Q-500 Experiment: A Trip to Comic Con

Week in Review

Early Thursday morning I left for the Comic Con in San Diego. I didn’t get back until Sunday night, so it took a toll on my pacing. Such is life. I’m glad to be back, away from the Stormtroopers, the toy collectors, and the self important “artists.” Comic Con, if you don’t know, is like Burning Man, but for people who don’t like going outside.

While it was once about Comic Nerds filling spaces in Iron Man collections in A Time Before Ebay, Comic Con has become a Mecca for all things collectible, nerdy, and obsessive. Thus, it is a perfect place to reach Film Nerds like me who want info on what is coming out, but not TOO much info.

The movie the attendees were most hyped about was Snakes on a Plane. The SOAP booth was a humongous snake’s head, big enough to enter standing up, with stills and artifacts from the film inside. Wanting to remain spoiler free, I declined entrance, even though I was coaxed by the flight attendants who manned the booth.

The most common costume was a pirate costume, in honor of the new Johnny Depp film. I saw quite a few Shaun of the Deads, since that’s a fairly easy costume to make. There were too many Superman shirts to count, and second to that was the “Vader Was Framed” shirts.

Saturday night, I attended a party celebrating the forthcoming Adult Swim cartoon Metalocalypse. I met the director, Jon Schnepp, and creator Tommy Blacha. Brendon Small, Brian Posehn, and Robert Smigel were also there. I’m not sure how they’re involved, maybe producers, voices, creators, directors, friends, I’m not really sure. This scoop is so fresh, it’s not on IMDB yet. You’re reading it here first, my friends.

There was a demo thingy that played. I’m not sure what Metalocalypse is about, but it looked gory, evil, and it played at 200 beats per minute. It reminded me only of the darker scenes of Heavy Metal, and not just because of the title. There’s a band in the show, Dethklok, but, like I said, I’m still not sure what this is about. All I know is, I’ll be watching the first week, and getting my evil on.

There’s nothing like a hotel room for bad film watching. I saw parts of both White Chicks. and Hitch. Both films were completely horrible. But you probably knew that already.

Pick of the Week

There wasn’t much to pick from this week, since I didn’t get to watch very much, and most of the films weren’t that good. There was one, that I enjoyed, that will make the cut: Mr. Majestyk.

Don’t screw with Charles Bronson’s watermelons! You can throw him in jail, threaten his life, but if you ruin his crop, there will be hell to pay. Bronson is a watermelon farmer who just wants to get his crop in. But people won’t leave The Bronson alone. There are rednecks, small town cops, and even the mafia get on his case. But The Bronson doesn’t need anyone but himself to take on the whole lot of them. This film has the best Watermelons Being Shot By Submachine Guns scene ever.

This plot is totally ludicrous and all over the map. But in the end, it’s an awesome Bronson flick. The script, while silly, has electric dialogue, written by none other than Elmore Leonard, not based on one of his novels, but actually written by him. Each line is delivered with precision under the watchful eye of Richard Fleischer.

While you may not be familiar with Elmore Leonard, his novels have been the basis of many films, right up there with other pulpers like Stephen King. The two best adaptations of his books were Jackie Brown. (from his novel Rum Punch) and Get Shorty. I also liked the original version of The Big Bounce. He’s never written a brilliant piece of literature, but he’s never written a boring chapter, either.

Even though Fleischer directed such great films as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Soylent Green, he’s still unknown to those outside of Film Nerddom. Definitely, this is a film that could’ve been ruined in lesser hands. There’s a beautiful book of his memoirs entitled Just Tell Me When to Cry. He’s the son of one of the famous Fleischer Brothers, the animators of Betty Boop among other things.

This film was released the same year as Death Wish, the film that broke Bronson from the B-List to the A-List. After Death Wish, there were many films, such as the sequels, where Bronson acted very little, and just walked around the sets mumbling lines and being filmed. Murphy’s Law, which I watched on Sunday night, was one of these. Check out some of his early work, such as this one or Once Upon a Time in the West.

The Pace
I watched 6 this week. 270 DVDs in 183 days. 230 DVDs left in the next 162 days for a pace of 9.93 per week.

There’s a bump in the road. One of the DVDs that was scheduled to come on Wednesday hasn’t come yet. Without that in the rotation, it could make things difficult for me. I’m waiting until Wednesday to report it missing. I do have a couple more for Monday, so I’ll get a headstart on the coming week.