Animation – The House Always Wins

Fan Expo Canada 2010

Thanks to the generosity of my good friend Jenn, last weekend I attended Fan Expo. She gave me the passes as an early Christmas/Birthday/Next Christmas present, and was in no way motivated by a desire to have company for her Fan Expo adventure or avoid thinking up other presents for me.

We met for lunch before heading over on Friday, August 27th at around 3 pm. We thought this would be an easy task, as doors had opened for Deluxe attendees like ourselves an hour earlier, but alas, the line stretched around the entire north and east sides of the building when we arrived, and before long it was wrapping around the south side of the building as well.

Two hours later we finally got in and presented our tickets, at which time we were rewarded with wristbands, and that was it. No swag bag or anything. I think I’ve been spoiled by my experiences with Ad Astra and Worldcon. I put the wristband on, not realizing that it was the sort designed not to come of without being cut, and so I was less than impressed at having to wear the damn thing when I went to the bathroom, showered, and ran errands outside of the convention centre. Jenn had been clever enough to leave hers loose so she could slip it off.

We started on the exhibition floor, which was insanely crowded. This was wear tons of booths were set up selling all the things I ever wanted. GI Joe toys, classic Transformers, endless shelves of DVDs, and comics, and Star Wars everything. And I had no money to spare. Alack! Alas! But probably for the best.

We wandered over to the celebrity signing area, and were sort of appalled at the cost of autographs. I mean, I appreciate the need for these people to make attendance worthwhile, and since the lines were quite large I guess they didn’t need to worry about demand, but still… I would have liked an Adam West autograph, or James Marsters, or Tahmoh Penikett, or Michael Dorn, but I could barely afford one, much less all of them.

I did spring for a Guild photo signed by Felicia Day and Amy Okuda, since I enjoy their work and—like many people of the male nerd persuasion—I have a somewhat mild desire to groom Felicia, albeit in a totally non-creepy way. Really. And Jenn and I split a photo opportunity with Summer Glau, scheduled for Saturday at 6 pm. After that we went and got some of Jenn’s books signed by Kelley Armstrong.

At this point, we’d been on our feet for quite a while, so we wandered the floor some more before leaving a bit early. We were rather frustrated by the poor organization for getting us in, and for controlling the flow of people.

Saturday, we arrived a bit after 11 to find a line wrapped around the building once again. Thankfully, that line was not ours, but for people looking to buy a single day pass. We were able to walk past them and in to the reentry doors with no problem. There was nothing scheduled that early that interested us, so we went straight to line up for the Tron Legacy presentation to ensure we got seats. This was, admittedly, more my interest than Jenn’s, on account of Bruce Boxleitner—Tron himself, though I better know him as Captain Sheridan from Babylon 5—being a part of the presentation.

They started letting us in early, after security confiscated all our phones and cameras, and we got some decent seats. The presentation itself was kind of exciting. It was hosted by Ajay Fry and Teddy Wilson from the Space channel, and first there was one of the tie-in game developers to show off the game. Then, they brought out Tron Bruce and talked a bit before showing us the trailer and 7 minutes of footage from the movie itself—in 3D! I don’t actually care for 3D that much, but I appreciated the effort to make the presentation seem special. There was a Q&A thereafter, and then we were free!

To line up to get our stuff back, which Jenn did while I went to the can. So, line up to get in, line up to get out, all sort of poorly organized. By the time we were sorted out, it was already 1:20, so we decided to take in Tahmoh Penikett’s spotlight panel though it had already started. Apparently it had started late though, because it didn’t seem like we had missed much. He gave a pretty interesting talk about his work on Battlestar and Dollhouse, and seemed like a nice guy.

After that, I left Jenn to watch Felicia Day while I headed back up to the exhibition floor to try and get a free autograph from Boxleitner, as Babylon 5 is one of my favourite things ever. I had to line up to take the escalator, because they were controlling how many people were allowed on the exhibition floor. Rumors were circulating that even people with the 3-day pass weren’t being let in to the building because it was so crowded.

After visiting the Pure Pwnage booth to say hi to the guys (who have a Gemini nomination, by the way), I got to the Tron booth a bit after 2 pm. He was scheduled to be there at 2:30, and I thought I was in luck—there was hardly anyone there! Then I asked, as was told the line was around the back of the booth. And across the aisle. And around the back of the Marvel comics booth, and along one side.

On the upside, from my spot in the line, I had a good view of the Hasbro booth, which had some pretty sweet Star Wars displays, and I could watch the Marvel preview videos. Eventually, Jenn showed up and joined me, flitting in and out to keep me and herself entertained. As we neared the front of the line, she decided she was in the line, too, and so we both got free Tron Legacy posters signed by Bruce Boxleitner. Sadly, he didn’t have time to personalize them, but I’m not complaining about free.

We figured the James Marsters session would be full, so we sought out food instead. (We later found out we could have gotten in—oh well.) Food turned out to be another lengthy lineup. And then we went to line up for the Summer Glau discussion session. She seemed quite shy, but had a few good stories to tell from being on set for her various science fictional shows and movies.

Guess what? After that we went to line up AGAIN for our photo op. The line went all the way down one hallway and across another, and continued to grow behind us. But our line was dwarfed by the Stan Lee line, which I don’t think was pre-paid like ours. And once the line started moving, they were able to process us quite quickly. Our photo op was at 6 pm, and we were done by 6:30. I look forward to seeing the resulting photo.

And that was the end of that.

Sunday morning we met at 11 (after I had a Cinnabon for breakfast). This time there was a significant line of people with armbands waiting to get in, so Jenn and I took a spot in the shade and waited for the end of the line to reach us. (It is possible that we may have filled in a large gap instead, but I fell no guilt about that.

We decided to stay away from the exhibition floor, and went on the spur of the moment to a Space panel with Ajay Fry, Teddy Wilson, and Natasha Eloi, along with two surprise guests: David Blue from Stargate Universe and Ryan Robbins from Sanctuary. They were quite funny playing off each other, had incredibly hard questions for their giveaways, and ended the event with David Blue signing Ryan Robbins’ ass. It was an unexpectedly fun time.

From there, we went to see William Shatner speak, and not in just as he was starting. He was in the largest panel room, so we were able to get seats, albeit far from the front. Shatner was… funny. Really funny. He had tons of funny and interesting stories to tell, poked fun at his cohosts and the audience, and worked the crowd well. This was also an unexpected delight. However, I was not crazy enough to try for an autograph after the fact.

From there we switched rooms to see Sendil Ramamurthy of Heroes fame/infamy. He played Mohinder on that show, one of my favouite characters of the first season, who the writers made progressively more ridiculous as the series wore on. He had a lot of interesting observations about his time on the show, and working as an Indian actor in general.

After his show, we were pushed out of the room to line up to come back in for the Michael Dorn panel. I went to this mostly out of curiosity, to see just how geeky a Star Trek panel could be. It was pretty geeky, but Dorn worked the crowd well, was happy to play to his Star Trek fans and discuss Worf in detail, and had funny stories to tell from the set and the things he’s managed to do as a result of his fame—specifically, riding in a lot of military aircraft.

By this point is was 4 pm, and our day was winding down. Jenn left at this point to do some other shopping, and I wandered the exhibition floor one last time before heading home.

Overall, it was a fun experience wrapped in boredom and frustration. It had an extremely commercial vibe about it, unlike Ad Astra or Worldcon or other book-oriented events, and all our 3-day pass guaranteed was getting to the exhibition floor—everything else we had to pay extra for or line up for. As a result, there were a number of panels that we missed because we were lining up for something we wanted more. I’m not sure I’d go back again, unless one of the following comes to pass: a) they have a guest that was a must-see for me, b) they seriously improve their crowd control and access issues so I don’t spend half my time in lines, or c) I have a ton of money to blow on the exhibitors. If I can optimize the fun stuff though, then maybe….

More Movies

You know, you’d think I’d get around to writing about something other than movies. But I’m on vacation now, so this is all you’re going to get. My thoughts on some July movies follow.

The Last Airbender

I really wanted this movie to be awesome. I mean, I want all the movies I see to be awesome, but for this one I had especially high hopes. This is because it was a live-action adaptation of the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is one of the best things ever.

Now, I will admit to some trepidation when I heard that M. Night Shiyamalan was the driving force behind this film. But, by all accounts, he was so excited by the cartoon that he fought to be able to make the movie, and at least the story was already coming from somewhere else, so there’d be no lame twist ending. In fact, the first season of the show had one of the best endings to anything I’ve ever seen, so there’s no way he could screw that up, right? And the trailers were looking pretty sweet, too.

But alas, all my hopes and dreams were dashed. The Last Airbender had Lucas-esque dialogue, narrated montages that skipped over so much and explained character interactions rather than showing them, and just felt rough and unfinished. It was also short. I will grant they had a tough job, cutting 10 hours worth of TV down to a single movie, but they could have at least gone for a 2.5 to 3 hour movie rather than the abrupt 90 minutes we were given.

The ending also changed somewhat from the show, cutting out details making it just a little bit less awesome and a lot wussier. Way to go, M. Night! You could have filmed the last 3 episodes of the season shot-for-shot and had one of the best things ever on film, and you still managed to cock it up.

(It is my fondest hope that Shiyamalan was working busily away on a 3-hour awesome epic version of this movie when the studio told him it had to be released in a month, and so he whipped this version together in the little time he had, and that the DVD will have a super-cool Director’s Cut.)

The movie was not without *some* redeeming features: it did showcase a lot of cool ideas from the show, and the bending looked pretty good (though not quite right compared to the original). Some of the actors were okay, but they weren’t given much to work with.

I wish I could recommend this movie wholeheartedly, but it was so rough, and so disappointing, I can’t. About the best I can say is that if you do see it, the cool ideas that made it into the movie might inspire you to watch the original show, which is—as I have stated above—one of the best things ever. (Also, if you do see the movie, see it in 2D—the 3D is the converted kind, not the filmed kind, and apparently sucks and makes the movie incredibly dim and an even worse experience.)

Despicable Me

This was a cute and funny CGI movie. I saw this in 3D, but apart from a few token “wow” scenes nothing would have been lost seeing it in 2D. It centers on Gru, a supervillain who gets scooped when a new villain steals the pyramids. As part of his plan to regain his status as the most dastardly of supervillains, he adopts 3 orphan sisters. Wackiness ensues.

From the setup, you can probably figure out the emotional arc of the plot, but it is still handled with charm and humour. It doesn’t approach Pixar-quality, but it has plenty of laughs, some clever ideas, and some “Awwwwwww” moments. A satisfying and entertaining summer movie.

Inception

This is the latest movie from Christopher Nolan, whose last movie (The Dark Knight) was all kinds of awesome. As such, there was a lot riding on this to be a success, and a lot of hope from audiences that it would be different and good. Thankfully, I think it succeeded on all fronts.

Inception is a sort of reverse heist movie. Leonardo DiCaprio plays an expert at going into others’ dreams to steal ideas and knowledge who gets hired to *plant* an idea instead. He has to assemble a team, make a plan, and then execute it (which inevitably goes wrong). Wackiness ensues.

Now, the plot is more complicated than that. A *lot* more complicated. That may be the greatest problem in the movie. They have to devote a lot of exposition to it in the first hour of the film, and then when the action kicks in it is somewhat-to-very confusing to follow what is really going on when the plan goes awry. The overlapping action scenes are beautifully-constructed, though, and once you’ve given it a bit of thought, only the ending is left as ambiguous.

So, this is an excellent movie that is beautifully shot. I saw it in IMAX, which was pretty sweet (except for sitting in the 3rd row like I did). It’s not a simple action movie, it’s not quite a drama, but it is really good. I recommend this one.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

I know, I know. Disney movie, starring Nic Cage. Why give it the time of day? Well, we gave it the time of day because nothing was out that we hadn’t already seen that we might possibly find amusing. But you know what? It wasn’t bad. In fact, I might even go so far as to say it was pretty good.

Nic Cage seems to have found his most natural role ever in playing a creepy, crazy old guy, and Jay Baruchel nailed his lovable nerd loser role (as he is wont to do). The plot was a bit predictable, but it moved quickly, *mostly* made sense, and was pretty fun. The visuals were good, and in some places genuinely clever.

So this movie was like the inverse of The Last Airbender: the trailers made it look awful, but it turned out to be surprisingly good. It’s not the best movie of the year or anything, and it doesn’t really need a sequel, but it was a fun way to spend a couple of hours on a Friday night, and that is more than most movies can say these days.

Quick Thoughts on Monsters vs Aliens

I ended up seeing Monsters vs. Aliens quite by accident, when—while questing for movie gift cards—my girlfriend suggested we see a movie, since we were already there, and it was really the only thing of interest at that time that I hadn’t yet seen, and she had been kind of interested anyway. (I am uncertain whether that was a clever plan on her part, banking on the fact that I’d rather do just about anything instead of go home to work.)

So we ended up seeing the movie—in 3D, no less—and it was okay. The animation was fairly typical for a computer-animated movie, the script was reasonably funny (albeit laden with already-dated jokes and pop-culture references), and the voice actors was fine. I was entertained. The 3D did not give me a headache or hurt my eyes. It doesn’t hold up well in comparison to anything from Pixar, but then, few movies do, and it’s not especially clever. But it had its moments.

It’s not something you need to rush out and see, and I don’t think the 3D element was so awesome as to make it worth seeing in the theatre. But, it’s an amusing enough movie, and will likely keep you entertained.