This is where I usually go! The Guinness is just about the best you'll get in San Diego (there and the Ould Sod).

I was thinking of going to one of the screenings but can't decide which. I guess I'll see which passes are left at the Sony booth tomorrow.

Oh the weather report looks like high 70's on the coast during Con.

For those going to Preview Night, be aware that the Padres have a game at 12:45. So, if you get there early, parking might be tough... and if you are getting there as the game lets out, traffic downtown will be rougher than usual.

My brother is working the con. He's at the Buena Vista booth. He told me Roger Corman will be there with them.

I'm finishing up my final arrangements. If any Otters want to say hi, I will be wearing shorts, a T-shirt and Lobster Johnson goggles (around my neck). Hopefully my hair will all be cut off. I have a broken hand and the noise of trying to do that just right now would be inappropriate.

It would be fun to meet someone from this space. (No politics or religion, though. Let's stick to cats VS dogs. ...maybe Godzilla monsters, too, although it can be a touchy subject.)

Can you find out when (day, time) he'll be there?


Roger, that is, not your brother

Oh yeah, you'll be easy to spot

I'll keep an eye out for ya, though. Hopefully you'll have a cast on your hand.

Please keep us up to date on the cool freebies givin away there. Im heading down to SD tommorow morn.

Okay, got back from Preview Night. Holy Carp, it just gets more and more crowded each year. On a positive note, they have badge pickup down to a science and it was VERY quick. We showed up at 3:20 and there was zero waiting. Nice.

Now, onto the first day of Comic Con and more exclusive toy lines and panels.

I got a pass for the 10pm show tonight. Not positive if I'll go, it depends on how I feel since I'm heading to get in line for Hall H EARLY.

Oh, here's the booth for Snakes on a Plane... click to enlarge:




They also updated Friday with the 20th Century Fox presentation:

12:45-2:15 Twentieth Century Fox Presents— Twentieth Century Fox returns to Comic-Con in a big way, with a sneak peek of 4 of the studio's most anticipated 2006 and 2007 releases. Get your first look at the highly-anticipated Eragon with premiere footage and special appearances by actor Ed Speleers (Eragon) and Elizabeth Gabler, president of Fox 2000 Pictures. Next it’s Reno 911: Miami, the big screen version of the popular TV series, with special footage and appearances by Lt. Dangle, Deputy Travis Jr. and Deputy Trudy Wiegel. And then it’s Pathfinder with star Clancy Brown and director Marcus Nispel revealing footage of this fantastic epic. And last, but not least, it’s the one and only Borat and his new film, Borat, featuring special footage and a special appearance by ... you guessed it! BORAT! Hall H

I'll be there Saturday. Gotta see what's on the schedule that day!

Sunday at 5, my man.

i'll be there saturday. taking the first train out of fullerton, o.c. looking forward to the Lost tvshow panel, bristol county party and veronica mars panel. i'm assuming the clerks2 auditorium will be too packed to get in.

Kevin Smith panels are almost ALWAYS packed.

They're having some surprise signings on Saturday. As always you just gotta be at the right place at the right time to get a wristband.

[spoiler]The right time could be 8am at various locations[/b]

Don't quote me on this but one signing could be a couple brothers who've made a couple of scary movies. Rumor also has it another signing could involve a certain webslinger...

Here's pic of Hillary Swank. I had a better pic of her before security cleared the area but somehow I deleted it. I had to sneak in for this one and they asked me to leave again

Been a bit difficult catching all the panels I want to see since i'm working during the show, but I was able to catch Lions Gate's presentation which was pretty sweet, particularly the Saw III clip they showed and seeing Jason Statham and Tobin Bell. Caught a few minutes of some Marvel topics, like Spidey and Civil War. Got to see Stan Lee I saw Hillary Swank too

My highlight so far was sitting in at Bruce Timm's panel, as he talked about his DC animated work. It was interesting that the clips that recieved the biggest applause was Batman Beyond.

Saw Borat and 2 scenes from the movie. I was floored. And that male on male nude fighting scene was priceless. I sensed the shock thru the entire packed room. They announced a screening last night, had to pick up a ticket at an ice cream truck right across the street fro the convention center. There was a rush of people leaving room.

I got a wristband to get a poster for Spider-Man 3 signed by the cast after their panel. Sam Raimi, Tobey McGuire, Kirsten Dunst, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace and Bryce Dallas Howard. Only one who didn't show was James Franco. Yes, it's okay to be jealous



No pics were allowed but we could chat while they signed. They were all very nice and Bryce was smokin hot along with Kirsten. She looks so mousy in her film roles so I almost didn't recognize her.

Nice!

Oh, for the first time in Comic-Con history (30 years), people had to be turned away because there were too many people. Holy shit it was crowded!

One day left... and, hopefully, bargains will be had

How and where did you get the wristband? The sony rep told me the were only giving hats. DAMIT so I left, due to the fact they yelled 15 minutes left.

I believe the hats were for people who went to the panel.

I got there EARLY (a few of us watched the sunrise). Usually they bring the outside crowd inside around 8am to a different staging area. This time, we got inside around 7:30am. Around 7:50am I wandered over to the Autograph area. There were 4 people with bags of tickets and they were sent off to various locations (they were told they couldn't do the ticket thing there). The standard drill is, you reach inside the bag and pull out a ticket. If your ticket has the special stamp, you get a wristband.

There were about 20 of us milling around... 8 of us started following this one guy. We get outside the autograph area, infront of Ballroom 20. He stops and has us each reach in for a ticket, one at a time. None of us get one. He said we can try again... so we're looping around. Eventually everyone in our little group got a wristband. We're happy

When I got back to the main line, another person with a bag of tickets had already showed up there but she only gave each person one shot. So, if you wanna get a wristband to the big guys, you just gotta get there early enough to be inside when they go around with bags.

When I went to the signing (which was in a special room above Hall H) there was an even luckier group of about 12 people. Apparently, they won some kind of text message contest with Sony so not only did they get to do the Spidey3 signing but, just before ours, they also got to do the Ghost Rider signing with Nic Cage and Eva Mendez (they signed an 8x10 mini-poster).

Congrats! I'm green with envy.

So I take it you went into the badge holders line that went up the escalator. Nice that they screw the Hall H line with this stuff as I sat there from 6am to camp out all day.

Anywho, I decided to skip today as I've had enough. 4 days is usually good enough for me. Ran into Jackskeleton.

My thoughts....

Preview night... time to bring it back to the industry only, I think. Just too many people. However, I did go catch the Monster House screening (thank goodness I knew the Sony people that I could secure my tickets). 9/10. Yes, it was that good. I think the performance capture was incredible, the story was great and the 3D was amazing.

Thursday - Camped out in Room 6CDEF.
Flyboys looks great. WWI aerial dogfights with bi-planes. I really want to see this.
Sony Animation panel, Open Season looks fun, but I'm really interested in Surf's Up. Told as a mockumentary about a penguin surfer, it just looks great and the story is different.
The WB Animation panel, well... Ant Bully to me is meh. Just a trailer for Happy Feet and Kevin Munroe's TMNT:CGI footage looks awesome. I think it looks closer to the original Turtle incarnation the Laird and Eastman did in the comics. Everyone was excited to see some footage.
Lionsgate panel. Skinwalkers with Stan Winston. Says this is the werewolf movie he wants to see, but what is intriguing me is how he's going to portray the werewolves. Some footage was shown but no werewolves. Crank with Statham and Pedro. Will be interesting to see how they handle this as it seems to be a variation of Nick of Time combined with D.O.A. And then SAW III, new challenge was to give that surprise. Showed a red-banded trailer that still has to go thru MPAA approval. Jigsaw has a guy attached to chains by rings thru his skin at various points thru his body (hands, back legs, torso, jaw), has to rip them out to disarm a bomb. Bloody gruesome.
Tripper the Movie. Well, poor David Arquette with his directing debut about some psycho hippies at a Ronald Reagan fest. He lost the footage on his way to the con, but did his best to keep the crowd interested.
Pan's Labyrinth. It's del Toro and his baby. Mostly talk about filmmaking and fucking with Doug Jones about if he's the Silver Surfer or not. Jones said he couldn't comment on anything, but asked if we liked his shirt (a shiny silvery dress shirt.)

Friday - Warner Bros panel. The Reaping with Hilary Swank. Interesting film about a biblical myth debunker. Then Bryan Singer fielding questions. I dunno, I expected him to get grilled more than that, but y'know he kinda covered himself by bringing Dick Donner onto the stage with him. Donner showed footage of the Donner cut of Superman 2. Can't wait for that DVD!
Fox panel. Reno 911. Hilarious. Pathfinder looks interesting. I wonder tho if Harlin and Warner Bros are thinking, why they didn't try to get (Northmen) out first. Borat. Holy jihad, I can't believe they showed that to an audience with kids.
Boondocks DVD panel. Aaron says that he's lucky to have Sony and Adult Swim behind him and letting him do his thing. There was only 1 time that he was nixed to do something by the studio, but everything else was free reign. Talked about characters coming back in the 2nd season.
Return to Dark Crystal. Nothing much as far as footage, there was a little bit. Unveiled a Jim Henson line of children's clothing based on Henson designs and that there may be a Fraggle Rock movie on the horizon and a retrospective PBS show/dvd on Henson himself. Showed some of their puppet improv too. Funny stuff!

Saturday - Camped out in Hall H.
Warner Bros. 300 panel. Holy christ Zack has given such a great look to this project. I swear art was there asking about seeing true man on man love since the beautiful trailer that Zack put together had man on woman lovin'. Miller was very happy with the work being done to bring this graphic novel to life.
Grindhouse panel. Robert and Quentin made this to be shown as a double feature. 2 movies for the price of one. Robert was still shooting his piece and Tarantino hasn't started yet. On the panel included Rose McGowan, Sydney Poitier, Rosario Dawson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Marley Shelton, and Zoe Bell. Robert's footage was extremely sick, exploitation, over the top zombie holy shit, fuck you. They started out with making 2 60 minute pieces that turned into the full double features. Nothing on any other projects.
Clerks II panel. Well, fuckin' Kevin was late so instead we got to see some of Broken Lizard's Beerfest film. And thent he lovely Rosario Dawson came back onstage to field some questions and broke out in to a Siiiiiiiiiiing-sing-a-song, make it simple to last the whole night looooooong!!
The Spirit movie with Frank Miller directing. Yawn.
Disney's Narnia/Pirates panel. Narnia is coming out with a 4 disc special edition dvd set and Prince Caspian is the next to be filmed. The Pirates presentation with John Knoll made me feel like I was at the visual effects bake off and I'm sure it lost some people until he brought something from Pirates 3. Chow Yun Fat looks amazing!
Sony panel Ghost Rider/Spidey 3. New trailer from Ghost Rider as we see the full transformation of Johnny Blaze into the Ghost Rider. Nick Cage is so fuckin cool. Basically, it's the effects work that pushed it out to being released in February. Looks awesome! Then Spidey 3, well... that 2nd teaser (which you won't see for a while because there were animatics and a hand full of unfinished effects) should put any and all doubt that Venom isn't in the movie to rest.

Kevin did finally make it to the panel... here's a little clip I took.

Teen Titans in Tokyo screening. Looks great! A lot of nods to Akira (even a cameo of Kaneda) Starfire and Robin finally get together. Boo-yah!