This one’s sure gonna look great on the wall hanging amongst its fellow View Askew posters from films past. Kudos to the gang on a job well done, and yet another unique and compelling promotional item from the flick.

Tickets for university students, faculty and staff are a mere $5 with a valid USC ID and available at the Russell House Information Desk. Tickets for the public are $15 per person plus service charges and are available at the Carolina Coliseum, all Capitol Tickets outlets, online at www.capitoltickets.com or via phone at 803-251-2222. Yes, you read that right. FIVE or FIFTEEN BUCKS. That’s IT!!!!

Basically USC students can ONLY get them at the student union and the general public can ONLY get them at the locations mentioned above. As the number released is VERY limited, you should buy your tix immediately, as we know they will sell out. There’s no way they’ll last at that price or amount. Have a blast at the show, the first time we can remember Kevin visiting the state in a while, if ever.

While some web outlets will start taking pre-orders now, as always, we suggest waiting for The Stash to get copies made available for order. Typically, Kevin will sign your DVD FOR FREE in person or for mail orders, highly increasing the value of the DVD and making it another valued item in your View Askew collection.

We were there for the show, where Kevin celebrated his 37th birthday in Red Bank, New Jersey. The disc will be packed with all new material, stories we had never heard before (many which have not been told since), and HUGE laughs. There’s a Die Hard 4 story you just must see/hear, quite possibly the best tale Kevin has ever told over the years. We’ll keep you posted on how to order your own copy of this set from The Stash. Just really pleased to finally see that official release date!

As always special thanks to VideoETA for getting that release date sent right over to us.

This may be a good time to subscribe to our RSS or Twitter feeds, especially if you follow other feeds, as you’ll be sure to not miss a beat. Also, our iPhone-optimized site (which automatically shows up when you visit with an iPhone) should also help those of you with busy lives stay up to date with us. Heck, we can’t stop using the iPhone site ourselves. What a fantastic device. Anyway, read on, enjoy, and thanks for your patience as we continue to do our best to keep up with the incredibly vast amount of news that’s rolling in. Here we go…

While some web outlets will start taking pre-orders now, as always, we suggest waiting for The Stash to get copies made available for order. Typically, Kevin will sign your DVD FOR FREE in person or for mail orders, highly increasing the value of the DVD and making it another valued item in your View Askew collection.

We were there for the show, where Kevin celebrated his 37th birthday in Red Bank, New Jersey. The disc will be packed with all new material, stories we had never heard before (many which have not been told since), and HUGE laughs. There’s a Die Hard 4 story you just must see/hear, quite possibly the best tale Kevin has ever told over the years. We’ll keep you posted on how to order your own copy of this set from The Stash. Just really pleased to finally see that official release date!

As always special thanks to VideoETA for getting that release date sent right over to us.

Tickets for university students, faculty and staff are a mere $5 with a valid USC ID and available at the Russell House Information Desk. Tickets for the public are $15 per person plus service charges and are available at the Carolina Coliseum, all Capitol Tickets outlets, online at www.capitoltickets.com or via phone at 803-251-2222. Yes, you read that right. FIVE or FIFTEEN BUCKS. That’s IT!!!!

Basically USC students can ONLY get them at the student union and the general public can ONLY get them at the locations mentioned above. As the number released is VERY limited, you should buy your tix immediately, as we know they will sell out. There’s no way they’ll last at that price or amount. Have a blast at the show, the first time we can remember Kevin visiting the state in a while, if ever.

I think Kevin Smith has a hit on his hands. The bad boy director is here with “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” which contains no hard-core sex but is wall to wall with hard-core language. Smith begins with your basic four-letter words, and supplements them with an astonishing vocabulary and verbal images. The director of “Clerks” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” once told me he’s a mediocre director but a great writer. Wrong. His films are not so much about his visual style as about words; he is a perfectly capable director who, as the author, respects his script.

The words in “Zack and Miri” are potty mouth taken to the buddy-movie version of Shakespeare. The audience was roaring with laughter at its sheer audacity and outrageousness. It’s so lively, the movie was initially rated NC-17, but got an R on appeal. Then the plot pulls ahead like two engines on a short train. Seth Rogen, the emerging superstar of raunchy comedy, is Zack, whose best buddy is Miri (Elizabeth Banks). They’ve known each other since first grade, are roommates, have never had sex, are broke and can’t pay the bills.

In desperation, they decide to make a porno film and enlist a mixed bag of cast and crew, including onetime porn star Traci Lords. Zack and Miri are co-producers and co-stars; will they have sex for the first time, out of duty to the movie? The answer to that question somehow creates a poignant love story in the midst of flying words and bodily fluids. Prediction: “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” will set box-office records if the audience is able to fasten its seat belts for the turbulence of the dialogue.

A film that can please both critics AND audiences? Go figure! We love what we’re hearing as far as reaction on this one, it certainly sounds like a crowd pleaser. October 31st is starting to feel like a slow crawl!

Kevin Smith’s controversial Zack and Miri Make a Porno is already getting good reviews and Smith tells Variety at the Toronto Film Festival (video below) that he’d love to be the man who saves The Weinstein Company.

“I’d love to be Quentin version two,” he says. Because Miramax was always known as the house that Quentin built and under The Weinstein Company, they don’t have that yet. It would be nice if this [movie] would be it.”

And hey, while you’re watching video, why not also check out this non-spoiler video clip from E! Online where Kev discusses the new flick while at the Toronto Film Festival. This one just goes for a couple of minutes. He talks about porn, working with Rogen, and blogs.

…We asked whether he might start shooting on that soon, to which he replied, “I hope so. We’re still looking for some cash for it ’cause it’s not a really commercial film at all. It’s very bleak and very dark, and there’s no one to root for in the movie, so it’s a real film festival type of film, but it’s not the kind of movie you can take into multiplexes and do a bunch of business with unless it becomes a water cooler type of movie where people start talking about it. So we’ve had trouble finding financing for it, but hopefully that’ll come together soon. Script’s all done. We want to make it for like $5 million in the Midwest and do it with a bunch of unknowns and see what happens. So I mean none of those things add up to people rushing to you with a check. No one’s rushing to give us money for it.”

Since Smith has never made a horror film, many horror fans who are also fans of Smith’s will be expecting something like we haven’t seen before and something truly shocking, since he’s probably built up a lot of ideas of what he’d want to do in a horror movie. “It is definitely a 180 from everything else we’ve done including ‘Zack and Miri’ but at the same time, it’s not like a splatter film, it’s not like slasher balls-to-the-wall gore, it’s more unsettling and disturbing type of horror,” he explained when asked about the direction he plans on taking things in his first horror outing.

So, it seems that there’s still more funding to be acquired before this one can truly get off the ground. If any fans who have contacts are reading this, we sure think this would be a fine investment — Here’s hoping that we’ll have some good news soon and we can see the project start in early 2009 as originally planned. Chances are it’ll be made on the cheap and turn a tidy profit to the lucky investors. As we hear more on “Red State”, we’ll of course kep you posted. As we’ve seen before, project schedules often shuffle around and movie priorities change — Most directors aren’t as forthcoming with their future plans as Kevin, but shuffling projects is quite common and could happen again. But we’re sure hopeful to see another View Askew production head in front of the cameras next year.

TIFF 08: Play that funky music


By W. Andrew Powell

Zack and Miri Make a PornoIf I go through some of my all-time favorite songs, most of them have one thing in common: they’re featured in a movie I also love.

Shaun of the Dead reminded me how much I loved Queen with the song “Don’t Stop Me Now.” Damien Rice’s “The Blower’s Daughter” leaps off the screen in Closer. Counting Crows had the wickedly addictive opening song “Accidentally in Love” in Shrek 2. Donnie Darko blew me away with the classic Echo & the Bunnymen song “The Killing Moon.” And those are just a few songs that jump to mind.

It just amazes me how a song can have such an important part in a movie, perhaps most dramatically represented by Gary Jules’ emotionally charged remake of “Mad World,” also from Donnie Darko.

So, what does this have to do with the Toronto International Film Festival? Well, I’ve seen a lot of films this past week that made great use of music. JCVD, Afterwards, and even Stone of Destiny, but none blew me away like Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

One single song reminded me how important it is to have great music in a film, and how often it’s the unknown songs that have the greatest effect.

I don’t want to ruin the film for anyone, but during an emotional scene between Zack and Miri, who are played by Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks, the band Live has a song that fits so perfectly, it actually made my jaw drop.

With frontman Ed Kowalczyk’s intense vocals, layered on top of the band’s heavy guitar rhythms, the scene is about as perfect as it could be.

Looking through the press notes I found out that the song was called “Hold Me Up,” but as a devout Live fan I can definitely say I’ve never heard the song before.

Thankfully, director Kevin Smith was able to give a little insight into the song. Here’s what he had to say:

It’s an old song that I first heard in ‘95, when we were putting together the Mallrats soundtrack. It was actually in the film for the first test screening, but Live decided they wanted to hold onto it as a potential single off their next album (which would follow Throwing Copper). When I was editing Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, the song had still never surfaced or been released, so I put in a request for it again. Again, I was denied.

Third time, apparently, was the charm. Needed a song for that sequence in Zack and Miri and remembered the Live track. This time, the band signed off on us using the track. Took 13 years, but was worth the wait.

I’m still a big fan of Live, but I have to admit, there’s an intensity to the song that doesn’t seem to exist in any of the band’s recent material. Hearing it in the film, I had a good idea it was from their Throwing Copper days, but now we just have to wait and see if the studio can get the rights to use the song on the soundtrack too. If the band is smart though, they’ll consent and promote the hell out of this song – it’s one of the most memorable scenes I’ve seen all week at TIFF, and I give nearly half of that credit to the song.

From “Clerks” and son, Kevin has always shown a great talent and picking fantastic tunes for his flicks (which in turn build remarkably listenable soundtracks). No word on an actual soundtrack for this flick just yet, but from the sound of it, we’re in for another great round of selections to go along with a hilarious film. Be sure to crank it up, theater owners.