Posts Tagged ‘Emma Stone’
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The indifference Tom displays toward The House Bunny is not actually true-to-life. In fact, in real life, I am very excited to see this film. I personally believe that Anna Farris is hilarious, fearless and a great comedian. It’ll be a treat to see her starring in a feature like this.
Both Cami and I are big Faris fans. I think it was her turn in the woefully underrated Just Friends that sealed the deal. He character is at once both annoying and abrasive, but the screen is a little dimmer when she’s not there to grace it. Even though it’s kinda of supposed to be a holiday movie, we’ll watch it almost anytime we’re bored. It’s a lot of fun.
To that end, I don’t know that there is anything particularly revolutionary about The House Bunny from a plot standpoint. Faris’s character is thrown out of The Playboy Mansion and takes up residence in a sorority house full of losers. She teaches them life lessons and everyone feels good about themselves in the end. Beverly D’Angelo shows up as the uptight house mother of another sorority out to spoil their fun. It’s pretty much paint by numbers. But Farris has a knack for making patently unwatchable films interesting. So it’s not completely hopeless.
It’s kind of disingenuous to stock the sorority house with actresses like Emma Stone and Kat Dennings as "the ugly girls." You can see their "removing the glasses and let down your hair scene" a million miles away. Rumor Willis, on the other hand… genius casting for that role.
That’s mean. Sorry, Rumor. It’s just that… well, your jawline freaks me out.
Anyway, Cami and I are hoping to see this sometime this weekend. I’m down for it, but I have to find time to go out and see Tropic Thunder as well. I’m falling behind!
Things are probably going to get a little more difficult for me from an availability standpoint. Today is the day that I start pursuing my Master’s Degree in Communication Leadership offered by Drake University here in Des Moines. There’s a social gathering for all of the people in the program this evening – kind of a meet and greet – before a full-blown introduction to the program itself, class load and expectations for the semester that lasts all day Saturday. After that, it’s one class a week every Wednesday for the rest of the semester. I’m kicking things off with Mass Communications 101, natch.
It’s hard to say how much impact the pursuit of my Master’s will have on the comic. Between my 9 to 5 job, being a husband, being a father and finding time to work out — attending classes and finding time to study is just another thing to add to the pile. But I wouldn’t have bothered applying if I didn’t think I could handle it. Plus, you know what they say about busy people – they get more done.
Speaking of getting more done, I’m starting to fold in some of the custom art requests I’ve received through the donation drive into my regular drawing schedule. I have one in the can and I wanted to share it with you.
This was drawn for a donator who sent $25 and who asked for a simple cast portrait. I wanted to show it to you guys because I wanted to demonstrate how I’m serious about giving you what you pay for. I’m not just slapping something onto a piece of scratch paper and mailing it to you. These drawings are on professionally printed 4 x 6″; cardstock, inked and signed. In addition to the good feeling you get for helping out a brother in need, I want you to feel like you got something for your money.
So there it is. Do with it what you will.
Please keep in mind that in order for me to maintain a level of consistent quality for ALL of the people who donated, it may take me a little longer to get back to you with the finished product. In fact, right now, I haven’t been able to get in touch with all of the people who send donations the week of the 11th.
I have a lot of e-mails to sift through and I’m trying to keep them organized. The system I’m using right now is to contact a small batch of donators at a time and learn what it is they would like in their custom art. Once the art is completely and mailed away, I take on another batch of e-mails. So if I haven’t gotten to you yet, I’m not blowing you off. I’m just trying to keep the influx of e-mail manageable. I WILL get to you eventually!
I also wanted to give everyone an update in regard to the actual data recovery.
The wizards at Ontrack managed to pull together nearly EVERYTHING from the damaged drive. I’m talking, like 99.9% of it. The only thing they weren’t able to recover is a temporary Photoshop file and an MP3 that I’m not going to miss. All of the family photos, video, and, most importantly the archived original Theater Hopper artwork has been rescued.
They had to take the failed drive into a clean room and rebuild it from the ground up to do it… but they did it!
Ontrack delivered the content back to me on Wednesday and I am glad to report it’s home safe and sound. Oh, yeah… and I already backed up copies of it just in case!
Just to be clear, this doesn’t mean the donation drive is over. I paid Ontrack with a credit card so I could get the data back as soon as possible. The goal now is to pay off the card equally fast so I’m not carrying debt and getting tagged with finance charges!
I’m optimistic, though. I mean, you guys helped me raise over half of our goal in less than two weeks. That’s amazing. It really makes me feel good to know that there are people so sympathetic to my problems and willing to help. I already knew I had a great group of readers, but to see it in my e-mail inbox everyday in black and white has been a staggering and humbling validation.
Thanks again, you guys. I’ll talk to you soon. Have a great weekend!
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Last night on the red carpet at the Golden Globes, Emma Stone confirmed to MTV’s Josh Horowitz that Spider-Man’s web shooters will be a mechanical device in the reboot – not the organic web shooters of Raimi’s films.
So, I’m glad that’s been all cleared up.
That said, I think Emma Stone would have made a MUCH more interesting Mary-Jane Watson. Not for the red hair, but because she has the right tough-chick attitude.
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Typically, I like to keep Theater Hopper as relevant as possible by tackling what’s current on the movie landscape. So it feels a little bit like I’m putting on loose pants by doing a comic about The Help – a movie that came out over a month ago.
The relevance of The Help has been maintained largely by it’s strong box office. It’s fended off contenders for the top spot for 25 days in a row – the longest streak a movie has stayed at number one since The Sixth Sense held on for 35 days over a decade ago. So, in case you were wondering… yeah, Emma Stone is a for-real movie star now.
“By why now, Tom? Why do a comic about The Help?”
Thanks for asking, imaginary person. The reason is simple. It’s because I went to see The Help this weekend!
The Help is a movie that Cami has wanted to see since before it came out. But, having two kids, we couldn’t find the time to go see it. At one point, Cami exclaimed that she would see it by herself if she had to! Even though I was willing to see The Help with Cami, I encouraged her to see it by herself if she had to because I wasn’t entirely revved up to see it.
Here’s was my opinion about The Help before I saw it – and I have to tread lightly here, because any time I try to make a comment about anything racial, it always seems to get misinterpreted as racist – and that is never my intent.
To me, The Help looked like one of those movies specifically designed to make white people feel good – Emma Stone in the role of a “white savior” helping to liberate black women serving as maids to white families in early 60s Jackson, Mississippi.
It’s basically the flip side of the “magical black man” that Hollywood likes to use from time to time. The black supporting character with particular wisdom or insight that helps the white protagonist. Think about Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile. Or Will Smith in The Legend of Bagger Vance.
I’ll stop there because I don’t want to dig a hole I can’t get out of. But basically what I’m saying is that when I watched the trailers for The Help, I immediately recognized a racially-tinged trope that I wasn’t sure I wanted to support with box office dollars.
Having seen the movie, I can say that I found it to be perfectly acceptable entertainment. I can’t speak to the authenticity of the film or the Civil Rights climate it reflects. I assume some liberties were taken., but nothing stuck out to me.
The film is a little long with side stories about some of the white housewives that I felt distracted from what should have been the main focus of the movie, racial segregation. Jessica Chastain portraying a bubbly blonde none of the other well-to-do housewives want to associate with seemed particularly out of place. Her story line played more like an episode of The Real Housewives of Jackson portraying women with money and their catty backbiting. I’m not sure it did much other than extend the running time of the movie quite needlessly.
That’s not to say Chastain’s performance in the film was bad. She was actually quite good. In fact, I was impressed by the entire cast – and I think that’s where The Help truly shines.
The subject matter may have been glossed over from a historical standpoint, but each of the actors in the film communicate the weight and severity of their reality.
Watching the film, I kept reminding myself that the era this film portrays really wasn’t that long ago – barely 50 years. That’s not very long in terms of undoing the culture of ignorance and the damage it inflicted upon these black women.
In the end, I’m not sure that a movie like The Help was ever intended for someone like me. But I felt like what it may have lacked in substance, it made up for with sincerity. If it gets people talking about race, maybe that’s a good thing.
Have you seen The Help? If so, what was your take? Leave your comments below!
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Sony recently released a batch of stills from the forthcoming Amazing Spider-Man with Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone.
You can follow the link above to Screen Rant if you want to see the actors in question looking about pensively. But I’ll save you the trouble. This is the only shot that matters…
Mechanical web-shooters.
BOOYAH.
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