Toronto. Smiley Face.

"Gregg Araki plays a very special role in my personal cinephilia," begins Matt Riviera. "The Living End, Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation were my introduction to independent queer cinema. They played a key role in my own coming of age, sexually, intellectually and politically.... It took 2004's Mysterious Skin to establish Araki as an A-list director, perhaps America's answer to Almodóvar." Smiley Face "is not the complex multi-layered follow up to Mysterious Skin I was hoping for. If that film was a step towards maturity, this one is pure regression."

But for Cinematical's Monika Bartyzel, this one shows Araki "can leave many of his usual, challenging themes behind and make an easy-to-serve, and completely fun, mainstream comedy." And just now, Christopher Campbell passes along news that, after a brief run in LA, this one's going straight to DVD.

Posted by dwhudson at September 26, 2007 1:51 PM