The Mix : What are people talking about today?

#SDCC: Overheard, Day 1

  • News
  • July 23, 2010

133802626-fedc46266866cf69a3078ca277229383-4c4928d8-full-3962243Continuing our world famous “stuff we heard in the halls” lists…

“I’m officially announcing it right now: I’m playing the Hulk in the Avengers movie.” –Jonah Hill at the Megamind panel

“They just recorded the folks in Hall H at #sdcc to use as crowd noise for TRON: Legacy. Man, the imdb page is gonna be HUGE…” —Vinnie Bartilucci

“You can’t write graphic novels thinking about the future movie. That way lies madness…or Mark Millar.” Warren Ellis at the Red panel (hat tip to Theremina.)

“I smell cigarettes and pepper spray… @warrenellis must be here.” —Matt Fraction

“My god has a hammer!” –unknown counterprotestor to the Westboro Baptist Church “crowd”.

“Very strange to hear Teller speak at length. I couldn’t get over the feeling he’s lip-syncing someone else’s soft-spoken voice.” —waxpancake 

If you have anything you overheard, send it to overheard@tips.comicmix.com. Hat tip to IntelGameOn for the pic.

Free Nic Cage!

  • News
  • July 23, 2010

Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be a good time to be Nic Cage.

Two weeks ago, Cage announced he signed for Ghost Rider Two. That made Late, Late Show host Craig Ferguson very happy, as he absolutely loved Ghost Rider
One and the movie had a major influence in his selection of a skeletal
robot as his side-kick.

A couple days later, Nic’s heavily-promoted new Disney/Bruckheimer movie, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,
bombed big-time at the box office. It took in a mere $17 million opening
weekend.

Before that we had Nic in Kick-Ass, which opened at less than $20 million. That was another well-promoted movie based upon a comic book series. Before that, he did a movie called Knowing which pulled in a slightly more respectable $80 million total.
Before that… Bangkok Dangerous, which did $15 million total. Total. Not
counting whatever revenue the movie is earning being on cable teevee every time I turn it on.

Next to the National Treasure movies, Ghost Rider was his best earning movie in a decade. All that’s a shame. I like Nic Cage, and I
feel I owe him because he’s been a big-time comics fan. But it’s been quite a
while since he was in a movie worthy of his considerable abilities. I hope he
can find better projects – there’s a great Batman movie villain inside him, just waiting to come out.

#SDCC: Penn & Teller do something you have never seen before!

  • News
  • July 23, 2010

Good evening, that’s Penn Jillette on the left, and his partner Teller on the right. Together, they are Penn & Teller, stars of stage and screen and hosts of Showtime’s Penn &
Teller: Bullshit! They came to San Diego with half of the rest of the Showtime original programming crew to share insights into their 35-year-long careers with audience…

…wait a minute…

…what’s that thing in Teller’s hands?

That looks like a microphone.

But that can’t be. Teller doesn’t speak.

Wait– what was that noise?

It sounded like human speech! And it came from Teller!

Amazing! I never knew Penn was also a ventriloquist!

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#SDCC: Joss Whedon to direct ‘Avengers’ movie for Marvel

  • News
  • July 23, 2010

avenger-joss-7705409Yep, Joss made it official today at Entertainment Weekly’s Visionaries Panel at San Diego with JJ Abrams. Quote: “That is not an official thing. But I’m making that an official thing: I’m directing The Avengers.”

The speculation can finally be laid to rest, and now we can start thinking about what female characters are going to be added to the story…

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#SDCC: ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’ – UPDATED

  • News
  • July 23, 2010

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Byran Lee O’Malley’s popular Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series came to an end earlier this week with the release of the final volume, Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour. The series has been basking in popularity for quite some time now, especially since word of Universal’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World movie got out. In fact, the Scott Pilgrim Comic Con panel was all about the upcoming movie.

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There were thirteen members of the panel, plus the moderator: director Edgar Wright, creator O’Malley, Michael Cera, Jason Schwartzman, Aubrey Plaza, Kieren Caulken, Ellen Wong, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Anna Kendrick, Mark Webber, Allison Phil, Brandon Routh, Satya Bhabba, Mae Whitman… and Schwartzman’s amazing mustache. There were surprise appearances by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who both starred in Wright’s action-comedy Hot Fuzz. They are not in the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World movie, but the audience loved their presence all the same. Oh, and Cera sported a Captain America suit– an obvious homage to Chris Evans, who is off filming Captain America.

The cast discussed how they spent months training for fight scenes, and how some had to learn to play musical instruments. Wright spoke of filming in Toronto, the setting of Scott Pilgrim and home to members of the cast and crew. He also announced that the movie will be in 2D, to which he added, “How do you feel about watching a film with sunglasses on?”

There was talk of Ubisoft’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World video game. The game has a retro style, similar to old school 8-bit games. If you haven’t noticed, there are many tie-ins to video games throughout the film. Sound effects from Tekken, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Zelda can be heard; Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) mentions “getting a life” as he snatches a floating 8-bit sprite version of his face from the air; a tag line for the film was “This summer it’s on like Donkey Kong.”

After introductions, discussions and Q&A, Wright jumped off stage and led hundreds of fans with 1Up buttons to the Balboa Theater for a special screening of the movie. Fans fortunate enough to posses the buttons excitedly marched with Wright to the theater, while the rest will have to wait for August 13, when the film will appear in theaters– unless you catch the showings tomorrow and Saturday.

UPDATED 10:25 7/23: Video, as expected, has started to leak out. Here’s the cast coming on stage from an… interesting angle.

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#SDCC Guinness Book Awards X-Men #1 Highest Selling Comic

  • Uncategorized
  • July 22, 2010

xmen1-3970366Today at the 2010 San Diego Comic Con, the Guinness Book of World Records awarded Marvel Comics’ X-Men #1 the award for the Highest Selling Single Comic Book. On hand to receive the award was longtime X-Men writer Chris Claremont (left) and Marvel Publishing COO, Jim Sokolowski. Oddly enough the artist for X-Men #1, one James Lee, was not in attendance for the presentation.

Those in attendance for the celebration (done in front of the life sized replica of Odin’s Throne from the upcoming Thor movie) could hear gentle sobs from somewhere in the back of the crowd. Mumbles of “Dagnabbit, I though Spawn #1 would take it!” could be heard from an unknown baseball cap adorned fan.

“This is a great achievement for Marvel. I’m very glad to have been a part of the creative team behind these beloved characters…” said Claremont.* Adding “…of course if you’d like to read how I would have actually finished that series you could go buy X-Men Forever... on sale now!”

*Ok, Chris didn’t actually say this, but we thought you’d agree.

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#SDCC: Oh yeah, the Westboro Baptist Church… UPDATED

  • Uncategorized
  • July 22, 2010

westboro-signs-9728575There is a line from C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters: “The devil cannot abide to be mocked.” For some reason, I thought of it today as I contemplated the scene outside the San Diego Convention Center.

Yep, there were there, just as they said they’d be. Here’s a photo taken by Megan Phelps of the family business of a young relative Gabe…

…and here’s a pic of them in action. All four of them.

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Now down the street were our people, in a photo snapped by Marc Bernardin:

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A bunch of happy mutants yelling “My god has a hammer!” and calls and responses of “What do we want? “Gay sex!” “When do we want it?” “NOW!” The folks at ComicsAlliance have some very good pics of the counter-protestors, but my favorite was from wessgregg:

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All I can say for the WBC is that it’s probably a good thing they protested today before the crowds got really large.

UPDATE: Rich Johnston has even more pictures and a great T-shirt.

#SDCC: ‘TRON: Legacy’ UPDATED

  • News
  • July 22, 2010

Returning for an unprecedented third year to the
fans and convention that started it all is TRON: Legacy, and if there’s ever going to be a film that can say it did everything to cultivate the audience, it’s this one.

As you may remember, it started two years ago when the director brought a visual test of the film to see if you could just make it look cool…

…and got such a huge buzz that the film was given a full go ahead.

Then last year, Disney went ahead and built Flynn’s Arcade in San Diego during the con, populated it with all the old games and made up some direct from the original movie, and released a new trailer, which also hinted at why they were going to delay one more year– a 3D version:

And now this year, after a skydiver came into WonderCon during an improved panel with Bruce Boxleitner and Cindy Morgan playing their roles from the Tron Universe, people have been waiting to see what’s next. So people packed Hall H to see cast members Jeff Bridges, Garrett
Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Michael Sheen, Bruce Boxleitner, director Joe Kosinski, and producers
Sean Bailey and Steven Lisberger, and all moderated by comedian ubergeek Patton Oswalt.

First off: the film’s finished. All done. And all shot in 3D, no upconversion. They’re saying that the 3D is even an improvement on Avatar‘s tech. Of course, it’s going to look even more impressive when compared against the special effects from the original film 28 years ago.

Jeff Bridges will be playing dual roles, one at his current age and one from the time of his first film.

And in one last piece of fan participation, the audience of eight thousand people was asked to shout certain words, and Skywalker Sound recorded it for later usage in the movie. Vinnie Bartilucci commented,  “Man, the imdb page is gonna be HUGE…”

And yes, there’s a new trailer, which we’ll post as soon as we have it. UPDATE: And here it is:

Tron Legacy opens in regular, 3D, and IMAX 3D theaters on December 17th, 2010.

(more…)

#SDCC: ‘Megamind’ – UPDATED

  • Uncategorized
  • July 22, 2010

will-ferrell-as-megamind-7176983And we’re off! The first Hall H presentation goes to DreamWorks Animation, making its Comic-Con debut with
Megamind. Riffing on a certain super origin, Megamind and Metro Man are jettisoned to Earth as
babies when their home planets are destroyed. Megamind crash-lands inside a
maximum-security prison, where he evolves into the wicked and diabolical
genius he is today, while the dashingly handsome superhero Metro Man grows
into the universally adored savior of Metro City, beloved by every man, woman
and child — and especially the city’s ace reporter Roxanne Ritchie.

Megamind stars Will
Ferrell, Tina Fey, and Jonah Hill and director Tom McGrath were on hand to show footage. Brad Pitt, the voice of Metro Man, was unavailable, but a cardboard substitute was found. Ferrell, as you can see, dressed in character. Either that or he’s decided to go in a different career direction and audition for Blue Man Group.

Jonah Hill, however, stunned audiences when he announced that he would be taking over the role of the Hulk in the Avengers movie.

UPDATE: Here’s the new trailer for MegaMind that was shown at the panel:

#SDCC: Frazetta Conan Painting Sells for $1.5 Million

  • News
  • July 22, 2010

conandestroy-6733277It’s one of the images that defined the fantasy illustration industry we geeks love so much. And to a lucky buyer, Frank Frazetta’s 1971 Conan the Destroyer sold in a 1.5 million gold piece private sale agreed to at the 2010 San Diego Comic Con with Robert Pistella and Stephen Ferzoco of Frazetta Management Corporation. No word yet on who purchased the piece of where it will be hung, but we assume it’ll adorn a wall next to fine mahogany bookshelves full of leather bound collections of Tolkien, maquettes of scantilly clad heroines, and signed Rush LPs.

Tip of the hat to BleedingCool.com.

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