The Adventures of Team Parker

This is going to be a long one, with lots and lots of pictures. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

As some of you may know, we headed for New York City on Friday afternoon. It was a bit of an effort getting here, almost like our return trip from Davos. There was a train, a bus, a plane, a shuttle, a train, a bus, and then a taxi involved. We started in Chicago at 2pm and ended up at our destination round midnight. Meh… Yet somehow, after all that drama, we managed to make our way to the Javitz Center for our reson detres. The New York Comic Convention. Though we really would have liked to have gone to more of the panels and forums, we decided that with only five days in New York, we had to sacrifice the comic con for the city proper.

We wandered into the huge building with its atriums and escalators and collected our passes for the day. Then we queued in a queue the likes of which I have never seen before. Damn. It was about 12 people wide and went on and on and on. There was a dedicated holding area the size of a plane hanger, just to ease the flow of people onto the convention floor. Below are some pictures of random characters we saw floating around while we were getting our passes and making our way through the queue.

As for the actual exhibition space, for scale, lets just say, the New York Comic Con comes to Cape Town. And takes over the entire CTICC. The main exhibition area was on the upper level of the Javitz Center. They had these huge banners hanging from the ceiling that had numbered there aisles. There were about twenty aisles I think. Then there were gaming areas that weren’t included in the aisles for Magic and Pokemon etc and an area called the Variant Stage where non-celebrity oriented events such as costume awards, jedi themed exhibitions, and zombie survival 101 were held. The TV channels that covered the convention (MTV, ABC, Sci-Fi etc) had special glass boxes overlooking the exhibition hall and you could see them filming and interviewing people up there. There were about 14 seminar rooms on the lower level for discussions and panels with famous authors, writers and artists as well as the main screening room and the press center .

After a quick squiz around, we decided to make a beeline for the screening room. There was a BSG panel we wanted to attend but to make sure we got in, we decided to go from the very first session as well.

The first screening was for Wall E, the new Pixar show. They showed us about five clips from the movie and it looks absolutely amazing. There were some hilarious scenes, some shocking scenes, and some really sad scenes that, when they ended, had us all going “Show us more? Where’s the rest?” The character Wall E is really adorable and the interactions between the various robots are so comic and sweet. This even though none of them actually speak.

Then they showed a new trailer for Prince Caspian and introduced the panel of four. The first guy is the producer, Mark Johnson. He confirmed that they are making a third Narnia movie – The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – to begin filming August this year. The second guy is Peter Dinklage, he plays Tripkin who is in this movie and the next, third is William Moseley who plays Peter Pevensie, and last is the new actor, Ben Barnes, who plays Prince Caspian in this one and will also be in the next film. Not the most interesting discussion I gotto say but that’s what happens when you’re actors are young and don’t know what they’re talking about. Most of the questions/comments were arb, like “What was the hardest stunt you filmed?” and “I love you” and “Can I have a hug?” (Seriously.) But there were a few, from fans of the books, who asked pertinent and interesting questions.

Then, the reason everyone was actually there. The Battlestar Galactica panel. So imagine a few hundred people who laughed their asses off for Wall E, who quite enjoyed the Narnia trailers and were very welcoming to the panel rushing to their feet, jumping up and down, screaming, shouting, whooping, whistling, catcalling, clapping, and cheering. Then imagine them all taking out their cameras to take pictures. And this goes on, and on, and on. The panel consisted of Michael Hogan, Michael Trucco and Rekha Sharma ie Colonel Tigh, Anders, and Tory (President Roslin’s aide). There was also a Sci-Fi channel rep who is heavily involved with BSG there but I forget his name.

Firstly, let me just say it was hard to get shots of these guys. I think because of all the flashes and what, it was even harder to get a good shot of them than of the Caspian panel. And oh-my-gosh! Michael Trucco is just as hot in real life as he is in the show! <drool> Michael Hogan got the biggest applause of course. He’s definitely a character that BSG fans adore. I bet a lot of them are like me. I didn’t always like Tigh what with the drunkenness, poor decision making, and weird wife but after everything that happened on New Caprica, well, I’m now totally in his court.

Most of the presentations at the convention are run by a studio rep such as the producer or director but the BSG panel had an independent moderator. I forget his name but basically he is one of the editors for Entertainment Weekly and he did a great job. He is a huge fan of the show and he pretty much asked a lot of the questions we wanted to. Afterwards, they opened the floor up for questions from the audience.

The panel did their best to answer our questions but where sometimes prevented from doing so due to contractual obligations. Also, they couldn’t give us spoilers. But they all – at different points and in response to different questions – agreed that something hectic happens in episode 13. Michael Hogan definitely told the most interesting and insightful stories about his character and also about being an actor on the set and working with the writers. When asked what his favorite moment during shooting was so far, he said it was during the original miniseries, when they were shooting the military funeral. It was the end of a long shoot and Edward James Olmos was giving his speech about finding Earth and suddenly he adlibs “So say we all” . It wasn’t in the script so everyone was confused and some of them mumbled and the others were just like “Huh?” Olmos repeats “So say we all!” and more of them pick up the line. Then he shouts “SO SAY WE ALL!!!” and they all shouted it back at him. Well, if you’ve seen it, you know it was a great scene and here we find, totally unscripted. But Trucco and Sharma were very sweet and very friendly too and tried to fill in a lot of the motivation behind their characters.

There was just one flaw. Because we’d flown to New York on Friday evening, we missed last week’s episode of Battlestar. Half way through the discussion, the Sci-Fi channel guy answers a question by mentioning an huge twist that happened in the episode. Oh my god!!! It was so hectic. There was a split second of silence and then a chorus of gasps, cries of “What?” and “Noo!” Obviously, we weren’t the only ones who’d been spoiled.

When the discussion was over, the actors graciously came forward so we could take pictures. Again, it was like being in the middle of a paparazzi mob. Crazy! With all the flashes going off only one of the eight pictures I took came out alright. And then someone asked Hogan to say “So say we all” and he did his Tigh voice and said it and the next thing you know everyone there is chanting it with him “So say we all! So say we all! So say we all!” It was totally awesome!

Okay, at this point I really had to pee. But they weren’t stamping anyone’s hands any more so if you left, you had to go back out and queue again. Well, lets just say the queue went in a zig zag that was five bends long and then snaked all the way around the foodcourt again. We decided to quit on the screenings and just head for the main floor. Too bad though coz I hear there was a surprise screening of scenes from the Dark Knight Returns at one of those. Ah well. We couldn’t be there for everything.

Other highlights for the day included a Terry Brooks seminar in which he spoke about his new graphic novel, the Dark Wraith of Shannara. I had never heard of this installment in the series but decided to give it a go after hearing the discussion. I was lucky enough to get a signed copy of it, at 25% off the regular price at the convention. And yes, it’s very good!

While I’m speaking about Terry Brooks, let me let you all in on something I heard, straight from the horses mouth so to speak. So I’ve spent the last 20 years of my life saying Sword of Shannara as in shun-NAA-ra. Well people, if you say it like me, you’re saying it wrong! Terry Brooks says it sha-na-RAA. It sounds a lot like Shangrila. How do you like them apples?

After that we went to a session called “Our heroes wear spandex” and it was a panel discussion with four comic book artists about how superheroes were originally based on the Greek and Roman mythic heroes. One point made was that in the 20s and 30s when Batman, Superman and co were invented, there was a lot of building going on in New York and also a neo-classical revival. So these comic book guys were constantly surrounded by sculptures and friezes of Greek gods. So the writers design their heroes based on that model. The power of the Greek gods is embodied by their physical being, hence they are always naked. Well, our comic book heroes couldn’t be naked but to bring the same physicality and godliness to them, you cover them in spandex, so their naked but not quite. Interesting point.

Another thing they spoke about was the four models of superhero – messiah, golem, amazon, and … something I can’t remember! Coz they didn’t delve into it too much. Superman, Batman, and Wonderwoman. Who that last dude was, I can’t remember. This was interesting too but its 3am now and I have to go sleep so, ask me on google chat. And then there was a whole discussion on Captain American that I didn’t get. But again, great panel!

After that we wandered around looking at all the stalls and shopping around. We didn’t get much, just some comics and some badges. But we enjoyed looking at things, trying to win prizes, oggling the costumed people and so forth. Good fun. And then we needed to put our feet up. Good thing the organizers had set aside this section.

The last session we went to was Starship Troopers 3, coz it was the only thing left. What can I say about Starship Troopers 3? It was shot in South Africa (yay!) on a budget of $10 million after Sony requested that they do another and make sure it’s funny and bloody and has bigger bugs. Well, it’s funny and bloody and has bigger bugs. But is it good? Maybe good for a laugh. Ah well, Casper van Dien is in it and at least he’s hot. For real, a real life hottie. See?

Will I watch it? Maybe on video or M-Net. It was just a bit sad to see the actors and director plugging this movie that people weren’t really interested in and that in fact, the studio had decided they could make more money off, and that it was a good enough reason to continue the franchise. (Apparently Starship Troopers 2 actually did make a profit on DVD sales and rental.) The questions were all arb but I think people were at least trying to be nice.

Anyway. So that was it. Afterwards we wandered off to Times Square which was mindboggling and blindingly bright. To end of a comic-centric evening, we took this picture.

YATAA!!!!

(Uhm, no I couldn’t stand in the middle of the street…)