Con Wrap Up, and KITH
Apr. 21st, 2008 03:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredericksSaturday ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
captainschlumpy and I met up at Javitz around 10:30AM, roughly a half-hour after the Con was supposed to open. We'd been deceived by the easy time we'd had entering the day before, because on walking in we found ourselves directed to the end of a MASSIVE line. It was unreal. Making our way through the line to the event proper took about another half-hour, but, the funny part? We found we didn't have to stand on line at all. We were heading down to the theatre on the bottom level for the the Wall*E preview from Pixar, and we ended up having to *leave* the Con floor to get to it, being rudely told by an employee that once we left the floor we'd have to stand on the line again in order to get back in. You would think that they'd inform people about the separate entrance for the theatre before making them have horrible flashbacks to theme park visits, but whatever.
The event in the theatre was run by Disney, and ended up being a double feature preview for Wall*E and the next Narnia flick, Prince Caspian. One of the fellows who worked on Wall*E (I want to say it was Andrew Stanton, the writer and director, but it's slipped my mind) told us a little about the movie and then showed up a good amount of finished footage. I think we'd all been expecting to see just a new trailer and maybe a couple of minutes of rough product, but he showed us maybe 15-20 minutes of completed goodness. I can't say it enough: Wall*E will be AWESOME. Please please PLEASE go see it. The character design team is full of manipulative bastards who decided to make the "eye" portion of Wall*E as endearing as possible, so I can tell the story is going to make me weep like a bastard (robots! in love!), but I don't care because so good.
The Caspian stuff involved showing the trailer and then a Q&A panel with William Moseley (Peter), Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian), Peter Dinklage (Trumpkin), and one of the writers. I didn't care much for the first Narnia movie and my lack of enthusiasm continues for this newest one, but I left the panel with a few thoughts. One: Ben Barnes is fuckin' hot. We were sitting about 20 or so rows back from the front of the stage, and the hotness was in no way, shape, or form, diminished. There was no Dopplering of the hotness, is what I'm trying to say. William Moseley wasn't half-bad himself [note: pics in link are *large*; I should go back and make 'em reasonable-size, but it's too late tonight], but I'd been subjected to his acting so I was already sort of "blah", and he insists on rocking that horrendous comb-over that English lads swear to be the shit. Talk about eclipsed. Two: Peter Dinklage is an amazing actor, and he looked bored as all hell up there with the other actors. In an act-off I have no doubt he'd send them crying home to their mamas, but the focus of the panel was on the younger more photogenic actors (with insipid questions to match, but I'll get to that in a second) and at moments there seemed to be palpable self-hatred running across Dinklage's face. Three: people in front of a microphone are stupid. I mean, I can't vouch for their level of intelligence at other times, but from the audience Q&As I've sat through I'm 100% behind my belief in their lack of intelligence. I can understand being nervous about facing celebrities and being in front of a large crowd, but, by God!, write your question down. Or at least think it through before you subject 1000+ other people to it. I think I erased the questions from my memory for the sake of my sanity, butcaptainschlumpy and I spent a good portion of the time dying on the inside and making snippy comments to help the time pass.
Why'd we sit through the Prince Caspian panel when neither of us had much interest in the movie? Because it was immediately followed by the Battlestar Galactica panel, and the theatre wouldn't be emptied in-between panels, meaning you could stake your claim and be there all day if you wished. I think many of the folk there only sat through the Narnia-related portion for similar reasons. The BSG panel was moderated by an editor from Entertainment Weekly, and he introduced three actors (Michael Trucco, who plays Anders, Michael Hogan, who plays Colonel Tigh, and Rekha Sharma, who plays Roslin's aide Tory) and a writer. The moderator-directed questions were pretty idiotic (it was obvious the man was a major fan and sort of spazzing out when it came to putting out thoughtful question), and the less said about the audience questions the better. Michael Trucco came across as an awesome fratboy type (at one point he quipped "I was only supposed to be around for two episodes" and laughed, and I think my Anders hate died a little), and Michael Hogan had a disconcerting way of referring to himself in the third person that was bewildering and hilarious. Not much was gained about the plans for the rest of the season (questions about what's going to happen next were met with variations on "we can't say"), but it was fun to see the actors enjoy themselves.
After that panel we made our way out to grab a bite to eat, then back inside to wander the floor for a bit (there was no line by that time). Around 2:30 I headed back downstairs to wait for the 3 o'clock Avatar panel to start and found myself on the end of a *massive* line. That line put the Neil Gaiman line from the night before to shame. I had planned to check out the Venture Bros. panel that was scheduled for 4 in a nearby room, but by 3 that line had grown to ridiculous proportions as well so I decided against it. The Avatar panel consisted of the two creators, DiMartino and Konieztko. They showed a trailer for the remaining part of the series, and it was greeted with loud cheering from the crowd (a link to the finale trailers, which was recorded from the second time they showed it to us, right before the Q&A; there's cheering in the audio, but the cheering that went on during the first viewing? times 100, I swear. It was great). The creators talked a little about making the show, with some amazing stills of background and character designs, and then touched briefly on the plans for a live action movie (I'm not going to become excited unless N. Night Shyamalan's name is not attached to things). Then they showed the first couple minutes of an upcoming full-out comedic episode, The Fire Emblem Players, wherein the writers tweaked on, among other things, fangirl slashing and overlong episodes ("Hey, it's The Great Divide! The largest canyon in the Earth Nation!" "...eh, let's fly right over it" still sends me into periodic giggles). HI-larious. I walked out after the second viewing of the trailer, met up withcaptainschlumpy, and we made our way to Times Square for a bite to eat and a quick visit to Toys R Us before she headed back home.
By this time it was 6 or so and I was tired beyond all reason (I'd slept only two hours the night before, and the night before that I managed mebbe five), but I had tickets to the Kids in the Hall live show for 10:30PM.atraxia was kind enough to come out early so we could grab dinner and keep me entertained/prevent me from falling asleep on myself before she headed out to her engagement. For some reason I really needed a medium rare steak, so logically we headed over to Red Lobster (don't question my thought process, just go with the flow; hells, it's what I do) where I got the steak I desired and downed many many cups of coffee in a futile attempt to shake off the shitty way I was feeling. It didn't work. I walked over to the Nokia Theatre and, honestly, I just wanted to curl up on the curb and take a long nap. Luckily I managed to catch a second wind a couple of minutes into the show, so I ended up focusing a little.
What to say about the show? Well, I guess I enjoyed it. I should start by saying this: I began watching Kids in the Hall back when Comedy Central used to show it continuously, almost on a loop. I remember laughing so hard at some sketches I'd nearly pissed myself. Then again, back then I also found Gallagher funny. Nowadays I wonder wtf Gallagher was/is smoking, but I still find aspects of KiTH humorous. Not so much the parts where they're openly shitting on religion (a big theme from the show), or when the humor in the situation seems to come solely from physical overexaggeration on the part of the players (y'all are better than that, I know it), but the other stuff. Which, let me be honest, was maybe half of the stuff I sat through. They were obviously having fun with each other, and that shone through best in the encore piece, where the Head Crushing guy put all the actors on the spot before putting them down (and where McKinney took the crown from Foley as the funniest kid, imho - his improv was great). I can't see myself going to another one of their shows if they were to come around again, but I will be revisiting the box set from time to time.
I got home around 12:30, then showered and headed to bed. Bro mentioned wanting to head out to the last day of the Con, but I wasn't planning on setting my alarm clock for *anything*. As it happened, I ended up waking at 1:20, so I decided to suck it up and go out with him. We got there around 3:30, and I was surprised to see a good number of people and booths still there. It was much less crowded than it was on Saturday (the floor on Saturday was utter madness), and we were able to wander up and down the aisles at a leisurely pace. I picked up some graphic novels from the Midtown Comics area (Jim Butcher had signed there on Saturday and I totally didn't know! I've been running around with Storm Front and Fool's Moon in my purse for the last week!) and found out about a relatively new The Authority release from the artist/writer at the DC/Wildcats area. I would have picked up some more Moofia stuff but I was running low on cash, so after we did a full circuit we called it a day.
This year's Con was light-years better than the last two, organizational-wise. It has me looking forward to what's in store for next year's already. Saturdays seem to be the craziest, crowd-wise, so I figure I'll end up using that day to focus on various panels and/or signings instead of wandering aimlessly between booths like I have before.
It's now around 6AM (see why I have a love/hate thing with posting? I've been typing in this window for the last two and a half hours), and I have a night of work to look forward to. Joy.
captainschlumpy and I met up at Javitz around 10:30AM, roughly a half-hour after the Con was supposed to open. We'd been deceived by the easy time we'd had entering the day before, because on walking in we found ourselves directed to the end of a MASSIVE line. It was unreal. Making our way through the line to the event proper took about another half-hour, but, the funny part? We found we didn't have to stand on line at all. We were heading down to the theatre on the bottom level for the the Wall*E preview from Pixar, and we ended up having to *leave* the Con floor to get to it, being rudely told by an employee that once we left the floor we'd have to stand on the line again in order to get back in. You would think that they'd inform people about the separate entrance for the theatre before making them have horrible flashbacks to theme park visits, but whatever. The event in the theatre was run by Disney, and ended up being a double feature preview for Wall*E and the next Narnia flick, Prince Caspian. One of the fellows who worked on Wall*E (I want to say it was Andrew Stanton, the writer and director, but it's slipped my mind) told us a little about the movie and then showed up a good amount of finished footage. I think we'd all been expecting to see just a new trailer and maybe a couple of minutes of rough product, but he showed us maybe 15-20 minutes of completed goodness. I can't say it enough: Wall*E will be AWESOME. Please please PLEASE go see it. The character design team is full of manipulative bastards who decided to make the "eye" portion of Wall*E as endearing as possible, so I can tell the story is going to make me weep like a bastard (robots! in love!), but I don't care because so good.
The Caspian stuff involved showing the trailer and then a Q&A panel with William Moseley (Peter), Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian), Peter Dinklage (Trumpkin), and one of the writers. I didn't care much for the first Narnia movie and my lack of enthusiasm continues for this newest one, but I left the panel with a few thoughts. One: Ben Barnes is fuckin' hot. We were sitting about 20 or so rows back from the front of the stage, and the hotness was in no way, shape, or form, diminished. There was no Dopplering of the hotness, is what I'm trying to say. William Moseley wasn't half-bad himself [note: pics in link are *large*; I should go back and make 'em reasonable-size, but it's too late tonight], but I'd been subjected to his acting so I was already sort of "blah", and he insists on rocking that horrendous comb-over that English lads swear to be the shit. Talk about eclipsed. Two: Peter Dinklage is an amazing actor, and he looked bored as all hell up there with the other actors. In an act-off I have no doubt he'd send them crying home to their mamas, but the focus of the panel was on the younger more photogenic actors (with insipid questions to match, but I'll get to that in a second) and at moments there seemed to be palpable self-hatred running across Dinklage's face. Three: people in front of a microphone are stupid. I mean, I can't vouch for their level of intelligence at other times, but from the audience Q&As I've sat through I'm 100% behind my belief in their lack of intelligence. I can understand being nervous about facing celebrities and being in front of a large crowd, but, by God!, write your question down. Or at least think it through before you subject 1000+ other people to it. I think I erased the questions from my memory for the sake of my sanity, but
captainschlumpy and I spent a good portion of the time dying on the inside and making snippy comments to help the time pass.Why'd we sit through the Prince Caspian panel when neither of us had much interest in the movie? Because it was immediately followed by the Battlestar Galactica panel, and the theatre wouldn't be emptied in-between panels, meaning you could stake your claim and be there all day if you wished. I think many of the folk there only sat through the Narnia-related portion for similar reasons. The BSG panel was moderated by an editor from Entertainment Weekly, and he introduced three actors (Michael Trucco, who plays Anders, Michael Hogan, who plays Colonel Tigh, and Rekha Sharma, who plays Roslin's aide Tory) and a writer. The moderator-directed questions were pretty idiotic (it was obvious the man was a major fan and sort of spazzing out when it came to putting out thoughtful question), and the less said about the audience questions the better. Michael Trucco came across as an awesome fratboy type (at one point he quipped "I was only supposed to be around for two episodes" and laughed, and I think my Anders hate died a little), and Michael Hogan had a disconcerting way of referring to himself in the third person that was bewildering and hilarious. Not much was gained about the plans for the rest of the season (questions about what's going to happen next were met with variations on "we can't say"), but it was fun to see the actors enjoy themselves.
After that panel we made our way out to grab a bite to eat, then back inside to wander the floor for a bit (there was no line by that time). Around 2:30 I headed back downstairs to wait for the 3 o'clock Avatar panel to start and found myself on the end of a *massive* line. That line put the Neil Gaiman line from the night before to shame. I had planned to check out the Venture Bros. panel that was scheduled for 4 in a nearby room, but by 3 that line had grown to ridiculous proportions as well so I decided against it. The Avatar panel consisted of the two creators, DiMartino and Konieztko. They showed a trailer for the remaining part of the series, and it was greeted with loud cheering from the crowd (a link to the finale trailers, which was recorded from the second time they showed it to us, right before the Q&A; there's cheering in the audio, but the cheering that went on during the first viewing? times 100, I swear. It was great). The creators talked a little about making the show, with some amazing stills of background and character designs, and then touched briefly on the plans for a live action movie (I'm not going to become excited unless N. Night Shyamalan's name is not attached to things). Then they showed the first couple minutes of an upcoming full-out comedic episode, The Fire Emblem Players, wherein the writers tweaked on, among other things, fangirl slashing and overlong episodes ("Hey, it's The Great Divide! The largest canyon in the Earth Nation!" "...eh, let's fly right over it" still sends me into periodic giggles). HI-larious. I walked out after the second viewing of the trailer, met up with
captainschlumpy, and we made our way to Times Square for a bite to eat and a quick visit to Toys R Us before she headed back home.By this time it was 6 or so and I was tired beyond all reason (I'd slept only two hours the night before, and the night before that I managed mebbe five), but I had tickets to the Kids in the Hall live show for 10:30PM.
atraxia was kind enough to come out early so we could grab dinner and keep me entertained/prevent me from falling asleep on myself before she headed out to her engagement. For some reason I really needed a medium rare steak, so logically we headed over to Red Lobster (don't question my thought process, just go with the flow; hells, it's what I do) where I got the steak I desired and downed many many cups of coffee in a futile attempt to shake off the shitty way I was feeling. It didn't work. I walked over to the Nokia Theatre and, honestly, I just wanted to curl up on the curb and take a long nap. Luckily I managed to catch a second wind a couple of minutes into the show, so I ended up focusing a little. What to say about the show? Well, I guess I enjoyed it. I should start by saying this: I began watching Kids in the Hall back when Comedy Central used to show it continuously, almost on a loop. I remember laughing so hard at some sketches I'd nearly pissed myself. Then again, back then I also found Gallagher funny. Nowadays I wonder wtf Gallagher was/is smoking, but I still find aspects of KiTH humorous. Not so much the parts where they're openly shitting on religion (a big theme from the show), or when the humor in the situation seems to come solely from physical overexaggeration on the part of the players (y'all are better than that, I know it), but the other stuff. Which, let me be honest, was maybe half of the stuff I sat through. They were obviously having fun with each other, and that shone through best in the encore piece, where the Head Crushing guy put all the actors on the spot before putting them down (and where McKinney took the crown from Foley as the funniest kid, imho - his improv was great). I can't see myself going to another one of their shows if they were to come around again, but I will be revisiting the box set from time to time.
I got home around 12:30, then showered and headed to bed. Bro mentioned wanting to head out to the last day of the Con, but I wasn't planning on setting my alarm clock for *anything*. As it happened, I ended up waking at 1:20, so I decided to suck it up and go out with him. We got there around 3:30, and I was surprised to see a good number of people and booths still there. It was much less crowded than it was on Saturday (the floor on Saturday was utter madness), and we were able to wander up and down the aisles at a leisurely pace. I picked up some graphic novels from the Midtown Comics area (Jim Butcher had signed there on Saturday and I totally didn't know! I've been running around with Storm Front and Fool's Moon in my purse for the last week!) and found out about a relatively new The Authority release from the artist/writer at the DC/Wildcats area. I would have picked up some more Moofia stuff but I was running low on cash, so after we did a full circuit we called it a day.
This year's Con was light-years better than the last two, organizational-wise. It has me looking forward to what's in store for next year's already. Saturdays seem to be the craziest, crowd-wise, so I figure I'll end up using that day to focus on various panels and/or signings instead of wandering aimlessly between booths like I have before.
It's now around 6AM (see why I have a love/hate thing with posting? I've been typing in this window for the last two and a half hours), and I have a night of work to look forward to. Joy.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-04-21 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-21 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-23 04:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-23 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-28 11:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-28 11:31 am (UTC)