Hey folks, Harry here... Want to know how to get me drooling... just talk enthusiastically about SPIDER-MAN 2 and SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW! These two movies are my drug of choice. I needs them, craves them, desires them and can't stands not having them! I wants them for my own. They makest me very tingly and goose-pimply and... and... and... pronounced and seeping. I can't wait to see these two flicks! But I have to, cuz life is a cruel fucking cock-teasing bitch that won't laydown till you fork over your ticket price, till then... life has a headache and the world's out of aspirin.
Hey, Harry. Long time reader. I mean long time. Thank you for all the scoops. You didn't save me from the two hours of The Punisher but maybe I deserved that.
I have a report for you from San Francisco's annual Wondercon convention (recently moved from Oakland), otherwise known as a comic geeks paradise. Cheap comics galore, small publishers and the like, art for sale, lots of hentai (not that I bought any...) I got to say hi to Sid Haig, Harvey Pekar and Ken Foree and got many people to sign my book from Jim Steranko to Lance Henriksen. So, needless to say, I went home happy.
But other than emptying my wallet on comics which isn't really new, what really made this convention stand out was that Tobey Maguire came up despite being sick to show us an exclusive clip from Spidey 2. He looked pretty tired and of course got lots of really mind-numbingly stupid questions asked of him, but he seemed to have a pretty good sense of humor about it all. One girl almost hyperventilated and asked him about being a vegetarian. A drag version of Wonder Woman asked him a pretty good question about getting typecast and he said something like he'd have to call Linda Carter and ask her about it. He came off pretty well, I thought, and didn't have an attitude while showing respect for Sam Raimi, and mentioned a lot of the words of wisdom Sam gave him to be able to play Pete and Spidey believably and make him his own.
So, on to the clip. Tobey jokingly told the audience not to write a blow by blow of the action... so I won't do that. But I will describe it. [evil laughter] The clip opened with Tobey and Kirsten Dunst basically sitting in a cafe and breaking up. She doesn't want it to be over, but Pete knows he can't continue it. To prove that he still loves her, MJ asks him to kiss her. At this point, somebody in the audience yelled DO IT! and everybody laughed. Then, she's leaning in to kiss him and Pete throws her down and out of the way as a car comes crashing in over their heads and tumbles into the cafe.
With thunder proceeding him, Alfred Molina enters as the bad mofo that is Doc Ock. We all went crazy at this point. Sam Raimi could not have hired a better actor to nail this guy. You've seen the picture of him - now imagine him grabbing Peter with one of his metal arms and Mary Jane with the other. He basically tells Peter that if Spiderman doesn't meet him he will peel the skin off Mary Jane, then throws Peter into the rubble. He scrambles up a building clutching a screaming her head off MJ, looking cool as all hell. Next, Pete crashes out of the rubble but he can't clearly until he takes his glasses off. The last shot is him throwing his glasses down for good. The crowd went mad! It was beautiful.
The only really interesting thing to come out of the Q & A by the way is that it sounds like Tobey wants Sandman to be the next villain, though he put the question to the audience and the general consensus seemed to be Venom.
OK, so that's the biggest story of this particular convention, but one thing that I have to also mention is that earlier the director Kerry Conran and producer of Sky Captain had also come down to show another exclusive clip that knocked me on my ass. I know you're looking forward to it, so I'll do my best to describe what we saw. All I can say is imagine looking at a painting by one of the great comic and pulp artists of the 30's or a Fleischer Supes cartoon and seeing it happen in real life in an ass-kicking dog fight scene between an old time plane that has been tricked out with modifications and these bird-like flying wings -- THROUGH the buildings in New York.
The scene starts with Gwyneth Paltrow conning her way onto Jude Law's plane just as he's about to engage with the incoming squadron of flying wings. The chase takes them from this secret base on an island into Manhattan where Polly thinks she knows the quickest way to head off one of the flying wings, but her directions lead them into dead ends and scaffolding and basically Sky Captain has to shoot his way out of each one while staying on the tail of the flying wing they're chasing. We all went crazy when he shot this dart out of the nose of the plane to rappel himself around a corner.
Seriously, it felt like seeing the run on the Death Star for the first time. Everything we saw on screen was done in CG except the actors and it was pretty mind-blowing. I hate to bring up Episode III, but Lucas better watch his back.
So, that's my run down of the Hollywood presentations at Wondercon and I didn't even get to the I-Pod robots from I Robot, AvP or the Episode III presentation. I'll try to write a part 2 and send to you, Harry.
If you run this call me Devourer of Worlds.
-Galactologist
