Ahoy, squirts! Quint here at the end of the first of two of the super Monster days of the San Diego Comic-Con. Friday and Saturday are always the busiest for me... all the big movie panels seem to fall on Friday and Saturday, when the attendance seems to reach its peak and with the big movie panels come the big stars, which means interviews to sprinkle in between the panels.

Today was a very busy day for me. I interviewed 2 people (a beautiful actress and an incredibly sexy director), got to spend about 10 minutes informally chatting with Rachel Weisz, who I had a mild crush on before I met her and who I am now am madly in love with, and saw about an hour's worth of exclusive footage or world premiere trailers.

I'm gonna start with one of my absolute favorite panels of the day.

I had been meaning to pick up V FOR VENDETTA for quite a while... since before it was known that they were making the movie, but I hadn't buckled down and bought one until Preview night at the Con, when I grabbed a TPB. I'm only about a quarter of the way through it now and I'm hooked.

Warner Bros' panel brought out Natalie Portman, Joel Silver, Grant Hill and co-creator David Lloyd.

They premiered the trailer for us and it was awesome. I'll get to some specifics in a minute, but first let's talk about the panel.

To start off, I have to say that even disregarding the line-up of love-struck males that approached the mic to ask questions of her, Ms. Portman had the audience eating out of her hand. She was so adorable, so sweet and so kind that you could feel the love of the audience for her.

TIDBITS:

-The first thing asked of Ms. Portman was for an utterly original moment... which she did to the delight of the audience. A kind of screechy, tongue-sticking-out, fingers splayed out over her forehead thing. Very cute.

-A (supposedly) New Line employee floated the idea of Portman playing Audrey Hepburn in a film. Portman says she idolizes Hepburn and didn't think she could ever bear the responsibility of playing her onscreen.

-A comic fan asked the panel why Alan Moore didn't sign off on the project (to a group of applause from the back of the room). David Lloyd, co-creator and artist on the original series, answered.

Lloyd said that Moore would seemingly only be happy with a page by page adaptation (a la SIN CITY, I'm guessing) whereas Lloyd himself only wanted a great script that captured the essence of the original books.

-Lloyd also was asked about the London bombings and his opinion on how controversial the movie will be. He responded saying that the story has always been controversial because of the idea of portraying a terrorist as a person with their own reasons for doing what they're doing, not an all out unexplainable evil isn't popular. He went on to say that if we can't understand the point of view of the terrorists we won't ever stand any chance to put a stop to terrorist acts.

This was popular with about half the hall while the other half just sat, quietly. The middle-aged lady in front of me was shaking her head the whole time Lloyd was speaking... Maybe she won't like this movie...

TRAILER:

This trailer whipped my ass. It starts off with Evey (Portman) being restrained, captured and shaved bald. The authorities tell her they will let her go if she can lead them to V. She tells them, "No."

The trailer is a lot of cuts and bits of info from here on out. What I gleaned from the 2 minutes... Hugo Weaving as V (voice specifically) is perfect. Absolutely perfect. It sounds like it is drawn in the book (which in the book all of V's dialogue bubbles are drawn in wavy lines)... whispery, but still theatrical and full of power. And it sounds nothing like Agent Smith or Elrond, which was my biggest worry.

We glimpse the image of V, pre-mask and cloak, in silhouette in front of fire (directly from the book) as well as some truly great dagger-sized knife moments. He goes two fisted with these gleaming silver daggery-knives that, when you add in the perfectness of the mask and hat with the whooshing of his cape, just made me grin like an idiot.

The only thing that is even a little off is there seems to be (in at least one shot) a slow-mo bullet-timey sequence that has V throwing his two daggers that go flipping through the air with little trails following them. Even though that was a tad weird, it still came off well since the daggers were spinning differently from each other, so the trails they left were kind of psychedelic.

The trailer ends with Weaving at his best saying, "Remember, remember the 5th of November..." Great friggin' tagline and great tie-in date.

The trailer truly got me pumped for this film. Add into that my recent addiction to the graphic novel and this has just jumped to the top of the list of my most anticipated films of the year.

I'll be back soon with the rest of the Warner Bros panel, including a description of the Comic-Con exclusive HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE trailer, 10 minutes of THE FOUNTAIN, 7 minutes of THE CORPSE BRIDE and a long, long clip from ZATHURA... Matter of fact, I'm gonna start now! See ya' soon.

-Quint