If you are at all interested in weather, think about putting in a wireless sensor package outside the house. I would look into the Davis Vantage Pro2. The university that I work at has the original Pro and I am thinking about getting one myself. It works like a charm: current weather, trends, 48hr forecasts, and graphs all on the base station. Plus, there is great software available for free on Linux called meteo that will populate a MySQL table with live data. Good stuff to then display using PHP and a web server.
where, in order to get the Xbox 2, you had to trade in your current system.
Where, in order to get the Xbox 2, you have to give up your existing Xbox and make the entire library of games that you own for that system useless. Seriously, the only reason I rushed out to by a PS2 was because I knew I would be able to play the 1-2 good release games and had my entire library of existing PS games to play on it as well.
at a speed of over 1.5 million miles per hour (670 kilometers per second)
No offense to the person who submitted this article, but do you think you could refrain from mixing your units of measurement (or time, for that matter). From a readability, it is much harder to following "x miles per hour (x meters per second)". People do this all the time and it drives me nuts! Suggestions would be:
1.5 million miles per hour (416 miles per second)
1.5 million miles per hour (2.4 million kilometers per hour)
Not trying to be an ass, but it just makes more sense when you read it. Thanks.
Also of note in this case is Metroid Prime or Eternal Darkness... which both managed to stream the levels off the disc, eliminating load times completely....
I appreciate your optimism here, but even Metroid Prime had load times. Even though they were few and far between, there were instances where I shot a door and had to wait 2-5 seconds for it to open before I could continue into the next section. During that period, I could hear the laser head on my 'Cube moving back and forth pretty fast loading data.
That said, a 2-5 second load time is nothing compared to what a lot of other games consider fast.
Sorry, but I think I will sit this one out. I this release announcement extremely upsetting for a couple of reasons:
$50 more than the Japanese release. Now, to be fair, I am not sure extactly how the US package differs from the Japanese package, but I would have hoped for a game for the extra $50 bucks.
The Spiderman 2 movie is only available to the first million? I can't believe they wouldn't make that a standard packin.
Sure, I might be nitpicking a little bit, but with all the recent press, Sony has an uphill battle in my book. Be it the "twist-and-shoot" problems with the UDM slot, the fact that the square button isn't as responsive as the rest do to a "design decision", 2 hour average battery life, or the general issue that this is a 1st generation product from Sony, I will take a wait and see approach.
Plus, I still can't get over the fact that the games are going to cost practically the same price as those for the full size consoles. To be honest, this is an issue I have with the DS as well. The reason I didn't include it up above, though, is that this seems the direction the hand held market is going and I will probably have to grow to live with it.
"The island boasts beautiful beaches ripe for developing beachfront property...<snip>"
Mr. "Deathifier" Emegen went on to describe his computer desk from which he does his online business. It is a large desk with newly discovered space underneath a pile of computer gaming magazines. The upper desk boasts a monitor rest with beautiful stacks of Mountain Dew cans ripe for recycling, an old arm lamp with rumors it once worked, and behind the desk described as an "outback" that is in desperate need of cable tying which is overrun with mutant horse flies, The house he inhabits has an area described as the "kitchen" in desperate need of the girlfriend who left it two years ago that indicates excellent penicillin mining opportunities.
"With forged checks, it usually goes first to bank security..."
I would agree, but in the case of my friend, she was given the check back and told there was nothing the bank could do. The really humorous part was that the people with the stolen check returned to where she works and tried again. This time, she called the police and they didn't show up for another 40 minutes. In the mean time, the "bad guys" got away. Guess it was their day.....
The original CSI is my favorite, as I can't stand David Caruso from the Miami show, and CSI: NY it too new to form an opinion (which is slipping to dislike right now). My one wish is that they would do more theft type episodes and move away from all murder. Case in point was an episode last season that involved the theft of some priceless antiques. Awesome episode. Not a drop of blood, but the process of how the determined who was the thief was fascinating.
That said, the CSI craze has caused an outbreak of stupidity. Recently, a friend received a stolen check where she works. Since she is the general manager of the store, she had to go to the bank and work out the details. The bank teller (besides being an ass) made the comment that my friend shouldn't "touch the check too often as they might get her fingerprints" and she would get in trouble. Honest truth, those were the bank teller's words. My friend responded with "CSI fan, eh?"
I have another friend that can't stand the show on the grounds of how unrealistic it portraits criminal investigation. Being he was a prosecutor for numerous years, his main beef is that the CSI officers are never involved with the interrogation of the suspects and that the usually hand over their evidence to the investigating office. He then does all the foot work. He also says that the CSI folks don't carry firearms, but he concedes that might vary from office to office. He really dislikes the Miami show since the Caruso character is ordering police officers around all the time, which he says never happens.
There you go, the $0.02 from some guy off the street.
How about online proof? Numerous game outlets (including EBGames) had moved the game back to the end of November for release. This morning, a brief search of sites (including EBGames and Vivendi's online store have the game shipping on November 1st!
Read the article on IGN (actually, it is Voodoo Extreme), and you will see that Valve has submitted the game to BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) and PEGI (Pan European Games Information) for rating. While this would most likely require the game to be in final build status, there has been NO announcement from Valve or Vivendi as of yet.
I Am Not Being Shifted, I Am Being Forced
on
The Long Tail
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The entertainment is a unique beast in that it permiates almost every part of our lives. From the morning news to the cereal we eat to the drive to and from work, people will find they are being bombarded by the entertainment industry. It didn't used to be that way, but has come on really strong in recent years. Group that with the number of movies that Hollywood produces each year, and you will find entertainment sensory overload?
"So what?" you might ask. Well, the problem here is that there appears to be only so many formulas that main stream Hollywood can produce. So, all that sensory overload is starting to become the same thing over and over again. How many firefighter movies do we need? Obviously one more since Ladder 49 found its way in theatres. And, if you have seen it, you will find (besides the way it ends) that it lacks originality in almost every facet of its existence. Same thing with Shark Tale. Get down to it, its just a gangster movie with a kids front put on it. I am not the only one who has noticed this, either. Most in my group feel that most every movie formula has been done to death by the movie industries. Look at the movie Taxi coming out soon. Go and rent the likes of National Security or Lethal Weapon and you will see basically the same formula.
This is where the indie industry is coming to the rescue with their niche titles. Its why your Napolean Dynamites are doing so well while main stream stuff is struggling to stay in theatres for any length of time. Its why Donnie Darko has such an underground following where as Armegeddon is considered loud crap by many.
This, of course, extends down to the rental businees. People are hungry for entertainment and these niche titles fit that bill to a tee. I, for one, am glad we have a Netflix that is able to provide the alternatives to the Grade A blockbuster crap from mainstream studios. Otherwise, I think I would have given up on the movie industry a long time ago.
Chalk up another weapon in Tivo's arsenal for living room domination. One of the final strokes would be for them to make the Tivo the centralized media portal in the house with the ability to run clients on PCs, other TV's, and maybe even the Playstation 2, precisely what Microsoft is doing with Media Center Edition and the Xbox. For Tivo's sake, I hope they play this correctly as it has the possiblity to either make or break the company.
I do wonder, though, if we won't see a similar announcement from Microsoft in the near future. After all, wouldn't a service like this fit perfectly into their growing living room plans? I would think so.
For me, I would love to have this type of functionality from Tivo. The ability to not only stream shows that you have recorded, but movies that you have downloaded from Netflix to any client would probably make me invest in a Tivo setup.
"It sounds like plaid is just one of those things that strikes Americans as being intrinsically funny, which isn't over here..."
The deal, here in the US at least, is that for all the different sci-fi movies that have been released, they all treat faster than light travel with these insanely bright textures that twist and turn. Plus, the faster the speed, the more colorful and chaotic the pattern. Any movie that has a ship go that fast will have that feature. So, Mel Brooks was lampooning this with the fact that they were going so fast, their pattern turned to plaid. It still makes me laugh out loud.
I hate to disagree, but we did not get the original trilogy. We got a trilogy that has been monkeyed with and, in parts, made worse while in other parts made better. On the whole, I like what he did to the three (even though I have seen the Hayden Christensen thing at the end of Jedi and hugely dislike it), but this is definately not the original trilogy.
Personally, I think that is what Lucas is worried about. Here you have three movies how he wanted them, now complete we can assume. But, a great many people hate the changes. So much so that in recently (like in the last couple of years), those with the laserdisc originals have been painstakenly moving those over to DVD and those are appearing online. I believe this is the piracy that Lucas is talking about. He wants to make those originals go away (he said so recently).
Here's my beef; you will need an external PC to get any sort of video what so ever.
I would have thought it would be as simple as:
Hook up device to cable
Schedule recording
Watch
Instead, you have to:
Hook up your computer to cable
Go to your PC and schedule a show
Once it is done, have the software crunch the video to be transfered to the device
Hook up the device to the computer
Transfer the video over to the device
Watch
How much more would it have cost to include a tuner with the unit?! Based on a post above, the unit can do video compression. So, until that happens, I am not too interested in the device as there are too many hurdles to jump to get out the door.
No offense taken. It's just when you say, "None of his movies lived up to the expectations that naturally came about as a result of the edginess of the original Clerks", I assumed that you didn't care for the other flicks. I do agree that a good writer doesn't fill their movies with inside jokes, but that comment only really applies to Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. Still, as I mentioned before, he didn't promise anything else beyond that; it was a movie made for the fans, the only ones who would get the inside jokes.
I do disagree that he is doing it entirely for the money. Sure, the dude has to eat (not that money is a problem with the thriving comic book store he has), but in the end , he is just giving to the fans what they really want, more Jay, Silent Bob, Randall, and Dante. How does that make him a hack?
I also didn't say you were "rabidly anti-Kevin Smith", it was just your original message sounded like you had grown to dislike the guy and his work, which will shade anyone's views. Hell, my message was rabidly biased has hell!
Finally, he did go out on a limb and tried to expand his horizons. It didn't work like he wanted. So, should someone keep trying till they either 1) self destruct or 2) succeed or 3) lick their wounds and try to fight again another day? Personally, I will take 3.
Again, no offense taken, even if your opinion was totally wrong:). I was just trying to strike up a conversation. And as for my "hard to take..." thing, just trying to get a rise out of ya.....
As a Kevin Smith fan, perhaps you could explain why you are a Kevin Smith fan in the first place?
Kevin Smith, to me at least, is your everyperson, a guy who you could have had a beer with and talk about your favorite flicks or comics or other stuff that I was interested in while growing up. He is the example of someone who likes movies to the point that he made his own, even at quite the cost (in the case of Clerks, a temp enrollment in film school and humongo credit card debt). So, in this respect, you could say I have huge admiration for the man.
Plus, as many Smith fans will agree, the man knows how to write dialog. A perfect example of this is in Clerks. While the whole presentation was "sophomoric" to a certain extent, his whole dialog on the contract works for the second Death Star was a great hoot (specially now that I am a government contractor, ironically enough). He talked about the lameness of crap jobs and Star Wars in Clerks. He discussed comic books and mallratting in Mallrats. I could go on, but I won't. His dialog that helped to get his point across was easy to relate to. So what if everyone talked in monologue, it was the point that mattered. I would go so far as to say he was one of many voices for the teens growing up in the 90's.
Now, I am not without criticism. Mallrats wasn't his best work, although it was very funny. Also, I felt the sh!t demon in Dogma did nothing for the movie. Jersey Girl was good but just a bit too derivative. For these reasons, those three movies aren't near the top of the list, which would go: Chasing Amy, Clerks, J&SBSB, Dogma, Mallrats, and Jersey Girl. I enjoyed all of them, but some a great deal more than others. JG shouldn't be included in the list, as it is a COMPLETELY different movie, but in the rankings of Mr. Smith's work, those the picks.
It is hard to take your comments seriously when you are so obviously biased against Smith and his films. It's too bad you don't like his work, but give the man credit. He is one of the few responsible for revitalizing the independent movie seen in the early to mid 90's (if you don't believe me, give Down and Dirty Pictures a read, good stuff).
But, to take some of your comments to point:
"None of his movies lived up to the expectations that naturally came about as a result of the edginess of the original Clerks..."
I have to say you are wrong here. Chasing Amy was even more edgy than Clerks could have hoped to be. The story line was much better defined, the characters had more depth, and the ending was a great punch in the face. Fantastic story. Dogma, besides having a sh!t monster that really didn't belong, was a great look at faith. Not quite as edgy as Clerks, but great characters and story. In both of these examples, Smith excels in two areas: being able to get his point across and great dialog.
"Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was just a series of in-jokes for the rabid Kevin Smith fans."
So the hell what? Smith never said it was going to be his most brilliant work (but it was his funniest, IMHO). In fact, he always said it was going to be for the fans, nothing more. How can you hold that against the movie when even the writer/director said it wasn't going to be any more than somethign for the fans?
"And wasn't that supposed to be the last movie set in the "View Askewniverse""
Yes, it was. But, something occurred that Smith didn't expect. Jersey Girl was a failure. It did OK in the box office, but I expect he was hoping it would be his transition from "dick and fart" movies to something more sophisticated. That didn't happen; the audience didn't show up. For anyone that would be a huge blow, mentally. So, he decides to go back to what he knows he can do best. Most people would do the same in his place. I, for one, won't have a problem with that, either. As for the comparison between him and Lucas, that analogy doesn't fit. Lucas is making huge bucks from the Star Wars franchise, and he will continue to do so even if VII, VIII, and IX aren't made. The fact that he probably will, though, indicates a want to milk his creation. In what I have read from the above book, I believe that Smith isn't like that, he makes the movies to make movies, cause he loves doing it.
As you can imagine, I am a huge Smith fan and my posting was just as biased as yours. But, I think both sides needed to be stated.
Slashdot Mirror
If you are at all interested in weather, think about putting in a wireless sensor package outside the house. I would look into the Davis Vantage Pro2. The university that I work at has the original Pro and I am thinking about getting one myself. It works like a charm: current weather, trends, 48hr forecasts, and graphs all on the base station. Plus, there is great software available for free on Linux called meteo that will populate a MySQL table with live data. Good stuff to then display using PHP and a web server.
where, in order to get the Xbox 2, you had to trade in your current system.
Where, in order to get the Xbox 2, you have to give up your existing Xbox and make the entire library of games that you own for that system useless. Seriously, the only reason I rushed out to by a PS2 was because I knew I would be able to play the 1-2 good release games and had my entire library of existing PS games to play on it as well.
In the immortal words of Peter Griffin:
"Touché salesman..."
No offense to the person who submitted this article, but do you think you could refrain from mixing your units of measurement (or time, for that matter). From a readability, it is much harder to following "x miles per hour (x meters per second)". People do this all the time and it drives me nuts! Suggestions would be:
Not trying to be an ass, but it just makes more sense when you read it. Thanks.
Also of note in this case is Metroid Prime or Eternal Darkness... which both managed to stream the levels off the disc, eliminating load times completely....
I appreciate your optimism here, but even Metroid Prime had load times. Even though they were few and far between, there were instances where I shot a door and had to wait 2-5 seconds for it to open before I could continue into the next section. During that period, I could hear the laser head on my 'Cube moving back and forth pretty fast loading data.
That said, a 2-5 second load time is nothing compared to what a lot of other games consider fast.
Sure, I might be nitpicking a little bit, but with all the recent press, Sony has an uphill battle in my book. Be it the "twist-and-shoot" problems with the UDM slot, the fact that the square button isn't as responsive as the rest do to a "design decision", 2 hour average battery life, or the general issue that this is a 1st generation product from Sony, I will take a wait and see approach.
Plus, I still can't get over the fact that the games are going to cost practically the same price as those for the full size consoles. To be honest, this is an issue I have with the DS as well. The reason I didn't include it up above, though, is that this seems the direction the hand held market is going and I will probably have to grow to live with it.
And it breaks new ground by putting a figure - for the first time in such a high-level document - on the danger point of global warming...
And that figure is.... 42.
"The island boasts beautiful beaches ripe for developing beachfront property...<snip>"
Mr. "Deathifier" Emegen went on to describe his computer desk from which he does his online business. It is a large desk with newly discovered space underneath a pile of computer gaming magazines. The upper desk boasts a monitor rest with beautiful stacks of Mountain Dew cans ripe for recycling, an old arm lamp with rumors it once worked, and behind the desk described as an "outback" that is in desperate need of cable tying which is overrun with mutant horse flies, The house he inhabits has an area described as the "kitchen" in desperate need of the girlfriend who left it two years ago that indicates excellent penicillin mining opportunities.
"With forged checks, it usually goes first to bank security..."
I would agree, but in the case of my friend, she was given the check back and told there was nothing the bank could do. The really humorous part was that the people with the stolen check returned to where she works and tried again. This time, she called the police and they didn't show up for another 40 minutes. In the mean time, the "bad guys" got away. Guess it was their day.....
There was this one guy who came up to us to axe us a question...
Ah, nothing like computer nerds using slang..... It's so cute yet so disturbing.
The original CSI is my favorite, as I can't stand David Caruso from the Miami show, and CSI: NY it too new to form an opinion (which is slipping to dislike right now). My one wish is that they would do more theft type episodes and move away from all murder. Case in point was an episode last season that involved the theft of some priceless antiques. Awesome episode. Not a drop of blood, but the process of how the determined who was the thief was fascinating.
That said, the CSI craze has caused an outbreak of stupidity. Recently, a friend received a stolen check where she works. Since she is the general manager of the store, she had to go to the bank and work out the details. The bank teller (besides being an ass) made the comment that my friend shouldn't "touch the check too often as they might get her fingerprints" and she would get in trouble. Honest truth, those were the bank teller's words. My friend responded with "CSI fan, eh?"
I have another friend that can't stand the show on the grounds of how unrealistic it portraits criminal investigation. Being he was a prosecutor for numerous years, his main beef is that the CSI officers are never involved with the interrogation of the suspects and that the usually hand over their evidence to the investigating office. He then does all the foot work. He also says that the CSI folks don't carry firearms, but he concedes that might vary from office to office. He really dislikes the Miami show since the Caruso character is ordering police officers around all the time, which he says never happens.
There you go, the $0.02 from some guy off the street.
Prepare for a "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around" question...
So, hypothetically, if Half-Life 2 were to be pirated, I download the game, and I already have it paid for via Steam, is it illegal?
How about online proof? Numerous game outlets (including EBGames) had moved the game back to the end of November for release. This morning, a brief search of sites (including EBGames and Vivendi's online store have the game shipping on November 1st!
Read the article on IGN (actually, it is Voodoo Extreme), and you will see that Valve has submitted the game to BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) and PEGI (Pan European Games Information) for rating. While this would most likely require the game to be in final build status, there has been NO announcement from Valve or Vivendi as of yet.
The entertainment is a unique beast in that it permiates almost every part of our lives. From the morning news to the cereal we eat to the drive to and from work, people will find they are being bombarded by the entertainment industry. It didn't used to be that way, but has come on really strong in recent years. Group that with the number of movies that Hollywood produces each year, and you will find entertainment sensory overload?
"So what?" you might ask. Well, the problem here is that there appears to be only so many formulas that main stream Hollywood can produce. So, all that sensory overload is starting to become the same thing over and over again. How many firefighter movies do we need? Obviously one more since Ladder 49 found its way in theatres. And, if you have seen it, you will find (besides the way it ends) that it lacks originality in almost every facet of its existence. Same thing with Shark Tale. Get down to it, its just a gangster movie with a kids front put on it. I am not the only one who has noticed this, either. Most in my group feel that most every movie formula has been done to death by the movie industries. Look at the movie Taxi coming out soon. Go and rent the likes of National Security or Lethal Weapon and you will see basically the same formula.
This is where the indie industry is coming to the rescue with their niche titles. Its why your Napolean Dynamites are doing so well while main stream stuff is struggling to stay in theatres for any length of time. Its why Donnie Darko has such an underground following where as Armegeddon is considered loud crap by many.
This, of course, extends down to the rental businees. People are hungry for entertainment and these niche titles fit that bill to a tee. I, for one, am glad we have a Netflix that is able to provide the alternatives to the Grade A blockbuster crap from mainstream studios. Otherwise, I think I would have given up on the movie industry a long time ago.
Chalk up another weapon in Tivo's arsenal for living room domination. One of the final strokes would be for them to make the Tivo the centralized media portal in the house with the ability to run clients on PCs, other TV's, and maybe even the Playstation 2, precisely what Microsoft is doing with Media Center Edition and the Xbox. For Tivo's sake, I hope they play this correctly as it has the possiblity to either make or break the company.
I do wonder, though, if we won't see a similar announcement from Microsoft in the near future. After all, wouldn't a service like this fit perfectly into their growing living room plans? I would think so.
For me, I would love to have this type of functionality from Tivo. The ability to not only stream shows that you have recorded, but movies that you have downloaded from Netflix to any client would probably make me invest in a Tivo setup.
"It sounds like plaid is just one of those things that strikes Americans as being intrinsically funny, which isn't over here..."
The deal, here in the US at least, is that for all the different sci-fi movies that have been released, they all treat faster than light travel with these insanely bright textures that twist and turn. Plus, the faster the speed, the more colorful and chaotic the pattern. Any movie that has a ship go that fast will have that feature. So, Mel Brooks was lampooning this with the fact that they were going so fast, their pattern turned to plaid. It still makes me laugh out loud.
My God, they've gone to plaid!
From what I hear, they'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
erh...
OH! Mo-jave Spaceport! My bad.....
Me: "Oh no, we can't get tickets! What do we do?"
***Eye piece swings over friend's eye***
My Friend: "We die."
"At least we got the original trilogy DVD."
I hate to disagree, but we did not get the original trilogy. We got a trilogy that has been monkeyed with and, in parts, made worse while in other parts made better. On the whole, I like what he did to the three (even though I have seen the Hayden Christensen thing at the end of Jedi and hugely dislike it), but this is definately not the original trilogy.
Personally, I think that is what Lucas is worried about. Here you have three movies how he wanted them, now complete we can assume. But, a great many people hate the changes. So much so that in recently (like in the last couple of years), those with the laserdisc originals have been painstakenly moving those over to DVD and those are appearing online. I believe this is the piracy that Lucas is talking about. He wants to make those originals go away (he said so recently).
I would have thought it would be as simple as:
- Hook up device to cable
- Schedule recording
- Watch
Instead, you have to:- Hook up your computer to cable
- Go to your PC and schedule a show
- Once it is done, have the software crunch the video to be transfered to the device
- Hook up the device to the computer
- Transfer the video over to the device
- Watch
How much more would it have cost to include a tuner with the unit?! Based on a post above, the unit can do video compression. So, until that happens, I am not too interested in the device as there are too many hurdles to jump to get out the door.No offense taken. It's just when you say, "None of his movies lived up to the expectations that naturally came about as a result of the edginess of the original Clerks", I assumed that you didn't care for the other flicks. I do agree that a good writer doesn't fill their movies with inside jokes, but that comment only really applies to Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. Still, as I mentioned before, he didn't promise anything else beyond that; it was a movie made for the fans, the only ones who would get the inside jokes.
:). I was just trying to strike up a conversation. And as for my "hard to take..." thing, just trying to get a rise out of ya.....
I do disagree that he is doing it entirely for the money. Sure, the dude has to eat (not that money is a problem with the thriving comic book store he has), but in the end , he is just giving to the fans what they really want, more Jay, Silent Bob, Randall, and Dante. How does that make him a hack?
I also didn't say you were "rabidly anti-Kevin Smith", it was just your original message sounded like you had grown to dislike the guy and his work, which will shade anyone's views. Hell, my message was rabidly biased has hell!
Finally, he did go out on a limb and tried to expand his horizons. It didn't work like he wanted. So, should someone keep trying till they either 1) self destruct or 2) succeed or 3) lick their wounds and try to fight again another day? Personally, I will take 3.
Again, no offense taken, even if your opinion was totally wrong
As a Kevin Smith fan, perhaps you could explain why you are a Kevin Smith fan in the first place?
Kevin Smith, to me at least, is your everyperson, a guy who you could have had a beer with and talk about your favorite flicks or comics or other stuff that I was interested in while growing up. He is the example of someone who likes movies to the point that he made his own, even at quite the cost (in the case of Clerks, a temp enrollment in film school and humongo credit card debt). So, in this respect, you could say I have huge admiration for the man.
Plus, as many Smith fans will agree, the man knows how to write dialog. A perfect example of this is in Clerks. While the whole presentation was "sophomoric" to a certain extent, his whole dialog on the contract works for the second Death Star was a great hoot (specially now that I am a government contractor, ironically enough). He talked about the lameness of crap jobs and Star Wars in Clerks. He discussed comic books and mallratting in Mallrats. I could go on, but I won't. His dialog that helped to get his point across was easy to relate to. So what if everyone talked in monologue, it was the point that mattered. I would go so far as to say he was one of many voices for the teens growing up in the 90's.
Now, I am not without criticism. Mallrats wasn't his best work, although it was very funny. Also, I felt the sh!t demon in Dogma did nothing for the movie. Jersey Girl was good but just a bit too derivative. For these reasons, those three movies aren't near the top of the list, which would go: Chasing Amy, Clerks, J&SBSB, Dogma, Mallrats, and Jersey Girl. I enjoyed all of them, but some a great deal more than others. JG shouldn't be included in the list, as it is a COMPLETELY different movie, but in the rankings of Mr. Smith's work, those the picks.
It is hard to take your comments seriously when you are so obviously biased against Smith and his films. It's too bad you don't like his work, but give the man credit. He is one of the few responsible for revitalizing the independent movie seen in the early to mid 90's (if you don't believe me, give Down and Dirty Pictures a read, good stuff).
But, to take some of your comments to point:
- "None of his movies lived up to the expectations that naturally came about as a result of the edginess of the original Clerks..."
- "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was just a series of in-jokes for the rabid Kevin Smith fans."
- "And wasn't that supposed to be the last movie set in the "View Askewniverse""
As you can imagine, I am a huge Smith fan and my posting was just as biased as yours. But, I think both sides needed to be stated.I have to say you are wrong here. Chasing Amy was even more edgy than Clerks could have hoped to be. The story line was much better defined, the characters had more depth, and the ending was a great punch in the face. Fantastic story. Dogma, besides having a sh!t monster that really didn't belong, was a great look at faith. Not quite as edgy as Clerks, but great characters and story. In both of these examples, Smith excels in two areas: being able to get his point across and great dialog.
So the hell what? Smith never said it was going to be his most brilliant work (but it was his funniest, IMHO). In fact, he always said it was going to be for the fans, nothing more. How can you hold that against the movie when even the writer/director said it wasn't going to be any more than somethign for the fans?
Yes, it was. But, something occurred that Smith didn't expect. Jersey Girl was a failure. It did OK in the box office, but I expect he was hoping it would be his transition from "dick and fart" movies to something more sophisticated. That didn't happen; the audience didn't show up. For anyone that would be a huge blow, mentally. So, he decides to go back to what he knows he can do best. Most people would do the same in his place. I, for one, won't have a problem with that, either. As for the comparison between him and Lucas, that analogy doesn't fit. Lucas is making huge bucks from the Star Wars franchise, and he will continue to do so even if VII, VIII, and IX aren't made. The fact that he probably will, though, indicates a want to milk his creation. In what I have read from the above book, I believe that Smith isn't like that, he makes the movies to make movies, cause he loves doing it.