Posts Tagged ‘relationship’

2 items.

IT’S ALL ABOUT STATUS

by Tom on October 1, 2010 at 12:00 am
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars6 Stars7 Stars8 Stars9 Stars10 Stars
(19 votes, average: 8.84 out of 10)
Facebook, The Social Network, single, status, relationship, annoying, updates, rude, David Fincher, Aaron Sorkin

First things first: The last week has been crazy and I want to thank you guys for putting up with it. I feel bad about there not being a comic on Monday and, frankly, I should have tried to work ahead. I don't really have the latitude to screw around with the update schedule now that I'm down to one comic a week.

I dunno. I guess I'm just paranoid that if I give you guys an excuse to stop reading the comic, you're going to take it. But after 8 years in the game, I think Theater Hopper is at a point where the people who love it kind of love it no matter what. I'm a little long in the tooth to be attracting new readers.

That doesn't give me the right to abuse your patience. I'm just saying maybe it's time I stop abusing myself, too.

Anyway, THANK YOU for being patient! Now that we're moved into the new house, hopefully we'll be settling into a routine soon. I got my office set up earlier in the week and there's enough room in there that I was able to drag out my old drawing table.

I've probably had this drawing table for close to 20 years. It was given to me by my Dad's cousin, who used to draft topographical maps for the Iowa Association of County Conservation Boards. He gave it to me when I was in high school and I spent a lot of time with my chair pulled up to it drawing comic book characters and large-scale compositions.

When I went to college, the drawing board stayed behind in my room. I'd use it every now and again over the summers, but not like I used to.

I think we moved the drawing table to our first apartment after Cami and I got married and I used it for about a year there, but this was probably a year before Theater Hopper. We had moved to a new house in that time and there was never a good place for the drawing table. So it went into storage.

Anyway, the drawing table is back. It sits right next to my desk in my new office and I LOVE IT. Drawing on it again felt like I was reconnecting with a prolific period of my artistic past. It felt like coming home. It was SO much easier to draw on that table than it has been drawing on kitchen table and portable laptop desks over the years. My back wasn't hurting and it was much easier to concentrate on what I was doing! I'm really looking forward to doing more work in this new environment.

Enough about my fabulous drawing table! Can we talk about The Social Network for a minute?

Reviews for this thing are through the roof (Armond White excluded) and frankly, I'm chomping at the bit to see it.

Normally, I take reviews with a grain of salt. But consensus on this thing seems to be so strong, it's hard to ignore.

I'm not particularly interested in Mark Zuckerberg's story. Although I am an avid Facebook user, I find him to be a detestable human being and the worst kind of hypocrite. That's not entirely his fault. But an introvert shouldn't be leading the charge on the largest wave of social interaction in the 21st century.

That said, I don't think it's important that Zuckerberg be a likable or even a relatable character for the movie to be successful. It just seems like a revolutionary concept because American audiences have been conditioned to expect clear heroes and villains in their mainstream entertainment. If anyone can subvert that notion, it's director David Fincher.

The pedigree behind The Social Network reads like a laundry list of Things I Love. David Fincher? Check. Script from Aaron Sorkin? Check. Score by Trent Reznor? Check. Jesse Eisenberg? Ehhhh... well, three out of four ain't bad.

All I know is that I think The Social Network looks great and I can wait to see it. Fingers crossed that my in-laws can watch the kids tomorrow so Cami and I can see it together. After living among boxes for the last week, sorting out the collected flotsam of a decade shared together (plus kids!), we could use a reprieve.

What does everyone else thing about The Social Network? Are you planning on seeing it this weekend? Are you excited? What's the main draw for you? Fincher's direction? Sorkin's script? The secret origins of Facebook? Leave your comments below!

Oh, and expect a new comic on Monday. I promise!

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INTERGALACTIC BRUSH OFF

by Tom on November 2, 2009 at 12:00 am
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars6 Stars7 Stars8 Stars9 Stars10 Stars
(31 votes, average: 8.48 out of 10)
The Fourth Kind, abuduction, alien encounter, clothes shopping, mix tape, Facebook, complicated, relationship, aliens

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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