Archive for December, 2002
12 items.
Well, so much for posting the strip at 7 or 8 o’clock tonight. But I did post this late Monday evening, so technically I’m not late late. I promise to have Wednesday’s strip piping hot and ready for you in the morning.
The strip today basically makes the point that if you are excited at all to see Extreme Ops, then you have obviously not outgrown the fads of the last 10 years. Any film that would dare to take a plot as insipid as this deserves all the bad box office it gets. I mean, c’mon! Extreme snowboarders do battle with terrorists? These guys have helicopters, sub-machine guns and helicopters. What do the snowboarders have except board wax and, oh wait… like, a TOTALLY RAD outlook on life!
This movie would have bombed 10 years ago when the snowboarding fad was hot. Somebody owes somebody else a favor.
I don’t mean to deride anyone who takes snowboarding seriously. If you’re any better than I am (which implies being able to stand for roughly a minute before tipping over) then you’ve got skills all over me. But let’s face it. There are some people that should have never been convinced by a Mountain Dew commercial to strap a plank onto their feet and rocket down a mountainside. Because odds are, you’re going to look really dumb doing it. I know I would. Give it up and watch syndicated episodes of Friends like everybody else.
Things are kind of hectic in my personal and professional lives right now, so it’s left me little time to pursue my hobby here. I’m just coming down from the Thanksgiving holiday and the feast my wife and I hosted. At work, we’re getting set to launch a new version of our corporate web site – one of my design. I’m the lead on the project and it’s causing me some last minute stress. Once the new version is out there, I’ll throw a link up on the site and you can all check it out. It’ll be up by Friday, so expect it then.
I saw a lot of movies over the holiday. Mostly animated fare. I saw 8 Crazy Nights last Tuesday. It was okay, but typical Adam Sandler. You really have to be in the mood for something stupid to enjoy it.
On Saturday I saw Treasure Planet, which I liked. The art direction is top-notch in this film and the voice talent wasn’t half-bad, either. I was a little wary going in because I really detested Atlantis from a few summers ago. Usually when Disney goes the full-bore action route, they loose a bit of their trademark magic along the way. This time, things held up. I had a good time.
Lastly, I finally hopped on the bandwagon (or rather, was dragged kicking and screaming by Cami) to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I HATED this movie. I mean, REALLY hated it. I hated it so much, I’ll probably put together a review detailing exactly where it when wrong.
I knew going in I wasn’t going to like it. Broad ethnic comedies like these never strike the right chord with me. It was just like any other movie where the foibles and quirks of a set of ethnic individuals is played for laughs. Only this time, instead of the family being Italian or Jewish, they were Greek.
People are constantly begging and pleading to be understood and for others not to stoop to making stereotypes. I fail to see how movies like these remedy the situation. I’ll go into it more another time.
For now, beddy-bye. Sorry again for the late post. It won’t happen again or it’ll be 40 lashes with a wet noodle.
Chow.
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I don’t really have a lot to say about this strip. It plays a lot like an inside joke to me because I’m taking a device I’ve been using a lot lately (i.e. dressing up the characters like those in popular films) and kind of turning it on it’s head. It doesn’t mean much if you haven’t been paying attention to the site recently.
I will say Cami laughed really hard for probably 10 minutes after looking at the strip tonight. I didn’t add any dialogue, but I think she was really caught off guard by the miniature version of myself sitting next to my regular self on the couch. Something about that she found hilarious.
I don’t have my review for My Big Fat Greek Wedding prepared yet, but I thought I would take a moment to post an e-mail I received in response to it. It comes from Jamie Kendall from over at The Magic Armadillo. I didn’t ask for permission to post these statements, so maybe if you visit the site a bunch of times, all will be forgiven.
Jamie is a fellow Iowan (albeit exiled at the moment) so there are some references to some specific locations here in the Des Moines area. That’s not the point. Absorb the brilliant sentiment of our shared hatred for this awful excuse of a chick flick. I felt Jamie did a good job of putting it into words.
i worked over the summer at the fleur cinema and cafe. it was a quality, fun, respectable independent theater, and i enjoyed my job immensely. about 2 weeks into my working there, we received a movie… a movie so hideously omnipresent as to cause myself and my friend and coworker sam to loathe its very presence. my big fat greek wedding lasted the ENTIRE TIME i was there, and every single goddamned week it outsold EVERY other movie, no matter how good every other movie was. now it’s time for winter break. i’m going to go back to iowa and work at the same theater. and greek wedding is STILL THERE. i hate that irreverent hour and a half of presence with a burning passion rivaling that of the sun. everywhere i go, i meet with nothing but good reviews. my manager, my parents, everybody but me, sam, my projectionist josh, and some guy i know who never saw it, loved it. and it is the bane of my existence. i curse its name when i go to work. every person who got a ticket to see it made me more and more lose all faith in humanity. it is my nemesis. i applaud you for speaking out against it, for love there is not between two such rivals as we and my mediocre skills warrant not an audience for which i can speak out properly my opinions.
I felt that pretty much summed it up. More later when I can get to it.
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I’m gonna say right now that there’s no way on God’s Green Earth you’ll get me to see Analyze That with out either:
- Knocking me unconcious.
- Lobotomizing me.
The reason behind this is simple: If you can’t go to the trouble of conjuring a clever movie title, then my butt isn’t going to be in the seat come opening day. I mean, Analyze That? It’s like they aren’t even trying!
More accurately, everyone associated with this film, from the writers to the director, to the producers and actors promised that they wouldn’t come back for a sequel unless there was a quality script involved. From what I hear, that’s not the case. It looks like a typical grab and dash job to me. Is anyone else getting slightly worried by DeNiro’s picture choices lately?
I think the fact that an actor of his caliber is hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend is a pretty clear indication that we’ve got a turkey on our hands here. Why else would he take such a high-profile gig to promote the movie? Maybe a season or two ago I would have understood, but this year? Blech! Will Ferrel, we miss you…
I feel the urge to keep ranting, but I think I’ve run out of piss and vinegar. I was going to launch into a whole tirade against the cross-marketing of crap media and how it’s grown out of control.
Okay, I’ll take a swipe at it.
Take for example Jennifer Lopez. I used to really dig this girl. When she was in Out of Sight, she couldn’t be any hotter. I thought she was an awesome actress and I admired her a lot.
Then her recording career got in the way. J-Lo happened.
First things first. Any self-designed moniker you give yourself I will immediately reject. We all know damn well no one was calling her J-Lo before she insisted on it with the release of her album. I’m sure people weren’t Gordon Sumner didn’t start asking people to call him Sting because he thought it sounded hip. He earned the nickname after performing several times in a yellow and black striped sweater.
Anyway, back to J-Lo. First she gives herself the nickname, then she has to drill it in our heads that she’s NOT a diva by penning two songs on the subject (“I’m Real”, “Jenny From the BlocK”) and now she’s virtually carpet-bombing all media outlets to plug her cheesy wares.
Don’t try to tell me that it’s coincidental that she decided to reveal to the world her engagement to Ben Affleck with Diane Sawyer a few scant weeks before she released her latest crap-tacular album and sweet a pie chick power movie Maid in Manhattan. Did you know she even tossed in a sample of her perfume Glow with every copy of her album?
This cross-pollination has to stop!
To hell with Jennifer Lopez. She’s nothing but a Latina Sandra Bullock to me now. Oh, God! She’s has a poorly made chick-empowerment movie coming out soon, too, doesn’t she? Two Weeks Notice? That’s it. I’m official going into hibernation. Wake me when it’s March.
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I don’t know if the theaters in your hometown do this, but at every theater I got to, I am bombarded by STUPID, LOCAL ADVERTISEMENTS! This annoys me to no end because I like to get to the theater early so as not to miss any previews. If you get there too early, being subjected to these ads is the equivalent to Chinese water torture.
In the theater, these ads are placed into a slide projector that automatically forwards. There is usually a mix between local ads and those for Coca-Cola (who has obviously sunk a lot of cash into sponsoring this subtle invasion of privacy). I don’t know whose ads offend me more – the shoddily designed local spots that aggravate my keen sense of composition and information hierarchy. Or the Coca-Cola ads – who’s lame trivia and “fun” games insult my intelligence.
Of course, to top it all off, they’ve got “Movie Tunes” blaring over the PA system before the start of the show. Movie Tunes masquerades itself as a radio station with one of the world’s largest listener-ship. Yeah, you’d have a pretty large listener-ship too if the audience was held captive. That’s like saying Saddam Hussien is the world’s most convincing public speaker.
Does anyone remember a time when you could go into a theater before a movie started and have a nice conversation? To hell with that!
A few things I’ll mention:
I want to give a shout out to Ctrl+Alt+Del. This strip has been getting a lot of attention lately and it’s well deserved. The drawing of this toon is excellent. It’s shaded and colored and looks like an animated short, or something. And the writing is top shelf to boot.
I also got an e-mail from my friend Nick who sent me a really funny short essay about working as a movie-theater projectionist which I will be posting to the site sometime later today. Nick and I are college buddies and he’s been in a couple of strips on the site. Nick graduated an English major, so soon you will be treated to the wonders of correct grammar, spelling and punctuation!
Sometimes I think I spoil you.
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Dec11
For the record, today’s strip is not an endorsement to make a crossover film of this sort at any time… ever. It’s indicative of the grade-level pandering real life studio bosses think audiences are capable of handling. But there is something to be said by watching Jennifer Lopez being vaporized..
With hat out of the way, it goes without saying that I am WAY more excited about seeing the latest installment of the Star Trek franchise than I am seeing another Jennifer Lopez vanity pick. Nemesis is the 10th movie in the series, and as we all know, this being an even-numbered film, it will rule. It’s like universal law, or something.
I’m hoping to dodge a bullet and skip Maid in Manhattan. Hopefully Cami will let me earn “good husband” credit by seeing Two Weeks Notice with Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant. This really isn’t a step up, per se. It’s more of a unilateral move. But I’ve developed an odd affection for Hugh Grant since his turn as a “villain” in Bridget Jones’s Diary a few years back. About A Boy strengthened my opinion of him.
Just wanted to give a quick shout-out to a few new link pals I’ve made. Everyone needs to go check out Bollox, Jaded Chaos and Spudmonkey. They’re all great strips and deserve your undivided attention.
Little note: Lately I’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback on the site and I feel that’s due in part to the effort I’ve been making to branch out within the community. To all the new readers coming in from different sites, I just wanted to say THANK YOU for stopping by and checking out what I do here. I’m excited to have you check out my work.
For those of you who take the extra time to write, double-thanks to you. It’s a great validation to hear from individuals out there in the digital ether who did what I do. It strengthens my resolve to keep making Theater Hopper better and seen by more and more people.
I still have more I want to say, but it’s getting late and I have an early day. I’ll try and come back this evening with more chit-chat.
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Dec13
Oooo! It’s FRIDAY THE 13th, kids! Don’t step on a cat while crossing over a ladder, or some other dumb crap like that.
Big thanks to the awesome crew of Mall Monkeys for letting me have a little fun with their characters. I don’t think there isn’t a soul on Earth that doesn’t already know about this comic, but if you don’t, you need to visit them now. It deftly blends the bizarre, the obscene and the weird – The makings of greatness. And they’re good guys to boot.
Not much to say in today’s blog that wasn’t covered yesterday. Basically I still really want to see Star Trek: Nemesis. But we’ll have to see if I win the battle of wills against my wife.
If you guys are interested to see what I do for a living, you can take a look at it up close. The company I work for recently launched their new corporate site and I designed it. The content isn’t much to scream about, but how many of you are designing web sites for multi-billion dollar companies? That’s right. Sit down.
There are still a few bugs to fix. Unfortunately, they lie within the navigation and didn’t show up during testing. Of course these problems only occur when you launch it for real. We’re having enough conflict that we’re thinking of replacing the JavaScript navigation with Flash.
Anyway, you can check it out here.
I’m gonna wrap it up because I don’t feel so good tonight. So to those of you I promise link exchanges to since Wednesday will have to wait a little while longer. Don’t fret. Wouldn’t you rather have the limelight on Monday when more people come to the site?
Anyway, Nick is back with another post. Play nice and I’ll see you here later.
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Today’s strip sprang from real events in my life this weekend. Anticipating the release of The Two Towers this week, Jared and I promised to sit down and watch The Fellowship of the Ring to prime us for the next installment. Ironically, neither of us own the movie. We’re both holding out for Christmas. So off to our local Blockbuster we went.
And it’s no exaggeration about what’s written on the box. It really did say “Rated PG-13 for epic battles and some scary moments”. We joked about if the movie were just slightly less epic, they would have gotten away with a PG. This made me thinking about how the MPAA comes to these inane conclusions when they rate films.
Personally, I think the MPAA is antiquated in its practices. Their friendly “labels” end up stifling artists who are under the gun from studios to make more “family-conscious” products. And R rating these days is just as bad as an NC-17. It’s considered financial suicide. This approach is the loudest indicator that MPAA ratings are meaningless. They do nothing to indicate the content of movies when studios kowtow to the system and mold their pictures around them. The end results are films made for adults, instead replaced by dumbed down versions designed to rope in the disposable income of pubescents. Quite frankly, it’s insulting and a little sad that studios would place so much stake into such an obviously flawed system.
Now I’m not advocating sex and violence just for the sake of it, but I can’t count the number of times I walked away from a movie that was PG-13 movie disappointed that it didn’t explore more adult themes or situations. None come to mind at the moment, but I’ve had this experience too many times to recall.
:: end rant ::
I lost the battle of wills this weekend with Cami and ended up seeing Maid in Manhattan. What a steaming pile that movie is. I was going to do a strip on it, but I thought I couldn’t top how unintentionally funny this flick is and to let sleeping dogs lie.
For one thing, Ralph Finnes isn’t someone anyone would want to be with. At least, not the way he acts in this film. Chalk has more personality. I wan to unload further on the movie, but after spending most of the weekend socializing with a few different groups, I’ve exhausted my hate-tanks in my thorough dismissal of the experience. I can’t go through it again.
What really burns my gravy is that this movie beat out Nemesis by, like $200,000 dollars and came in #1 with something like $19 million. They said it’s J-Lo’s biggest opening to date. I guess we can all look forward to more watered down “You can do it, ladies!” material from the future Mrs. Affleck.
In linkable news, you may want to check out the sites of a few more friends I made. The Hardcore Empire (not as dirty as it sounds), Funny Bunny, (bunnies are cute!), and No 4th Wall To Break (classic).
Those first two have a lot of pop-up ads, but that shouldn’t dissuade you from checking them out. No 4th Wall To Break is slowly becoming one of my surrealist favorites. Play nice and tell ’em Tommy sentcha!
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No doubt most of you are going to see The Two Towers tonight (that is, if you already aren’t recovering from a midnight showing). I’m really looking forward to seeing it. After watching the first one over the weekend, I am sufficiently amped up.
I’m having fun this week with the Lord of the Rings, in case you couldn’t tell. It’s easy strip material and I know of at least one LOTR fan site that’s noticed my efforts. But I lost the link to it, so… damn.
Cutting the rants short today so I can detail a few plans I have for the site. Stay tuned for some new improvements including a new poll that will be over on the right hand side and also some additions to the Bonus Materials page. Jared put together something right dandy for it.
Speaking of our resident mystery man, he’s back in the house. So I’m going to let him do a little gum-flappin’.
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Dec20
So like the rest of the universe, I went to see The Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers on Wednesday. And if you’re one of the rare few who haven’t seen it yet, don’t be surprised when we all point and laugh at you on the street.
Need proof that everyone and their grandma saw that movie on Wednesday? All you need to do is look at the numbers. The Two Towers had the biggest one day take in movie history – $26 million in 24 hours. Wanna know who the previous record-holder was? It was The Fellowship of the Ring which raked in a paltry $18 million in the same amount of time. The Two Towers took that record and broke it over its knee!
Considering The Two Towers is almost 3 hours long, that’s quite an accomplishment!
Of course I thought the movie was great. Probably better than Fellowship because it got all the boring set-up out of the way. Two Towers just dumps you in the middle of the action and there’s about a billion more cool things to look at.
I could go on about the movie, but I’d only be mirroring other comments you’ve read in other places. Obviously judging by the theme of today’s strip, you’ll know Gollum was the star of the show. I even put together a web cam pic to reflect this opinion:
Scary, I know. But who among us doesn’t get a kick out of watching a computer-animated, shriveled troll have a conversation with himself while alternately eating fish and rabbits raw?
The cam pic is a handy segway because I wanted to let everyone know about my intentions of adding one to Theater Hopper in the near future.
Right now, you can view my ugly mug on the No Pants Tuesday cam page as well as the nexus of all things funky – Hot Buttered Funk. I figured it was about time to start hosting a few images here and archiving the old ones. I find that as I go, I put more and more effort into how these things look. I think they will be of interest to you.
Also, be on the lookout for some small adjustments to the site next week. I’m planning on implementing a poll on the front page so I can get your feedback on a few issues. We do and average of 300 to 500 unique visitors a day depending on if there’s a strip that day. I’m beginning to feel that the introduction of a forum may be warranted. But I want to hear from you first before I got to any extra work.
Jared has already been hard at work. He’s put together two flash games that we’ll be posting to the site next week. So you see, the Christmas spirit of giving is everywhere! Even online!
Is anyone else having trouble following this with that creepy picture above looking at you? I know I am.
Anyway, things are good and I’m looking forward to the holiday. And, in case anyone cares, Saturday is my birthday. I turn 25. I am THE QUARTER-CENTURY MAN.
Yay, me!
Take care, y’all!
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So the holidays are upon us. Geeze, it seems like the season comes faster every year.
Today’s strip is based pretty close to reality. I really do have a Amazon wish-list about that thick. It’s something like 10 pages. A lot of my friends and family were asking me what I wanted for Christmas and my birthday. So instead of trying to keep track of what items I asked for from which people, I just directed them to my wish list.
You wouldn’t believe a lot of the crap I got for having such a lengthy list. But let me tell you, a list like that just doesn’t crop up overnight. It takes several years of careful selection and pruning. I still have some items on there from 2000. Everyone carefully chose to overlook that when ribbing me.
Since this time of year is regularly reserved for family gatherings, I’m predicting a large drop off in traffic. And that’s cool. I mean, for the love of Pete, get offline join the living for a little while. Have some eggnog.
As is such, there will be no strip on Wednesday as I will be away visiting family of my own and have no way to access the site. I looked into an automatic timer to post a strip for Wednesday, but it just wasnt feasible for the moment.
Part of me is kind of bummed that I’m missing a production day. I pride myself on never having missed one since starting back in August. But obviously there are some things that are a little more important and my family would be hella-pissed if I locked myself away in a room for three hours working on “funny pictures”.
To help soften the blow, I’ve added some new interactive features to the site.
You’ve probably noticed the poll near the top of the blog. I know now probably isn’t the best time to introduce this, but it’s been something I’ve wanted to incorporate for a while an figured what the heck. There is background information that explains the question and to help you make a more informed vote. If you could lend me your feedback, it will help me greatly to plot the course of the site.
And, since ’tis always better to give than to receive, we here at Theater Hopper are proud to bring you TWO NEW GAMES playable on the site! You can find them right now on the Bonus Materials page.
Now in addition to wasting your time at work reading the strip, you can hang around and play a game of Memory or Solitaire! We do it because we love you.
Many heartfelt thanks to Jared Brinkmeyer for bringing me these applications for the site. He really went out of the way to contribute something wonderful and exceeded expectations on all points. What made it really special was I never asked him to do this work for me. He did it for the site – and that tells you exactly how awesome he is. Thank you, Jared!
And with that, I say Happy Holidays and I’ll see everyone here on Friday!
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