Posts Tagged ‘Bruce Willis’
6 items.
As promised, I wanted to come back in today and blog about Cami’s reactions to Sin City.
We hunkered down with a big bowl of popcorn last night and watched it together. It was a lot more violent than I remember. I think when I watched it for the first time back in April, I was more under the spell of it’s visuals. Anyone who reads comics knows its probably the most literal adaptation of any franchise put on film. At that initial viewing, I think I was geeking out so hard, I kind of glossed over how brutal it actually is.
So as this revelation comes to me, I’m thinking to myself “Cami’s hating this. It’s gory. It’s too grotesque. She’s hating this.”
As the credits rolled, I sheepishly asked her “What’d you think?”
“I liked it.”
Imagine my surprise! I asked her what she liked most about the movie.
“The yellow blood!”
Looking back, Cami was pretty engaged in the whole thing. She would ask me questions throughout.
“Wait, wasn’t that girl dead?” “Why is that guy yellow?” “How come Elijah Wood is sitting on the porch when he was killed earlier?” She seemed pretty engaged.
Turns out she liked the segment with Bruce Willis the best. That was my favorite part, too. I think it’s the most poetic and probably the best use of Willis as an aging action star yet.
Of course, for pure vicreal thrills, nothing beats watching Mickey Rourke as Marv lay waste to a bunch of no-name cops. Watching him bust through that windsheild? Man, I get chills just thinking about it!
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I don’t think I’m making any kind of particularly witty statement with today’s comic. Anyone who has seen the trailer for Perfect Stranger probably came up with the same joke 5 seconds after they learned what the title of the movie was. But I’ll ask you to stick with me on this one. The follow-up comic I have for Friday is going to be the real pay-off.
Considering that today’s comic doesn’t exactly have a lot going on in it’s brain, I thought I would talk for a moment about the comic creation itself. Mostly because you guys seem to get a kick out of it when I have a joke that’s a bit of a dog.
Originally I was going to have Bronson Pinchot himself appear to protest the movie. But I thought that highly unlikely since isn’t he dead, or something? I kid. I know he was on The Surreal Life not to long ago. But actually, I avoided using him simply because if I was going to burn brain cells trying to figure out an appropriate caricature, it was NOT going to be on Bronson Pinchot. Instead, I decided to make the protester someone who vaguely LOOKS like Bronson Pinchot and make him the president of his fan club. Subtle, no?
When I told Cami that I was going to make fun of Perfect Stranger by pulling a reference to the television show Perfect Strangers, Cami asked me “Are your readers even going to understand it?” I think she’s under the impression that everyone who comes to the site must be 12. If it just so happens that you’re NOT a child of the 80’s like I am, what can I tell you? YouTube it.
“Standin’ TAAALLLLLLL! On the wiiings of my dreams!”
Man, whatever happened to the inspirational feel-good sitcom theme songs? For that matter, whatever happened to predictability? The milk man, the paperboy, evening TV? How did I get delivered here – someone tell me, please!
All the 12 year-old’s are scratching their heads right now.
At any rate, if you’d like to download something that DOESN’T make you feel incredibly old, grab a copy of The Triple Feature broadcast from Monday night. Gordon, Joe and I talked about Grindhouse for a full hour and I think we hit upon some really juicy topics of discussion. Pull it down to your machine and listen to it in the background as you contemplate the fate of television stars of the 80’s. It’ll be an interesting juxtaposition – trust me.
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It may seem a little cheap to do a parody of the “;I’m A Mac…”; tv spots, but when Live Free or Die Hard slaps Justin Long in their movie as the comic sidekick to Bruce Willis, that’s low-hanging fruit too delicious to ignore.
In the commercials, Long represents the slick, hip future of computing to the stodgy, bland PC. Willis’s John McClane character is the analog equivalent to action movies. It makes sense they would try to “;freshen”; him up a little.
From what I’m hearing, thought, LFoDH does a good job with it’s action set pieces in a low-tech way. Not a lot of CGI cartoon physics. They’re doing it old school – which I admire. No one works harder than a stuntman.
I don’t know if there will be room in our schedule this weekend for LFoDH. Cami recently finished reading The Wal-Mart Effect and it inspired her to go back and re-read Fast Food Nation. This has put her in a very specific frame of mind, so I think she’s got her sights set on seeing Sicko this weekend. I kind want to see Ratatouille, but that’s because I’m a socially irresponsible bastard stuck in a state of arrested development. Adorable rodents! Awww!
If you want to get the reaction of someone who saw LFoDH and loved it, check out the most recent Joe Loves Crappy Movies. As Joe puts it, the movie is “;the balls.”; It’s cool to me that he enjoyed it so much. I’m sure we’ll be talking about it on Monday’s Triple Feature.
Speaking of The Triple Feature, I didn’t give you guys the second half of the clue for our Evening contest. So here it is:
“;POWER”;
Be sure to download Monday’s show over at TalkShoe to get the first half of the clue. Take the compiled clue and mail it to me at theaterhopper@hotmail.com along with your name, age and mailing address. One lucky winner will be chosen at random to receive a make-up bag, a cook book and two posters from the movie Evening. Happy hunting!
Switching gears, I just wanted to give everyone a status update on my computer situation.
First, let me thank EVERYONE who left comments in Wednesday blog or e-mailed me personally offering solutions. I wish I had time to thank you all individually, but the outpouring was so strong, that’s not possible. So if you took time out of your busy day to help me diagnose the problem or made yourself available to me through e-mail or by phone – thank you. Each of you went above the call of duty and I appreciate it.
Long story short, I ended up finding the Windows XP installation discs I need to repair my machine. But it turns out my hard drive was physically degraded to the point where it wouldn’t accept it. I contacted Dell customer support to help walk me through things and we tried the repair console first. But it didn’t take, so their recommendation was to do a complete reinstall. That didn’t take, either. So I was forced to buy a new hard drive.
Even though I was keeping all my Theater Hopper stuff on another smaller internal drive (so I think it’s safe) this whole episode has put enough of a scare into me to make sure I have backups of that data in multiple formats. If I ever lost my original artwork, I would probably give up completely. It would be like someone pulled the string out of my back.
That said, we’re not completely out of the woods yet. I had to complete today’s comic using my laptop, but I was running into errors THERE as well. I have a… copy of the Adobe CS2 Suite and for some reason, the version of Photoshop I had on my machine was saying that certain registry information wasn’t matching up. I tried re-installing it, but had no luck. I eventually had to load a… copy of Photoshop 6 I had lying around to get my work done.
This makes me a little nervous about getting the programs I need back on my desktop after I install my new hard drive. So if anyone knows where I might find a… copy of Photoshop CS2 (or, even better, CS3) send me an e-mail and we can chat.
It’s been a long week. That’s about as much as I can say. Everyone enjoy their weekend and I’ll see you here on Monday!
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Sep07
GUEST STRIP – JASON SWEARINGEN
September 7th, 2009 |- Comics »
- Comics »
- Guest Strip
(46 votes, average: 8.93 out of 10)
As I mentioned last week, I’m taking this week off to concentrate on setting up a web site for my web design freelancing business. The job market it tough and getting tougher, so I need a calling card that will help me stand out among my competitors. Once I have the site up and running, I’ll be sure to post a link so you guys can check it out (and hopefully send some business my way!)
In the meantime, please enjoy this guest strip by Jason Swearingen. I really like the pacing Jason developed for this comic. It went from funny, to unfunny, back to funny again. I especially enjoyed how he played up Tom and Cami’s relationship – something not a lot of other artist’s do.
Jason has a comic of his own called Winston’s Oddessy and I strongly encourage you to check it out. He has almost 40 comics in his archive, so it’s a great time to get on board early and add his comic to your bookmarks.
Thanks again, everyone! Check back on Wednesday for another guest strip!
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First, I totally have to give credit to my good friend Joe Dunn of Joe Loves Crappy Movies for making the observation that the robot avatars in Surrogates look like the creepy family from the Duracell commercials. Joe noted the similarity during Monday’s episode of The Triple Feature – which I highly encourage you to download!
If you have no idea what this reference means, here’s a handy video to help educate you:
If you grew up in the ’90’s, you’re probably very familiar with the Putterman family (as they were called). If you grew up in any other era, I’m sorry that I’ve now scarred you for life.
The Little Dutch Boy? Let’s hope that everyone has some cursory knowledge of his fable. If you don’t know who he is, then your parents must not love you.
In either case, I’ve created this visual aid to help put it all together for you.
I think it’s the hair that really trips me up. Like I said, if you could walk around in a robotic avatar that looked 20 years younger, why would you give it a haircut that exposes a high forehead and make it look like it was wearing a bad wig?
Maybe I should talk about the movie a little bit…
I like the idea for Surrogates and I certainly like seeing Bruce Willis in action hero mode, but I think this film is suffering from some bad advertising – especially the first trailer, which is heavy with exposition explaining exactly what surrogates are.
I don’t want to hold the marketing against the movie too much, though. I realize that it’s necessary for the film to establish “the rules” of the society depicted in the not-too-distant future if they’re going to bring people on board. I just wish it weren’t so cheesy – what with the robotic female voice literally selling us the concept of surrogacy. It’s not very clever.
If the advertising is anything to go by, I fully expect the exposition in the opening act to be boring and things won’t get interesting until we get to see the “real” Bruce Willis stomping in robot heads.
Once again, however, I have to give credit to Joe for pointing out a unique trend in avatars at the movies this year. First it was Gamer. Later in the year is Jim Cameron’s aptly named Avatar. But right now, it’s Surrogates. All movies about a separate consciousness controlling the body of another.
Is Hollywood trying to send us a warning about technology. Should I stop posting to my Twitter account? Should I drop off the grid entirely?! Time will tell.
What’s your thought about Surrogates? Are you planning on seeing it this weekend? Are you excited to see Bruce Willis back in an action movie two scant years after Live Free or Die Hard? What do you think about that plasticine look? Leave your comments below!
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The first trailer for The Expendables 2 came out yesterday. It’s so manly, I want to run my fingers through its chest hair.
For a big action movie, this trailer’s a little week. Just a buncha name. Then again, it’s a teaser trailer and the actual movie doesn’t come out until August 17, so what do you want?
It’s funny that I bristle at stunt casting in movies like Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve. But I’m TOTALLY okay with a movie that stars Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damm, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and Liam Hemsworth.
Okay, maybe not Hemsworth. I can take him or leave him.
Actually, I think I’m probably most excited about seeing Dolph Lundgren on screen. Yeah, I know he was in the first one. I just love that crazy Swede!
Who’s YOUR favorite Expendable? Leave your comments below!
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