continued...

Now, for more of my long-overdue recap of Comic Con 2007!


FRIDAY, JULY 27

So, this morning was the Warner Bros. panel. First, they showed a reel from Get Smart, and then the director brought out some dude from Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, MASI OKA!, THE ROCK!, and STEVE CARELL!!! It was excellent. At some point I went "WOOOO!" very loudly, and The Rock said, "Some guy is like, catcalling, haha." I am that guy! There was a video greeting from Nicole Kidman who is in Australia filming Australia! with Baz Luhrmann. Then they showed a clip of her movie with Daniel Craig, Invasion, a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There was also a trailer for Trick 'R Treat, which looks lame but has Anna Paquin in it. The trailer for 10,000 B.C. looked like it might be pretty entertaining, actually. Shannyn Sossamon, Ed Burns, and the director of One Missed Call answered questions that nobody had about their movie. Shannyn looked high. Then they showed the trailer for Whiteout, and Joel Silver, the artist of the graphic novel, and the director, and star Kate Beckinsale came out, and made the movie actually look really good. Now, we're just waiting in the same hall for "trailer park," followed by Clive Owen and Shoot 'Em Up. I think it's interesting how the buses around here all have nerdy bus ads for stuff like Stargate Atlantis, Spaceballs: The Animated Series, and Dead Like Me: the movie (!)...

*****

Here is a list of links to all the trailers that they showed during trailer park: The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, Mr. Woodcock, Eastern Promises, I Know Who Killed Me (LOL), Resident Evil: Extinction, Rush Hour 3, Bee Movie, The Heartbreak Kid, Balls of Fury, Right at Your Door (this looks cool), Dragon Wars, Across the Universe, The Kingdom, The Bourne Ultimatum, Vantage Point, American Gangster, 30 Days of Night, Superbad, Shoot 'Em Up, The Golden Compass, and Stardust

*****

So, watching the trailers was a nice diversion, and then after that we saw writer/director Michael Davis and star Clive Owen (mee-ow) present their film Shoot 'Em Up. The film screened twice last night, but we were way too exhausted and hungry to be able to go see it. They showed a five-minute clip of the movie (Clive Owen delivering a baby while slaughtering a huge group of nameless hitmen. Monica Bellucci and Paul Giamatti are in it as well. It looks amazing! Michael Davis was a really cool nerd who was just about to abandon hopes of making it in Hollywood when his script got picked up by New Line. They showed a second clip and also some of the animated "storyboard" that Davis had made in order to pitch his movie. Then we navigated the floor for a little bit, buying some crappy and exorbitantly overpriced sandwich. We got back to the place where Kevin Smith is going to be talking later. We caught the tail end of the Blade Runner anniversary edition DVD discussion, and now we're sitting in a "Star Wars at 30" thing.

*****

Despite the fact that I have never seen the original Star Wars movies, the LucasFilms/ILM presentation was still kind of neat. Mostly they showed trailers for upcoming video games, but they also showed two short clips from the upcoming hour-long season premiere of Family Guy which is a satire of Star Wars. Seth McFarlane actually came onstage to talk about it, which was pretty funny. They also showed some on-the-set footage from Indiana Jones 4, which made me feel better about missed the Paramount panel yesterday. Next up: Kevin Smith!!!

*****

So, last night's Kevin Smith panel was really cool. He came onstage and basically did stand-up got about half an hour before screening for us the pilot of this fall's new show Reaper, which Smith directs. It's about a slacker 21 year old whose parents sold his soul to the devil, and now he has to capture escaped souls and send them back to Hell. Then, the writers (two women, yay!) and two of the cast members came onstage for a Q&A, but obviously pretty much every question from the audience was about Kevin Smith's previous work. One guy asked to hear a funny story, and we were all treated to a tale about the time his lab started having sex with his toy dachshund. Another man started trash talking Smith's earlier work, which brought on a hilarious tirade about not making fun of your betters. Even a deaf guy with a translator got in with poking fun at Smith. After that was all said and done, we all went out to Little Italy for some great pasta and gelato, and then crashed pretty hard.

TO VIEW MY VIDEO DIARY OF COMIC CON 2007, PLEASE VISIT http://www.youtube.com/katexmachina