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July 15, 2005

Well the second day at San Diego was infinitely better than the first
day, and I can imagine the rest of my stay to be all good from here on out *knock on
wood*.

I had some pleasant conversations with people at the convention, either
waiting in a line, just walking around, or some that I met and actually
walked around the gaslamp district with. Oh, and ofcourse there's the
exhibitors that were delighted to talk to attendees about their
product, the comic con, and just general stuff. Like a certain Linda Tran,
who is just one of the most gorgeous women I've ever met, and quite
friendly to talk to. Unfortunately, being that she's there promoting
her work / products and not there as a booth babe, she does charge for
pictures, so I'm lacking a photo of her at the convention. You can find pics of her online though if you are curious, or maybe I can sweet talk my way for her to waver her fee.
In fact, combine the fact that you can't take free pics of her, and
that she is one hella good looking lady, a lot of people (read:
intimidated
guys) don't approach her booth much. Luckily for her then, I'm not that
easily intimidated (okay Hon, you can put down that knife). I better move on...

One of the panels I went to today showed several movie trailers from
current to future releases. One of them is Neil Gaiman and Dave
McKean's "MirrorMask" which looks visually stunning. Another one is a horro movie called "Room 6" which looked visually disturbing. But the real highlight of that panel would be a teaser promo reel of "Transformers"
the live-action movie! They showed clips of the state of CG work in
transforming robots today, and some demo of possible Transformers that
will be used for the film. Unfortunately, even though Steven Spielberg is the producer, they got the boom-pow-zip director that is Micheal Bay to do it. May the autobot matrix of leadership watch over this film.

One of problems I'm finding recently, is that it's hard to get pictures
of celebrities when they are doing their autograph signings. The
comic-con has it set so that noone but the people waiting in line have
a clear view of the celebs. This is ofcourse a problem for those
of us who just wants to take a picture. Luckily, because my camera has
10x optical capabilities, I'm able to get the shot from a distance; if
the view is clear ofcourse. Check out the pics below of Margot Kidder and Wilmer Valderrama to see how close a shot I was able to get from far away.

Downstairs at the dealer's room I played this game where I had to
"fish" out a price from a 7 foot tall box in front of me. My
price? A Pink Belt! Needless to say, I gave it away to the first girl
that wanted it. After a decade of not buying a single issue comic book
(I'm all about trade paper backs now), I finally broke that long
stretch of time. The book that got me to break it? Serenity. This is the spin-off book from the TV show Firefly, and suppose to bridge it to the feature length movie. I love me my Firefly. Another book expenditure for me occured when I came across the official english released version of "I''s."
I've been waiting for that to come out here in the states, and I
thought the day would never come. In fact, I remember asking them about
the status of them bringing the series over, and I got a "we're working
on it" answer years ago. I guess they really were working on it.
Excellent. Over at the mezanine section of the convention there was a
medieval sword fighting demonstration. Surprisingly so, it held
my attention for quite awhile.

I went to two other panels to top of the convention. One was
about getting your ideas to Hollywood, the legal steps to go about it,
and the sociological aspects that you will have to deal with. It
was primarily a Q & A panel, but it moved a little slow in getting
the information out because a lot of the times, the answers would make
the panelists segway into another story that lasts for minutes on end.
Another one I attended was the "dirty secrets of the video game
industry" panel which by far has been the BEST panel I've been to this
year. It was incredibly informative and entertaining at the same
time. It dealt with some really good scenarios and explained them
very well to the audience. At the same time, the panelist's humor was
actually funny, so that's always a big plus. Kudos to them.

Lastly, to end the night, I had a free screening pass to the upcoming Wes Craven movie "Red Eye."
It's a limited seating arrangement, so it was first come first served.
Unfortunately, I was about 20 people away from getting in, so no luck there. Oh well,
I was only mildly interested in the film, since the trailer practically
gives away the whole plot.

As I'm typing this, I realized I'm about two hours from my alarm clock waking me up. Until my next blog then...