Posts Tagged ‘Monkey’
3 items.
The idea behind today’s strip is pretty simple: When in doubt, add monkeys. It’s a time-honored device that only the most highly skilled comedy writers bust loose when in a pinch. All you gotta do is watch the first season of Friends for proof. The writing wasn’t strong, so they hit this scene pushing the monkey to the fore. Smart move. Once the writing started to tighten up by the third season, no more monkey. Coincidence?
Not like I… watch Friends, or anything.
I read a report yesterday that said last weekend was the lowest-grossing movie weekend in 4 years. Considering that movie prices seem to keep going up, that’s quite impressive.
You see, this is what happens when studios front-load their summer schedules with blockbusters in a bid to outdo each other. Come the end of the season, we’re left to wallow in the immense crapitude of Serving Sara.
I look at the slate of new releases for the next few weeks – City by the Sea, Swimfan, Barbershop, The Four Feathers, Stealing Harvard, Moonlight Mile, The Transporter – Is anyone going to see these movies? Besides Moonlight Mile and maybe Stealing Harvard, I’m gonna say no for myself.
I hate to be down on the scene, but maybe August wasn’t the best month to start a movie strip, eh?
Good news is in the works, however. I recently raided my parents basement and found a box of really old comics I drew back in junior high. If any of you have been reading the forums, you’ll know that these doodles depicted earth-shattering battles between myself and Jared in toon-form.
I’m working on a way to get these posted to the site. Many of them are in poor shape and will probably need some sort of “commentary track” so you can understand the dialogue scrawled across the page by a manic 13 year-old. This stuff lays kind of close to the vest, so I want to give it a good treatment.
I haven’t decided if access to these forgotten gems will be contingent on a donation but it may happen. How open are the rest of you to a “Members Only Club”? If you want to give me some feedback, you can always e-mail me – also, the forums are always open.
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Tom asks the question that all intellectuals have sought the answer to for generations.
I recently switched out the style on my incentive sketches so that they actually looked more like sketches. Novel idea, I know. But things were starting to get a little too polished. Plus, I had a few requests in the THorum to leave the pencil lines in. Some people were curious as to my technique. Yup. Really pulling back the veil here. Check it out, if you’re interested.
I wanted today’s comic to be more of a commentary on the lack of any quality film this year akin to the message delivered last Wednesday. Instead it turned into a larger commentary on media at-large.
The monkey smoking on "tee-vee" was literally something I was watching as I drew the strip last night. Cami had America’s Funniest Home Videos on in the background (now in it’s 16th season!) I failed to see the humor in a many training a monkey to grip a cigarette and pursing it between its lips. Yet the canned laughter coming from the audience seemed to find it uproarious!
I dunno. Things are getting better. Cami and I are actually looking at the docket of films to be released this week and are excited again. In Her Shoes is very much at the top of our list. Waiting… and Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit seem like fun matine diversions. Big weekend ahead. We’re both chomping at the bit to see Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown on the 14th.
We didn’t get a chance to see A History of Violence, which I am still pressing for. But both of us have our radar up for Capote, which I hear delivers a phenomenal performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Gotta see that before it slides out of the art houses.
I will claim a major victory this weekend in that I got Cami to watch Citizen Kane on Friday night. I know it was a successful initiative when she was talking about it two days later. She even brought it up to her parents when we had lunch with them today!
I know it sounds like hyperbole to categorize Citizen Kane as the best movie ever. Certainly enough critics have adorned it with that title. But if you haven’t seen it yet, you owe it to yourself. Admire the direction and how almost every movie since then has stolen from it. If you enjoy the film and dig deeper, it’s history is fascinating.
For example, most people know that Orson Welles was taking aim at media mogul William Randolph Hearst by mirroring his life as a scoundrel. Did you know that Hearst banned any review of the film in any of his papers and that blacklisting remained in effect until the 1970’s until finally the Los Angeles Times reviewed it?
Did you know at the time of its release in 1940, the film was a commercial and critical flop. Even when its name was read at that year’s Academy Awards, it was booed by the audience. It wasn’t until it was re-released 9 years later in 1950 that it began to gain critical acclaim.
Appreciate some of the finer nuances of the direction like how all the important characters are shot from low angles to give them a looming presence and how all the secondary characters are shot from up high to make them look diminished.
Also note the ceilings on most of the sets. This was totally unheard of in the 1940’s when most movies were filmed on sound stages. Or how Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland pioneered "deep focus", a technique that keeps every object in the foreground, center, and background in simultaneous focus.
It’s a watershed film in every sense of the word. Go rent it. Hell – BUY it now.
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Introducing a monkey into the comic kind of feels like a lame way to up our cuteness factor similar to how Diff’rent Strokes brought in that little red-haired kid after Gary Coleman stopped being adorable. But, hey. You try saying "No" to that face.
I haven’t decided if Dewey is going to be a permanent addition or not. I suppose that depends on your reaction to him. For now, he’s serving as a means to an end so that I can talk about King Kong this week.
I’m really excited about Kong opening this Wednesday. Moreso than I’ve been about any other movie opening this season. I’ve been talking a lot about movies with friends recently. Going over the year that was. Most of us agree that 2005 was a pretty dismal year for film. Here’s hoping Kong can send it out on a high note. After all, just like in the movies, you can have two acts that are nothing but crap, but if you can really push it over the top with a great ending, that’s what audiences are gonna remember!
I’ll likely have more to say about Kong as the week – and this storyline – unfolds. So stay tuned for more on that front!
Real quick, something you might have noticed this morning is a change to the front page. I’m experimenting a little bit with my advertising options. Trying to find a way to integrate them more seemlessly into the site. I haven’t decided if I’ve accomplished that or not. That 728 x 90 banner ad above the comic and below the navigation is kind of distracting. But I like the 468 x 60 banner below the comic navigation and above the blog.
I’m trying to find a way to still offer cheap advertising for other web comics and interested parties. I was thinking about somekind of insert within the blog space, but I don’t know what I’ll do yet. We’ll see how the 728 x 90 banner ad at the bottom of the page performs. I might end up placing sponsorship links there.
Or perhaps I’ll place them to the right of the logo and push the navigation down a little bit? I’m really interested in hearing from any past advertisers on your preferences. I’m not married to these 728 x 90 banners. Nothing is set in stone. E-mail me if you have opinions.
Additionally, I’m polling the readership-at-large for advice on what to do with the navigation bar. Links inside colored boxes isn’t working and it doesn’t address the sub-navigation problems I’m sure to encounter on subsequent pages in the archvies. If you have any thoughts on how I could make that a stronger interface for you, please let me know.
I’m taking all kinds of feedback, so let me have it!
Talk to you all again soon!
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