Harry Potter 1 in preparation for the WAYDM marathon. T'was a'right s'pose. Discount LOTR. All the hero's journey tropes slapped together. By the numbers. Lose the parents. Check. Chosen one. Check. Whacky buddies. Check.

Clerks doesn't hold up well in 2013. Having characters talking about LOTR and Star Wars in a movie seemed novel back then, now it's been beaten into the ground and is usually the mark of extreme laziness. Dogma has it's moments, I have mostly stayed away from his other work (because what I've seen of it is utter garbage).

Do yourself a favor and watch his stand-up An Evening With Kevin Smith instead, which is brilliant. What's baffling about the guy is that he's one of the most entertaining verbal story-tellers I've ever seen on stage, but that just completely does not seem to translate into his work at all.

I love(d) Mallrats, it's funny and filled with great lines and references. Clerks and Chasing Amy are good too. However, I've not seen any of these for a long time and intend to keep it that way.

Of his later work, Dogma had a superb script but was poorly cast and directed, Jersey Girl was actually ok (helped enormously by George Carlin), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was bad, and Clerks II was cringe-inducingly abysmal (so bad that I switched it off).

BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR

Caught up with it today. I've worn myself out talking about it on a variety of websites in the last few hours. But see it. It's a (flawed) masterpiece, and one of the best cinematic explorations of love I can remember.