Posts Tagged ‘Robert Rodriguez’
4 items.
Can you imagine if the whole world had its contrast thrown out of whack Sin City style? I bet people would be walking around with screaming migraine headaches, that’s for sure.
With the thought of Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City hitting shelves on Tuesday with its release on DVD, I decided to revisit a little visual trick that seemed to impress some people back in May.
It’s not as effective this time around, I realize that. It’s visual paraphrasing at best. I didn’t have time to sit down and do the prep work like I did for the earlier comics. Actually, I just got back from Kansas City after going South to see Rufus Wainright and Ben Folds in concert. The concert was delayed an hour due to the weather and we ended up getting rained on anyway, but it was totally worth it. I have a bunch of pictures from the show that I’ll have to share sometime later.
Apologies for the short blog. I’m just out of words for the moment.
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I know Grindhouse doesn’t come out for another week, but I pretty much backed myself into a corner by doing my Blade of Glory comic on Monday. There really wasn’t much after that I wanted to make fun of.
I actually have a whole week of Grindhouse strips ready to go for next week. So, at first, I thought this one might be overkill. But as Cami and I were gathered around the dinner table tonight, Henry resting atop the table in his bouncy chair, we discussed Grindhouse and Rose McGowan’s almost instantly iconic look as a stripper with a machine gun for a leg. Our conversation turned to how we could make fun of it.
This comic was originally more complicated. First having Tom and Cami wax poetic about the prosthesis. But the more we discussed it, the more we thought it sounded like "industry conversation." So I decided to turn it over to the hapless (and so far nameless) production lackeys of the Hollywood Hills. I’m really starting to like these characters. They pull through in a pinch.
Not much else to say for now, I’m afraid. I had a meeting that lasted through my lunch hour on Thursday, so I wasn’t able to get away and draw today’s comic while I ate. Instead, I had to put it together when I got home and only after we put Henry down for the night. For once, I’m kind of glad he didn’t sleep very well last night because he’s sleeping like wood tonight!
In any case, I’m tired and will need to close soon.
Quick word about the Copying Beethoven DVD giveaway contest. A lot of you have sent in your entries but a few of you aren’t following instructions all the way. Along with the completed code, I need your full name, age and mailing address. Some people are just sending in their name and address. Some people are just sending in the clue. I know a few of you are put of that I’m asking for your age. But I have to ask because Copying Beethoven is rated PG-13 and I can’t award a 12 year-old with the movie. That may sound unlikely, but it’s also important that I establish the prescident for when I might be giving away a movie that’s rated R.
So here’s the deal. Under normal circumstances, I would be forced to throw these incomplete entries out. But since is the first contest we’re doing, I’ll give those of you who only sent in a portion of your information a second chance. If you want to send a revised entry to theaterhopper@hotmail.com, I will accept them. Response has been strong to this initial offering, so you’ll want to make sure your name is in the running! Thanks again.
One last question – since t-shirt sales are starting to pick up again and a few of you seemed to respond positively to seeing me modeling the designs, I was thinking it might be cool if I posted pictures of YOU guys wearing the shirts on the store pages! Interested? Send in pictures of yourself wearing any of our shirt designs currently in stock to theaterhopper@hotmail.com. Or, if you want to send in a picture of yourself reading one of our books, we’ll take those, too!
One thing I need help with: Does anyone know how to write a custom script that will allow me to post thumbnails of these pictures under the main image on the product listing page? Then, when you rollover them, a larger version of the thumbnail appears where the closeup image of the shirt design displays at the default? Once again, fire a message to theaterhopper@hotmail.com if you have any experience with that kind of development!
That will do it for me today. Cami and I are seeing Blades of Glory tonight. Her Mom insisted that we go so she could babysit. It’s been a blessing to have our family so close by as we’re bringing up Henry. It’s been a real treat for him to get to know both sets of grandparents better.
Oh, well! Have a great weekend, everyone!
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Oct16
When Grindhouse came out in theaters back in April, I wasn’t able to see it in theaters as I was busy taking care of a newborn son. At the the time I felt badly that I wasn’t able to participate in what was supposed to be the great film geek-out of the spring. But as word spread, I was actually kind of relieved. Not because neither of the two films that made up the double feature were bad movies. But from everything I heard, the fim’s first half – Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror – was a goopy, gory mess and I wasn’t enchanted by the idea of being trapped in the theater for an hour and a half before getting to see Quentin Tarantino’s contribution in Death Proof.
I’m not a great fan of zombie movies, excessive gore or things that jump out of you looking for a cheap scare. Familiar with Rodriguez’s work in Sin City and From Dusk Till Dawn, I knew that there wasn’t the explicit whim of his inner 14 year-old that Rodriguez wasn’t adverse to indulging. You can imagine my anxiety sitting down to watch Planet Terror – available extended and unrated on DVD today, October 16.
The plot is typical zombie fare. A greedy bio-chemist played by Lost’s Naveen Andrews unleashes a chemical agent on a small Texas town that turns it’s residents into the walking dead. It’s up to a rag-tag group of misfits to fight their way to safety.
True to form, Rodriguez heaps on the carnage and mayhem. There isn’t an explosion too large or a sound effect to squishy or crunchy to be used in his arsenal. Everything in this movie is turned up to 11. When zombies are shot at, they explode like ripe water baloons filled with plasma.
What the movie lacks in subtlety, it more than makes up for with it’s excellent cast. Six Feet Under’s Freddy Rodriguez turns in a surprising and commanding performance as the mysterious El Wray. Michael Biehn shows up as the town’s true-grit sherrif and Jeff Fahey shows up as his BBQ-obsessed brother. Bruce Willis plays it straight as a tough-talking army general and Rose McGowan, her acting somewhat wooden, creates one of modern cinema’s most indelible heroines in Cherry Darling – the go-go dancer/amputee with a high-powered machine gun for a leg.
In terms of visual excess alone, Rodriguez delivers the spirit of Grindhouse cinema. I can’t compare this extended version to the theatrical release because the DVD fails to include both. But nothing here feels overtly extrenious or draining to the film’s running time.
The DVD comes with an excellent collection of extras on the second disc including Rodriguez’s traditional “10 Minute Film School.” In it, he reveals a lot of the tricks used in the film to achieve it’s large number of practical effects. Everything from the explosions, the car wrecks, to composit shots and the CG magic behind the infamous machine-gun leg.
In “The Badass Babes and Tough Guys of Planet Terror,” we get to see how the casting of each of the roles influenced Rodriguez’s script as he was writing it. There is some slight discomfort listening to Rodriguez effusive praise of star Rose McGowan’s prowess performing her own stunts as well as what personality quirks she added to Cherry Darling in her ad libs. Considering the on-set affair the two of them had that resulted in the end of Rodriguez’s marriage to his wife and co-producer, Elizabeth Avellan, it feels like some of that could have been scaled back.
It gets more unsettling still as an entire bonus feature titled “Casting Rebel” focuses entirely on Rodriguez’s casting of his youngest son Rebel in the role of Marley Shelton and Josh Brolin’s son. “Meet your new Mommy, Rebel! She has a machine gun for a leg!”
All in all, those looking for a visceral thrill will find more than enough to wrestle with in Planet Terror. While the movie is intense, my initial fears of the movie being TOO intense were unfounded. Rodriguez injects just enough humor into the script to keep the scales from tipping over completely – All the while pushing the film into greater and greater parody of itself. At the point that Quentin Tarantino’s infected solider affectionally credited as “The Rapist” comes on screen, you’ve pretty much given yourself over to the cartoonish ridiculousness of things and just enjoy the ride.
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Something I noticed after I had produced this comic… I draw my characters throwing their hands up in the air an awful lot. Someone should start a meme.
Onto more serious news.
I was talking about Machete on the Theater Hopper Facebook page (more specifically, that star Danny Trejo was 66 years-old – What the WHAT?!) and someone shared with me a link to a group that was planning on protesting Machete for being “anti-white.” This group’s claim is the the film was released to “green light” violence against white Americans.
I won’t share the link with you here. I’m not particularly interested in validating this specific group with your time or attention. But, needless to say, I found the whole thing pretty disgusting. Not just for the misguided protest effort they were trying to organize but for the truly horrible, racist comments posted along with it. The less said about it, the better.
I haven’t see Machete and I’m not exactly running out the door to do so. I figure any feature-length movie sprung from a joke trailer released with Grindhouse three years ago is probably going to be a little light on plot and characterization. And, well, it’s a Robert Rodriguez movie. So, same goes.
But reading about this hate campaign disguised as a protest makes me want to see Machete for no other reason than to turn their crank.
From everything I’ve read the movie is violent and cheesy and everything you’d come to expect from a Rodriguez movie. I’m aware that they tried to make the film somewhat topical by tying it to the immigration debate going on in Arizona at the moment and that perhaps their execution was sloppy. Considering Machete’s somewhat incomplete origin, that sounds like a reasonable criticism to me. I don’t think anyone is seeing this movie for political moralizing. They just wanna see Danny Trejo slap a Gatling gun onto a motorcycle and launch that bad boy 50 feet in the air.
But protesting Machete’s for being anti-white? I just don’t see it. In fact, I don’t even see a point in pretending like it’s a reasonable complaint and formulating an argument against it.
If these paranoid loons see a bunch of white guys getting carved up by a six foot tall Mexican and think it’s anti-white, they need to put themselves in the shoes of every black person who has watched the token black actor be the first to die in EVERY SINGLE HORROR MOVIE of the last 30 years. I can’t imagine that’s been very encouraging to them.
I have to stop while I’m ahead. Having an argument about this is a losing proposition. You can never reason with people who see issues like this where there is none. It’s like yelling at a wall.
So, for brevity’s sake, can we all agree that the assertion that Machete is “anti-white” is a ridiculous notion and move on with our lives? Thanks.
Even if you want to debate it with me in the comments, I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to make an executive decision to delete those comments. Because I don’t care how well-reasoned you think you’re being, protesting Machete for being “anti-white” is just a fancy way of dressing up your racism and marching it down the street.
I try to be accommodating to different points of view, but sometimes you just have to cut your losses and move on.
I have to apologize for the comic being a day late. Unfortunately the reason is because Cami and I spent the majority of the Labor Day weekend packing up our house in preparation for the move to our NEW house in less than 3 weeks. Henry and Pearl stayed with my in-laws and we worked all weekend. We got a lot done, but by Sunday night we were exhausted. We went to pick up the kids on Monday so we could at least have ONE day this week where we – y’know – get to SEE them. And, well, that’s why the comic was late.
I have most of my office packed up, but I’m getting kind of freaked out about boxing up my merchandise to move to the new house. The shirts aren’t that much of a hassle to move. But the books are very heavy and you can only box so many of them together before you risk throwing your back out trying to pick them up. That means a lot of boxes and a lot of trips up and down stairs.
That’s where you guys come in.
As you may or may not know, I’m running a sale in my store on ALL my merchandise now through September 19. Right now all of my books are being sold for $11.00. All of my shirts are being sold for $7.00 or less. These are great deals. After the 19th, books go back to $15.00 and shirts go back to $10.00. If you were ever thinking about buying something from me, now is the time to do it.
Incidentally, if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you’ll see references to discount codes up to 30% to help drive incentive a little more. With these codes, you can order from the store and essentially get shipping for FREE.
I’m very serious about selling as much of my merchandise as possible before the movie. I’m practically selling it to you at-cost. I can’t go any lower. So help me out. Get something for yourself. Get something for a friend or a loved on that you can give them for their birthday or the holidays. Let’s get this stuff out my office before I have to move it!
I’m trying not to be overbearing about it, but I’m getting a little more panicked as our move date approaches. Some of you have written me and expressed regret than you can’t take part and I totally understand that. But even if aren’t able to make a purchase, you can still help by telling others about the sale.
Share links to the store or to Theater Hopper on Facebook or Twitter. Mention us in the comments section of blogs you read or forums you visit. Submit the comic to social networking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon or the /r/comics section of reddit.
Tell them about our Spoiler shirt and ask people if they can guess all the movies being spoiled. Tell them about our books and how you get commentary with each strip plus tons of bonus features – over 200 pages of content in full color in every book for $11.00! It’s a steal!
It sounds cheesy, but every little bit helps. If you’re out there raising awareness, that’s one more person who wasn’t aware of Theater Hopper previously. That’s a good deed and karma points in my book!
I’m sorry to do the full-court press on you with this blog post. But since I’m only updating once a week, I have to hit with as much impact as I can before I run up against the September 19 deadline!
So again, if you’re thinking about buying anything from the Theater Hopper store, please do so today! And if you can’t make a purchase for whatever reason (totally understandable), please help by spreading the word about the site and sale among your friends and the communities you visit.
One more time, here’s the link to our store:
http://theaterhopper.storenvy.com/
THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO HAS ORDERED SO FAR AND THANKS TO EVERYONE READING THIS FOR THEIR CONTINUED SUPPORT!
If you saw Machete or The American this weekend and feel like chatting it up in the comments below, please feel free. I know I gave The American a free pass without much discussion in the blog and I’ve heard wildly different reactions to the film. Some people I know were really into it and others thought it was a depressing waste of time. Did you see it? Where do you stand? Let us know!
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