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Mark Harrison Sep 28, 2017

How a 1994 indie hit from Kevin Smith gave birth to an unlikely franchise...

In 1993, Kevin Smith made a movie. Clerks was shot in black and white over the course of three weeks, at night, in the convenience store where Smith worked during the day, on a shoestring budget of $27,575. Smith funded the film himself by dipping into his savings, selling all his comics and maxing out several credit cards.

Even though it became an indie phenomenon when it was picked up by Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Miramax (who gave it a new soundtrack using a post-production budget that was ten times the cost of principal photography) at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, it doesn't have 'franchise starter' written all over it.

Long considered a Gen X touchstone, Clerks is a funny and filthy slice of life movie, which equates a working day for Dante Hicks (Brian O'Halloran) to his namesake's Inferno.

The entire fate of Clerks 3 depends on one actor.

Lrm and Review Nation was told by Kevin Smith that Jeff Anderson was the previously unnamed actor who refused to be in Clerks 3. He was already suspected and implied by the Internet community, but this is an official confirmation by the director since the announcement of the cancellation of the film.

Anderson is well known as Randal Graves, the best friend to Dante in Clerks and Clerks II. He was the wise-ass slacker who worked in the video store, who managed to convince consistently Dante to ditch his responsibilities and get into trouble.

He reprised his role multiple times, not only in the sequel, but also in the animated series Clerks, the film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and The Flying Car short. He has also appeared in Smith’s other works, including Dogma and Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

If you’re a fan of the Jason Aaron/Wolverine & the X-Men series like me, prepare to be disappointed with this issue as it has nothing whatsoever to do with it. It has Wolverine in it but no other X-Men, just Sue Richards, and it’s written by Matt Kindt.

This is one of the weirder tie-ins to the Event in that I’m not quite sure what the point of it was. With other tie-ins like the Black Widow one, it explained how she came to be deformed, which the main series had avoided mentioning. With the Fantastic Four tie in, we found out what happened to the rest of the Four. There was a point to these tie-ins.

With this one, you need to have read Age of Ultron #6 to understand what Logan and Sue are doing in Fury’s flying car in the past. But if you’ve read that issue,...

Remember the heady days playing on GTA: San Andreas on the PS2, when you could press Circle, Circle, L1, Circle, Circle, Circle, L1, L2, R1, Triangle, Circle, Triangle and an army tank would happily drop from the sky right in front of your feet?

Since the dawn of next generation consoles, and with that, a boom in online head to head modes, cheat codes on platforms such as the PS3 and Xbox 360 have been consigned to the past – partly because such codes would give gamers an unfair advantage over human opposition – something which wasn’t possible on past generation consoles, and partly because it would detract from earning “trophies”.

However, one game that did stick with the fabled cheat codes was the GTA series. Cheat Codes have been present in Rockstar’s popular Sandbox title since GTA III and have remained in some capacity ever since, even on GTA IV...

The flying car, a concept aeronautical engineers, inventors and dreamers have pursued for about as long as cars and planes have been around, just came a step closer to mass-market reality.

Terrafugia Inc., the Woburn, Mass., company developing the Transition “roadable aircraft,” said it completed the first test flight of its production prototype at Plattsburgh International Airport in Plattsburgh, N.Y. The same vehicle has also been through road tests aimed at demonstrating its ability to convert easily from driving to flying.

As you may have recently heard Nike is about to release a limited run of the Nike Air Mag trainers featured in Back to the Future Part II (1989). You should remember those, they were the awesome power lacing ones. Somewhat disappointingly the trainers being released by Nike don’t actually feature the power laces, however they do light up and all the profits are going to the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s disease.

We do have hope that one day the power laces will be incorporated. Whilst we wait for those I thought we should look to other films for other fictional technologies that scientists, engineers and designers should really have worked out how to create by now. Just so you know I am not really accounting for real life moral dilemmas that some of these may present. Just the general awesomeness that each presents.

Masks and voice...

The newly released Kevin Smith three-movie box set contains the popular director’s three most popular films in beautiful Blu-ray quality. Containing his debut Clerks, along with Chasing Amy and Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, Smith’s new box set captures a lot of crap you missed the first time around.

Kevin Smith is usually a big hit with internet writers thanks in part to his humble origin, legendary (or hyped, depending on who you ask) beginnings and his rather soft physique. He also represents the film/comic book/video game subculture, which has made serious strides to becoming a mainstream, high covered phenomenon on the verge of losing its trademark and sarcasm.

Or he just makes funny movies.

The legend of Kevin Smith is a classic American success story. A film school reject, Smith decided to break away from schools, books and teacher’s dirty looks and make his...

Chicago – Very few filmmakers provoke the same kind of passionate adoration as the sometimes-great Kevin Smith, a man who has such a following that he can sell out large theaters filled with people who merely want to ask him questions for hours. Smith is a charismatic, interesting, clever filmmaker and his best work reflect his gregarious personality. Three of his best are captured in “The Kevin Smith Collection,” including two films with all-new Blu-Ray material.

Blu-Ray Rating: 4.0/5.0

If you were designing the Kevin Smith set and could only pick three films, what would you choose? The man has directed eight full-length feature films and we can probably cut “Jersey Girl” from consideration from the beginning, leaving seven to choose from. Personally, I would go with three different periods of his work and choose “Clerks,” “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” and “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” but then that...

Blu-ray Review

Kevin Smith 3-Movie Collection (Clerks, Chasing Amy, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back)

Directed by: Kevin Smith

Rating: R

Due Out: November 17, 2009

Who’S It For? With the fan-based nature of his movies, if you like these titles from writer/director Kevin Smith, then you probably own them already. It’s really up to you if you want to shell out ninety dollars to have their latest incarnation, though none of them really demand a high definition presentation except for maybe the more Hollywood Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. The documentaries about each movie are fun watches, but perhaps you should put this on your wish list before your immediate shopping list.

Movies:

Clerks

Kevin Smith embraces the suckage of work by finding the amusing nature of the weird sh*t that can go on during one shift. Slaving away at a beat down convenience store on...