Archive for April, 2003
33 items.
Today’s strip has to do with a little bit of industry news. If you haven’t heard by now, Peter Jackson, the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy has signed on with Universal to do a remake of the 1933 classic King Kong. For more details on the story, read this item here.
To be fair, this odd choice for a follow-up project didn’t completely come out of nowhere. King Kong is a project that has been on Jackson’s back burner since 1997 when it was shelved by Universal so as not to compete with Disney’s Mighty Joe Young or Sony’s Godzilla rehash.
I don’t doubt that Jackson will make an excellent movie. And if he’s got his LotR W.E.T.A team behind him (which looks likely), I’m sure the effects will be astounding.
But still, don’t you think you would take a little time off before trying to update one of the most beloved monster movies in cinematic history. I mean, if they screw this up, that’s a pretty big strike against him. Does anyone remember the 1976 version starring Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange? Okay. Well, maybe you do. But do you think anyone was standing around ASKING for that picture to be made?
With that out of the way, I wanted to move on to some business involving the site. Recently there’s been an influx of fan art and cameo appearances that you can check out in full detail on the Bonus Materials page.
I mentioned how Aric from Fish Strips is putting together an epic storyline featuring a lot of my pals in the community, but Beaner from Troy’s Bucket must have been sweating bullets when he put together this bad boy featuring over cameo appearances
I want to send a special shout out to my good friend Dave (just Dave) who put together a killer guest strip a few weeks ago. Dave contacted me to let me know that he has just started his own strip called Taking the Bi-Pass. He has only the first strip up right now, but take my word for it, this is one you’re going to want to bookmark and check often. If you don’t believe me, check out his extra bit of fan art that picks up where his guest strip left off!
The last bit of news I’ll mention is the rather grim message that was left over at No Pants Tuesday yesterday. Visitors to Zach’s site were led to believe he had died due to choking on a pizza roll. I would call everyone’s attention to yesterday’s date and give Zach a hearty pat on the shoulder.
…you know. To dislodge that pizza roll…
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If someone called me up and said they were going to kill me, wouldn’t it be cool to have the balls to just walk away? It would never happen in the real world. I’d probably soil myself right there.
So after much delay, Phone Booth finally finds it’s way into wide release today. I’d like to go see it, but I have a feeling Cami isn’t interested in a suspense movie featuring hostages and snipers.
I’m more interested in seeing the thing on principal. It has a clever premise – one that was pitched to Alfred Hitchcock over 30 years ago by screenwriter Larry Cohen.
For those not familiar with the plot, a scummy ad executive is held hostage by a sniper who threatens to kill him if he hangs up the phone. His intention is to apparently force him into owning up to his own unscrupulous tendencies.
No doubt Hitch would have had more fun turning the screws, but from what I’ve heard, director Joel Schumacher doesn’t do too bad of a job. Other reviews I’ve read claim it will cement Colin Farrell’s status as an A-list star. Funny when you consider this thing was filmed almost 2 years ago
Something Hitch couldn’t have matched was the breakneck pace and method at which Phone Booth was filmed – they did it all in 11 days, in sequence on digital tape. In and of it self, I’m curious to see the results of such an approach. Granted, then entire movie basically takes place in the 30 feet surrounding a phone booth, with no costume changes or much else. But that’s commendable, especially for a studio flick.
Beyond that, life continues at a normal pace. This has been one hell of a week. I had to spend over $700 replacing the radiator and some pipe on the underside of my car. I hate to ask for a hand out, but this has really laid me up.
I hope the rest of you are well. Fire me an e-mail if you’ve got some time to spare.
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Things might look a little odd around here for a week or two. I just recently converted the site from .shtml to .php using a handy script I picked up from Comrade F over at The Misc.
The changes shouldn’t affect how you, the reader encounter the site as a whole. But it does WONDERS in terms of organizing things for me on the back end.
With this script in place, there will be less likelihood of broken links and MORE blog updates since now I can input commentary into the site from any terminal with internet access. This goes the same for my friends Jared and Nick as well as my wife Cami – who should have more ease uploading content versus the old “send me a Word document” system we had going before. So in that respect, it’s good for you because you’ll be getting more diversified content.
The bad news is that all of the old blogs have been erased and need to be replaced through the .php script. That’s going to take some time, but I plan on starting at the beginning and steadily working my way toward the present.
Also on the fritz is the archive section. but it’s not a big loss because if you want to skip around to a specific strip, there is now a little menu bar underneath the blog. Actually, it’s more efficient than what we had before.
The last down side is for anyone who may have linked directly to a strip. Those links are gone now, but this doesn’t screw up those of you don’t have web sites.
Regardless, this is the new system and it’ll be a little bumpy putting it into place. If you see an errors or broken links, please contact me so I can fix them and thank you for your patience.
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The scenario in today’s strip is close enough to the truth to make a joke out of it. I’m finding the war coverage more and more oppressive. I was really left with very little choice but to go out and find some mindless escapism. So Cami and I went out and rented a bunch of dumb movies. We would have seen Phone Booth, but as you can imagine, we weren’t to up on seeing a movie about terrorism at the moment.
For the record, we really did rent The Master of Disguise and Undercover Brother. You won’t find me near Sweet Home Alabama with a ten foot pole, so our third movie was actually Wet, Hot American Summer.
Despite my better judgment, I really like Master of Disguise, but I’m glad I didn’t see it in a theater. Truthfully, I’m just more excited about Dana Carvey doing his thing than anything else. I’ve been a big fan of his for a long time. It’s a crime he isn’t in more movies.
I really liked Undercover Brother. I laughed out loud several times – which shocked me, because I’m not really fond of Eddie Griffin. But it was racial humor done right. If it had come along before the Austin Powers franchise, I picture it being much more popular. Be being the “johnny-come-lately” that it is, there’s a certain “been there, done that” feel about it.
Clearly the best of the three movies we picked up this weekend was Wet, Hot American Summer. I wish I could describe it to you, but I can’t. Basically, it’s a send up of every cheesy 80’s movie cliche there is – but I’m not talking in a Breakfest Club kind of way. Think Meatballs. It stars Janeane Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce, but it was written and directed by some cast-offs from the comedy troupe The State. You might remember the show they had on MTV for a couple of seasons in the mid-90’s.
Do yourself a favor and rent it. It’s got cult status stamped all over it.
Beyond that, I’m still getting used to updating the site through the new PHP script Comrade F from The Misc. helped me to install. For more background information on the big switch, check out Friday’s strip.
Last, but not least, I’d like to publicly thank those of you who donated over the weekend after I detailed the sob story about my car and the $700 in repairs I’ve been laid up with. You’re help means more than I can express.
But this generosity got me to thinking: I’m not usually one to ask for a handout. I’ll take it if you give it, but it only seems far to give something back in return, right? That’s why I’m pleased to announce that I am working on a THEATER HOPPER POSTER!
My hope is to get this off to the printer this week. My plan is to do a really small run and number them so those of you who buy them know you have something extra special in your possession. If they turn out to be a success, I’ll whip up a brand new poster with a limited print run and number those, too!
I’ll sign the poster for anyone who wants the autographed and plan on shipping them in tubes so they don’t get ruined. PayPal looks like the logical choice for now, but if you have any suggestions for internet transactions that don’t charge a fee, drop me a line.
I’ll let everyone know when I have more information!
Thanks again!
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Something I wanted to mention earlier, but forgot: Both Nothing Nice To Say and No Pants Tuesday are back in full swing.
Anyone who already checks this site, probably already checks theirs – so this information may not come as a surprise. But both of these guys are buddies of mine and I wanted to give them a shout-out. It’s great to see them back on the horse.
…and nooooo, I’m not talking about heroin!
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Hi! Well, I’m really happy to be posting to the site. For my first blog, I’d like to address my disappointment in a movie I saw over the weekend…well, I actually slept through it with Truman balancing on my head on the couch.
Master of Disguise starring Dana Carvey is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. What’s with his Italian accent? He was obviously born in the U.S., so I don’t get it…and even I can’t stretch my imagination that far and imagine that 52-year old Carvey is the son of James Brolin.
Ok, OK, so I know I’m making a lot of Dana Carvey fans angry…I guess I’m just out of sorts today. I think it’s the 4.5 inches of snow we received last night. Or, maybe I’m not adjusted to Daylight Savings Time…or it could be that I have a case of the Mondays. And, we all know what remedies that… A TALL GLASS OF PAIN GO BYE-BYE JUICE. (Tom, you’re buying tonight!)
Anyway, I’m excited that I got to write a blog!
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Hey–maybe it’s just me, but do Tom and Jared look a little TOO happy in that sketch above? I mean, I’ve known both of them for 11 years, but I’ve never quite seem them so… umm… into each other. For the record, both Tom and Jared are married — HAPPILY MARRIED.
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Woo Hoo! It’s blog writing time the easy way! Cami, I am glad you pointed out the subliminal message in Tom’s drawing. I think it shows clearly who wears the pants in our relationship. Hee hee.
Anyway, down to business. I watched Queen of the Damned this weekend, which was okay. It fit well into the larger world of popular vampire lore and I must say it was fairly enjoyable, even for a soundtrack driven movie. I didn’t really see anything too spectacular in Aaliyah’s performance though, and there is a laughable “Lois Lane and Superman flying through the night air” scene. If your into vampire flicks, check this out, but otherwise don’t wear out your shoes running for this one.
I also went to a local second run theater and saw Shanghai Knights. As I expected, it was entertaining. Nuff said.
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This blog post was lost when Theater Hopper moved to WordPress in January 2009.
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