Please Stop Singing

I wanted to like Mamma Mia. I really did. I'm a sucker for romcom and based on the previews, this is a movie I would have gone to even if it weren't an ABBA musical. "Bride invites her three potential fathers to a Greek Island for her wedding, and two of them are Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth? Count me in!"

I never saw the stage show, but I suspect I would have liked it, because I'm betting they cast triple-threats in the main roles. I do think the movie would have worked a lot better if anyone but Christine Baranski could sing. A friend with a better ear than mine assures me that no one was actually off-key, but when he commented that he thought therefore that they pulled off the singing, I could only counter, that maybe they pulled it off, but they certainly didn't put it over. I expect musical numbers to make me want to dance in the aisle, not cringe in my seat. Anything that can make me look away from Pierce Brosnan, has to be bad.

The one exception to my disappointment was the Dancing Queen number, in which the entire female population of the island joins in. This unlikely chorus reminded me of Matt Harding's Dancing Videos, uplifting and moving.

The Collaborative Medium

While at ComiCon, I saw the preview of the first two episodes of the animated "Iron Man: Armored Adventures." I thought it was great, at the end of the hour I was eager to see more. There was one complaint at the mike that the storytelling is unsophisticated, which I thought was handled well with the reminder that the show, and the channel, are primarily serving 8-14 year-olds, with adult viewers an added bonus. They're not going to alienate their intended audience by going over their heads. It's refreshing to see some programming aimed at the future Comic Geeks. (Steven Moffat had a similar insightful comment during the Doctor Who panel, about making the show for today's 8-year-olds, not the nostalgic adults. To each generation their own Doctor.)

That being said, as an adult I found the show suspenseful and witty. And I was hugely impressed with its look and feel. Which got me to wondering about the always-hot-topic of Residuals. WGA members are fortunate and justly proud of the gains we've achieved in this area, where a person who creates a storyline or character has an ongoing financial interest, however small, when that intellectual property is exploited. But watching this Iron Man show, I was struck by the extent to which the design of the technology -- most notably Tony's heads-up display -- seemed to have been influenced by the film. In the ideal world wouldn't that Production Designer be receiving some kind of credit or residual? (Not to mention the comic book artists, but that's a whole other column!) What about sequels that draw heavily on the production design of their predecessors? What about all the myriad Star Trek licensed gak that uses the LCARS look? Do Production Designers and Art Directors swell with pride when they see their work influencing ancillary properties, or do they curse the studios and the Work For Hire business model?

Welder Needed

Paramount (and apparently Intel) had an interesting game set up at their booth at ComiCon, which I unfortunately didn't discover until Sunday. Paramount's booth was not near the other big studios and not well-marked on the map, but they did have an ad in the program book, which I finally noticed on Saturday night, urging people to come to their booth to form a Construction Crew and win a prize. The gimmick was, they handed out scratch-off cards every hour, which had job titles on them like "Gravity Engineer," "Electrician," etc. If you formed a team of eight, one of each type, you would win Star Trek laptop bags. They had excellent intentions with this game, which ideally would have resulted in people clipping the cards to their badges and spending the weekend scanning other people's ID to put together a team. In this crowd, this could easily have turned into a self-designed LARP, and lifelong friendships could have resulted.

In the event, the real-life result was that people collected stacks of the cards, and if they managed to put together all 8, they grabbed a bunch of friends or passing strangers and collected their prize. All of this was explained to me by a fellow attendee holding a sign that said "Welder Needed," which I thought at first meant he was an exhibitor with a broken display. But no, he needed a virtual welder to help him build an imaginary Enterprise.

I hung around for the card distribution, hoping to get a Welder card for my new friend, but both cards I was given said "Inspector" on them, which seemed appropriate. Then one of the booth staffers explained to me that I could take my photo at a laptop station in the booth and get a construction team ID, and if I did, I'd receive in the mail a 4-part poster for the new Star Trek movie. Considering that around the corner in the other half of the booth people were elbowing one another in the face to collect that very same 4-part poster one piece at a time, I found this hilarious. (I got two yellows and no blue.)

I was gratified to see that the crew chief I'd been chatting with found a Welder in the crowd. He'd worked for it.

I Can Almost Smell The Popcorn

Something happened on my last day at ComiCon that seemed like it was aimed just at me. Considering it happened on the jumbotron over the Lucasfilm booth, though, that's pretty unlikely.

Does anyone else remember the preview trailer for The Empire Strikes Back that was released with the Theatrical Re-Release of Star Wars in 1979? I sure do, because 25 of the 27 times I saw Star Wars in the theater in the 70's were during that magical summer. In those days before VCR's, our Star Wars obsession through the intervening years had been fed only by the comics, the novels, the flip-books we'd made out of Topps cards, the dialogue and sound on the Story of Star Wars LP, and of course the Holiday Special that even at the age of 11 we recognized as atrocious.

So the chance to see the film again -- and again and again and again -- was golden. Those 2-and-a-half minutes of preview for TESB were absolutely joyous. We stayed in the theater through multiple showings, enjoying the movie but living for, and memorizing, that trailer. As an avid Han Solo devotee, who considered Luke a loveable but annoying tag-along, I adored the moment when the announcer intoned, "Your favorites are back," and then listed off the characters... and as he said "Luke Skywalker!", instead of the head-credits-beauty-shot that the other characters got, Luke FWUMPED sideways across the screen to thud into the snow. Priceless!

When The Making of Star Wars was released on VHS in 1980, it included the Empire trailer. My father, a news producer, had a VCR before they became common. I saved my allowance to buy that video. I was so excited to have a copy of my own of that trailer I had committed to memory.

Except it wasn't the same trailer. It was similar, but had small variations. And they'd changed Luke's entry. Crushed!

As far as I know, the trailer I remember has not been released on any of the DVD extras. I haven't seen it in almost 30 years. But today at ComiCon, there it was, on the screen above the life-sized Clone Wars maquettes. Thank you, Lucasfilm Archivist Steve Sansweet, for that absolutely visceral journey back to a darkened movie theater in 1979.

Con! Cooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!

Eugene Son has coined the best rallying cry for this weekend. (See his blog.) I can't believe I've never heard this shouted in this context before. I'll never be the same.

(con. text. hee.)

San Diego ComiCon Schedule

I'm not on any programming this year, leaving me free to roam. The panel schedule is so jam-packed with interesting stuff that I don't know when I'll find time to shop the floor! I don't recall there being all this evening programming in previous years. It's a good idea, logistically, but the advantage to the doors shutting at 6 PM was that a person could go collapse and recharge for the next day.

I shouldn't complain, though -- I lucked out with a hotel room you can see from the convention center. Ah, pit stop, sweet pit stop.

There are a few things I'm definitely planning to attend, so if anyone's looking for me, look there:

Thursday, 12:00 NOON, Room 20, the Doctor Who panel. I so admire the writing on this show.

Friday, 7:15 PM, Room 6B, MST3K 20th Anniversary Reunion. It breaks my heart that this is up against Kevin Smith in Hall H, but no way can I miss seeing all the MST guys back together -- including both Joel AND Mike.

Saturday, 11:15 AM, Room 6CDEF Quick Draw! Ever since Len talked me into checking this out two years ago, I am hooked. Laughter is truly the best medicine.

Saturday, 5:30 PM, Room 8 Spotlight on Len Wein. Soon to be Eisner-Hall-of-Famer Len Wein, I'm sure.

I'm also planning to attend the WGA/Animation Caucus reception, always ComiCon's hottest ticket.

Open House

No way! Open your house with a Marvel-licensed key! How cool is that?!

I came across this on an emergency trip to the hardware store -- there's an excellent plumber here today fixing my kitchen sink and the faucet in the guest room. This is the kind of craftsman that's hard to find these days -- a man who takes real pride in his work, goes above and beyond the call of duty, and even thinks ahead in terms of what order to dismantle and reassemble everything so that no time is wasted. It's a pleasure to watch him work, and after he dismantled the Reverse Osmosis system for cleaning, I discovered that I only had 3 of 4 replacement filters in the house, hence the rush to the nearest hardware place.

I was actually tempted by these keys. There were a bunch of Marvel characters and some Peanuts characters, as well. I love visual shorthand and the incomprehensible-to-outsiders jargon that can result -- imagine telling a housesitter a mnemonic like: Wolverine at the front, Snoopy in the back. (My current house keys are color-coded yellow and green, for front door and back, because my house is yellow and my yard is green.)

But is choosing a key graphic like choosing a personal avatar? This isn't a "Wolverine" house, and they didn't carry an "Athena" key or even a "Red Sonja." (I'll accept "Wonder Woman" in a pinch!)

So I walked away empty-handed, wondering whether stuff like this finds a market. Because while I can understand why Len Wein would want a Wolverine key for his house -- and you do, don't you, Len? -- I'm still sorting out who the rest of the customers are.