Posts Tagged ‘April Fool’s Day’
2 items.
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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I am painfully aware that today’s comic is not laugh-out-loud funny, but I hope for those of you who are somewhat familiar with Frank Miller‘s work with the Sin City graphic novels and short stories will get a kick out of the visual gag in today’s comic. I’ve been a fan of his for a long time and this has been a visual style I’ve been aching to try out for a while.
For those of you living under a rock for the past four months, a big screen version of Miller’s grim and gritty tales of pulp noir will be opening in theaters this Friday. Former Desperado and Spy Kids helmer Robert Rodriguez is directing it. Frankly, I can’t think of another filmmaker who could pull it off.
The Sin City books have a VERY specific visual style to them. Incredibly high contrast work, desperate characters slip in and out of the shadows. Every so often a scene will be violently punctuated by a shock of red or a splash of yellow. Translating that to film wouldn’t work unless that style was kept in place. Otherwise, what’s to distinguish it from any other detective/vigilante versus scum-of-human society revenge flick?
The movie itself has a light narrative woven through several different stories, all arcing over a multitude of colorful and grisly characters.
Personally, I’m already entranced by Mickey Rourke’s unrecognizable appearance as the dive bar brawler Marv. The prosthetics they’ve slapped on his face make him look EXACTLY like the character. A Roman Centurion after too many highballs and a broken heart.
I’m sure I’ll have more to say about Sin City as the week progresses. I plan on building more sand castles in Frank Miller’s sandbox this week.
I want to give everyone a reminder that I’ll be in Kansas City this weekend promoting Theater Hopper and representing web comics in general with my partners-in-crime Mitch Clem and Zach Miller at the Kansas City Planet Comicon comic book convention. If you’re in town, be sure to swing by the Overland Park Convention Center between 10AM and 5PM both days. We’ll be there.
We’re actually all planning on seeing Sin City together Saturday night. So if you’re up for it, I’m sure we could all meet up at the same time.
I’m really looking forward to the weekend. Not just because of the convention and a chance to get out of the house for a little while. But also because my good buddy Jared is going to be taking footage of the whole sordid affair. We hope to combine video from this convention, Wizard World Chicago in August and the Minneapolis Fallcon in October and put together a cool little road-trip/documentary about Theater Hopper, the comic convention circuit and the craziness that comes with it. When it’s all said and done, Jared and I are going to sit down and do a comprehensive interview/retrospective looking back on the last three years of the comic. We hope to have everything assembled and ready for purchase on DVD by Christmas. So keep your eyes out for that one!
This has probably been enough self-promotion for the day. Enjoy your Monday!
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