Posts Tagged ‘2006’
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That’s kind of a gross image to end the year with, isn’t it? Some old white guy wiping his ass with stationary? I thought I could do better than that, but really – I can’t.
At any rate, please enjoy this sketch for the new year.
For what it’s worth, this has been a terrible year for movies and I think most of you would agree. Even when I talk to my friends that aren’t hard-core into cinema like I am, I hear the same sentiment. "Man, there just hasn’t been any good movies this year, has there?" I die a little inside when I’m forced to confirm their suspicions.
I’m pretty sure there is some kind of statistic floating around out there that spells out just how awful this year has been. I think if you add up the number of crappy sequels, pointless remakes and movies made from lame televisions shows, it would have to be upwords of 80% of Hollywood’s total output this year.
You could accuse Hollywood of having run out of ideas. But fundimentally, we’ve been gathering around the proverbial campfire listening to the same stories of horror, drama, romance and comedy since mankind developed spoken language. In other words – Has everything else been done before? The answer is a resounding "YES." So what I’m saying is, don’t get mad because there’s been a lack of new ideas on screen.
What Hollywood has FAILED to do is find a way to say new things about old ideas. I can’t imagine anything more insulting to a thinking person’s sensibilities than to take a television show that aired 50 years ago like The Honeymooners, retool it with black actors, film it and dump it into theaters and claim that you’ve done something original. I choke at the thought that anyone felt strongly enough to make Cheaper By The Dozen 2 and then said, "We really don’t have a plot for this. Let’s just rip off that old John Candy movie The Great Outdoors. That’ll do."
I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know and I hate to look at the glass as being half-empty. Will 2006 be a better year? I don’t know. But I guess the fun is trying to figure that out, isn’t it? After all, it’s why we keep going back. Or at least why I keep going back.
It’s funny. People (and by "people," I mean me) bitch and moan about the state of things, but yet keep filing back into the theaters. As angry as I get watching bad movies from time to time, I can’t imagine ever seeing something so awful that I would write off watching movies entirely. Because for every Herbie: Fully Loaded, there will be a Walk the Line. And as your tastes refine, the challenge becomes weaving your way through the traffic and finding that one piece of film that communicates with you directly and reflects something about yourself you never considered.
That’s what good art does. It helps you grow as a person. Who would turn their back on that?
I have some more thoughts regarding the end of the year, but I kind of like the tenor of this post, so I’ll leave it at that. I’ll be back later in the day with more thoughts relating to 2005, Theater Hopper and our direction for 2006.
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Here it is, the fist comic of 2006, and I’m late with the blog. Not a good way to kick things off, is it? Well, if it makes you feel any better, I feel torn up inside about it. Check out my Webcomics List incentive sketch if you don’t believe me!
Incidentally, after being asleep at the switch throughout the month of December, it looks like they finally reset the vote counts. We’re at number three as of the authoring of this blog. Let’s see if we can’t reclaim the top spot with totalitarian fury!
I haven’t had a chance to see Brokeback Mountain yet, but I’ve seen the trailer. I’ve mentioned it before – that line that Jake Gyllenhall’s character yells to Heath Ledger – "I wish I knew how to quit you!" Totally removed from context like that, it’s one of the greatest, most quotable, unintentionally hilarious line deliveries next to James Van Der Beek’s twangy "I don’t want… yer life!" from Varsity Blues. At any rate, I’ve been struggling to find a way to incorporate it into the strip and I think I finally found a situation where it made sense. I’m happy with how this comic turned out.
I’ve read articles about the line. I guess they say people have been laughing about it in theaters. But, at the same time, if people are talking about it – that’s a good thing, right? At least they aren’t ignoring it completely.
Cami and I both have an interest in the film. I want to see what all the hub-bub is about. It looks as though it’s been positioned as the big Oscar contender in a year rife with lightweights. I think Cami wants to watch it for hot man-on-man action.
Yes, I am being sarcastic.
We were hoping to see the movie today, but it doesn’t look like it’s showing yet in our area. We’ll probably see The Producers instead – despite the fact that we’ve already seen the Broadway show and heard the filmed version is as if they took a camera and pointed it at the stage. No one I know is talking about The Producers. I think it was a big mistake for them to open on Christmas Day. Apparently that was Mel Brooks decision. He didn’t want to compete with King Kong. Yeah… ‘cuz, you know… they’re like EXACTLY the same movie. I love Mel Brooks, but sometimes I feel like he doesn’t know when to quit. I was watching History of the World: Part I on AMC over the weekend and I was laughing my ass off. I don’t know if the filmed version of a musical that was a film 30 years ago is going to do the trick. I mean, I enjoyed the stage version when I saw it. But isn’t it kind of like Xeroxing a Xerox?
I guess my parents saw it a week ago and really liked it. But they go to about 5 movies a year, so their rating scale is skewed a little differently. Oh, well. It has Will Ferrell in it. And that’s like throwing in catnip when it comes to my comedic sensibilities. What can I say? Ferrell is my kryptonite!
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