Tuesday, August 28, 2007

BuboniCon 39 in Albuquerque

You want Authors? We got Authors! and some Green Slime, too!


I made it to Bubonicon for the second time last weekend, which is a small, but growing, convention that's been going for quite a while. The majority of the local authors come out to take part and they usually have a good number of authors coming from nearby areas as well as a few from out of town. It is a fairly relaxed convention and a lot of the authors hang around to chat with fans and each other, or sit in the audience for panels with other authors.


This year's Author GoH was Vernor Vinge, with William Stout as Artist GoH and Jane Lindskold as Toastmaster. Other authors participating included Connie Willis, Daniel Abraham, Walter Jon Williams and more. Check out the Bubonicon site for the full list. George R.R. Martin wasn't scheduled to participate, but did show up to hang out and participate in the group signing.




Highlights for me included Connie Willis' "50 Minutes With" where she discussed the current state of her new novel and also read from her new novella,"All Seated on the Ground", being published in the December Asimov's. It is a pretty funny story and I'm glad we won't have to wait too long before being able to read the rest of it. It's about a group of aliens who land in Denver, come out of their ship, and just stand there. For months. Without anything getting a reaction from them, until they all sit down when hearing a christmas carol. Connie left us with the line "Whatever you do, don't play them any more christmas carols!".


They had their mass autographing on Saturday afternoon with almost all of the participating authors taking part. Here's just a few of them....








They also held a remembrance panel later in the day on Saturday, with Connie Willis and Melinda Snodgrass talking about Jack Williamson and Fred Saberhagen, who passed away in the last year. Members of Williamson's family were not able to attend due to services for Richard A. Hauptmann, a friend of Jack who passed away on August 20th. Connie, Melinda and other authors and fans related stories about Jack, Fred and Richard.


During their Sunday auction, one of their annual traditions is auctioning off a copy of John Lymington's Froomb!, a really bad novel that is auctioned off each year with the winner having to read it and write comments in the book. This has been going on for several years and they have recently added a copy of Lymington's other novel, The Green Drift, to the package. This year it went for $100!


To close out the convention, the Green Slime awards is presented by Kathy K. Kubica. There wasn't a really outstandingly bad movie this year, but Underdog was awarded for being a movie that really wasn't needed, SciFi for mucking with the Dresden Files and then canceling it without giving it a chance, Laurell K. Hamilton for her continuing decline as an author, The Creation Museum, and a Superman toy with sound effects and glowing eyes when his heat vision comes on that looks demonic.



There's some con photos uploaded to the Bubonicon Flickr group (which will soon include some of mine).

If you want to get some signed books from some of the authors, you shoudl contact Who Else? Books. They do not have online listings, but most of the authors signed new and used books for them.

Monday, August 27, 2007

SciFi October Preview

SciFi Goes Halloweenie this October

SciFi's October schedule is now visiable via SciFi's schedulebot or via their cable info PDF file. With October being the month of Halloween, SciFi is going overboard with a 13 days of Halloween promotion in addition to a week of horror tinged episodes during their daytime blocks.

First up, as indicated previously, Doctor Who and Eureka end their current seasons on SciFi early in October, with Eureka having an all day marathon leading up to its season finale on October 2nd. New episodes of Flash Gordon and Stargate Atlantis run each Friday night during the month along with repurposed episodes of The Bionic Woman at 7 pm ET/PT (with no sign of repurposing for Chuck, Journeyman or Heroes). Joining the SciFi Friday lineup on Oct 13th at 8 pm ET/PT will be Odyssey 5, starring Peter Weller and Christopher Gorham (Jake 2.0 and Ugly Betty). When originally aired on Showtime in 2002, Showtime stopped airing the series with eight of its 20 episodes left to air and finally screened them two years later in October 2004. It has been released on DVD and SciFi's airings will likely have some bleeping going on (or alternate audio).

For Halloween, SciFi starts things off the week of October 15th where their daytime rotation will feature horror tinged shows (Night Stalker, X-Files, Kindred: The Embraced, Wolf Lake and Tales From the Darkside. Starting on Friday, October 19th, SciFi goes into full "13 days of Halloween" mode with their schedule being pretty much nothing but horror and monster movies aside for their Friday night original series, Tuesday's ECW, and a block of Ghost Hunters with The Haunted on Wednesday nights (The Monday Enterprise/Ani-Monday blocks air on Oct 22nd, but are pre-empted on Oct 29th). This all culminates in a six hour live episode of Ghost Hunters starting a 9 pm ET on Wednesday, October 31.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

SFTV Catchup

A few various things from the last week to catch up with....

SciFi Channel Roundup Jane Cancelled, Flash Debut So-So, Fall dates for BG: Razor and Atlantis, NBC repurposing

The SciFi Channel announced that they will not be renewing Painkiller Jane for a second season due to low ratings. They will continue to run the series through the season finale in September.

The debut of Flash Gordon on August 10th did a 1.5 household rating and around 2.1 million viewers. This was the highest debut for a new series in 2007 for SciFi, which was slightly better than when the Dresden Files debuted with a 1.4 rating back in January.

SciFi also announced some airdates for their fall shows.

Stargate Atlantis returns on September 28th for its fourth season, airing at 10 pm ET/PT and will run pretty much straight through until the mid-season finale on December 7th.

The Battlestar Galactica special "Razor" will air on Saturday, November 24th. Leading up to the broadcast will be the "Razor" minisoded that will air during Flash Gordon starting in October.

Ghost Hunters will resume its third season on Wednesday, Sept 26th and will also have its second Halloween special that will air from 11 pm to 5 am ET/PT on October 31 and will be broadcast live from one of the most haunted places in America, Waverly Hills Sanitarium in Louisville, Kentucky. Being paired up with Ghost Hunters on Wednesdays, will be the 2002 UPN series, Haunted, starring Matthew Fox, who seems to have done better with his next series, Lost. UPN pulled the series after seven episodes, leaving six episodes unaired.

SciFi looks to be planning to repurpose NBC's Journeyman, Bionic Woman and Chuck, but do not appear to have Heroes on their schedule. The last week of September shows Journeyman airing at 7 pm on Thursday with The Bionic Woman at 7 pm on Friday. On Sunday night, they have Chuck scheduled at 11 pm with Journeyman at 12 midnight. Once Doctor Who ends its run in the 8 pm Friday time slot, it may be that one of the NBC shows will take over that time slot on Oct 11th.

SciFi also last week dropped their two hour block of Tru Calling on Tuesday nights, replacing it with one episode of Dead Like Me and a repeat of a Eureka episode. That is how the schedule looks through the end of September.

Canadian TV Updates

I've found a website, TV Eh?, that is specifically about Canadian TV shows, networks and news. It looks like things will be getting a bit busier this fall for SF TV on Canadian channels, which may include some things airing before they do in the US.

Blood Ties - The series will debut this week on CityTV in Canada, with different times depending on where you are watching City TV. The show will also air on Space this fall, at 9 pm Fridays starting September 14th.

Masters of Science Fiction - Space will also air Masters of Science Fiction beginning November 4th, planning to air all six episodes.

Friday, August 10, 2007

The Day of Reckoning, or Not.

There's several things of importance happening today or have happened in the past...

First up, Stardust!


The movie adapation of Stardust, the illustrated novel by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess, is released to theatres today. There's been a lot of preview screenings including the one I attended in San Diego during ComicCon and there's been various reviews posted online, the majority of them positive ones. Our local papers, The Phoenix New Times and The Arizona Republic had less favorable reviews, showing that they just don't get it at times.


I enjoyed the movie and plan to see it again this weekend. Neil Gaiman has asked that fans go see it during opening weekend to show your support for good movies, especially ones with a Neil Gaiman connection. What would be really neat is for it to beat Rush Hour 3 in Box office, which likely isn't going to happen since RH3 is probably opening in four times as many screens as Stardust, but if Stardust gets a good per screen average, that will be a good thing.

Yes, there are differences from the book, in part to expand the story a bit more and make it more cinematic. Neil Gaiman is happy with how it turned out and describes the differences as akin to Earth-1 versus Earth-2 versions (or is it Earth 42 or so with the new DC Multiverse, but I digress...). Despite the tone of the movie trailers produced by Paramount, the movie is more than just an action adventure, with a good deal of magic, romance and humour (spelled the British way).

Next Up - Flash Gordon ?!~
As anyone who has watched anything on the SciFi Channel of late knows, today is the debut of the new Flash Gordon TV series. I have not had the opportunity to see the pilot in advance to pass judgement on it myself, but this roll call of critics reviews collected by Hercules of Ain't It Cool News definitely leads me to believe it is going to be the train wreck I was expecting. First of all, when SciFi announced back in January (completely out of the blue), that they were making a Flash Gordon series to debut in July of this year, I had my doubts they could pull it off. At the time of the announcement and even a few weeks afterwards, it was apparent that they didn't even have a concept on how to remake it or had any casting. When the casting was announced of Eric Johnson as Flash, it definitely wasn't anything to get many fans excited (Lana Lang's jock boyfriend from Smallville?) and the rest of the cast are pretty much standard spot-the-Canuck actors we've seen turn up on a lot of Canadian produced TV shows. When they finally admitted who was running the show, Peter Hume (Charmed, South Beach), there was yet another big yawn. When the biggest news about the start of filming was that they were able to reuse sets from the Tin Man miniseries to represent Ming's palace on Mongo, it was apparent they were stretching to find something to try to get people's interest up. Then, when we started to get actual information on their take on modernizing the show, expectations were lowered even more (no rockets, just a wormhole/rift to travel between Earth and Mongo, Ming is a blonde Canadian with no real apparent alienness - who knows, maybe it will work), and with seeing actual clips form the show, it looks pretty much standard made in Vancouver show. SciFi has been struggling with their first run dramas, Battlestar Galactica and the Stargates have all declined in the ratings, Painkiller Jane has hardly made their top ten for the week, likely averaging about half what Galactica and the Stargates were getting in the ratings, The one show that held some promise and had halfway decent ratings during its 12 week run, The Dresden Files, Scifi seemed to disown it and only just recently admitted they had no plans to renew the show. This after stringing fans along for months without anything more than a "no decision has been made" response. I expect there will be some curiosity tune-in for Flash Gordon tonight, but I will be surprised if it manages to hang on to much of a loyal audience.

August 10th Birthdays and other Happenings
Famous people born on August 10th include Claudia Christian (of Babylon 5 fame and apparently isn't enough of a celebrity anymore to make the "Celebrity Birthdays" list in the papers today), Rosanna Arquette, Antonio Banderas, Kate O'Mara (Dynasty and Doctor Who's The Rani) and Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. It is also my birthday, number 50 (ack!). It is also the date that the Babylon 5 pilot started filming in 1992, and the date I first visited the Babylon 5 set in 1995. I also use this date as an annual request for donations to help support SFTV.org. Amazon.com gift certificates or paypal donations can be sent to leewsftv@yahoo.com .

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

NeilCon, or the Neil Gaiman Subset of ComicCon International 2007

As I've seen mentioned a few times, the San Diego Comic Con International is so big that you basically need to decide what convention you want to make for yourself. This year, I elected to make my Comic Con experience focus on Neil Gaiman. I didn't see everything he was one, but made it a point to catch his spotlight panel and two of the three movie presentations he was part of at the Horton Plaza theatre.

First off, a somewhat organized report on the screenings:
One of the highlights of this year's Comic Con International were some special screenings arranged for three movies based on Neil Gaiman works. First up was one for Beowulf, for which a screening was held on Wednesday night with Neil Gaiman and co-screenwriter Roger Avary. With it happening on Wednesday night, there was confusion about who could actually get in to see it, though. The people at the Paramount booth either didn't know about it, claimed it was for press only, or later claimed it didn't actually happen. It did happen and Paramount did screen a taping of it on Thursday afternoon a couple of times. I was not able to make any of those screenings, but did see Gaiman and Avary talk about the movie in the big Paramount presentation on Thursday afternoon in Hall H. Gaiman first took the stage to talk about Stardust with screenwriter Jane Goldman, showing an extended clip from the film. When they were done with that segment, Neil walked off stage as he had been told to do, and then came back on stage with Roger Avary. You can see video from those panels on Youtube. First the Stardust segment with Jane Goldman and then the Beowulf panel with Roger Avary.

Thursday night was a preview screening of Stardust, with Neil Gaiman and Jane Goldman introducing the movie and holding a short Q&A session afterwards. For this screening, there were 50 VIP passes made available via the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund for which those who sprung for it got a limited print by Charles Vess (1 of 50) signed by Gaiman and Vess, a set of the Stardust frangrances by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, and a VIP ticket to the screening. Paramount also handed out passes at their booth, having them snatched up very quickly by fans eager to see the movie early. Of course, they handed out more passes than there were seats and those who arrived late weren't able to get in. Having sprung for the CBLDF VIP package, I was able to bypass the line outside and take a seat in the reserved section.

As it grew nearer to the start of the Stardust screening, the theatre filled up and sitting down the aisle from me was Charles Vess and, I assume, some other people involved with the movie. Neil and Jane were introduced and did a short introduction for the film and then did a Q&A session afterwards. I'll be posting a detailed review of the movie later this week, but I quite enjoyed it and the audience gave Neil and Jane a standing ovation as they went back to the front of the stage for the Q&A session. As Neil had indicated onstage earlier in the day, the movie is different from the book in such a way as to describe the book as the Earth-1 version of the story while the movie is the Earth-2 version. The story was restructured a bit so that we actually met up with Tristan Thorne much earlier in the movie and he has a much quicker journey to where the star has landed. When asked about the role of Captain Shakespeare and if it was expanded for the movie because the signed up Robert DeNiro, Goldman indicated that the role had been expanded as part of creating the movie script and that it grew a bit more when DeNiro was brought on board. Gaiman talked about when he visited the set and was able to walk around on the full size flying ship set. He recounted that he put a flying ship in the story because he thought it would be neat to have Charles Vess draw a flying ship as part of the illustrations. It took him a few minutes to write it, and probably a few hours for Charles to draw it. When he was standing on the set that took workers two months to build and several million dollars, he started to feel a bit guilty about it, though. For those wondering why it is Tristan Thorne in the movie while in the original book it was Tristran Thorn, Gaiman said that when director Matthew Vaughn was getting things written down, he referenced a British paperback edition of Stardust that had the character name as Tristan Thorne on back of the book and once Michael had it written down that way, it stuck. Thus probably perpetuating the Earth-1 vs. Earth-2 analogy.

During the Rogue/Focus pictures panel in Hall H on Saturday, Neil Gaiman once again took the stage, this time with director Henry Selick to talk about the stop motion 3D animated movie based on Gaiman's Hugo, Nebula, British Science Fiction, Locus Poll, and Bram Stoker award winning story Coraline. They formally announced a special screening that night with passes being handed out at the Rogue Focus pictures booth later that afternoon. I managed to get by the booth and get a pass, although it appeared that the passes that were more popular were those for a preview screening of Balls of Fury. I imagine that people who were in Hall H that heard about it didn't want to leave the hall to get a pass for fear they would not be able to get back in and those who might have wanted to see it didn't even know it was happening. Those of us who were able to check Neil's blog knew that something was happening and were able to figure it out.

After packing my stuff up from the J. Michael Straczynski spotlight, I caught the comiccon shuttle bus up to the Horton Plaza and found a relatively short line of fans lined up for the screening. I was early enough to have time to get something to eat and relax a bit before heading back to my place in line, seeing that it had grown a bit while I was away. They did have a couple of posters on display outside of the theatre and it was a fairly relaxed crowd when they started to let us in. As expected, they were checking bags and purses to prevent anyone from taping the presentation. They were relatively nice about it compared to other screenings I've been to and since most people had come directly from the convention, they still had their cameras. I was allowed to keep my camera by removing the memory card and putting it in my pocket. After the screening, I was able to take a couple of pictures (really dark, though) of Neil and Henry signing the posters they handed out.

The crowd was a mixture of Gaiman fans (a couple of girls dressed up as Death and Delirium), industry types and Gaiman's family (his daughter Maddy and son Mike) as well as his assistants who had been watching over him all weekend. Neil Gaiman and Henry Selick sat down in the front of the theatre and started with showing various test footage of each of the major characters including Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning), her Mother and the Other Mother (both voiced by Teri Hatcher), her rubbernecked Father (voiced by John Hodgman), the obese Miss Forcible and top-heavy Miss Spink (voiced by Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, respectively). Selick noted that French and Saunders had originally been cast with the other roles (French as Miss Spink and Saunders as Miss Forcible) but that when they were doing readings, something seemed to be missing. When they had them switch parts, it really clicked and that is how it has ended up. The look of the character design in the movie is different from the Dave McKean illustrations in the original book and were primarily developed by visual designer Tadehiro Uesugi. We saw test footage of characters walking and moving as well as some test footage with syncing the faces up to the dialogue. In most footage there was still a line below most characters foreheads that is part of the physical puppet. Selick indicated that they planned to remove those for the final film as well as the visible support beams needed for some characters. Gaiman indicated he kindof liked that lines on the face and hope they stay in. I guess we'll find out when the movie is released next year how it ends up. After concluding showing us the test footage, they asked us to put on our 3D glasses and screened a mostly completed section of the film lasting about ten minutes that showed Coraline discovering the door between her house and the Other house and ending with the discovery of the Other Mother with her noticeable difference from her real mother. The 3D is more subtle in the real world and is more noticeable in the Other world. The footage looked very good and the look of the film is really outstanding visually. Selick said that when they decided to do it in 3D, they redesigned and rebuilt some of the sets to make it work better in 3D and it really did look good. It think this will set a new standard for stop motion animation and will be worth catching by viewers of all ages.

After the screening was done, Gaiman and Selick took a few more questions and then it was announced that those with pieces of paper stuck under their seats with stars on them would be getting a special poster made for this event and that Gaiman and Selick would sign. They were numbered and on thicker paper and look really neat.

The rest of Neil Con
In addition to the offsite screenings and appearances on the panels in Hall H, Neil was quite busy the rest of the time. He did one full public signing up in the autograph area on Friday where they did a random ticket drawing for people to be able to be in the line. They had several hundred people filling up about four bays trying to get the few tickets that were available, for which I was not one of the few to get them. That wasn't the only signing opportunity, though. Neil also did a couple of signings on Thursday and Friday for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund where for new or renewal memberships, you were able to get an item signed. Also for the CBLDF, they did a special poster of his poem "Instructions", illustrated by Brian and Wendy Froud, that originally was going to be a signing at the Imaginosis booth where Brian and Wendy were most of the weekend. Realizing the demand for Neil, they made it a ticketed drawing with a notice in the daily paper about it. The mention didn't specify it also required purchasing the poster (with proceeds going to the CBLDF). WIth the late notice, there was a much smaller crowd for the drawing and most people that wanted the ticket were able to get one. During this signing is when Claudia Christian stopped by to tell Neil how much she liked his work.

Neil also made an appearance at the CBLDF Auction (or was supposed to) and also presented at the Eisner Awards on Friday night. It was here that his co-presenter, Jonathan Ross, decided they should re-enact the Madonna/Britney Spears kiss for the audience. It was near the end of a long ceremony and you can see what happened here on YouTube.

Neil's spotlight panel on Friday was well attended and Comic Book Resources has a very good report on it. Neil did cause a bit of a stir during the panel when he removed his leather jacket!
During the panel, Neil's assistant also handed out sample t-shirts from the Neverwear venture.
There's also a few bits of video from this panel online on YouTube. Panel opening, Scary Trousers, ComicCon's Early years & Charles Vess, Imagination, Scandanavian Death Metal.

The other panel Neil did was on Sunday in a Jack Kirby Tribute panel with Mark Evanier, Erik Larsen, Darwyn Cooke, and Mike Royer. This was the panel Neil was most looking forward to doing and CBR has a report on the panel.

Following the Kirby panel, Neil was off and running up to Los Angeles for the star studded premier of Stardust in Hollywood. Photos on IMDB from the premiere can be found here, starting with Neil in the slideshow. Charles Vess also reported on the premiere on his blog with a report and a photo of him and Neil together. (Note that at the time I posted this, the greenmanpress site appeared to not be responding. Possibly overloaded due to Neil having linked to it on his journal).

You can also look back on Neil Gaiman's online journal for his thoughts on Comic Con including a couple of videos from his daughter, Maddy. While waiting in line and in the audience for these events, a lot of people were surprised to hear about the other things happening, all of which they would have known about if they'd read Neil's blog before the con.

I think that about does it for this entry.

Sunday, August 5, 2007

SFTV Roundup & News Tidbits

Taking a break from the Comic Con stuff to update a few things in the SFTV world.

SFTV Schedule Files Updated - The SFTV Schedule files have been updated as of August 4th with current schedule info for upcoming shows. Use the links on the right hand side of the SFTV Blog.

Dresden Files Not Renewed - After what seemed like a long time of "No Decision Has Been Made" responses from the SciFi Channel, they did finally confirm that they have not renewed The Dresden Files for a second season. Reports such as this one by TV Guide's Matt Roush indicate SciFi's costs were higher than they could justify even though the show did comparable ratings to Battlestar Galactica and almost double what Painkiller Jane has been getting. The people running Dresden City have some additional information including a post from Robert Wolfe. Efforts are continuing to get Lionsgate to try to find another home for the series, but indications are they were waiting for SciFi to officially cancel the show and may not have any other potential outlets in mind. The Dresden Files DVD set comes out this week, so if sales are good, Lionheart could look into other possibilities including a direct to DVD release somewhere down the road. In the meantime, the Dresden Files books are still selling strong and Jim Butcher is still planning on continuing the series through 20 books and possibly more. I really think if SciFi had given the show more of a chance, it would have picked up additional viewers, but they seem to be putting a lot of their eggs into the new Flash Gordon series starting this week which there doesn't appear to be real high expectations for from the fan community.

Masters of Science Fiction debuts on ABC - The long awaited Masters of Science Fiction debuts on ABC last night in the 10 pm Saturday time slot. No word yet on how the ratings were but it is unlikely we will see more than the four bought by ANC and the two additional ones produced. The do have a MoSF Blog on TV Guide's web site and the producers have a very good Official Masters of Science Fiction web site with lots of info about the series including the episodes ABC is not airing. ABC has a basic information page on their web site and don't appear to be offering any online episode viewing. As I've indicated before, the show had a lot of promise but I think them going with ABC pretty much killed any likelyhood this will do well enough to be an ongoing series.

Doctor Who Rumors Squelched - One of the British tabloid papers had indicated that at the end of Series Four for the new Doctor Who, David Tennant would be leaving and be replaced by James Nesbitt, currently starring in the BBC series Jekyll with Steven Moffat taking over as showrunner. Moffat posted a message on Outpost Gallifrey stating "The James Nesbitt story is a total fabrication. Made up. A fantasy. Just a guy sitting at a desk and just inventing stuff.I wasn't going to say anything, but I'm getting embarrassed for the deeply wonderful Jimmy Nesbitt. So tell everyone please, cos it's getting very silly. Steven Moffat".

FOX Pushes Back New Amsterdam to Midseason - FOX announced schedule changes this week that took their new series New Amsterdam off of the schedule, pushing it back to mid-season. Also debuting on FOX in mid-season will be The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Pratchett's Colour of Magic filming, Hogfather to debut in US on Ion. Currently filming in the UK is a new miniseries based on Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic, the book that introduced Pratchett's Discworld series. It will air on Sky One in the UK this fall. Sean Astin is Twoflower, the first Discworld tourist, David Jason is the wizzard Rincewind, Tim Curry is Trymon, and Christopher Lee is doing the voice of Death. The Hogfather miniseries produced last year for Sky One will be airing in the US on Ion TV as part of the RHI Weekend movie package. The producers are looking to first distribute The Colour of Magic as a movie first. This past week, a group of fans got to be extras in a crowd scene. Be on the lookout for some reports on the filming....

Lee

Comic Con Links, Reports, Videos and More


I've been looking around the net to find all the various sites that covered this year's Comic Con, including some video feeds and such. Here's a summary (with some updates to come as I find other stuff).

Newsarama.com has a big index to all of their reports, obviously focusing on comics and comics related media stuff.

On the Newsarama blog, they have a post with a lot of links as well.

IGN.com has a Comic Con Index for all of their reports.

SciFi Channel had a special Comic Con area for reports as well. They also had a bunch of reports on SciFi Wire (but no index, you'll have to page through the news items).

Of course, G4 TV did a live broadcast from the show and has a lot of video clips availble to view on their Comic Con area.

Comic Book Resources did a lot of reporting but don't have an index that I can see.

Some of their reports include:

More of their panel reports can be found on the Comic Reel archive pages for August and July. They also had several photo reports, this is linked to #4 with links to their three previous ones including in the report (with a fifth one promised).

The Futon Critic did live blogs of most of the TV panels at Comic Con.

Kryptonsite had some special reports on Smallville from Comic Con, including bits from the press conference. First was a report on the Smallville panel, then interview bits with the producers and Erica Durance, and then with Supergirl, Laura Vandervoort.
Check back for updates to this post as I find more places to link to.....



Lee

More Comic Con Pics - Superheroes and more

Here's some more pictures from ComicCon, mostly superhero & celebrity themed

First up, one of the press events I made it to was the Who Wants to Be a Superhero? event, that had Stan Lee, the first season's winner Feedback, and two of this year's contestants, Hygena and Hyperstrike. I got to do short interviews with Stan, Hygena and Hyperstrike, which I will have up later.


The TV Guide Channel was also in the room interviewing everyone.



















Hygena and Hyperstrike. Hygena got the idea for her character at last year's Comic Con when she noticed how messy it was and thought it would be neat to have a Super Hero to clean up after the other superheroes. Hyperstrike changed his character from the one he auditioned with since SciFi gets the rights to the characters and he uses that persona as part of the circus act he does.

The top three from last year, Feedback, Fat Momma and Major Victory were also on hand, signing autographs and getting photos taken in the autograph area.


I also made it for part of the Ghost Whisperer press conference that had star Jennifer Love Hewitt on hand along with Executive producers Ian Sanders, Kim Moses and P.K. Simonds. Hewitt wasn't doing any panels at ComicCon, but did do a signing at the Inkworks booth. At the same time as her signing, Marvel was unveiling the Iron Man costume with Jon Favreau, which caused near gridlock around those booths at the time. The room for the Ghost Whisperer press conference wasn't really set up for picture taking, so right in the middle of the Superhero press event next door, they brought Jennifer into the room, stood her against the ComicCon backdrop for a quick photo op (about 15 seconds!) and then whisked her out of the room to head down for the signing. This was right in the middle of TV Guide interview Stan Lee.

J. Michael Straczynski was on hand to promote the Babylon 5: The Lost Tales DVD release and also did a spotlight panel as well as several comics panels and a couple of autograph sessions. When I caught up with him on Sunday at his signing, he admitted he was pretty exhausted and had only gotten about an hour and half to shop in the dealer's room.

At Neil Gaiman's signing on Saturday, Babylon 5 star Claudia Christian came up to say hi to Neil, wanting to let him know how much she liked his work. That's a somewhat bemnused Brian Froud in the background. More on Neil to come in a subsequent blog post.


During the Paramount panel on Thursday, J.J. Abrams and company announced casting for Spock for the Star Trek movie, with Zachary Quintos (Sylar on Heroes) announced to be playing Spock.

Additionally, they also announced the Leonard Nimoy would be playing Spock as well and brought him out. Nimoy indicated he thought that it was a very good script and that the casting choice made was "Logical". See the Trek part of the panel online at IFC.com


Paramount also had a live video feed from the set of Indiana Jones IV with Spielberg, Ford and other cast including announcing that Karen Allen would be returning as Marion Ravenwood. The video can be seen on the official Indiana Jones website. Copies on You Tube have been removed.


NBC had a booth for Heroes, set up like Iassac's loft with paintings including the big bomb blast on the floor. During exhibitor hours, the place was packed as the cheeleaders handed out various goodies including comics, temporary tattos, and tickets for a drawing for a Heroes lunch
box. Look for all of those items on Ebay now!


I took some photos one day before the hall was opened to the public.
Here's the floor painting.



A look inside.




A display of props on the outside of the booth.

Saturday, August 4, 2007

ComicCon Report of sorts

Here's a report with pictures of some of the stuff at ComicCon 2007. I'll have some reports on specific events later. (As I've discovered trying to put a bunch of pictures into a blogger post is a pain...)


A panoramic view of the exhibit hall from the mezzanine on preview night...


Stargate Atlantis water on sale at the concession stands.




Fans getting their head shaved so they can get a Stargate symbol spray painted on the back of their head!

And now, A parade of buses..


Stargate Atlantis buses


Stargate: The Ark of Truth


With an autograph on the back of the bus, it appears.

Spaceballs: The Animated Series


Species: The Awakening

The bus driver insisted that I take a picture of her as well.

Her name tag was Ralph Kramden....



The War Games Bus

There was also a bus for Dead Like Me: The Resurrection, but I never got a picture of that one...

That takes care of the Stargates and Buses for now.



There were also a group of Stargate fans posing for a picture as well.