A Day at Comic-Con

Posted on July 14, 2012 at 12:00 am

Oh, there is so much I want to tell you! But you will see why all I have time to do right now is entice you by sharing my schedule for today.

6:00 am Pick up by stretch limo to be taken to the studios of my good friends Emily, Tommy, Laura, and Jeff and Jer. I usually review movies on their show each week from my house (at a more civilized time of the morning — Eastern time). But one of the best parts of my visits to San Diego for Comic-Con is that I get to be in studio with them.

Exhibit Hall to look at some of the more than more than 1000 booths and displays — everything from solo artists drawing on a table to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of effects — and of course 150,000 attendees, many in costumes. All day long, I took photos of my favorites, more than 100.

The biggest venue at Comic-Con is Hall H, which seats 6000. That is where the high profile events are held, so that was my next stop. I saw the actors and filmmakers behind “Paranorman” and the cast and producers of “The Big Bang Theory,” though Sheldon (Jim Parsons) attended via computer screen because he is starring in “Harvey” on Broadway and Leonard (Johnny Galecki) did not make it because his plane was delayed.

I then went to a series of interviews with the “Paranorman” people and then a press conference with Joss Whedon and the cast of “Firefly,” who were announcing their 10-year anniversary special, to be broadcast on November 11.

Then I visited a display of the Batmobiles, including Adam West’s, Val Kilmer’s, and the Dark Knight’s. And a guy from TV Guide was conducting an interview of the creators of “Big Bang Theory,” so I stayed to listen to that.

Then back to the Convention Center for three panel discussions: Hollywood concept artists talked about their work on films from “Rango” to “Stargate,” “Rise of Planet of the Apes,” and “Oz the Great and Powerful;” “Girls Gone Genre,” with Gale Anne Hurd (Producer of “The Terminator” and “Walking Dead”), Marti Noxon (“Buffy,” “Glee”), and Angela Robinson (“True Blood”), and a status report on “Stripped,” a new documentary about the rich history and precarious future of comic strips. Just to give you an idea, at any time of day or night there are dozens of these events going on, each, smart, funny, and fun. I wish I could go to everything!

More details coming soon!

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Comic-Con: “Oz the Great and Powerful”

Posted on July 13, 2012 at 10:47 am

I am sure that somewhere in the world there were people who were looking at great works of art and somewhere else people were enjoying magnificent natural vistas and exquisite flowers but I assure you that no one saw anything more beautiful than I did yesterday as I sat just a few feet across from Mila Kunis and Michelle Williams, the stars of the 2013 release “Oz the Great and Powerful.” Their charm and looks make them pretty but their graciousness and dedication to their art and their audience makes them truly lovely.

Producer Joe Roth and director Sam Raimi sat on either side of the actresses to tell us about the film, a prequel to the story we all know, based on the book by “Wizard of Oz” author L. Frank Baum that tells us how the “humbug” got from Kansas to Oz and came to live in the Emerald City. Mila Kunis plays the witch who will become known as the Wicked Witch of the West, and Michelle Williams plays Glinda.

One luxury they all appreciated was the chance to minimize the use of green screen effects. Kunis spoke of the dazzling designs and the pleasure of working in a “fully furnished” environment. Roth described seven huge sets built in a Detroit filming facility, each twice the size of the typical Hollywood space.

Kunis told us that when she first moved to the United States from Ukraine as a little girl, “The Wizard of Oz was one of the first films she loved, and so her parents gave her the Baum books to help her learn English. Raimi, the director of horror films and the “Spider-Man” trilogy, spoke with feeling about how much it meant to him to make a film with so much emphasis on the way the characters change and what they learn. This is his first 3D film, so he had a learning curve about the way the technology affects editing and composition. “There’s a whole different language of cutting.”

He also told us about the patience the film required because his stars had other commitments — Kunis was filming “Ted,” Williams was promoting “My Week with Marilyn,” Rachel Weisz was making the new “Bourne” movie, and title star James Franco was “off getting another degree.” Franco himself had learned and grown since he and Raimi worked together on the “Spider-Man” films. Now that he has also been a director, he has more “openness, collaboration, patience, more of a sense of what goes into a shot.”

They did not have the rights to the iconic images we all know so well from the MGM film and in any event, their plan was to “nod lovingly toward it and make our own story” set in “the whimsical nature of Baum’s great world” and characters who struggle and learn and deal with the consequences of their choices.

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DVS: Making Movies Accessible to the Visually Impaired

Posted on July 13, 2012 at 8:00 am

Boston public television station WGBH is a pioneer in making movies and PBS shows available to the visually impaired by adding descriptive audio, called DVS. That is a quiet narration to explain the actions and settings, like “Jim runs to the door, chased by a dog.” To support this effort, visit their website to make purchases of descriptive audio movies through Amazon. It does not cost extra, but four percent of the purchase price goes to making more movies available. And contact the studios, to encourage them to make their films available to this audience.

Ice Age: Continental Drift

Posted on July 12, 2012 at 6:00 pm

The “Ice Age” folks have the formula down very well, and this fourth entry is one of their strongest, with enough of the familiar to be satisfying and enough that is new to keep things interesting. The real expertise is the mixture of heart, humor, and adventure, in what is now one of the most reliably entertaining series for families.

It begins, as “Ice Age” must, with Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel who is the Sisyphus of the pre-historic era. Scrat (voiced, or, I should say, squeaked and squealed, by director Chris Wedge) wants an acorn, but it is his destiny to have it always just beyond his reach or to create chaos when he tries to bury it. Both happen right off the bat as inserting the tip of the acorn into the ice has results that are literally earth-shattering. Yes, it turns out that the reason the continents separated and moved to opposite sides of the oceans was because of a squirrel.

Meanwhile, our old friends Diego the cranky saber-toothed tiger (Denis Leary), Manny the anxious Mammoth (Ray Romano), and Sid the silly sloth (John Leguizamo) are on the wrong side of the dividing tectonic plates and become separated from Manny’s mate Ellie (Queen Latifah) and his tween daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer). Just as Manny and Peaches are in conflict because she wants to hang out with her friends and he thinks she is too young, the ground buckles and cracks underneath them. Diego, Manny, and Sid are adrift on an ice floe along with Sid’s dotty grandmother (Wanda Sykes). Like Daniel Day-Lewis in “Last of the Mohicans,” Manny promises, “I will find you.” But they have no cell phones or GPS or even maps.

And then things get worse, as they run into a pirate crew on a ship made from ice led by the piratical Captain Gutt (a sensational Peter Dinklage of “Game of Thrones”). His first make is a female saber-toothed tiger named Shira (Jennifer Lopez). Our heroes must battle Gutt’s gang and find their way back home. Gutt and Sid’s granny are welcome additions to the cast, adding vitality and flavor to a cast whose conflicts have subsided in the previous chapters. The animation is exceptionally well executed, especially the roiling water and a very funny reaction to a paralyzing plant. The action scenes continue to be crisply executed and the happy ending includes lessons on loyalty for friends and family. If it merrily ignores any historical or scientific legitimacy, it shows its value with wit and heart.

(more…)

Comic-Con, Preview Night

Posted on July 12, 2012 at 10:57 am

I am thrilled to be back at Comic-Con and the preview night was sensational. The special effects geniuses at WETA have really outdone themselves and their enormous trolls from Peter Jackson’s upcoming “The Hobbit” were magnificent. I saw “Star Wars” cookbooks (one with a recipe for Wookiee pies and a Darth Vader cookie cutter) and a meta comic book about Siegel and Shuster, the teenagers who created Superman (and inspired Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, soon to be a movie). I watched upcoming television programs “The Following,” with James Purefoy as a serial killer and Kevin Bacon as a damaged former FBI agent and “Revolution,” a post-apocalyptic story about earth fifteen years after all power sources mysteriously stop working. I interviewed Lisa Camp, editor in chief of the “distinguished but daring” publishing firm McFarland & Company, with its wide-ranging and extraordinarily expert books. And I had the very great pleasure of speaking to Disney animation legend Don Hahn about his new film, “Frankenweenie.” Based on the cult classic short film by Tim Burton, this stop-motion feature will open this fall. I asked Hahn about the difference between digital and live-action animation, he told me that it was the physical challenge. The sets, like this one of a schoolroom, were laid out in one huge room and the effort involved in reaching and stretching to make the minute adjustments for each frame was “like Pilates,” he told me. I especially admired the way he tied in what they did to the best from the past (he said they used the same technique developed by special effects master Ray Harryhausen) and the present (digital cameras allowed them to get immediate feedback on what they were doing). I will be attending press conferences on “Frankenweenie” and the final film in the “Twilight” series later today. Stay tuned!

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