Last night, I finished with pencil and ink at around 8:30pm, so I decided to go out and do something, since it was Saturday, or such was my feeble rationale. While drawing, I'd been listening to NPR and I tuned into Ebert and Roeper (a series of guest hosts have been filling in for hospitalised Ebert--this week was a guy named John Ridley--last week was Kevin Smith. You can still listen to audio of the Smith episode here), and all sources were talking about this movie The Illusionist.

I hadn't even heard of this movie until about a week ago, and it seemed like a Johnny-come-lately to cash in on The Prestige's hype. But I was generally hearing good things about it, so I decided to give it a shot. It turns out to be a pretty good movie. Not perfect, but a long way from bad.

The movie's about a magician named Eisenheim(Edward Norton) in 19th century Vienna, trying to win the love of his childhood sweetheart, Sophie (Jessica Biel), despite the fact that the crown prince (Rufus Sewell) is engaged to marry her.

As many reviews point out, though, the central character is really the police inspector Uhl, played by Paul Giamatti, whose task to find out for the movie audience what's actually going on betwixt the above mentioned characters.

I had only two significant problems with the movie; (1) everyone's speaking English with these annoying posh British/German accents. I guess it's supposed to give you the flavour of the language without forcing the filmmakers to actually learn German and take the box office hit of releasing a Hollywood movie in German with subtitles. But I think they would have been better served by having the actors--especially Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti--speak in their natural accents. To me, this accent thing just seems to suggest that nobody in Vienna can speak German properly.

(2)Edward Norton was horribly miscast. This is another attempt by him to convince everyone he wasn't perfectly cast in Fight Club as the wimpy loser. Here he tries to be a dark and mysterious romantic lead which, coupled with the gorgeous cinematography, is often times unintentionally very funny. I felt a little embarrassed for Norton and for everyone involved in the movie, particularly during the passionate candlelit love scene, which wasn't helped by drawing on clichéd devices like the close-ups of flesh moving against flesh, and annoying in vogue devices like the drowsily focusing camera to simulate afterglow. I was reminded of a criticism Bernard Herrmann had for Vertigo--that the male lead ought to've been Charles Boyer. I liked Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, but I found myself lying awake at one point to-day thinking of actors who'd have been better suited for the part in The Illusionist. Whenever I think "male romantic lead", Cary Grant instantly pops into my head, so it took a few moments to brush him aside. The illusionist needed to be fiercely, ravishingly handsome, maybe a little frightening, and definitely elegant. It would also help if he was slender and good at seeming dextrous. This obviously ought to've been Johnny Depp. He'd be my number 1 pick, with my dark horse number 2 being Jim Carrey.

Onto what I liked about the movie;

Wonderful cinematography by Dick Pope. In one of the reviews I'd heard, it was mentioned how Pope enjoyed simulating early 20th century film, and this was evidenced in the movie by mild flickering and slow, seemingly hand-operated iris wipes during flashbacks that actually reminded me a lot of Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. But lighting and colour choices were quite good all the way through, mostly without falling into the so-perfect-it's-lustreless problem seen in films like Henry and June.

There was a problem early in the movie, during a flashback of Eisenheim as a boy wandering through a grassy field. The scene looked like it was ripped whole from The Fellowship of the Ring, with young Eisenheim looking exactly like Frodo, from his clothes to his hair to his complexion. And then he meets an old magician in a broad-brimmed hat, and I was fully expecting to hear, "You're late!" "A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins . . ."

I think if I were in a much more tolerant mood, I might be able to appreciate the love story in the first half of the movie. But things really pick up when it becomes a murder mystery, and there's a fairly satisfying twist at the end. It's a twist you see coming rather early on (at least I did), but it's fun to have it all explained like a magician explaining his trick, many of the details of which were surprising and interesting. There were one or two cheats, and there was, in my opinion, an over-reliance on cgi, but on the whole, I didn't feel like a sucker for suspending my disbelief.

It seems the people at a nearby Starbucks don't know what a cappuccino is. I heard them puzzling over it behind the counter; "Do you know what a cappuccino is?" the manager asked one of her subordinates. When the guy finally served my drink, he announced it as a "triple grande . . . grande . . . [mumble mumble]."

I can't really blame them, though. Customers in the know will order a latte over a cappuccino since the drinks are very similar, only a cappuccino means a layer of foam you can't drink through the lid. I have no idea why I was in the mood for one to-day. What I ended up getting tastes like a triple grande latte. The notation on the cup, for those who follow such things, looks like a botched ¢.

I went to a different Michael's than usual yesterday and got another pad of tracing paper--it was a gamble, but it paid off; it's the old kind, and my pen strokes are back to normal, at least for now. I'm worried the fucked up waxy version is the new standard, and once the old stock at that Michael's is depleted, I'll never see the like again.

I woke up early, even for a Thursday, to-day. This follows yesterday, when the neighbours made noises like a leaf blower war outside my window early in the day. I managed to write the new Boschen and Nesuko script in spite of that, and I'm fairly happy with it.

To-day the maids just decided to come early and, apparently, rearrange my things in maddening little ways. It's baffling how they manage to put everything they pick up in the wrong place, even after all these years. Stuff I think I could've learned in an hour, tops . . .

I was glad to see there were actually some early movies playing, so I went to see Little Miss Sunshine. It's a film that belongs to what you might call the "Precious Ennui" genre Wes Anderson pioneered, and it's not as strong as Rushmore or The Royal Tennenbaums, but it isn't a complete misstep like I Heart Huckabees. Really, Little Miss Sunshine only occasionally treads too far into gooey, and most of the time it sets the right tone.

The movie's about a family of misfits, each one what could be described as a "loser" in his or her own way. It's a movie about not being defined by how much you win, I guess . . . It also seems to just noticeably be an allegory for the current socio-political climate in the U.S. This is best shown in a scene in a hotel--Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette, the parents, are in one room while next door are Steve Carrell, as the uncle, and Paul Dano, as the son. Carrell and Dano can hear them fighting through the wall and Carrell says gently, "You don't have to listen to that," and switches on the television before going back to the bathroom to brush his teeth. On the television is President Bush, fumbling through his latest dull excuse. Dano switches off the television, smiling contentedly to again only hear his parents yelling at each other.

The movie has a number of nice performances, but best of all is Steve Carrell as the suicidal Proust scholar. That man continues to amaze me by how much he's able to do by doing almost nothing. It's what made him my favourite correspondent on The Daily Show--he'd say things that weren't necessarily funny but still make me laugh, by sheer will. It's exciting to see that he can do it with dramatic material, too. I really hope he gets attached to a really great production at some point.

I found myself surprisingly interested in the new developments in the Jon Benet Ramsey case to-day. Maybe because when I was doing image searches for reference while working on the latest Boschen and Nesuko, I stumbled across Ramsey's autopsy photos. That's some seriously disturbing imagery. I didn't even realise who it was at first--the image search was for "garrotte" and I was mainly paying attention to how the skin and blood clots had reacted to the trauma. Then I noticed it was some cute little girl's mouth just above those ghastly details and I started reading the captions.

It was strange to see Keith Olbermann covering the story about an hour after I woke up to-day. But I must admit I was more interested in latest instalment of Olbermann's ongoing series about the "Nexus of Politics and Terror" which explores the many instances where the Bush administration has apparently used phoney terror threats and unrelated attacks as political leverage to combat the political successes--usually during campaigns--of the administration's adversaries.



At Sonya's prodding, I last night watched Yankee Doodle Dandy, and was reminded of a time when someone could be both a Democrat and considered extremely patriotic.

As Roger Ebert said in his review, the movie is "bio by the numbers." It has the more upbeat quality of biopics from the 30s and 40s, and has about the same flavour of others I've seen, like Sister Kenny and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. As Ebert points out, though, Cagney's electricity really opens the movie up. Once again, Cagney's complete investment in the role elevates the material beyond what it might deserve. Apparently, Fred Astaire was offered the role originally but turned it down. Cagney wasn't half the dancer Astaire was, but fascinatingly makes you believe he's sort of great. Astaire wouldn't have been right for the role anyway, judging by his somewhat misfired attempt at playing a working class Joe in Follow the Fleet. Cagney and director Michael Curtiz give the film that Warner Brothers slightly rough-house style, although Cagney's big arms don't actually deliver any punches this time.

Walter Huston has a small role in the movie--and I was a lot more surprised to see him singing than I was to see Cagney. He wasn't very great at it, and he was a bit overqualified for the dramatic aspects of the role, though it wasn't as much a step down as The Outlaw. His presence is not a bad thing, but it the movie's quality is almost totally in Cagney, the goodness of George M. Cohen's tunes, and Michael Curtiz's lean and enthusiastic direction.

Two new crêpe restaurants have suddenly appeared at the nearby mall. One of them replaced a Greek restaurant that'd been there forever, and which made my favourite spanakopita in town. However, I must admit that Voila Crêpe's spinach quiche is about the same thing, maybe a little better, for about a dollar less.

I've lately been re-watching Top o Nerae 2. I continue to be absolutely blown away by the animation and lush sound design. It's a goofy series at times, yet it somehow manages to carry a huge visceral punch in its enormous action sequence. I still have not seen another movie or television series that conveys the sort of terrible scope of space battles among giant robots and ships.

Although the main characters are female, for some reason the series is rife with phallic imagery. It's almost over the top--but it sort of makes me smile.




Obviously a cockpit.


Obviously a spaceship. And nothing else.

But there is a lot more to the series than that. Here are a few images from the first episode;



This is the Martian city where the story begins.


Nono, who dreams of being a space pilot, is forced to work as a waitress. She's not so good at it, as she's discovered she has an uncanny ability to split solid objects in half without meaning to.


The first space monster of the series is found by this poor grunt.

Top o Nerae 2 is a six episode OVA series, and the final episode's supposed to be out in a couple weeks. I'm looking forward to it.

Last night I watched 1955's Love Me or Leave Me, an interesting Musical/Gangster movie hybrid starring James Cagney and Doris Day. It's based on the true story of singer Ruth Etting's rise to fame and her fractious marriage to gangster Marty Snyder. I should've known it was a true story pic just from its structure as a barely fleshed out outline of dutifully hit plot points. The deliveries of which feel as though they were long debated by publicists. A tradition continued to this day by films like Walk the Line, ensuring a glorious future of films that tidily synopsise the messy lives of our favourite stars, breezily mentioning the bad spots to put them into a "was it really so bad?" context.

Actually, Day and Cagney are constantly fighting in the movie. In fact, Day never actually displays any affection for Cagney, making it perplexing that the movie skips past their marriage--it's revealed by a newspaper headline in a scene following one where it's suggested Snyder violently raped Etting. Meanwhile, Day showers a loving smile on dull as dirt Cameron Mitchell as piano player Johnny Alderman. Well, not only is he dull, but also obnoxious, continuingly telling Etting how she feels and getting into a snit when she doesn't actually feel that way. And yet it's clear the movie wants us to want them to get together in the end.

But the movie has some good things. There are several full length musical numbers of Day singing songs Etting popularised in the 20s and 30s. And Cagney's performance as Snyder easily makes him the most interesting character in the movie. It's broadly written, and really just a stereotypical blowhard gangster, but Cagney invests in it totally, and perhaps the resonance of Cagney's many great gangster roles of the 30s helped, too. He comes out seeming like the only real person in a movie full of puppets.

Good day. There are no coffee filters around here . . . So I'm having green tea. It's the cheapest I could find at Mitsuwa, the Japanese market. I'm kind of proud of how I managed money the past week. I spent thirty dollars to fill up my gas tank, and around thirty dollars on art supplies, and still I managed to live comfortably thereafter.

Though the tracing paper turned out to be a disappointment, I did get one new thing to make me happy--a flat surface. No more having my pencils and pens getting caught in the canals of old drawings.

And I beat Oblivion last night, by the way, or at least the main plot of Oblivion. I'm sure there're hundreds of subquests I've not yet played. It took four years for me to get tired of Morrowind, Oblivion's predecessor. I suspect it'll take less time for Oblivion, but there still ought to be a substantial amount of afterglow.

"What?" you say, "Less time for you to tire of Oblivion?! But why? But how?! Upon my word, blulalloolalooohah!"

Well, it's true the landscape in Oblivion is far more impressive. You can see for great distances, and it looks like real forest and mountains. The radiant A.I. is fascinating and amusing. And I like that it's a little harder to level up in Oblivion. But for all that, Oblivion still feels smaller than Morrowind. Perhaps it's the smaller variety of weapons and armour. It's the fewer segments of armour--to make a full suit in Morrowind, you need collect helmet, cuirass, left pauldron, right pauldron, left gauntlet (or bracer), right gauntlet (or bracer), greaves, and boots. In Oblivion, the pauldrons have become part of the cuirass, and the gauntlets have been put together as a single unit. In some cases, the whole suit of armour is a single piece--from boots, greaves, cuirass, to gauntlets. This is the case with the arena armour and the special armour you get from the Dark Brotherhood Assassins Guild. Also, you're no longer able to wear clothing under your armour.

What this means is that you can put together less interesting combinations. In Morrowind, I'd sometimes just put pauldron and gauntlet on a single arm, making for a nice asymmetrical look, looking sort of like Ivy in Soul Calibre. Or I might do something like what I did here, with one of my favourite characters, Paelwynna;



She's wearing a High Ordinator cuirass over a shirt--which provides the plumbed sleeves--and daedric gauntlets. You can't do something like that in Oblivion.

The biggest problem with Oblivion, though, is by far the interface, with its big, preschool font, lack of imagery, and cumbersome means of navigation. How I miss the ability in Morrowind to drag and drop any item to anywhere. And I miss how conversations were laid out like web sites, with hotlinks to topics of conversation.

I was able to download mods to fix some of these problems, including a problem (though I'm sure the designers would tell you it's an improvement) Oblivion has with its third person mode, which gives the camera an annoying "elastic" effect. It's essentially as though the camera following you is attached to your character by a rubber band, making it difficult to manoeuvre in battle and keep aim.

It is nice in Oblivion how everyone's got voice actors now and that you're able to overhear conversations between other characters. And I like how all the characters have houses in towns and routines.

Oblivion's physics engine is an improvement, too, giving objects weight and realistic reactions to stimuli. But there seems to be less variety of objects.

Anyway, a lot of these problems will probably be solved by mods eventually.

The end of the game itself was sort of interesting. There's a character voiced by Sean Bean, which was nice. I made sure to ask him about every topic in his dialogue tree, just to hear Sean Bean extolling endless bits of extraneous trivia in that tremulous, casually passionate voice of his.

And a character voiced by Terrance Stamp provides the closest thing to an end boss of the game, though the best thing about fighting him was how amusingly easy he was. Of course, the game was designed to be beaten by characters at level seven and I was at level forty three.

"Beaten at level seven?!" you say, "Bloulblaboollooghbloo!!"

Yes, you see, many of the game's problems are related to its being aimed at console systems, where apparently people consider a game bad if it can't be beaten in a weekend. But I, enthralled by Oblivion's massive landscape, ignored the stupid "map travel" function and ran out into the wilds, plundering every tomb, shrine, and ancient ruins I came across. By the end of the game, I had much of the best enchanted daedric armour, like Boots of the Taskmaster, Cuirass of the Undefeated, and an ebony helmet I enchanted myself, naming it Skull Cosy of the Motherfucker.

What else have I to say this Sunday? I watched Blue Velvet on Friday. There's a movie I love more and more as I grow older. I wonder, though, if David Lynch is going to do his own DVD release of it. This latest one has excellent picture, and nice special features, but the sound mix is a little odd. One thing that's amusing about it is that Frank Booth's voice is the only audible voice at regular volumes, forcing you to turn it up so Frank's really loud when he shows up to say, "Shut up! It's 'Daddy' you shithead. Where's my bourbon?"

The new Boschen and Nesuko's up. Caitlín and Robyn appear again (though no Sofa Fay, I'm afraid). I also put Arina in this chapter.

I got a bunch of new art supplies a couple days ago and the new tracing paper I got reacts to ink in an irritating manner. It's to all appearances precisely the same tracing paper I usually buy, but for some reason it made the lines thinner than usual. I'm out of time and money to hunt a proper pad of tracing paper, though. Hopefully the last three pages won't bother people as much as they bother me.

Thursday's unexpectedly decided to start even earlier than usual. But before I get out of here, I ought to point out this post by Caitlín R. Kiernan wherein she talks of how Penguin have been a pack of asses to her. In violation of their contract with her, they decided to remainder two of her books. So if you've ever thought of buying Caitlín R. Kiernan stuff, now's a time to help a lady out.

I bought a copy of Munich last night at Target--it's down to only ten dollars. It went down from twenty pretty quick, which I suppose isn't too surprising as it's hardly a blockbuster.

The only special feature on the disk is an introduction by Steven Spielberg. It made me wish Israel had paid more attention to the movie;

"I am not attacking Israel with this film . . . This film is an attempt to look at policies Israel shares with the rest of the world and why a country feels its best defence against a certain kind of violence is counter-violence. And we try to understand this as filmmakers through empathy. Because that's what you do--you extend empathy in every single direction because you can't understand the human motivation without empathy. This movie is not an argument for non-response and, on the contrary, what this movie is showing is that a response, that may be the right response, is still one that confronts you with some very difficult issues. And when we have to respond to terror to-day, what's relevant is the need to go through a careful process. Not to paralyse ourselves, not to prevent us from acting, but to try to ensure that the results that we produce are the ones we really intend.

"I mean it's the unintended, you know, results that are probably some of the worst and that are ultimately gonna bedevil us. What you see in this movie is not an attempt to answer whether there should be targeted killings or not. What I'm doing with this movie is highlighting some of the dilemmas and highlighting some of the issues that need to be discussed. I'm not trying to answer them. But the movie, in a sense, apart from being a human drama that explores what these guys went through, will hopefully stir that discussion."

I spent a lot of time at the Comic-Con watching anime. In the east wing of the convention centre, on the second floor, there was a row of movie theatres set up showing anime television series episodes all day long. They're never shown in any particular sequence, and there were never any two episodes of one series shown together, although there were several episodes of Piano shown throughout the Con. I'm not sure why--I saw one episode and found it to be an agonisingly banal teen melodrama. Some of the character designs were pretty, reminding me of Ah! My Goddess (I'm pretty sure it's the same guy doing the designs), though the main character's improbable hair-cut is distracting and awkwardly animated.

The best stuff I saw was related to Rumiko Takahashi. The first day of the Con, I was there very early, and managed to be the only one in the theatre where Maison Ikkoku was rolling. I would've caught the whole episode, except Convention Security was making everyone take a strange detour to get to the theatres Thursday morning for reasons no-one was ever able to explain. But I've read the entire manga series, so I was able to jump right into an episode about Godai and Mitaka trying to have a fight, but having their efforts thwarted by a nosy cop. Getting my hands on the anime has proved difficult and it was nice to finally see a regular episode (I'd seen one OAV episode) and find it was a good and faithful adaptation.

I saw an episode of another elusive Takahashi series on Friday; Rumiko Takahashi Theatre, a series based on a number of the woman's short stories. It was an episode called "The House of Garbage", which was a great story about a young family whose house is mysteriously taken for a garbage dump. Although I mostly hate children, it was rather refreshing to see anime centred on a couple with kids, instead of yet another focused on teenagers.

Before that, I sat through a fascinatingly awful episode of a series called Dan Doh, the titular character being a very young golf caddie whose strange wisdom about the course has brought success for Japan's champion. The characters somewhat resemble Dragon Ball Z people, with their spiky hair and trapezoidal eyes, and they regard the game with the same, er, intensity. It was really strange to see a series that took golf so seriously, while still relying on ridiculous plot contrivances to create tension--in the episode I saw, Dan Doh was not there to help his master because, having been up all night preparing for the match, he was found fast asleep the next morning, and it was deemed rude to awaken him for the actual match.

I also sat through a few terrible Magic Princess-style shows whose titles I didn't bother to notice. I saw a decent series called Risky Safety, a rather funny series called Leave it to Piyoko, and, when Tim was with me on Saturday, we both decided to walk out on an excruciatingly dull series called Nanka 6/17.

Good or bad, though, it was nice to see this year that everything was in Japanese with subtitles.

I saw Clerks II last night and liked it. I think maybe I'm really jaded because I wasn't grossed out at all by it, contrary to what Joel Siegel, Roger Ebert, and a number of other critics experienced. And I thought the gross stuff was funny. In fact, the movie only stumbles a couple times when it tries to be soft, particularly during musical montages that use light, classic rock or R&B. Smith just doesn't know enough songs of that sort. I noticed the same problem with Jersey Girl--both movies use songs in scenes where you've just recently heard the same song used in a similar situation in another movie. In this case, it was Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, which I'd just heard in Spider-Man 2.

But there are plenty of things I like about the movie. Rosario Dawson next to Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson reminds us why we like beautiful people in movies. Which is not to say O'Halloran or Anderson do poorly--they do very well, as does Jason Mewes and Trevor Fehrman, who plays an awkward Christian geek with just the right amount of sincerity.

Roger Ebert referred to the movie's philosophy as shallow. I won't tell you what it is, as finding it out is essentially the movie's climax, but I don't think it's shallow. Maybe simple. And probably, I think, something a lot of young people might need to hear.

The movie lacks some of the realistic feel of the first film, but it's not nearly as cartoonish as the animated series, existing somewhere in between. But it was good. I certainly hope Smith makes more of these instead of more Jersey Girls--though I must say I kind of liked Jersey Girl.

I saw a trailer for that Pathfinder movie the Fox people were plugging at the Comic-Con. It looks lamer now. I feel a real loathing fermenting inside me for its cinematography. It's like watching a movie through a camouflage blindfold. And whenever I see the title, I feel like there ought to be a tagline; "1300 years before it was an SUV, Pathfinder was . . . a movie!"

The new Boschen and Nesuko's up. It feels like a victory. The Comic-Con put me so far behind on this chapter, I had to do two pages a day most days of this past week.

Did I cut any corners? Hmm, let's just say if your name happens to be Caitlín, Robyn, or Sonya, maybe I've slightly robbed your likenesses . . .

Not much was happening to-day on this, the last, day of the Comic-Con. So I took the opportunity to wander the floor and hand out dopey little cards I'd made for my web site. It was still pretty crowded, especially considering nothing much was going on. It was definitely a very crowded Con this year.

On Thursday I rode downtown with my sister, who had free valet parking at the Hilton across the street from the convention centre. This was for a job she'd gotten for the Con, handing out flyers across the street. She didn't know what the flyers were for until she got there--it was part of a promotion for the upcoming movie Accepted, starring Justin Long (the "Mac" from the new Macintosh commercials. I prefer the PC actor, myself) and Lewis Black. On Friday, there was a "kegger" held in front of the Hilton attended by the cast of the movie. My sister got a pass for it, and met Justin Long and some others. The only cast member I would have been interested in seeing was Lewis Black, whose luggage, my sister tells me, was in the middle of the room in the Hilton. Due to some mix-up, Black was not reserved a room of his own, and my sister said he spent a lot of time standing around, smoking, and looking very angry.

My sister's boss offered me a pass to the kegger, but there's something about the word "kegger" I find to be uninspiring.

I only saw one panel on Thursday--a panel of Science Fiction authors including Elizabeth Bear, Greg Bear, Josh Conviser, Karen Traviss, Kevin J. Anderson, and Vernor Vinge. Of them, I'd only read Kevin J. Anderson and Elizabeth Bear--and only some Star Wars books in high school by the former and one short story by the latter. But it seemed like it might be interesting, and I was tired of not getting into panels all day because of all the other people trying to get in. Even this one was pretty damned crowded and there were a lot of people forced to stand.

The topic for the panel to discuss was, as stated in the programme; "Is SF/Fantasy getting too bloody depressing and denying us escape from grim reality?" In the one hour allocated for the panel, it seemed no-one managed to say much on the subject. In fact, aside from words of mutual admiration, the authors seemed barely able to communicate with one another. Of course, it's, if anything, a complicated subject to tackle. So maybe that's why many of them held forth on tangential things--Kevin J. Anderson began talking about how inaccessible truly fine Science Fiction can be. Karen Traviss, who'd suggested the topic, mentioned several times that she doesn't actually read. Everyone agreed that conflict was essential to drama. Vernor Vinge mentioned how things were more innocent in the fifties, when he was growing up, and people were afraid less, while Greg Bear talked about how when he was growing up in the fifties, people were more frightened than they are to-day because of the atomic bomb, and I couldn't tell if they realised they were disagreeing with each other.

Ray Bradbury spoke rather highly of Greg Bear on his panel, so I feel I might try and check out the guy's work at some point. And I read Elizabeth Bear's blog now and then, so she's also on my ever expanding list of things I very much need to read, too.

I saw a heads up in Neil Gaiman's blog regarding how crowded panels had been this year, so I showed up to the programme in hall H scheduled before the Stardust presentation. This was the 20th Century Fox presentation, beginning with footage from the upcoming Eragon, which, according to the Fox rep., is a much beloved fantasy classic, even if the movie looks like Fox's cynical stab at the Lord of the Rings cash cow. The film's young star, Edward Speleers, came out to talk to us, looking like a pretty milksop. The movie also has Jeremy Irons and John Malcovich, and Weta's doing the special effects. Who knows? Maybe it'll be good.

Next, three stars from the upcoming Reno: 911 movie came out, in character, and were mildly amusing. Less amusing was Sacha Baron Cohen, who appeared next, also in character, to promote his new movie Borat. It looks like a cross between Yakov Smirnov and Jackass.

The director of Pathfinder came out and showed clips from his movie in which Vikings bearing a curious resemblance to orcs fight Native Americans, captured by a cinematography resembling spinach smeared on a kleenex.

At last, there came the Stardust panel with Neil Gaiman, Jane Goldman, and Charles Vess.

The clips from Stardust looked promising. Michelle Pfeiffer comes across very well, and the young man playing Tristran seems charming and cute.

Neil Gaiman seemed extremely tired, Jane Goldman's hair was a cheerful sort of red neon, and Charles Vess just sat there, silent and smiling. Someone asked if Tori Amos is going to play the tree in the movie and both Gaiman and Goldman said they very much hope she will, though they've not yet reached the phase of production where that will be decided.

The panel, which was technically the Paramount panel, concluded with the Paramount rep. relaying a message from Optimus Prime on his cell phone, thereby revealing that Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime in the old series, will be the voice of Optimus Prime in the new movie.

I got into the Comic-Con at about 11:30am to-day, and walked into hall H where, to my surprise, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez were onstage, just starting to talk about their new "double feature" movie called Grindhouse. Tarantino wasn't listed in the programme for the panel, only for a signing to take place later. This was probably wise as the audience was much smaller than it would have been.

From the clips they showed us--yeesh, what a grand fucking movie Grindhouse is gonna be. A heavy bass soundtrack with an enormous, scab-red title preceded footage of Michael Beihn as a cop talking shit, of Rose McGowan pole dancing, some "babysitter twins" beating the shit out of a car with sledgehammers, Danny Trejo mounting a mini-gun on his motorcycle, and kung fu. The crowning image was Rose McGowan's amputated leg being replaced with a huge gun--like Rodriguez's Mariachi who, robbed of his ability to play guitar, makes of his guitar case a thing of violence, so the exotic dancer's leg becomes an instrument of carnage.

After the footage, dames from the movie joined the directors on the panel; Rose McGowan, Marley Shelton, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Sydney Tamiia Potier, Rosario Dawson, and, the star of Tarantino's half of the double feature, playing herself, stuntwoman Zoe Bell.

A double feature it shall genuinely be, as Rodriguez and Tarantino are each filming full length movies, making for a roughly four hour experience. Tarantino's half has not yet been shot--all the clips were from Rodriguez's--but Quentin said that while Rodriguez's is a zombie film ("and so much more than that," McGowan was quick to interject), Quentin's is a slasher film with a villain played by Kurt Russell, with whom they had just made the deal last night.

So I'm pretty hyped to see Grindhouse now, a film I'd only barely heard of before this morning. But I had gone into hall H to see Kevin Smith, who was to be promoting Clerks 2--since it's been extremely hard to get into the rooms this year, I figured I'd beat the line by catching the preceding panel and just camping in the room all day.

But when Tarantino and Rodriguez were taking questions from the audience, one of the questioners, a meek-voiced bald man who turned out to be guy in charge of the Comic-Con, asked the Grindhouse panel to stay an extra thirty minutes because Kevin Smith was late ("Are you for real?" asked Rodriguez. "Yes--you can't buy these," said the administrator, holding up his black badge). Tarantino's not known for brief monologues and found no difficulty in filling another thirty minutes, chattering about his half of Grindhouse, called Deathproof, how he wants all the women from that movie in his next movie so that the trailers can say, "Those Deathproof girls are at it again!", and explaining to one beach-bum fellow that he didn't actually know Dick Dale when he decided to use his music for Pulp Fiction.

Finally, the Grindhouse panel had to leave, and the little Comic-Con administrator guy had time to fill because Kevin Smith was still stuck in traffic, twenty miles away. He said to the crowd, "Well, in room 20 upstairs, Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen, and Forrest J. Ackerman are conducting a panel. We can put up the video feed of that--" A few cheers came from the crowd. "--Or, Warner Brothers has provided us with footage from their upcoming movie, Beerfest." Lots of cheers, hoots, and applause came from the audience. "Well, okay," the little man said sadly, "I guess culture loses to-day."

Beerfest seems like a very dull movie.

Anyway, afterwards, the administrator returned and again asked if we'd like the feed from the Bradbury/Harryhausen/Ackerman panel upstairs, and this time a group of people somewhere in the middle of the hall cheered as hard as they could, and the feed was given.

Mostly Bradbury talked and took questions. He told stories about meeting Marlene Dietrich and W.C. Fields, about how he walked out of a talk show in England during the moon landing because the talk show host was more interested in hearing what Englebert Humperdink thought of the event. One questioner asked what it felt like to be in the creative process, and Bradbury replied, "It's like sex. So go home and write something." Everyone laughed and Ackerman said, "None of us can top that, so that concludes this panel . . ."

Afterwards, the room was without diversion again, so I took the opportunity to change the shoestring on my left shoe, which had broken earlier in the day. After a few minutes, Rosario Dawson came back on stage. Just visibly pregnant, the actress introduced herself as Kevin Smith and managed to blather fairly charmingly for a while, answering what questions she could about Clerks 2, plugging her own comic book, and even singing a song from Rent. One questioner suggested she call Smith on her cell phone. "We're not gonna have a Joel Siegel moment, here," she said, laughing. But, taking out her cell phone, she reached the man in his car, still miles away, who said to us, when the phone was put to the mic, "Hey everyone, it's Kevin; I was just talking to Joel Siegel."

He said he couldn't get to the Con because there were, "Too many fucking people walking around dressed like Robin."

I decided not to stay for the panels after that, because I was hungry and tired, and I've been going to a Mexican place called Pokez for lunch every day of the Con and they have wonderful tofu burritos. I'm kind of sorry I didn't stay for the Ghostrider/Spider-Man 3 presentation, which, according to this CHUD article, was pretty impressive.

Anyway, I was at the Con from 7am 'til 5pm on Thursday and Friday and I have lots more to tell, but now I must sleep, because I'm going again to-morrow . . .

I'm tired like I really didn't want to be to-day. To-morrow's the first day of Comic-Con, so I've been trying to get a leg up on Boschen and Nesuko. Only this script has been coming out like giant granola bars through a baby walrus oesophagus. Which is to say, it's been slow. So even though I'm getting up stupid early to-morrow, I decided to let myself sleep naturally last night, so I could bring full concentration to bear on the script to-day. I didn't know I was going to be sleeping in a fucking furnace. It is too fucking hot around here, and that's that. I heard 2006 is shaping up to be even hotter than 2005.

I bought the first two Spider-Man movies from Best Buy a couple weeks ago. They were in a pack together for 15 dollars. Hard to say no to, and I'm glad I didn't, as the movies are a lot of fun.

Watching them so close together, the difference in the look of the two movies was very stark. The first movie was shot in 1:85:1 aspect ratio, which surprised me, as all other superhero movies I've seen have been 2:35:1--from Donner's and Singer's Supermans, to Burton's and Nolan's Batmans. Spider-Man 2, though, goes to 2:35:1, according to imdb, to accommodate Doctor Octopus’s tentacles.

But the big difference was in cinematography--the lighting and the use of colour was completely different. I was struck, watching the first movie, by the rich use of colour, almost like an old Technicolor movie, especially when it came to red. You had Tobey Maguire's bright red lips, Spider-Man's costume, Mary Jane's hair and Chinese gown. All contrasting sharply with bright green for the Goblin. There was something kind of pleasantly lush about it.

The second movie, which indeed had a different cinematographer, looks almost as though it was lit for black and white film. With black shadows and light brightly reflecting off surfaces like people's foreheads, it had a sort of dour quality. I guess it was okay, and maybe it helped the cgi look a little more convincing. I love the action sequences in those movies, even when they look fake, simply because they're so well put together. I don't know what convinced Christopher Nolan to try to follow Spider-Man 2's el train sequence with one of his own in Batman Begins, but it's nowhere near as good.

I wonder how Spider-Man 3's going to look. I wonder a lot of things about that movie, especially since reading about Danny Elfman's very nasty split from the franchise.

Oy, my head hurts, and I feel dim. So here's more YouTube time-employment;

P.J. Harvey, with people;



and