Tom Hanks goes to the facial hair dark side:
I committed face-pelt atrocities in my youth (none preserved on the intertubes, I think — can I get a Ramen!) but never anything remotely as heinous as my namesake above.
So what’s the verdict? Thumbs up or down for Bad Tom Hanks?
Because I am a kind man, (occasionally, when I forget myself) I will not close this post with that curdling image to sour your pomegranate cosmopolitans. So let’s open up this thread with the irreplaceable sound of two masters of the guitar:
<div align=”center”><iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/W_SlgMu3vDE” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
And with that — I’m off with the brood to hear live music in the open air. You?
schrodinger's cat
Must be for some movie. Not such a great look.
pragmatism
thumbs down for bad tom hanks.
i wish i had 4 thumbs so i could give tom hanks’ douchenozzle son “Chet Haze” 4 thumbs down.
arguingwithsignposts
That looks a lot like Hanks is playing a bad John Travolta day.
maven
Brutal. Calls for a cocktail.
cmorenc
I sure hope Tom Hanks current look is for a pending movie role, and not one of changed personal preferences in general appearance. The shaved-head look looks good on some men, but OTOH if you have a great thick healthy head of hair, you should luxuriate in it if you’re a guy.
kindness
Giants Dodgers tomorrow.
TheOtherWA
That had better be for a role and not because he thought it looked good. *shudder*
eemom
On the positive side, he’s come a long way from Forrest Gump.
BGinCHI
I assume he doing this for the film version of “Bosom Buddies.”
Wonder what Scolari looks like. Mullet?
Liberty60
They’re rebooting the Charlie Chan franchise?
srv
Tom is blonde in Cloud Atlas too:
http://www.thefablife.com/files/2012/07/Cloud-Atlas3.jpg
Re the vid, almost 22 years now…
gwangung
@Liberty60:
They took it away from Lucy Liu??
BGinCHI
@Liberty60: Also, dude, Chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
He looks like he’s auditioning for a Yakuza movie or something. Not a good look for him.
On a diff. note, is any one else having their browser frees something hardcore trying to load the site? I keep having my browser stall for like 5 mins at a time every time I open a page here.
R-Jud
Hanks: It’s totally for a role.
The opening ceremony is SO. MUCH. FUN. Classic Danny Boyle. Can’t believe he got Her Majesty to act. Y’all will enjoy it.
the Conster
Tom Hanks’ mustache could always be worse.
Gin & Tonic
@cmorenc:
I do and I do. I’d sooner cut off my balls than shave my head.
That picture calls for a cocktail and a bucket of brain bleach. Fuck you, Tom Levenson.
Valdivia
@R-Jud:
I can’t wait for it :) I haven’t missed it right?> It’s at 7:30 no?
Fax Paladin
Oh, it gets better/crazier. This is one of multiple roles in the upcoming movie of David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas. As I understand it they’re all supposed to be reincarnations of the same soul in different time periods.
BGinCHI
Watched Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” last night.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that was simultaneously so terrible and so entertaining at the same time.
Woody is a strange film maker since about Bullets Over Broadway. And by strange I mean mostly unwatchable.
Tony J
Tom Hanks finally spending some of that ‘All American Good Guy’ cred by playing against type as a total bastard? Yeah, I’d watch that. Great, great actor. I can name a few bad films he’s been in, but I can’t name a single one he’s been bad in.
Put it this way. IMHO, the only way ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ might have been better was if Tom Hanks had played Andy Dufresne.
YMMV.
Comrade Mary
@Valdivia: It was on at 4 PM EST here, but I have to watch the repeat at 7:30 because I missed the first half hour.
One hint: Al Gore.
Valdivia
@BGinCHI:
you didn’t like Matchpoint? I think that was very different for him and yet one of his best,
I am an ever romantic so Midnight totally captivated me. I wanted to sock the woman playing his fiance the whole time though.
Can’t wait! :) @Comrade Mary:
Jay in Oregon
Yeah, I showed that picture to a co-worker, and he said that Tom Hanks was actually in Portland this week and looks totally normal.
And I found the links to the Cloud Atlas trailer and was going to mention it, but Fax Paladin beat me to it.
HEY YOU
Damn! I miss SRV but I’ve still got him on 8-track tape.
Hanks, you don’t have to be pretty if you’re BAD.
Klaus Kinky
Looks like a bad PhotoShop.
And yes, not only do I share the same first name, I have also committed facial hair atrocities.
The Other Chuck
He looks like a white Ice T
Dennis SGMM
Guitar? John Martyn, “I’d Rather Be the Devil.”
Scott Alloway
@maven: To hell with the cocktail Just leave the bottle on the table. I’ve had my current beard since fall of 1982; the moustache goes back to 1972 when, on Memorial Day weekend in Vinalhaven, Maine, I decided to quit shaving. But I never had anything like those snakes on his face.
El Cid
I’d like to see Tom Hanks as the evil gangster type.
scav
But even with the excuse of a movie, wtf movie would want that and pay money to design same? Best to be avoided on purely aesthetic grounds. and who choose his clothes to go with?
Jay in Oregon
@srv:
That looks like an outtake from one of the Dharma Initiative movies in Lost.
Tom Levenson
@Gin & Tonic: My work here is done.
El Cid
Hey, looks like someone else Stood Their Ground in Florida.
A man defended himself using full 2nd Amendment authority against a potential frozen lobster or ribeye attack.
Now, the bullet-sponge in this case was white and wearing no hood, but still, it was his choice to place his body in the way of these bullets.
Spaghetti Lee
Looks kinda like a shaved guinea pig.
Tom Levenson
@El Cid: Oh Fuck.
Remember: Guns don’t kill people. Idiot fucks with paranoid fantasies fueled by rage and idiocy kill people, using guns.
Dennis SGMM
@El Cid:
It’s like the East Coat was tilted up and all of the loose shit rolled down to Florida.
El Cid
The hero prepared to defend his castle against other marauders.
Thankfully, all hope of justice is not lost.
The libertarian, proppity-defendin’ hero just maybe liked living without all that gubmit interference.
Richard Fox
A dead ringer for Hedley Lamarr
MTiffany
Looks like he joined the cast of Jersey
SoreShore…jenn
@El Cid: Holy toledo, that’s awful.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hanks is always genial, funny and self-mocking on Letterman, which is about the only time I see him. I can’t remember the last Tom Hanks movie I saw and liked, and that last one with Julia Roberts, just judging from the commercials, seemed like a self-parody of a Tom Hanks-Julia Roberts movie.
foodriots
I hope you are smart enough to realize that look is a character in his upcoming movie “Cloud Atlas” and you are just pandering for some cheap click attention because you can’t find anything better to write about.
Here’s an idea. How about Bezo’s 2.5Million dollar donation in support of Gay marriage.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/07/27/jeff-bezos-gay-marriage/
Surprised Cole never jumped on this (pardon the pun) seeing how when he is not googling for gloom porn it’s all gay all the time and yet he still hasn’t apparently come out of the closet.
Emma
@R-Jud: I just saw the Queen’s sequence. I think I most enjoyed the little not-quite-grin as she stood there listening to the cheers. It was like “yeah, I still got it, boys and girls.”
freelancer
Not to speak ill of the wrongfully dead, but if you’re a door-to-door salesman, selling food products, pretty please, knock on my door with a fucking cigarette hanging from your mouth. That’ll get me to buy some of your lobster “meat”. Where’s my wallet?
El Cid
Sorry, thought I’d put in first note: H/T TheGreatLeapForward at DKos.
Spaghetti Lee
@El Cid:
From RawStory:
Roop’s neighbors described him as “the neighborhood crazy.” Roop has a concealed weapons permit and approximately 14 firearms.
Ain’t that America!
BTW, I already saw the victim blaming start up in the comments there. “Well, why’d that idiot go to a house with 3 ‘no tresspassing’ signs?! He had it coming!” Great. Who wouldn’t want to live in a country where the gun-hoarding nutcases decide what is and isn’t tresspassing, suspicious behavior, etc. and shoot on sight anyone who violates their rules?
Some people-some very pathetic and vicious people-will go to any lengths to avoid admitting that some people in this country are too violent or fucked in the head to safely own guns. If this Roop fuckhead took out some kids playing in the street or an old lady walking her dog, they’d blame those people too. Fucking assholes.
Tiny Tim
All the major actors in cloud atlas play several parts, so some cosmetic differentiation is required.
El Cid
@Spaghetti Lee: I know they prefer manly titles like ‘gun nuts’, but I think we need to mess with their notions of macho-ness and refer to them as ‘gun nerds’ or ‘gun geeks’ or ‘gun dorks’.
They like to be thought of as wild and crazy and a bit scary. They won’t like it when they’re classed among any other overly avid hobbyist.
VividBlueDotty
Thank goodness that look is for a role. If Tom Hanks goes midlife crazy at some point, I absolutely do NOT want to be a spectator.
The Other Chuck
He was a door to door lobster salesman, who would say “I’m here with the meat”, with a cigarette hanging from his lip.
I swear to god, that’s the beginning of a Tom Waits spoken word piece.
Tony J
@El Cid:
You are fucking kidding me.
Maybe it’s because I live in a country where owning a gun isn’t a test of challenged masculinity, but the very idea that the shooter in this incident isn’t automatically going on trial for murder (with grounds for claiming insanity) because of the ‘Stand Your Ground’ law makes me taste copper in my throat.
Dennis SGMM
@Spaghetti Lee:
I’m trying to figure out how I made it through 368 days in the Mekong Delta with only two firearms.
El Cid
@Spaghetti Lee: At this point it can certainly be seen as blaming the victim, but given our national abundance in scaredy-pants with itchy trigger fingers, I’d say that people throughout the country, and with extra super passionate intensity in Florida, assume that any such sign or any other curious symbol implies there’s someone waiting for you with a gun and looking for an opportunity to blow your head of, so, yeah, don’t trespass.
Probably would be sensible to post signs upon all entrances to Florida that “Tresspassers Will Be Shot By People Likely To Get Away With It”.
Gin & Tonic
I almost never go south of the Mason-Dixon line so am unfamiliar with all the customs, but is it normal to have salesmen going door-to-door peddling meat?
Gin & Tonic
I almost never go south of the Mason-Dixon line so am unfamiliar with all the customs, but is it normal to have salesmen going door-to-door peddling meat?
Hal
Cloud Atlas is several novellas that focus on different time periods. My favorite is a Korean super state of the future completely dominated by corporations with genetically engineered slaves forced to work at the local fast food chain.
joeyess
Any Balloon Juicers living in the KC area? If so, give me a shout in the comments. If so, I would like to cordially invite you to my band’s show on Friday, August 3rd at the recordBar in Westport.
let me know and we’ll hook up on facebook or whatever the kewl kids do these days.
j
Spaghetti Lee
@Hal:
is a Korean super state of the future completely dominated by corporations with genetically engineered slaves forced to work at the local fast food chain.
Somewhere, Mitt Romney just felt a little tingle of pleasure.
Ben Franklin
@El Cid:
The Hoary Man-Type doesn’t really relish the equality of weaponry.
It’ s the courage of a man with a gun in a knife-fight, or skittles-fight.
wasabi gasp
Hanks looks like he’s about to bust out a lobster for sale.
Randy P
@BGinCHI: I actually loved it. And it was cool to see Owen Wilson in a new kind of role. You probably disagree, but casting him as the obvious Woody Allen persona in a Texas accent completely worked.
Atrios
be more positive. wife’s cousin has a major role in that movie (Somni).
Weaselone
Out of curiosity, does anyone know of a gun with bullets that curve around to strike the back of an approaching threat? This is murder plain and simple. He shot an unarmed man who was already in retreat.
I guess anyone who runs is a
VCcriminal. Anyone who stands still is a well-disciplinedVCcriminal.scav
Florida’s really gunning for that #1 Family Vacation State status, nope? What with the behavior of the Anaheim PD, I’d be thinking long and hard before visiting any trademarked mice on correlational grounds alone.
Ash Can
Glad to hear Hanks’ look is apparently for a movie. That configuration does him no favors.
As for the lobster salesman, surprise, surprise — a law goes into effect that makes gun worshipers and other nuts think that they can get away with shooting people dead, and they do exactly that. No one could have predicted.
MikeJ
Reservations at Etta’s tonight. Yum.
Yutsano
@Ash Can: As long as you’re white. If you’re blah or any other minority even if your ex is stalking you it obviously doesn’t apply.
Jay in Oregon
@Dennis SGMM:
You obviously aren’t a Real American(tm) like Mr. Roop.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@HEY YOU: Yup. There have been lots of awesome blues guitarists, but nobody did it better than Stevie. Still makes my jaw-drop.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tom Hanks: That’s just wrong and sad.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I like it. I should note for the record that while I lived in Honduras for two years after college, I grew a beard for two months specifically so I could give myself muttonchops when it got long and thick enough. Kept the muttonchops for the better part of a year. I really liked them. My wife now, though, sad to say, has forbidden me to ever grow muttonchops again. I live an oppressed life.
jwb
@El Cid: Winggeeks, Wingdorks—hey, it works for politics too.
Angela
Opening ceremonies open thread? Please?
Ruckus
@Dennis SGMM:
You had friends helping you shoot back?
You aren’t(I’m guessing here) a deranged paranoid? And that’s with people shooting at you.
Another Halocene Human
@Gin & Tonic: Pretty typical except for the notion (unproven) that this guy is legit because usually the meat is stolen, bad, or poisonous.
Dennis SGMM
@Uncle Ebeneezer:
A long, long time ago a young guitar picker was a side man with the Isley Brothers band. The band was playing at one of the shit pits, I think it was the Cinnamon Cinder. The Isleys were great as usual. After the set I struck up a conversation with that side man. We talked about the blues and how they’re the basis for so many other things.
That young man pulled out an acoustic guitar and he slipped a medicine bottle on his little finger.
Then he played the blues. Then I knew that I’d never get there.
His name was Jimi Hendrix.
Another Halocene Human
@jwb: rifle diddlers
quannlace
All of you going on about Tom Hanks finally taking on a not-nice=guy role. Don’t you remember ‘Road to Perdition?’
Dennis SGMM
@Ruckus:
LOL! I was with the little boats ( Nineteen foot PCRs) in the USN. I carried an M60A1 machine gun and a Chinese knock-off of the Russian Tokarev small-caliber pistol. When we finally, actually, were sent home I threw both of them into the Mekong.
I haven’t shot anyone since 1972.
muddy
Gun bunnies.
NotMax
Posted this in the wrong thread, so repeating it here.
Just a tidbit on Ann Romney’s easy use of stereotypes for ‘humor’ that helps flesh out her complacent “you people” attitude.
Raven
@Dennis SGMM: Fuckin river rats! Loved to watch em blast up and down the canals.
General Stuck
They are still way off in number, but some hummingbirds have arrived enough to get a pic or two.
Josh G.
Weird. He looks like Ice-T in that photo (well, at least like the way Ice-T looks playing Fin on SVU).
MikeJ
@muddy:
I used to love that band. Saw them at the South End and the old Pyramid Club, along with the Antenna a few times.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1G0oJJXmmQ
Dr. Squid
He looks ready to bob his head with the aging brothers to “What Is Love” for A Night At The Roxbury sequel.
muddy
@MikeJ: I’m sorry to have insulted these perfectly nice musicians.
burnspbesq
@Tom Levenson:
It only takes a split second to premeditate. And the second shot will convince any holdouts on the jury. This guy is more than likely going down for murder two.
Yes, it was reasonable for the defendant to fear for his life. Sure it was.
Fuck. Life initiates Monty Python. “Come at me with that banana.”
Maude
@muddy:
Thanks for the info on the coffee shops. That isn’t good either.
It fits in with the announcement some time back that women should only work part time.
NotMax
Modern medical technique is sometimes just freakin’ astonishing.
Maude
@NotMax:
Let’s make him head of the UN.
Dennis SGMM
@Raven:
We were insane. the only way into that gig was to volunteer and to have no dependents.
MikeJ
@NotMax:
Their next stop is Poland, that may play well there.
Dennis SGMM
@burnspbesq:
Ah, apparently you’ve never been attacked with a Bunch of Grapes.
Anne Laurie
@Dennis SGMM:
“An armed society is a polite society”
Ask any Syrian!
Anoniminous
@El Cid:
How about “sociopathic homicidal maniacs?”
Legalize
I assume that’s for the role of Evil Gump, in Forrest Gump II: The Search for Lt. Dan.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Dennis SGMM:
lolz
Thank god you never encountered a frozen lobster.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Dennis SGMM:
And yet yer still killin me.
lol
Dennis SGMM
@Anne Laurie:
I am old that is probably why I think that owning a firearm puts an obligation on you to use that weapon as a last resort.
muddy
@Maude: Oh, I thought I was way too late on that thread. Glad you found it of use.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia: I also liked Midnight in Paris, probably for the same reasons you did. Paris in the 20s? I’ll buy in. Paris in the 1890’s? I’ll buy in as well.
burnspbesq
Nothing will change until a Girl Scout selling cookies gets iced.
El Cid
@Anoniminous:
Still sounds thrillingly dangerous. The goal should be to make them sound weak, pathetic, or at least in terms which sounds so to their eyes.
Gun rubbers.
El Cid
@Dennis SGMM:
Pretty sure that’s now supposed to be “an obligation to use that weapon at a nice resort“.
El Cid
@Dennis SGMM: Clearly you didn’t see this.
Anne Laurie
@El Cid:
Shooter fanbois. Weapon fondlers. Gunstock diddlers.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie: Pathetic little shits?
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: Those were the parts I liked!
But the relationship with the shrewish wife and the asshole inlaws?
Come on, Woody, that was pathetic.
Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein was inspired.
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: Wanna fight?
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: Wanna fight?
Steeplejack
@pragmatism:
Whew. Had to check IMDB. I thought you were ripping on Colin Hanks, who was great in the late, lamented series The Good Guys.
NotMax
@El Cid
trigger jerkers
barmy army
gun huns
Yutsano
@BGinCHI: @Omnes Omnibus: Don’t make me turn this blog around children!!
tybee
guitar? acoustic, meet mister stills: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVUwrifwKrI
(and that john martyn was outstanding)
shaved heads? the 21st century version of the mullet.
today, i got to do the early vote thing for local/state offices/initiatives primaries, in the deep south. most of the candidates/initiatives are republican. natch.
for those of you down here in redneckdumbfuckistan (and i’m native to this area so i’m allowed to call it what it is), do ya’ll vote republican in the primaries and democrat in the general or am i the only person trying to fuck things up down here?
i’d move but i hate shoveling snow, i no hablo and i love hot weather.
muddy
@NotMax: I like gun huns. I was very amused by signage from a primary election a few years ago. There was a long stretch with a sign for each of the very worst of the worst wingnuts. In the middle was a sign for Attila the Hun. I got a good laugh going past, thinking it was performance art. Then when I was going home I saw the Attila sign had been taken down. So it was just a prank. I could never decide which was the funnier.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
That movie was clean and honest and true.
Raven
@Dennis SGMM: Least you had good chow and cameras! Those MRF sites have more pics than National Geographic! We had to put our damn duece-and-a-halfs on the civilian ferry to get across to Can Tho!
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Well, no subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure.
Raven
@El Cid: The Last Resort is a great Athens eatery!
Steeplejack
@General Stuck:
Great pictures, Stuck.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
I know that you can’t write well if you fear death. I learned that here at Balloon Juice.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Well played.
Steeplejack
@Legalize:
Fix’d.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
I was going to add “I learned it from . . .,” but I chickened out. Peace is my profession.
Gregory
Road to Perdition was already mentioned as a rare appearance by Hanks as a criminal, and he’s also rockin’ a mustache in that flick.
YellowJournalism
Thank the lord it’s for a movie! I thought for a minute these were glimpses into an alternative universe where John Travolta never did Pulp Fiction and instead became the proprietor of a sleazy nightclub and an occasional celebrity spokesman for a device called The Rhinestone C@ckring.
Corner Stone
@Tony J:
This is just beyond the pale. Out of your fucking mind here.
Corner Stone
@The Other Chuck:
Thank you jesus!
This was my first thought upon glancing the Hanks’ visage with the facial hair.
Motherfucking Ice-T on set, bitchez!
Corner Stone
@VividBlueDotty:
Good God. There would be absolutely nothing, nothing, better than Tom hanks pulling a Wayne Brady on Chapelle Show at this point.
“So is Tom Hanks gonna have to choke a bitch?”
Corner Stone
@Dennis SGMM:
Easy. You weren’t in Florida.
On a side note, I’m wondering when “14” became some kind of cut-off for crazy, paranoid gun owner. Maybe 18 isn’t so bad, mmmm?
Corner Stone
@Atrios: Shut up. You should better spend your time writing multiple paragraphs for all of your blog entries. Your concise synopsii isn’t good enough for your betters.
The maths demand it!
Corner Stone
@quannlace:
Meh. He killed people but he threw his life away to save his son.
Corner Stone
@burnspbesq:
Stick to stealing govt revenue for your tax clients BBQ.
You’re pathetically off base here.
Citizen_X
@srv:
Is that supposed to be him playing Janet Reno?
Ruckus
@Dennis SGMM:
Tin can sailor here, while you were a rat. East coast so no bang bang.
No, not that kind of no bang bang.
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: I was agreeing with you.
But if we fought I’d just kick you in the back and then carry your Cannondale around and then smash it over my knee.
Sorry but the Chicago Thug thing is real.
Peace through strength.
JoyfulA
@Gin & Tonic: In the last year, we’ve begun having door-to-door meat salesmen from different companies here in south-central Pennsylvania. They have small refrigerated trucks and pull in driveways. The pitch is that it’s top-quality steaks, etc., at low prices. If I answer the door, I claim to be a vegetarian and shut the door. I figure that gets me off any list. DH bought some steaks that looked too fatty to me (because he’s a sucker for a “bargain”) and said they were not anywhere near top quality.
I don’t know why now or where they come from.
Arclite
Has there ever been a guitar player better than SRV? EVH is pretty close, I guess. God, Stevie made that guitar sing and wail, and I cried when he died. So, so, so sad, and so much potential lost.
I’d not heard this one before, so thanks.
Rafer Janders
@Tony J:
Road to Perdition. Least convincing murderous gangster ever. I did not for one second believe that that character made his living as an enforcer for the mob.
growingdaisies
Interesting … I’ve read Cloud Atlas, and if the movie follows the book, in this scene (judging by the preview) the bearded Hanks character is playing a two-minute bit role.
The book contains about six interrelated storylines spanning different time periods. I guess the actors/actresses playing major characters in some will be popping up as minor characters in others?
Jebediah
@The Other Chuck:
My first impression was “Howie Mandel trying to look bad-ass.”
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Dennis SGMM: That’s a very cool story. Especially because Jimi rarely played slide (at least I’m not aware of much recorded slide work by him.) He was not too shabby playing blues. Voodoo Chile (long slow version) is still one of my all-time favs. And Red House was really the first song that made me appreciate how bad-ass a blues solo can be when done right.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Rafer Janders: I loved Road to Perdition despite Hanks. Yeah, I just never bought him as a cold-blooded killer. Appreciate the willingness to try something different, but not real convincing.
Corner Stone
@Uncle Ebeneezer: I bought him as a stone killer who did what he did mainly out of loyalty. They didn’t really spend any time on a backstory for Hanks’ character but I thought, “Eh, tommy gun goes blammo. I’m good.”