Posts Tagged ‘cosmopolitan’
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Today’s buzzComix incentive sketch doesn’t have much to do directly with M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, but it’s pretty close. It’s Tom as a pilgrim, folks. Dig in.
I had a tough time coming up with a way to make fun of The Village. Originally I was going to do a strip where Tom was in control of a nerve center dedicated to uncovering the secret “twist ending” to the film (“I’ve received a credible lead from my contact in Zurich!”). He didn’t know what the ending was, but dern-gummit, he knew there was a twist!
Ultimately I couldn’t find a punch line for the setup, so I abandoned it.
Still, I think it leads us to an interesting discussion. Jared and I were actually talking about it yesterday. How much harder has it become for Shyamalan to surprise his audience when they go into his movies EXPECTING a twist?
It’s kind of the difference between going into a haunted house when you’re a kid versus when you’re an adult. When you’re a kid, you have no idea what’s around that next corner and, in your mind, those monsters are REAL. When you’re an adult, you’re kind of predicting when something is going to leap out at you. That primal fear is gone, but you’re still being entertained because you remember how seriously you used to take this stuff when you were younger.
Out of all the movies being released this week – The Manchurian Candidate, Garden State and Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle among them, The Village is the flick I want to see the most. If anything, but to learn if my theory regarding the movie’s ending are proven true.
I haven’t spoiled the movie for myself and read anything online about it, but I have my own thoughts as to what the twist could be. If you have a brain stem, you’ve probably already established the obvious thought. But in case you’re stemless, I’ll keep my theory to myself until next week.
I have good news for fans of the THorum. I received word from my former hosting company that the DNS transfer has been submitted. So hopefully Theater Hopper will be seen from it’s new server in the next 48 hours.
You shouldn’t be able to tell a difference on your end. We’ve prepared things in advance so the change over should be pretty seamless. The biggest change will be that the THorum will be open so we can discuss all of the latest films!
Lastly, be sure to check out our new advertiser Dunn Boyz. This comic has been around for a while and it’s still as fresh as ever. I read this strip a lot before I started Theater Hopper. I love the art!
I’ll be back a little later in the day to share with you a couple of links I think you should know about…
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Sex in the City comes out this weekend and seems to be as hotly anticipated by the fairer sex as every comic book movies is ready to be embraced this summer. Unlike most men who seem to be operating from a database of "I won’t watch this movie because I don’t have vagina" zingers, I’m not psyched out by this proposition. It’s been a while since there was a romantic comedy with any real pedigree. Seems to be you had to wait for some kind of Tom Hanks / Meg Ryan vehicle to come along before you could permit yourself to feel confident about the genre.
Cami is a big fan of the shoe, so I’ve seen enough episodes of the show to know what’s going on. I even went to a Sex and the City finale party when it ended. I bought her that huge pink velvet book that collects the entire series for her birthday a few years ago, so the occasional Sex and the City marathon is not a rare occurrence in our house.
These are all things MAN LAW tells me I should be ashamed to admit. But I’m not. What can I say? It was a good show and I can certainly understand why the power fantasy was so attractive to women.
Since Sex and the City went off the air a few years ago, every romantic comedy since then seems to extrapolate from it’s formula. Smart, career-minded women who can HAVE IT ALL! The Job, The Clothes, The Man. Think about it. Think about all of the romantic comedies that have come out just this year that share this formula. 27 Dresses and Baby Mama, for example. Nevermind all of the television shows that try to capture lightning in a bottle. Lipstick Jungle, Cashmere Mafia… even Gossip Girl, Dirty Sexy Money and Grey’s Anatomy try to capture this to a degree. Why needs men, right?
Ah, but therein lies the rub. Box office for romantic comedies has been down in the last few years not only because they’re all operating out of the same playbook, but because these movies and television shows almost entirely exclude men from the equation.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, men enjoy romance from time to time. But when the movies tell you over and over that you’re a prop for a successful woman, no wonder men lose interest.
I’m trying to avoid categorizing this in sexist terms. Certainly movies for men have been using women as props for years. Most, if not all of them, in fact. A little turnabout is fair play.
BUT for a genre that is supposed to be all about UNIFYING the sexes, does anyone else find it curious that it is so thoroughly alienating one half of its audience?
In a social climate where there are so many pretenders to the throne, it’s interesting to me to see if Sex and the City can return to the big screen and not feel completely stale. And, if it fails, what will become the next flavor of the month when it comes to romantic comedies?
A little food for thought over the weekend. Take care and I hope you guys have a good one. I’ll see you back here on Monday.
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