Archive for March, 2008
19 items.
Horton Hears A Who was number one at the box office this weekend with over $45 million in earnings. That’s fairly substantial, but no entirely a surprise. Kids rule the box office. Parents will take then to see anything.
I’m kind of non-plused about the whole affair for reasons outlined in the comic. I recognize that Horton Hears A Who is getting good reviews, but there are just as many bad reviews and I feel like I’ve been burned before. I thought the live-action version of How The Grinch Stole Christmas was grotesque and the live-action version of The Cat in the Hat completely glossed over what made the book so endearing by adding it’s own unneeded elements. I suppose you can give a tip of the hat to Horton for avoiding the temptation of live-action. I’ll admit that the CG looks good. But isn’t there some kind of emo-kid that lives in Whoville? I could have swore I saw one in the trailer. Is this what Ted Geisel had in mind?
I realize that after a certain point and author’s creation is taken out of his hands and adapted to fit the sensibilities of a modern audience. Clearly all great tales do this. Their themes may be universal, but the details are tweaked to make them modern.
At the same time, the inventive mind of Dr. Suess was so completely beyond timeless, I think any attempt to anchor it to modern sensibilities is a mistake. You should breathe life into what was on the page but not give people cell phones, or whatever. I think that’s why the Chuck Jones’s animated version of How The Grinch Stole Christmas endures year after year after year. They didn’t see a need to embellish it. The story was perfect as it was.
Quibbles, I’m sure. I doubt anyone is losing sleep over my concerns. I know there are no longer any sacred cows. But, for me, Dr. Suess is deeply entrenched in my childhood memories and those books played a major influence in my life. If you’re going to adapt them for the screen, stay faithful to them so the next generation can be equally inspired.
Just my two cents.
Be sure to tune in to The Triple Feature podcast this evening where we’ll be talking about Horton Hears A Who and its diametrical opposite, Doomsday. The show starts at 9:00 PM CST over at Talkshoe.com. Just follow this link to be taken there 15 minutes before the show starts.
See you there!
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Mar19
In real life, Cami like to temper my fanaticism about Iron Man by suggesting the character might possibly be gay. Something about the mustache, she says. Wives always overlook the first rule of a man-crush. Ignore the haters.
That said, I’m probably only giving her more ammunition by producing a comic like this, but so what. It’s all in good fun.
I took a look at this weekend’s upcoming releases to find something timely to make fun of and was uninspired. Drillbit Taylor looks like nothing more than Owen Wilson’s “getting back on his feet” movie after his suicide attempt a few months ago. Audiences will give him a pass on this one if it’s awful and assume he’s still working out the kinks.
Meet the Browns is like the what?… sixteenth Tyler Perry movie this year?
Shutter looks like more reheated J-Horror that I liked better when it was The Ring, The Grudge or The Eye or whatever.
So, just like in the comic, I do what I always do when faced with a problem. I visit my happy place! Admittedly, Iron Man’s May 2 release date is always near the top of my list when I think about stops I need to make while visiting my happy place. Just buckle yourselves in now, folks. Because these random comics about Iron Man are only going to get more and more frequent the closer we get to May 2.
Beyond that, not a lot of news to report. I’m still enjoying my time off and making great progress on the site redesign. I’ve got the template all figured out and now I’m actually in the content writing stage. One of the big problems with my last redesign was creating navigation for stuff I never ended up writing content for. Not this time. I’m not releasing ANYTHING until all pages are written and accounted for.
I think you guys are really going to like the new design. I’m flattening things a great deal. The home page will be the comic, the blogs, and access to the archive. That’s it. There’s a lot of distractions on the home page right now. I’m trying to get rid of a lot of that and shuffle off some of this content to support pages. Y’know – so you have a reason to hang around the site for more than 20 seconds!
Anyway, that’s all for me. I hope you’re having a good Wednesday! See you here Friday!
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When someone e-mailed me this story about actor Shia LaBeouf having a $1,000 bench warrant issued for his address, I laughed out loud. Not only because it fit into my ant-Shia campaign, but because it fit so perfectly.
First of all, who on Earth gets cited for unlawful smoking? Second, I know he’s a busy guy and probably couldn’t make his court appearance, but what kind of boneheaded attorney has he hired who wouldn’t be there on his behalf? It’s almost too perfect.
This, combined with “Hell-no-I-won’t-leave-this-Walgreen’s-Don’t-you-know-who-I-am?” bust in November of last year makes LaBeouf the most laughable wannabe “tough guy” in Hollywood. It’s almost like he’s the Jan Brady of up-and-coming actors, always coming up with these hair-brained schemes to boost his tough guy cred and shed his Disney past. But he’s only capible of coming up with the most minor offenses.
“I gotta think of of a way to look more manly for casting agents! I know! UNLAWFUL SMOKING! Then, later, I might egg someone’s house.”
I know that’s not the case, but in the dark corners of my mind, I wish it were true.
Still, what do you have to do to get cited for unlawful smoking? I realize in most urban centers, you’re not allowed to smoke indoors anymore. But it’s not like running a red light, is it? I mean, a cop isn’t going to see you lighting up indoors somewhere and immediately hit you with a ticket, is he? Heck, even when you’re speeding, sometimes they let you off with a warning. Don’t you think they would have asked him to “please extinguish the cigarette” before hitting him with a fine?
I’m starting to wonder if it wasn’t a case of someone asking him to put out the cigarette and him saying “Sure!” before lighting up again when the person was out of sight. I wouldn’t put it past him. That’s exactly the kind of entitled attitude that I read in waves coming off this kid.
Again, this is all conjecture. In fact, a great deal of it is fantasy. But does it really seem that far outside the realm of possibility? Food for thought.
Sorry for the lateness of the comic. I didn’t get a start on things until late last night and couldn’t finishing until later this morning because we had a guy in our house doing electrical work. Lame excuse, I know. But things will settle more back into a routine next week when I start my new job.
That’s all for now. Have a great weekend everyone!
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I was at a complete loss for what I was going to do for today’s comic. None of the recent crop nor forthcoming releases have inspired me to make satire.
So I retired to my “thinking room” and spent a little time pondering the subject of Easter movies. There really aren’t any. I don’t know that there SHOULD be any. I just noticed there aren’t any. And, thus, a comic was born.
I guess my mind wandered onto the topic because as we were leaving our house to have Easter lunch with my family, I noticed dozens upon dozens of cars parked near the two large churches near our house. They were everywhere. Parked on the street, parked in the lots of nearby businesses. It’s never this busy. Not on an average Sunday.
So Easter is one of those big church-going holidays and – conceivably – families will then depart to participate in Easter egg hunts, eat ham and chocolate bunnies and whatever else odd traditions have emerged from this holiday.
The point I’m making is that the holiday is a gathering of sorts – of community, of family.
So why aren’t there very many movies that speak to this?
Think about all of the Thanksgiving movies out there. You know the basic outline. The family black sheep returns home for the holidays, everyone is stressed out, comedy ensues. You could easily transpose that formula onto Easter gatherings.
I mean, okay… so Easter probably isn’t a big travel day. And it’s not like people are given days off from work so they can go be with their families on Easter, or whatever. But you get the gist.
For those of you complaining that it’s too secular, explain all the Christmas movies out there. Most of them are more about Santa or gift-giving than the actual holiday and Easter is complete with it’s own set of bizarre traditions. So religious persuasion really isn’t a factor.
All I know is that every year ABC plays The Ten Commandments around Easter and I can’t figure out why. What does Old Testament Bible have to do with New Testament death and resurrection of Jesus? Or did someone lose a bet to Charlton Heston?
I could be completely talking out of my rear end because – admittedly – I’m not a big church goer, I don’t understand the Easter tradition… It’s just always been something we’ve done as a family. I can’t imagine I’m the only one in this boat?
What do you think? Why do you suppose there are no great Easter movies out there? Or maybe there are tons and I’m missing out? Let me know!
Last bit of business, don’t forget to check out The Triple Feature podcast tonight over at TalkShoe at 9:00 PM CST. I don’t know what we’re talking about since I missed last week’s show, but I’m sure it will be enlightening. How is that for an endorsement?
Sorry, I feel a little scatterbrained. I’m starting a new job today, so I’m mostly focused on that. But I’ll try to have it put together by tonight’s show.
See you there!
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So today’s comic and blog generated a lot of feedback in my in-box as well as on the LiveJournal syndication feed and everyone pretty much said the same thing: That The Ten Commandments isn’t an Easter movie, it’s a Passover movie.
At which point I slapped my forehead like Bull from Night Court and then buried myself in three feet of sand from embarrassment. It all feels kind of obvious now.
Still, it kind of proves my point. There aren’t really any good Easter movies. Some people tossed out ideas like Ben Hur, The Greatest Story Ever Told and The Last Temptation of Christ. One guy even suggested The Passion of The Christ – a cheery holiday movie if there ever was one!
But just because those movies are religious or about Jesus specifically doesn’t mean they have anything to do with the Easter holiday.
Do you see the manor in which I’m splitting hairs? Easter as a gathering, as a family tradition… and no one has anything to say about it from a cinematic perspective? Why does Thanksgiving get all the love? What’s so magical about Christmas?
I guess I just don’t understand Easter and maybe never will. I’m trying, though – fumbling and stumbling toward glory.
Apologies to those of you who wrote e-mails. I probably won’t be able to answer you individually. But since I figured there was this outpouring of response (and people were generally responding with the same thing) this was an appropriate venue.
Thanks for attempting to enlighten a heathen!
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Apologies for the lack of a news post on this comic. I stayed up late Tuesday night producing it and had to crash before writing the blog. I planed on completing it when I got back from work Wednesday night, but crashed out because I was really sick with chills and everything. I slept something like 13 hours last night. Crazy.
Things are a little nutty right now because of the new job I started on Monday, so I appreciate your patience while things fall into place.
About the comic, I know that I did a Shia LaBeouf comic a couple of days ago, but the kid keeps screwing up in such unspectacular ways, he makes it too easy not to comment on it. If you click on that link and read the story about his parking mishap, be sure and check out the note someone taped to his car. Perhaps a candidate for PassiveAggressiveNotes.com?
Not much else to add. Like I said, I’m a little scattered this week. But thanks for your patience. I hope to see you here Friday!
Later!
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When my good buddy Joe Dunn jumped on our mutual friend Mitch Clem’s neckbeard bandwagon with his latest comic, I really wanted to do my own neckbeard comic as well. Alas, I couldn’t make it fit within context and had to go another direction.
I was stuck for a while until I remember Run Fatboy Run was in theaters this weekend. The rest… came quite naturally.
Did you have an overweight friend in grade school? Were *you* the overweight friend? Why is it that the only weapon at their disposal is the threat of sitting on someone? Wouldn’t they have to catch you first? Oh, well.
In case you’re not familiar with the plot of Run Fatboy Run, Simon Pegg from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz plays a guy who left his fiance (Thandie Newton – once again cast as “the girl”) at the alter tries to win her back by training for and finishing a marathon. It sounds kind of like a premise for a sitcom to me. Which perhaps makes it appropriate that Friends alumnus David Schwimmer is directing. What? I know. Sounds weird to me, too.
I have hope for the screenplay, however, as it was written by both Pegg and Michael Ian Black, who you might remember from MTV’s The State or VH1’s infinite I Love The (Insert Decade Here) series.
I’m kind of thinking I need to get out of the house this weekend and see a movie. It’s been a stressful week for me. I started a new job and I’ve been sick as a dog with some kind of super-cold. I’ve been equal parts stressed out and exhausted. I need a little reward.
I don’t know if Run Fatboy Run is the kind of movie Cami would be interested in seeing. We haven’t discussed it since this is only something I’ve started to consider since I sat down to write this. But even if she takes a pass, I think I’m going to try and slip out of the house once Henry is asleep and try to go see it.
While I try to sort that out, I have something else I wanted to share with you guys.
Remember Boxcar Comics, the web comic collective I belong to? I haven’t mentioned it very often because, well, we didn’t do very much.
But now that’s changing! We have a freshly redesigned web site and we’ve committed ourselves to producing new content for our collective readers. The first offering of which is this:
That’s right! A jam comic! Pretty cool, huh?
Click on the image above to be transported to Boxcar’s first jam comic offering. I was really proud of how the whole thing turned out. Everyone really stepped up to the plate with their art and their jokes. In fact, I was completely intimidated because I had the last spot and I was seeing everyone’s work as we were progressing. All I kept thinking to myself was “There’s no way I’m going to be able to match this stuff.”
I think, in the end, I landed on my feet. But I’ll let you be the judge of that. Check it out!
Until then, have a great weekend everybody! I’ll see you here on Monday!
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Mar31
I think as long as there are movies – any form of media, really – the parody genre will always be a vital form of keeping industry arrogance in check. It’s almost like the judicial arm of the entertainment checks and balances system. If the studios (the executive arm) overstep their bounds by utilizing the same formulas again and again and again, parody films are well within their right to single this out and make fun of it for profit.
Incidentally, some of my favorite comedies are parodies. Blazing Saddles, Airplane!, Young Frankenstien, The Naked Gun, Spaceballs. Mel Brooks and David Zucker are masters in that regard.
However, the thing that Brooks and Zucker did that the writers and producers of the “Movie” movies don’t do, was create something original to critique the genres themselves and not individual scenes within specific movies of the genre. It’s not a wasteland of references to popular films with interchangeable jokes. Watching one of the”Movie” movies is like watch Dennis Miller stumble through a routine without a thesaurus. Basically what they say to the audience is, “Hey! Remember that famous scene from the movie you liked? Well, here’s that *same* scene with someone farting! Woo hoo!”
Watching a “Movie” movie is like watching a pardoy sketch I would have written and video taped with my friend’s family’s video camera when I was 12 – and I would have thought it was HILARIOUS! (Believe me – I’ve done this.) But the fact that the producers of these films not only continue to churn out product year after year but somehow continue to attract comedic actors that I like really disheartens me.
Superhero Movie should have been right up my alley. Making fun of comic book movies? Sign me up. There’s enough cringe-inducing moments in Spider-Man 3 to make fun of to at least last 40 minutes. I may be a big comic book nerd, but I can laugh at myself.
Of course, the operative word being “laugh.” The trailers for this thing look so insipid, so uninspiringly unfunny, I couldn’t bring myself to endure it. Especially when you consider the “pedigree” of the past “Movie” movies – including Date Movie, which has to be one of the ugliest, most hateful films I’ve ever seen.
Did any of you guys see Superhero Movie this weekend? E-mail me and let me know what you think. It’s third place showing at the box office tells me I didn’t miss much, but I could be wrong!
That about does it for me this morning. Don’t forget to tune in to The Triple Feature tonight at 9:00 PM CST over at TalkShoe.com. I’m sure we’ll be talking about Superhero Movie, 21, Run Fatboy Run and more!
See you there!
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Turns out we’re going to be one man down fo The Triple Feature this evening. Gordon has to bow out for tonight. So, since I wasn’t able to get out of the house this weekend to see Run Fatboy Run like I had hoped (I blame a mutant head cold), I think we’re going to steer the topic of conversation down a different path than usual with this week’s show.
Joe and I would like to take this opportunity to field your personal questions. So if you have any, please e-mail them to me at theaterhopper@hotmail.com. They can be about movies, our web comics or what the weather is like in Des Moines versus New York. We don’t care what you ask, we just want to get you involved!
Of course, it would be more of a thrill if you could join us LIVE during the broadcast at 9:00 PM CST over at TalkShoe.com tonight. I mean, how awesome would that be? You could log on to the chat field and leave your question where we can make fun of your spelling or you could call in and talk to us in person where we can make fun of your accent!
That’s not very enticing, is it? Okay, I promise we won’t make fun. But call in all the same! It’ll be a blast!
See you there!
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