Overall, the New York Comic Con was fun this year. Although I have to say, I think I like last year's better, for a variety of reasons. Read on to find out why (and be sure to play the game at the end!) ...
Head to Freakgirl's post for photos
Friday was pretty much committed to exploring the show floor, and that part was great. The planners did a great job of laying things out better than the previous years -- publishers, dealers, small press, artists, autographs, and gaming were all on one floor, each in their own well-defined areas. There was even a podcasting section. The hall was as big as the first two years combined, the aisles were wide enough to keep things moving, even on Saturday, and the vast majority of the booths did actually seem to be comics-related, which was nice. The floor experience was so good, in fact, that we didn't even bother to attend any of the Friday panels (which frankly didn't look all that interesting anyway).
Saturday was less satisfying. Most of the panels worth attending were scheduled for Saturday, so we planned to spend most of our time doing nothing but that. Sadly, all the effort the planners put into improving the show floor experience cut into effort that should have been spent better organizing the panel. Every session we attended started late and ran late, they were scheduled one right on top of the other with no breathing space, and the lines to get in were long and badly organized by the staff. As an example, for some baffling reason, they stuffed Stan Lee -- arguably the Father of Modern Comics -- into a room about one-third the size it should have been, so that people were standing shoulder to shoulder in the back of the room, and despite it clearly being a press event (they actually handed out a press release), no special consideration was made for press seating.
Stan Lee and Virgin revealed that they're partnering to create a new superhero universe for Virgin Comics that they claim will be unique, groundbreaking stuff. But with no artists or writers identified yet, one has to take this with a grain of salt. I love Stan, and give him full props for everything he's done -- but he's an old dude now, and freely admits that he doesn't read many new comics. So while I'm sure he has great ideas, he'll need to align himself with the right creative minds to make sure these new comics can stand up to what 21st audiences are expecting. During the rest of the panel (what little we heard before we had leave early to catch the next one), Stan did his usual great job of tooting his own horn while somehow managing to sound humble, classy, and free-spirited.
As for the Battlestar Galactica panel, refer to this link for details about what was revealed. What was mildly frustrating to me is that getting home late from the con on Friday, and getting up early for it on Saturday morning, I didn't get a chance to watch Friday night's episode before the panel. So I pretty much got spoiled, and I have a feeling half the audience was probably in the same boat as me. But oh well. My only other impressions were that in person, Michael Hogan (Tigh) seems much nicer, Michael Trucco (Anders) seems much funnier, and Rekha Sharma (Tory) seems much prettier ... and geekier. It was also interesting to learn (from Hogan) that the "So say we all!!!" moment from the mini-series was improvised by both Edward James Olmos and the rest of the cast.
Before the BSG panel, some Sci-Fi Channel dude announced that their experiment with Virgin Comics, a comic book called "The Stranded," has been green lit for a TV pilot -- which apparently was the intention all along. Following this same creative path, he announced that a new comics title would be starting soon, which he described as, "The Justice League meets Desperate Housewives," which would tell the story of a group of superheroes living in a gated community ... or something like that. The working title is "Superbia," and presumably if the comic does well, it will also get a TV pilot. Which is an interesting business model to me.
The LucasFilms panel was moderated by some goofy corporate dude who thought he was a lot funnier than he really was, but he really managed to pack a lot of content into his hour: 1) A preview of the upcoming Indiana Jones movie; 2) a preview of the Lego Indiana Jones video game, which you know I'll be buying; 3) a preview of the upcoming "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" game, which looks off the hook awesome; 4) previews and interviews about the upcoming "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" CGI animated TV show; and 5) a great interview with Seth Green & Matt Seinrich, who discussed how "Robot Chicken" got started, and talked up the pending release of the "Robot Chicken Star Wars" DVD.
The last panel we tried to attend that day was a preview of the upcoming Kevin Smith movie "Zack & Miri Make a Porno" ... which turned out to be a complete cluster-frak. The chaotic line situation had gotten ridiculous by this point, and even though the panel started late, the moderator still wasn't there yet. So rather than sit and watch the four middle-aged troubadours (don't ask) on stage stare at each other, we decided to cut our losses and bail. In this case, what's especially disappointing is that Kevin Smith himself wasn't at the show this year -- his moderation of the BSG panel last year was a big highlight, and his own panel was a hoot. Nothing I attended this year came close to the fun of either of those, this non-panel was a prime example of that.
Also notably missing was a single Whedon-related event. This, despite the fact that both Buffy and Angel have canonical comic books out right now, and the new Serenity comic mini-series released just last month. So this seemed like a no-brainer to me. But there wasn't a single panel, and to my knowledge, not a single Whedon-verse cameo to be found. Smooth move Dark Horse and IDW!
Also no surprise cameos from anybody involved with the Iron Man, Batman, or Hulk movies. Which, on the one hand, I guess kept the convention from being too much of a Hollywood spectacle. But on the other hand, it seems kind of a let-down. It's nice to see John Cho, Kal Penn, and Neil Patrick Harris there promoting the Harold & Kumar movie, and the BSG actors, and Peter Dinklage ... but none of those are comic book movies/shows. Where was Robert Downey Jr. or Terence Howard or Ed Norton or Liv Tyler or Tim Roth or Christian Bale or Maggie Gyllenhaal? Or if those were too pie in the sky to expect, then how about any remotely secondary character from these movies? It seems to me the show handlers did a much better job of getting big names for this show last year.
Next year, they're moving the show back to February. So we'll see if that changes anything for the better or worse. Regardless, you know I'll be there!
EDITED TO ADD:
During the BSG panel, there was a question about whether or not there was a plan to create more curse words than just "frak." The response was that "frak" is actually a very versatile curse word, and that recently, the word "gagglefrak" had shown up in a script.
I propose a game. Let's all create a sentence with the word "gagglefrak" in it, and if/when the episode that uses it airs, we'll find out who came closest to its intended meaning.
A few weeks back, we did a giveaway of the new Appleseed Ex Machina DVD. At the time, they were generous enough to send a copy to us here at TMFT as well. And while this isn't really Freakgirl's kind of movie, I took advantage of her being away this past weekend to finally watch it.
For starters, you should know that I came into this completely blind. I've never seen the first Appleseed movie. And despite having a well-documented comic book habit, I'm also not particularly into manga/anime comics, and have never read a single issue of what I understand now to be the classic and widely popular Appleseed series from the late 80s. In fact, having watched this movie, I still have no idea what "Appleseed" is, or what it has to do with anything. But putting all of that aside, my lack of knowledge about this franchise did not diminish in any way my enjoyment or comprehension of this movie. The narrator quickly catches you up on the basic premise in the first minute, and then from there, you just go along for the ride.
As for the basic premise ... it's the 22nd century, World War 3 has come and gone, lots of people died, and in the aftermath, the massive utopian city of Olympus was built. There's an artificial intelligence called Gaia that runs things, a slightly shady global corporate entity called Poseidon, genetically engineered humans called "bioroids", and a special police force called ESWAT that maintains order with the help of high-tech weaponry, flying cars, and occasionally even cyborg soldiers. One of these cyborgs is Briareos, a massive dude who is mostly machine, but still seems to be all heart. His partner/girlfriend on the force is a petite bad-ass named Deunan. They apparently served together during WW3, back when Briareos was still all-human, and they've stuck together ever since.
No matter what else happens, these two characters are the primary focus. When the movie opens, ESWAT is foiling a terrorist attempt by some rogue cyborgs, and Deunan and Briareos are right smack in the center of the action, hot-dogging it, flouting the orders of their superiors, and even standing back to back while they blast away at the legion of bad guys surrounding them. They are the classic action movie team, and work together like a well-oiled machine. That is, until Briareos gets badly injured at the end of this mission, thereby creating a point of personal conflict that plays out for the rest of the movie.
I'm a character guy. So while I could sit here and tell you about all the things that get blown up, the people who turn into zombies, the conspiracy to rule the world, and the not-so-subtle condemnation of personal communication devices like cell phones, what I'm really all about is the characters. In particular, I love when a sci-fi story finds a way to force characters to examine their own identity (Battlestar Galactica is a great example of this). So for me, the introduction of the character of Tereus -- who is basically a clone of Briareos -- is the point at which the movie caught my interest.
In short, Tereus is Briareos before he became a cyborg, all man and no machine, and ESWAT makes Deunan work with him while her partner is recovering from his injuries. This of course creates problems for her, because Tereus essentially IS the guy she first fell in love with ... but he's not. Meanwhile, both Briareos and Tereus have to struggle with exactly what does and does not make them unique, and sometimes that struggle is a literal smackdown between them. Add to this the fact that somebody has monkeyed with Briareos' cybernetic parts to make him behave badly, and this forces him to fight even harder for the same humanity that the presence of Tereus has already called into question.
Visually, this movie is very cool. Not so long ago, I was playing a game on my Xbox in which the computer-generated cut scenes were SO good that I wanted to watch an entire movie of them. In particular, since it happened to be a superhero game, it occurred to me that in some cases, I would rather that the movie studios did CGI versions of certain superhero movies instead of live action versions. And the look of Appleseed Ex Machina is very close to what I had in mind when that thought crossed my mind.
To be clear, the CGI used here is not of the super-realistic variety that you see in, say, The Matrix or Spider-Man movies. The intention here seems to be not to reproduce reality so much as to make everything look as if it had been hand-drawn in three dimensions. Which is what I find so appealing. The characters and settings clearly look drawn, and not like the slightly rubbery characters in Beowulf or the doll-like characters in Shrek -- both of which are also visually impressive movies, but don't give you the same "from the pages of a comic book" impression that I'm talking about. And yet, even though everything looks drawn, you still feel as if you're moving through three-dimensional space, complete with depth of focus effects and "physics" that almost always look (and sound) real.
Further enhancing the feel of this movie is the cinematography, which I have to assume was heavily influenced by the producer, John Woo. In this respect, the film steps away from its comic book roots to offer camera angles (virtual of course) and scene transitions that are bold and dramatic, often in ways that would be impossible for a live action movie to pull off. In true Woo style, the fight scenes are as choreographed and beautiful to watch as any great kung fu movie, complete with judicious use of the "bullet time" slow-motion effect that Woo himself first introduced to the genre two decades ago. In short, while animated, this movie often looks and feels like a John Woo movie, in all the best ways.
My only criticism -- and it's not much of one really -- is that outside of the movie's own mythology, the story itself didn't have much resonance. You can certainly draw a few parallels between the events in the movie and the "real world," but there doesn't seem to be any clear social message. And while I enjoyed some of the characters' identity issues, I'm not sure they were resolved in any profound way. Spoiler Alert: Deunan & Briareos are still a team at the end, and you never really doubt for a moment that they will be. So I didn't get too emotionally invested. But to be fair, it's really more of an action movie than a sci-fi movie, so these are shortcomings I can live with. To make it more "heavy" than it is would probably have alienated the fan base.
In the end, Appleseed Ex Machina succeeds at being a fun, fast-moving, visually compelling movie, and I'd love to see similar ground-breaking animation techniques like these used for superhero characters with which I'm more familiar. It's a great compromise between a cartoon and a live action movie.
To celebrate the release of their new CG action/sci-fi anime film, Appleseed Ex Machina, Warner Brothers is giving away one DVD copy for Too Much Free Time readers. The film is produced by John Woo. Watch the trailer and find out how to win after the jump.
2/29/08 - ** CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR WINNER, Melissa Becker! **
Just post a comment about why you'd like to win a copy of the DVD, and you'll be entered in a random drawing. You can comment as much as you like in the thread, but you'll only be entered in the drawing once. US residents only, sorry. The winner will be chosen on Friday, 2/29.
Here's some more info about the film.
EW lists their top 25 sci-fi movies and shows of the past 25 years.
I finally got myself caught up with the first 3 episodes of both Bionic Woman and Journeyman this weekend, and I think I'll be able to keep up with both in real time for the foreseeable future. When I posed the question last month of which one I should recap this season, the response I got wasn't nearly as decisive as I was hoping. So for now, I'm going to take a stab at recapping both in the same post for a couple of weeks, and see which one gets more chatter.
Let's start with an overview of the first 3 episodes of each show ...
Bionic Woman is a classic story of girl (Jamie Sommers) meets boy (Will Anthros), boy gets girl pregnant, boy asks girl to marry him, rogue agent of boy's clandestine agency hits boy and girl with a truck, girl almost dies, and boy saves girl's life by replacing some of her blood with nanites, installing some chips in her brain, and giving her a bionic ear, eyes, arm, and legs. Then boy gets shot by rogue agent and dies -- end of romance. Further complicating the equation are Jamie's bratty sister, Miguel Ferrer's incessant cynicism, and Sarah Corvus, the first bionic woman, played by Katie Sackhoff with pitch-perfect crazy, desperate, dangerous precision. There are some other main characters, but they're all kind of boring to me -- the icy blonde woman, the Asian martial arts guy who's in love with Sarah, whoever Isaiah Washington is supposed to be, and the forgettable IT dude who upkeeps Jamie's bionics.
The show is dark, both literally and figuratively. Lots of black clothes, scenes at night, scenes in bars, scenes that take place in poorly lit windowless rooms of the Wolf's Creek facility. Figuratively, there are all these dead people weighing down the storyline -- Will, Jamie's mom, Sarah's sister, the 14 agents that Sarah killed, 200+ people in the town that gets gassed by some terrorists. And did I mention Miguel Ferrer's incessant cynicism? The happy-fun scenes between Jamie and her sister seem obtrusive somehow, and the closest thing to an active romance is Sarah & Jae -- and considering that Jae once "killed" Sarah, that one is dysfunctional at best. And what are we supposed to make of the fact that Will kept a dossier on Jamie for 2 years before he met her? Creepy.
Still not sure if I care about these characters yet, and that may eventually keep me from sticking with the show long-term. Even the dangers these people are saving the world from seem two-dimensional. But I'll give it till the mid-season break and let the current plot arc play out before I decide. I just have a hard time believing there's a plot twist coming that will really surprise me all that much.
Journeyman is a classic story of boy meets girl, boy dates girl, girl disappears and is presumed dead, boy steals his brother's girl, boy marries that girl, boy starts jumping around in time, and boy learns that the first girl has also been jumping around in time. And really, it's as simple as that. The main cast is minimal -- Dan the time jumper, his amazingly understanding wife Katie, his cop brother Jack, and his ex-fiancee (also a time jumper) Livia.
Through exposition in the most recent episode, we learn that Dan has overcome a gambling addiction and that his boss Hugh has overcome a drinking problem. And details like this seem to establish a tone of redemption for the show. The jumps that Dan makes sometimes literally force him to look at who he used to be, and force him to reflect on both himself and his marriage. Complicating this process is the fact that his not-dead ex Livia keeps popping up at some point during every one of his jumps, being mysterious, making it hard for him to concentrate on the task at hand, and indirectly creating rifts with his wife.
This show is light where Bionic Woman is dark -- again both figuratively and literally. Lots of daylight scenes, and most of the sets have tall ceilings and/or lots of windows. The relationship between Dan and his wife (and their son) is a central plot point, and despite their difficulties, the tone is always positive. To punctuate this, in the first episode, Dan follows a man through time and ultimately prevents him from killing his own wife and child in a fit of jealousy -- the child goes on to become a doctor and save lives. In the second episode, Dan helps deliver a baby girl on a plane, and follows her through time, indirectly causing her to donate bone marrow to a pilot who now flies humanitarian missions. In the third episode, Dan jumps repeatedly to 1989, the day of the big San Francisco earthquake, and saves the life of a lawyer who now defends wrongly accused convicts. So it's kind of a "pay it forward" theme -- helping people who help other people.
So far, I have to say, I'm enjoying Journeyman a bit more than Bionic Woman. The characters are better developed and more sympathetic, and I get the impression that there are some interesting plot surprises awaiting us in the coming months. And while I have no problem watching a "dark" show -- Battlestar Galactica rules! -- I'm not convinced that it works for BW tonally. It seems a bit put on. "We're saving the world. But we're really broody and serious and cynical (Miguel Ferrer) and we listen to The Cure and we don't really know why we're saving the world, because life sucks." On the other end of the spectrum, it's very easy to accuse Journeyman of being too optimistic and hopeful. And maybe it is. But so far, it works for me.
It's Day Four of my shameless attempt to shoehorn more sci-fi content onto the TMFT site, and today I'd like to give everybody a choice. Besides Chuck and Heroes, NBC is giving us two new sci-fi shows this fall season -- the much-anticipated Bionic Woman remake, and the intriguing time-travel series Journeyman.
I've watched and throughly enjoyed the pilots for both shows. Each in its own way takes advantage of a formula used in most of the sci-fi shows that seem to appeal to the masses these days -- take an ordinary person, and throw them into an extraordinary situation. Take a bartender, put her in a near-fatal car accident, and have her wake up with superpowers. Take a dude with a wife and kids, and have him suddenly start bouncing around in time for no apparent reason, like Billy Pilgrim in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five.
It's a no-brainer why this formula works -- they're "gateway drugs". If you're trying to entice viewers who don't normally watch or read fantastic genre stories, then you start with a character who is "normal" like them, and work your way up from there. And if you're trying to entice geeks like me, who have an active imagination, and who on some level have always dreamed of being "super", then these kinds of shows become pure wish fulfillment fantasies. It's not that most of us don't also wish we could be Captain Kirk or Superman or (for the girls out there) Wonder Woman. But there's something especially intriguing about seeing the progression from zero to hero, and wondering what we would do if faced with a similar situation. Which might explain the popularity of an "origin" show like Smallville, or J.J. Abrams' decision to give us a young Kirk in the next Trek movie.
Okay, lecture aside, the bottom line is that I only feel like recapping one other show besides Heroes this fall, and I need to decide whether that show is Bionic Woman or Journeyman. Needless to say, it's much more fun to post these things if people actually comment and we get an active dialogue going. So I'd like to hear from you. Which pilot did you like better, do you plan to watch both or either, and which would you rather talk about here each week?
[guest posted by GeekBoy]
So who else ended up watching The Lost Room mini-series on the SciFi Channel? With all the holiday plans, it actually sat on our TiVo for a few weeks, but we finally finished up the third episode last night. And I have to say, I really liked it. But then, I'm probably the exact target audience for this sort of thing. Give me puzzles to solve as I'm watching something, and I'm a happy boy. Beyond this, I thought the writing was intelligent, the acting was strong, the premise was clever, and all in all, it had the feel of an "old school" sci-fi story to me.
The one down side for me -- from an impatient "I HAVE TO KNOW NOW" perspective -- is that the concluding episode didn't answer every single question I had in my head. What exactly was the event that created The Lost Room and all those objects to begin with? What are the implications for Joe of the decision he made? What will become of Ruber and the Order? But I'm guessing that SciFi intends to answer these questions in either a follow-up mini-series or perhaps a full-fledged series. Which is perfectly fine with me. The primary conflict was always Joe trying to get his daughter back, and that plot line was wrapped up nicely.
Of course, as soon as the last episode was over, I started walking around the house pointing at things, and identifying them as lost objects. "Hey honey, see that pen? Its power is to put words on a piece of paper. And that lock de-icer in my xmas stocking? It magically removes ice from car locks. And this roll of paper towels? It makes spills disappear." Because I'm a geek.
So who else watched it, and what did you think?
The Sci-Fi Channel will be airing the new Dr. Who, starting in March.
The Sci Fi Channel will begin airing "Firefly" in July, including the three episodes Fox didn't want you to see. Just in time for the movie this fall.