Archive for March, 2010
20 items.
You’ll noticed Jared left Repo Men out of his negative assessment of Hollywood’s new offerings this week. I’m reserving judgment on that one. It looks like goofy, dark futuristic fun in the vein of Paul Veerhoven. The jury is still out.
But, yeah. Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Bounty Hunter look like limp noodles to me.
I know I should probably be in Diary of a Wimpy Kid’s corner, considering the genesis of Jeff Kinney’s creation was as a webcomic. But kind of how I don’t think of Penny Arcade as a webcomic anymore, Diary of a Wimpy Kid has become something else entirely. It’s a brand.
Certainly I don’t begrudge Kinney his success. We should all be so lucky. But having moved beyond webcomics, Kinney’s brand just isn’t for me anymore – if it ever was. I mean, it really is more for pre-teens anyway. The movie looks like no exception. My question is why no one know professionally is talking about it?
People are talking about The Bounty Hunter, though – and for all the wrong reasons. The Bounty Hunter looks like the kind of movie stars like Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston either make at the beginning of their career or at the end of it. Butler can kind of be excused, though. He’s clearly trying to balance his tough-guy roles with romantic comedies. I’m not really buying him in these romantic roles, but he gets an “E” for effort.
Poor Jennifer Aniston, though. She looks like she’s grasping at straws. She’s never really been in a movie besides The Good Girl or maybe The Break-Up that anyone has taken seriously. All of her projects seem to be one notch slightly above a movie you’d see in Lifetime: Television For Women. I’m curious if her fan base would continue to support her if she hadn’t been so mercilessly dumped by Brad Pitt.
This is an utterly stupid point to make, but I’m going to make it anyway. Aniston has basically become a figurehead for rejected women and equally helping and hurting her career. People like to root for her, yet she continues to make crappy films – which only makes people root for her more. It’s a weird stigma she’s living with that excuses crappy performance. Consider it the “Aww, you’ll do better NEXT time, honey”-Factor. I have to imagine that it feels fairly condescending.
I don’t know what I would do differently if I were in Aniston’s shoes. Probably try to do some straight-up comedy. Play to your strengths. I mean, I know she has comedy movies in her past, but they each have romantic elements. I’m taking straight-up goofball comedy. Think Kevin Smith or Judd Apatow. Something edgier. Something that doesn’t require a marshmallow ending.
It seems like she kind of avoided comedy for a while because she didn’t want to be type-cast as Rachel from Friends for the rest of her career. These days? I think there are worse things to be associated with. Just my two cents.
As for the St. Patrick’s Day, it would be fun to go out and celebrate. But, the truth is, I’ve never really been a fan of fighting the crowds at a bar on the holiday. I did it a couple of times when I was in my 20’s but got tired of it pretty quickly. What’s the point in going out for St. Patrick’s Day if you have to wait in line for 15 minutes to get a beer? I might as well get drunk at home, you know? It’s much easier to identify signs of alcoholism sitting on your own couch.
I guess maybe you have to show up for those tent parties early to get properly blitzed before the Regular Joe’s get off work at 5:00. I’ve known real-life Jared to take a day off from work in the past to do exactly that. I don’t know. Maybe he had the right idea.
That’s it for me. If you have any thoughts about Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Bounty Hunter, Gerard Butler, Jennifer Aniston or St. Patrick’s Day, please leave your comments below!
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If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you probably caught my announcement yesterday about celebrating my 10th wedding anniversary with Cami. And, if you didn’t, well… you are now!
It’s difficult for me to talk about the anniversary without sounding like I’m bragging or too proud. But, darn it… I’m proud! 10 years is a big deal and worth celebrating. I think it’s cool that I’m able to share it with so many people.
Cami and I have actually been together a lot longer than 10 years. The wedding anniversary is just the celebration of a legal document. In fact, we’ve been together for 15 years – almost half our lives. We were high school sweethearts and we married 5 years to the day of our first date. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s cool.
But, of course, I love it when dates and stuff like that line up neatly. I think it’s awesome that Cami and I got married in 2000. Not only because of symbolism of starting a new life together in a new millennium. But it means I can always do some simple math if I ever forget how many years we’ve been together when I’m old and senile. “Lessee… It’s 2056 and we were married in 2000… So that means we’ve been married… 56 YEARS!”
I’m telling you, fellas, it’s a bulletproof plan. Maybe I’m a closeted numerologist, or something. More likely, I suck at math and need all the help I can get!
To celebrate our anniversary last night, Cami and I recruited my parents to babysit Henry and Pearl and we had a very nice meal at a restaurant we love. We had the best time just talking, eating and sharing a bottle of wine. Afterwords, we ran an errand at Target and got a car wash. We joked about it. “What did you do on your 10th wedding anniversary?” “Oh, we got a car wash.”
We we were younger, we used to fantasize about our 10th wedding anniversary. We vaguely planned to go to Hawaii to celebrate. Of course, we had kids and I lost my job last summer. Then our oven crapped out on us last month, so we decided to buy a new oven and count that as our anniversary present for each other.
It sounds unglamorous on paper, but it’s not. It’s representational of how we’ve built a life together, how sometimes plans change and you go with the flow as best you can. How you grow, adjust and learn. If you’re lucky and you’ve picked the right person, hard times are never really hard. And you become a better person because you have someone to share these things with.
Cami makes me a better person and I’m having a blast being married to her.
Happy 10th anniversary, Cami. Here’s to 10 more… and 10 more after that… and 10 more after that.
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Hey, guys. Remember a few weeks ago when I left a post asking for your thoughts and suggestions on ways that I could establish a greater community presence here on Theater Hopper?
Well, yesterday I found an excellent article that listed 15 different plug-ins that could help me to achieve that goal. Several of them offer a level of interactivity – not only with the site – but with other visitors that I think could be very beneficial.
I have my own ideas about what plug-ins I would like to incorporate, but I would like to get your feedback and find out what features would be valuable to you. It would be very easy to go whole-hog and install ALL of these suggested plug-ins, but I want to try a slow roll out and integrate features into the site at a pace that everyone can keep up with.
Please read the article and investigate some of the plug-ins. If you could leave your comments in reply to this post, I would appreciate it!
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Where I live, we only have one IMAX theater. I say that like there should be an IMAX theater on every corner. But I guess I feel the need to qualify that statement because sometimes it felt like Iowa was the last place on Earth to even get an IMAX. So when we got one, it was a pretty big deal.
Our IMAX is affiliated with our local science center. So I don’t normally keep informed about what movies are playing there unless there is a theatrical release in house. You might remember that we took Henry to his first movie at our IMAX theater when we took him to see The Polar Express.
The problem with that is that it never seems like they get a properly formatted IMAX reel. I always get the sensation that they’re taking a standard movie reel and blowing it up on that concave dome. The image is always stretched out and it’s not a very enjoyable experience.
I’ve seen a few movies this way. Superman Returns, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and The Polar Express. Only Transformers had a legitimately scoped scene in IMAX (when Devastator is attacking the pyramids) and it was cool. But, otherwise, I find the IMAX feature film experience to be exhausting. Watching Brandon Routh zoom from one side of the screen to the other in Superman Returns gave me a crimp in my neck. Right now, they have Avatar as their featured release. Avatar gave me eye-strain on a NORMAL sized screen. I’d hate to imagine what kind of experience I would have watching it on an IMAX screen.
Anyway, long story short, I don’t normally keep up to date on proper IMAX films unless I happen to go to the science center our IMAX theater is affiliated with. After looking at the exhibits, I might say to myself “Oh, what’s playing on the IMAX?” and then check it out. I don’t usually make a point of seeing an IMAX film just for the sake of it.
But that changed this weekend when Cami and I went to see Hubble IMAX.
I was peripherally aware of Hubble IMAX after reading a few advance notices over at Hollywood Elsewhere, but I didn’t give much thought to seeing it until Cami mentioned it to me early last week. I’m not sure how she caught wind of it, but I took it as a sign that we should probably go. Obscure IMAX movie that neither one of us should have any knowledge of? A sign from the Movie Gods.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that both of us are huge nerds who enjoy things like science, history and space. Hence, the punchline to today’s comic.
But I digress…
Let me say this: If your town has an IMAX theater and they’re showing Hubble IMAX, you NEED to see it. In fact, I command you to see this movie. It is AMAZING – and I can’t stress that enough. I caught myself with my mouth wide open several times. It’s simply astonishing.
From a narrative standpoint, there’s not much to tell. The film tells the story of the Hubbel telescope and recounts a few of the repair missions before actually putting you over the shoulder of the most recent and most important repair that happened in April 2009.
To say the repair was high-stakes is putting it lightly. Basically, it was a last ditch effort to repair the ailing piece of equipment or face scrapping a multi-BILLION dollar project entirely.
Once the repairs sequence is complete, the movie treats you to a series of mind-bending and immersive images captured by Hubble to try and explain the sheer enormity of the universe. When the film uses Hubble’s images to dive into the center of a nebula 900 billion miles wide, it basically crumples up your brain and tosses it into a waste basket.
I mean, I always knew that Earth is a planet in our solar system which is made up of several other solar systems that in turn make up the Milky Way.
But when Hubble expands it’s view to include our nearest neighboring galaxy – Andromeda – before gazing further to view the cluster of roughly 36 other galaxies that make up the celestial “village” we inhabit that you start to get an idea of the impact Hubble has on our understanding of the universe.
Gazing further to reveal a “metropolis” of over 2,000 galaxies, the point is hammered home.
By the end of the movie, Hubble goes so far as to literally show you THE END OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE as it zooms in on malformed galaxies so far away, the light they are emitting left their tiny corner of space over 10 billion years ago.
Now, considering that scientists think there are 200 to 400 BILLION stars in the Milky Way ALONE… stop and think about our neighboring galaxy. Then the galaxies in our “village.” Then the 2,000 galaxies in the nearest “metropolis” and finally the dying galaxies on the edge of the universe.
Boy, if you didn’t feel small after watching Hubble IMAX, then your ego is ALL out of whack.
Watching this movie and the irrefutable science really puts a lot of things in perspective. I won’t enter into any kind of religious debate… but when you consider the prospect of extra-terrestrial life… Man, how can there NOT be something else going on out there? Surly we can’t be the only life in the universe. And if we are – WOW, what a waste!
I mean, that is unless they have webcomics somewhere in Omega Centauri? Who knows?
I wish I could get most specific about Hubble IMAX but I’m still kind of processing it and it has left me at a loss for words.
Jeffery Wells from Hollywood Elsewhere made an interesting point when he was talking about the profound disconnect from three-time box office champ Alice in Wonderland.
Basically, he was talking about the 3D fantasy environment Alice promotes and how it never really sinks in because we’re aware of the conceit of 3D and CGI as artistic tools. This, in comparison to what Hubble IMAX gives us – which, in Wells words, “provides a feeling of awe that is 100% real.”
I can’t deny feeling nervous for the astronauts who put their lives at risk to fix this piece of equipment. I felt profound sadness that their contribution to the understanding of our role in the universe isn’t acknowledged more than it is.
I think if you ask people about space exploration, the general consensus is that not much has been accomplished since we put a man on the moon in 1969. But putting a man on the moon feels like a publicity stunt in comparison to the raw value and perspective Hubble has given us.
Watching Hubble IMAX, you get the sense that this knowledge will not be fully appreciated or even actualized until several generations later and that’s a shame. Because the tens of thousands of people that have worked on Hubble are true heroes. Hubble IMAX gave me this new perspective and has me thinking twice about the validity of our space program.
If you haven’t seen the movie, see it. If you HAVE seen the movie or are curious about it, please leave your comments below..
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Just wanted to let you guys know that I added a new feature to the site that allows you to reply directly to a specific comment in the comments thread. Before, new comments would show up at the bottom of the page. But now if you want to address someone directly, your comment will appear immediately below theirs! Pretty cool, huh?
The plugin also affords you the opportunity to be notified when someone responds to one of YOUR comments. How cool is that?
Incidentally, this is the plugin I’m using. I might need a little help customizing it for the site. For example, the “Notify me of follow-up comments via e-mail” check box appears in the lower left corner of the comment input field. I’d like to get it a little closer to the “Submit Comment” button.
If any of you have WordPress or plugin experience, let me know. I could use a little help.
Enjoy the new feature!
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Today’s comic is very much an inside joke, so my apologies for those that it excludes. But the punchline is one stolen from my good friend from Joe Loves Crappy Movies. It’s his humorous take on Emperor Palpatine from the Star Wars prequels. It comes from this comic, when Anakin finally connects the dots and realizes that Senator Palpatine is actually the Sith Lord, he responds with his signature catchphrase.
Joe’s version of Emperor Palpatine proved to be very popular and became a reoccurring character. He appeared in four other comics.
Why reference something obscure to anyone who wasn’t already a die-hard fan of Joe Loves Crappy Movies?
Well, recognizing the comedic potential of including the line “My God, it’s full of Stars!” from 2001: A Space Odyssey in reference to Hubble IMAX, it made sense to have someone there to point out Tom was stating the obvious and/or being stupid. So why not Palpatine?
You could probably also say I included Palpatine because Joe doesn’t update Joe Loves Crappy Movies much anymore and, well, I miss seeing the character.
I’m not pointing fingers at Joe, mind you. I know he recently got a new job, moved into his first house and has been pouring a lot of effort into his two OTHER comics – Martriculated and Another Videogame Comic. He’s a busy guy. But (for obvious reasons) Joe Loves Crappy Movies speaks to me the most and I miss Joe’s take on what’s new in theaters.
It’s weird, you know – Since we ended The Triple Feature back in January, I really haven’t talked to Joe much at all. I’ve talked to Gordon over at Multiplex a few times through Twitter and Facebook. But that’s about it.
I suppose we could have all used a break from one another. But after 3 years of doing that show every week, it kind of came to an abrupt stop.
C2E2 is coming up in a couple of weeks and all three of us will be there. But in a break from our traditional con set up where we’re either situated next to each other or sharing tables on Artist Alley, the three of us will be spread around the convention floor. Joe and the rest of the Digital Pimp crew are in Artist Alley. Gordon and I will be somewhere in Webcomics Pavilion, but not set up next to each other. So if we see each other, it’ll be after the show. We won’t be hanging out throughout the day like we normally do.
I don’t know why I’m working this out in front of you like I am. Certainly it’s not very funny or entertaining. But I think we’ve come to the point where the three of us were kind of intertwined in terms of the branding of our three comics. Sometimes I’ll get e-mails asking about Gordon and Joe, so I assume there’s some interest there.
Sorry, I’m rambling a little bit.
Let me just say instead that I hope you enjoyed today’s comic and thanks to Joe Dunn for letting me take one of his characters around the block for a little walk.
Cheers and I’ll see you guys here on Friday!
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Today’s comic is an almost word-for-word exchange we had with a cashier when we were checking out at Walgreen’s last Saturday. They had a bunch of New Moon DVDs sitting out on the counter to tempt you with a last minute purchase. For reasons I can’t explain, I grabbed one and decided to taunt Cami with it. The cashier mistook my playfulness for genuine interest in the franchise and what followed was a weird, slightly sexist one act play.
It’s a little bit difficult for me to convey exactly how incredulous the cashier was when Cami admitted she had not seen either of the Twilight movies. But she acted like Cami had spit on her grandmother. Prefaced by her comment about “never seeing a man appreciate Twilight,” we definitely got the sense that this conversation was being drawn on lines of gender.
It’s true that Cami has read all of the Twilight books. I remember she told me that they are a very easy read, profoundly stupid series of books – but impossible to put down. Trash, pop culture “literature” at it’s finest. Lucy Knisley had a great comic about this very phenomenon. If you take offense at the way I’ve described Twilight, well, sorry. You can tell me Iron Man is stupid and we’ll call it square.
I don’t exactly know why I’m wasting time with these “real life” comics when I should probably be talking about How To Train Your Dragon or Hot Tub Time Machine. It’s very possible that these series of events are funny only to me.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t talk about How To Train Your Dragon or Hot Tub Time Machine at some point. You can likely expect a recap on Monday. I hope to see both films this weekend. After the week I’ve had, I deserve it.
I try not to talk about my employment situation too much because 1.) I don’t want employers who read this to get the wrong idea about anything and 2.) Talking about unemployment is a drag.
BUT, today is my last day on the 90-day contract job I’ve been working and I don’t have anything lined up. So I’m kind of in limbo.
Today is also the day that Cami is going back to work after having been on maternity leave. To say we are transitioning at the moment would be a gross understatement.
Our immediate plan is to keep Henry in daycare to maintain the semblance of a routine while keeping him socialized. But we’re going to knock him down to 3 days a week to save money. Two days a week, he’ll be with me.
That’s not a big deal. We did something similar last summer when I was first let go from my last full-time gig. I’m used to that.
The BIG change is that I will be watching Pearl FIVE days a week. As you know, babies can be somewhat demanding.
I don’t have a problem being a stay-at-home Dad and I’ve been fortunate to land contract jobs here and there since being let go last June. But I’m getting very tired of not knowing what’s going to happen next. I’ve sent out a bunch of resumes. I’ve gone on lots of interviews. I’ve come very close to landing a few different jobs. But the job market is such that there are just A LOT of very talented web and graphic designers in my area. So it’s hard to secure a full-time thing.
We’ll see what happens. In the immediate future, I plan on being a house husband while I get ready for C2E2 in Chicago in a couple of weeks. After that, I’m going to pound the pavement hard and see if I don’t get lucky. Not to drag politics into it, but I’m really hoping that the new health care reform act will help employers to free up some money and hire more people. It can’t come soon enough!
I guess there’s not much else for me to say today except thanks for reading and I’ll see you here on Monday! If anyone has plans to see How To Train Your Dragon or Hot Tub Time Machine, leave your comments below and we can talk about it!
Later!
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I had a difficult time writing today’s comic because the joke is kind of crass and I kept trying to censor myself as I was constructing it. That’s a lose-lose situation every time. So I decided to just kind of go for it.
I prefer to think of Theater Hopper is a family friendly comic. But sometimes, you just have to throw caution to the wind.
I don’t know if this joke is particularly funny, but an imaginary sexual euphemism was the first thing that came to mind when I was thinking about How To Train Your Dragon.
I actually got a chance to see the movie on Saturday and I’m surprised how much I liked. Or, rather, I’m surprised how much my enjoyment of the film mirrored critical and fan response leading up to the release.
In the few days before Friday and on Friday itself, I was seeing all kinds of effusive praise for the film and thought it was almost going over the top. I was skeptical that if the film was the first moderately good film of the year that people were going overboard heaping praise on it just so they would have something to talk about.
Well, it turns out the praise is justified. The movie is spectacular. Even if the film lacks some of the wit and heart of your average Pixar film, Dreamworks was finally able to put the cap on the annoying pop culture references they’ve been making since the first Shrek movie.
And while the film’s story of an outsider who finds acceptance (and his reticent Daddy issues) won’t win points for originality, you never really notice the tropes as you’re watching the film. The plot moves briskly, explains it’s rules succinctly and never treats the audience like idiots. Kind of a tall order for what is otherwise a kids film.
At the insistence of others, I watched How To Train Your Dragon in 3D and I strongly recommend you do, too. The flying scenes alone are a wonder to behold. Talking with my friend Joe Dunn from Joe Loves Crappy Movies, he said “It does for flying sequences what Iron Man did. It’s almost becoming its own genre.” He couldn’t be more right.
Bottom line, the movie looks fantastic. And I’m not talking about the computer animated bells and whistles. I’m talking about the cinematography, the lighting.
It should look good. Directors Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders hired Roger Deakins to make sure the film looked top notch in this department. You may not know it, but you’ve seen Deakins work before. He performed the same role for Pixar’s Wall-E.
If I could make one complaint about the film, it would have to be the voice casting. Jay Baruchel can sometimes come off a little too nasal and whiny. Kind of like Woody Allen’s grandson snuck into a Viking village.
Similarly out of place are Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson as tribal leaders. Their thick, Scottish brogue’s on full display in a Scandinavian village. If I were Nordic, I’d be kind of peeved. What? They couldn’t at least cast Stellan Skarsgård?
I was also very distracted by the inclusion of America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Kristen Wiig as Baruchel’s friends in “dragon training.” Every time I heard their characters speak, I was distracted by trying to figure out where I had heard their voices before.
Hill’s character in particular, Snotlout, threw me because he looked like he was modeled after Jack Black. I kept expecting the character to break into song and over-enunciate his consonants at any minute.
But these are minor distractions, really. For the one or two things the movie gets wrong, it gets four or five things really, really right.
The dragon referenced in the title – a “Black Fury” Baruchel names Toothless – is an excellent reflection of the animators skill of showing without telling. Toothless does not speak, but we know exactly what he’s thinking throughout the entire course of the movie. His facial expressions flow effortlessly between snarling distrust to wide-eyed playfulness. His body language is equal parts dog, cat and jet-black gila monster.
How To Train Your Dragon does an excellent job of accessing that part of your childhood that fantasizes about dragons all day. The part that doodles them on a sheet of paper when you get distracted. It is an immensely enjoyable film and if you don’t leave the theater wanting a dragon of your own by the end of it, then you must be one of those people who likes unicorns. If that’s the case, then I don’t know how to save you.
If you saw How To Train Your Dragon this weekend, feel free to leave your comments below. Let’s talk about it, shall we?
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Does anyone remember the movie S1m0ne referenced in the title of today’s strip? It was a movie starring Al Pacino from 2002 where a movie producer digitally creates a synthespian – an actress that becomes an international celebrity. It’s a terrible movie, but an interesting idea.
Similarly, I’m not convinced that today’s comic isn’t exactly funny, but I think it’s good idea.
I certainly hope this comic doesn’t upset anyone in Australia. I know Sam Worthington is kind of a big deal there. But you have to understand, here in America, the dude came out of nowhere. I literally never heard of the guy before last year and all of a sudden he’s inserted himself into all of these huge, effects-heavy blockbusters. Terminator Salvation and Avatar in the same year? Where did this guy come from?
Now because of the box office success of Avatar, everyone acts like we’re suppose to know who this guy is. Sorry, I’m still confused. Am I alone in this?
Now Worthington is in another effects-heavy blockbuster this weekend with Clash of the Titans. This movie looks goofy as all get-out to me. But I guess that’s okay because the original was kind of goofy, too, right?
Except the original was a showcase for the unique stop-motion artistry of Ray Harryhausen. Even if the plot was crap, you could still sit back and enjoy the inventiveness of the effects work. What can a remake hope to accomplish when there are literally dozens of effects houses around the globe that can produce the kind of digital wonders we expect to see Worthington pretend to react to?
From everything I’ve heard, the new Clash of the Titans is pretty much a dud. I also heard that the studio applied the 3D process to the film late in the game to cash in on the 3D trend and it looks terrible. So if you plan on seeing the movie this weekend, don’t shell out the extra money for 3D.
Despite all of this, I still kind of want to see it. I can’t explain why other than it’s one of the first effects-heavy blockbusters out of the gate for 2010 and I’ve kind of been starving for some dumb entertainment. Consider it an appetizer before the meatier, more satisfying blockbusters yet to come like Iron Man 2 and Toy Story 3.
What’s your take on Clash of the Titans? Do you plan on seeing it this weekend? What are your thoughts about Sam Worthington. Did he come out of nowhere for you, too? Leave your comments below!
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