Hey folks, Harry here with Mute Witness to give us an oh so brief glimpse of life at the San Diego Comic Con. All sorts of goodies and promos will be surfacing out of there over the next week or so, so if ya got any advance materials for movies or tv shows at San Diego... Scan em and share em with the rest of us. We're curious little folks. Hopefully I'll be headed to San Diego next year! A last minute financial foopah got in the way this time dagnamit!

Hey Harry,

Never had anything much to say before. I hope you can use this. Unless somebody has already made claim to it, you can call me Mute Witness.

Just depressurizing after 3 days at the massive thundering Comic-Con here in San Diego (there¹s still Sunday to go, but most of the cooler presentations are over). As I haven¹t seen anything about the con on your site yet, I decided to debrief you on some of the panels and Q&A I was able to catch between shelling out big bucks for kick-ass Toshiro Mifune action figures ($149.00) and fighting over free THE GREEN MILE t-shirts.

Chris Gore of FILM THREAT magazine gave an inspiring, informal talk on independent filmmaking, as well as screening the underground and unsanctioned TROOPS, a Star Wars-slanted dead-on parody of COPS, featuring a camera crew ride-along with self-narrating storm troopers as they go about questioning, harassing, and eventually shooting in the back a couple of poor defenseless jawas, then hastily ordering the cameras shut off. Packed in a hot, tiny and crowded room, the audience of would-be filmmakers ate it up - as they did the hollywood insider favorite (and SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE parody) GEORGE LUCAS IN LOVE.

In another room, the writer/producer (Mark Altman) and writer/director (Robert Burnett) of FREE ENTERPRISE screened a trailer and a couple of scenes from the semi-kinda-loosely-not-really autobiographical comedy and told behind-the-scenes William Shatner stories. Like about how once, when meeting with Shatner at his home, Ricardo Montalban just happened to call on the phone. The delighted filmmakers couldn¹t believe their good luck to be in the room listening to the Kirk and Khan on the phone.

The filmmakers explained how the screenplay originally revolved around fantasy sequences involving Shatner dispensing sage advice to a socially inept Star Trek fan - not unlike Bogart in PLAY IT AGAIN SAM. As they told it, the script kissed Shatner¹s ass. And they were sure he wouldn¹t be able to refuse it. Surprisingly, Shatner turned the script down, saying he simply couldn¹t play that guy. That he wasn¹t that guy. That he was a fucked-up guy without life¹s answers. The writers quickly responded and turned the story around, and Shatner agreed to play the pompous ego-centric guy we all know and love. (And did a great job.) Hopefully this film will earn a wider release.

These same filmmakers also showed a clip of THE SPECIALS, a low budget indie they produced (but did not write or direct). While the clip contained some similarities to MYSTERY MEN, it was cooler by far. At least part of it - maybe the whole thing - is a unwinking mock-umentary. Making it feel like some sort of a MYSTERY MEN/SPINAL TAP hybrid. Featuring interviews with strange super heroes (including Rob Lowe). Super heroes sitting on shabby sofas talking earnestly (with hilarious effect) to the camera. In once scene a super hero couple sadly mourn the death of Stretchy Boy, explaining how his unique genetic make-up, while allowing him to contort his rubbery body in the fight against crime, was also the cause of the mouth cancer that ended up killing him. Whoa. Edgy. Smart. (Don¹t get me wrong, it¹s not all dark like that - at one point Rob Lowe introduces a female super hero whose body can change into any substance she touches - wood, concrete, or ³fruit roll-up².) It¹s hipper than the execs would ever allow studio summer blockbuster to be.

WARNING SPOILERS BELOW ABOUT SLEEPY HOLLOW!!! WARNING!

The only person to show up to a SLEEPY HOLLOW Q&A was the preening, flirting pretty boy, Casper Van Dien, whose last Comic-Con appearance was a couple of years ago for STARSHIP TROOPERS. He didn¹t have much of anything of interest to say - aside from cheerfully giving away important plot twists. (Like who the villain turns out to be.) The SLEEPY HOLLOW people managed to screen one of those short ³The-Making-Of...² promotional documentaries that kicked-ass. This movie is so cool. Though it also showed clips and interviews that gave away some plot points I wish they hadn¹t. Like one actor mentioned the experience of seeing his own severed head. So he obviously dies, right? Maybe you¹ll want to edit this sentence out, Harry - cuz I wish I hadn¹t seen it - but the promo piece shows Johnny Depp as Ichabod grabbing an axe and hacking into a cool twisted, dead tree, and discovering all these severed heads hidden inside. Why would they show that? I don¹t want to see that. I want to see that in the movie.

YOU ARE NOW CLEAR OF SPOILERS! GO ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS!

The TITAN: AE trailer was cool - but only because it was half-completed, and pencil tests and roughed-in CGI look really cool to me. Unfortunately, the finished clips they showed looked very formulaic and QUEST FOR CAMELOT-like and not to my taste.

The IRON GIANT panel was excellent. No Brad Bird, but plenty o¹ animators - of both the 2-D and 3-D varieties. They wear their enthusiasm and love for both the project and Brad on their sleeves. Though they politely refused to answer any direct questions on the matter, their heartfelt disdain for the way that Warner has been marketing the film was also clear.

The trailer for David Twohy¹s PITCH BLACK was effectively kinetic and exciting, the CGI for the molten crash of the spaceship and for the stalking alien creatures (that come out to play when the planet has a rare solar eclipse) look excellent. If it appears anything like it does in the trailer, the harsh desert planet (filmed, I believe, in Australia) is glaringly, stylishly over-exposed and washed-out. Very cool-looking. It¹s got Vin Diesel in it and I forget who else. Due out in theaters in January.

Heather Donahue did a Q&A about BLAIR, confessing to a disbelieving audience that her ³bitchiest² moments were actually left on the cutting room floor, and that the Heather you saw was in reality a much toned-down version. Audible gasps. When asked what the piles off rocks found outside her tent meant, Heather was refreshingly clueless. She still has no idea about that or what was out in the woods. She related how for the last shot of the film the directors grabbed her from behind and slowly lowered her to the floor and then set the camera down. She also said it wasn¹t always easy to maintain that hopelessly lost-in-the-woods feeling - because they were filming in a day-use park, and hiking families and kids on bikes were always spoiling shots.

As for real scoops, well John Landis was sitting on a panel to plug his dinosaurs-and-breasts Direct-TV series ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE¹S LOST WORLD, and let slip that he has a new movie project slated with New Line. He said the working title was VERY SCARY, but that the title would surely be changed (god, I hope so). The movie is a four-part horror anthology, to be directed by Joe Dante, Walter Hill, Guillermo del Toro and Landis himself - who¹s piece would serve as the wrap-around segment.

Yeah, it was another cool Comic-Con. Where else can you grab a bite in the hotel restaurant and find yourself sitting one table over from Forrest J. Ackerman!? Or do that little hesitation dance trying to avoid crashing into the still-massive (but, sadly, no longer green) Lou Ferrigno in the convention center lobby? Nowhere, I say.