As we pack up our Movieline-skinned Smart Car and prepare to journey up the 5 back to L.A., we look back at our time at Comic-Con mostly with fondness, and maybe just a twinge of regret (primarily over the onset of "Twilightnitus," an irreversible form of hearing loss which manifests itself as the persistent sound of 6500 teenage girls screaming "TAKE IT OFF, TAYLOR!!!" in your ears).
Anyway, HERE ARE YOUR BOX OFFICE NUMBERS. (WHAT?! WE'RE NOT SHOUTING - YOU'RE WHISPERING!)
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Kevin Smith on Zack and Miri Make a Porno, which he previewed at Comic-Con '08: "The last one took a shit, and that's when everything started going down the toilet. I went into a deep depression. No seriously -- I did.Then I discovered weed and everything got better. Sorry, I know there's kids in the audience. Doesn't work for everyone, kids -- but it worked for Uncle Kev."
So I'm inside Hall H again, this time having just witnessed more CGI destruction than my already-addled brain can handle with Sony's 2012 panel. (Q: "Why do you keep destroying the planet?" Roland Emmerich: "Because I love it!") Now up is Iron Man 2, which I'll live blog, for your sitting-around-hearing-me-talk-about-something-you'd-rather-be-watching-for-yourself pleasure.
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The costumed masses at Comic-Con may seem silly sometimes, but as I blog from the floor of the convention center next to a woman dressed as a sexy, blue-haired cat, I learn that back on Planet Non-Con, talking guinea pigs and vibrating panties triumphed at the box office yesterday. So, I put it you, dear reader: Perhaps it's mainstream America that needs the intervention? The full Friday numbers, after the jump:
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All roads this week led to San Diego, the globe's temporary nexus for star power, fan power and vibrating-panties power. OK, sorry -- but two out of three isn't bad! At least we have them all represented in Movieline's Week in Review. Have a look after the jump, and enjoy your weekend!
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Disney's The Princess and the Frog marks the studio's long-overdue return to hand-drawn animation, and those hands belong to Ron Clements and John Musker -- two animation veterans responsible for later-era classics like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. From the beginning, Disney proudly trumpeted that Frog would feature their first African-American princess with Tiana, a gesture that would go a small way towards righting the wrongs of all the yarn-spinning uncles, jive-talking crows and Neverland savages that came before her.
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· Remember that weird Twitter dispatch dashed off a few weeks ago by Richard Kelly? The one where he said he'd finished his new script, and that it was "expensive." Turns out he was just talking about a futuristic tale set in Manhattan, wherein 30 to 40 percent of the film would be Avatar-style motion capture. Good luck with that, son.
· Among the other sites covering Comic-Con, few do it better than Hollywood Elsewhere, where Jeff Wells offered up this exclusive report of falling asleep at a party with half a glass of champagne in his hand. MUST CREDIT HOLLYWOOD ELSEWHERE!
· Syfy issued a trailer today for its forthcoming series Stargate: Universe.
· Spout reminds us not to believe the hype (or at least not all of it) about those hotly touted Comic-Con titles, with 10 examples to prove they can bomb just like the rest of 'em.
· "A Gathering for Geeks Jumpstarts the Oscar Race." Yes, it has finally come to this at the New York Times.
It was the throwaway comment heard round the 'Con: At this morning's Book of Eli panel, Gary Oldman casually tossed off an acknowledgment that the third installment of Chris Nolan's Batman series would begin shooting next year and could make its way to theaters by 2011. "But you didn't hear it from me," he added. Not that he'll be in it; at least not any more. [/film]
What's your name?
Carlos.
What are you dressed as?
Blanka from Street Fighter.
What's involved in putting an outfit like this together?
A lot of expensive, alcohol-based paint, an airbrush, some pants that you ruin, contact lenses, and a lot of time spent on dying and bleaching your hair.
How much does this look cost?
Like, over $600.♦
Everyone has their own '80s cartoon franchise that meant something to them, and mine was ThunderCats: The Rankin/Bass series followed of a race of humanoid felines from the planet Thundera, forced to evacuate after their home comes under siege by the fearsome Mutants of Plun-Darr (who looked a bit like reptilian Ernest Borgnines.) Yes, I still hold a fond place in my heart for Lion-O, Cheetara, Panthro, Tygra, Snarf and the rest, and so Warner Bros.' announcement a while back of a Thundercats movie filled me with the warm, fuzzy feelings one typically associates with watching Saturday morning TV while eating peanut-butter-and-grape-jelly sandwiches. The script, written by Paul Sopocy, was to follow Lion-O's origin myth from young cub to his anointment as Lord of the ThunderCats, and was to be directed by veteran art director Jerry O'Flaherty.
In conjunction with our coverage of Comic-Con 2009, Movieline has obtained O'Flaherty's never-before-seen Thundercats concept art, demonstrating just how gorgeous and ambitious his vision for this production is. After the jump, you'll see Thundercats renderings of Lion-O, The Pyramid, Third Earth, and Mutant Attack.
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Police in the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa are still on the lookout for the prolific vandal who tagged 80 local stop signs with the inscription "Voldemort." The resulting "Stop Voldemort" placards baffled the cops until one of the investigators' kids explained its provenance as Harry Potter's evil archnemesis. "It took a 7-year old to tell us what [the graffiti] was," said a Wauwatosa police captain. "We thought it was just some type of new tagger." Wait for the "Yield Hermione" signs to follow as early as this weekend. [Chicago Tribune]
Obviously, The Ugly Truth will be a distant runner-up to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in the final box-office tally. But it lags behind that blockbuster in another, perhaps less-expected way as well: According to Rotten Tomatoes, the nation's movie critics seem to prefer the much-loathed Michael Bay epic to Katherine Heigl's latest romantic comedy but a nearly two-to-one margin. The hate isn't quite as acidic for Truth, but there's no denying it's ugly. Read on for a vivid sampling:
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We've been handed down a mandate to share every crumb we stumble upon in regards to a certain upcoming CGI feature about a race of blue people who live in an enchanted forest filled with giant inhabitable flora and predatory feline creatures, and who share only one female among them.
No -- not The Smurfs Movie, silly! Avatar!
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