Archives by Tag: Movies
Zack and Miri Can’t Remember My Birthday
Kevin Smith’s struggles with the MPAA continue, and I’m getting more and more aggravated by what’s going down.
This week, you see, Smith and company launched a “Making Of” series for Zack and Miri Make a Porno. This is the same kind of thing that the View Askew crew (along with Chop Shop Entertainment’s Zak Knutson and Joey Figueroa) put together for Clerks II, and it’s already turning out to be just as awesome. There’s only one problem though, and that’s the annoying age verification form that I need to fill out every single time I watch an episode!!!
Last week, our friends over at News Askew broke the story on how the MPAA was refusing to let even Web-only documentaries fly below its radar now. But, even when I read that piece, I had no idea that the Association was going to go to such draconian lengths to keep us from enjoying what Knutson and Figueroa had put together.
There has got to be a way (a cookie, or something) to allow me to enter my birthday only once per visit, but I’m guessing that just wouldn’t have been kosher with the morality police. So, instead, I have to go through the same rigmarole every damn time. And I’m telling you, the idea may be to deter kids from watching these “naughty” videos but it’s going to end up deterring me and other busy, law-abiding adults instead. Kids’ll sit there and come up with a dozen different birthdays (they aren’t stupid, and they’ve got plenty of time), but I have shit to do.
DVD or Digital Download?
I celebrated my thirty-first birthday yesterday and the most pressing question to come out of that blessed event was this: DVD or M4V?
In the Clark household, movie-watching happens exclusively through an Apple TV. It started with the massive DVD conversion project I undertook earlier this year, and it’s continued with occasional purchases from the iTunes store (Juno and Gross Pointe Blank most recently). But those movie purchases have been few and far between, and the true test of my willingness to go entirely digital has arrived in the form of a much-beloved Marvel Comics movie which I, personally, have yet to see. You see, Iron Man is out now, kiddos. And I can’t decide if I want the DVD or not.
Now, I know what the easy answer is: Buy the DVD and rip it and you’ll have the best of both worlds. And sure, converting a DVD to an iTunes/Apple TV compatible file is a breeze with HandBrake, but that doesn’t address the core issue. And the core issue is this: Do I need the DVD, or do I just need the movie?
I used to be a glutton for special features. I ate all that shit up. But times change, and I don’t have as much time as I used to. I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve watched a DVD’s special features over the last three or four years. All I really need is the movie. And the truth is that I watch movies more often, now that I’m able to get to any movie in my collection with just a couple of clicks.
Aside from that, there’s the fact that, while HandBraking a DVD is simple enough, HandBraking a DVD to a file that’s compatible (and looks good) on both my Apple TV and my iPhone is next to impossible. The files purchased directly from the iTunes store work on both devices, and look good on both devices, but I’ve never been able to create that kind of file myself. And, really, part of why I want digital copies of everything is so that I can take movies on the road with me, on my iPhone. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is that all of the movies I spent my spring converting are incompatible with the iPhone.
Then, there’s the issue of space. We had way too many DVDs taking up way too much space in our living room, and the Apple TV helped solve that issue. I don’t want to contribute to its resurgence by buying more physical products when their digital equivalents work just as well.
But that DVD, that physical package, it’s still alluring, to a certain extent.
How about you, Geek Forcers? Are you ready to make the move to digital movies in the way that many of us have made the leap to digital music? Let us know in the comments.
Geek Force Utterz #017 - Spider-Man 4
Over the last few days, I’ve been hearing more and more about a potential fourth film for the Spider-Man franchise. Both Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst are apparently back on board, and there are whispers that Black Cat may play a role in the story.
In today’s episode of Geek Force Utterz, I talk about what I’d like to see from a fourth Spider-Man film, why what I’d like to see is probably impossible, and why Spider-Man 3 didn’t suck nearly as much as you think it did.
Can’t see/hear the embed above? You can listen to this call on Utterli instead.
“How does fake poo warrant an NC-17?”
Earlier this month, Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek interviewed Kevin Smith at the Toronto Film Festival. The broad topic, of course, was the TFF premiere of Zack and Miri Make a Porno, but what’s really great about the interview is when they get into the specific topic of the NC-17 appeals process. I’ve written previously about one of the scenes that the MPAA was demanding that Smith trim, but it turns out there was an even more “disturbing” shot that had to be dealt with, this one involving, well, poo.
Zacharek explains:
[T]he MPAA expressed its extreme displeasure with several scenes in the movie, including what Smith blithely refers to as “the shit shot.” (To explain it here would give too much away, so all you need to know is that the gag involves an unusual camera angle and—I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.)
And later, Smith elaborates on how things went down:
...for the shit shot, I cited “Trainspotting,” when they whip the sheet, and the shit goes all over the family. And I also cited “Jackass,” which was a weird pull, but it was congruous to some degree, because I said, “Look, when ‘Jackass’ was an MTV show, there were tons of articles about how kids were imitating it, and winding up hurting themselves. Then it became a movie, an R-rated movie, in which there’s a sequence called the Fart Helmet, where Steve-o is wearing this bubble helmet on his head, with a hose attached to it with a funnel. And his buddy’s farting into the funnel, which goes into the headpiece, and Steve-o starts throwing up. Then his friend shits into the funnel, and you see it at one point.” And I’m like, “‘Jackass’ is more of a documentary than anything else. What they’re doing is real. That got an R. Clearly, what we did is unreal. It’s fake poo all the way. And how does fake poo warrant an NC-17, versus real poo getting an R?”
Somehow that worked. They flipped it. We left the room, and about five minutes later they came out and said that we won.
Honestly, every new bit of information that I learn about why the MPAA gave Kevin so much of a hassle this time around makes the whole thing seem even more ridiculous to me. Okay, so there’s a shot involving poop. And there’s a sex scene between Jason Mewes and Katie Morgan that’s a little more than over-the-top. But this is the same ratings board that gave Clerks II, with its donkey show, an R right out of the gate. And it’s the same committee that, as Elizabeth Banks so eloquently put it, routinely grants Rs to movies “about people cutting off each other’s limbs and blood gushing everywhere.” What is the big deal?
It’s all about the title, isn’t it? Had this movie been called anything else, I’m guessing it wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much shit for it’s shit scene (and its sex scenes) as it has.
Oh well. The nice thing about all the press that’s coming out about the film now is that the reviews have been uniformly positive. So that’s good. I can’t wait for October 31 to get here, so that I can see for myself what all the fuss is about. How about you?
Worth Your Consideration 017 - A GF5 Linkdump
- Trent Reznor and company have launched a new version of nin.com that seems to be heading in a slightly more social networking direction than you’d expect from a band that makes music for generally antisocial people. My profile is here.
- Kevin Smith has updated Silent Bob Speaks with a look at the Canadian poster for the film and a link to a previously unreleased general audiences trailer. The new trailer includes some new, funny bits, but it’s got basically the same structure as the red band trailer. So, it’s a bit hard to watch if, like me, you’ve watched the red band trailer so many times that you’re expecting all of the comedic beats before they happen. When a different joke or beat hits in this green band trailer, I’m totally thrown for a loop, and that’s distracting me from enjoying the thing.
- Bill Melendez, the voice of Snoopy and the Flash Beagle’s sometime animator, has died. As a huge Peanuts fan—my nickname in college was Charlie Brown, in case you didn’t know—this makes me very sad. Ain’t It Cool News has a nice tribute, complete with a couple of You Tube clips.
Topics: View Askew, Nine Inch Nails, Geekforce Reserves
