Wonder-Con Day 1 Coverage

MovieManX here, reporting in on Day 1 of the Wonder-Con. Namely, Friday! Panelists were from CFQ magazine. Editor in chief Sean Jordan, publisher/editorial director Mark Altman, and executive editor Jeff Bond were in attendance. The first trailer shown was for "V for Vendetta". The editors didn't have much to say about it other than the mentioning of Hugo Weaving taking over as a result of a recast, and that the Wachowskis, while only producing the film, still had a heavy-hand of involvement in the film, as they were on set every day.  

The next few trailers were ones we've been seeing for the past couple months or so, including "Ultraviolet" ( watch it ), "MI3", ( watch it ) "Final Destination 3", and "A Scanner Darkly" ( watch it ). Next up was another creepy Japanese Horror film from the maker of "The Grudge" and the "Ju-on" series Takashi Shimuzu, about a man with a video camera obsessed about what causes people to be scared. When he finds a seemingly abandoned naked woman half dead in a sewer or something, he decides to take care of her, but of course theres more to this chick than what meets the eye. "Merebito" was followed by two more Asian made films, a sci-fi and a horror, both from Korea. The sci-fi, "Natural City" (directed by Byung chun-Min) regards a soldier in the year 2080 who's fallen in love with a cyborg woman. When she is set for expiration, the soldier vows he'll do anything to keep her alive. I was intrigued by the visuals of the trailer, so after the panel was over, I ventured into the Wondercon booths to find someone selling Asian made dvd's. I found a 3rd region version of "Natural City for $30 and watched it that night. The visuals are reminiscent of NY in "The 5th Element" and the story of "Blade Runner". Definitely worth checking out it's American release. The horror film, also out of Korea, was titled "R-Point". From the trailer, I got that it's about Vietnamese soldiers who have to deal with fellow-passed soldiers coming back to the world of the living as ghosts. Looks creepy.

After screening the overplayed "Superman Returns" trailer (which, according to the CFQ editors, will be the best movie this year), a trailer of a film in production played, called "Dead and Deader". The trailer showed off a lot of fast-paced gun-toting action set mostly in what looked like a bar, and was set to the ac/dc song "Highway to Hell". It stars Dean Kain.

The last 3 trailers will interest horror fans the most, as they portrayed 3 different horror genres - vampires, zombies, and what seemed to be demonic possession. Set cleverly to the song "Bite" by Nine Inch Nails, the vamp. film trailer, "Infection", stars Adam Baldwin and Jeremy Sisto, and boasted lots of gory images of violence and flesh-eating. Next was the trailer for "House of the Dead 2" ( watch it here ). HOD2 tag line: "How do you kill what's already dead, over and over??!!" Unfortunately, I don't think they were referring to the House of the Dead franchise. It seems to take place at a university, where an elite army team gets sent in to stabilize/eradicate a quick-spreading zombie infection. Hey, at least it's not Uwe Boll this time. The reason for the sci-fi presentation was that studios didn't want to take chances with HOD2 because they're last zombie feature, the Australian made "Undead", bombed terribly. Last but definitely not least, was the trailer for "Room 6", an interesting looking horror tale starring Christine Taylor (not so interesting as the protagonist) and Jerry O'Connell. It was hard to tell what this film will be about, as the only clues the trailer gave us were tag lines such as "Some fears must eventually be faced" and "Some doors should never be opened" - and such images as an angry flying priest, a woman bleeding black out of her eyes, and a seemingly-once-good O'Connell getting stabbed in the stomach via Taylor's metal pipe. He calmly and evilly replies with "That Hurt".

The second and last panel I attended Friday was the "Mirrormask DVD panel. Executive Producer Michael R. Polis (with the Jim Henson Company) and Rob Valoy (with Tokyo Pop, an anime/manga producing company) helmed the stage for this panel. At this point, not too much is unknown about the actual film (available on DVD February 14th), so Polis went into more detail about the DVD and the making of the movie. Originally titled "Curse of the Goblin Kingdom (remember, this is the Jim Henson Co., makers of Dark Crystal an Labyrinth), the film, written by Neil Gaiman (who has a couple other movie deals based on some of his graphic novels, like Sandman and Good Omens) and directed by Dave Mckean ("N[eon]"), only cost about 4 million dollars to make in it's 2 month production process. After it launched at Sun dance in January, it was released in London soon after, where the film was shot. Valoy's involvement in the panel was to let us know of the dealings TokyoPop has with the Jim Henson Company. Coming this fall is a story-furthering set of three 160 paged "Labyrinth" graphic novels and an animated "Dark Crystal" series. The biggest news the gentlemen brought to the table was the announcement of a "Dark Crystal" sequel (to be directed by Genndy Tartovski, director of "Star Wars: Clone Wars") to be here sometime in 2008, and the "Farscape" project the Henson Co. is currently working on.