Clerks [A Fat Jesus Movie And BluRay Review]

Clerks is easily one of my favorite movies of all time. Kevin Smith has been one of my favorite writers and directors for years now and first movie is arguably one of his finest. Almost 20 years later its really stood the test of comedy time. His crude, yet amazingly real, dialogue, stories and characters envelope you into to his work and Clerks may be his best. On Kevin Smith's first movie (and the long shot it ended up being) no less, this comedy was supposed to be here today.

Clerks follows the story of convenience store worker Dante Hicks (Brian O'Halloran) as he's called into work on his day off. The store is in New Jersey and the trouble starts as soon as he gets there to open. Someone has jammed gum into the locks of the stores shutters and he has to make a giant sign out of a sheet and shoe polish to let people know they're open. Vilification. Not long after opening an anti-smoking gang, is formed by a gum representative telling people buy gum rather than cigarettes that is broken up by Dante's girlfriend. Veronica Loughran (Marilyn Ghigliotti) and Dante then spend some time talking and get in an eventual fight about her giving fellatio to 37 people. Not long after Veronica goes to class after their fight, Randall Graves (Jeff Anderson), Dante's friend who works on the video rental side of the store, finally arrives to work. Malaise. Their half of the morning is spent dealing with the two stoners out front in Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith), talking about Star Wars and a host of other things related to their lives. Quandary. After learning that he won't be relieved the day becomes incredibly lax as the store is not tended well to or even open. They unfortunately hear that Dante's ex-girlfriend, Caitlin Bree (Lisa Spoonhauer) who he's still kinda hung up on, is getting married to an Asian design major. They also hear that one of their classmates has died and her memorial is that day. Denouement. In the end, as the day turns to the evening, the stories get bigger, a surprise reunion happens and customers get raunchier. It really makes you wonder, why any clerks ever are supposed to be there on a given day.

I almost don't even know where to start with this cause as of yet, I really haven't done a review of one of my all time favorite movies. Aside from the obvious look of this movie, made in 1993 for $27,000 dollars, it's not the most quality looking movie ever made. But that's part of its charm I think and where my sort of gripe about this movie ends. Also the shooting in black and white is awesome and it gives it that classic movie feel of a more modern movie. The story of the Quick Stop and RST Video store that fateful day is one of the most original and hilarious stories I've ever watched. Even with my more than multiple viewings of this I never get tired of all the antics everyone from Dante to Jay or Randall and Silent Bob pull. This brings me to the dialogue, which is immensely funny and not afraid to go anywhere. From deep moments relating Star Wars to contractors and laugh educing moments where a list of porn titles being said in front of a little girl. Also from one liners from Randall to the customers he hates to a brain-dead druggie popping in and out all day, there is no shortage of laughing to be had watching this.

The character development is awesome as you can pick up on the background of almost all the main characters. They are all written well and feel real, like they could really be the people that hate working at the convenience stores we all go to. Also making them wholly relateable is a touch not may comedies can go to, but this is one of those movies that does it really well. Though in a slightly exaggerated way. The actors that play the rag-tag group of misfits in this area of New Jersey that has Russian singers and hockey lovers are great as well. Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson are an amazing duo (and looking forward to Clerks II) and have a great amount of on-screen comedic timing and presence as Dante and Randall. Jay and Silent Bob turn out to be staples of the View Askew Universe and Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith himself start off with a great supporting duo performance in this. Ending with the duo (I really like that word right now in this) of Marilyn Ghigliotti and Lisa Spoonhauer as Dante's current and ex-girlfriends are great compliments to O'Halloran when they're on screen. Not much cinematography to speak of in this but the music during the title cards and the "Berserker" songs are perfect.

In short, in this day of internet and technology this is a great movie that shows life in the early 90s. For a kid like me who actually grew up in the 90s, I'm happy that some of the best movies were made when I was a kid so I can go back and re-watch them like this. Kevin Smith has a lot of movies I adore, actually most of his films to be completely honest. I'm a kid at heart for the nostalgia aspect of this, the teenager at heart that loves raunchy comedy and the adult in me loves the storytelling of this. Clerks is one of the best comedies of all time and makes me glad Dante was supposed to be there that day.

With my disc reviews that I've done so far I really like to start with the commentary track I decide to watch. With this 15th Anniversary BluRay there is a couple of tracks you can choose from depending on the movie version you decide to watch. In the theatrical cut, you get original commentary from 1995. Or with the first cut (which I chose to watch), with commentary from the [full] main cast in Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes, Scott Mosier, Jeff Anderson and Brian O'Halloran. As well as an intro from Kevin filmed in 2004, I believe for the Clerks X dvd set. Anywho, the commentary track is awesome as it turned into stories about the filming of the movie back in 1993, Mosier seeing Kevin's mom naked in almost a moment of sleepy twilight and all the points where lines were hard to get out. Kevin and the crew were highly funny and this was more like listening to a podcast while watching the movie and I don't mind that one bit.

There are a ton of featurettes on this huge set so I'm going to jump right into the three that stood out to me most! "Clerks: The Lost Scene" is great. This is the memorial service scene done in the Clerks animated series style. It was taken out cause it would've been too much of a hassle to make for the original movie. It's funny, written well and if they had somehow filmed it, it would've gone into the movie perfectly. "The Flying Car" is another great feature. When Smith was going around in the early 2000s doing press he would use this short of Dante and Randall being stuck in traffic. Randall posed this question to Dante on whether or not he would cut his foot off for a flying car and it escalates to side-splitting hypothetical situations. This was a great watch and Jeff and Brian looked great for being Dante and Randall for the first time together since Clerks.  These last two are pretty cool as well. MTV contacted Smith to do intros and breaks that they would air between videos and such. So they added all eight of these little intros, so to speak, and they're pretty cool little spots featuring Jay and Silent Bob. The other one is "Clerks Auditions." This is cool because I haven't seen too many of these thrown on sets throughout the years. Being able to see Brian O'Halloran, Marilyn Ghigliotti and Jeff Anderson do some monologues and earn their characters was a cool behind the scenes look.

"Snowball Effect: The Story of Clerks" is a feature length documentary that's included with this set (and the Clerks X set as well). This is pretty amazing as it's a complete in-depth look of Kevin Smith's life. From his city wide popular sketch troop in high school, to seeing SLACKER (his inspiration movie) and finally dropping out of film school mid-way through to start the inception of Clerks and everything beyond is a wonder to behold. "Mae Day: The Crumbling of a Documentary" is another cool addition to this set. This is the short that Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier made while in film school together before Kevin left. It was supposed to be a documentary about a transsexual, who ended up dropping out, so it turned into people revealing their true feelings about the two not being able to get their act together. Not near as good as anything he's done since "breaking out", but it's nice to see where his mind was way early in his career. Finally the "10th Anniversary Q&A" was filmed after the first showing of the remastered edition and features almost the entire cast. The questions were fairly good as it propelled the cast and crew into hilarious one liners and stories about their experience in the making of Clerks ten years prior.

This set is massive and I didn't even cover everything on this set. Granted if you own Clerks X you still have a lot of this stuff, you don't have it in high def. You don't have a nifty new commentary track. You don't have the BluRay exclusive Making-Of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and another new introduction by the mastermind behind Clerks. This set is cool, to me, cause I haven't watched Clerks X in awhile. But for fans of this movie or Kevin Smith in general, this is a great way to get your full Clerks experience all in one BluRay set.

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@_FatJesus_
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The Cabin in the Woods [A Fat Jesus BluRay Review]

Like all of these BluRay reviews, or DVD ones when I get to some, I'm going to be starting with the commentary track I listened to. For The Cabin in the Woods BluRay you get a commentary with Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon (Writers and Director and Producer respectively). Now I went into this expecting a great commentary. Joss is hands down one of my favorite producers, writers and directors and Drew had worked with him on things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, Angel and even wrote Cloverfield too. So these two should have an amazing track. Well it's pretty mediocre to say the least. Don't get me wrong, as with all of Whedon's work he gives a ton of behind the scenes stories and information and these two definitely had a chemistry, but it felt tired to me. The two sounded deflated and especially on Joss' end too, as I believe he had just got done with The Avengers or was was working on it when this was filmed. Don't quote me on that haha. 

My advice to you is this, though. Take three hours if you have it, or take a couple of afternoons or evenings and watch the commentary track then watch the "It's Not What You Think" BonusView mode. This is another thing I was excited to watch cause of the Second Screen Experience I watched with The Avengers BluRay. But the Bonus View with this is isn't on your computer. It cuts into the movie with inside looks at the shots, the thinking behind scene, how it was filmed and actor and crew tid-bits about what they thought in and around the scene that's happening. I'm sure if I had a 50 inch monster TV I'd be able to enjoy this a bit more, but they way they cut in and out was pretty seamless and (to me) a nice little compliment to the only okay commentary track.

Now we'll move into the first part of all these juicy featurettes. "We Are Not Who We Are" was a pretty good behind the scenes shoot of the everyday walk through of life on the set with the actors and crew. The sets were huge, the basement and props were awesome to see and the cast going about with their own view of things was a cool look. "An Army of Nightmares" was an amazing look behind the scenes of how the monsters, both in make-up and animatronic ones, were made and conceived. The make-up in the end took hours to produce, but in the end looks bloody, horrible and perfect. "Primal Terror" was a neat look at all the stuff it took to make the visual effects and CGI looks good through out. A lot of scenes are done without CGI, but there are just some parts that have to have it. So see all it took to combine the real effects with the CGI and it make it looks seamless was pretty awesome.

There are two Secret Secret Stash, segments if you will, "Marty's Stash" and "Hi My Name Is Joss And I'll Be Your Guide" are pretty well odd to say the least. At least the first one, "Marty's Stash," is. If you listen to the commentary track you know Joss and Goddard joke heavily about the marijuana use and make quite a few drug jokes as well.  So Marty, played by Fran Kranz, go through all the, stoner paraphernalia (weed, joints, hiding places, rolling paper and bongs) that Marty used. Including the infamous Tulip joint. The second one "Hi My Name Is Joss and I'll Be Your Guide" is a great look at the making of the sets and sound stage cabin. The sound stage cabin is very different from the one actually in the woods and all the various rooms and basements that come with it. Finally there's a pretty cool and informative Q&A after an initial showing at WonderCon where Joss and Goddard takes questions from the audience. Having watched this last there's a few things that I hadn't heard asked or talked about throughout all the extras so it's a nice little watch to see them interacting with the fans. 

This DVD set, even with the commentary lacking, is still loaded and The Cabin in the Woods is still one of the best horror films of 2012 and probably of the past 5 years or so as well. The featurettes are very informative and not just little two minute long looks behind the scenes. There's also a ton of them, so if you're taking a Saturday or something to watch everything you won't be done in a couple hours. The films looks good in the BluRay format and really nothing is lacking in this loaded set. Don't hesitate to pick this up and and get trapped in this monstrous cabin.

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@_FatJesus_

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21 Jump Street [A Fat Jesus BluRay Review]

Let's start with the commentary track on this set as it's pretty damn awesome. You get the two directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller along with the two main stars in Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, all together for one of the first times watching the final product. You don't mind missing some of the funniest lines and parts cause Jonah Hill, who is very outspoken in this track, still refers to Emma Watson as Hermione and can't help but point out scenes with Ice Cube and when Rob Riggle grabs Brie Larson's boobs. Also there's funny behind the scenes stories from Channing and Jonah's scenes with Rob Riggle, Dave Franco and Ice Cube. Also there's an unnatural love for getting drunk during scenes, since it was filmed in Louisiana, and their love (and frankly my love too) of Korean Jesus. There's a unanimous decision between the four, that the "F*ck you science! *Walks off*" line is the best in the movie. Hard to argue. This track was a blast to listen too, and if you like this movie you'll love this commentary.

The deleted scenes ended up being more extended scenes or alternate scenes. There's a five minute extended one where Jake Johnson, the schools principal, just improvises with Channing and Jonah that had me in stitches. There's also a few more good ones involving Nick Offerman, Dave Franco and Chris Parnell. Gag-reel is hilarious as well as it gives a huge behind the scenes look at watch actually made the actors in his laugh. Let me tell you, a lot set these guys off and most of that same stuff set me off too.

There's a ton of featurettes on this set as well. We'll start with these three in "Back to School," "Brothers In Arms" and "Peter Pan on the Freeway." Back to School goes behind the scenes with Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as they transform back into high-school kids after being assigned to 21 Jump Street. It's a neat watch as things have changed (and even in the writing) since the two were in school. Brothers in Arms is another behind the scenes featurette with Jonah and Channing. It shows the transformation into the cops that they portray in the movie. It's sort of a continuation of "Back to School" with more pointing the prop guns at each others crotches and firing to see if they were loaded. They had to shut down half of a highway to film the chase scene in this movie. Jonah comments on how that there's live traffic on the other side of where they're filming. He even gets (what turns out) an undesirable message (the first of it's kind) on the highway itself.

We're not done with featurettes either, there's still three more with "Cube-O-Rama," "Johnny Depp on Set" and "The Rob Riggle Show!" Cube-O-Rama may be the best on this set cause it Ice Cube yelling his lines from the movie and improvised lines too. Ice Cube is a riot in the movie and there's lines that were cut could've easily been put in. Also everyone is in awe of his birthmark near his eye (as said on the commentary track too) and are mesmerized by it. Now onto Johnny Depp on Set. There's a pretty big cameo by Depp, who was in the original series, that no one could stop asking about once the inception of 21 Jump Street started. The actors on set felt they could talk to Johnny while he was in his scene clothes (and Depp even went out and about without being recognized). But once he was out of them everyone suddenly got starstruck. Finally we have The Rob Riggle Show and this is amazing. Riggle is a hilarious guy and steals the movie behind Channing and Jonah. The whole cast agrees as again we get to hear about Riggle grabbing Brie Larson's boobs, making Jonah and Channing ruin so many scenes due to laughing and putting his own penis in his mouth.

This set really has it all. The great movie with an awesome commentary track. The deleted scenes that felt more like extended ones. Along with a side splitting gag reel. And there's six awesome featurettes that keep the behind the scenes knowledge flowing. There's a ton of extras on this set and if you liked 21 Jump Street like I did (my favorite comedy of 2012) you really need to get this set. Well worth your money. 

@FatJesusReviews

@_FatJesus_

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The Avengers [A Fat Jesus BluRay Review]

This is my first time doing a DVD and/or Blu-Ray review so I wanted to pick a great (recent movie) with a quality (not quantity) amount of extras and things to go over. So this Blu-Ray dvd combo set, I'll be dammed if I couldn't find it in Blu-Ray packaging, of The Avengers seemed like a good place to try my hand at it first.

First off the commentary track, with Joss Whedon, is pretty damn awesome. From writing, directing and producing TV and internet shows including Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse he's no slouch in TV fantasy. But look to what he's done on the big screen, helping pen movies like Toy Story, Thor, Captain America and The Cabin in the Woods, and it has Whedon all over it as well. As well as all this, Whedon is a life long comic book fan and he has an 8-issue series with Dark Horse called The Fray. So hearing the man behind all of the aforementioned giving little insights to thought processes, why he filmed what a certain way and all his thinking patterns regarding the writing and directing of the biggest Marvel movie to date, well, it's truly a treat.

Along with the Blu-Ray set you get another installment in the Marvel One-Shot series called, Item 47. Item 47, takes place after the final battle of The Avengers and follows the story of a down of their luck couple named Benny and Claire (Jessie Bradford and Lizzy Caplain) who find a left-over Chitauri gun (Item 47) and decide to start robbing banks with it. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Sitwell and Blake (Maximiliano Hernandez and Titus Welliver) are assigned to track and receive the now active gun from the two, reminiscing about Agent Coulston as the mission begins. We are also informed that all the Chitauri guns are all "dead" so it's a wonder that the couple is even using it. I'll let you watch the rest of this short-film, but to say the very least it makes me wonder if we'll see these four in upcoming Marvel movies, including Iron Man 3 (2013), Thor 2 (2013), Captain America 2 (2014), The Incredible Hulk 2 (2015) and The Avengers 2 (2015).

There's a couple of really cool featurettes (A Visual Journey and Assembling the Ultimate Team), a gag reel (The first EVER one for a Marvel film) and deleted scenes that comes with this set as well. One featurette is on the DVD as well. The first is called "A Visual Journey." Chronicling the huge and unique set designs and all the different special effects and cinematography. The other, which is on the DVD as well is "Assembling the Ultimate Team" in which the all-star cast, including Robert Downey Jr, Joss Whedon, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Cobie Smulders and Samuel L. Jackson, all talk about their characters and how this is one of the most start-studded movie of all time. 

The deleted scenes all give more insight into characters like Maria Hill, Hawkeye and there's even a great scene involving Captain America. The gag reel is hilarious and give a great look behind the scenes and what the atmosphere on set was like. Would've been fun to spend a day on that set when everyone was there at once. Also the Second Screen experience, The Avengers Initiative, was cool as well. I synched up my movie with an app on my laptop and it offered a ton of extras such a videos, pictures, actor bios, behind the scenes shots, story-boards, comic book trivia and so much more. Watching with this added a ton of behind the scene stuff, even on top of the commentary I had just watched.

This was the best superhero movie of the year and the BluRay and DVD combo set did not disappoint. The commentary track is there and it's more than informative. The gag reel is hilarious while the deleted scenes are good, but rightfully removed. The featurettes are great watches and the Marvel One-Shot film, Item 47, is the best of the three released so far. The Avengers Initiative was also really cool to go through as well during the watch cause I've seen this movie a lot since it came out. This set is well worth the money and if you can get it in BluRay packaging more power to ya. This is a set you should definitely own.

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