Masquerade Of Fools

We saw a lot of previews this comic-con. Saw a lot of the same ones over and over again, of course. Here, now, my picks of the pix:

• The Devil's Advocate: looks cool. Keanu Reeves plays a lawyer! Al Pacino eats scenery! Takes the whole lawyer-hate thing to its natural extreme.

• Lost In Space: I've never seen this TV show, but the promo (for a pic still being shot) looked cool. William Hurt as the noble father! Gary Oldman is the bad guy and eats scenery! The LS logo in slightly Klingonish font I could have done without.

• Gattaca: In the future, your DNA will decide who you are. However, those on the bottom will always be resourceful enough to infiltrate out perfect society...provided they look like Ethan Hawke. (When this trailer was shown at the Masquerade, the crowd started chanting, "Gatt-i-ca! Gatt-i-ca!") Very art deco, possibly cool.

• Blade: Wesley Snipes kicks some otherworldly ass! It's based on some Marvel character. It'll probably suck, but it's got vampires, so I'm going.

• Starship Troopers: the classic Heinlein novel. There was a "Making Of" reel I saw about 50 times, but pretty much all we got to see was the battles with the bugs. I want to know what they're going to do about the crypto-fascist society. The bugs are cool, though.

• Steel: Shaq kicks some worldly ass! Pretty stupid looking, but the kids really liked Shaq and went nuts when they saw him. Someone teach this man to enunciate. Based on the DC comic started after the death of Superman.

• Alien Resurrection: The fourth Alien movie! Looks cool -- I'm going. Ripley's back as a result of cloning...but her DNA's mixed with the alien's. Is this bad? Who knows.

• Event Horizon: Sphere in space. From the "Making of" reel it's clear this degenerates into a real gorefest, although the trailer does not show any of the gross stuff. Watch out.

• Sphere: From the Michael Crichton novel. 'Nuff said.

Saturday is the biggest day of the con, when all 35,000 people show up. So today was the day of the big hall presentations, in which you needed a ticket to go to most of the presentations. Darin and I picked up tickets to all of the presentations, though it quickly became clear that we weren't going to be able to sit in that room for the 6 to 8 hours that it was going to require. (You couldn't actually sit in the room between sessions -- they cleared out the room so that there was no seat-saving.)

Here are the ones Darin and I went to:

1. Star Wars: An hour-and-a-half of Lucasfilm self-worship. Many clips celebrating the return of the trilogy this year. Also some clips of shows that had Star Wars references, such as the screen tests for Star Wars that Kevin Spacey did on Saturday Night Live. The parts that got the audience the most excited were
   • the actual screen tests done by Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher (with that godawful British accent she used for about half of the first movie)
   • the oft-discussed but never seen (until now) Biggs Darklightner sequence. You could see why it was excised: boring, badly acted, and a large dose of exposition.

2. Starship Troopers: Paul Verhoeven, screenwriter Ed Neumaier, and two of the actors from ST showed up to answer questions. What happened to the powered armor? It was too expensive and duh actors don't like acting with their faces covered. The best part of the Q-and-A session was when one fan asked the panel how they'd been influenced by Heinlein. Paul Verhoeven talked for a bit about the cryptofascism that Heinlein appears to be embracing ("at least in this book") and then about how he was far more influenced by actual Fascism in his early life. Cut that puppy down, let me tell you. This is why I want to see what Verhoeven has done with the societal aspects.

3. Spawn, the movie: Darin and I had had it halfway through Starship Troopers, so we bagged this and went to have lunch. Darin nearly fell asleep during lunch, so I sent him back to the hotel and headed back to the con on my own.

4. Buffy and Alien Resurrection: Buffy! Creator Joss Whedon showed up with Xander and Willow from the TV show and answered questions (or didn't answer them) about the next season. Funniest answer to "How old are you?" came from Nicholas Brandon: "I'm old enough to fight for my country and to have a cocktail if we win." After the Buffy panel, they did one of Alien Resurrection, also written by Joss Whedon. Sounded interesting.

5. Spotlight on J. Michael Straczynski: An entire panel in which jms couldn't show Babylon 5 material and couldn't tell the same stories he told during the Babylon 5 presentations. He told anecdotes for the whole 90 minutes. He had a big thing about "getting outside the system," and making your life interesting. Also about writing every day. Heh.

After the Buffy/Alien Resurrection panel, I ran up to find Joss Whedon, who is a very nice, shy young man who's probably my age or (gasp) younger. I introduced myself and asked him if a)he needed any interns on the show (sadly, no) and b)if he was available for USC's mentoring program (to mentor me, of course), and no, he hasn't any time at all, dammit.

Here's all of what you need to know about the entrants in the costume competition at the world's largest comic book convention:

There are no depths to which people will not sink.

There were good costumes, and cute costumes (the Jawa!). And stupid costumes, such as the character from Ranma 1/2, which consisted of her wearing a bathing suit and holding a beach towel. Most of the female costumes (multiple Xenas, multiple heroines wearing Not So Very Much) were embarrassing -- how can you do this in front of a huge audience? There are no answers.

To all stage mothers who dress up their daughters as Sailor Moon or Sailor Pluto and tell them to dance around suggestively to the Spice Girls' "If you wanna be my lover," I have two words: JonBenet Ramsey.

To whoever dreamt up Babylon 5: The Dating Game: tsk. The Shadow in a dress was pretty funny, though.

The Playboy Bunnies and The Rock?????