CliqueClack

San Diego Comic-Con: Day Two

Yesterday, at the end of a very long day of San Diego Comic-Con festivities, I shared the highlights of the con’s first jam-packed day.. It was jammed packed, and I was especially appreciative of getting to see the Ender’s Game and Divergent panels in the usually difficult to get into Hall H.

Friday was a much different day. I spent the majority of the day in press rooms, talking to the creators and casts of The 100, The Following and The Blacklist. As planned, Keith and I also attended the Veronica Mars Fan Event – which I live-tweeted at CliqueClackTV – which was pretty awesome. The big surprise of the day was getting a last-minute opportunity to sneak into Hall H for the Game of Thrones panel.

As with yesterday, I just want to go over some of the highlights of the day. Next week when I’ve had more time to process them, I’ll post videos from the roundtable interviews I participated in.

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Video of the X-Files 20th Anniversary panel at the 2013 SDCC

You’ll have to excuse the few spots where the video gets cut up a tad. We’re not allowed to show videos or photos that get presented on the screens at the panels … and my battery cut out on me toward the end, during on question being answered (but I only missed 30 seconds, really!) Enjoy!

R.I.P.D. tries to be a paranormal Men in Black, but falls a little short of its goal

Universal Pictures’ R.I.P.D. has all the makings of a summer blockbuster hit. It has pretty impressive special effects and action sequences, an interesting storyline that sets it up as a sort of paranormal version of Men in Black and it stars the phenomenally talented Jeff Bridges, Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Bacon and Mary-Louise Parker. And yet, it still left something to be a little desired in my humble opinion.

R.I.P.D. is the story of murdered cop Nick Walker (Reynolds), who is given the choice between either taking his chances at “Judgment Day” or joining the Rest in Peace Department, which is pretty much what it sounds like: an assembly of the finest law enforcement officers now in the afterlife who are tasked with keeping the dead at peace. Apparently, if you decide to remain on Earth long after your expiration date, you don’t turn into a restless spirit with rattling chains and wispy-like qualities, as we have been popularly led to believe. Rather, you become a grotesque ogre-like creature with a penchant for destruction and mischievous mayhem. There are ways to hide this about yourself for a while should you choose to, but for some reason, the spice cumin will always bring your inner rotting self to light.

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San Diego Comic-Con 2013: Day One

Once again this year, Keith, Michael and I are braving the crowds at San Diego Comic-Con to learn the latest news, get the inside scoop and rub elbows with the stars of some of our favorite shows … and 125,000 of our other closest friends. This is my third year attending, and it is amazing how much the con has grown just in those three years (I can only imagine it from Michael’s perspective, who has been attending long before SDCC became the craziness that it is today).

Keith previewed what he was looking forward to most this year earlier this week. I’d planned on doing the same, but decided to skip my post when I realized that my list was nearly exactly the same as his.

Instead, I’m going to attempt to spend a couple of minutes each night going over the highlights of what I saw and learned during the course of each day. I’m not promising I’ll get it done every night – I can promise you with almost absolute certainty that Saturday Night’s schedule will definitely preclude me from chiming in – but I’ll do what I can.

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Red 2 brings the fun but that’s about it

If it’s a universal truth that everyone grows up, it’s also one that everyone grows old. Barring tragedy, of course, there’s an interesting parallel trick of “coming-of-age” with “facing-the-inevitable” that life plays on us. It’s a bit different; people don’t like feeling useless or pointless, they don’t want to be left out as the world keeps going, although it often tends to do that. Naturally, coming-of-age stories are a dime a dozen because we can all relate to that. But not everyone can relate to the “twilight of life” movies, because not everyone is there yet. Of course, there are more audience members of a certain age in affluent countries than there have been in years past, and it’s no surprise that they can strike a chord. The first RED movie played on this idea, measuring a full life of competence and occasional mistakes against the worry that there are no good days left. Naturally, the point there was that it’s really up to you. If you’re Bruce Willis or Helen Mirren, of course.

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The Conjuring does the haunted house movie right

I love a good haunted house movie, but so many of them have just been done so badly over the years with the advance of special effects technology allowing filmmakers to put just about anything on the screen that they can imagine, usually to the detriment of the story and the scares. In the first half-century of motion picture history, directors had to rely on imagination to scare audiences, spooking them with what was unseen rather than putting it all front and center (something a young director named Steven Spielberg also used to great effect in a little film called Jaws). Many consider 1944’s The Uninvited to be one of the greatest haunted house movies ever made, but I don’t think it holds a candle to 1963’s The Haunting, a film that relied on the heard but unseen to send shivers down the spine.

The Haunting was subjected to a woeful remake in 1999 with Lili Taylor as the young woman besieged by spirits during a haunting investigation (in the original, you never knew if there were real ghosts or if the character was simply losing her mind … or if other forces were at work), and at that time I was disappointed with Taylor’s choice in selling out her indie cred for such a bombastic piece of Hollywood trash. But now, Taylor turns up in a new haunted house movie, The Conjuring, and I can happily say all is forgiven.

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Win passes to see 2 Guns in Chicago and Indianapolis

The commenting period for this contest has closed. Please follow us @CliqueClack on Twitter for alerts on news, reviews and contests.

CliqueClack has partnered with Universal Pictures to offer readers in Chicago and Indianapolis a chance to be among the first to see the new action movie 2 Guns, starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg. 2 Guns is an explosive action film that tracks two operatives from competing bureaus who are forced on the run together. But there is a big problem with their unique alliance: Neither knows that the other is an undercover federal agent. For the past 12 months, DEA agent Bobby Trench (Washington) and U.S. naval intelligence officer Marcus Stigman (Wahlberg) have been reluctantly attached at the hip. Working undercover as members of a narcotics syndicate, each man distrusts his partner as much as the criminals they have both been tasked to take down. When their attempt to infiltrate a Mexican drug cartel and recover millions goes haywire, Trench and Stigman are suddenly disavowed by their superiors. Now that everyone wants them in jail or in the ground, the only person they can count on is the other. Unfortunately for their pursuers, when good guys spend years pretending to be bad, they pick up a few tricks along the way.

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Turbo proves no dream is too big and no dreamer is too small

Sure, we’ve all heard about that plucky little engine that could, but whoever heard of a racing snail outside of The Neverending Story? While the concept that a snail could race in the Indianapolis 500 may seem a bit far-fetched to many of you out there, I’ve been excited about DreamWorks Animation’s latest feature Turbo for well over a year now.

While there are certainly many things peppered throughout the film that only an IndyCar racing fan could appreciate, I think the main driving point is something that is a really beautiful insight for any child to learn, as well as all of us much older, but not always wiser, adults. The main thing to take away from Turbo is that “no dream is too big and no dreamer is too small.”

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Comic-Con, one more time: What I’m most looking forward to at this year’s SDCC

Yes, it’s that time of year again where our @CliqueClack Twitter feed and Facebook page become littered with Comic-Con updates, followers leave us in a huff of frustration and jealousy, and five days of nerd-bauchery and free food and booze (FOOZE!) flies by in a blur of what-the-fuck-just-happened. Every year I look forward to it and dead it at the same time, as it means an experience like nothing else for someone engaged in television, movies, games and comics … and a burning chasm of a hole in one’s wallet.

As I traditionally do, I’ll put the blinders on as the dollar signs fly past and list the things I’m most looking forward to at this year’s SDCC, in reverse order:

Hop-Con: The W00tstout Launch Festival — You’re going to find a trend in this list: there are a LOT of things going on outside of Comic-Con, and they don’t even require an SDCC badge to get in. This event is quite outside of Comic-Con — at the Stone Brewing Bistro & Gardens in San Diego. Guy-I-like-to-namedrop Wil Wheaton is releasing his Farking Wheaton W00tstout on Wednesday night, and I want to be there for it. Starting the week out right: we take a bottle of the stuff home, after a Paul & Storm concert and more.

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Win free passes to see The Wolverine first in Baltimore

The commenting period for this contest has ended. Winners will be notified by email. Follow @CliqueClack on Twitter for news, reviews and more giveaway offers!

CliqueClack has partnered with 20th Century Fox and Allied Integrated Marketing to offer our readers in the Baltimore area a chance to be among the first to see The Wolverine starring Hugh Jackman, Will Yun Lee, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Rila Fukushima, Hiroyuki Sanada and Famke Janssen. The screening will take place on Tuesday, July 23, 7:00 PM at Cinemark Egyptian at Arundel Mills Mall in Hanover, MD. To win one Admit Two pass, simply leave a comment on this post telling us why you want to see The Wolverine. 30 winners will be chosen at random. One comment per person/email address only. Duplicate comments will be disqualified. Commenting period will end at 6:00 PM, Sunday, July 21 and winners will be notified by email on Monday, July 22. Please note that passes do not guarantee you seats at the screening. Please plan to arrive early. CliqueClack has no control over the number of passes distributed or the seating at the theater. Good luck!

The Wolverine opens in theaters nationwide on July 26.