SD Comic-Con...

[The Prankster]

Hi guys...I just got back from the comic con and I see the coverage is going up, but there seem to be a few gaps...no one's mentioned the rather kickass Serenity/Firefly panel yet, for instance. Can I describe it here on the message boards, or does this count as news I should submit?

[The Prankster]

Screw it, I'm gonna post about it.

THE INCREDIBLES:

--Frickin' awesome montage of Brad Bird's career to this point.
--Spiderman 2 is going to have a very short reign as the movie with the best superhero battles, from the looks of it. The first clip they showed was of Mr. Incredible vs. a killer robot, and it was stunningly good, even better than Spidey vs. Doc Ock. The second was more dialogue-based, but really funny, involving Mr. Incredible getting a ne costume.
--It's Pixar's first PG movie, and it looks closer to an action flick than anything they've done so far. The robot scene was set up in a way unusual for an animated film, but very much in keeping with a James Bond-type flick (he's given certain parameters, particularly the fact that it'll learn as he fights it, so the faster he defeats it, the better.)
--Oddly, the movie seems to take a LOT of inspiration from WATCHMEN. Seriously. One of the central conceits of the setup is identical to Watchmen. And they also talk about how lousy capes would be for superhero antics, as in Watchmen.

HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE:

--You should have seen the steadily building audience reaction for that teaser. It was great. They didnt' say what it was going to be beforehand, so...that's showmanship for you.

MIRRORMASK:

--The Neil and Dave McKean were there. Gaiman looks and sounds an awful lot like Alan Rickman to me.
--The movie is literally a Dave McKean painting come to life. It's supposed to be in the tradition of "Dark Crystal" and "Labyrinth", but it makes those movies look like "Agent Cody Banks" in terms of normalcy. Gaiman remarked that a studio head told him that it looked like "Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast...on acid...for kids."
--The CGI can be a bit fakey-looking. But again, there's absolutely no attempt at realism anyway, so...
--The girl who plays the lead is excellent. Apparently the movie's about a girl who grows up at the circu and dreams about running away to join real life.
--Weird-ass imagery. Rooms full of spiral staircases to nowhere, sphinxes made of literally live-action heads on CGI'd bodies, eye-spiders that latch onto the Queen's face so she can see what they saw...people made of books...messed up, man.

SIN CITY

--Surprisingly, almost no one has mentioned (that I've read) that the trailer listed Quentin Tarantino as "special Guest Director". So he IS involved, definately.
--Based on remarks they made, I'd speculate that Miller directed the Marv story (now called "The Hard Goodbye"), Quentin did the Bruce Willis story which I *think* is "The Big Fat Kill", and Rodriguez did the teaser and "Yellow Bastard". I could be wrong though.
--Speaking of, they overdid it with the Bastard. He looked like a Ferengi to me.
--Yes, Marv's bandages are literally pure white against the greyscale skin of Mickey Rourke. There are also splashes of colour (the Bastard, the woman's lips and dress in the teaser), but mostly the actors are in high-contrast black and white (not radically different from a B&W movie, despite RR's hype) and the backgrounds are crazy high-contrast CGI things that look a lot like Miller's drawings.
--They'll also occasionally do things as white silhouettes on black backgrounds, or similar, to invoke the comics.
--They're sticking almost TOO close to the comic. No serious dialogue changes, the panels basically become the storyboards...I didn't need to see it adapted THAT faithfully. Hell, I would have gladly seen a new SC story done in this style. Makes me glad I haven't actually read Kill and Bastard yet.

TEAM AMERICA:

--Trey and Matt were there, and seemed sort of tired, but the audience loved it. They said "We did South Park because we never wanted to work with actors. Actors suck. But after making this movie, we now appreciate the abilities of actors to walk...lift their arms...drink water...usually..."
--Hilarious as hell. You've read about it on AICN already, and the ineptitude of the puppets is part of the joke. But much of the first sequence they shot was done EXACTLY like a Michael Bay-type action movie, all the blatantly obvious cues (Arabic wailing when the terrorists appear) and Hollywood horseshit (a little kid being the first to spot them in a crowd). This kind of stuff is already kind of funny, but when you see it in puppet form...well, you'll never be able to watch a "serious" action film by a hack director again.
--Kim Jong Il wants to conquer the world because he's "Ronery".
--The ad proclaimed: "GEORGE CLOONEY! SEAN PENN! TIM ROBBINS! MICHAEL MOORE! JANEANE GARAFOLO! GERGE W. BUSH! JOHN KERRY! And KIM JONG IL! Are all going to be really mad when they see...TEAM AMERICA!!!"

SKY CAPTAIN:

--Incredibly dull panel. The producer was boring and pretentious and told long stories with no point. The director was terrified and didn't want to talk. Jude Law was vapid. Giovanni Ribisi didn't know what he was doing there. Bai Ling was charming, but doesn't speak English very well. Unfortunately, almost all the Q&A's turned into wankfests, but this one especially so. "I just want to say you're great and that you rock..."
--The clips, however, were pretty good. New trailer, featuring the combined might of Britain's high-tech airforce and sky fortresses, which were pretty cool.
--I was worried by the first clip which showed Gwyneth trying to take pictures of the robots as she ran around beneath them. The robots are cool, but it looked disturbingly close to George Lucas-esque "I don't know what I'm doing or even looking at" type interaction with the CGI. Gwyneth was like three feet from a relentless collapsing robot, and she was tripping daintily about as if she was trying to make it across the street before the light changed.
--Second clip was better. An expanded version of the underwater chase we've all seen, with some actual dialogue and character stuff, and a neat moment at the end. This one got me excited.

LOST:

--Saw this pilot, or the first half of it anyway. Started out intriguingly mysterious, slowly reveals itself to be "Land of the Lost" for the aughts and gets way more predictable. And if they show only this one hour on the first night, people are going to really be left hanging. No answers or indications of what the show's going to be about, what's on the island (besides "something big") or what they're going to do besides getting killed one by one. I'm interested, but it was too much of a tease. Still, David Fury and Paul Dini are writers...

SERENITY:

--NOTHING matched this level of excitement. Seriously. Firefly fans are INSANE. I'd say this movie is bound to succeed even if only hardcore fans go, because there seem to be a lot of them, and they'll go repeatedly. The place was packed. Joss got a standing O.
--I knew Joss was a funny bastard, but turns out several of the actors are too, especially Nathan Fillion. Someone asked Adam Bladwin what it was like to play a stupid character, he got mock-offended and responded "Well, it's easier for a smart person to play stupid than vice versa" and everyone looked pointedly at Morena Baccarin. Big laugh.
--The pseudo-trailer (I don't think you'll see it in theaters...it uses the words "THEY'RE BACK!!!" which will probably cause 90% of the audience to go, "Who?") looked really, really neat, and NOTHING like the show. I remember the talk about them hiring a cinematographer who was quite famous, and it seems to have paid off. I thought the show was plenty cinematic, but the trailer was just plain slick. It's not like later Star Trek where it's sort of a pathetic attempt to transfer the show's look to a movie; it IS a movie. Also, the backgrounds and environments looked more exotic and SFnal than the show.
--The cuts were really fast. We see Mal and Zoe holding up a ship (?) and opening a safe to reveal a pathetically small pile of cash; Zoe says, "Hurray, we can retire from our life of crime." The rest of the trailer was Jayne doing action-y things on a moving landspeeder of some kind, Inara in what looked like a Companion whorehouse, and River, River, River.
--Yep, lots of River. People who don't like River are going to be disappointed. However, this appears to be River 2.0 who can do ninja crap like conceal herself on the ceiling. And there's a shot of her narrowing her eyes that makes it look like she's about to go "Scanners" on someone's ass.
--Apparently there's not much Blue Sun in this movie, just a more generic Alliance presence.
--Refreshingly, Joss seems a lot more focused on just making ONE good movie than worrying about an extended saga, though he did mention it would be nice to make a trilogy. Doesn't sound like they're going to push to get the show back.
--Ron Glass pwned the room the few times he spoke.

My first comic-con, incredibly exciting for me, so forgive the burblage. I go sleep now.

[Poprob]

This is great. What a great read for those of us who can't go. Thanks, Prankster.

[Dave Davis]

As I missed most of the actual panels due to being in the press room (and left before Whedon's -- why they have big panels on SUNDAY is a mystery), it's good to read about them.

As for Sin City: QT did either a chunk of or the entirety of The Big Fat Kill, while Miller and Rodriguez co-directed everything else. Rodriguez insisted Miller get credit as a director since the film is such a literal translation of the books, but I'm sure the camerawork and actor interaction were mostly RR. And That Yellow Bastard looks almost exactly like he does in the book.

more here: http://www.chud.com/news/july04/jul26sin.php3

Blade: Trinity stuff: http://www.chud.com/news/july04/jul27blade.php3

[Ne1butme]

Prankster: for the Serenity bits, did they have any sound effects in space? That was one of my favourite aspects of the show. No sound in space. No lasers sounds, no engines. Nothing. I hope that continues in the movie. But knowing that the average theater patron won't understand, i can see why the filmmakers might include sound effects.

[The Prankster]

Well, literally the ONLY thing they had to show was the mock-trailer, and there were no special effects in it that I saw, including spaceship shots. So I can't say, but I really don't think there's going to be any push to include them (even if they ARE included, the sound probably wouldn't have been added yet anyway, so there you are). The budget on this is like $50 million, low enough that the execs aren't going to be screaming at them over every detail I think...

By the way, I forgot a couple of things: there's a shot where some guy asks Mal, "don't you have a plan?" and Mal responds, "I am the plan." (Did they do that exchange in the show? It sounded familiar.) And then the final shot was River lying on the ground, freaking out, and whispering "...Reavers!" (I strongly suspect we're going to finally get to see the Reavers in this movie.)

[Jacob Singer]

Great write-up there, Pranks. Informative, to-the-point, and plenty of enthusiasm. Thumbs up.

[ShaolinMK]

The Incredibles is going to be PG?? Good God - the things that Pixar will do with that rating. November can't get here soon enough. Thanks for the scoop.

[Subotai]

How'd this year compare to years past? While it sounded like there was a lot of great stuff, it seems there was a bit of a let-down this year.

[Dave Davis]

That's not a lie.

[jujubes78]

Yup. Has been better before. It was pretty rank too - lots of people crammed into halls with very little AC.

[Rufus Rockefeller XIII]

Thanks for the report, Mirrormask is probably my most anticipated film and judging from what they showed at Comicon it's going to be stunning.

[alfalfa]

The Mike Mignola poster for The Incredibles that they have up at AICN is amazing:

http://www.aintitcool.com/image/Mignola-Incr_Comicon.jpg

[Whask]

Are you still doing the recaps Nic? I can't even find a link to part 1?

[moovyphreak]

There's about 40 pics of the celebs who attended the event here (http://movies.yahoo.com/slideshows/generic/comiccon2004.html).

There's also a 4-minute video (http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=mf_frame&id=1808466198&mspid=&mfurl=http://mediaframe.yahoo.com/launch?lid=wmv-56-s.6368384-0,wmv-100-s.6368385-0,wmv-300-s.6368389-0&p=movies&f=1808466198&.spid=1808585414&.dist=Paramount%20Pictures&type=m) highlighting the event (though the last half features an interview with Jude Law.)

And is it just me, or does Corey Haim look like a butch lesbian in this photo?

http://us.ent4.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/comic_con/comic_con_2004_photos/_group_photos/corey_feldman5.jpg

[Whask]

There's about 40 pics of the celebs who attended the event here (http://movies.yahoo.com/slideshows/generic/comiccon2004.html).

And is it just me, or does Corey Haim look like a butch lesbian in this photo?

http://us.ent4.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/comic_con/comic_con_2004_photos/_group_photos/corey_feldman5.jpg

Actually...he looks eerily like Woody Harrelson!

Anyone know how to capture that video from yahoo? I viewed the source code but couldn't find the link in there?

[Sly McFly]

I had a great time at the Comic Con. between talking to Richard Kelly and The Wachowski Bros., being at the really small premier of Rex Steele: Nazi Smasher and conversing with the makers afterwards, seeing the brilliant artists at Quick Draw, and The Incredibles panel (which by the way is going to be amazing, the cg and comedy is phenominal), I'd have to say it was my best year. Although I had a few problems.

Sin City looks amazing, but I'm iffy about the whole "the comic book is the storyboard" mentality. It will surely be the closest adaptation of a graphic novel ever but is that really good? If the movie's going to be exactly like the book, then what's the point? Robert wants the audience to be able to select complete stories when the DVD comes out, just like the comic book and it seems kind of pointless. It's going ot be kickass to see the panels moving, but there will be no surprises, just an almost too straight translation of the source.

I saw the Sky Captain panel and after seeing the clips and I can't say I'm excited to see it. It just feels so claustrophobic. You have an all cg shot of the city and then an extreme closeup of the actor. It's so detached: shot of bit robot, shot of actor's reaction, rinse, repeat. The view of Sky Captain never changes (at least from what I saw) and I think they should've just gone all CG.

The Batman Begins panel was just a big cocktease. They weren't allowed to say anything so the fans got to see the logo and Goyer trying to heal the scars from the previous Batman films. It's nice to hear the films coming along nicely but treating the fans like shit after premiering the trailer a week later is kind of dickish.

All in all it was a blast and I can't wait to go back next year.