Finally the infamous toilet scene from The Spirit, shown last month at Comic-Con, has been leaked online. And it’s just as bad as I imagined. Actually, it’s worse. Our own Kevin Kelly, who liveblogged the clip, described the setting as “extremely muddy and watery,” but I’d go so far as to say that stuff looks like shit. Considering the fact that a toilet is involved, I’m sure it is indeed shit, literally. I don’t think there’s been so much excrement in a movie since Trainspotting.
Now that I’ve seen the clip, I have to believe the makers of The Spirit actually mean for it to be humorous, but I wonder if those on stage (writer-director Frank Miller, producer Deborah Del Prete and actors Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson and Jaime King) realize that the audience is laughing at the scene, not with it. OK, maybe some of the panel attendees seem to actually be enjoying the footage, but I definitely hear some awkward reactions in there, as well.
Sure, it’s just a guy dressed up like The Joker. And sure, he really was a Romney supporter. But it’s an endorsement for the Republican ticket nonetheless. Really, who knew so many Comic-Con attendees were conservatives? Including that woman with no pants. And Wolverine.
Obviously the video is meant to be humorous, so part of the point was to show weirdos stating that they’ll be voting for McCain or, worse, Ron Paul. And to show the ditzy girls who can’t make up their mind — that zombie chick frightened me in so many ways, but it was the girl who quickly flipped her choice to agree with her friend that made me scared for the future.
Ah, accidents of synergy. Zach Snyder set the first trailer for Watchmen to a Smashing Pumpkins song called “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning.” That song, which was originally released as part of a rarities and b-sides contract fulfiller in 2005, is currently the 75th most purchased song on iTunes. Because of this Watchman-related mini-comeback could potentially give a boost to his recently-resurrected, currently recording band, Billy Corgan says he’s hoping Warner Brothers will allow him to release the trailer as a music video, even if it might go against the interest of the Pumpkins faithful (”My fans seem to be confused when the outside world appreciates our work, so I can only imagine this terrifies them,” he told the L.A. Times.)
So, yay! Good for Billy Corgan! Bring back the 90s by any means necessary, right? Well, hold on just a minute: Snyder might have used this song by accident.
Last year’s 2007 Comic-Con featured a massive Paramount Pictures panel, which did everything from give us a live broadcast from the set of Indiana Jones (where we found out Marion Ravenwood was in the picture), to introduce both Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto as Spock in the new Trek film. However, Paramount’s only presence this year was a Tropic Thunder screening outside the Con, and some freebie Trek posters on the show floor. Where was the most cinematic representation of the Comic-Con audience to be found?
When I first went to Comic-Con, almost a decade ago, it was purely as a girlfriend. My then-love interest and I had gone to our respective home towns for the summer, and one day he called and asked for my measurements––he was making me an Uhura dress.
I understood then that part of my job at Comic-Con was partially to avoid saying anything too cynical or aggressive to his friends from back home (including the girlfriend of his best friend, who went every year in full Slave Leia regalia). But mainly, my job was to look good. I was young, and I went along with it because I was flattered that anyone would actually want to put me on display. Still, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it, and if memory serves, I wasn’t very good at it. I am a girl of varied talents, but that summer I learned that being passive, high-concept arm candy doesn’t make use of any of them.
Which is not to say that I had a terrible time; when we got to San Diego, I ditched the boyfriend and found my own niche. I remember there being a fair number of a girlfriends, floating around at various levels of excitement or reluctance, but there were also women who were there because they were active members of one of the communities represented, either as educated consumers or as makers, or both, and across generations, they seemed to be talking to one another. My memory could be fuzzy, but I don’t remember a single booth babe. I do remember a lot of preteens in Sailor Moon suits, but that’s another matter.
But blah, blah, blah — times change. From 2000 to 2007, Comic-Con attendance tripled. Studios started to swoop in in earnest around 2001, after X-Men and the ascendancy of sites like Ain’t it Cool taught them the power of the permanent adolescent male market. As long as we’re on the subject of adolescence, if my experience at Comic-Con 2008 is any indication, the options for young girls here have, on the surface, become quite a bit more varied than the either/or between mannequin and active consumer/producer; at the same time, most of these new options seem to amount to little more than one side of that old binary split.
Seriously, with a title like Tropic Thunder, I wonder how many storm-related movie headlines will be out there. Stuff like “Tropic Thunder blows into town this weekend!” or “Tropic Thunder hopes for box office lightning!” Is there anywhere you can apply for a job putting really bad puns to work? If so, I want it. (Ed: Yes)
So I caught a screening of Tropic Thunder during Comic-Con, and I have mixed feelings about it. Sure, there were some pretty funny moments in it, and as expected, Robert Downey Jr. stole most of movie. Right now the guy could do a one-man show making fun of every ethnic group in the world and probably win a Tony for it. But is the over-hyped Tom Cruise role as funny as people has been saying? Find out after the jump.
Walden Media and Fox had two special retro Pullman cars set up chock full of gear and footage from the upcoming film City Of Ember, and packed some lucky press sardines inside to get a peek on the way down to Comic-Con. While the Amtrak train I took wasn’t quite as cool, I was able to catch up with director Gil Kenan and talk to him about the movie, his passion for sci-fi “without laser beams”, and what he’s added to the source material to aesthetically flesh out the novel’s “steampunk” world.
That Troma propaganda/war satire clip that Lloyd Kaufman showed at Comic-Con? It’s on YouTube, natch––and it’s apparently super old. Oh well––new to us! It’s embedded above.
The Troma panel at Comic-Con gets smaller every year, but the sense that you’re at a really fucked up family reunion never dissipates. “What I find is amazing about Lloyd, is that everybody is connected to him in some fashion,” said panelist Steven Paul at yesterday’s session. He gestured at the room––the smallest I entered all weekend. “I bet everyone here has acted in a Lloyd Kaufman film.”
Not quite, but part of the reason to show up to this thing every year is to see which disparate characters Lloyd will rope into making an appearance. This year, there wasn’t a guest more unexpected than Paul, a producer on Ghost Rider, the visual effects producer on Karate Dog (!!!), and the man responsible for a number of upcoming “is that really necessary?” video game adaptations, including Castlevania and Tekken. What, exactly, was this guy doing on what Kaufman himself billed as “a panel of independent thinkers?” “I at one time was Steven’s teacher,” Kaufman boasted. “So there’s a little bit of Troma in the mainstream world!”
Maybe more than a little bit. Seated on the far end of the table was Mark Neveldine, co-writer/director of the budding Jason Statham franchise, Crank. “You’ll have to excuse me, because this is the first panel I’ve been sober for,” Neveldine cracked with pitch perfect post-frat bravado––now that nerds are inheriting the earth, an awful lot of them look and sound suspiciously like recurring characters on Entourage. What’s this guy’s connection to Kaufman? He’s apparently Troma’s most dedicated plagiarist.
McG and Bryce Dallas Howard, “This is our new baby, we named him T-600 McG-Dallas-Howard.”
The world of Terminator fandom let out a collective groan when the news was announced that McG, director of the Charlie’s Angels films, is at the helm of the upcoming Terminator Salvation. The film, the fourth in the more than twenty year-old franchise, stars Christian Bale as John Conner. Bale unfortunately did not join the rest of the cast in promoting the film at Comic-Con. There was a press conference immediately following the big announcement panel, and the star of the show, surprisingly, was director McG.
When asked about the overall feel of the film, McG said, “I’m tremendously influenced by Children of Men, hat’s off to that picture, I think it’s fantastic… By the same token, this isn’t designed to be an art picture, it’s for audiences the world over, so you’ve got to find a balance between that artistic take and what’s right for a film to be seen by a great many people around the world.”
Many fans are concerned that McG’s take will further derail the franchise, rather than improving upon the rather dismal third film. McG seemed more than prepared to address these fears, making explicit his interactions with James Cameron, the creator and director of the first two films. “I did not want to move forward on this picture if Jim were like, ‘Fuck you, what are you doing?’ It’s very simple, I would have acquiesced and said, ‘You’re right, you’re the creator of what this is, and I respect that.’ And he was very encouraging, we talked at length about the story, we talked about Sam [Worthington], and most particularly, we talked about his experience on Aliens, and the idea that you can’t live in fear, you’ve got to move forward.”
Hamlet 2 is one of the funnier films you probably haven’t heard of unless you track the movie sales at Sundance. Earlier this year it almost broke the Little Miss Sunshine record of 10.5 million when it sold for 10 million to Focus Features. The New York Times says “”It made sure to take shots at Christians, gays, Latinos, Jews, the American Civil Liberties Union and Elisabeth Shue, one of its lead actresses.” In fact, the trailer says “And reintroducing Elizabeth Shue as… Elizabeth Shue.”
Since we attended their party last night, and drank copiously from their open bar, which was stocked with drinks like “Holy Water” and “Rock Me Sexy Jesus,” we thought we’d better man up on the tough “sunday morning wakeup and head to the Con through the remaining fog of Saturday night.” They showed us the trailer for the movie, and several clips, which all served to make me wish I’d seen this movie in Park City. The aforementioned drink name serves as one of the key musical numbers, and you’ll end up having “Rock Me Sexy Jesus” stuck in your head.
Director and co-writer Andrew Fleming, and writer Pam Brady joined star Steve Coogan onstage to discuss the film, which is exactly what you’d expect from Brady, who writes and produces South Park. But Fleming has directed films like Dick, Threesome, The Craft, and Nancy Drew, so he’s all over the map. According to Fleming, the original title for the film was “Mr. Holland’s Anus,” but according to Pam Brady, “That title was already being used by a Belgian porn, so there were copyright issues.”
They didn’t really have much time for a Q&A, being slotted for just 30 minutes, right before the Harold & Kumar panel. Someone asked Steve Coogan, “did you watch a lot of Jesus movies?” Steve replied, “Yes, particularly enlightening was Max Von Sydow in The Greatest Story Ever Told,” which might have actually inspired Coogan’s hair in the film. “The hair was very key,” according to Coogan.
Fleming also explained that, yes, they do make a lot of fun of Elisabeth Shue throughout the film, although most of that was her idea. For instance, when Coogan’s theater teacher character brings her to class, no one knows who she is. That was Shue’s idea. I’m actually wondering if that’s based on some of her real-life experiences. Do people still know who Elisabeth Shue is?
They showed several clips from the film, including an extended “sing along” scene of the main dance number, which you can watch in the video above. As they closed things out, Fleming thanked everyone at Comic-Con for coming to the panel, “Jesus is the original superhero, so… yeah!”
Hamlet 2 comes out in limited release on August 22nd, and goes wide on August 29th.
Producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller who, along with Michael Bay, are behind the reboot of the Friday the 13th film series, just announced that they’re currently in the middle of making a deal to bring Nightmare on Elm Street back to theaters with a modern storyline. Fuller was quick to say “the deal hasn’t been done yet,” but based on the cheers from the audience, people are excited for it. Granted, we’re sitting in a panel for Friday the 13th, so this audience might be a bit biased.
The Harold and Kumar panel opened with a disclaimer from moderator Adam Vary of Entertainment Weekly. “This is family day at Comic-Con, but in case you didn’t know, this is for an unrated DVD of a stoner movie.”
But what better way to sell a DVD to your teenage fan base, then to get your hooks into them when they’re in close proximity to parental wallets?
Cynicism aside, it looks like there are some pretty cool elements to the package for the fans. In addition to a “12-15 minute mini adventure of what would happen if Harold and Kumar had decided not to smoke weed on the plane, and made it to Amsterdam,” there’s an extensive interactive feature called “Dude, Change the Movie,” which allows the viewer to swap out scenes from the theatrical cut for other options. Remember the bottomless party? You can choose to watch it topless. “Most of the options,” said co-writer Hayden Schlossberg, “Are extremely unrated, and extremely…”
“Nude,” John Cho interrupted. “You’re welcome.”
Some vague details about Harold and Kumar 3, and disappointment for fans who want to believe that John Cho and Kal Penn are really Harold and Kumar in real life,after the jump.
Ah, accidents of synergy. Zach Snyder set the first trailer for 
