Comic Con: Saturday Afternoon Panels

I love Battlestar Galactica. I had a few reservations about attending the panel, however. I don't watch the shows "live," I get them on DVD (no cable) and I don't like spoilers. None of that mattered, though. Despite the fact that I stood in line for an hour and a half, I wound up being about 20 people away from getting through the door. I just sat on the floor and watched the Lost panel on my iPhone (yes, it went online that fast) and playing Aurora Feint (obsessed) while I waited for the next panel: Chuck.

I keep getting stuck with Chuck! It's an interesting show and all, but I just haven't been sucked into it. And yet here I was watching the panel. It turned out to be entertaining, so I didn't mind sitting through it to secure a seat. I was really only hoping to be present for the final panel of the day: Fringe!

Fringe panel at Comic Con - J. J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Bryan Burk, Jeff Pinkner, Anna Torv, Josh Jackson, and John Noble at the "Fringe" panel

I'm totally excited for this show, I can't help it! The viral marketing has totally sucked me in (as has the fact that the team that created "Alias" is behind it). Unfortunately, I missed out on a massive Fringe-themed scavenger hunt that took place after the panel. D'oh! By the time I realized that the swag they handed me was actually a clue, I was already on the trolley out of town. Of course, when I went to seek clue #2 the next day it was over. By that time, though, I was feeling pretty rotten, so it was probably better that I'd slept.

J.J. Abrams is one cool guy. I like almost everything he's ever been involved with (and of course, he gave me the coolest laptop ever). Most of the panel questions were directed at him (it's hard to come up with questions for a show you haven't seen yet and for which they will offer no spoilers). He talked about his love of fan involvement in the form of mystery solving (duh) and how much he enjoyed finding the "Nina's" in Al Hirschfeld cartoons. He certainly offers his fans plenty of Nina's! He also told the story of the "mystery box:" His uncle (? I think) used to take him to a magic shop. They sold something called a "mystery box." It was a box that cost $15 and they promised that there was about $75 worth of stuff in it (these are the numbers I remember- don't kill me if they aren't accurate). He saved up the $15 and bought the box, but found that the mystery was more compelling than the actual booty inside. He has yet to open the box. Yeah, he's kind of my hero!

Fringe at Comc-Con - J. J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman

I still don't know a whole lot about the show. I didn't see the premiere, but I got to see enough at this panel to know that it is not an "X-files" ripoff, as some have suggested. I also know that Anna Torv is one of the most compelling people to look at. She didn't say a lot, but she kept catching my attention. She's gorgeous and has a "deep in thought" sort of aire. Josh Jackson and John Noble also have that feel to them. You know that thing where you see someone in a store and you think "wow, that guy looks like he could be an interesting character in a movie. He seems shrouded in mystery. Maybe he leads a double life! Yeah, he's a spy or a brilliant scientist whose views are too far-out for the mainstream scientific community, but he's actually got information that could save us all..." (Or am I the only one who sizes people up in this way?) Whoever is in charge of casting for his shows is brilliant, IMO.

Fringe at Comic-Con - Anna Torv and Josh Jackson

Comic-Con Reflections

In many ways, I considered Comic-Con to be the anti-Cannes. Technically speaking, it's not a film festival, but it hosts a few (anime, children's films, along with nightly film screenings). I lump them together in a category I call "Geek Havens." Comic-Con is the geek winner, for sure. Many people go to Cannes without a real passion for movies, just a hope that they can sip champagne with someone famous. I think the Comic-Con goers were as interested in drinking champagne as the yacht-goers were in theorizing about Lost (oh, have I mentioned that Lost is my favorite television show of all time?) At Cannes, the rich and famous are the ones catered to. Everyone else has to shuffle along the sidelines, standing tip-toed to see the pretty people on the yachts. Well, at Comic-Con, the consumer is the one catered to. Whether you like a movie or not has no effect on its winning the Palme d'or, but it has a huge effect on profits. The companies at Comic-Con want nothing more than to make you happy so that you will go on to your blog and write about how much you can't wait for Fringe, how much you liked the pilot, and how it is nothing like the X-Files (ahem). The companies are scrutinizing and watching and surveying and sweating, hoping they can please the crowds. Superficially speaking, I don't fit the "demographic" so I like throwing wrenches into the works. I like discussing Herzog and Brakhage as much as I do pop culture. I liked and hated both Cannes and Comic-Con. Mostly for different reasons, but crowds were the common element of the "I want to go home" feeling.

I'll be posting some of my favorite (and least favorite) moments from Comic-Con over the next few days.

Slusho Zoom!!!

This is my official entry to the Slusho!! commercial contest. It is a fictional commercial for a fictional drink that may or may not somehow play into the new film "Cloverfield," produced by J.J. Abrams. Or doesn't it?

For those of you who think that sounds vague, let me explain:

It is.

Last summer, the movie "Transformers" opened in theatres across the U.S. (yeah, I loved it, so sue me). Immediately after the first East Coast screenings let out, Google began getting hit with thousands of searches for things like "mystery jj abrams trailer transformers" and "transformers trailer monster movie" and "1-18-08" and "free porn." With the exception of the last search, all of this was seriously pleasing the folks over at Bad Robot productions. Why? Before "Transformers," audiences were treated to a movie trailer (or "preview," if you will) consisting of a sort of first person video clip of what appeared to be a monster attack on New York City. It began with the taping of a surprise going away party and ended with the severed head of the Statue of Liberty skidding down a SoHo street. Vague bits of dialog like "I saw it! It's alive! It's huge!" could be heard through the chaos of the crowded streets below, as the party-goers evacuate their apartment and attempt to glean more information. The audience was given nothing more than the name of the producers ("Lost" creator J.J. Abrams and his parent companies, Bad Robot and Paramount Pictures), and what seemed to be a release date of 1-18-08. A wave of "what the f*@$?!" spread across the crowd. A massive viral marketing campaign was born...

Youtube was soon inundated with pirated copies of the trailer, the web world was abuzz with "what's it all about" speculation, Paramount pictures was "denying" involvement in this titleless production, and geeks and "Lost" fans like myself were salivating over having a new way to waste precious time.

Fine. What the hell does this have to do with some slushy drink thing? Honestly, no one knows! The drink was first mentioned in an episode of "Alias" (also created by Abrams, also a show that I love). Additionally, in the original trailer, one of the characters from the film was wearing a slusho! shirt. It didn't take web geeks like myself long to find the slusho! web site, where even more oddness was revealed (like a donkey swimming underwater while thinking of a blue oven mitt and a bizarre story about some "secret" deep sea ingredient that is evidentially used in the manufacture of slusho).

Now it appears that some company called "Tagruato Corp." has been harvesting this slusho ingredient (?) using off shore oil rigs, one of which (according to foreign "news sources" whose videos are available on YouTube) was just destroyed this last weekend, as the monster makes its way to New York City. Also, the main character from the movie trailer, Rob, has announced on "his" MySpace page that he is going to go work for this company...

This kind of realtime buildup to movies and alternate reality gaming is fascinating to me. The Internet is becoming an increasingly collaborative and accessible space for the human race.

I'm really looking forward to the film. At this point, I have an almost scientific fascination with it. I'll only be disappointed if, like so many other movies this year, this turns out to be yet another zombie movie...