ComicCon! A Report

We bring you now an exclusive report from our own Dennis Woo on San Diego's Comic Convention last weekend, replete with glossy (well, pixel-glossy) photos and all the dirt. Take it away, Dennis!

The San Diego Comic-Con is that city's largest yearly convention, with membership for the 2003 event estimated to be more than 70,000. It's pure nerdvana.

"Starbuck was a cigar-chewing womanizer. What about your character?" Katee Sackoff stars as the new all-female Starbuck in the all-new "reimagined" Battlestar Galactica coming to the the Sci-Fi Channel. Speaking at a panel at the SD Comic-Con the past weekend, her Starbuck will also have a penchant for cigars. Or at least some chewing gum, as the photo shows. She also said she wouldn't mind her character taking a few gents for a ride, as long as she got to do the casting. Visual FX supervisor Ronald Moore, vet of numerous Star Trek series, explains there'd be no major fleet action seen in the new Galactica. Expect production influences from In Harm's Way, the movie focusing on an American battleship out at sea while Pearl Harbor takes place. The Cylons will be more Borg-like and the product of human creation.

The vision is at odds with Richard Hatch's (not the Survivor player -- the original "Captain Apollo" from the 1970s Galactica) sense of the Cylons, which to his mind have been and always will be reptilian. Hatch complains that the head of the Sci-Fi Network doesn't even like science fiction, and that Glen A. Larson, producer of the original, is p.o.ed about the re-imagining. Hatch holds out hopes for his dibs on a movie version, claiming that Larson has those rights. Realists probably wouldn't count on it. However, Hatch's new thought-child "Magellan" sounds interesting. He claims to have finished the bible on that universe, and is going around pitching.

Hatch WOULD NOT SHUT UP after we flagged him down in front of the Con. I guess Jonathan really had him against the ropes. Actually, he was very friendly and very generous with his time considering he was due at a panel at 11am and was obviously on his way there. Interestingly, he referenced Galaxy Quest once or twice and he LOVES Lord of the Rings. The new project he's been pitching is called Magellan. Younger folks, check him out on Battlestar Galactica. Check out Julie and Matthew waiting patiently in the background while Richard is pitching Jonathan. We think he'll be up for an interview on the site, though, as he accepted our biz cards graciously.

2) Maybe Hatch would like to cast Deborah Van Valkenburg, at 50, still spritely and "still fun," as she claims. You probably know her as Mercy from The Warriors or the cute brunette sister on the Ted Knight series Too Close for Comfort. A 17-year blink later, she's opposite William Shatner in Free Enterprise. How time flies.

3) A Disney-esque ghoul sits on the panel for the Haunted Mansion movie. But how will you get out? As with the theme park ride, the movie will be funny as well as scary. (See Craig's thoughts on Disney Theme Park Movies in a previous entry.)

4) The lovely Ms. Halle Berry gets the crowd going in talking about her character Storm in the X-Men movies. She will be in the upcoming Gothika, playing a doctor who wakes up in her own mental hospital wondering what just happened. Notice the cast -- Halle broke her arm in a scene with Robert Downey Jr. which "wasn't even a stunt scene." Is Halle the most accident-prone actress in Hollywood or what?

5) Angelina Jolie greets a crowd of thousands (4,500 actually...8,000 were trying to push into the room). With her extracurricular work in Cambodia, and with her portrayal of 1970s supermodel Gia winning her plaudits from the AIDS activist community, Angelina arrived as a virtual saint seeming to push the forthcoming second Tomb Raider movie as a kind of afterthought. Angelina was gracious enough to blow a kiss or two for the crowd, and found herself shedding tears when an HIV-afflicted fan made mention she'd travelled from Arizona only to see her and had been in line since 2 in the morning. And to answer a question, guys (and gals), yeah, she is pretty hot in real life.

6) Kevin Smith is a convention regular but always entertaining. "What are you guys really here for? Hobbits? No really, what's up next? Spider-man 2?" His default joke is to bag on Ben Affleck. He claimed that he couldn't log onto the Internet anymore because he spent far too much time trying to prove he wasn't an asshole. "You come to the realization, 'He's right. I am an asshole. I do keep making the same movie over and over. Frodo12 is right.'" Anyway, I hear "An Evening with Kevin Smith" is pretty much like what we saw, so you should just check that out and not feel you missed anything.

7) Freddy Krueger is back. What else need be said?: Freddy vs. Jason is nigh upon us. If you're betting anything but Freddy, you're nuts. On the flip side of evil, Robert Englund also plays the nicey-nice turncoat alien in the original NBC science fiction mini-series V, which is soon to be revived. He dropped some tidbits, nothing substantial.

8) This was pretty cool. Sala Baker, who plays both Sauron in costume and the lead orc Lurtz in the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, appeared in full Lurtz garb on stage. Costumers from the LOTR movies were on-hand with a pretty impressive costuming demonstration, outfitting a elf-warrior-maiden in the garb of Lothlorien and a Rohirrim guardsman before the audience.

9) Billy Boyd (Pippin) himself gets on stage to check out the hobbit hair. Also on hand from Middle-earth were Andy Serkis (Gollum), and later Elijah Wood (Frodo Baggins, at left, left) and Sean Astin (Sam Gamgee, right). What's with the hair and hat? The third and final installment of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy promises to be one of 2003's biggest film debuts. Wood claimed that of what he saw, Return of the King will be better than the first two movies combined. Whew.

10) Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy, spoke about the upcoming movie starring Ron Perlman and directed by Guillermo del Toro . According to Mignola, del Toro graciously wanted to direct a vision of Hellboy very close to that seen in the comics. Reports of washed-out black and white scenes with Hellboy as the only color element have a "they're doing it right" ring to them. Do you think the red shirt has any signifcance? The clip from Hellboy looked fab and Perlman's make-up is dead-on right. For those of you unfamiliar with the comicbook and mythology, check out the Hellboy web site.

11) Is is boring to look so beautiful? Here's the story of the Americanization of Kate Beckinsale. She's first known mostly as an english flower for her mannered roles in vehicles like Emma, Cold Comfort Farm, and Much Ado About Nothing. Later, she turns to pragmatic leading lady roles in Last Days of Disco and Pearl Harbor. USA! USA! She now eschews the talk and lets her guns do the acting in the forthcoming Underworld -- a Romeo and Juliet story of werewolves vs. vampires...okay, there's a little bit of Shakespeare in there...Felicity's Scott Speedman (dude! Hair!) plays her Lycan honey-bunch in this romantic thriller with Matrix-esque action. Doesn't seem groundbreaking but it did look like fun. She's also a kick-ass rapier wielding gypsy in Van Helsing, which looks Ken Russell's Gothic on steroids or the League of Extraordinary Monsters. Hugh Jackman is also in this one. Kate had the best hair flip of any of the major panelists at the Con.

12) Sam Raimi is at it again. He was slated to be at the con (was there two years ago promoting the first Spider-man) but was sick, so he sent his neck-tie instead, worn by producer Laura Ziskin. Seriously, that's what she said. The villain in the web-head's second big screen outing will be one of his best known comicbook foes, Doctor Octopus ("Doc Ock"), played by Alfred Molina(fresh off his celebrated portrayal of Diego Rivera in Frieda) . Clip shown at the presentation showed the Doc stretching his arms against the medical staff about to remove his new metal tentacles -- he lashes out with a chainsaw (in a hospital??? They were well-equipped...) in classic Raimi fashion. Considering the success of the previous movie, the studio really budgetted for this one hinted Ziskin. Yeah, this one's gonna be a big one.

13) Okay, so is Hugh Jackman as hunky in real-life? Who could tell under that hat? He and the cast of Van Helsing did kindly stick around for better than an hour signing autographs with multiple hoots coming from the autograph area for god-knows-what during that time. So you can't say he isn't fun.

14) Meanwhile, in autograph alley, we find Robia La Morte, "Jenny Calendar" from Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 2 , with Mark Lutz, Groosalugg aka "Groo" from second season Angel. The argument at the booth was who was more hot. Big shrug from both on "will you ever be back"? Showbiz, erg.

Coming Tuesday: QT, Eliza Dushku, a little Richard Hatch, some tidbits without photos on still life, wonderfalls, the cartoon network clone wars animated shorts, starship troopers 2, and a black robocop.