IndieWIRE – “”Brothers of the Head” and “Clerks II” Among Winners at 60th Edinburgh Int’l Film Fest”

In “Clerks II: The Second Coming,” New Jersey mini-mart clerks and best friends Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson) are forced to find new jobs in the fast-food universe. The first “Clerks” installment screened at EIFF in 1994.

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Reuters – “”Brothers of the Head” gets nod at Edinburgh”

Kevin Smith’s comedy “Clerks II” took home the audience award during the event’s closing ceremony Sunday.

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EIFF – “FEATURE FILM AWARD WINNERS FOR 2006 ANNOUNCED”

Kevin Smith’s raucous comedy Clerks II received the Standard Life Audience Award. Sponsored by Standard Life, the winner is chosen by audience votes from the Gala and British Gala sections of the Festival.

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Digital Spy – “‘Brothers’, ‘Clerks II’ triumph at EIFF”

The Standard Life Audience Award went to Clerks II, in which Kevin Smith returns to his directorial roots and updates us on the lives of irreverent restaurant workers Randal and Dante.

Yes. Yes it will. Right from the get go, Affleck hands his haters a nice, hearty, steaming cup of STFU as he comes out swinging with what is easily the single greatest performance of his career. No. Stop laughing. I’m not kidding. He’s actually really, really good. The man becomes George Reeves – both in his off screen persona and as the 50’s era Superman. The cadence of his speech, the poses he strikes for the kids, the sharp humor mixed with a deep sadness – Affleck delivers a complex, layered performance the likes of which few are expecting and unlike anything he’s done before. Affleck acts in this as if his life depended on it, so much so that even his harshest critics are going to have to admit this is at the very least an above average performance.

Hollywood director Richard Kelly is furious after learning distributors plan to cut one hour of footage from his latest movie Southland Tales. Kelly’s follow-up to his cult hit Donnie Darko received a disastrous reception from critics at the Cannes Film Festival in France earlier this year. And the 31-year-old now has no idea of American audiences will ever get to see the movie as he intended it to be seen. He tells Hotdog magazine, “What’s disappointing, frustrating is that now I don’t know that Southland Tales will be seen in the United States. Maybe it will, but potentially it could be shown with almost an hour of it missing. I don’t quite know what that film is. It was intended to be this epic LA story. I just don’t know if I have the energy anymore. I tried. I tried. And hopefully they’ll (the fans) get a chance to see it at some point.”

I went to the Melbourne Clerks II premiere and Q&A the other day.

I asked Kevin Smith about the horror movie and if Ben Affleck was going to be slaughtered. He replied “Hasn’t Ben Affleck been slaughtered enough”. He then said that for this one, he plans on using a mostly unknown cast. Harvey and Bob Weinstein currently don’t know about the horror movie, so he’s not sure how that will go.

Other things that came up:

On the Prince Scandal, “Kevin had filled in a non-disclosure agreement, so prince was going to sue him, but Kevin had accidently taken the agreement home with him, so nothing could happen to him.”

Jen Smith was originally going to play the Rosario Dawson role in Clerks II, but Harvey and Bob wanted a star to play it, but if all the stars on the list said no, then Jen could play the role. Kevin picked Rosario because he thought she was most likely to say no, but she said yes.

His favourite moment in Australia was seeing a koala shitting while at the zoo.

He hated Superman Returns, found it boring and also found it strange that when Superman came back to earth, everyone was younger.

The winners of the EIFF 2006 Feature Awards were announced this afternoon in an exclusive reception at The Point Hotel, hosted by Artistic Director Shane Danielsen.

Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe’s superb, genre-bending Brothers of the Head won the esteemed Michael Powell Award for Best New British Feature Film. The Jury for the 2006 Award was chaired by British acting legend John Hurt and included Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig, Irish writer John Banville, acclaimed Scottish Director Michael Caton-Jones and rock legend Chrissie Hynde. The Michael Powell Award is sponsored by the UK Film Council.

Scripted by Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas writer, Tony Grisoni, and directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, it follows the rise to rock stardom of conjoined twins. There will be a special screening of the award-winning film, tonight at 21:45 at The Cameo.

Kevin Smith’s raucous comedy Clerks II received the Standard Life Audience Award. Sponsored by Standard Life, the winner is chosen by audience votes from the Gala and British Gala sections of the Festival.

Smith also appeared at EIFF 2006 for a rare UK appearance, in a Reel Life interview. Festival audiences who missed out on the original sold-out performances of Clerks II, have another opportunity to see it at 12:00 on Sunday 27 August as part of the Lavazza sponsored Best of the Fest.

The inaugural Best Documentary Feature Award went to Jake Clennell for The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief. The ‘Great Happiness Space’ is Osaka’s Rakkyo Café: a club, run by ambitious young entrepreneur Issei, where a core staff of 20 young men are groomed to become the top male escorts in the city. The film will receive a further screening as part of Best of the Fest, at 10:00 on Sunday 27 August at Filmhouse.

Director Paul Andrew Williams took home the Skillset New Directors Award for urban thriller London to Brighton. The film charts 24 hours in the life of a prostitute and a young runaway, fleeing to Brighton in a desperate attempt to save their own lives. The gripping drama receives a further screening as part of Best of the Fest at 14:00 on Sunday 27 August at the Cameo.

Tickets for screenings of the Award winning films can be purchased online, in person at the venue Box Office or by telephone on 0131 623 8030.

See the Photo Gallery for exclusive pictures of the event.

9/18 – My Name Is Earl, Season One
9/26 – Drop Dead Sexy
10/24 – Monster House
12/5 – Clerks II

“…When we first talked about doing a Clerks sequel, a bunch of people went, ‘Oh no dude, don’t do it cause that movie rocks and what if you make a sequel that sucks?’.

“But I love the movie.”

Smith wouldn’t rule out a third Clerks instalment but said it would be unlikely in the next few years.

“Clerks was a movie about what it felt like to be in my 20s and Clerks II is what it felt like to be in my 30s,” he said.

“So somewhere mid-40s or even mid 50s might be a nice time to check back in after I have had a bit of living experience.

CLERKS II

As director Kevin Smith returns to the convenience-store classic, Jason Mewes explains how he’s grown up over time.

“The first Clerks was pretty much how I acted when I was younger, I never sold weed—that part’s fiction. But I did smoke a lot of weed back then. I would say that the character of Jay, then and now, is the younger me to a tee. I still act all obnoxious and stuff, but I sort of know boundaries. I’m not going around saying, ‘Hey, sluts!’ you know what I mean? Uh, its not that I don’t think it, but now I might keep it to myself. Being sober, I’m more clear and connected. I live a little more. Because of drugs, I was so much worse. It wasn’t good. I’m sure you know what drugs I was doing. I would be concentrating on getting through a take and wanting to do more drugs, because my only concern was finding some so that I didn’t fell so bad, so that I wasn’t physically sick. Or if I was doing coke, I would want the scene to end so I could go back to my trailer and do more. It only makes it better now that I’m clean, because now I can do six takes and not be concentrating on getting back to my trailer. I can concentrate on more important things like ,’well would it be funnier if I said this here?’”

Filmmaker Kevin Smith touched down in Australia this week to promote the bejesus out of his comedy “Clerks 2”. Moviehole’s Mark Bennett – an out and out horror buff – was so keen to find out about Smith’s upcoming horror film (announced it a couple of weeks back), that he decided to tie him to a chair, and threatened to play his scenes from “Vulgar” on loop, if he didn’t give up the goods.

“Next up I want to do a horror movie. I just think it would be kinda interesting – for me at least – to go left. I’ve made seven comedies, or variation thereof, and some people would argue that none of them are funny. But it would be nice to make a horror movie. An intentional horror movie, not like Jersey Girl. [much laughter]. It’s a genre that I grew up watching on VHS and on cable when I was a kid”, said Smith.

“No jokes and stuff, not like Scary Movie 4. There are people that do that really well, like Edgar Wright with Shaun of the Dead, but I don’t want to make a comedic one, I want to make a straight-forward horror movie.

“It’ll be a bit of slasher, but I’m kinda looking more at … you remember that movie Race With The Devil? It’s more kind of in that vein. Or Wicker Man. Something in that vein where it’s creepy and unsettling more than gore.”

Smith says some of his favourite horror movies include “The Shining, Halloween. I’ll pretty much for anything that I came of age watching. You know, the ’70s-’80s slasher genre. The current crop of horror movies not nearly as much. There seems to be a lot of remakes and whatnot. A lot of “Let’s do Texas Chainsaw. Again. And let’s do The Hills Have Eyes again.” I’m sure there’s probably ripe material out there. A lot of things are more horrible than a dude in a mask trying to stab you. [inaudible – something like, You can look it up in the newspaper and pull it out of there]. So I’m kinda going for that. The one thing I’m happy about is the idea that I have, I haven’t seen it done before.”

Yahoo/AP: “American cult director praises Thalluri”

“…That movie carries a pretty powerful and meaningful message,” said Smith, in town to promote his new film, Clerks II. “It is a really good-looking flick and very assured for a dude who hasn’t made a bunch.”

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Sydney Morning Herald: “Silent Bob Strikes Back”

“…Dante and Randal are the characters that I love best,” he says. “They’re the ones that put me on the map, they’re the ones that are closest to my personality, like my id and my super-ego. I’m not sure what that means, but I read it in a review once and it sounded very smart.”

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Herald Sun: “Silent Bob Speaks”

“…And if there’s ever gonna be a Clerks 3, it would be somewhere down the road in my 40s or 50s, when it might be interesting to check back in on Dante and Randal. But I don’t know about Jay and Bob so much, ‘cos at 45, leaning on a wall in front of a convenience store might be a little sad.”

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The Age: “Off-kilter universe”

“…The sequel to the no-budget Sundance discovery that started his career a dozen years ago, Clerks II sounds like a desperate retreat after Jersey Girl. But it turns out to be a shrewd career move, in which he takes his characters into the present and even ratchets up his own marketing skills.”

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Herald Sun: “Silent Bob Speaks”

“…And if there’s ever gonna be a Clerks 3, it would be somewhere down the road in my 40s or 50s, when it might be interesting to check back in on Dante and Randal. But I don’t know about Jay and Bob so much, ‘cos at 45, leaning on a wall in front of a convenience store might be a little sad.”

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Herald Sun: “Kevin Rolls With the Hollywood Hits”

“…Smith described a similar event in Sydney on Tuesday as “religious”, with dedicated fans turning out for a reunion with characters they have now followed through six films over a decade.”