Kevin Smith at the Orpheum

This is not a movie a review but I posted it here because Kevin Smith is a movie maker. Plus, shows like the Q&A show I saw can be seen on DVD on 3 other movies he made in 2002, 2006 and 2008.

I saw the first two of the three of Kevin Smith's Q&A movies which were An Evening with Kevin Smith (2002) and An Evening with Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder (2006). The live show was more of the same but of course he's talking about things that are relevant and interesting to him now. A few years ago, Kevin left NJ and moved to Beverly Hills and now lives in Ben Affleck's old house. I was shocked that he would leave NJ because I thought he a hard-core Jersey boy. But then I thought it about some more and realized that it made sense. It helps to be at the center of the entertainment universe (Hollywood) if you're trying to be successful. There is more opportunities to be great out here.


BTW, Kevin's middle name is Patrick, same as my first name. While waiting for the show to start, they played music exclusively from Rush which is my all time favorite band. I got there very early since my ticket said it started at 6:30 pm but it really started at 8 pm. It seems half the people got there at 6:30 pm and the other half arrived at 8 pm. Strange. The two guys I was standing in line with just happened to sit next to me (assigned seats). I ended up sitting between two large guys like myself so it was quite uncomfortable. I leaned forward most of the time so we could all have shoulder room. It was a full house. Most of the audience was large nerdy looking guys like myself and yet half of them had girlfriends although they were large nerdy looking girls. There were also random packs of hot looking girls at the show.

In his first two Q&A's on DVD, Kevin used the F-word every third word but I don't recall him saying Fuck a single time last night. It may be that I'm desensitized to the word at this point but I did notice he over-used the expression "that being said". I'm personally annoyed when someone overuses an expression for example there was a guy at Disney that would include "at the end of the day" every other sentence. Kevin's third Q&A movie is called Sold Out: A Threevening with Kevin Smith (2008). I just rented that on NetFlix.




A Kevin Smith Question and Answer show is hard to describe to those who have never seen it. I don't know of anyone else who does what Kevin does. He stands in front of an audience for 3 hours and takes questions non-stop letting his audience direct where his rambles go. A single question can lead to a 45 minute rant or amusing story. His mind seems to get side-tracked again and again but somehow he manages to bring it around and tie it all together. Recently I watched the movie Swimming to Cambodia where Spalding Gray gives a monologue about working on the movie The Killing Fields but that's a performance which includes music, sound-effects, special lighting and props. Kevin does not perform. He's just himself.

I was just telling my wife that I try not accept all fashion I see even if I think its ridiculous but Kevin's pant legs are getting wider every time I see him. He was like a big cartoon character up there with pant legs wide enough to wrap around my hips. I know he's a fatty but these pants just make it worse. They are funny pants and if he's trying to funny, then perhaps this is a costume and he's making fun of himself. I wonder if he normally wears those pants in public.

Kevin is a laugh-a-minute literally. He really is funny and entertaining as well as informative and inspiring. I'm a huge fanboy of Kevin Smith and part of the reason is that I'm inspired by his success. When I worked on my dot com startup, I had a go-for-broke attitude and I did go broke ... literally. Certainly if things had worked out and I was rich right now, I'd be saying that was the right thing to do but even though it hurt me financially, I try to stay positive about the experience even though I'm still recovering from it 8 years later. Before Kevin started on Clerks, he knew it would he would go broke but it was something he had to do.

I gotta admire Kevin's honesty and willing to share intimate details of his life including sex, masturbation, pooping, raising a daughter, exchanges with his wife, smoking pot, getting inspired a Wayne Gretzky documentary as well as his professional life like writing Batman for DC comics, working on the script for Ranger Danger, working with actors like Seth Rogan, Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, directing A Couple of Dicks, working on Zack and Miri Make a Porno and seeing Jason Mewes dick (filing "Porno"), etc.

Wayne Gretzky's father told Wayne at a young age to "go where the puck will be" and Kevin was inspired by that. He talked about how Judd Apatow is now doing these movies like The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad and how critics say Judd makes Kevin irrelevant. At first Kevin thought his career was over but after thinking about it, he realized that there is a line of bad-taste that Judd will not pass but he himself has no problem stepping over that line.

Kevin says that making Zack and Miri Make a Porno was "going where the puck is" which is what Judd Apatow does so now he's attempting to go where the puck will be. His next major project he is writing is a hockey movie. He's half-way thru writing the script for Ranger Danger but he's putting that project on hold for a while. When he mentioned he'd be doing a hockey movie, the crowd stood up and applauded him. It was the only time the audience gave him a standing ovation besides when he arrived and left. In case you didn't know it, Kevin has a passion for hockey and all things Canadian. Hockey was prominent in Clerks for example.

Although Kevin is film maker, his true passion is for writing comics. He talked about writing for Batman. He also loves to do the smodcast where many of the stories he told tonight were already told on this podcast. His stories were obviously well rehearsed and refined which is fine. The cool thing is that nobody has any idea which way the stories will take us. Even so, he managed to fit in important info about the things he is currently working on now which is part of the reason I went to the show.

Toward the end he would often look at his mobile phone checking to see how much time was left. Someone asked him what it was like directing Tracy Morgan and at first it sounded like he had nothing to say on the subject but little by little, he started wandering from one thing to another until he fixed on his final story of the night about trying to direct Bruce Willis and how Bruce cannot be directed. This was the first time he directed a major star and he was trying to give Bruce some direction and Bruce was not having it. He quickly realized that Bruce is in control of his own performance. It was a long great story and suddenly he ended it with a punch-line and the night was over and he was gone.

Robinson Crusoe on Mars

This movie was released in 1964. This was right before we went to the moon. Only a few people had been space at that point. This was as scientifically accurate as they could make the movie based on what we knew about Mars and space travel at the time. When I saw it on TV as a kid of maybe age 10, 11 or 12, I thought this must be totally accurate.

Looking back we can see what they got right and what they got wrong. They did not indicate what year the first man crash-landed on Mars so we can't fault them for being too optimistic or pessimistic.

What they got wrong:

• Noise in space. Space is a vacuum so spaceships do not make sound. You would not be able to hear an orbiting ship from the surface.
  
• In the movie, the air is thin but breathable for a time
• The pressure on Mars would cause your blood to boil
• There are no great fires on Mars
• There would be no fireballs in space
  

What they got right:

• Mars has ice-caps
• Mars is dry like a dessert
• Water cannot exist on the surface of Mars except maybe at the bottom of the deepest canyons where the atmosphere pressure might be high enough.
• Mar's sky is red
  

Maybe's

Mars may have a molten core and therefore magnetic poles which might cause similar colored lights like the Earth's Northern Lights which are featured in the movie.

Adam West plays the astronaut who dies.






Shots of the spacecraft which you couldn't really see because it flew past the camera so fast.















There were same amazing mat paintings for landscapes.

Zombieland

I went into this movie with high expectations. Usually when I do that, I'm let down but this time the movie met my expectations. I thought it was very funny and it actually made it seem fun to be the last humans on Earth battling the zombies.

I read that this was originally meant to be a TV show so there's enough material for maybe 15 sequels. Crazy. I would love to see at least one sequel and it doesn't have to be with the same people. The entire world is over-run with zombies so the sequel could be anywhere with anyone.

I love the guys rules for staying alive

• Never be a hero
• Always have an escape route
• Always look in the back seat
• Don't be afraid to use ammunition
• Always double-tap to make sure they are really dead

This guy reminds me of Michael Cera and the girl reminds me of Lindsay Lohan.

They get a yellow hummer (one of my dream cars) and drive it to Hollywood where they get a map of the stars to locate the a certain celebs house. I won't spoil what happens next. It's one of the highlights of the movie. I'm itchin' to tell ya but I promised some people I'd keep my mouth shut and stop dropping spoilers in my reviews.

The zombies are stupid. They can't use weapons and they don't recognize when someone has a weapon which can easily kill them. They are simply mindless killing machines with rage ... and they're hungry for human flesh. Zombies do not bother each other unless it's in competition over who gets to kill and eat a living person. If you wear convincing zombie make-up, it will fool the zombies. Zombies focus on one thing at a time and wouldn't see the speeding car that's about to run them over while they're feasting on a recent kill. Zombies don't feel pain. If you blow off their feet, they'll keep running on the leg stubs. Zombies can't sprint but they can run and they seem to have great endurance. It's important that you have great endurance too. For this reason, the fatties are the first to go.

I would think that the zombies would all die off on their own once their food source disappeared. They spew tons of foul liquid from their mouths, you'd think that they would dehydrate very quickly.

For the living, traveling in packs seems like the best choice. When you're alone, you cannot watch your own back. You cannot cover yourself. While you're pumping gas, zombies have a way of sneaking up on you in your blind spot behind the car. If you had friends, there would be no blind spots which is why I find it strange that these various people that meet are reluctant to travel together and to trust each other. I would want at least two people standing guard while I slept.

Spoiler Start:

OK, I can't resist. There are some things that bothered me.

Zombies are attracted by lights and sound. So why would the main characters go to an amusement park and turn on all the lights, rides and music then go on a ride where they couldn't exit until the ride ended? You would think these people would have wised up by now but they go and do the stupidest thing you could possibly do ... attract attention to hundreds of zombies.

The celeb they meet wears zombie make-up so they can walk freely among the zombies and do stuff like play golf. You'd think the zombies could see past it if that zombie was acting like a living person and doing things like driving a car or playing golf. The last thing you want to do is play a joke on someone with a shotgun and sneak up behind them with zombie make-up to scare them. Not even celebs are that stupid.

Spoiler End.

People will make obvious comparisons to Shaun Of The Dead but for me, they're like apples and oranges. All you can say is that they are both funny zombie movies. They go off in completely different directions and have very different feels to them.

I'm a big fan of Woody Harrelson. He never disappoints me. I've enjoyed his performances in Cheers, White Man Can't Jump, Indecent Proposal, Natural Born Killers, Kingpin, Money Train, The People vs Larry Flint, Wag the Dog, The Thin Red Line, EdTV, Anger Management, A Scanner Darkly, No Country For Old Men, Semi-Pro and Seven Pounds. The only other actor I recognize is the celeb whose name I won't mention.

There is gore and violence and strong language but none of that bothered me. I was thoroughly entertained and I've added this movie to my list of all time favorite movies (which I'm working on posting here soon).