Archive for April 27th, 2009
4 items.
Sometimes I like to draw things for the incentive images that are a little too risque for the regular comic. I’m particularly proud of this one! If you want to know what the fuss is about, vote for Theater Hopper at Top Web Comics and find out!
Fatal Attraction 2: Jungle Fever, er… I mean, Obsessed was number one at the box office this weekend. In a way I’m not surprised, but I’m also kind of depressed.
If you look at the box office this weekend, you’ll notice the top 3 films – Obsessed, 17 Again and Fighting – were critical duds. Meanwhile, critically lauded films like The Soloist and Earth languish with less than $10 million.
Not that I think critics have the final say on what’s entertaining. But I think anyone with two eyes could see Obsessed looks like a Lifetime Original Movie with about $200,000 extra in it’s budget.
Cami and I saw Earth this weekend and I enjoyed it, but I also left the theater feeling slightly hoodwinked. I was aware that the film was based around the footage of the BBC documentary mini-series Planet Earth. But I guess I didn’t anticipate how much of it I would recognize from the show.
The events of the movie are somewhat re-contextualized by the narration of James Earl Jones and it was interesting to see how Disney presented the life and death struggle of the wild through the filter of the deep bond between Mother and child.
But watching the film was like experiencing some kind of echo or a dream in the back of your mind swirling around like an itch you can’t scratch.
Certainly the film is beautiful and compelling to watch. Planet Earth is credited for leading the way in the transition to high definition home entertainment. Similar to how The Matrix was credited in the advancement of DVD players in the home, if people wanted to show off their hi-def kit, Planet Earth were the go-to discs.
In that context, imagine those images on the big screen in a proper theater. It’s an impressive sight and a welcome one. In the future, I sincerely hope Disney continues to pursue large-scale nature films like this in theaters. Despite the ways in which our world becomes smaller every day, there are still unexplored corners that need to be shared. I only hope that, next time, their hard work doesn’t leave you with that deja vu feeling.
We’ll be talking about Earth, Obsessed and more tonight on The Triple Feature. We’re recording live at 9:00 PM CST at Talkshoe.com. Please join us won’t you?
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It was brought to my attention that there was an error on the Store > Bundle page. People trying to order the One Book, One Shirt bundle were being charged for One Book and TWO Shirts! Not cool on my part. My sincere apologies.
I wanted to let everyone know that the error has been fixed and you can now place an order for One Book and One Shirt at a discounted price of $25.00. That’s $5.00 off!
Thanks!
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If you’re at all familiar with the real-time schadenfreude generator FMyLife.com, you’ll know that they’ve recently started accepting artist submissions for illustrated versions of some of their most famous tales of woe.
I noticed the boys from Cyanide and Happiness threw their hat into the ring with their contribution and I could stay my hand no longer!
I wrote to F My Life and offered my services and it looks like I’m clear for take off! They’ll be publishing my comic sometime in mid-May.
The only thing I have to do now is pick a story to illustrate. Obviously, one about movies would be the initial choice. But I was curious if anyone here keeps up with the site and if they might be willing to suggest one of their favorites?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below!
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I’ve gone a little blog crazy today. Sorry about that. But I wanted to tell you about a new/old feature I’ve added back to the site. I say “old,” because this is something we had before we brought the site into WordPress earlier in the year. I’ve been shopping around for just the right plugin and I think I’ve found it.
What am I talking about? Why, comic ranking of course!
Now you can let us know how you feel about any comic in the archive by ranking it on a handy scale of 1 to 10. Some of my web comic buddies told me “Tom, you’re nuts! You should never let your readers pass judgment on you in this way!”
But I say “Hooey!” We did it once before and it worked out great! Were there a few comics that I liked that were poorly ranked? Sure! But it didn’t diminish the reasons *I* found them funny. And besides, why shouldn’t you have a say?
The previous ranking application bore unexpected fruit. It helped me to pick which comics to put into our Top 25 Sampler Booklet which is something I use to introduce people to Theater Hopper at conventions every year!
By the way, did you know you can now purchase a copy of the booklet? I put it up in the store a few weeks ago and it’s only $3.00! It’s a great way to introduce new readers to the comic and it includes a brief paragraph with commentary for each strip – just to frame it in context a little.
Who knows… Now that we have the ranking system back, I might have to do a second edition of the booklet!
If you’ve got nothing better going on, take a little time to comb through the archives and pick out your favorite strips. Rank them to get the ball rolling. The search bar is returning more robust results every day. Just type in a few search terms to find your favorite strips!
Enjoy!
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