Posts Tagged ‘slap’
4 items.
Since today’s comic is (in part) about shadowy deception (and getting slapped crosswise), I decided to take a more stylistic approach to the buzzComix incentive sketch. Click here to see it!
I don’t really have a lot to say about today’s comic or really anything to say about Vanity Fair, for that matter. I guess some people are saying this performance could net Reese Witherspoon an Oscar nomination, but I find that hard to believe. Costumer dramas are SO 15 years ago. Yeah, Reese? 1989 called. It wants its copy of Dangerous Liaisons back.
Doesn’t Reese know the only way for actresses to win Oscars these days is to ugly themselves up? Charlize Theron in Monster, for example. Or Nicole Kidman in The Hours. For the men, playing a mentally challenged person is still the quickest way toward Oscar gold.
In any case, we’ve found ourselves in that dire cultural limbo that is the end of summer. Studios are coming off the blockbuster season and tossing nothing but garbage into the theaters as kids go back to school. The end result is very little for me to make fun of during the course of a week. Such is life!
The only movie I’m holding my breath for is Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. With its 1940’s adventure serial looks, it’s right up my ally. I don’t even care that it has Gwyneth Paltrow in it!
A few notes of business. Cami wanted to thank everyone who sent her birthday wishes on Wednesday. She sincerely appreciates it and she had a wonderful day.
Also be sure to check out our latest advertiser Beefyness. They’ve got lots of great comics for you to look at.
See you here next week!
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I’ve been kind of disapointed in my last few comics. Not that I think they’re entirely bad. I just think they sounded better in my head than I ended up executing them. So I decided to make a big splash with today’s comic and I’m really happy with it. The staging, the expression, the action, the big splash panel in the middle, the punchline – everything.
Yup, I’m really patting myself on the back for this one. I just like it. No shame in saying so. If you can’t take pride in your work every once in a while, you might as well be drawing Marmaduke.
We talked about The Eye a little bit in Monday’s Triple Feature broadcast, but no one on the team had a lot to say about it. We pretty much speculated if this was the last movie Jessica Alba made before announcing she was pregnant. If so, you guys can say so long to Miss Sweet Cheeks for the next few years.
Although I guess I did recently read something about Alba toying with the idea to be pregnant for the next Fantastic Four movie. No deals have been made, so I guess that’s wishful thinking.
As for the movie, The Eye – I’m kind of hoping this will be the last J-Horror American remake for a while. It’s been a few years since The Ring and The Grudge and I think we can move on now. Most J-Horror movies do a really good job of setting up suspense and mood. But at this point, if I have to see another jittery, pasty-faced ghost kid or water as a metaphor for evil, I think MY eyes are gonna roll right out of my head.
Not much more for me to talk about today, other than to encourage you to listen to this weeks Triple Feature. It was a good show. We spent a little time talking about Rambo – which is being savaged by critics, but getting a great reaction from audiences – as well as discussed the recent Oscar nominations. To end the show, the three of us made our Oscar predictions. So we’ll have to see in a couple of weeks who was right!
Don’t forget that you can subscribe to the Triple Feature through iTunes. I’m sure there is a myriad of ways for you to access our show on a subscription basis, but iTunes is the progam I use and I think it makes the process very intuative. The program will download our show straight to your machine immediately after it posts! No muss, no fuss! It’s an excellent tool to help you keep on top of the show, even if you’re unable to listen in live every week.
Anyway, that’s it for me. Have a great Wednesday! The week is almost through!
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Today’s comic is as much about comic Tom slapping Jared for a terrible joke as it is about real-life Tom slapping himself for not coming up with a better one.
I don’t mean to be overtly critical of myself. I’m just explaining the genesis of today’s comic. Sitting around, staring into space and trying to come up with a joke about Shutter Island is no small task.
The marketing for the film has done a very good job of obscuring exactly what about Shutter Island makes it so terrifying. From what I can gather, it’s about the criminally insane, twisted experiments and some kind of psychological time bomb Leonard DiCaprio has roiling under the surface as he tries to solve a missing person case. But beyond that, I can’t connect the dots.
Added to this, Martin Scorsese directed it. Certainly the man is not above making mistakes (Kundun, anyone?) but the man gets a pass on his name alone. Scorsese lives and breathes film and it is evident in his work. It’s a rare treat to watch a film maker whose love of movie transcends money or art. Watching Scorsese’s films, you get the distinct feeling that he tells these stories because he has to. For that alone, I’ll watch anything he directs.
So how do you make fun of a movie you know nothing about directed by an auteur you greatly admire? Like I said, no small task. When the chips are down, just have your characters slap each other silly!
What do you guys make of Shutter Island? Are you excited to see it? Does it concern you at all that the film is being released in the dead-zone traditionally known as February? Would it encourage you to learn that Scorsese picked this weekend on purpose after DiCaprio’s availability pushed the film past awards season?
It was 19 years ago this weekend that Silence of The Lambs was released. If you recall, it did pretty well at the Oscars. It was the last film to earn all 5 major awards – Best Actor, Actress, Director, Screenplay and Film.
I’m skeptical that Shutter Island can repeat the same feat, but I’m excited to watch Scorsese slip on his horror boots again. If it’s anything like his last foray into the genre – 1991’s Cape Fear – then we’re in good hands.
Leave your thoughts about Shutter Island in the comments below!
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I have to apologize for two things.
First, apologies for the comic being posted later this evening on Monday.
Second, my apologies for the random violence in today’s strip. I’m of the firm belief that violence for the sake of violence is usually an indicator of poor writing. This might be the case with this strip. It certainly turned out a lot darker in tone than I originally envisioned.
Fortunately, there’s an excuse for both of these issues!
Last week, a link to Lackadaisy’s tutorial for drawing expressions made the rounds in webcomic circles. It. Is. Phenomenal. If you’re an illustrator of any capacity, you need to check it out. It’s very thorough and very informative.
Anyway, I spent the week digesting the information and really wanted to put what I learned into practice. So I grabbed a small hand mirror and started making goofy faces to use as reference in today’s comic. That’s why the strip is late.
As for the violence… I dunno. I was trying for extreme emotion and I guess I’m just an angry dude?
As for Natalie Portman, I do think it’s funny that she follows the most wildly heralded performance of her career in Black Swan with an Aston Kutcher romantic comedy. It kind of reminds me when Eddie Murphy followed his Oscar-nominated performance in Dreamgirls with Norbit.
I don’t think the bloom is off the rose for Portman, though. No Strings Attached opened in first place with tepid, but not toxic reviews. Even if the movie tanked, she’d be the last one to take the blame. They’d lay it at the feet of Ashton Kutcher or director Ivan Reitman before they ever thought about pointing fingers at Portman.
Besides, Portman’s long been championed as a lock for a Best Actress Oscar and we all know the Academy loves giving those awards to Americans. The field could be choked with Tilda Swinton, Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett playing some kind of Elizabith I Super Beast. They’d still give the award to Sandra Bullock for playing a no-nonsense Mom with three kids.
I guess we’ll know what the field looks like tomorrow when nominations for the 83 Annual Academy Awards are announced tomorrow.
I plan on posting the nominees on the new Bonus Materials blog here on the site, for what it’s worth. I mean, it’s not like you can get that information anywhere else, right? But maybe you want to check in tomorrow and we can talk shop. Share with others your opinions of the nominations and who you think will win.
Should we put together some kind of Oscar betting pool?
Have you guys had a chance to check out the Bonus Materials blog yet? I only ask because I’ve been linking to some of the articles I’ve writing through the Theater Hopper Facebook account and one person asked me if I could add the articles to the site somewhere. They were having trouble finding them.
That’s why I slapped that “NEW BLOG!” graphic up there with the arrow pointing to the new navigation link. I don’t want you guys to miss out.
I’ve been trying to post at least one article daily, depending on what’s going on in the world of movies. Sometimes I post trailers or photos from upcoming films. Sometimes I talk about what’s going on right now.
For example, earlier today I posted an article about all the flack Kevin Smith has been catching from the blogger community after his new film Red State premiered at Sundance last night. It’s provoking some interesting responses.
My hope is that you guys check the blog often. But more importantly, I hope you contribute. I know more comics is always better. But until I can figure out a way to bump up production without killing myself, these blog posts are a way to create content and it isn’t much skin off my back.
So, anyway. Check it out and enjoy.
Oh, and if you didn’t notice, I added some social media links under the navigation to Theater Hopper’s Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds. If you want to check those out, that would be a real ego boost for me.
In the meantime, if you want to chat up Natalie Portman’s new sexy-time phase of her career, you can do that here, in the comments below.
HAVE AT IT, QUEEN AMIDALA FANBOYS!
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