Posted by Pukey P at wnpgas05-p204.mts.net on August 27, 2001 at 15:09:33:
So I guess it’s my turn to get to pretend like I know shit about anything. Plus I know how much everybody cares about everyone else’s opinion, especially mine so here goes. I really liked J & SB: SB, but here’s my thought, if you will. It seems that as soon as the budget goes up, the film tends to be more and more Hollywood. Not necessarily that it will conform itself to the views of the system, but that the film will conform itself to the classical narrative structures of the studio system.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The only reason I say anything, besides the fact that I’m a pompous ass, is that the bigger films, Mallrats (<= fuck the critics, Mallrats was good!), J & SB: SB, and to some extent Dogma aren’t as good as the independent ones, Clerks and Chasing Amy. Kevin may lampoon his visuals in those films but that’s not the point of those movies. I don’t think Clerks was ever intended to be a stunning visual epic. Those films show Kevin’s strengths of being much more like a post-modernist Woody Allen, at least in structure. I mean if you look at Allen’s earlier films, they aren’t visual masterpieces either. Even now his style is more utilitarian, with the same long takes and meise on scene that Kevin lampoons in his own films.
So what’s my point you ask? Well it’s this. Kevin is the man. I just worry that as his budgets get bigger, he will move further and further away from the films that single him out as a genius (yeah that’s right, I said Clerks and Chasing Amy were genius). But then again, what the fuck do I know? (This coming after I saw J & SB: SB and now know how much Kevin LOVES Internet critics, and yes I do live in my parents basement, thank you very much).