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Archive for April, 2007

18 items.

THE BURGG

by Tom on April 13, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Blog
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Before I forget, I wanted to direct everyone's attention to a great movie-themed web site I think you'll all enjoy.

It's called The Burgg and it was created by my good friend Bernie Hou who also created the web comic Alien Loves Predator.

The concept of The Burgg is deceptively simply and grossly addictive. A member of the community draws a scene from a movie - any movie. You're then left to guess what movie they're referencing. Most of the images you'll guess right away. But every once in a while there will be one that stumps you. It's a lot of fun to play along and they have a movie discussion forum on the site as well. One of these days I need to get off my butt and submit a drawing of my own!

At any rate, check it out. The Burgg. A lot of fun!

Have a great weekend everyone!

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A MAN OF FAITH

by Tom on April 13, 2007 at 12:00 am
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars6 Stars7 Stars8 Stars9 Stars10 Stars
(6 votes, average: 8.67 out of 10)
Balki Bartokomous, Perfect Stranger, protest, Victor, religion, worship, Eli Winslow

Happy Friday the 13th, everyone? Doing a good job of avoiding black cats, ladders and Jason Voorhees? Good for you!

As you can see, this is the continuation of my Perfect Strangers comic from Wednesday. I don't know why, but I just thought it would be funny to cast Victor as a being from a village small enough in the Ukraine that they might actually worship a character from a 1980's sitcom. No offense to anyone of Ukrainian heritage. Call it the Borat effect. People don't really think Kazakhstan is like that. It's all in good fun.

I'll fess up and admit that Wednesday's comic was pretty much the exposition needed to get to today's punchline. I came up with "Thou shalt not be ridiculous" and worked backwards from there. Yeah, it's kind of the same joke. But there's humor in repetition sometimes. Give me a break. It's a slow week!

Here's some good news: I learned this week that my local comic book shop will be playing host to a 24 Hour Comic Day event next Saturday and I'm going to participate! I've always read the exploits of my contemporaries who do the 24 Hour Comic thing and I was always jealous. Finally, someone has taken the steps to organize our own event and I'm not going to miss it.

Originally I was planning on putting together the Theater Hopper origin story that's been bouncing around in my head for a few years. But after consulting a few good friends, they talked me out of it. The catch in participating in this thing is to have 24 sheets of 11 x 17" paper drawn, inked and lettered. I don't want to hand-letter this story. It's too important. Plus, there's a strong likelihood that I'm going to run out of gas around hour 22 and I don't want the last two pages looking like I was asleep at the wheel.

So, anyway, I tried to come up with a few other options. I had an idea for a story about Jimmy getting the day off. Except he doesn't want the day off and keeps trying to sneak back into work. Not really original, but it's a start.

Then I had an idea about Tom literally theater hopping into another dimension or into the movies themselves. He would take on the characteristics of people in the films he "jumps" into like Quantum Leap before going into another one. I couldn't figure out what the point of that one would be, though.

So I talked to Cami about it and she suggested doing something completely different - a comic about our lives in 2006. A more personal story. Cami getting her Master's Degree, our trip to Europe, our pregnancy and end it with Henry being born. I'm really warming up to that idea. I think it would be something special.

I don't know. What do you guys think? Want to brainstorm with me a while? Leave your ideas in the comments field. Tell me what you think!

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WILL FERRELL MOVIE GENERATOR

by Tom on April 11, 2007 at 12:00 am
Posted In: Blog
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Okay, I feel a little guilty for enjoying this as much as I did because it depict what Will Ferrell does as an interchangeable series of predictable routines and I think that's oversimplifying things a bit.

All the same, check out College Humor's Will Ferrell Movie Generator and prepare to laugh.

It was the inclusion of the completely random catch phrases and quotes that did it for me.

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WHEREFORE ART THOU COUSIN LARRY?

by Tom on April 11, 2007 at 12:00 am
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(5 votes, average: 7.60 out of 10)
Eli Winslow, first appearance, protest, Bronson Pinchot, Perfect Stranger, Halle Berry, Bruce Willis

I don't think I'm making any kind of particularly witty statement with today's comic. Anyone who has seen the trailer for Perfect Stranger probably came up with the same joke 5 seconds after they learned what the title of the movie was. But I'll ask you to stick with me on this one. The follow-up comic I have for Friday is going to be the real pay-off.

Considering that today's comic doesn't exactly have a lot going on in it's brain, I thought I would talk for a moment about the comic creation itself. Mostly because you guys seem to get a kick out of it when I have a joke that's a bit of a dog.

Originally I was going to have Bronson Pinchot himself appear to protest the movie. But I thought that highly unlikely since isn't he dead, or something? I kid. I know he was on The Surreal Life not to long ago. But actually, I avoided using him simply because if I was going to burn brain cells trying to figure out an appropriate caricature, it was NOT going to be on Bronson Pinchot. Instead, I decided to make the protester someone who vaguely LOOKS like Bronson Pinchot and make him the president of his fan club. Subtle, no?

When I told Cami that I was going to make fun of Perfect Stranger by pulling a reference to the television show Perfect Strangers, Cami asked me "Are your readers even going to understand it?" I think she's under the impression that everyone who comes to the site must be 12. If it just so happens that you're NOT a child of the 80's like I am, what can I tell you? YouTube it.

"Standin' TAAALLLLLLL! On the wiiings of my dreams!"

Man, whatever happened to the inspirational feel-good sitcom theme songs? For that matter, whatever happened to predictability? The milk man, the paperboy, evening TV? How did I get delivered here - someone tell me, please!

All the 12 year-old's are scratching their heads right now.

At any rate, if you'd like to download something that DOESN'T make you feel incredibly old, grab a copy of The Triple Feature broadcast from Monday night. Gordon, Joe and I talked about Grindhouse for a full hour and I think we hit upon some really juicy topics of discussion. Pull it down to your machine and listen to it in the background as you contemplate the fate of television stars of the 80's. It'll be an interesting juxtaposition - trust me.

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FOR THE DUMB KIDS

by Tom on April 9, 2007 at 12:00 am
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(5 votes, average: 8.20 out of 10)
Disturbia, Shia LaBeouf, collective unconscious, cosmos, Rear Window, Hitchcock, Jimmy Stewart, remake

Sorry I didn't have another Grindhouse comic for you guys today. But I think I ran through all of my ideas last week! Didn't get a chance to see it and it doesn't look like that many of you guys did, either! A disappointing fourth place take this weekend at the box office. Surprising, for one of the most heavily-hyped films of the year. No so surprising within the context of a major Christian holiday weekend. Whoops!

If you saw Grindhouse this weekend, leave your comments after the blog. I'd love to hear what you thought! Sounds like people are really responding to the ending in Tarantino's Death Proof. Don't spoil it - but what did you think?

I'm sure Gordon, Joe and I will talking about Grindhouse and it's impact (or lack thereof) up and down The Triple Feature talkcast tonight at 9:00 PM CST. If you have the druthers, join us over at TalkShoe while we take your calls and answer your questions. What went wrong? What went RIGHT?! Listen in tonight at 9:00 PM CST for the answers!

Disturbia starring Shia LaBeouf comes out this weekend and I know people who are genuinely excited to see it. To them I say "Good for you?"

Look, don't kid yourselves. This is a total rip off of Rear Window. I'm not saying Hitchcock got their first with stories about voyeurs seeing things they aren't supposed to see. But he did it best. CERTAINLY one of the best suspense films of all time, completely bastardized by filmmakers who are going to ratchet up the gore, throw in some lame T&A and occasionally have David Morse jump out of the shadows at you. This is Rear Window without a brain.

One of the best decisions Hitchcock ever made was to handicap Jimmy Stuart's character with a broken leg. Smarter still, he doesn't leave his apartment to confront the murderer until he absolutely has to - and even then, it's for something like 5 minutes.

Disturbia tries to leverage something similar by putting their teenage protagonist under house arrest. They did this in a effort to make him edgy, I guess. Too far out of bounds and the cops come to haul our little punk to the pokey. Sure. Like that's stopped anyone. Or like cops have nothing better to do than to patrol lazy suburban confines for the errant house arrest escapee.

Everything about the trailers for this movie make me want to retch. From the blood splatter across windows and torture implements in the basement, to the too-cute punny title, to the over-earnestness of Shia LeBeouf begging to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor, this film reeks of cheap tricks and imitation.

Do yourselves a favor - instead of seeing Disturbia this weekend, rent Rear Window and see how it's done. You can keep your MTV and your fancy iPoo-poos! I'll take the classics!

That is all!

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THE INTIMATE TIMES

by Tom on April 6, 2007 at 12:00 am
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(12 votes, average: 8.58 out of 10)
Grindhouse, Planet Terror, Cherry Darling, gun leg, intimacy, premature

As I was drawing today's comic, I actually thought to myself "Have I crossed the line?" But here's the thing - when I started thinking up comic ideas for Grindhouse, this was the FIRST idea that came to mind. All the other comics this week I had worked backwards from that original thought. So, by this point, even if I was going too far, I didn't care. I'd come to far to give up now! This was the big payoff, baby!

I don't care what you say - I think it's one of the funnier comics I've written. I like this one a lot.

At any rate, Grindhouse comes out this weekend and it's been getting crazy good reviews. It's funny, too - because oddly enough, the critics seem to like it, but the blogosphere has already gotten sick of the hype. Oh, when will critics and the blogosphere learn to get along?

Personally, I find it the same kind of contemptible ";too cool for the room" atmosphere that makes reading most blogs 90% unbearable.

Incidentally, Theater Hopper falls comfortably within the remaining 10%...

As much as I wish it weren't the case, I probably won't be seeing Grindhouse this weekend. It's a shame, because I know this is one film everyone is going to be talking about. I'm not really blaming it on the fact that I have a 6 week old baby, thought. I'm blaming it on Cami entirely. Yeah, she has no desire to see it. ;-D

I'm just havin' fun. It's not like I can blame her for not wanting to see it. Zombies, blood, gore... not her bag. It's not really my bag, either. I just want to hear some whip-smart Tarantino dialogue and see the homage to the 70's in full effect. She said I could go see a matinee if I wanted. But underneath you could tell there was a line of venom. "If you take off for three hours to see this movie, so help me..." that's what the look she shot me said in an instant. Sometimes to be an effective communicator, you gotta read the non-verbals.

Remiss as I am about the situation, I know you guys will have fun seeing Grindhouse this weekend and I want you to report back to me. Certainly it can't be an more depraved than today's comic!

Have a great weekend!

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AN EASY NUT TO CRACK

by Tom on April 4, 2007 at 12:00 am
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(5 votes, average: 8.00 out of 10)
Grindhouse, Cherry Darling, Planet Terror, gun leg, advantages, walnut

I hope you guys enjoyed the second installment of our dissertation on the advantages and disadvantages of having a girlfriend with a gun for a leg. It's a serious debate. Compliments to Grindhouse for the inspiration. Stay tuned for Friday's exciting conclusion that will put the discussion to rest once and for all!

Sadly, not a lot of movie news for you today. But if you want to get my opinion on Blades of Glory, you should download Monday's episode of The Triple Feature. Gordon, Joe and I rave about it for nearly half an hour. Yeah, we liked it.

We also discussed The Lookout, getting into movies for free and the annoying trend of releasing DVDs with added features shortly before the next installment in a franchise is about to hit theaters. There's a Fantastic Four extended cut coming soon and I think Spider-Man 2.1 is already available. What a crock. We hit the issues head-on over at The Triple Feature. Download Monday's show and you'll see what I mean.

Can I solicit you guys for a little feedback? I was thinking about the comic book conventions I planned on attending this year as part of my initiative to sell of my remaining stock of Theater Hopper: Year One and Theater Hopper: Year Two. With Henry now in our lives, it's really difficult for me to imagine being away from him for that long. Now I'm worried that I'm not going to be able to sell off what I have before producing Theater Hopper: Year Three - which I had hoped to do by August of this year.

The first book sold great for me. I was able to build a lot of buzz around it and got a lot of orders out the door. I still have plenty of copies left over, but not as many copies as I have of the second book.

I think after the success of the first book, I bit off a little more than I could chew and dove head-first into the second, thinking orders could be matched before the holidays. By that point, I think people were burnt out on me talking about the books all the time and orders weren't as strong.

I don't want to dive back into those self-promotional heydays, but I gotta unload some of these books!

Price cuts aren't an option. They're as cheap as I can make them and still turn a profit. I've flirted with distribution through Diamond Comics to get the books into comic book stores. But the problem is, they want too big of a cut. Again, no way to turn a profit if I go through them. The only way the books can succeed financially is if I sell them on a one-to-one basis either through the site or going door-to-door at my local comic book shops and book stores. I've tried to make them enticing by discounting bundled orders and a few of you seem to like that. But there's still more work to be done.

So let me pose the question to you - what kind of incentives would you like to see to buy copies of my books? Right now, each book that's shipped includes my signature and a word of thanks. But maybe I need to do more? For people who pre-ordered the first book, I included a one-of-a-kind sketch and people really seemed to like it. Should I try to do the same thing for Year Two? What would you like to see?

I'd really appreciate any feedback you guys can give me in the comments section. Seems like a great opportunity to get a discussion going. Typically in the past I would ask you guys to send in e-mails. Now that we have this new feature, we can really do some brainstorming together. So what do you say?

Thanks and have a great Wednesday!

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OUTGUNNED

by Tom on April 2, 2007 at 12:00 am
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(4 votes, average: 9.25 out of 10)
Grindhouse, Planet Terror, Rose McGowan, Cherry Darling, gun leg, argument, Kurt Russell

In honor of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse opening in theaters this Friday, I'm doing a series of strips detailing the advantages and disadvantages of having a girlfriend with a high-powered machine gun for a leg. I hope you find it enlightening.

Not much to say about Grindhouse right now except that I've heard Rodriguez's first half - the zombie romp called "Planet Terror" - is a hyper-violent, ultra-gory disorganized mess. Apparently production was thrown into upheaval when the crew reported back to Rodriguez's wife of 14 years that he was having an affair with Rose McGowan. On-set flings happen all the time and it's probably not the business of the crew to tattle on the director. That is, except when the director's wife is PRODUCING THE FILM!  That's 15 kinds of stupid. Talk about don't poop where you eat!

At any rate, I didn't have high hopes for "Planet Terror" anyway. I'm not a big zombie fan. Never was. I don't think people have to belong to a group of the walking damned to show great inhumanity to another man. Sure, they weren't eating brains on the sands of Iwa Jima, but comb through history sometime and you'll find a few close seconds.

Pretty much at this point Rodriguez's contribution to Grindhouse is the striking visual of Rose McGowan's leg having been replaced with a machine gun. I don't care how much the movie sucks - it's wormed it's way into geekdom's heart with that brilliant juxtaposition. Say all you want about these guys regurgitating content from the obscure recesses of pop culture's dark corners... You've never seen a girl with a machine gun leg before.

Tonight is another Triple Feature talk cast and I hope all of you who came to check us out last week as part of our Copying Beethoven DVD giveaway will come back to check us out tonight. This week we'll be talking about Blades of Glory, The Lookout and a funny little tale of woe from Joe Love's Crappy Movies's Joe Dunn about seeing movies for free. Oh, and Gordon McAlpin from Multiplex will be there, too.

Log in to TalkShoe tonight at 9:00 PM CST and we'll be taking your calls!

Oh, and don't forget - Copying Beethoven comes out on DVD tomorrow, April 3. I haven't received copies from Fox Entertainment yet, so I guess we're still accepting submissions! Just download last week's Triple Feature for the first half of the clue and then check out last Wednesday's blog for the second half!

By the way, you guys might have noticed that I've switched up my advertising options through Project Wonderful on the right hand side of the blog. I decided to give a little more prominence to the ads since there is usually a lot of empty space to the right. If you want to get your ad on Theater Hopper for the cheap, check us out through Project Wonderful!

That's about it for me tonight. Sorry, but I'm kind of dragging today. I spent pretty much all day Sunday cleaning out my basement and juggling Henry.

I'll catch up with you soon!

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