Multiplex (Complete)

Multiplex #808: The Neutral Zone

2013-05-19T22:24:02-07:00

See you later this week with Kurt and Jason’s promo for Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (or part one of it, or something like that).

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Multiplex #807: Pop Culture Reference

2013-05-17T15:05:02-07:00

Ooookay, so one year of grad school down, two or two and a half to go!

I’m going to try to get back to a Monday/Thursday schedule for the summer — but don’t quote me on that yet.

I also have to get Book Two off to the printer as soon as possible, continue developing the Multiplex iOS app, work on Multiplex: The Card Game a little, and maybe even get started on Book Three. Plus some other stuff. So… busy summer.

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Multiplex #806: I’ve Never Seen Its Equal

2013-05-12T22:30:01-07:00

…So no, they’re not in costumes in the theater. I thought they gray text was a giveaway there: I’ve used that to indicate voices from phones, radios, or theater speakers since forever!

Jason and Kurt’s promo for The Princess Bride concludes on Friday. See you then!

And then I’ll be on summer break, having finally wrapped up my first year of grad school and my first semester of teaching my own drawing class (as a graduate instructor in grad school). Fun times. I’ll need to relax for a few days and then I can get cranking on Book 2, Kickstarter rewards for Book 2, and maybe some bonus comics for Book 3. But I’m getting ahead of myself, there.

Incidentally, the title comes from a line I cut for space. I wanted to have Jason/“Inigo” ask the Man in Black if he had seen The Princess Bride, to which he would reply with that line, which is straight from this scene. Maybe in the Director’s Cut of Book 7.

You can watch the original scene below:

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Multiplex #805: They Don't Make ’Em Like They Used to

2013-05-10T16:02:01-07:00

You know what would have been a great movie summer? 1982.

Conan the Barbarian, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Blade Runner, The Thing, The Road Warrior, E.T., and Poltergeist, are all pretty great. Plus Tron, Rocky 3, Secret of NIMH, and The Beastmaster, if you’re slumming it a little, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High if you include comedies. And all of them came out between May and August!

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Trailer Watch: Alphonso Cuarán’s Gravity teaser

2013-05-09T17:34:16-07:00

Awwwwwww shit.

Alphonso Cuarón’s long-awaited follow-up to Children of Men, Gravity, finally arrives on October 4th.

Multiplex #804: Homesick

2013-05-05T22:24:31-07:00

It took me long enough, but after a tease in both Theater Hopper and a Multiplex guest strip by Tom, I’ve finally brought over Jimmy. With Iron Man 3 out this weekend (haven’t caught it yet — end of the semester crazy times), it seemed like the right time. Sorry it took me five months, Tom!

If you aren’t familiar with Theater Hopper, you might go on a Theater Hopper archive dive with the “Jimmy” tag and get caught up on his old adventures in Iowa, but you won’t need to be familiar with them to get the idea.

Incidentally, here’s Coming Soon’s article about Luke Evans being cast in F. Javier Gutiérrez’s reboot of The Crow.

We’ll get back to Jason and Kurt’s film series on Friday, so see you then. I think I’ll be switching back to Monday/Thursday updates over the summer, by the way. I’ll let you know if/when that happens.

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Multiplex #803: Refraction

2013-05-03T16:21:02-07:00

You might be able to guess what this means. If not, I ain’t telling. See you Monday!

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Trailer Watch: Pacific Rim WonderCon trailer

2013-04-30T09:41:03-07:00

If this trailer doesn’t get you more excited about Pacific Rim, I’m revoking your geek card.

The film stars Charlie Hunman, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Ron Perlman, and Charlie Day. It opens on July 12th.

(via Tom Brazelton)

Multiplex #802: Motivational Speaker

2013-04-28T18:13:34-07:00

You didn’t think their films series was going to be a huge success straight out of the gate, did you?

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Multiplex #801: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

2013-04-26T14:43:10-07:00

This will get explained indirectly or otherwise in the next strip or so, but since it’s not supposed to be a point of suspense, I’ll save you the math: 24 tickets means they made $192.

For context, looking at this past Tuesday on Box Office Mojo, the film it would have replaced would have made roughly $100–130 (12–16 tickets) the whole day — so maybe four people in the one screening they replaced.

20 extra people doesn’t sound too bad until you factor in the rental cost of the movie, which would have been around $300.

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Trailer Watch: Michel Gondry’s Mood Indigo trailer

2013-04-25T09:08:06-07:00

The new trailer for Michel Gondry’s next film has a little more plot and a little less Lumineers than the first one, but it’s beautiful. Keep this one on your radar. Mood Indigo stars Audrey Tautou (Amélie), Romain Duris, and Omar Sy (The Intouchables, X-Men: Days of Future Past).

The film is based on the novel by Boris Vian. Its synopsis follows:

In a world where you can travel around on a pink cloud or literally be swept off an ice-skating rink into a hole, Colin, a wealthy young man and inventor of the cocktail-mixing piano, wants to fall in love. With the help of his cook Nicolas and best friend Chick, he meets Chloe, the incarnation of a Duke Ellington tune. But soon after their wedding, Chloe falls ill. She has a water lily growing in her chest. Ruined by medical expenses, Colin resorts to increasingly desperate methods to save his beloved’s life…

Mood Indigo opened yesterday in France and Belgium. It doesn’t have a US release date yet.

(via Coming Soon)

Trailer Watch: Thor: The Dark World teaser

2013-04-23T09:08:24-07:00

The first trailer for Thor: The Dark World is now online. There’s an immediately apparent difference in tone (at least in this trailer, if not the film) than the first Thor — darker, less silly, hints at Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster getting taken captive (or killed)… Since Gwen Stacy is almost certainly dying in Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Pepper Potts’s days look numbered in Iron Man 3, are we going to get a dead-girlfriend hat trick? Two out of three? Place your bets, folks.

The big-budget sequel stars Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgård, Idris Elba, Christopher Eccleston, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Kat Dennings, Ray Stevenson, Zachary Levi, Tadanobu Asano, Jaimie Alexander, Rene Russo, and Anthony Hopkins. Alan Taylor (Game of Thrones) from a script by Christopher Yost, Christopher Markus, and Stephen McFeely. The film hits theaters on November 8, 2013.

Multiplex #800: See It with a Bud

2013-04-21T22:24:47-07:00

The title of this strip was one of the tag lines to Dazed and Confused.

Oh, and I guess I hit #800. Bully for me! Longtime readers know I don’t really care about the whole round numbers thing (especially since — like I always like to remind you guys — there are about 50 pages of bonus strips in Multiplex: Enjoy Your Show and Multiplex: There and Back Again (available… later this year, but you can read the bonus strips in the Chapters 6–10 eBooks). I’ll make a slightly bigger deal about it when the 8 year anniversary rolls around in July.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

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Multiplex #799: Remake, Reboot, Recycle (spoiler-free version)

2013-04-19T15:34:46-07:00

At least one of the movies Jason names could be seen as a spoiler, so… spoiler warning, obviously. Don’t come crying to me if you click on that link and didn’t want to know.

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Book 2 Update and a bonus comic from Book 3

2013-04-16T22:27:04-07:00

Multiplex: There and Back Again (Book 2) is being proofread, and I’m doing other technical stuff, getting the files ready for print. I’m also waiting to hear back from my distributor about various things before deciding on a final print run. Once I have the print run determined, I can settle on a printer and figure out when the book will be available — hopefully late summer or early fall, but… we’ll see. I’ll let you know as soon as I do!

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m frustrated that the book is running late. I had hoped that the new content would have been done at the end of the summer, so my “free time” during the school year could be used to do the various rewards, and I could get a Book 3 Kickstarter going for the summer. Obviously, that didn’t happen, and I intend to finish everything related to the Book 2 Kickstarter project before launch a Book 3 Kickstarter project — but I still hope to get the next book started much, much sooner — so that I can get it out in under a year.

I shouldn’t need as much time with Book 3, because it will have fewer bonus comics than Books 1 and 2 did — roughly 20. Books 1 & 2 had about 30 bonus strips, plus Book 1’s Prequel story. Anyway, last weekend, I ended up taking a look at what Book 3 will entail and got sidetracked with thinking about what I would do in the bonus comics for the first chapter in Book 3 (a.k.a. Chapter 11). Aaaaand since I was enjoying myself, I decided to do this strip, despite having other things I should be working on (like graduate school stuff)…

Anyway, the strip below is set prior to Multiplex #217, making it the first strip in the book.

The Hollywood Pitch

Trailer Watch: Man of Steel trailer #3

2013-04-16T18:52:49-07:00

I’ve only seen one Zack Snyder movie that I’d say I liked (Watchmen), and even that one with a lot of qualifiers — but I gotta admit, the man gives good trailer. And unlike any of the other films he’s made, it looks like the actors will actually talk more like normal people…

The latest ~~Superman~~ Man of Steel trailer gives what seems like a good overview of what the film is about. The film opens on June 14, 2013, and stars Henry Cavill as Superman, Michael Shannon as General Zod, and Amy Adams as Lois Lane. Rounding out the cast are Antje Traue, Laurence Fishburne, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, and Russell Crowe.

Trailer Watch: Star Trek Into Darkness final trailer

2013-04-16T10:15:33-07:00

The final trailer for J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness has hit the internet, and (I think) it’s the best one yet. Heavy on the gravitas, and a few big, big plot teases. This is gonna be fun.

Star Trek Into Darkness hits theaters next month, on May 17, 2013. It stars Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, John Cho, Alice Eve, Anton Yelchin, Simon Pegg, and Bruce Greenwood.

Multiplex #798: Adaptation

2013-04-14T22:11:49-07:00

Most of you won’t remember all the way back to #16, but that’s when Jason mentioned The Magnificent Ambersons to Kurt and Becky. It is indeed actually playing at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago right now, and since it relates to the current storyline about the classic film series, sort of, I thought Jason should see it… and bring Becky with him.

The Magnificent Ambersons was unavailable on DVD in the US until 2011, incidentally, though you could find bootlegs or imports if you tried really hard. I caught a screening of it at the Music Box several years ago, myself.

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Multiplex #797: Change or Die

2013-04-12T12:44:35-07:00

Some of your comments on Monday’s strip were extra amusing to me in light of this strip.

Anyway. It occurred to me as I was scripting this strip that it really gets at one of the central themes in this phase of Multiplex: the movie industry and movie theater industry’s rapidly changing states at this time. It seems like the industry has changed more in the last seven years than in the thirty before it, because of home video, because of digital downloads and streaming, and any number of other factors.

Hopefully I’m not just indulging myself by focusing on these topics for the next… while… but it seems natural to me that the characters would have to deal with them.

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Multiplex: There and Back Again final cover

2013-04-09T19:11:17-07:00

I finally broke through my artist’s block on the Book 2 cover, and so aside from some corrections and technical mumbo-jumbo left, Multiplex: There and Back Again is DONE. Finally.

I’ll keep you posted when I have a better idea of when it will be published and available, but I’m hoping sometime this summer or early fall — things with the distributor take a little longer than if I were just self-publishing, unfortunately.

Multiplex #796: Strange Bedfellows

2013-04-07T22:26:33-07:00

Say whaaaaaaaaat? Yeah, okay, so this isn’t exactly a shocking reveal, but Jason and the Blogger’s conversation will continue on Friday all the same.

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Multiplex #795: Escape from Reality

2013-04-05T15:05:18-07:00

Roger Ebert
(1942–2013)

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Multiplex #794: Let’s Not Do the Time Warp Again

2013-04-02T22:29:47-07:00

Okay! See you Friday! It’ll be in the late afternoon as per usual.

I’ve got a few movies picked out already, but feel free to keep talking about what you’d like to see. I will say this: Rocky Horror is out; The Room is out (in-universe excuse: it’s playing at the Music Box in May); and Jason would sooner show a Bayformers marathon than Birdemic.

Also, I refuse to watch any of those three movies. I would do anything for Multiplex, but I won’t do that.

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Multiplex #793: Etiquette

2013-03-31T22:16:18-07:00

There will be three this week. (Wednesday’s will be short, continuing straight from this one; it just seemed to make more sense to have them separate strips rather than one long one.)

Sarah (behind the desk, in Kurt’s spot) hasn’t appeared in a long time, and she’s only appeared a couple of times, so you’ll be forgiven if you don’t recognize her, but as you can tell from the context, she’s one of the managers. Specifically, she’s the other assistant manager these days, alongside Neil.

Amy (the redhead) hasn’t appeared in a while, either — and she’s probably appeared more in the bonus strips from the Chapter eBooks/print books than in the regular strips, but you may remember her as a suck-up who complains constantly.

See you Wednesday!

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Multiplex #792: Wish List

2013-03-29T15:53:19-07:00

It is way too nice outside. No commentary right now! (Or maybe later.)

OH: Actually, that screening of The Shining is actually at midnight TONIGHT at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago (of course). If you’re in the Windy City, you should go! I wanted to make it ambiguous what night this strip was set.

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