Posts Tagged ‘Dewey’
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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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Is Dewey as sweet and cuddly as he appears? Maybe not…
I don’t know if today’s comic is as funny as it could be on it’s own, but it establishes the direction of the arc. I think you guys will like what I have in store for Dewey in the next couple of days.
If you’re not on board with this one, well, too bad. I’ve been sick since about 11:00 Monday. Throwing up. Multiple bathroom trips. Chills. Fever. The works. I actually took a sick day from work to recouperate. I NEVER do that. I didn’t start feeling better until about 4:00 yesterday afternoon, but my head was still too foggy to come up with anything complex. Oh, well. It’s the destination, not the journey, right? Or have I mixed that up again?
King Kong comes out today. Don’t know if Cami and I will be able to make it out tonight to see it. I know I have some catching up to do on some other household duties since I was out of commission for the last two days. Namely, the two to four inches of snow that dropped on us last night. The driveway won’t shovel itself!
I’m happy to see that Kong is getting mostly positive reviews. In some cases raves! I don’t know why, but for the longest time, it seemed like some of the bigger critics and box office handicappers had it out for this movie to fail. Something about the bloated $200 plus budget, the fact that Peter Jackson’s movie is almost a full hour longer than the original and some even arguing that a remake need not be made at all.
I can see the argument on that last point. Especially when you factor in Gus Van Sant’s shot-by-shot remake of Psycho from a few years back. But by-in-large, I think the nay-sayers wanted to see a little cosmic comeuppance befall Jackson after he won Best Picture and Best Director for Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. I mean, I think we can all be honest and say that was a "gold watch" in terms of being rewarded. I don’t know if it was the better picture when stacked up against Mystic River. It certainly wasn’t the best of the three films in the Lord of the Rings trillogy – not with all those tacked on endings. It was pretty much a way for the Academy to say "Good job on doing these three huge films back-to-back-to-back, have them be profitable and not killing yourself. Take this home and put it on your mantle."
That said, I’m glad the nay-sayers are wrong. I’ve been a Jackson fan since Meet the Feebles and really got a kick out of the underated The Frighteners. I think Kong will go a long way toward solidifying his reputation as this generation’s go-to guy for the all-out "big entertainment" blockbuster. A Spielberg replacement, perhaps? Just a thought.
Sorry I don’t have much more to say. I’m blaming the illness and will leave it at that. Hopefully I’ll be a little more sharp on Friday. See you then!
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Most people would probably be upset to have all of their laundry strewn across the floor, but Dewey makes michief fun! Even though we know the terrible truth about him!
Man, Dewey’s a jerk!
I hope you’re enjoying the arc so far. I’m gonna tie things up next week by actually getting the characters into – y’know… A MOVIE THEATER? Oh, oh! And making MOVIE REFERENCES! And guess what? I’ll even tie it back into King Kong. Yes, Virgina. There is a Santa Claus.
Speaking of the petulant ape, tuns out Peter Jackson’s opus only earned $9.7 million on it’s opening day. Remember those nay-sayers that wanted to see Jackson fail? Maybe they’re getting their wish?
$10 million on a Wednesday is nothing to sneeze at, but for a movie supposedly as large as this one having the advertising behind it that it does, that’s kind of a surprise. It ranked 21st on the all-time list for Wednesday openings. Universal was looking for Kong to do about $80 to $90 million in business over the first five days. Now they’re lowering their estimates around $55 to $65 million.
Rumor has it that Kong is having trouble attracting women, which makes sense to me. In my mind, monster movies typically occupy the same head-space in men where the Three Stooge’s and baseball statistics go. Are there any women readers out there that would either like to confirm or deny these theories? As always, we talk about the newest movies in the THorum.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the 3 hour running time has also been keeping people away. At least until the weekend. People lead hectic lives, made even more hectic by the holiday season. If you had 3 hours to kill on a Wednesday night, would you use it to see a giant monkey picture or to round up the last few presents for friends and family?
Or… y’know. Volunteer at a soup kitchen, or whatever.
Either way, it’s not like summer where people can kind of blow off work to see Star Wars: Episode III and their obligations aren’t as stacked up. Kong will do just fine over the course holiday, especially this last weekend before Christmas. People will be out in force in the nation’s malls, running around like idiots when they’ll say, "Man, I could really use a break. Wanna go see a movie? King Kong? 3 hours? PERFECT." Sites like The Drudge Report have prematurely labeled the film "King Bomb." They’ll be proven wrong.
Incidentally, what business does The Drudge Report have reporting movies? Slow day at the office, guys?
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Carrying around all that extra monkey weight can sometimes lead to an uncomfortable situation.
Longtime fans of the strip will recognize the gag I’ve busted out of retirement for today’s comic. Can you believe the last time I used it was July, 2003? Seems like it’s been with us forever.
Cami and I were finally able to get our holiday shopping set aside and went to see King Kong on Saturday. We were really surprised that there weren’t more people in the theater. We went to the 7:00 show. We thought for sure it would be packed. Ended up that maybe a third of the theater was full.
Apparently this is happening in a lot of theaters across the country. Last Wednesday’s $10 million take wasn’t a fluke. It really was an indicator of audience interest in this picture. Instead of the film earning in the $80 – 90 million range over the first five days (an a minimum of $60 million over the weekend) it underperformed and took in a hair over $50 million.
It’ll be interesting to see how the film does over the Christmas holiday. Maybe families are waiting until they have more free time to show up en masse. Maybe it was a marketing misstep on the part of Universal to release the film the week before Christmas because now – as I’m hearing it – audience reaction has been mixed. It’s having trouble living up to the hype and all those glowing reviews.
What was my take on the film? I’m not going to martyr myself and say I hated it, but I will admit there were things about the movie that I didn’t enjoy. I mean, things about the movie that flat-out disgusted me.
Okay, I’m gonna dive into this a little now. So if you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want it ruined, be warned…
HERE BE SPOILERS!
The first act of the movie is ponderously slow. EXCRUTIATINGLY slow. You could argue that they’re setting up the exposition, and that’s fine. But there was easily 20 minutes of footage here that could have been tossed out to tighten up the running time. The relationship between the First Mate and the young sailor, for example. They toss that in there to add emotional weight to one of the later scenes on Skull Island. Except when that scene finally rolls around, it doesn’t deliver because we never cared about these characters in the first place.
The best part of the movie hands down is the second act on Skull Island. It looks as foreboding as it sounds and the place is totally out of control. The half-possessed natives on the island were truly terrifying. The anguished faces carved into all of the rocks was a brilliant touch.
Kong himself was a marvel to behold. Andy Serkis’ motion-captured performance as the great ape was totally naturalistic and I bought into it. I think it’s safe to say that those blokes in the Weta Workshop in New Zealand are giving ILM a SERIOUS run for their money when it comes to effects work. All the little touches to the scars on Kong’s face to the debris in his fur felt totally right. I believed in him as a character.
The fight between Kong and the two Tyrannasaurus Rex is worth the price of admission alone. It’s choreographed brilliantly and is the exact turning point in the movie where you start to root for the monster as he shows his protective instinct toward Naomi Watts’ Ann Darrow. When Kong cracks open the jaw of the dinosaur, twists his neck around then stands triumphantly over the giant leathery corpse – you half expect a ring announcer to step out, microphone in hand and shout "WINNAH! KONG!"
That said, as good as the dinosaur fight is… really, as good as all the giant critter footage is – you watch it and get the sense that things just keep unspooling with no end. Some of these chase sequences and fights go on FOREVER. Watching them, you’re not really bored, but you wonder when it’s going to end. There are two possible arguments to this. Either Peter Jackson has no sense of control and decided to throw everything up on the screen… OR it’s Jackson’s way of re-enforcing part of the movie’s theme that mankind cannot control nature. When you think you’re on top of things, nature will always find a way to surprise you. Nature always wins. I haven’t figured out which one of the two I believe.
I’ll say this; The scene with all the bugs is probably one of the creepiest, grossest and most uncomfortable I’ve had to sit through all year. I don’t think it’s a bad scene. Watching Andy Serkis (as the ship’s mysterious cook Lumpy!) be consumed by giant earthworms isn’t something you see every day. What made it difficult is that we had to endure it immediately after the rousing Kong/dinosuar battle. You aren’t given a chance to come down from that before Jackson steers you headlong into an entirely different set of extreme emotions. I think this is part of what’s contributing to the "everything but the kitchen sink" feeling you get from the picture.
Watching the movie, you start to notice that there are several long stretches where there is almost no dialogue. I think when Kong and Darrow are up on the high cliff watching the sunset, when Darrow says "Beautiful," it’s the first word uttered in the last 30 minutes. It’s jarring. It took me right out of that scene.
There are a lot of little moments that broke the suspension of disbelief for me. Ironically, it wasn’t the fantastic over-sized creatures that I found distracting. I thought they were the most realistic things in the movie. Instead, it was the emotional stuff that felt fabricated to me.
I had a hard time believing that Adrien Brody’s screenwriter character Jack Driscoll could care so deeply about Darrow after only having kissed her once. We don’t really see any deep bond between the two. Just some awkward courtship. Now suddenly he’s willing to risk life and limb – being EATEN – to save this stranger? Maybe he’s answering to some more grandiose sense of chivalry that existed in the 1930’s, but I’m not buying it. Nor am I willing to buy that so many of the ship’s crew would also risk so much. As she’s written, Darrow doesn’t seem like anything special. If anything, she comes off a little dumb. What’s worth rescuing? The answer is they HAVE to because the script says they do.
I don’t believe for a minute that Driscoll could switch gears from big city screenwriter to balls-out action hero like he did. Kicking Velocoraptors in the face, firing machine guns. Nope. Sorry. Not plausable. I also didn’t believe that the actor character played by Kyle Chander could retreat in cowardace, only to return at the last possible minute as the leader of a rescue party, swinging on vines and shooting up the place like Rambo. Perhaps if Jackson had framed these heroics within the context that inside this fantastic situation, these individuals dug deep to uncover fantastic abilities and resources within themselves – but I didn’t feel like this was established.
Additionally, Darrow’s near-romantic relationship with Kong also felt forced. I can understand that they have this bond because she provides an emotional connection for him where there has been none for ages (Kong appears to be the last of his kind). For Darrow, Kong provides protection against and uncertain and dangerous environment. But once the action moves back to New York, that Darrow someone how instinctively knows to go to Kong when things go haywire seemed a little convienient. Also, that whole scene with them spinning around on the frozen lake like it was some kind of first date just felt weird.
Do you have any idea how cold it would have to be to freeze the ice to the point where it was thick enough to support the weight of a 25 foot tall gorilla? Meanwhile, Darrow in her little silk dress seems as comfortable as can be. Watching her in that costume – especially atop the Empire State Building where winds are probably, y’know… about 30 miles an hour – I kept thinking "Isn’t she cold?" Then I became annoyed. "WHY ISN’T SHE COLD?!"
I think the thing that really tweaked me about the movie and left me with a bitter taste in my mouth was the delivery of that last, classic line. "Oh no. It wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast." They gave that line to Jack Black’s dispicable Carl Denham. The line is supposed to reflect that Kong wasn’t really a monster. It’s we, the humans who are the savages. But by giving the line to Darrow, it comes off less as commentary on humanity’s potential for cruelty and more like he’s trying to pawn off his responsibilty for capturing Kong and putting him display to a gawking public on Darrow. The act would be within character for Denham, but it kind of spits on the idea of the source material.
END SPOILERS
Overall, I thought the movie was good. I was wrapped up in a lot of the action seqeunces and certainly fell for the "WOW!" factor of it. But the emotional stuff really bugged the crap out of me. Maybe I’m off base. Cami thought that was the best part of the movie. She was totally captivated by Darrow’s relationship with Kong. I don’t know. Maybe I missed something.
If you have thoughts about King Kong or want to leave your own review, please check out our User Movie Review Database. You can leave your thoughts on nearly every movie Theater Hopper has discussed in the last three and a half years. We’re adding new movies all the time. Here’s the link to King Kong’s specific listing.
Review away!
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One might ask themselves, "How is a tiny primate like Dewey able to lift a full grown woman over his head?" The preliminary answer is because he works out. The secondary answer is because it’s a comic, silly.
Despite the rudementary finishes on today’s comic, it took me forever to draw and put up on the site. I was really dragging my heels. I think part of it was because the punchline was part of a foregone conclusion. At least in my mind. But it serves it’s purpose in advancing the story arc to the point we can wrap things up on Friday. After that, it’ll be business as usual, I swear.
Truthfully, I think today’s incentive sketch is funnier, but that’s just me.
Another reason I think I was dragging my feet last night is because today is my birthday and Cami and I are taking the day off. Working on a comic with the knowledge that you don’t have to be alert for your day job the following morning is freeing in a sense. But it also removes the threat of a deadline, which is also dangerous. How these guys who produce five times a day keep up with it is beyond me.
Then again, if I didn’t have a day job and were able to take my time with a comic over the course of the day, maybe I wouldn’t feel so rushed in the last four hours I spend awake before starting the cycle all over again.
Not much special planned for my birthday. Basically just kicking back and spending the day with Cami. We’ll get lunch, probably buy comics, hang around the house for a while, get dinner. Then, this evening, we’re going sledding. There’s a place south of Des Moines with a 16-story hill and a tow line that carries you to the top. We don’t have a lot of snow on the ground right now, but this place makes their own snow every day. I’ve wanted to go there since I was in high school, but it’s never worked out. This time, I’m MAKING people go!
Thursday we’re going out for dinner and drinks with Jared and his wife. Jared’s better half also has a late December birthday, so we’re kind of doing the joint celebration thing. It’ll be fun.
Friday we’re going to see Fun with Dick and Jane with my parents and in-laws before going to dinner together. I don’t know why I keep falling for Jim Carrey movies. I should know better by now that when he’s in manic-crazy mode, there’s a certain quality deficiency. Am I weird because I tend to prefer him in dramatic roles? Don’t get me wrong – I think he’s funny. But these kind of movies tend to become all about *him* and I think the rest of the production suffers.
I shouldn’t think so hard about it. I just wanna laugh.
At some point this weekend I’m sure we’ll see The Family Stone and possibly Rumor Has It… if the reviews are any good. Those are a couple of warm, fuzzy, non-threatening movies for the holidays.
Check in with you guys later. If you’re stuck at work today, hang in there!
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Truman takes to the skies! Afterwords, he takes a little nap. He deserves it.
Apologies for the tardiness of the strip. Thursday night I went out with Jared, his wife Patti and Cami as part of a joint birthday celebration. We didn’t get in until way late and I wasn’t able to start working on the comic until yesterday morning. Then, yesterday afternoon we went out with my parents and in-laws to see Fun With Dick and Jane and then have dinner. It’s been hectic!
I suppose there was something to be said for the complexity of this strip. For some reason, I was under a total block in terms of how to stage the panels. Plus, not really knowing what a bi-plane looked like and being too stubborn to do research made me keep second-guessing my design. I suppose it turned out well.
And with that, we conclude the Dewey/King Kong storyline? What was Dewey’s ultimate fate? We may never know. Will Dewey ever return? Perhaps.
One of the great things about the holiday break is catching up on movies you’ve missed. Cami and I have been watching stuff at home like Roman Holiday as well as going out to the theater to see movies like The Family Stone as well.
If you haven’t seen The Family Stone, I would recommend it. The ending is a little sappy and, frankly, a bit of a downer. But I liked how the movie unfolded in these interested ways. Basically, it’s the story of a very liberal Massachusetts family coming together for the holidays. The eldest son brings home the very stuffy, uptight businesswoman he intends to marry and everyone butts heads. That’s the high level look. But what motivates the characters reaction to this interloper are very interesting. The ultimate conclusion I felt was pretty satisfying.
Something I wasn’t expecting however was how easily Luke Wilson walked away with the whole movie. I don’t know what it was about his performance that I found so enjoyable. He was essentially doing the same laid-back philosophy dude he does in every movie. But perhaps the chemistry was right this time around. Compared to the other actors, he certainly sticks out.
Something else? Dermot Mulroney isn’t looking very well these days. Looks a little rough around the edges. That’s a scary proposition for an actor who’s pretty much cast in roles for his looks, because it CERTAINLY isn’t his acting. The stairwell banister has more personality than he does.
Beyond that, nothing more insightful. I don’t really have any strong opinions about Fun With Dick and Jane (which I mentioned earlier). It was serviceable, but not laugh out loud funny. Kind of disappointing for a Judd Apatow screenplay, really. I mean, compared to the strength of Wedding Crashers and The 40 Year-Old Virgin, this one doesn’t really register on the Richter scale. If you’re a fan of Jim Carrey, you’ll probably enjoy watching him mug across the screen. There’s a manic vibe that he emits that becomes contagious to the rest of the cast and that picks up the pace of the storytelling, which is good. But I pretty much forgot everything I watched immediately after leaving the theater.
I’ll be away from my computer for the next two days. Going over to the in-laws tonight for our Christmas, then over to my parents house the next day for another round.
If you’re celebrating this weekend, stay safe and have a happy holiday!
If you’re not celebrating, know that I love you just the same!
Best wishes to all!
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Ask you may recall, Tom and Cami had a monkey friend that was hanging around for a while. His name was Dewey and he didn’t get along with Truman so well. Turns out he didn’t die! Good work if you can get it… Don’t worry, though. He’s not coming back full-time. Just a nice "how do you do" from the Left Coast.
Every once and while I get the itch to do a comic without and dialouge. Actually, that and facial expressions have become very interesting to me lately. I don’t know why I feel the need to share that with you. I guess there’s never been much shame in admitting that I’m still learning new things all the time and I enjoy discussing the means by which I push story and art in different directions.
Not much to say about the comic beyond that.
I should probably let you guys know that I’ve finished the first draft of the Theater Hopper: Year One book. In case you don’t recall me mentioning it earlier, I’ve been coming into my office on the weekends collecting the comic from the first year of the site – all 156 of them – and writing commentary for each. On Saturday I finished all of the layout and commentary work. Now I’m onto the proofing stage. I’m going to print out the whole book and hand it over to Cami for spelling and grammar screw-ups – of which I am certain there will be many. Cami has a much better eye for these kinds of things. She’s worked in public relations for years, but she’s been good at that kind of thing since high school. Me? I just draw pretty pictures. I never double-check my work.
Anyway, while Cami is working on the content proof, I’ll be writing the introduction, dropping in the cross-over comics I did with Movie Punks, adding the guest strips from that era and writing a tutorial on how I put together the comic. I’m looking forward to that last one. We’re going to stage a bunch of photos and show you my work space. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.
I was going to write about seeing The Pink Panther and Capote this weekend, but I forgot what I was going to say. I’ll leave another post if it comes back to me.
Later!
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The first order of business today is a call to arms. Today is June 1. That means the ranking list over at Top Web Comics has been reset. If we’re going to crack the Top 10, this is our best opportunity. So, please, for The Gipper… vote for Theater Hopper at Top Web Comics right now.
For your trouble, you can see how Truman handles the Buzz and Woody uprising in his own inimitable style!
Today’s comic calls back to something very specific in Theater Hopper’s history. Back in 2005, Cami gave Tom an early Christmas present – Dewey, the havok-wrecking monkey. Truman and Dewey didn’t get along with each other, which is expected when a new pet is brought into the home. But things came to a head after Tom snuck Dewey into a screening of King Kong. It fill him will all sorts of terrible ideas. Of course, Truman came to the rescue the only way you can possibly hope to stop a rampaging monkey… buy flying a biplane, guns blazing.
I don’t know if you’ve seen Up yet, but if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve probably seeing Dug the talking Dog. Dug is a member of a larger pack of talking dogs and, well, long story short… at one point, three of them fly biplanes.
YOU TOTALLY STOLE MY IDEA, PIXAR!
Please note my tongue placed firmly in cheek because I TOTALLY stole the dog-flying-a-bi-plane gag from Charles Schultz, to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude.
But, yeah… I have to admit it was my own comic that came to mind when I watched that scene in the movie.
Describing the dogs in biplanes scene makes me realize how completely odd Up is. Maybe even a little to idiosyncratic for its own good. But I don’t care. I love, love, LOVED this movie. Despite its flourishes, Up is probably Pixar’s most emotionally relevant film to date.
I never thought Pixar would be capable of making me care about their characters as much as they were able to hook me with Wall-E and Eve. If they can make you care about robots in love, they can do anything.
As we know, Up is the story of Carl Fredrickson, a widower who ties thousands of balloons to his house and flies it to South America. But what we don’t know is where Carl got the idea.
In the film’s first act, we’re introduced to Carl’s childhood sweetheart, Ellie – a girl who, in all likelihood, for who the term “moxie” was invented. It is her childhood dream to build a house next to Paradise Falls. In a stirring, wordless montage, we see the couple grow old together, scrimping and saving to fund their bold adventure into the jungle. Before long, Ellie succumbs to old age, leaving Carl to fend for himself. Punctuated by Michael Giacchino’s brilliant score, both Cami and I were an emotional wreck after watching that scene. That’s when Up got its hooks into us – deep. After that, you’ll pretty much let a movie get away with anything – even a trio of talking talks flying biplanes.
I can’t stress the value of Giacchino’s score in this one, folks. Occasionally when Carl looks to the heavens and speaks to the ethereal Ellie, Giacchino’s score returns to the first act and drags up those memories of a life spent together. Carl’s pain becomes our pain as we remember alongside him. Absolutely fantastic work. That’s why I was disappointed to learn that Disney is not releasing the Up original soundtrack as a physical CD, but in digital download only.
I think what I appreciate most about Up, is that even though it is pulling your heartstrings, it never feels manipulative. It feels completely organic to the story. Carl’s quest to the Amazon is completely in service to his wife’s wishes. Love that conquers continents. The romantic in me can’t resist.
Additionally, Carl is joined by a young stowaway, Russell – a motormouth “Wilderness Explorer” seeking to collect his “Assisting the Elderly” badge so he can become a Senior Explorer. Rotund, yet hyperactive, Russell’s backstory as a child of divorce is only alluded to. But it is a powerful representation of what he hopes his obsessive collection of badges will achieve – his father’s attention and approval. Russell never says as much in such detail, but the animators make his despondency clear on his face. That’s note-perfect storytelling, folks. If nothing else, Pete Docter’s direction does a fantastic job of showing and not telling.
In addition to Up being Pixar’s more emotionally affecting film, I will also go out on a limb and say it is it’s funniest. Lots of rapid-fire jokes throughout, mainly courtesy of its animal cast introduced in the second act – Dug, the aforementioned talking dog and Kevin, an exotic 9 foot tall bird that joins them on their journey.
Things fall apart a little bit in the third act as Carl and Russell bump into the recluse adventurer Charles Muntz who has tucked himself away in the tabletop mountains seeking to capture one of Kevin’s species to bring back to the civilized world. At this point, the film becomes more of a farce than an adventure and if I were to lob any criticism toward the film, it would land here.
But as I said earlier, these details are almost incidental to the primary plot device of seeing Carl through on his epic quest. His is almost a Quixotic folly, but you believe in the love for his wife and cheer him on.
Of course, what Carl discovers after the task is complete and the lesson learned that adventure can be found in your own backyard, become profound for their simplicity. Carl traversed the globe keeping everything familiar to him within arms reach. But in order to achieve peace, Carl has to let go of everything that was keeping him locked inside a widower’s despondency. We witness his growth as a characters and as all his pain is lifted off his shoulders. It’s an amazing transformation.
I can’t recommend Up highly enough. It is far and away my favorite film of 2009.
What about you? Did you see Up this weekend? Did you succumb to it’s emotional right hook or did the film’s eccentricities get in the way? Leave your comments below!
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Dec27
GUEST STRIP – JESSE GUIHER
December 27th, 2012 |- Comics »
- Comics »
- Guest Strip
(4 votes, average: 10.00 out of 10)
I know that the comic is ending in less than a week and maybe now seems like an odd time to share some fan art. But, c’mon. Did you look at that thing up there? I HAD to share it.
The above piece of art comes from Jesse Guiher. You can learn more about him at his web site – Tiger Tail Art.
Jesse actually wrote me a few months ago asking me about some of my favorite movies. Bi-polar as I am, I remember suggesting both Vertigo and Anchorman. Little did I know that inquiry would result in this piece of fantastic art!
I don’t know if there’s more that I can say about it other than I am very appreciative to have fans like Jesse who pour their heart and their talent into pieces like this.
Jesse was very complimentary to me in his e-mail. “I am sorry to see Theater Hopper going away, it was one of a handful of comic sites that influenced me to try my own hand at starting a comic on the web after sending countless submissions to syndicates over the years,” he said.
My reaction to that kind of praise is to almost shy away from it. I’ve had people over the years tell me I’ve been an influence to them – which I appreciate – but I’ve never doubted for a second that these talented individuals couldn’t have made their dreams real on their own.
But then you look at a piece like this and it’s kind of hard to ignore.
And I am humbled further.
Thanks, Jesse. And thanks to all of the fans that have kept me humble over the years. Cheers.
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