Posts Tagged ‘punch’
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May31
GUEST STRIP – ANDREW AND MATTHEW CORWAY
May 31st, 2006 |- Comics »
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- Guest Strip
(7 votes, average: 7.86 out of 10)
Big thanks to Andrew and Matthew Corway (that’s Rusty and Jonas to you! {or is it Jonas and Rusty?}) for today’s guest strip. I really liked thier idea of Tom teaching an acting class. Of course, the cut right to the core of the matter when they depicted Tom as using violence as a teaching tool. Anyone well-versed in the history of Theater Hopper knows that outlandish cartoon violence is ALWAYS the answer.
Andrew / Matthew / Jonas / Rusty have thier own web comic with a name that’s fun to say – Robobo! Say it five time’s fast! Are you smiling yet? Of course you are! IT’S FUN TO SAY! Be sure to show them some love and check out their comic. It’s really good and it has robots in it. Always a good sign.
Not much else to say on a Wednesday except that Cami and I are still out of the country and you have a week’s worth of guest strips coming at ‘cha. Are you enjoying them? I hope so. Because I have another one on deck for you tomorrow.
See you then!
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So this is it. The big finish.
I suppose some of you might be let down by the comeuppance Shia LaBeouf receives. Personally, I would have hoped that it would have been a little more Machiavellian, but sometimes a solid punch to the gut is what you need.
You can see it went a little larger with the comic today. I think it’s the first time I’ve done that. I did it to kind of punctuate the story arc by giving you a little more. Even though I can see a thousand different opportunities where to take this, I think after a month it’s best to hang it up and move on to new things.
I hope you guys enjoyed the arc. I had a lot of fun writing it. Probably the high point for me was last Friday’s strip where I broke out the production photo of Harrison Ford riding bitch on a motorcycle Shia was driving. That was the tipping point. Here I was making this case for why you should hate Shia LaBeouf and some people were like, “I don’t get it.” Show them that picture and all of a sudden they’re like, “I HATE THAT GUY!” I always knew it was my secret weapon.
I have to give thanks to those of you with StubmleUpon and Reddit accounts that gave that strip prominence on the social bookmark circuit. Your efforts brought CRAZY traffic to the site and I can’t thank you enough. If only we can have that going on all the time. How cool would that be? Of course it’s a good idea to bookmark EVERY Theater Hopper strip – but I think asking you guys to concentrate your efforts on a specific comic really paid off. So I might try that trick again at some point in the future.
Incidentally, if you’re new to the strip – welcome! I hope you add us to your bookmarks and check back often.
Not much more to tell you except I’m seeing Beowulfthis weekend and I’m really looking forward to it.
At first I was kind of “Meh” about Beowulf. I was like, “I read the poem in high school. What more do you want from me?” But then the footage for the trailers started seeping into my brain and I became really curious as to how they were going to make this motion capture stuff work.
I saw The Polar Express. It was the last time Robert Zemekis tried the motion capture trick and I didn’t like it. The children looked like dead-eyed Play-Doh zombies. Will he be able to breathe life int a much more epic story? I like that he keeps reaching for that brass ring.
Oh – real quick, I have to point your attention to a recent Joe Loves Crappy Movies comic about the parking lot thriller P2. Joe came up with a new term based on how bad the movie was to describe theater hopping and he gives us a funny shout out. Read it!
Anyway, that’s it for me! Thanks again for your support and have a great weekend!
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I don’t know if you recall, but back in 2006, German director and all around hack Uwe Boll issued a challenge to his harshest critics to step into the ring with him to box. Basically, he was tired of people bashing his painfully bad adaptations of video games like Bloodrayne and Alone in the Dark. I did a comic about it back then, too.
At the time I thought I would include Boll as a regular character. Just someone who would show up and punch Tom for no discernible reason. I kind of forgot about the idea until I heard about In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. Or – as I like to call it – ITNOTK: ADST. Much easier that way.
Looking at the film’s entry on IMDB, I’m kind of surprised by the cast list. Jason Statham, Leelee Sobieski, John Ryhs-Davies, Ron Pearlman, Claire Forlani, Kristanna Lokken, Matthew Lillard, Ray Liotta and Burt Reynolds to name a few. Either their unaware of Boll’s poison reputation or they don’t care and are just doing it for the paycheck. But I don’t think anyone was waking into this film expecting it to be the next Lord of the Rings.
I’ve seen a couple of Boll’s movies and I think the reason he gets so much crap – I mean, despite the amateur hand when it comes to staging or shooting a scene – is because he clearly doesn’t have a passion for the video game properties he’s adapting. And when you’re comparing passion against the gamers who make these properties viable, you’d better be right there along with them. You’d better match their passion or they’ll eat you alive. Comic book fans are the same way. But Boll doesn’t seem to care. Not to sound xenophobic, but he comes off like an outsider capitalizing on a trend. A hack whose just in it for the paycheck.
I know a few hard-core gamers that feel strongly that Boll’s films are preventing video games as being seen as a legitimate art form. You’d think they were talking about Jane Fonda setting back the women’s movement 20 years when she started making exercise tapes.
Did I just date myself there?
At any rate, regarding Boll’s challenge. A few internet critics took him up on it. Turns out he was once a semi-pro pugilist. The results are about what you’d expect:
I was going to post my list of Top 10 Films for 2007 to the site today. But I barely got any sleep last night and I don’t think I can articulate myself the way I want. Look for the full list on Friday.
If you want a preview, you can always listen to Monday’s Triple Feature broadcast. I do an overview of my picks 10 through 6 and dig a little deeper on my picks 5 through 1. Plus, you get to hear Gordon and Joe’s picks as well! Everyone wins!
That’s it for today. Thanks for stopping by the site. I hope everyone survives their Wednesday.
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The Incredible Hulk came out this weekend and, for the most part, people seemed to enjoy it. At least to the tune of $55 million – which is less than the $62 million Ang Lee’s Hulk took in for it’s opening weekend 5 years ago. But considering how quickly that film dropped off in it’s second week, I think The Increidble Hulk will have legs by comparison.
If nothing else, it already has respect. I’ve received e-mails and comments from a few people who thought the Ang Lee film was better, which I can understand. The characterization and backstory is much more nuanced in that film and a little bit more satisfying from that stand point.
That said, I don’t share that perspective.
I always felt – as I suspect most Hulk fans feel – that if there was ANY property tailor made for the kind of high-level, mindless Michael Bay destruct-o-thon, it is the Hulk. And in that respect Louis Leterrier’s Incredible Hulk does not dissapoint.
I enjoyed this movie a lot. I thought Edward Norton was a much more believable Bruce Banner than Eric Bana. I always thought Bana was much too beefy for the role. Norton easily brings that reedy braniac quality to things by default. William Hurt was a little over the top, but enjoyable, as General Thunderbolt Ross and Liv Tyler as Betty Ross barely registered. Any excuse to put Tim Roth into a movie I’ll sign on for, but he looked a little out of place as Emil Blonsky and I thought he was a little transparent in his portrayal of Blonsky as an out of control junkie, but whatever. Admit that you’re not watching these movies for the performances. You want to see the Hulk break stuff!
The good news is that unlike Ang Lee’s film, the Hulk shows up early. But Leterrier doesn’t give everything up right away. He keeps the Hulk in shadows and fog. You don’t see him directly, but you see what his power is capable of and that’s almost as scary.
A second confrontation with the Hulk on a college campus is much more furious and terrifying as the army brings wave after wave of weapons to trying and subdue him. The sonic cannons I thought were particularly inventive and visually interesting.
By the third act when Blonsky is turned into the semi-nude four ton exoskeleton with attitude – The Abomination – the gloves are off. Well, except for the police car the Hulk tears in half and makes boxing gloves out of. A fantastic nod to the videogame Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.
As savage and exciting as the final battle is, it’s not quite as satisfying as the fight on the college campus. It’s fun to watch the Hulk cut loose, but he’s pretty much evenly matched, so it’s like a couple of gorillas beating on each other with no real conseqences.
I’m also not impressed that they chose to stage the fight at night because Leterrier could hide a lot of the action in shadows and it became a little frustrating to watch. Some oddly placed camera angles too close to the action and it gets to be a little too much to handle. The immediate comparison I made was to the battle sequences in last year’s Transformers, which ended up playing out much better on the small screen when the movie was released to DVD. Let’s hope the same holds true here.
These are nit-picky complaints. I would never suggest to anyone that they skip this movie. Go see it. You’ll have a blast. If you’re already a fan of the Hulk (or a comic book geek in general), you love all the little nods and references to past iterations of the character and the Marvel universe as a whole. You can tell that Marvel has taken great care to create a sense of an overlapping universe, similar to what you experience in the comics.
And because I’m sure you’re curious about my take on the matter… there’s the BIG CAMEO from Robert Downey Jr. at the end of the film as Tony Stark. Did I like it? Well, yeah. It’s friggin’ Iron Man, people! But I almost wonder if it would have be better as an extra scene after the credits. As it is, it feels a little tacked on. Banner makes his escape into the Canadian wilderness, meditates and tries to control the Hulk. His eyes flash green and a smile crosses his face. The movie should have ended there. It was a perfect punctuation mark to the film.
But immediately after, we’re taken to a bar where Thunderbolt Ross is pounding down drinks before Tony Stark walks in and hints at a team they’re “putting together.” I think people would have geeked out more if the scene were shown after the credits. Instead, the movie ends and people asked “What’s next?” A lot of them – myself included – stuck around after the credit to see if there would be another sequence. There wasn’t one. So that’s my tip to you – “DON’T stick around after the credits.”
As far as the comic is concerned, I’ve read a lot of online chatter about the merits of The Incredible Hulk versus Iron Man and I think it’s pointless. And not just because I’m heavily biased.
I don’t understand the purpose of comparing one comic book movie to another. I mean, I do – because that’s what comic book geeks do. But you never see this anywhere else in film. People don’t do this with dramas or comedies or any other genre. You don’t read pages and pages of debate weighing whether No Country For Old Men is better than Sweeny Todd, y’know?
Oh, well. It is what it is.
Be sure to tune in to The Triple Feature tonight at 9:00 PM CST where we will be sure to talk about The Incredible Hulk as well as M. Knight Shyamalan’s The Happening. If you want to contribute your two cents, be sure to call in LIVE
See you then!
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I kind of got more than I bargained for with this little arc about my hand injury, Tom’s grand lie and whatnot. I really didn’t expect it to last two weeks, but I’m very satisfied with the conclusion. I hope you are, too.
Incidentally, if the last panel of today’s comic looks a little familiar, that was intentional. I parodied my own work – Jared’s first encounter with Shia LaBeouf – which you can find here. Ah, memories… Memories and poorly drawn caricatures of Harrison Ford.
Not much else to mention today. Cami is going out of town this weekend with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law so I’m on full-time Henry duty starting today. I’m trying to think of things we can do that will keep him away from television. He’s become very demanding as of late. His hunger for Wow Wow Wubzy and Go, Diego Go know no bounds.
Depending on the weather we might hit up a local wading pool or maybe the zoo. But if it’s not warm enough or if it rains, we’ll be trapped in the house. I don’t know if I have enough Play-Doh to last us the entire weekend.
From a movie standpoint, it’s kind of bad timing that Cami is leaving town. 500 Days of Summer, The Hurt Locker and Funny People all open here today. I don’t know if we’ll have any time to see them together before I leave for Chicago Comic Con on Thursday.
G.I. Joe opens August 7 and will probably be the movie Zach, Gordon, the Digital Pimp crew and I end up seeing (as is our annual tradition). So I don’t know when I’m going to get caught up on the others.
Oh, well. More important things to worry about at the moment. Now where did I leave that Play-Doh?…
Have a great weekend, everyone!
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Just so we’re all on the same page, everyone know what Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots are? If not here’s a commercial from a time before fun was invented.
I know I’m not the only one who looked at the trailer for Real Steel and immediately thoughts of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. I mean, there’s clearly a moment in the trailer where a robot’s block is literally knocked off. But dammit if I’m not a sucker for nostalgia.
And violence.
I know I went a little overboard with the Photoshop effects in the last panel. But what can I say? I wanted to make it colorful!
I don’t know that I have too much more to say about Real Steel except that I really wish they hadn’t thrown in the kid as some kind of conduit for Hugh Jackman’s redemption. It’s an old trope and it reminds me too much of Over The Top… and not in a good way.
If you haven’t seen Over The Top, it’s a movie starring Sylvester Stallone as a truck driver that reconnects with his son through the power of competitive arm-wrestling. You read that right. Arm-wrestling.
It’s a horrible, horrible movie – redeemed only by it’s high 80s cheese-factor. A crazed man drinks a quart of oil out of the can as a psych-out move before a competition. That happens.
Do you see where I start to draw the comparisons with Real Steel?
I mean, I get why they had to throw a kid in there. They have to sell toys, after all. It’s pretty much the same reason Jake Lloyd was cast in The Phantom Menace. Little kids need to see themselves on screen as some kind of proxy… I guess.
Although if you’re taking your 7 year-old to a movie about robot boxing, well… there are bigger problems in the household that need to be addressed.
Do I still want to see Real Steel? Of course! Why? Because I’m mentally 7 years-old and I have a driver’s licence, that’s why.
I CAN DO WHAT I WANT!!
I wanted to post a quick reminder that I currently selling prints of comics from my 1,000+ archive. Making a purchase couldn’t be easier. Just comb through the archives and find your favorite strip. Then click on the “BUY PRINT” icon in the navigation field just below the comic. Send me $5.00 and I’ll ship to you a SIGNED print on lovely cardstock paper – suitable for framing!
I’ve already received a bunch of orders since announcing the option last week. Thanks to everyone who have already ordered prints. I really appreciate it! I’m finding it very interesting to see what comics are people’s favorites. Some nice surprises in there!
As always, anything you can do to help spread the word about Theater Hopper helps. If you could click on one of the icons below to share this comic on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or with a friend on e-mail, I would really appreciate it. Word of mouth is the most valuable form of advertising there is! Think about it: Right now, one of your movie-loving friends has NO IDEA Theater Hopper exists. Share it with them, won’t you?
That’s all for now. If you have comments about Real Steel or Over The Top, throw ’em into the comments ring below, ya?
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TMZ posted footage of actor Shia LaBeouf getting knocked to the ground by some hairy, shirtless dude outside of a bar in Vancouver. Although, truthfully, most of the video is of LaBeouf getting talked down by his bros before he decides to engage in any more fisticuffs.
Shia’s looks pretty drunk in the video. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen someone who has had a few too many try to clumsily extract themselves from the grasp of a friend who is trying to keep them from getting their head caved in. If that’s the case, it makes it a little difficult to cheer for the comeuppance I feel he’s due for. Make it a fair fight, at least.
That said, the wave of schadenfreude that took over Twitter when the news broke pretty much reflects what I believe is the general consensus – “People don’t like Shia LaBeouf.”
This coupled with the news that LaBeouf won’t be back for the next two Transformers sequels they’re filming back-to-back (Jason Statham is rumored to be the replacement), it’s been a pretty interesting week in Shia-related news.
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