Posts Tagged ‘Julia Roberts’
11 items.
This is the strip Cami has been bugging me to do ever since I started Theater Hopper. Whether or not she appreciates the punch line, I’ll have to wait until later to find out.
But seriously, ever since I put the strip together, she’s been bugging me to stick our 7 month old beagle Truman into a strip. She’s also been bugging me to make a Julia Roberts joke. This is odd because, to my knowledge, she’s a fan. How else can I explain to my friends that Runaway Bride is in our DVD collection? It wasn’t one of my picks!
Regardless, I was happy to sling tiny pebbles at that goofball smile of hers. The woman has a grin like the Joker with teeth the size of piano keys. I’ve seen less ivory on elephants.
I hate Julia Roberts.
Those of you who watch the news might be aware that today is the one year anniversary of a rather significant event in our history. I have nothing to say about it really. Why add to the chorus of talking heads?
However, I will say this. Life is short. Love your family. Trust in your friends. Go outside and be a citizen of the world. Time is against you. Giving anything less than your all is a waste of your time. Laugh, love, experience. Live.
To you and yours; Love, Luck, Hope and Faith.
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I gotta tell ya, I had one hell of a time coming up with an idea for today’s strip, so there is no grand story behind it’s origin. Just lots of grabbing at straws. I doubt I could spin gold from the one I chose, but I’m not going to get a nasty rash from it, either. The less said the better. It’s just one of those days.
I had a pretty low-key weekend and, unfortunately, couldn’t muster the energy to get out and see any of the movies I wanted to see. That’s okay. Everyone needs a do-nothing weekend every now and again. It was nice not to have any obligations.
Cami, on the other hand, was able to make it out to the multiplex and took in Two Weeks Notice with a friend. Cami is usually my movie partner in crime, but I was more than happy to sit this one out. But I had second thoughts when both her and her friend came back to report that the film was both genuinely affecting, well written and acted. They seemed sincere and not at all blinded by any notions of romantic overkill most of these movies try to cram down your throat.
If anyone else has seen it, I’d be curious to hear your reactions. I’m wondering if I may have lost an opportunity to rack up some brownie points on a movie that wouldn’t have been that tough to sit through.
I finally decided to replace the poll regarding Top Web Comics. It had a better turn out this time around with about 180 submitted votes. The final percentage came out with 50.8% of people saying I SHOULD NOT join the TWC and the other 49.2% said I should.
Jeeze, not only is the American voting public split on whether or not to have one party to run the government, but it apparently boils down to matters as mundane as these!
I pretty much had my mind made up on the matter before I posted the poll and felt with a large share of certainty that I would no affiliate myself with the TWC. But I ran the poll simply to see if there was enough public opinion to convince me that, hey, maybe the TWC isn’t so bad after all. I guess my initial assumption was correct. Thanks to everyone who voted.
The new poll is a little on the softball side. It’s basically just an opinion poll to see what aspect of the site you like the most. The results probably won’t bring about much change, but if there is a surprising percentage of you who really hate the About page, who knows? It might get the heave-ho.
I just want to give a quick shout-out over to the people at the Webcomic Choice Awards for their new site, WCA: Webcomic News. Eventually, the two sites will merge and they are still in there beta phase, but I wanted to call attention to a great idea that The One has put together. If he plays his cards right, I can see this becoming a major hub for web comics that doesn’t revolve around vote-whoring or ugly competition. He has an awesome PHP-Nuke set up that makes things easy to navigate and infinitely customizable. Go check it out.
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Okay, I’ll admit that today’s comic isn’t “wet-your-pants” funny, but I’ll be damned if I was going to pass up an opportunity to win some points by doing a birthday comic for Cami on her actual birthday.
For those of you who sent birthday wishes from Friday’s post, Cami has read them all and thanks you. It just goes to show what an awesome fan base we have.
That’s why I feel so crappy for being late on the comic. The Labor Day holiday had something to do with it, but add the big birthday blowout into the mix and it all adds up to about 4 hours in the house total this weekend. We’ve been catching up with family and friends from out of town and have eaten about a dozen birthday dinners. Good times, good times.
I hope you had a great holiday weekend, too.
Be sure to check back tomorrow – I have some news relating to the site you should know about.
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[The blog post was lost when the site was moved to WordPress in January 2009 – Tom]
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Sorry I didn’t come back and finish my thoughts on Jersey Girl and The Ladykillers like I said I would on Monday. I came home that evening and was feeling really sick. I think it was the weather screwing with me. Can barometric pressure DO that?
Anyway, to make up for things (in a typical, American half-ass way), I thought I would give you a quick synopsis of both films.
Jersey Girl: A fine romantic comedy by most standards, but because it was penned and directed by Kevin Smith, I judge it by a different set of standards. Smith betrays his talent for dialogue by using cheap cliche’s throughout the movie. There are scenes in the movie that feel tossed in to help retain Smith’s edge, but he should stop trying to play to two audiences. He could really do anything he wants, but he shouldn’t compromise. Jersey Girl feels like a compromise.
Liv Tyler comes off well. So does George Carlin. But this will not be the hit – or the performance – that will save Ben Affleck’s floundering career.
The Ladykillers: Typical Coen Brother’s fare. A kind of mash-up of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty. A southern-fried caper flick filled with untrustworthy people. The humor is very black and the overall message is very cynical. Tom Hanks delivers a very fine performance, but it’s all “actory” twitches and gimmicks. Nothing substantial. One character suffers from I.B.S. – Irritable Bowel Syndrome – and it manifests during unfortunate times. Since when did the Coen’s have to resort to toilet humor?
Hmm… those short recaps were a little longer than I thought. Anyway, those were my takes on this weekend’s cineplex fodder.
Lots of good stuff coming out this weekend. Hellboy and Walking Tall being the two I’m most interested. I’ll have more to say about Hellboy on Friday, but I’m thinking of renting The Rundown before seeing Walking Tall as a kind of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson action movie primer. I never saw it in the theater and regretted it. I’ve heard nothing but good things. Walking Tall seems to play in a similar vein and it looks really good to me. Is it odd that Cami agreed to see Walking Tall and not Hellboy with me this weekend?
I’ll probably have to end up seeing The Prince and Me at some point, so I guess fair is fair.
I was hoping to have some big news for you associated with today’s post, but it’s been postponed a little while. If I can get my business together, you should be hearing something about it relatively soon. Sooner, at least, than my Jersey Girl/Ladykillers reviews.
Trust me. It’s a big deal. You’ll want to keep checking this space to find out what I have in store.
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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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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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Apr22
GUEST STRIP – JOSH MEINZER
April 22nd, 2005 |- Comics »
- Comics »
- Guest Strip
(5 votes, average: 8.00 out of 10)
I’m handing out major props to Josh Meinzer (AKA “Fenris) the write and artist of Aikida for today’s excellent guest strip.
Josh’s comic is one of my absolute favorite on the internet and it was a real treat when he said “Yes” to do this for me.
If you’ve been following Aikida at all, you know that Josh is telling a MASSIVE new storyline right now. He’s introducing new characters left and right. Fleshing out his existing characters. And doing all of it in an inventive way that doesn’t feel convoluted at all. Top it off with the fact that it’s emotional when it needs to be and laugh-out-loud funny when it wants to be and you’ve got a winner.
The thing I always admired about Josh’s work is that he is able to add layer upon layer of detail to the characters and it always makes perfect sense.
I’ve been actually re-reading his archives and what started out as a kind of gag-a-day gaming comic with occasional cheesecake drawings of the ladies has turned into a very rich experience. It’s like these character have always existed in his head as fully realized creations and he’s been unfolding them in front of our eyes very slowly.
I admire the hell out of him, if it isn’t plainly obvious. If you want in on a little secret, reading Aikida is what inspired me to flesh out Jimmy’s character back in September when he lost his job and also inspired my introduction of Charlie.
The Jimmy storyline went well, I thought. But introducing Charlie was like driving with the parking break on. Meanwhile, when Josh adds new characters or adds layers to his existing cast, it’s like spreading jam over toast.
At any rate, for today’s buzzComix incentive sketch, I drew Aikida in her demon form. I hope you like it. I think it turned out pretty well, but I had hoped to have had more time to work on it. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (which opens this weekend) that leads into Star Wars – Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (which opens May 19). I want to get to the story ideas I have soon so they’re still timely.
I will probably burn through the remainder of the guest strips next week and post a new one every day until I run out. Be sure to check the site every day next week. You won’t be sorry. I have some “big-guns” lined up. Some of these strips are to DIE for!
Incidentally, you might have noticed some of the advertisements on the site have disappeared. That’s a temporary thing. I basically let the ads I have run out before the site redesign and am currently not accepting new ads. The dimensions and locations of the ads in the redesign are different, so it would be moot to take on any new clients at the moment.
So, if you’ll allow the expression, “pardon our dust while we renovate to make things better.” I think once I slap a new coat of paint on things, you guys will be pleased. Things will also be better organized. I’m really looking forward to unveiling things.
Thanks for your patience and thanks for supporting the site!
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A short blog post…
If you ready Friday’s blog (which went up late due to a server outtage) you know that one of the potential punchlines to Friday’s comic was to put Cami in sexy lingerie. I thought better of it, but gave in to my base instincts for today’s comic.
Actually, I got around to thinking about The Invasion and how it was the modern remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Then I got to thinking about how I could have a little fun with that in the comic. Then I got to thinking SOME MORE about how I could do a week’s worth of stories with this idea and how that would be a real treat since I haven’t done something like that in a while.
Then again, considering The Invasion’s paltry $6 million take and 5th place showing at the box office this weekend, does anyone even know what I’m referencing? Oh, well. You guys are smart. I’m sure you’ll get the joke.
Be sure to listen in to The Triple Feature talkcast tonight at 9:00 PM CST over at TalkShoe. We have a bunch of stuff to talk about. First among them Superbad and it’s first place, $31 million dollar weekend. I’m also kicking off two new contests. A DVD giveaway for Wild Hogs (in stores last Tuesday) and The Ex (in stores tomorrow). Listen in tonight for one half of a clue. You can get the second half of the clue right here on Wednesday before sending in your entries along with your name, age and mailing address to theaterhopper@hotmail.com
Lastly, we’re working on getting Brian Carroll from Genrevous Point and Instant Classic to call in tonight to get his take on the recent offerings in theaters. Brian’s been a friend for a long time and it’s a personal pleasure to see him throwing himself back into web comics again. Be sure to visit both of Brian’s comics and listen to tonight’s show for more!
Have a great week!
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Tom’s really being a sarcastic jerk in today’s comic, isn’t he? I think I will hide behind the “making my characters unlikable gives them depth” defense, Your Honor!
Julia Roberts bashing aside, I’m actually interested in seeing Duplicity at some point this weekend. It’s written and directed by Tony Gilroy and this is his follow up to the brilliant and tightly wound Michael Clayton. Duplicity looks to be a little more effervescent, but it still swims in the waters of dubious corporate behavior.
Post-economic meltdown, I wonder how that will play? Roberts, along with co-star Clive Owen play ex-spooks and full time lovers representing two corporations who team up to con their respective bosses and steal a profitable new product. Will the audience find tolerance for a movie about corporate shenanigans – even if it’s the corporations (not the consumers) getting screwed at the end?
Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe they just want to see Roberts flash that ivory billboard she calls a smile. Ms. Roberts? The Joker called. He wants his mouth back.
Ya’ burn!
I keed. I keed. Hey, Duplicity looks like a lot of fun. And even though Cami and I will be seeing I Love You, Man this weekend instead, I’d still like to try and squeeze this one in – if for no other reason than to see Clive Owen put on the charm.
Owen has been locked down by a lot of serious drama’s and thrillers lately. I like him best when he’s self-effacing. I mean, Shoot ‘Em Up was a real turd of a movie, but he made it a lot of fun by putting on the airs of an afflicted, tough guy anti-hero.
Real quick, some site news.
I haven’t mentioned it yet, but I’ve moved the ShareThis application under the comic and above the comic navigation (before it was hidden in the lower left hand corner of the blog posts).
If you’re not familiar, ShareThis gathers up the links to nearly every social networking site there is and offers you, the reader, the opportunity to share links to Theater Hopper among your friends and peers.
I’ve been trying in vain to get some traction with social networking and I realize not everyone is on board with it yet. I also don’t want to mention it too much, lest it come off like begging.
But if you’re already on board with the social networking bandwagon, it would be really great if some of you could get into the habit of spreading links back to Theater Hopper around a little bit.
The ShareThis app has connections to StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Del.ico.us, Furl, Technorati and more. It even has connections to Facebook and MySpace – and I know a lot of you have accounts out there.
Anyway, using ShareThis to link back to Theater Hopper is something really easy that you can do to help the site. I appreciate those of you willing to test it out. Thanks.
In the meantime, it looks like a pretty strong weekend for movies. In addition to Duplicity and I Love You, Man, Nicolas Cage is starring in the new apocalypse thriller Knowing. It’s directed by Alex Proays who directed The Crow and also wrote and directed Dark City. So I’m always kind of interested to see what he’s up to even though Knowing kind of looks like it’s covering ground that Jim Carrey movie – The Number 23 – covered a few years back.
What do you guys think? What looks interesting to you? Leave your comments below and I’ll talk to you soon!
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