big bad blue tidings

Not much happened for me personally at Comic Con on Sunday except for getting the frack out of there before getting quashed by a giant menacing smurf.

But other stuff did in fact happen on Sunday. Like, new Doctor Who clips, which the lovely Charlie Jane Anders of io9 has up, along with many other vital Who-vian tidbits.

Cowboys and Aliens is coming out of the Con with buzz stronger & bigger than a gi-normously towering big blue bad, which bodes well for the flick based on Scott Mitchell Rosenberg’s 2006 graphic novel opening next weekend (via Retuers)

Also coming out on Friday with solid, although somewhat softer but pleasant murmuring buzz is Attack the Block. Here’s the trailer for the Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim) produced film from the Comic Con panel that took place on Friday (via Geeks of Doom)

People were also talking about Rhys Ifan getting citizen’s arrested by a security guard! As pop culture savvy Beat reader @Cary Coatney pointed out, the upcoming Amazing Spiderman villian is a bad ass. While it might not beat last year’s pen face stabbing incident in Hall H, don’t you just love a good Comic Con celebrity arrest story? (via MSN)

Cartoonists Jeffrey Brown and Simon Gardenfors at the Top Shelf table

Here’s a little something people weren’t talking enough about: Did you know that critically acclaimed, top selling auto-biographical cartoonist Jeffrey Brown has written a screenplay and contributed art to a rom com called Save the Date to be released in 2012? The first I heard of it was from Eisner award winning cartoonist and all around suave lady person, Hope Larson’s twitter feed. Some of Larson’s artwork will be used as set pieces in the upcoming film, along with a lot of Jeffrey Brown’s art as well. I had the pleasure of speaking with Brown at the Top Shelf booth yesterday about it. Apparently he filled up a sketch book for the lady artiste main character that appears in the film (played by Party Down’s and True Blood’s Lizzie Caplan). He also had postcards on hand for a band logo Caplan’s character draws that figures into the reportedly (although not to me) loosely autobiographical plot.  The film also stars Alison Brie (of Community and Mad Men fame) and Martin Star (also of Party Down). Why aren’t more people talking about this!!?? Talk about classy and understated yet undeniably intriguing.. this film already is all those things.

As for some of the under-buzzed but over promoted yet intriguing items coming out of the con and onto the smaller screen in the near future, Ringer, the new series produced by and starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, will premiere on The CW on Tuesday, September 13 marks the return of Sarah Michelle Gellar to the network, the home of her iconic role as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her legions of fans from Ballroom 20 on Friday sounded like they’ll be tuning in. Although the show was almost picked up by CBS, they ultimately passed on the “modern noir” thriller about a drug troubled, foxy fugitive who assumes the identity of her twin sister after a mysterious accident, only to find that her seemingly perfect and rich doppelganger has even more dangerous troubles of her own.  While Gellar gamely kept turning fan questions back from Buffy to Ringer, she did say that she often has to “remember that my character doesn’t have super slayer strength when fighting” and said (in answer to a fan question about whether or not viewer’s will see any Buffy in the twins she’s playing) that she “likes to think of myself as putting a little Sarah into all the characters I play.” You go, girl. BT-Dubbs, Ringer also features Richard from Lost (Nestor Carbonell) as an FBI agent.

Reggie Lee and Sash Roiz from the cast of GRIMM
GRIMM Producers, Jim Kouf and David Greenwalt (of Buffy/Angel)

I also got to attend a screening and press roundtable of NBC’s upcoming fairy tale police procedural GRIMM from another pair of Whedon-verse alums, Angel and Buffy writer/producers, David Greenwalt and Jim Kouf. The show (a joint production from Universal Studios and Hazy Mills) uses the premise that Grimm fairy tales (along with other mythological cautionary tales from around the world) are actually warnings from a long line of prophetic, crime fighting/monster hunters known as GRIMMS. Apparently each episode is a stand-alone police procedural but the storyline about the GRIMMS and their interactions with the monsters, myths and legends they come up against will be an on-going narrative. Show runner David Greenwalt (who the cast kept referring to as “Greeny”) said that “what I learned from the master, Joss Whedon, is that there’s tremendous emotional power in so-called genre stuff.” You tell ’em, Greeny. While fellow producer Jim Kouf commented that, “just like Buffy and Angel, we hope to deliver the same great, very scary and horrific events, plus great comedy when you (don’t) expect it.” Apparently, another running theme of the show will be addiction, supporting character, Sgt. Wu (Reggie Lee), will have an as yet to be named addiction problem which will wreak some havoc in his life and on the show and may have some fairy tale roots. Another cast member, my boyfriend, Sasha Roiz (from the unfortunately short-lived Caprica) plays a police chief with a hidden agenda and says that, “we’re entering Jim and David’s world which gives us a fabulous foundation of imagination” in reference to a question about how the series seems to share some similarities with Angel. Both Sasha Roiz and Reggie were late additions to the supporting cast (and picked specifically by Greenwalt and Kouf for the on-screen juju) and were my personal favorites of the cast members to chat with. They were actually on their way to Portland the next day to begin shooting the remaining 12 episodes of the first season that NBC has ordered. All the cast members parroted the NBC party line that Portland will be it’s own character on the show. And I have to say that, after viewing the pilot, they do make what I think of as kind of podunk little town look quite lovely and storyb0okish. The pilot, btw, was pretty entertaining but I’ll need to see more of the clever humor and organic character development that Greenwalt and Kouf are famous for before I can advocate whole-heartedly for it. I think the odds are good they’ll achieve something interesting tho, so tune in when that shizz hits the air.

Party time with Jason Momoa

Last but in no f-ing way least, I got to sit down with Jason Momoa (aka Khal Drogo from Game of Thrones and Conan the Barbarian) on Friday night for a brief Q&A in the Time Warner Video on Demand Lounge. Man, he seems like he’d be fun to party with. I wish I could’ve gone out drinking with him afterwards. Except I might’ve died – dude was already three sheets to the wind and it was barely 6:00 PM! But then again Comic Con can have that kind of effect on people so who am I to judge. I asked him asked him what it was like to learn the made up Dothrakian language for Game of Thrones. Momoa replied, “Wow, it was…” then shook his head and shared how he was given CD’s to learn the Dothraki native tongue. I then asked if they were, like, Rosetta Stone CD’s or something and if he had to like practice verb tense and stuff. He answered that it was more like, “learning a melody.” Sounds like something you could do drunk! So, good for him. Another reporter asked him what it was like to be an APA actor getting so much work. Momoa response: “What’s APA mean?” The reporter enlightened him that it stood for Asian Pacific American. I didn’t know what that meant either! He seemed happy to have gotten that knowledge dropped on him.

I, on the other hand, am about to drop dead. Good night and see ya later this week at the regular Studio Coffee Run time of sometime on Friday!

1 COMMENT

  1. “Pop culture savvy “- yeah that pretty much nails it for me, Ms. Beat.

    Yeah, as much of the world beholds Comic Con International as the world’s latest dernier cri or as our industry’s Cannes on the West Coast – it’s attracting more and more mind numbing and rowdy riff raff – boiling to the point whereas THAT it has to be a event where everyone and their family plus their pet hamster has to attend in order to create unnecessary chaos just to achieve their fifteen seconds of fame. I mean,how many people were hanging outside the convention center without passes who just wanted to be in the general vicinity or bask in the ambience by fighting through the crowd of the outdoor IGN sponsored carnival activities much compared to those who come by to watch the Laker playoffs on a Jumbotron screen at Staples Center and then start to riot afterwards? Not much of a difference, I’d say. If you pack a place full of locusts, rest assured there’s gonna be a full on hue and cry for that last piece of cookie crumb lying unclaimed (and what did I overhear outside the convention center that there were actually fistfights in line over next year’s tickets costing $175.00?).

    The seismic overload of this crazy misdemeanor nonsense is going to increase up a notch every year, the more roughshod of “in your face” marketing is transmitted to the world masses – but yet every year, I get that calling in my head THAT I have to be present and accounted for even though I no longer share what the organization’s mission statement has metamorphosed into – i.e: corporate sellout. Comic Con International is the only thing I consider close to finding true religion in my obtrusive atheist ways. So I go down simply just to bow my head in prayer and to pick up the souvenir book (because I so love Jackie Estrada and Dan Vado’s work on them) and quickly scurry back to LA (I missed last year’s offering and I’m still searching high and low for that elusive spare souvenir book that someone might have lying around if it hasn’t got caught in someone’s garbage disposal by mistake).

    I tried to make it down Friday to lend my support for this website’s Eisner nom – but I got called into work at the last minute. I apologize for that.

    Went down Saturday and got to spend seven whole hours at the con, but it seems I latched onto a virus on the way down via Amtrak- so my head was pretty much congested and out of sync by the time I arrived there. I refused to make any shaking hand contact with anyone there, and I must have went through a couple of small bottles of hand sanitizer while roaming the dealer’s room.

    Since I freelance as a film scout/researcher for a distributor who specializes in documentaries these days – my first priority at the con this year was to greet (with my hands dripping of sanitizer) and talk to the independent filmmakers who were screening films at the CCI Film Fest and get them to send screeners out. After the screening of ‘My Comic Shop Documentary” – I just couldn’t take it anymore and jumped back on the last train back to LA.

    But upon arrival in beautiful downtown San Diego – what is it I always do when I first jump off the train?

    I make the trek to the San Diego Concoarse to reflect on innocent memories past and to revel in the fact that it was there where it truly all began for me for better or worse (worse meaning Deposit Man is on forced hiatus again)

    ~

    Coat

  2. A great write up! Nice to meet you at the Grimm press event. :) I can’t wait to see what the next episodes bring. And of course, to see what little tweaks they’ve made to the pilot.

  3. Hey Melissa, thanks! It was great to meet you too – just remember that Sasha is MY boyfriend when you’re watching the newly pimped up pilot ;)

  4. oh, and @popculturesavvycarycoatney, i have a book to recommend to you after reading your lengthy screed. i gotta look up the exact title tho.