Posts Tagged ‘flashback’
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Vote for Theater Hopper at buzzComix and come face-to-face with all your phys ed fears come to fruition – COACH TOM!
So the new Ben Stiller/Vince Vaughn comedy Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story comes out this Friday. Despite the catatonic state I depict for myself in today’s strip, I’m actually quite looking forward to this movie.
Frankly, I’m surprised no one came up with the idea for a dodgeball movie before now. The unsuspecting school yard activity is social Darwinism in its purest form. It’s like Lord of the Flies with monkey bars. There is sure to be a lot of comedy to mine from that.
Is it wrong to admit that I’m more interested in the supporting cast of this movie than the leads? Well, maybe not ALL of the leads. I really like Vince Vaughn. He’s found himself a tidy niche as the scheming wise-ass. He was great in both Old School and Starsky & Hutch. That mellow exterior… he steals almost every scene he’s in – and that’s no small feat when you’re set up toe-to-toe with Will Ferrell.
It’s Ben Stiller I could care less about at this point. He slaps on a stupid wig and glues on a silly mustache and we’re supposed to laugh? Personally, I refuse to roll over on this. At this point, Stiller has become like an annoying uncle trying to make you giggle by making stupid faces and talking with a goofy voice. Only problem is you’re no longer 3 years-old, but now your 11 years-old and he doesn’t seem to notice.
I’m more interested in the bit players they’ve assembled for this picture. Rip Torn, Stephen Root, Justin Long, Jason Bateman, Hank Azaria, William Shatner, David Hasselhoff… heck, even Stiller’s wife Christine Taylor can throw a subtle laugh better than her husband.
That’s all I can think of for the moment, but I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts on Dodgeball this Friday. I have another tale of pre-pubescent anxiety to unveil in comic strip form! Stay tuned!
Do you have a dodgeball story to share or maybe reflections on the upcoming movie? Share your thoughts in the THorum!
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It’s 100% fact that I was in Florida while V for Vendetta was in theaters. It was released on March 17 of this year and we were actually smack-dab in the middle of a two week long guest strip marathon. Since V for Vendetta comes out on DVD tomorrow, I thought this was a clever way for me to talk about the movie in a way that wouldn’t have been timely earlier this spring.
However, if you’re looking for the ultimate parody of the police state politics represented in the movie, I strongly suggest you check out Joe Loves Crappy Movies. Our good friend put together a GREAT storyline during the period that the film was released, creating a new character along the way… Stoic Joe-replacement-slash-secret-agent George! Classic stuff.
Originally, I wanted to do a week’s worth of comics about Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, but I ended up doing this far darker and more paranoid comic instead. I think it’s my way of coping with the paranoia about my attendance at Wizard World Chicago this year.
As I’ve already mentioned, I’ll be at table # 3134 A on Artist’s Alley and I’ll be pretty hard to miss because I’ll be surrounded by the likes of other web comic luminaries like Zach Miller from Joe and Monkey as well as Gordon McAlpin from Multiplex.
I guess I’m nervous because I feel like I have a lot at stake at this convention. I attended in 2004 and that was me putting my toe into the water. Checking out the scene and trying to make sense of it all. In 2005, it was all about strengthening the relationships I made with other artists and having a hell of a lot of fun doing it. This year?… it feels more like business. I’ll have several dozen copies of my first book "Theater Hopper: Year One" with me and I want to make sure that I get it in front of as many people as possible. Obviously that means selling a bunch. But it also means putting it in the hands of other creative people and getting their feedback. It’s all about networking, baby. I’m wracking my brain over the potential of this thing.
Incidentally, if you’d like to order a copy for yourself, you can do so here. I actually just got a bunch of the cardboard envelopes I needed to mail out the pre-orders shipped to my house on Friday. So I’ve been spending the week preparing books for shipment. You guys should be seeing your orders very soon! However, if you recall, I offered free sketches to all orders placed before June 11. So I’m drawing those in the book and it’s going to take a little while. The majority of you should see your books arrive by mid-August!
At any rate, if you can make it to Chicago, please come by the table and say "Hi." If you do, I’ll be sure to give you an invitation to my book release party on Saturday night. Trust me. It’ll be a blast.
Man, three days from now I’m going to be on the road to Chicago. I can’t wait.
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It’s been previously established that Tom was (is?) a glue-eater. I thought it might be kind of fun to explore the impetus of that.
Smart People came out this weekend and failed to impress at the box office. It only did about $4.2 million worth of business. That’s kind of disappointing. You think the focus that was being put on Ellen Page post-Juno would have attracted some interest. And where’s the love for Dennis Quaid? To me, he’s one of those quintessential American actors. He doesn’t get the showiest parts, but he’s always reliable to turn in something interesting.
Quaid gets more and more interesting to me the older he gets. When he was younger, he played a lot of arrogant hot shot in movies like The Right Stuff, Enemy Mine, Innerspace and the Jerry Lee Lewis bio-pic Great Balls of Fire! Now that he’s older, he’s settled on this more quiet, dignified persona. Someone who may not like the situation he’s in or the attention being directed toward him, but he does his best and trudges through.
I think the turning point was somewhere around The Rookie, which is probably the best sports movie I’ve ever seen – and I HATE sports movies. After that, he turned in performances in Far from Heaven and In Good Company that I really liked. You can also see part of that transformation in Frequency, although that came out before The Rookie.
I don’t know… Now that he’s older and he kind of has this gravity behind him, there’s this authority to him. He’s kind of like America’s Dad at this point. Maybe it’s his roles in the remake of The Parent Trap and Yours, Mine and Ours that’s giving me that impression. Anyway, it’s a theory I’m kicking around.
Back to Smart People… critics have been tagging it for being too pretentious – and I guess I can see where they’re coming from. From the trailers, it looks very dry and very much about it’s own indie-cred. I can understand why that would be a turn off.
I didn’t get a chance to see the film, but I was eager to check it out because I thought throwing Thomas Haden Church into the mix as a kind of blue-collar spoiler was a bit of interesting casting. I never anticipated that the dumb-ass mechanic from Wings would be an actor I would ever be invested in, but there you go.
Not much else to talk about this morning except that I encourage everyone to check out The Triple Feature talkcast tonight at 9:00 PM CST at TalkShoe.com. Tonight we’ll be talking about Smart People and more.
The last couple of weeks we’ve had really good success answering user-submitted questions. We’d prefer to talk to you in person if you have a question to ask, so don’t be shy about calling into the program! You can do that, you know – because we record it live!
But if you’re uncomfortable calling in or don’t have the resources to do so, feel free to e-mail your questions at theaterhopper@hotmail.com and we’ll see what we can do about getting you an answer on-air tonight!
It can be about anything – The movies we’re anticipating in 2008, our least favorite films, most quotable films… It doesn’t have to be about movies, though. Maybe you want to ask us a question about our web comics or what we do in our downtime. The sky is the limit! So don’t be afraid to ask!
At any rate, it’s going to be a great show. We hope to see you there!
Take it easy!
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