Posts Tagged ‘The Fat White Movie Producer’
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Apr23
I don’t really have a lot to say about Jennifer Garner’s latest movie 13 Going On 30. It seems like a pretty mindless diversion. I guess it’s getting pretty good reviews. A fairly positive one from our own resident movie-reviewer Nick Caster. He had the good fortune of catching a sneak preview last weekend and decided to share his thoughts. You should swing over to the Bonus Materials page and read it for yourself…
I’ll admit the comparison to Big is a cheap one. Cami pointed out to me that a reviewer in Vanity Fair came to the same glib conclusion. I don’t read Vanity Fair, so I’m excused from plagiarism. But that doesn’t mean the common perception isn’t out there.
Oh, well. My joke is more about a studio executive being so captivated by the concept of giant breasts that he wouldn’t notice a couple of lowly screen writers stealing his checkbook to make a hack movie. Call it a reflection of the male condition. It makes it sound more educated.
With that of the way, I have a bunch of site related business to mention.
First off, I want to give a big welcome to Jeph Jacques whose excellent indie-themed comic Questionable Content was brought into the fold over at Dayfree Press. Jeph has a great thing going. Wonderfully characters and richly developed story lines. You should check it out.
In other Dayfree news, congratulations for Brian Carroll of Instant Classic for reaching 100 strips! Brian lead into his crescendo with a bang – literally! He took the comic in a narrative and artistic direction that really raised the bar. It needs to be see to be believed!
I also wanted to give a shout out to two of our newest advertisers – InfamousGreen.com , a site that will host a film makers short films for free. A great resource for you Spielberg’s-in-training.
We’re also advertising a new comic called The Munchies . It’s ripe with adventures about food products. Get it? RIPE?! Oh, wow!…
The last thing I’ll mention is to check out the forums for a fun game we play every week called The Friday Five . The concept is very simple. I pose five questions to the community at large, and they answer them. You can, too! It’s a great jumping on point to the forums and you can learn a lot about the people who already post there with minimal research. Check it out!
I hope everyone has a good weekend. I know I’m looking forward to it. The weather is getting nicer every day!
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That’s kind of a gross image to end the year with, isn’t it? Some old white guy wiping his ass with stationary? I thought I could do better than that, but really – I can’t.
At any rate, please enjoy this sketch for the new year.
For what it’s worth, this has been a terrible year for movies and I think most of you would agree. Even when I talk to my friends that aren’t hard-core into cinema like I am, I hear the same sentiment. "Man, there just hasn’t been any good movies this year, has there?" I die a little inside when I’m forced to confirm their suspicions.
I’m pretty sure there is some kind of statistic floating around out there that spells out just how awful this year has been. I think if you add up the number of crappy sequels, pointless remakes and movies made from lame televisions shows, it would have to be upwords of 80% of Hollywood’s total output this year.
You could accuse Hollywood of having run out of ideas. But fundimentally, we’ve been gathering around the proverbial campfire listening to the same stories of horror, drama, romance and comedy since mankind developed spoken language. In other words – Has everything else been done before? The answer is a resounding "YES." So what I’m saying is, don’t get mad because there’s been a lack of new ideas on screen.
What Hollywood has FAILED to do is find a way to say new things about old ideas. I can’t imagine anything more insulting to a thinking person’s sensibilities than to take a television show that aired 50 years ago like The Honeymooners, retool it with black actors, film it and dump it into theaters and claim that you’ve done something original. I choke at the thought that anyone felt strongly enough to make Cheaper By The Dozen 2 and then said, "We really don’t have a plot for this. Let’s just rip off that old John Candy movie The Great Outdoors. That’ll do."
I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know and I hate to look at the glass as being half-empty. Will 2006 be a better year? I don’t know. But I guess the fun is trying to figure that out, isn’t it? After all, it’s why we keep going back. Or at least why I keep going back.
It’s funny. People (and by "people," I mean me) bitch and moan about the state of things, but yet keep filing back into the theaters. As angry as I get watching bad movies from time to time, I can’t imagine ever seeing something so awful that I would write off watching movies entirely. Because for every Herbie: Fully Loaded, there will be a Walk the Line. And as your tastes refine, the challenge becomes weaving your way through the traffic and finding that one piece of film that communicates with you directly and reflects something about yourself you never considered.
That’s what good art does. It helps you grow as a person. Who would turn their back on that?
I have some more thoughts regarding the end of the year, but I kind of like the tenor of this post, so I’ll leave it at that. I’ll be back later in the day with more thoughts relating to 2005, Theater Hopper and our direction for 2006.
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Ugh, this comic stressed me out.
Caricature isn’t my strong point and deciding to spoof Michael Douglas in The Sentinel was not an easy task. He’s a goofy lookin’ dude, no doubt about it. That high forehead. The eyes set a little farther apart. The checkbones. The butt chin. I’m tellin’ ya – Douglas DNA is nothing to mess around with!
I haven’t seen The Sentinel, but I’m curious about it. I gotta admit, I’m a sucker for these political conspiracy movies where people are wrongly accused like U.S. Marshalls or Murder at 1600. Or maybe I have a secret fetish for Wesley Snpies. Who knows?
At any rate, I was watching Ebert & Roeper review the film this weekend and they totally pegged Douglas as the guy who takes roles where his character makes a supremely bad decision at the beginning – usually involving a woman or infidelity of some kind – and who spends the rest of the movie making up for that mistake. Maybe that was more of the nadir of his work in the 80’s, but it seems to be a theme to refer to from time to time.
I guess I shouldn’t really single out Douglas. After all, there are plenty of middle-aged action stars that tend to take the same role over and over. Harrison Ford, for example. Don’t believe me? Watch this clip.
That’s about it for the movie commentary. Now we move onto the book commentary.
I won’t lie to you. Pre-orders have come to a stand-still and I’m a little nervous. Yes, I know that I just announced the pre-sale last week and you’re probably putting your money together. But it would take a huge load off my mind if a few more of you would send in orders!
The site has been doing gangbusters lately in regards to traffic due to all the promotion I’m doing for the book. But before all the hullabaloo – we were seeing an average of 6,000 unique visitors a day. Believe me, I’m thankful for it.
But if less than one-tenth of you guys placed pre-orders today, that would solve a lot of problems for me – and help me sleep a little better at night. Believe me when I say the success of this pre-sale will dictate the direction Theater Hopper takes in the future in more ways than I can explain right now.
Look, I know $18.95 is a lot for book, but it’s totally worth your money. 200 pages in full color. Brand new commentary on every comic. 11 guest strips. A six-part crossover. Look around at some of the other web comics selling books and tell me if they’re offering as much. You’re getting more than what you pay for.
If you’re thinking about ordering a book, please – don’t wait. ORDER TODAY!
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Lawrence has an awesome idea for a new movie about ice cream. If you want to find out his suggestion for what they should title it, you’ll have to vote for Theater Hopper at Top Web Comics.
I can’t decide if the joke in today’s comic is a little too obscure or not only because I’m not sure how aware audiences are of the movie Fighting coming out on Friday.
The movie sticks out to me primarily because it’s my job to know about such things. But also because I think it’s one of the laziest titles in movie history.
“What’s your movie about?”
“Fighting.”
“What’s it called?”
“Fighting.”
Fighting wins the award for the movie with the lowest set expectations ever. All it has to do is put at least one fight sequence on screen and it will have fulfilled the promise of its title. Who else but a simple-minded 5 year-old could come up with something so literal?
The last time I recall running into a title this dim-witted was (appropriately) the 2007 Mark Wahlberg action film Shooter. But at least that was more of a title and less of a verb. I’d probably respect Fighting more if it were renamed “Fighter.” At least then it would communicate that the movie is about a specific person that I should care about.
But Fighting? I leaves me with a “Yeah? So what?” vibe. What action movie these days DOESN’T already feature lots of fighting?
Am I the only one for whom this is a problem? Am I too far inside my own head? Does the title of this movie strike you weird or are you psyched about seeing it this weekend?
Leave your comments below and we can iron this out.
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May15
I had a hard time with today’s comic basically because it relies so heavily on the caricatures of Ron Howard and Tom Hanks to help sell the joke. I’ve convinced myself that caricature is not my strong suit. All you need to do is look through my archives to see how long it took me to get comfortable drawing my own characters, let alone internationally recognizable celebrities.
I’ve bought a few books about caricature and it has helped me to understand some of the fundamentals. Basically, you take the most obvious feature on someone’s face and exaggerate it while minimizing their less noticeable features. Ultimately, what I end up doing is looking at what OTHER caricature artists have done and use that for a source image.
I don’t think I’m beyond help when it comes to learning how to caricature, but I do think some people have an innate talent for it. Thursday’s strip parodying Lost over at PvP was excellent. It not only clearly communicates which characters are being parodied, but Scott retains his signature style throughout. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t inspire me a little bit to try my hand at caricature again for today’s strip.
Joe over at Joe Loves Crappy Movies does a great job with caricature as well. Check out his Jason Statham or his comic for Slumdog Millionaire. Joe makes it look so easy.
I tried to stretch a little further by doing another caricature of Tom Hanks for today’s incentive sketch. I think it turned out pretty well. To see it, vote for Theater Hopper at Top Web Comics. I would be curious to know what you think!
Turning the Lens of Introspection away from myself for a minute, let’s talk about Angels & Demons coming out today. Considering how big The DaVinci Code was when that came out, it’s weird that no one I know is talking about this movie.
Do you remember the sequel to The Silence of The Lambs? Hannibal? I think we’ve got another one of those on our hands here. Angels & Demons looks like the kind of movie that was green-lit based on the financial success of the first movie without anyone stopping to consider if it was a product anyone wanted to see.
The comic addresses the controversy surrounding The DaVinci Code which, at the time, was palpable. But very few are even raising an eyebrow over Angels & Demons. In fact, the Vatican’s official position on the film seems to be “So?”
Director Ron Howard insists that there is still a controversy and believes the Vatican is holding a grudge. That very well might be true, but it seems they learned their lesson from the first time around and aren’t lending the new film any credibility by addressing it directly.
I’m not a church-goer, nor am I a fan of the Catholic church and their policies. But, in this case, I say “Good for them.” Frankly, the Catholic church shouldn’t be commenting on works of fiction. (I could make a real easy joke about The Bible right here, but won’t)
My point is that the Catholic church is a global organization with incredible influence whose leaders support the faith and give comfort to millions of people around the globe. If you can find me one person who read The DaVinci Code or saw the movie adaptation and said, “You know what? Catholicism? Not for me. I’m out,” then maybe you’d have an argument.
But as it is, there is enough REAL LIFE problems in the Catholic church that is causing followers to question their faith that I think the institution should be addressing if they want to continue tending to their flock. Addressing Ron Howard or the novel’s author Dan Brown doesn’t help anything at all.
Henry is staying with his grandparents tonight, so Cami and I are going to see Angels & Demons. I’m practicing a little bit of willful ignorance and ignoring some of the negative review headlines I’ve been scoping out in my travels around the web. I’m not worried about it. If it’s dumb, it’s dumb. Between Howard, Hanks and Ewan McGreggor, there’s enough talent in the pool to hold my interest. And besides, it’ll be nice to go to a movie with Cami for once. I see a lot of crap movies she doesn’t have an interest in seeing anyway, so it’s a treat the two of us can go out together. I’m really looking forward to it.
What about you? What do you think? Not about my date night with Cami, but about Angels & Demons? Are you planning on seeing it this weekend? Do you think it looks good? Do you think there is any controversy or is it all part of the film’s marketing plan? Can movies about religion avoid controversy, or is it built in? Leave your comments below and let’s get a discussion started!
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