By Jay A. Fernandez

The “Cop Out” red-band trailer broke out today, and now it’s looking more like a Kevin Smith movie.

That ridiculous PG version Warner Bros. ejected first just about torpedoed everyone’s interest in sitting through the film. When it comes to Kevin Smith, no one wants to be invited to a whorehouse with a promise of seeing good card tricks, you know? Give us the money shots or we’ll just go rent “Clerks” again.

Anyway, here are Tracy Morgan, Bruce Willis and Seann William Scott acting like regular ol’ profane action-movie grown-ups. Some of it’s even funny.

One observation: The profanity zeitgeist seems to have shifted from the cringy thrill of watching old ladies like Betty White throw out f-bombs to young kids spewing curse words like little machine guns on a sugar high. “Role Models” got the movement going, and this year’s “Kick-Ass” has teed up a few choice raunch-zingers viewable in the latest international red-band trailer (also below – wait around for the last line).

Well, here we have… Eh, just watch it.

By Jay A. Fernandez

The SXSW Film Conference and Festival unleashed its complete feature lineup late Wednesday night, and it’s got some must-see world premieres (”Kick-Ass,” “MacGruber,” “Elektra Luxx“) and thus-far-unseen gems. Running in ecstatic overlap with SXSW’s voluminous music and interactive fests — from March 12-20 — the film festival has developed its own distinct Texas flavor (separate from the great Austin Film Festival’s screenwriter-centric identity).

Fest producer Janet Pierson with Seth Rogen in 2009.

Industry vet Janet Pierson took over the job of festival producer in 2008 and here discusses her year-two approach to organizing the event.

What’s your background? You were a producer for a long time?

I came up through distribution and exhibition in the late ’70s. I was the assistant director of the Film Forum ‘81 to ‘86. John Pierson and I hooked up in ‘82, married in ‘83. After “She’s Gotta Have It” opened, I quit the Film Forum and just worked with John for a couple decades as a producer’s rep, co-creator and executive producer of “Split Screen,” which was our filmmaker-friendly magazine format television show. It’s funny, because the filmmakers who passed through that show, so many of them are still working and have features all over the place. We moved here in 2004 and I was asked to take over the festival in April ‘08 for the ‘09 festival.

By Steven Zeitchik and Borys Kit

Two weeks after promo footage unspooled at Comic-Con, "Kick-Ass," the Matthew Vaughn comic-book adaptation about an everyday teen who becomes a superhero, is closing in on a buyer.

Lionsgate, Paramount and Universal are in the running for the pic, which Vaughn financed independently after some studios found the project’s violence too graphic and some of its dialogue too profanity-laced and opted not to board it at the script stage.

But the Comic-Con event garnered a hugely warm response from the fan universe, which has in turn helped convince the companies to reconsider. Buyer screenings followed the week after Comic-Con, and several studios began circling the pic.

Studios interested in "Kick-Ass" see a Vaughn pickup, even at a price in the solid seven figures and with a significant P&A commitment, as a way to plug a franchise-level property into their slate with comparatively little financial risk or production headaches.