Movie Cricket

Salt Lake City filmmaker Jared Hess, the guy who directed "Napoleon Dynamite," is taking on another icon beloved by Utahns: Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" saga.

New York magazine's Vulture blog reports that Hess, at a Q-and-A following a Big Apple screening of his new movie "Gentlemen Broncos," took a shot at the special effects of the next "Twilight" movie, "New Moon."

Hess was asked about the deliberately low-rent special effects of "Gentlemen Broncos," in which Sam Rockwell portrays the wild-man hero of a fantasy world created by a home-schooled teen (Michael Angarano). "We didn't really have the money to make it look too awesome," Hess answered. Then he joked: "I don't know which looked more real, the new wolves from 'New Moon' [or the animatronics in his film]."

If there is a battle between "Gentlemen Broncos" (which opens Friday in New York and L.A., and elsewhere — including Utah — on Nov. 6) and "New Moon" (opening galaxy-wide on Nov. 20), New York magazine notes that there will be one man caught in the middle: Mike White. The actor-screenwriter plays Angarano's creepy "guardian angel," and he's old pals with "New Moon" director Chris Weitz, having co-starred with Weitz in the mega-uncomfortable comedy-drama "Chuck & Buck" back in 2000.

(Photo of Angarano, Hess and Rockwell, from left to right: Getty Images.)