Kevin Smith: (laughs) Roger Ebert is in rare form with how he keeps re-tweeting his Cop Out review. I was thinking if Roger was trying to send me a message. But he’s liked enough of my stuff in the past. He liked Jersey Girl, but I know he didn’t like Mallrats and Clerks II. He also said something great about Chasing Amy saying how he regretted not putting it in his top ten. Roger has always been so fucking fair. Even though people kept pointing out he keeps re-tweeting that Cop Out review and saying, “isn’t that suspicious?” Obviously I’m not retarded, it’s very suspicious. But he’s a guy who’s been nice to me throughout my career in particular when I really needed it. I wasn’t going to start yelling, “he did what? I fucking guested on his show!” I mean I’ve been saying a lot lately and it’s dawning on me, but I’m almost 40. Getting mad at Roger Ebert is just not in the cards for me. He’s an icon and I like the dude. He didn’t like it? That’s fine, he liked something else I did. It’s not like I don’t get it. I used to be very contentious… Shit, used to be? A few weeks ago I took on a huge corporation (laughs). That was a real thing, but getting mad about an opinion isn’t my thing. Maybe they’ll like the next one. For Cop Out, it’s a different world. A bad review for Cop Out isn’t going to fucking kill the movie. Most people going in are thinking, “we know it’s stupid, who cares?”

Read it all over at DVD Talk.

We’re talking about Dogma, the 1999 comedy in which Smith pits a pair of exiled angels (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) against a ragtag group that includes a Greek muse turned stripper (Salma Hayek), the heretofore unknown 13th apostle (Chris Rock), Jesus Christ’s last surviving relative (Linda Fiorentino), and a pair of unwitting prophets (Jason Mewes and Smith as, of course, Jay and Silent Bob) — all while God (played by Alanis Morissette, natch) lies trapped in the comatose body of a homeless man (s)He was using to play skee ball. Not for the easily offended, obviously — but despite what Dogma’s detractors may have thought, Smith didn’t go for cheap gags, instead using humor to leaven a thoughtful look at what we believe, and why. “Make no mistake,” cautioned TV Guide’s Maitland McDonagh, “Kevin Smith’s talky, farcical comedy of cosmic errors is clever. But it’s clever in a deeply juvenile way.”

#16: Clerks (1994)

The ’90s Film: At the time, Kevin Smith’s comedy was a defining document of no-budget slacker filmmaking, with its slapshod camerawork, shaggy-dog dialogue and on-the-pulse video store setting.

Nowadays, apart from still being hilarious, it’s a period piece. The technical ability bar has been raised for budding auteurs, and – as Clerks 2 confirmed – nobody rents anymore.

If They Have To Remake It: It should be topical. Let’s set it in the vast warehouses of Lovefilm.com, with Dante and Randall bitching and moaning all day long as they traipse to the stockroom to post yet another boxset of The Hills.