With the new Kevin Smith film, Cop Out just around the corner, its time for some good Kevin Smith-ness on the Lampoon.  Kevin Smith has his regulars.  Jeff Anderson.  Brian O’Halloran.  Walt Flanagan.  And of course Jason Mewes.  But since the smash hit Clerks, he’s been acquiring new, super successful friends who can’t wait to be in the next View Askew cult hit.  (Even though he stopped working under the View Askew brand with Jersey Girl, Zack and Miri Make a Porno and Cop Out. I still like to think of all of his films as View Askew films.  So please don’t bother with the whole snarky “The View Askew films were only the ones in the Clerks Universe!”)  To the public, Smith comes across as this friendly, funny, likable jolly dude.  And I don’t think you can fake that.  He’s a good actor, but not that good.  And that charm and likability has resulted in this conversation MANY times since 1994:

“So, Ben, we’ve got a lot of work to do.  You’ve got a lot of projects to decide on.  $20 Million to reprise your role as Jack Ryan.”

“Pass.”

“$25 Million to be Daredevil again.”

“Pass.”

“Invitation to Matt Damon’s wedding.”

“How much is he paying me to attend?”

“Uhm.  To attend his wedding?  Nothing.  In fact I think you even have to buy a gift.”

“Pass.”

“Invitation to Casey Affleck’s film opening.”

“Pass.”

“But you even directed the film.”

“Just tell me what language to say ‘pass’ in in order to allow you to understand it.”

“Last one.  A 20 second cameo in which you don’t get paid, you go in and a donkey farts on you.  But it is a Kevin Smith film…”

And Ben Affleck hops on the first plane to Jersey.

This little black book of celebrity buddies all started when he made a tremendously popular little film called Clerks.  It spoke to millions of kids sitting behind the counters at menial jobs across the country.  Smith’s unique dialog style and quirky sex humor had fans clamoring for more.  As the years progressed, Smith started working with bigger and better actors (no offense Walt Flanagan).  And even when those actors blew up and became the new Jack Ryan or the dude who screams at Alvin and the Chipmunks, they still would drop all to fly back and work with Smith again.

So, what would have happened if he were presented with his current clique of celebrity friends and his current pull, and he just now came up with Clerks.  Who would he cast?  Let’s hypothesize below:

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Last year’s Oscar snoozefest that saw The Dark Knight omitted from Best Picture contention before the broadcast even started was a wakeup call for the Academy.  Last year’s broadcast was a slight rise over the record setting low point of the 2008 broadcast.  There was a rise in New York, LA and Chicago, but not of the country still failed to really care about Hollywood patting itself on the back and giving smug speeches.  They went out and made a major move in upping the Best Picture nominees to 10 from the traditional 5.  It drew some ire from people, a lot of people shrugged, but very, very few said “yes, that’s what was missing.  More five-minute montages about the Best Picture nominees.”

February 2nd will see the announcement of the Oscar nominees.  We know that AVATAR, The Hurt Locker and Up In The Air will be on the list.  The list will generate a small buzz if we see District 9 on there and a moderate buzz if The Hangover sneaks its way in.  Ratings will climb a little bit on the off chance we might get to see Zack Galifianakis give a Best Picture acceptance speech, even though we all know that the Academy would rather shut down Hollywood altogether than give the award to The Hangover.  They don’t give a damn that it might have been the most enjoyable and memorable movie this year.

And that’s the big problem.  The Oscars are all about this self adulation of this small exclusive club and often end up celebrating the films most people couldn’t care less to see and will be forgetting once that “Special Oscar Winning Edition” Blu-Ray of that film is out of the Best Buy weekly ads.  Not sure if they expect people to tune in to the Oscars when they celebrate these critically acclaimed, but narrowly distributed films, but its not working.  “Oh, man!  Who will win?  The 519th film about how the Iraq war was wrong or the small story of a lesbian dealing with bulimia that had no dialog?  I didn’t see either movie and don’t plan on it, but I am so emotionally invested in this award ceremony!”

By adding 5 more nominees to the Best Picture list, the Academy shows they want to be more inclusive, draw in more people and have the opportunity to celebrate more films in an attempt to nominate those films that resonated with the general film going public.  But even when those fun films we talk about around the water cooler make it on the list, we have no delusions that they might win.  Here’s how I think the nominees will shake out:

• Avatar
• The Hurt Locker
• Up In The Air
• Precious: And The Weird Ass Subtitle
• Inglorious Basterds
• Julie & Julia
• (500) Days of Summer
• (Some Obscure Foreign Film)
• (Film from one of the big Hollywood Directors like Invictus even though it probably doesn’t deserve to be here)
• The Hangover

I’m calling it.  I’m calling my shot.  They will give The Hangover a nomination solely to draw people in.  But it won’t totally work.  But everyone knows it won’t win.  The people they hope are drawn in won’t come just to see their favorite film get 10th place.  Its almost insulting.  Its like creating a special award in Elementary school just so the weird kid can feel like he accomplished something.

Sure, last year people really took to Slumdog Millionaire and were brought in by that.  But it seems like the Oscar success is totally dependent on some film miraculously resonating with the Academy and the people and being one of the five nominees.   But if they made some minor tweaks to the awards, the event of the Oscars itself would be interesting enough and they wouldn’t have to hope and pray that critics and fans line up in order to have a successful broadcast.  So, now you started reading this hoping I would get to the point.  And here is my proposal to fix that (after the break):

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Yeah.  This article might be a little deplorable.  But one cannot write solely mocking Robert Pattinson.  If you’ve gathered around the computer as a family to read some National Lampoon… I’m sorry and am going to recommend you avert the gaze of your kids before the see someone ranking their beloved Disney Princesses on hotness.  And for those of you who think it might be a little gay to be talking about Disney Princesses at all, you can’t tell me that the below picture doesn’t make you start doing the same:

You want to go watch Peter Pan right now, admit it.  And come on.  You do a Google image search for any of these Princesses, a picture will come back with a sexy Halloween costume version of them like so:

So I’m not the only one.  They make heroines all pretty, trim, athletic girls.  They want girls to admire them and think they’re pretty.  So what’s wrong with ranking them based on how well they did making them pretty.  Wow, I just keep making this worse, huh?  OK, I’m going to stuff justifying this and just jump in (after the break).  ALSO!  Working under the assumption they are all over 18.  Cuz, otherwise, that would just be sick.

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In case you got four words into the title of this article and got bored, here’s what this is.  Its a list of things from my childhood that I had incredibly fond memories of.  Things that made a big impression on me in some way.  Toys or movies that I, as a child really, really enjoyed.

Until I saw them again as an adult and came to the conclusion that I was a stupid, stupid, stupid child for liking those things.  Stupid.  The above stock photo is an accurate representation of my disappointment.

Some things this list is not.  This isn’t a list of things that I always thought sucked.  Like don’t write up asking why Snorks aren’t on here.  They suck.  They always sucked.  I always thought they sucked.  There’s no big revelation here.  Not going to write a list of how right I was to change the channel every time they came on.  And its also not a nostalgia list.  Don’t ask “why isn’t The Transformers cartoon movie on here?”  Because I have seen it recently and it is still incredible.  Orson Welles went out on a high note.

So, here (after the jump) are the ten things that are much crappier than I remember.

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We here at the Lampoon are all about comedy.  Remember Animal House?  Comedy.  “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog”.  Comedy.  Remember Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj? Yeah.  Well go on and forget that one.  But still.  We are comedy.

Also, the end of the decade calls for nonsensical lists for people to argue over.  Just look at Digg.  Try to find one article without “Top X of the decade!”  We’ve innovated here and combined lists… with comedy.  Something NOBODY else on the web is doing.  So this list is the top 10 people who made a major impact on comedy or were comedy innovators in the 2000-09 decade.  (I kept it positive influences.  No point putting Dane Cook on here to talk about the impact he had ruining Stand-Up.)

10. Tina Fey

She was SNL’s first female head writer before they decided to take a hiatus from being funny.  She wrote and starred in the only redeeming thing about Lindsay Lohan’s career (Mean Girls), if you don’t count slutty pictures of her.  She then carried “30 Rock” to a fantastic start.  She’s won 7 Emmys, 2 Golden Globes and she has that sexy librarian thing down.

9. Conan O’Brien

When Letterman and Leno started feeling old, Conan made Late Night still feel edgy and fresh.  Or maybe he just seems awesome next to Jimmy Fallon.  He wrote for “The Simpsons” when it was awesome.  He wrote for “Saturday Night Live” when it was awesome.  He also has the most awesomely random stalker of all time (from the ultra-reliable wikipedia):

Subject of stalking

It was reported that since September 2006, O’Brien had allegedly been stalked by Father David Ajemian of the Archdiocese of Boston, who despite multiple warnings to stop, had been sending O’Brien letters signed as “your priest stalker” and coming in contact with O’Brien’s parents. Ajemian sent a letter to O’Brien, frustrated that he had been denied a spot in the Late Night audience.

I’m heading to Boston just to sit in on one of his sermons.  “And God said ‘it was good… FOR ME TO POOP ON!’”

(Rest after the Jump)

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AVATAR is blowing up around the world.  Its set to take in record hauls.  People love Zoe Saldana’s Neytiri so much articles from geeks wanting to boink 10 foot tall blue chicks are popping up all over.  So you knew James Cameron wasn’t going to just sit on this.  Our crack investigative team here at National Lampoon has obtained emails passed between James Cameron and Fox executives from this past weekend about the future of the Avatar franchise.  Its no secret that the way white people came over from Europe and raped the lands of the Native Americans played a major role in the story oif Avatar and the Na’vi people in the film.  It seems as though Cameron is determined to continue that theme in the sequel (after the break):

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