Posts Tagged ‘career’
4 items.
Today’s strip was stripped almost verbatim from a conversation Jared and I had at lunch earlier in the week. He wasn’t as blunt as he is in the punchline, but I could tell he was thinking it!
The strip might give the impression that I’ve grown tired of Samuel L. Jackson’s choice of characters or that I don’t want to see S.W.A.T. this weekend. Nothing could be further from the truth. I actually enjoy his performances a great deal. It’s fun to watch an actor who seems like he’s really enjoying himself.
Still, you can’t deny the observation. There seems to be less carefully crafted character work in his cannon post-Pulp Fiction than there was before it.
Sure there are some interesting stretches like The Red Violin or The Cavemen’s Valentine, but most of his mainstream work stays close to the Jules Winnfield template.
I wonder if a breakout role like that is more of a luxury or a burden? Does the public expect a certain level of outlandishness from Jackson having come to be familiar with him through that signature role? Is he anything like that in real life, or is he more even-tempered?
Either way, I enjoy watching him on screen and find him a fascinating actor. Much like Christopher Walken or Jack Nicholson, we let him get away with so much more because his charisma is more interesting to watch than anything he could craft on screen. It’s rare and a real treat.
I wanted to thank everyone again for keeping Theater Hopper in the Top 10 at TWC. I’m thankful we’ve been able to make it last. The competition has been really stiff the last few days.
I also wanted to thank all the people who sent me congratulations for Theater Hopper’s first year. Stepping back for a minute, it really is an accomplishment. But the thanks should go to you guys for being so supportive.
Brian Carroll from Instant Classic sent me an excellent piece of artwork to commemorate the occasion and it has found a home on the Bonus Materials page. You should really take a look at it. I’m very proud of it – mostly for what it symbolizes: The great friends I’ve made from doing this strip.
There are also three new pieces of fan art, sent in from a week or two ago when I was asking for guest strips. I ran out of spots to display them on the front page, but that’s not a reason to hide this work away from the public! All three strips are quality and appreciate the effort that went into every one of them!
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The Haunted Mansion doesn’t look very good to me, but it looks like the perfect movie to nod out to after a gynormous Thanksgiving dinner. Fall asleep if you like! You’re guaranteed to have a perfect antiseptic experience.
The fact that Eddie Murphy is tied to this movie and that it’s a Disney production screams “PLAYING IT SAFE!” The fact that is was directed by the guy who did the two Stewart Little movies tells me there won’t be any genuine thrills, unlike that OTHER Disney ride based feature, Pirates of the Caribbean. Still, I was pleased to see Rick Baker doing makeup on the project. That guy always produces quality work.
Murphy, on the other hand, is a performer whose stock went way down for me after he started making kiddie flicks like The Nutty Professor and Dr. Dolittle. In a way, I kind of feel sorry for the guy.
He tries slipping into the old Axel Foley mode in movies like Metro and Showtime, but audiences have decided for him what roles they want to see him in. They want him to baby-sit their kids. Hence, The Nutty Professor II and Dr. Dolittle II.
As for me, probably the only role I found him remotely interesting in the last 15 years was his duel role of Kit Ramsey/Jiff Ramsey in Bowfinger – a highly underrated film if there ever was one.
Part of me thinks we might still see The Haunted Mansion just to see if they can pull one out of the hat. Plus, Cami and I love Disney World. It’s a guilty pleasure kind of thing. I’m curious to see how close they can get to the “feel” of the ride – which is one of my favorites in the park.
Of course, either that, or I can hang around the house and play more Final Fantasy X-2.
I wanted to take a minute to call everyone’s attention to two great web comics. The first one is Overcaffinated, a great comic about geeks and the coffee that fuels them. The writing is really sharp. You can tell the guys behind it are operating a few notches above the rest. Plus, it has a great site design. I guess creator Sergio Villarreal is a web designer. It shows. That site runs like a dream.
The other site I wanted to point you to was Taking the Bi-Pass. I’m kind of ashamed that I didn’t link to this one sooner. Dave has done some great guest comics and fan art for us in the past, and I guess I thought I had always had a link to his site. It’s been fun watching Dave’s art and writing evolve. He comes up with some of the best jokes entirely out of left field.
As always, if you have a site and would like to trade links, please let me know.
I know our Canadian neighbors have already celebrated the holiday, but for everyone in America, Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you have a safe holiday. Be sure to check the site on Friday for a special Thanksgiving-themed comic!
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We do our fare share of razzing Julie Roberts around here, so in an effort to appease Cami, today’s incentive sketch loving depicts her in Roberts most famous role – Pretty Woman.
Even if you don’t care about lending votes to the site, I insist that you click on this link to view the sketch. It’s seriously probably one of the best ones I’ve done in a long time. I’m very proud of it.
In any case, according to an interview she conducted with Newsweek, Julia Roberts will indeed put her career on hold to raise the twins she’s supposed to give birth to this December with cameraman husband Danny Moder. All she has left to promote is the infidelity drama Closer and the European heist flick Ocean’s 12 and that’s all she wrote. We won’t see Julia Roberts for a long time to come. Hopefully the next 18 years. That’s how long it is before they kick kids out of the house these days, right?
Personally, I find the whole “Julia Roberts Pregnant!” story a little too good to be true. First they tell us she’s having twins. NOW there are reports it’s a boy and a girl. Could it *be* any more perfect?! I’m sorry; its sounds a little too much like a Hollywood concoction to me.
Frankly, I’m surprised Roberts is pregnant at all. She doesn’t have the shape of a mother. She looks like the kind of girl that any added weight is going to unbalance her like a weeble. She looks to frail to carry a baby, let alone two.
But then again, I suppose she should have extra room in her body considering that giant, empty chamber where a heart should be.
I’m sorry if that sounds callous, but Roberts does not strike me as the motherly type. She’s too cold. Too bitchy. Too… pointy. She doesn’t even have the shape of a mother. I guarantee one flash of that impossibly white windshield she calls a smile is going to burn the back of those kids retinas… leave ’em blind. JUST YOU WAIT!
Now that I think about it, she probably isn’t pregnant at all. She just ties on a prosthesis belly for when she has to do interviews or walk about town. She probably invented the whole pregnancy thing so she could hole herself up on that ranch she has in New Mexico and do lines of coke of a laser disc copy of Flatliners.
Come time to “deliver” the babies in December, she’ll fly out to some farm house in central Nebraska and buy a couple of kids from a poor, confused young woman. She’ll steal the children away before handing the crying infants over to her entourage. Then she’ll wag her bony finger in the face of the sobbing woman, threatening her to “Keep her dumb, redneck whore mouth shut!”
After flying back to their ranch, she’ll set the kids up in the guest house and have a Mexican nanny look after them. Ever so often she’ll wheel them out for photo ops and the occasional publicity – y’know, so America doesn’t forget about her.
Then, when the kids are all grown up, one of them will write a scathing tell-all book and dish on all of Roberts
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Nothing makes my day like seeing articles titled “Is Ben Affleck’s career over?” Well, maybe “Ben Affleck’s Career Over!” would be better.
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