As fans lined up to pose for a photo with Richard Roundtree, star of the 1970s hit Shaft, the actor chuckled at the get-ups he saw, calling it a “circus-like atmosphere, very unusual.”

It’s been over 30 years since Shaft was on the big screen. Roundtree, who over the years has appeared on TV shows including Desperate Housewives, has also found a second gig: “My photography has really taken off and I enjoy being on the other side of the camera.”

Dawn Wells, “Mary Ann” of Gilligan’s Island, was equally impressed:

As a line of fans waited to talk with her, she admitted she didn’t know what most of the costumes represented, but admired the fans that dressed up as their favorite comic book hero or villain.

“I think it’s interesting that they’re dedicated to whatever they like and it means something to them that they’ve gone off and gotten a costume.”

And what about from the other side? The dude from Roboplastic Apocalypse had a little write up on some highlights:

# Very little by way of robot figures on the dealer floor. Saw a Japanese reissue Smokescreen and some Revoltech Patlabors but that was it.
# One dealer has original art from Micronauts, ROM, Shogun Warriors and G1 Transformers comics. Pages from Transformers #43 and Transformers #55 were $95-$150 each, while he wanted $1,200 for the cover to Shogun Warriors #5!
# I congratulated Larry Kenny on landing that new Thundercats role-he said I was the first to mention it so far this weekend!
# HOLY CRAP I TALKED TO LION-O!!!!!

Lots of photos from the floor here.

The filmmakers have issued a casting call for fans who are going to the big show this year:

LOOKING FOR PEOPLE WHO LOVE COMIC-CON

Are you headed to the 2010 Comic-Con International in San Diego? Do you die for diehard fandom? Do you pine over Chris Pine, other Captain Kirks, or have firsthand knowledge of who is the ultimate Bruce Wayne? Is your Lost Ark a long lost collectible, an original edition comic book, a need to be the first in line at a sneak peak of Green Lantern, or to understand the ultimate and undeniable power of Akira?! Are you the original inspiration for comic book guy? Is your collection the biggest? Is your costume the best? Is your dream to propose to your girlfriend and give her the one ring to rule them all? Are you an artist who is showing off your work? A vendor showing off your amazing collection?

If you are any of these things, then we want to hear your story.

Oscar®-nominated filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, producer Thomas Tull, comic book icon Stan Lee, writer/producer Joss Whedon, and film guru Harry Knowles have joined together to bring audiences the feature-length documentary COMIC-CON EPISODE FOUR: A FAN’S HOPE – a documentary celebration of all things con-tastic!

We are looking to cast original, eccentric, funny, touching, and mildly obsessive people that will capture the excitement, enthusiasm, joy, and passion of comic book, anime, sci-fi, and fantasy lovers everywhere.

If Comic-Con International will be the highlight of your year and you have a story to share about your passion, let us know. Join the fellowship, take part in this epic documentary, and write us at ComicConDoc@gmail.com. Include your name, phone number, a picture, and tell us your story.

There are a couple of things that strike us as a bit odd about this. Are Twi-fans who camp out overnight braving vermin and dirty old men not eligible? Maybe they are not “mildly” obsessed enough. The mention of Akira, the manga for people who hate manga, shows that cosplayers need not apply. In short, it’s a pretty limited casting call and most applicants will be wearing a T-shirt kinda like this:

or this:

Christopher Campbell at Cinematical is also a little dubious:

I don’t condone the practice of casting for documentaries, and already I’m turned off by this project. The people in a film like this should be found organically through observation and on-hand selection. And it shouldn’t specifically be about people who think they’re the most hardcore fanboy or fangirl professing to be such to the camera. This is how shows like Wife Swap are done, by attracting the biggest attention whores to embarrass themselves for a bit of money (I really hope A Fan’s Hope is not paying anybody). Typically in seeking people who want 15 minutes of fame, a production is going to end up with a freak show.

Besides, this film has already missed the most dramatic part of attending San Diego: Hoteloween!!!!! Where is the ten minute montage of people hitting refresh on their computers? The tension of the endless “circuits busy” beep on the phone? The intense drama and weeping when a Mission Bay location is revealed? It’s really all pretty boring from then on until the part where you stand in line to get into the William Morris party.

We’d also like to point out that this is NOT the first Comic-Con movie.

Mark Hamill directed and starred in this film about obsessed fan Don Swan, who goes to San Diego to find out what’s happening to his favorite superhero, Commander Courage. The film, released in 2004, featured unscripted interviews with con attendees like Kevin Smith and, of course, Stan Lee. Because Stan Lee must be involved in everything.

This film was so successful that six years later, Hamill has another directing gig, adapting his own comic book, THE DARK PEARL.

Nor is this the only movie about Comic-Con in the works! Simon Pegg and Seth Rogen are working on their own comic-comedy, PAUL, in which two geeks on the way to Con encounter an alien. Bidi bidi!

Frankly, we’ve long dreamed of writing our own Comic-Con docudrama, one that starts out involving a blogger on an endless quest to get to Ralphs for some food and to find free Wi-Fi. But then somewhere along the way, by a mad stroke of fortune, he gets into the EW party and meets the cast of Doctor Who! And then things get crazy. There are some reversals, misunderstandings, and double crosses, all revolving around a mint copy of CHEW #1. It even looks like a romance may develop between the blogger and the actress who was a purple Jedi who got cut out of ATTACK OF THE CLONES. But then, morning dawns out by Joe’s Crab Shack and the blogger is left with only an improved sense of self worth, happy memories, and a MiFi that the Jedi girl left him with so he can blog the shit out of the rest of the show.

Maybe there is a reason no one has yet made a Comic-Con movie.

§ If you’re wondering what happened to the Pepper-kisses-Iron Man’s-helmet scene from the IRON MAN 2 trailer that was nowhere to be found in the movie, Gavok’s Iron Man 2: The Deleted Scenes has a lot of answers by comparing the novelization of the movie (based on an early version of the screenplay) to the finished version:

The most obvious removal is the scene of Pepper kissing Tony’s helmet and throwing it out the aircraft as he tells her, “You complete me!” as seen in all the ads. A variation of that is in the book. The situation makes it look like Tony is about to be dropped into a warzone. He’s vomiting into a toilet and argues with Pepper over what brand of aspirin she’s given him. The two banter back and forth and the tension is played up until he finally makes the jump out of the plane. The payoff, of course, is that this is for the Stark Expo and not some big battle.

More importantly, THIS change was made:

During my review of the book, I noted that they had the potential of a huge mistake when Rhodey runs off to become War Machine for the first time, but luckily they changed it. In the movie, Rhodey’s last straw is seeing Iron Man blow up the champagne bottles. In the book, he’s set off by seeing Iron Man blow up the watermelon. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help but think that the combination of that scene would have led to a big wave of racial awkwardness if left unchanged. You can’t tell me 4chan wouldn’t have been all over that one.

§ Speaking of which, Brandon at Are You A Serious Comic Book Reader? finds some racist imagery in Brendan McCarthy’s SPIDER-MAN: FEVER:

First, it’s just weird. How, in 2010, a clearly smart knowing guy like McCarthy could write such ridiculous coon-ish dialogue is baffling. Second, it’s confusing because the guy’s dressed like say, a De La Soul or Souls of Mischief fan from the early 90s, not a thug at all. Third, it’s a buffoonish black character dropped into the narrative for some incredibly cheap laughs. This kind of stuff happens in comics all the time, like casual sexism, and it’s just sort of jarring and weird and worst of all, innocent. McCarthy clearly doesn’t think this is a big deal, right? He finds it humorous or maybe somehow, accurate to real life? What the fuck.

§ Brian Hibbs is chatted at by Tom Spurgeon:

HIBBS: Is it possible? Sure, it’s possible. The thing that’s different with comics as opposed to the franchise businesses you’re talking about is that the product changes every single work. If you can go to the ice cream store that sells 31 flavors, you’re getting 31 flavors of ice cream. There are variations of how you’re getting it, but there’s only a few permutations of possible objects that you’re selling there. In a comic book store, if you’re focusing primarily on periodical comics, and that’s still a significant portion of everybody’s business, every single week you’re getting somewhere between 60 and 100 comics that aren’t interchangeable the way chocolate ice cream is with another ice cream.

§ Tom has a similar type convo with Ben Schwartz, editor of The Best American Comics Criticism:

SCHWARTZ: Doug Wolk edited Da Capo’s annual Best Music Writing series some years ago and I thought, why not do that with comics? I’m writing another book for Fanta and pitched it to them and they liked the idea. Gary was the most skeptical. Early on he asked me if I seriously thought I could fill a whole book with good writing on comics. He sent me his essay “The Death of Criticism.” Nice to know that’s on your publisher’s mind!

§ Did you know that Newsarama no longer posts comments after their news stories? I did not!

§ From Polykleitos to Topffer with Matthias Wivel.

§ Ken Parille offers 35 short ‘essays’ on comics at Blog Flume.

§ Ben Morse takes a crack at explaining the appeal of Iron Man.

NERDLEBRITY CORNER

§ Sorta news. A few images from the Conan set in Bulgaria have leaked out, and apparently ancient Cimmeria has been dressed to look like Camden, New Jersey.

§ A New Zealand newspaper takes umbrage at the way J. Scott Campbell drew Kiwi actress Anna Paquin for the cover of the new TRUE BLOOD comic. It seems that there isn’t much real news in New Zealand. Lucky New Zealand.

§ Gerard Butler is on image rehab at Architectural Digest!

Thirteen-foot-tall mahogany doors with a knocker that could summon the dead. A ceiling fresco depicting the rape of Ganymede. Plaster walls chipped and mottled with age, massive columns supporting limestone lions, crystal chandeliers casting spidery shadows…. Medieval castle? Ancestral manor house? Try a two-story loft in the heart of New York’s ultratrendy Chelsea district. The doors alone are remarkable enough to stop the most jaded Manhattanite in his tracks: Who in the world lives here?

Knocker. Tee hee.

§ Matthew Goode — Ozymandias in WATCHMEN — mentions that he’s auditioned for the role of Bilbo Baggins in THE HOBBIT:

“Now he’s a father, Goode doesn’t even like travelling that much. But just before we met, he’d auditioned for the role of Bilbo Baggins in Guillermo del Toro’s two-part film of The Hobbit. As he is the first to admit, he’s not an obvious choice – ‘Look at the size of me for Christ’s sake!’ If he got the part, he would, he says, find it almost impossible to refuse – despite the fact that it would involve him spending several months in New Zealand.”

Not a bad choice, although he is a lot taller than previous pint-sized hobbits like Elijah Wood and Sean Astin, but advances in CGI should make that much easier to deal with. What we want to know – who will play Fili and Kili?

§ Splash Page has a substantive report on the continued desire amongst comics fans to see manly Jon “MAD MEN” Hamm play a superheroic character. It turns out that Hamm can credibly claim to be a comics reader, accurately describing the darker comics era of the last 15 years, but choosing the right character might be hard:

“I don’t know,” he said when asked if he’d consider a role in a comic book movie. “It’s a tricky road to go down with some of those heroes, because they’re not flawed. Superman is Superman — he’s invincible, so where’s the drama?”

“I think what people are finding with the success of things like “Batman Begins,” “The Dark Knight,” “Iron Man,” it’s much more interesting to talk about the person behind these heroic personae rather than the flying, shooting fire and lasers and all this other stuff,” continued. “Although it has been interesting to see the evolution of the comic book film, because technology has essentially caught up with the ability to tell those stories.”

Hamm also suggests the perfect Captain America would be Stephen Colbert.

The family was in London for the UK premiere of THE DARK KNIGHT. The assault took place on Sunday, the day before the premiere. According to the Sun the police waited to question Bale so that the premiere could go on.

UPDATE: As you might expect, TMZ has breaking news on this:

So why did cops put a hold on busting Batman? They didn’t think he’d flee.

Scotland Yard tells us after his mom and sis dropped a dime on Bale yesterday, the cops didn’t jump because they felt Christian was not a flight risk. Also, they thought the crime was not super serious.

So, we’re told, they waited until after “The Dark Knight” premiere to have him pay a visit to the station.

Above, Schreiber wonders why all X-men villains must have gnarly sideburns.

Here, Jackman/Wolverine realizes that adamantium claws make the best damn apple slicer, period.

Wolvie may look a little downscale in these photos, but can we say (in the jump) that Jackman puts the abs in “abtastic Wolverine”!

We say she deserves a role in some superhero movie!

[Via Jezebel]

• Warner’s Dark Knight movie site, which had been rolling out a viral marketing campaign using Ledger’s Joker character, has gone to a simple tribute to the actor,

• Comicmix has a short audio interview with the actor about his role as the Joker.

• While Ledger’s entire , no one is saying how much ADR work had to be done, EW reports.

Dark Knight director Chris Nolan and execs at Warner Bros., the studio releasing the film, were not available for comment, and have not issued any public statements about the status of the movie. EW placed a call to Oscar-winning sound designer and sound editor Richard King, who’s handling the Dark Knight audio work, but he declined to comment. According to several other sound-mixing experts who also declined to speak on the record, there’s no way to tell what the situation is with Dark Knight from the outside, since the amount of ADR required, and the timetable for doing it, varies wildly between films. (In plenty of instances, looping is not completed until very close to the final release date, perhaps as little as a month or two out.)

• The marketing campaign will probably need major adjustments. Various pundits and studio types analyze the situation here. The marketing exec who came up with the campaign recently left WB.

“Warners are in a difficult position. Initially they wanted to capitalize on the early buzz that has surrounded Heath’s performance,” Bock told AFP. “Now they’re going to have to do a 180 from that.”

While the death of an actor before a film’s release is not unknown, with famous examples being 1994’s “The Crow”, starring the late Brandon Lee, and 1956’s “Giant”, released a year after James Dean’s death, the situation with “The Dark Knight” was unprecedented in the modern era, Bock said.

“This is something we’ve never seen before,” he said. “On the one hand they have to pay tribute to Heath and the performance that he gives, but on the other hand this is going to be one of the biggest films of the summer.

• Ledger’s final film was with director Terry Gilliam, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Major shooting had been completed but much SFX work remained to be shot in Vancouver. It’s not the first time a Gilliam film has been plagued by tragedies and accidents. The film’s future remains very much up in the air.

• And finally, in the most enigmatic note, when former Joker Jack Nicholson was apprised of Ledger’s death (by papparazzi), he muttered, “I warned him.” Which doesn’t mean anything at all really, except where the Joker is concerned, you should always go out on a mystery. You can watch a video of the comment here.

Urban also reveals that his time signing autographs at SF cons was well spent, as he avoids the use of the pejorative term “Trekkie:”

I just will say that the project as a whole is very faithful to the original series and I think that J.J. has a very fresh and exciting approach and I think that he’s an incredibly talented visionary. I believe that he is going to reinvigorate this franchise in a really healthy, positive and exciting way. I really think that the Trekkers and the long time fans will be really pleased with it, because it really does honor the very spirit of what we are all really quite crazy about, in a good way.

Looks like its time to rev up our Karl Urban programme here at SBM!

Anyway, like we said, we’re weak in Heroes-fu, so we have no idea how shocking this is.

We know one thing: they both have names that are hard to spell.

NEXT, Marc Bernadin at EW points out some similarities between Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark and Edward Norton as Bruce Banner:

Apparently, Marvel superheroes are prone to wearing wifebeaters when making quasi-scientific advances.

Actually, we are told that Marvel employs the same trainer for all their superhero movies, which is one reason for the wifebeater look. Either that or Marvel Studios head Michael Helfant just has some kind of fetish.