Tag: Comic-Con

Morgan Spurlock’s new documentary “Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope” has plenty of familiar speakers — Joss Whedon, Stan Lee, Olivia Wilde and Kevin Smith are among the commentators on fanboy culture — but the most memorable voice might be the droll, self-deprecating Holly Conrad. The amateur costume designer is one of the Comic-Con pilgrims followed by Spurlock’s cameras. Hero Complex caught up with her too. Hero Complex: What was your first thought when you heard about the documentary — did you have anxieties about the tone or motivation? Holly Conrad: I didn’t really at all. Even when Morgan first called me and told me I was in, I knew this was a movie made for all of us, and with Joss Whedon behind it how could it not be awesome? Plus at the time I was still finishing the ...

When word spread that Morgan Spurlock was making a documentary about Comic-Con International there was a reflexive shudder in the fanboy nation — Spurlock’s keen camera already had zoomed in on overeating (“Super Size Me”), subtle social shunning (“Freakonomics”) and well-known cave-dwellers (“Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden”) and, well, you can see where that line of thought leads. It turns out they had nothing to worry about. “Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope,” which opens Thursday in limited release, sets its phasers on sentimental. Spurlock has made an 88-minute movie that is, by his own admission, sweet, earnest and respectful of the pop culture tribes who gather every year at Comic-Con, the annual pop culture expo in San Diego that attracts 130,000 people with its celebration of toys, sci-fi, fantasy, spectacle films and comics. For Spurlock, a ...

Comic-Con International, the massive San Diego expo celebrating entertainment of the fantastic, is more than four months away, but it will be the hot topic this weekend: Entrance badges go on sale online Saturday at 8 a.m. PST. Fans that met the Feb. 28 registration deadline to register for a Member ID (a new first step added to the process this year) can purchase badges via Event Planning International Corp. (EPIC). Here’s hoping the rush to secure admittance to the event doesn’t launch the flurry of “epic fail” puns that followed last year’s online badge sales, which crashed Comic-Con’s website on three separate registration opening days. Eventually, on the final attempt in February 2011, the badges sold out in less than one day. An email Comic-Con International sent out to those with Member IDs today declared, “As you know, because ...

The costume party that is Comic-Con International just got a major new photo op — fans and celebrities will participate in a 136-mile Olympics-style torch run in the days leading up to massive San Diego pop-culture expo but, of course, instead of torches they’ll be holding aloft their lightsabers. The Course of the Force will begin in Santa Monica and every quarter-mile the ceremonial lightsaber — the trademark weapon for the Jedi Knights of “Star Wars” fame —  will be handed off to a new runner that, considering Comic-Con obsessions, may be dressed as a Wookiee, Klingon, Time Lord or Justice League member. Through sponsorships, the event will raise money for Make-A-Wish Foundation but Peter Levin, chief executive officer of Nerdist Industries, said the lightsaber run is also intended to widen the footprint of fanboy culture. “I was at Comic-Con last year and I noticed that there was a real lack of ...

It’s hard to think of anywhere farther from Southern California than New Zealand, but if there is such a place, it would be Middle-earth. That’s why it was a massive surprise this summer when Peter Jackson — the cinema wizard behind the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and its upcoming two-part prequel, “The Hobbit” — left his work in Wellington to make a mad dash to Comic-Con International in San Diego. “Madness is the word for it,” Jackson said at the time when asked about the trip, which involved more than 24 hours in the air and less than 24 hours on the ground. “But I’m happy to do it if it helps spread the word about Tintin. He’s like an old friend, one of my oldest, in fact….” Tintin is the beloved adventure hero who, for five decades, lived ...

“The Amazing Spider-Man” swings into theaters in July 2012  and actor Rhys Ifans will play the film’s main menace, Dr. Curt Connors, a.k.a. the Lizard, a laboratory creation that is both scary and scaly.  The 44-year-old native of Wales was in the news today: The Wrap reported that San Diego prosecutors won’t pursue a misdemeanor battery charge against him for allegedly shoving a guard just before his on-stage appearance at Comic-Con International (through a spokesman the actor has said he “deeply regretted” the incident). Our Geoff Boucher sat down with Ifans in San Diego (about an hour before the Comic-Con kerfuffle) and we’ll be posting parts of the interview in the weeks to come. GB: Marc Webb was a surprise pick to direct this film — his only other feature was “(500) Days of Summer” — but he has some bold ideas for taking Spider-Man into new areas on screen. How was the shoot for ...

The Hulk will appear in his third feature film next year when Oscar-nominated actor Mark Ruffalo gets green in Joss Whedon’s ”The Avengers.” On Sunday, at the final day of Comic-Con International, fans got their first sense of the character’s new visage thanks to a Marvel promotional poster that depicts both the angry giant as well as Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner, shown in sad silhouette. I caught up with Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios and producer of “The Avengers,”  to talk about the new green movement. GB:  Will we see anything substantially different in the visual realization of the Hulk? KF: Well, I don’t know about substantially different. It will be as different as ”The Incredible Hulk” was from Ang Lee’s “Hulk” in terms of its look and design, but it is Hulk. The image we released on the last day of Comic-Con — which got a tremendous ...

It was quite the Hollywood posse — Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, Steven Spielberg, Jon Favreau, Ron Howard and Olivia Wilde? Comic-Con International has been bringing in movie stars for years now, but the San Diego pop-culture expo has never seen anything like the world premiere of “Cowboys & Aliens” on Saturday. Favreau, the director of the film and a true savant when it comes to fanboy culture and film promotion, championed the idea of making the premiere a Comic-Con tie-in. It was at Comic-Con that Favreau found his way to the project in the first place (as he explained to Hero Complex when we visited the film’s New Mexico set), and it was at Comic-Con that he introduced the movie to the world last year via a memorable preview panel. If the movie does well when it opens Friday, he might just round up the ...

“Tintin” fans know Captain Haddock as the rum-loving, fiery-tempered seaman who supplies many of the Belgian comic’s funniest lines in his role as Tintin’s unstable sidekick. The mischief-maker created by the artist Hergé will be just as salty in Steven Spielberg’s motion-capture adaptation “The Adventures of Tintin,”  according to the actor who plays him, Andy Serkis. “When we meet Captain Haddock, he’s a chaotic, self-pitying shipwreck of a human being who has completely imploded and is carrying somewhere in his mind the guilt of the sins of the fathers and forefathers,” Serkis said, a few moments before heading to “The Adventures of Tintin” panel Friday at Comic-Con. “He’s basically softened and numbed the pain with alcohol. He’s a big drinker.” The “Tintin” footage Spielberg unveiled at Comic-Con showed Tintin (Jamie Bell) meeting Haddock for the first time, as the cub ...

After years of hearing about the costumes, the crowds, the over-the-top pop-culture craziness known as Comic-Con, I finally broke down and joined the madness this weekend. At 8, my comics-loving son was finally old enough to appreciate this annual mecca of geekdom, and I was just curious enough to indulge him. What could possibly be so alluring to prompt 130,000 people to pay $175 just to get in, I wondered. Why would so many people come from so far to brave bumper-to-bumper parking lots and hotels costing $200+ per night and to do so wearing uncomfortable costumes and face paint? I found out Thursday, when my son and I got our badges and industrial-size Comic-Con backpacks and walked into the San Diego Convention Center. To my son, it was as if he’d just entered the world’s most giant toy store. ...