Posts Tagged ‘aliens’
7 items.
For those of you wondering if I’ve replaced Tom and Jared with two new guys, don’t worry. They’re just another set of characters I like to dust off every once in a while. Let’s call them “The Slacker Screenwriters”. They’ve actually appeared in a couple of comics before.
National Treasure comes out today and every fiber of my being is telling me it’s gonna be an early Thanksgiving turkey. First, it’s a Jerry Bruckheimer production, so you have to go into it knowing it’ll contain high levels of Hollywood cheese.
Second, the director – Jon Turteltaub – directed While You Were Sleeping, Cool Runnings AND 3 Ninjas. Not a confidence boosting resume.
Third, his screenwriters don’t fare much better. Jim Kouf wrote Operation Dumbo Drop. Partners Cormac and Marianne Wibberley had a hand in Bad Boys II, Charlie’s Angles: Full Throttle and I Spy. None of these films prose inspires confidence.
Basically, it’s the homogenized effort of a handful of filmmakers with questionable box office history. I mean, the whole thing smacks of this lazy attitude like, “We couldn’t get the rights to The DaVinci Code, but let’s make a movie just like it and just sub out Renaissance painters with American history.”
Don’t even get me started about Nic Cage’s very obvious and very bad wig or his character’s laughable name of Benjamin Franklin Gates. I mean, why not just go full tilt with it and call him “Dash Charming” or friggin’ “Dudley Do-Right”, or something? My eyes are rolling out of my head over here.
But yet how can a film that co-stars Harvey Kietel, Sean Bean, Jon Voight and Christopher Plummer be ALL bad? All of these actors I respect and admire, so surely they’re bringing something of worth to the table.
That’s probably why, despite the film’s outlandish plot, I still plan on seeing it tonight. I don’t know. I’m just really in the mood for a dumb action/adventure movie right about now. I know I’ll be dumber for it later, but it’ll be a good time at the movies and I can just turn my brain off for a while.
I’ll make up for it later when Mike Nichols’ Closer comes out the week after Thanksgiving.
Switching gears for a moment, I wanted to address some business relating to the site. Theater Hopper is hosted by a very nice fellow (and THorum Moderator) Brian Arnold. Brian is in a bit of a pinch right now and asked me to share with you a message regarding his ability to service this site. It is as follows:
Currently, the server we have is pretty rock solid. The problems we’ve had have been minimal, but the company has been less and less reliable in certain areas, and so it’s time to move. Moving will also be an upgrade, including more disk space on the server, as well as literally a processor that is twice as fast, and a connection that is 10 times faster, meaning you’ll get more funny at ever greater speeds! However, moving isn’t exactly cheap.
If every single visitor to TH gave one penny, we’d have the money to move. Seriously, we don’t need tons of money. Technically, we don’t need any money. If you don’t give anything, the site will still be here for your enjoyment. Donating helps us to make the move to the better server. Any amount of money over and above the needed initial cost will go into future hosting costs.
That said, giving just a penny through Paypal, while thoughtful, doesn’t really work. Paypal takes 30 cents no matter what, so when you donate, please give at least 32 cents, so that a penny does reach us
You don’t have to give money, but every dollar is appreciated. To donate, click here. Thanks! – Brian
So basically this isn’t a “have to” situation. If you guys aren’t able to donate to help Brian’s cause, it’s not a big deal. But Brian offers excellent service and I wanted to return the favor. If you’re interested in the long term viability of Theater Hopper – faster performance, more reliable connections – then feel free to donate. Or maybe you’re just feeling generous and want to help a fellow tech guy in need. We’re not asking for much. A dollar will do. Heck, even fifty cents will do. Whatever sounds fair. We appreciate the opportunity to bring this to your attention.
With that out of the way, I hope everyone has a great weekend. I know I will. I’m typing this from home right now. I’m taking a personal day off from work today and I have a WHOLE LIST of improvements I’m going to make to the site on my day off. Really bring things up to speed. If you visit the site over the weekend, you’ll probably see them start popping up here and there. But expect a full breakdown of site additions and revisions on Monday.
Oh, and if you feel up to it, sign up in The THorum and participate in our little weekly ritual – The Friday Five. We ask you five questions, you answer them. Couldn’t be easier! If you were looking for a window of opportunity to join the community, it’s a great way to introduce yourself and learn more about the other people online! Check it out!
Later!
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I wish I had a little more room in the comic to really capture the epic-ness of a Monster versus Alien versus Robot versus Ninja versus Monkey beat down. I hope the ASPCA doesn’t mind that I put a shuriken between the eyes of Bobo there.
I’m still pretty pumped to see Monsters vs. Aliens this weekend even though some reviews are starting to come back negative. I guess some are complaining that it’s kind of short on laughs and not very innovative. Some people are saying it’s the Bad Old Days of Dreamworks Animation and not the blockbuster Kung-Fu Panda was.
I suppose maybe some of that is to be expected. After all, the director is the same guy who wrote and directed Shark Tale. But I don’t care. I just want to watch something fun, bright and colorful. MVA fits the bill. Heck, I think I’m even going to shell out a few extra bucks to see it in 3D! Why not? What else am I going to see A Haunting in Connecticut? I think not. I’ll report back later with my findings.
I don’t have very much to talk about today. So, instead, I’ll take this opportunity to point you to my good friend Joe Dunn’s web comic Joe Loves Crappy Movies. Joe recently made a big announcement. His first book Joe Loves Crappy Movies: Volume One is now available from his site.
You guys really gotta check this out. Odds are, if you’re reading Theater Hopper, you’re probably already reading JCLM. But if you’re not, you’re gonna love it. Joe put a lot of work into this book to really add value beyond what you get on his site for free.
Most impressively, he’s selling “Artist Editions” of the book featuring kick-ass original sketches inside. People who order before Sunday get upgraded for free! You gotta look at the work he’s doing with these sketches. Check out this thread in his forum. They’re amazing.
Joe’s a great guy and I really want him to have a lot of success with his first book. So maybe you can take some of your tax return and invest it in something you’re really going to enjoy. Take my word for it.
That’s all I have for today. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you guys next week!
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As you’ve probably heard, District 9 comes out this weekend. Personally, I’m very excited to see it if for no other reason than to watch a science fiction movie with a little more on its mind than the next great space battle or awesome explosion.
Don’t get my wrong – space battles and explosions are great. But that’s also what action movies are for. Whatever happened to good sci-fi movies that twisted the screws a little bit or made us consider the human condition? Between District 9 and Moon, 2009 is shaping up to be a very good year for the genre.
I’m going to try and squeeze in an early matinee of District 9 this morning before rushing to meet Cami for a showing of The Time Traveler’s Wife immediately after. It’s going to be hard, but I think I can do it.
District 9 is showing at the theater that is closest to my house at 11:10 AM. The movie is 111 minutes long. So, with trailers, that means I’ll be getting out of the movie between 1:00 and 1:15 PM.
My in-laws are watching Henry today and Cami is taking the afternoon off to have lunch with her folks and Henry where they live about 20 minutes away.
After I watch District 9, I’m going to try to meet Cami at a different theater in town where her parents live to watch The Time Traveler’s Wife. That movie starts at 1:45.
So, barring no complications, I’m going to be cutting it pretty close. But if we pull it off, it will be awesome.
What’s better is that there is an outside chance Cami and I will be seeing The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard on Sunday afternoon when my parents come over to watch Henry for a couple of hours. I talked Cami into seeing it after I showed her the Will Ferrell sky-diving clip with language and images entirely NOT safe for work.
Now I know to you all of this movie-watching might sound like negligent parenting. Not the case. Cami and I are just looking to spend a little time with each other after I was in Chicago last weekend and she was in Minneapolis the weekend before that. It just so happens that there are a bunch of awesome movies coming out this weekend, so we’re choosing to take advantage of that.
I’m kind of psyched for this little experiment. I haven’t seen 3 movies in one weekend in… I can’t remember how long. Fun!
What about you guys? Which movie are you most psyched to see this weekend? What are the odds of you seeing more than one? Leave your comments below and have a great weekend!
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I don’t know how much The Fourth Kind is on anyone else’s radar (maybe you’ve seen/heard the ads playing right now on Theater Hopper – sorry about that). Regardless, the execution of this film has me interested.
Basically, the film sets itself up as a dramatic retelling of actual events that were said to transpire in Alaska in the 1970s. Several people have been abudcted for years without any clues to their disappearances. Several years later, psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler (played by Milla Jovovich) is video taping disturbed patients who are subjects in a sleep study. Under hypnosis, they reveal that they have been subjected to alien encounters and experimentation.
What the film does next, I think is genius. It splices in some of Dr. Tyler’s “real” videotaped footage of the hypnotized patients in with the Hollywood version and it creates a layer of fear and doubt that starts to mess with you a little.
If you do a little digging, you’ll find some controversy around The Fourth Kind, but I think it’s the appropriate amount of controversy to stir interest in the film and get the audience to ask sincere questions about the veracity of what they’re watching.
When you think about movies like Paranormal Activity, Rec. or The Blair Witch Project and what they’ve done with “found” footage, The Fourth Kind is playing on another level. It’s presenting to you the “real” footage – framing it in an almost truthful, documentary context – and then contrasts it with the “pretend” version, Hollywood’s dramaticization and leaves it up to the audience to decide.
Smart stuff.
I don’t have much more to say about The Fourth Kind except to talk it up a little bit. I’ve seen ads for it here and there, but I’m not really hearing any buzz. So, if you haven’t heard about it until now, consider yourself informed.
Something else you should consider yourself informed about is the fund raising project I have going on over at Kickstarter to raise money for Theater Hopper: Year Three. I talked about it a little bit on Friday and explained what I’m doing to try and raise money and I’m bringing it up again today. There have been a few pledges over the weekend, but we’re going to need a lot more if we’re going to make goal by December 31. The holiday’s are hectic. Don’t let them get in the way of preventing you from pledging to the cause!
Visit the campaign page at Kickstarter to read more about the project, including details on the rewards you can receive by pledging at different levels!
Incidentally, I just got a copy of Adobe Premiere Effects over the weekend and I’m excited to record a little promo video explaining the project that I can post to the campaign page. I’ll let you know when that’s edited together and ready to view.
I don’t know if I’ll have a chance to put together the video tonight because I still need to watch the 1941 original Wolf Man for The Triple Feature. Since we were kind of rudderless on last week’s show, Gordon, Joe and I agreed that we needed to get back on track and the easiest way to do that was by having all three of us watch the same movie.
So, in a fit of post-Halloween examination, we’re going to discuss the classic versoin of The Wolf Man and use it as a foundation to discuss the 2010 remake starring Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins when it comes out. I can’t afford to be dead weight on this one.
It’s was a little difficult for me to run down a copy of The Wolf Man to watch before tonight’s show. Cami and I canceled our Netflix account because we were terrible about making time to watch the movies we rented. I think we need the threat of a late fee to make that kind of activity a priority anymore. Either that or I need to buy an X-Box 360 so I can download movies directly from Netflix to my console and watch them when I want to watch them. I don’t know if that would improve my odds of watching these kinds of movies or not?…
Anyway, Gordon pointed out that I can “rent” The Wolf Man online through Amazon On Demand, which I totally didn’t know you could do. It’ll kind of suck being forced to watch it on a computer monitor, but it’s the best option I have right now.
Anyway, be sure to listen to the final outcome tonight at 9:00 PM at TalkShoe.com. It’s always a good time.
That’s about it for me. Feel free to leave your thoughts about The Wolf Man (original or remake), The Fourth Kind or our new Kickstarter fund raising campaign in the comments below!
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I think everyone was left scratching their heads when The Hollywood Foreign Press nominated The Tourist, Burlesque and Red for Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical. But, for me, it was the final revelation that the Emperor TRULY wears no clothes.
I mean, the Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical category has always been a bit off a goof. Especially considering that the two genres have very little (if anything) to do with each other. And besides, how many musicals does Hollywood produce a year? One? Maybe two?
When you look at the nominees in this category, you begin to understand why comedic actors are rarely nominated for Oscars. Because, apparently, what counts as “comedy” in that town is REALLY friggin’ subjective.
I missed the first hour of the Golden Globes because I was busy being a parent (or some such nonsense) and was reading Henry stories before putting him to bed. I kind of wish I had caught the first hour because I heard Trent Reznor won Best Score for his work in The Social Network, went on stage to collect his award and that would have been very surreal to see.
But I started watching in the second hour and after about :30 minutes, thought to myself, “I’d really rather be playing video games right now.”
I managed to stick it out for the rest of the show. Chalk it up to exhaustion and not wanting to get up off the couch. But as I laid there, I asked myself “How do I get sucked into this every year? How does The Hollywood Foreign Press manage to convince me that this is important? That they’re not plying all of these celebrities with booze so the can take pictures with them later? Why does this matter?”
I still haven’t come up with a good answer for you on that one, but I’ll be sure to get back to you when I do.
More than the nominees or the winners, it seems like people are talking about Ricky Gervais as the event’s host. I guess his opening monologue was pretty incendiary and Robert Downey Jr. shot back at one point. I missed that stuff.
The stuff I did manage to see I thought was a little mean-spirited. Not that I’m against knocking celebrities off their high horses (obviously), but I’ve always kind of found Gervais to be insufferable. It’s that snarky, know-it-all tone and ridiculous grin, I think.
No doubt that Gervais is devastatingly smart, but Gervais’s put downs are never about getting the target to laugh at themselves. It’s straight up insults – “You’re a drunk! You can’t get work! You’re stupid!” – and it’s not entertaining to watch.
As I pointed out on the Theater Hopper Facebook page, I was left with the distinct impression that Gervais was doing everything in his power NOT to be asked back as host next year. Mission accomplished, bro.
If you’re curious, I’ve posted all of the Golden Globe winners in the new Theater Hopper blog – Bonus Materials. Be sure to check that out. I float a lot of odds and ends in there, so be sure to check back often. Or, feel free to subscribe to the Theater Hopper RSS feed. The blog posts show up there as well.
In the meantime, did you watch the Golden Globes last night? Were you as flummoxed as I was? What is your reaction to the nominees and the winners? Leave your comments below!
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The following is a supercut of each of Bill Paxton’s lines as Pvt. Hudson from James Cameron’s Aliens condensed into one handy YouTube video.
Considering that the summation of Paxton’s performance can be distilled to roughly 6 minutes, I think it’s a compliment to him as an actor that he could create a character so indelible in our minds that people are still quoting “Game over, man! Game over!” over 25 years later.
When you think about it, there are very few protagonists that experience the character arc that Hudson does in traditional action movies. Most characters from that era were either superheroes or cannon fodder. Hudson was a little bit of both. Chest-puffing bravado at the outset, a pants-wetting fatalist after the first attack and a hero resigned to his fate by the end. In many ways, Hudson would act like we would in that situation and I think that’s why Paxton’s interpretation of him stays with us.
God be with you, Pvt. Hudson, you glorious coward.
Thoughts?
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Apologies for the delay this week. This comic about Cowboys and Aliens was originally supposed to go up last week when it was perhaps a little more timely. That didn’t happen and now I’m wondering if anyone cares.
I’ve not yet seen Cowboys and Aliens, but no one I know seems to be talking about it – good or bad. The few reviews I’ve read basically say the film is competent, but unspectacular. All of the positive buzz that was surrounding it before its release seems to have died on the vine. Tying for first place at the box office with The Smurfs probably didn’t help.
I’ll probably end up seeing Cowboys and Aliens sometime this weekend while I am attending the Chicago Comic Con as the Rosemont Convention Center. I’m really looking forward to attending this year. I skipped out last year because I decided to go to C2E2 instead. I decided to come back to the Chicago Comic Con because, frankly, C2E2 was too expensive.
There will always be a special place in my heart for the Chicago Comic Con. It was the first big show I ever went to back in 2004. Since then, I’ve steadily progressed and learned how to operate and one of these big shows and it’s been a treat to hang out with the fans every year.
If I could do more big shows, I would. Unfortunately, I’m kind of limited to the shows I can drive to. So that means I’m pretty much stuck in the Midwest. But it’s nice having a show of this size relatively in my backyard.
If you’re attending Chicago Comic Con this weekend, you can find me in Artist Alley, table #3314. I’ll be easy to spot because my table is right next to Gordon McAlpin from Multiplex. It’ll be great to see him again.
Not sure what else to say except that I managed to somehow see both Captain America AND The Change-Up this weekend. I’d like to talk about them, but I’m kind of distracted because I’m focusing on Chicago Comic Con.
I’ll say this regarding Captain America – Chris Evans made me forget that he ever played the Human Torch.
Probably the less said about The Change-Up, the better.
But, hey! If you saw either of these movies (or Cowboys and Aliens) and want to talk about them, feel free to fire up the comments area! I’d be interested to read your thoughts. Maybe if we can prompt a conversation, I can go into more depth on both those films.
Sorry for running and gunning it this week. Please come see me at table #3314 this weekend at Chicago Comic Con! Otherwise, I’ll catch up with you next week!
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