Ahoy, squirts! Quint here.
Okay, so I took off a little early from the Con in order to catch up on some writing and clean up some interviews for you folks tonight. I also have a long interview butt-ass early in the morning and I only got 3 1/2 hours of sleep last night, so I'm going to crash like a drunk on the autobaun.
So, I love the WB people. They're great and have tons of good properties right now, but the panel didn't have any umph to it this year. Most of the stuff screened as "world premiere" or "exclusive" were just trailers we've seen online for a week or a month. Like 10,000 BC.
INVASION was the old trailer, with some closer looks at the creepy transformation sequences and Nicole Kidman getting puked at by those who have turned. I prefer this footage... the current trailer seems to be shying away from the horror aspect of it all.
WHITEOUT... a thriller about a murderer in Antarctica starring Kate Beckinsale and based on a graphic novel. The trailer premiered and was pretty decent. It mostly narration with a few clips. The narration was talking about how inhospitable this land is... how you can't see more than 6 inches in front of you during a snowstorm and how there's no official government... Best line from the trailer was, "Nature never intended you to survive here."
Then we get little bits of them finding a rather grotesque body and it was over. The panel had Joel Silver, director Dominic Sena and graphic novel author Greg Rucka. Beckinsale was late.
-Silver was asked about SPEED RACER. "What they're doing on SPEED RACER is incredible," he said. The actors are all perfect, the race footage mind-blowing and the Wachowski's are so into it it's not even funny, he said. SPEED RACER was their first experience with Japanese Animation.
-Silver was also asked, since he has worked with both of them, who would win in a fight: Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson. The audience laughed, then Silver thought about it and said: "... I would."
-2008 release for WHITEOUT
Beckinsale finally showed up (was cut off from the Convention Center by a freight train... which I don't doubt because I've had that happen to me already) and pretty much just told some sexy stories... let's get to them.
-How was WHITEOUT different from UNDERWORLD? "I slept with the director far fewer times here."
-She also said in UNDERWORLD, when she was in her tight leather costume she'd be onset and every time she had to bend over to pick something up, someone on the crew would let out an animalistic grunt... "Uggghhh." Not so much in this one where they were filming in places 30 degrees below freezing and always had on five layers. In her parka she didn't quite get the same reaction from the crew.
ONE MISSED CALL
They premiered a trailer for the remake of one of my favorite J-Horror movies, directed by the man himself, Takashi Miike, called ONE MISSED CALL starring Shannyn Sossamon and Ed Burns. The story is interesting... you get a call on your cell, you hear a creepy ringtone that isn't yours and you always miss the call. You check the voicemail and it's time stamped a couple of days in the future and you hear the moments leading up to your own death. When you die, someone else in your address book gets the call and it spreads that way.
I explain this to you now because if they release this footage you won't get an idea for the concept.
This one is a mixed bag for me. It looks well made and some of the effects (strange contortions half-glimpsed on passerby's faces, etc) looked really creepy, but I couldn't help but feel a disconnect. The one very happy thing about the trailer was the inclusion of the original ring tone, that creepy lullaby melody. I want that so bad as my ringtone.
One kinda cool marketing thing they did was they gave away 4 iPhones to the 4 lucky bastards who asked a question. I hope it's worthwhile, but I get a distinct EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE feel from some of the creep-out moments... Although, for fans of the original like me, I did see the hospital from the finale and the red candy.
GET SMART
This'll wrap up this report. Strangely enough, the most engaging and interesting footage shown on this whole panel was from the GET SMART movie. I've been pretty positive on this since it started gathering up a cast... mostly because of the cast it was attracting. I love that Terence Stamp, David Koechner, Ken Davitian (naked fat dude from BORAT), Terry Crews (IDIOCRACY president), Masi Oka (Hiro!!!), Alan Arkin and Ann Hathaway are there to support Steve Carell.
And the footage they showed today was pretty damn funny. Ann Hathaway (playing 99) kicks all sorts of ass. She has her shit together and beats the living hell out of the baddies in her path. Carell is, of course, a bumbler, but a lovable one.
Oddly enough, the action is pretty big. It's not like NAKED GUN or something, but it's like these characters are in a real dangerous situation, which I can't wait to see... especially since their main bad guy is Terence Stamp.
I saw the shoe phone. I saw Carell try painfully to use a mini harpoon gun, tether attached... by the end of the sequence he had pierced his own lip a couple times and somehow made a small web of zigzagging tether. I saw Hathaway enter a henchmen filled elevator and walk out of it a floor up, all the men crumpled on the floor. I saw Alan Arkin tackle someone. I saw James Caan playing the president. I saw Hiro and Nate Torrence (from TV's STUDIO 60) making some gadgets. I saw Carell riding in a jet fighter holding a bag of his own disgustingly thick puke... the jet makes a turn and the puke doesn't stay in its little baggie.
Peter Segal (director), Steve Carell, The Rock, Masi Oka, Ken Davitian and Nate Torrence jumped on the stage and answered questions.
-Masi Oka and Nate Torrence play kind of Qs of this universe, inventing gadgets.
-Carell said this film is kind of a comedic Bourne Identity... it's almost set in a world that parallels this one. A real world setting for some slap-stick characters. He said he always finds it funnier when the characters in a comedy don't know that they are indeed in a comedy.
-Carell also said he was a huge fan of the original and doesn't believe he'll ever be as good as Don Adams, just hopes to serve his memory well.
-He didn't know he was offered the role straight away. He thought he was going into an audition when he took his first meeting on it, complete with headshot and resume in hand.
-The Rock plays Agent 23, Maxwell Smart's mentor.
-Heimy the Robot and Agent 13 both appear... with Agent 13 being a special cameo...
-Mel Brooks and Buck Henry will both cameo in the film.
Got a couple more stories to run tonight before I sleep so, keep an eye out. Tomorrow is the craziest day yet. You have been warned.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
| 
