Emilia Clarke with her new monster. She also has a dragon. (PmC, HBO)

- How did Seth MacFarlane land Game of Thrones’s Emilia Clarke?? Do they not have Saturday Night Live in Qarth? This is truly an upsetting turn of events; at least when he dated Amanda Bynes, one got the sense that they were both awful.

- Jenni "JWoww" Farley got engaged to longtime boyfriend Roger Mathews after he proposed to her while skydiving. Smart move, protecting herself from complete reality-show irrelevancy now that Jersey Shore is ending and Snooki might not come back for their spinoff. JWoww Getting Married, anyone?

- Kevin Smith really wants everyone to know that he has paparazzi. Or at the very least, a personal stalker. No seriously, you guys! He does!
http://youtu.be/aCUeqiKRsaY

- Lindsay Lohan's latest rumored beau, artist Domingo Zapata, is vehemently denying that he's seeing the lung-infected actress. Which really doesn't prove anything, since no one will ever admit to sleeping with Lindsay Lohan, ever again. Plus, he painted her portrait, so they are definitely doing a Leo-and-Jack thing.

The sausage fest of 'Comic Book Men' (AMC)

Today over a long lunch at Caroline's, actor/director/oversized advocate Kevin Smith discussed his new AMC reality show, Comic Book Men. The series, which focuses on Mr. Smith's own New Jersey comic shop Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash (as well as the kooky individuals who both work at and patronize the store), has been given a prime spot on the channel: directly after the zombie drama The Walking Dead.

After various mentions of how high he was, Mr. Smith took questions from the audience. The Observer enjoys a good comic book now and then, so we just had one question about the "reality" show...where were the female comic geeks?

"The show's called Comic Book Men," Mr. Smith answered to scattered laughter. "I hope there is some female viewers, even if they don't feel that it's gender-oriented towards them." Of course, that implies the subject matter itself isn't interesting to women, giving you a glimpse into the way Kevin Smith's mind works. And it just got better from there:

It's not like there aren't chicks in the show...there are chicks. But the reality of the comic book stores is that these are the people who work in them. There's not a woman among them. When we originally showed the idea to AMC, they said 'It's a sausage party,' so we said all right, let's bring in a chick. And for the presentation we brought in and shot a chick, and it was wonderful and great, but then AMC, god bless them, said 'Well, that's not the reality of the show.'

Wait so which was it? The girl was great and wonderful, or "God bless AMC" for waking up to the fact that women and comics just didn't feel "real" enough for the very high criteria of reality television? He continued:

So for Season One we were less concerned with gender politics in nerdom, and let's put forth a reality show. And this is the reality: these dudes work here. Now, we could alter the reality of the show...but that would feel kind of weird. This is a snapshot of a store where these guys have worked for 20 years, and unfortunately it is a sausage fest.

Oof. All those crazy feminists and their "gender politics." If you're wondering why the show would publicly hold auditions for a comic book store where authenticity means "everyone has worked here for 20 years"...well, us too. But the woman originally involved with Comic Book Men was Zoe Gulliksen, who Kevin Smith had called "perfect" in an early podcast about the show. The Clerks director mentioned that store manager Walt Flanagan "learned a powerful lesson" after claiming that girls didn't know anything about comics and then meeting Ms. Gulliksen.

Too bad that's a lesson Comic Book Men never plans on showing us.

Today is the official start date of  New York's annual Comic Con, the sad stepbrother of San Diego's way more famous nerd convention. Still, New York has its fair share of amazing graphic novel writers and artists (which was what Comic Con is all about, right?), and DC and Marvel have spent a good chunk of cash flying out some big name celebrities for panels as well.

There's also the indie comedy factor: IFC and Adult Swim have their hipster lineup of comedians, including David Cross, Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein, Patton Oswalt, Kristen Schaal, etc.

Since Comic Con can be a little overwhelming, we made a list of some of the more famous names coming to the Javits Center this weekend, and where you can presume to find them.

This might rankle the powers that be a little bit, but the real highlight here is the incoherent curse-riddled rant that Smith unleashed upon the screener audience before the movie started. It's full of self-indulgent reminiscences and face-palm digressions, bouncing from one ill-formed argument about the studio system to the next. Also, he gives plenty of love to Twitter and, for some reason, goes on a tangent about Wayne Gretzky's hockey stick to excruciating length.

But, hey -- at least he had the power to admit to himself, and the audience, how bad Cop Out was. Watch the speech below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC5yeHehGbs

Blame Kevin Smith, or perhaps Edward Burns. They took their little indie films (Clerks and The Brothers McMullen, respectively) to the festival circuit in the mid-'90s, grabbed a distribution deal and went on to fame and fortune. "The popular story that got everyone's attention at the time was the young filmmaker who put the entire film on his credit card,"  actor William H. Macy told The Observer. "His parents mortgaged their house and he sold his car, and it went to Sundance and Harvey Weinstein brought it for $8 million and everybody got healthy.

"But for every one of those stories, there's a Colin Fitz. There are a lot of very expensive home movies out there."

The long and (rather incredible) winding road for Colin Fitz, in which Mr. Macy co-stars, ends on Wednesday, Aug. 4, when the film is resurrected as Colin Fitz Lives! and available on demand via Sundance Selects. For those keeping score at home, that's more than 13 years after it premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival, in 1997.

Colin Fitz is a very witty film about two security guards (Matt McGrath and Andy Fowle) guarding the grave of rock star Colin Fitz on the anniversary of his death. Over the course of the evening, beers are chugged, epiphanies are had and a bunch of very familiar faces show up in supporting roles-in addition to Mr. Macy, there's Martha Plimpton, John C. McGinley, Julianne Philips, Mary McCormack and Chris Bauer.

Shot over two weeks at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx for $150,000-and completed in postproduction for an additional $100,000-Colin Fitz went from table reads to the film festivals in six months. "It was pretty crazy how fast it happened," said Colin Fitz screenwriter Tom Morrissey.

But that was just about the only thing that went quickly: Despite the positive reception the film received at festivals-New York Times critic Caryn James called it a "deftly amusing dark comedy" when it premiered at Sundance, and it was named "Best of the Fest" at the Austin Film Festival-finding an acceptable distribution deal proved difficult. "Deals were offered," director Robert Bella said in an email to The Observer, "but unfortunately none of them would cover all of our finishing costs. ... I tried for over a year after Sundance to try and secure a deal that would allow me to pay everyone back and get the film, as well as myself, out of hock."

For Mr. Morrissey, it was a hurdle he never expected to encounter. "It was terribly disappointing," he said. "It started to feel that it was easier to write and make a movie than it is to get it distributed. You have to answer the question from your aunts and uncles and everyone you know: 'When am I going to get to see your movie?' It was very frustrating-'I don't know ... maybe soon?' And then your voice just trails off."

Said Mr. Macy: "There can be bit of shame attached to [not getting a deal]. We went to Sundance and didn't sell. It's like when someone goes into rehab, you don't want to go, 'Hey, I heard you're a drunk!'"

While friends, family and the general public weren't able to watch Colin Fitz, the film had a loyal following. "There was a cult status that it went into-people writing about it online, scenes went onto YouTube," said Matt McGrath. "People were carrying this torch for this thing."

Those fans plus the persistence of director Robert Bella kept Colin Fitz alive. "For nearly a decade, I slowly paid down the debts and bought back the pieces," Mr. Bella said. "Little by little, the total amount owed got smaller and the finishing costs were reduced, which ultimately made it much easier to sell the film."

That and some new, never-before-seen talking-head interviews (including Fitz fan Harry Knowles), which further fleshed out the film. "IFC felt that the new footage helped frame the original story in a great way, while allowing them to release a new film, rather than one from 1997," said Mr. Bella. Arianna Bocco, IFC/Sundance Select's vice president of acquisitions and distribution, purchased this version of the film, newly titled Colin Fitz Lives!, from Mr. Bella over drinks.

"It just sounded like, 'Are you kidding me?' After 14 years-we made it in 1996-I didn't even think Robert was still plugging away at this," said Mr. McGrath. "I'm curious to see it, especially this version."

Mr. Bella told The Observer that he paid for the delivery of the original Sundance cut to IFC, and hoped that they would release both versions of the film eventually.

As for Mr. Morrissey, forgive him for still having a bit of trepidation, even on the eve of the release. "Honestly, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think after 13 years, I was entitled to think that. But now that it's finally here ... will I tell my aunts and uncles to go watch it? Definitely."

editorial@observer.com

1. Shutter Island: $22.2 million ($75 million total)

In this day and age—when twisty horror movies routinely plunge 60 percent after their initial first weekend—the 46 percent drop that Shutter Island experienced in weekend two is fairly significant. Despite a twist that isn't that twisty (and scares that aren't that scary), the $22.2 million gross shows that the word of mouth is clearly strong on this one. While Shutter Island isn't nearly the beloved phenomenon that The Departed was—after all the Oscar winner dipped only 29 percent in its second weekend—it should still come close to the previous film's $132.4 million gross. Apparently moviegoers like their Scorsese with a significant helping of hammy genre, something we're sure movie studios around Hollywood have already noted.

2. Cop Out: $18.5 million ($18.5 million total)

It's a tale of two narratives for Southwest Airlines' Customer of the Month, Kevin Smith. On the one hand, the $18.5 million debut of Cop Out is the best start of his career, surpassing the $11 million bow of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back in the summer of 2001. On the other, his name was so thoroughly left out of the marketing campaign that unless you followed him on Twitter, you probably didn't even realize he was the man behind the camera. So while Cop Out might wind up being the most lucrative "Kevin Smith film" ever, what's the cost to the man himself? More studio hackwork and relatively anonymity? Color us underwhelmed.

3. The Crazies: $16.5 million ($16.5 million total)

This rash of horror remakes is nothing if not consistent. No matter what name is on the product, the end financial result always seems to be the same: like The Hills Have Eyes and Last House on the Left, The Crazies opened in the mid-teens and should maim and plunder its way to a final gross of around $40 million. Cheap, disposable and not very good for you, this subgenre of films is officially the White Castle of cinema.

4. Avatar: $14 million ($706.9 million total)

With nearly $707 million in the bank domestically, and another $1.844 billion internationally, Avatar has a gross threatening our national debt; for reference, the latter number is bigger than the entire global haul of Titanic. Logic dictates that Avatar will finally drop out of the top five next weekend, when Alice in Wonderland sucks up some 3-D screens. But after 14 straight weeks, don't rule a 15th out just yet.

5. Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief: $9.8 million ($71.2 million total)

While Percy Jackson certainly doesn't have legs as long as the Na'vi, his film has acquitted itself quite nicely since opening three weeks ago. Down just 36 percent, The Lightning Thief was able to hold off Valentine's Day (which incidentally became the first film of 2010 to cross $100 million) to finish in fifth place at the box office. With some luck—and a little bit of financial finagling—20th Century Fox might be able to push Percy Jackson above $100 million. Of course, that would represent just one-seventh of Avatar's gross, but who's counting?

ZERO STARS

With so much junk littering the screen these days, the movie business looks like a garbage strike, and it’s beginning to smell, too. The latest pollution from the celluloid dumpster is sub-mental horror called Cop Out, starring Bruce Willis and a screeching, eye-rolling, potty-mouthed comic named Tracy Morgan as the newest team in a seemingly endless stream of mismatched NYPD cop-buddy flicks, on the trail of a stolen baseball card. You can’t make this stuff up. This pair of imbeciles—and the movie they’re in—are about as funny as the contents of a toilet bowl.

The hack responsible for this miserable dreck is director Kevin Smith, whose writing on other films is so filthy it cannot be quoted in the company of anyone who cares about their I.Q. status (this monstrosity was scripted by brother team Rob and Mark Cullen), and whose zero talent as a director of such cinematic brain lesions as Clerks, Mallrats, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Zack and Miri Make a Porno has made significant contributions to the dumbing down of America in general and American movies in particular. It gets even dumber with Cop Out.

There isn’t much to say about a movie this stupid, involving a duo of aging stoners in uniform who patrol Brooklyn and Queens and call themselves White Lightning and Black Thunder, and who spend most of their time on suspension without pay for obvious reasons. One nitwit shoots, stabs, maims and wipes out a Mexican drug cartel that stole the priceless 1952 Pafko baseball card he needs to pay for his daughter’s wedding in order to prevent his ex-wife’s new husband from getting all the credit. Instead of protecting the citizens he’s paid to help, the other nitwit spends his time on duty beating up a teddy bear, spying on his wife with binoculars to see if she’s sleeping with the neighbor and screaming a relentless spew of fetid obscenities in a shameless imitation of Stepin Fetchit, dressed like a cell phone. Instead of a plot, the long and paralyzing vignettes the movie tosses into a Cuisinart of violence for padding feature a 10-year-old car thief; a Mexican Lupe Velez look-alike who holds the key to millions of dollars in offshore bank accounts; a numbing parade of car chases; a mass murderer named Poh Boy who collects memorabilia; and a masked home intruder who takes time out in the middle of robbing his victims to turn their living rooms into bathrooms. Kevin Smith has been quoted saying his goal in Cop Out was to emulate Abbott and Costello, but either times have changed more than I feared, or he’s never seen one of their movies. The Willis-Morgan team is about as on point as four legs with the ankles missing. The sequel will undoubtedly star Adam Sandler and Chris Tucker.

In the comic tradition of the Farrelly brothers, Judd Apatow, David O. Russell and Wes Anderson, this is the kind of critically bilious emetic I would ordinarily pass by, looking the other way. But at the screening for alleged critics I attended, one lady reviewer old enough to know better went into high-pitched squeals of shrieking hysterics every time the cops described in detail their excrement, flatulence and penis size. I don’t even want to think about what this says about the state of movie criticism today, but it’s pretty clear that we will always have moron movies as long as we have moron critics who praise them. Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of either.

I guess it could be worse. The sleep-inducing Cop Out was originally called A Couple of Dicks, so be grateful for small favors. An even bigger favor would have been burning the negative before it left the lab.

It's 2 a.m. and you awake with a jerk, alone in your fully lit apartment and still on the couch. On TV, the credits of some movie you've already seen a billion times are scrolling by. It feels like rock bottom. And we know, because we're just like you: single.

Need a movie to keep you company until you literally can't keep your eyes open? Join us tonight when we pass out to Mallrats [starting @ 2:35 a.m. on HBO Zone]

Why we’ll try to stay up and watch it: In the past 10 years, has there been any director who has seen his reputation age worse than Kevin Smith? Running down his filmography—which, at one point, was surely filled with titles that you considered awesome—is like leafing through a bunch of old photographs from high school; it will invariably lead to pangs of embarrassment, regret and confusion. Even the ostensibly “good” movies—Chasing Amy, Dogma and, yes, Clerks—aren’t actually that good; amateurish and smug, too full of their own agendas to actually hold up to intense, multi-viewing, scrutiny. Perhaps then that’s why we still consider Mallrats to be Mr. Smith’s crowning achievement. It was never meant to be anything other than a stupid comedy, and it hits that goal with great accuracy.

Released in 1995 by Universal Studios (under their now-defunct Gramercy banner), Mallrats was castigated by film critics and ignored by audiences; witness the paltry $2.1 million total gross at the box office. Mr. Smith’s first post-Clerks film—a studio film, no less—was so reviled that the director even apologized for making it at the Independent Spirit Awards the following year. But a funny thing about all that: Mallrats is hilarious. Oh, sure, it’s a sloppy mess—a 10^th anniversary DVD release features an extended cut that includes nearly an hour's worth of excised footage—but we’d venture to say Mr. Smith has never made a film so alive and vibrant.

Most of that has to do with the casting, Mr. Smith’s strongest suit as a filmmaker. Putting aside Jeremy London—an actor so wooden he makes his brother Jason seem like a graduate from the Actor’s Studio—the rest of the cast (Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams and Michael Rooker among them) is loaded for bear, specifically Jason Lee. It might be hard to believe, especially in the wake of the painfully unfunny My Name is Earl, but Mr. Lee used to be hysterical. As Mr. Smith’s onscreen alter ego, Brodie (yep, that’s a Jaws reference; Mr. London’s character is named T.S. Quint), Mr. Lee is caustic, furious, biting and altogether brilliant. He was an angry geek before angry geeks even existed.

When we’ll probably fall asleep: Despite Mallrats being a wonderfully short film—the entire thing runs just over 90 minutes—we’ll clock out fairly early on if only because this thing is starting so damn late. Jeez! So we’ll make it until 3 a.m., 25 minutes into the film, when Brodie and Quint get into a shoving match with a couple of comic-book nerds waiting outside a store to get Stan Lee’s autograph—the Spider-man creator makes an appearance later, reading cue cards like Christopher Walken on Saturday Night Live—which culminates with Brodie uttering the immortal line: “You think just 'cause a guy reads comics, he can’t start some shit?” And with that, a generation of geeks found their battle cry.

Because the first thing that pops into your head when you hear the name Kevin Smith is "talented director," Warner Brothers has decided to let Silent Bob helm his first big studio picture. Mr. Smith will get behind the camera for A Couple of Cops (more on this title in a moment), a buddy comedy starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan as a pair of police officers who have to track down a stolen baseball card and rescue a damsel in distress all while being chased by a bunch of gangsters. (Any similarities to the Tracy Jordan comedy Black Cop/White Cop is purely coincidental.) A Couple of Cops is noteworthy because it is the first film Mr. Smith will direct that he didn’t also have a hand in writing; this script was penned by Las Vegas co-writers Robb and Mark Cullen, and appeared on the 2008 Black List as one of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood.

At the risk of joining the cacophony of haters already loosening up their vocal chords, we'll say it: this movie could not sound worse. Seriously. Even if this were still the 1980s the premise would be considered overly generic. And while we’d probably see Mr. Morgan do anything, Mr. Willis has a bizarre track record with comedies. The man is undeniably funny, always livening up dramas or action spectacles with a sharp line reading (see Die Hard, Pulp Fiction), but when he’s actually asked to actually do comedy, he tries too hard and invariably fails (see The Whole Nine Yards, The Story of Us). The thought of Mr. Willis hamming his way through A Couple of Cops is already giving us the icks. And about that title: when rumors of this story were originally reported earlier in the week, the film was called A Couple of Dicks (get it?), but in the trades this morning it had already been changed to A Couple of Cops. We guess at least now Mr. Smith doesn’t have to worry about any problems when the DVD appearing on the shelves of Walmart.

All that aside, the biggest issue with A Couple of Cops is Mr. Smith himself. While we won’t deny his talents as a writer (though we’re tempted to), Mr. Smith is just not a good director. Some critics praised the look of Zack and Miri Make a Porno as a step forward in his craft, but maybe that was just because everything was framed properly and no boom mics were visible. And don’t even get us started on his prowess, or lack thereof, with actors; we doubt you’ve ever walked out of a Kevin Smith movie championing how good a performance was. Put it all together and the idea of Mr. Smith handling a moderately budgeted studio picture for Warner Brothers becomes almost laughable. And we thought hiring Zack Snyder for Watchmen was a bad idea…

The pitch for the show sounds... well, like every other Judd Apatow based rip-off we've seen in the last few years. Still, we guess it's about time that the Apatovian comedy style returned to television. And while Mr. Apatow isn't directly involved in this project, we're sure Mr. Rogen will be a capable fill-in. Plus, the dude has massive clout, so unlike Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, Mr. Apatow's failed (and awesome) ventures into television comedy, Mr. Rogen's project should stick around for a little while. Expect the usual repertory players to appear here as well; we may be biased towards Jay Baruchel, but this would be a perfect vehicle for him to star in.

This is also great news for Showtime, since they've gotten lapped by HBO during the last year. It's been very easy to take pot shots at the former king of pay cable, but HBO has collected such a large variety of talented people in recent months that it's only a matter of time before they get back on top. Meanwhile Showtime, which seems to get off scot-free, has seen its shows go directly into the tank. With this project, the Steven Spielberg/Diablo Cody match-made-in-bizarre The United States of Tara and Edie Falco's Nurse Jackie, things are looking significantly better for Showtime in 2009. As long as Mr. Rogen keeps Kevin Smith far away from this new series, everything should be fine.