Unless you've been avoiding your computer and television (or just don't care about comic books), you know that Comic-Con took place this past weekend in San Diego. The costumes, the LARP-ing, the sneak peaks. And PopWatch was there to cover it all.
In case you missed a post or two during our Thursday-Saturday geekstravaganza, we've condensed all our Comic-Con coverage into a delicious bite-size snack, after the jump. Enjoy!
EW's Whitney Pastorek sat down with David Boreanaz at Comic-Con Friday (watch Part 2 of their conversation below), and he had two great ideas for Bones' fourth season:
1. That Booth should injure his firing hand and have to depend on Bones to do things for him. Hilarious. Made me want to watch the Halloween episode "Mummy in the Maze" again, when she was packing as Wonder Woman.
2. That he guest blog for us throughout the season. That might help us get over Gormogongate. What do you think?
Sorry, gang. I got all wrapped up in the San Diego Comic-Con's highs and lows, joys and heartbreak (okay, not so much heartbreak) and I forgot to deliver a Firefly Friday for y'all. My apologies. And I didn't remember until Saturday night, at the EW/Sci Fi Comic-Con party, when Nathan Fillion and his brother showed me how to drink beer from an iPhone.
So, here's a make-good, brought to you by Captain Tightpants himself.
To a cacophony of screams and whoops, Jensen Ackles and Jared
Padalecki filed onto the stage for the Supernatural panel at Comic-Con on Sunday (along with show
creator Eric Kripke and writers Sera Gamble and Ben Edlund). The panelists and the moderator (EW's own Alynda Wheat)
handled the crowd's obvious enthusiasm with aplomb, kicking things off with a screening of the first five minutes of the CW show's season 4 opener. What did conventioneers learn? SPOILER ALERT! Since Dean was
left in hell the last time we saw him (after a rather messy and tragic exit from
this mortal plane) seeing him literally crawling out of the
grave was both heartening and terrifying. A newspaper in an abandoned gas
station nearby tells both Dean and the audience that it's four months later, but the scene ended (with a mysterious force that knocks Dead out) before anything else could be revealed.
Following a terrific response from the audience, Kripke revealed that Supernatural had just signed
on X-Files alum Mitch Pileggi to play Dean and Sam's grandfather in
an episode that promises a little time travel as well. Fans can also look
forward to more from the Winchester past, including a story centering on when Mary
and John Winchester were not only still alive, but much younger. The panel wrapped up with a sneak peak
of the gag reel that will be on Supernatural's season 3 DVD (to be released
later this year). It will no doubt be worth a look -- if only to witness Ackles'
spot-on reenactment of the YouTube sensation Dramatic Prairie Dog.
The funniest event at Comic-Con? With apologies to Kevin Smith,
I'd wager it was the Pineapple Express panel — which boasted producer Judd
Apatow, director David Gordon Green, cowriter Evan Goldberg, plus stars Seth
Rogen (pictured, left), James Franco (pictured, right), Danny McBride, and Amber Heard. But it was truly the Seth
and Judd potty-mouth show.
The proceedings started with clips of a few hysterical
scenes — one, in which Rogen demonstrates impressive inhaling techniques on a "cross" joint — from the stoner-action flick. ("We felt personally
close to the material," quipped Rogen, before chastising the enraptured ladies
for hooting only when Franco spoke: "F--- you. You didn't do that when I started
talking.")
Then they got down to business with the
funny. Asked if Heard or Franco was the better kisser, Rogen turned to his old
Freaks and Geeks costar and reasoned, "You're the better kisser because you're a
man and know a man's anatomy. He's got home-field advantage." As for the wacky
tobaccy the cast smoked on set? That was a fake-out substance called "wizard
smoke" (an apropos name for the Comic-Con crowd). On a proposed
Rogen–Franco–Jason Segel collaboration, Rogen cracked: "If we both have to show our
d---s, I'm out." And, naturally, someone asked Rogen if he knew where to score
weed. "The answer is: yes," he said. "But I can't tell you." Hey, the kid had to
try.
TheFringepanel at Comic-Con Saturday ended up being far more noteworthy for what it didn't have rather than for what it did offer: a half-full ballroom of lookee-loos and no footage from Star Trek.
For days, there had been lots of buzz that executive producers J.J. Abrams (pictured), Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman were going to use the panel to debut a few minutes from Trek (which was directed by Abrams and written by Orci and Kurtzman, and is set for release next May). Zachary Quinto, who plays a young Spock in the new movie was even in attendance. But almost 40 minutes into the session, it seemed certain that Abrams had no intention of unveiling the much-anticipated footage, despite comments from insiders around him who said he actually had three minutes from Trek ready to debut. (When asked on the panel about the progress of Trek, Abrams said that most of the special effects work hadn't been completed, which is why he couldn't show anything at Comic-Con).
So what happened? One key source says Fox, the network that will air Fringe, may have nixed Abrams' plan at the very last minute (a Fox spokesman could not be reached late Saturday). Then again, Abrams may have also given the stunt a second thought out of respect for the movie's studio, Paramount, which had no presence at Comic-Con this year.
The cast and exec producers of Battlestar Galactica dropped
mere crumbs of real info about the final 10 episodes of the series at their
Comic-Con panel, but no one in the capacity audience seemed to mind a whit. The
hour, in fact, concluded with a spontaneous standing ovation that surprised and
clearly moved panelists Katee Sackhoff, James Callis (pictured, right), Tricia Helfer (pictured, left), Michael
Trucco, Jamie Bamber (a surprise, unlisted addition), exec producers David Eick
and Ronald Moore, and last-minute drop-in Tahmoh Penikett -- and they stood and
applauded right back.
In between, the BSG panel was mostly a chance for
everyone on the stage to crack wise (in both senses of the term), about their
characters and the show itself, with moderator Kevin Smith, who introduced
himself with his trademark coarse wit: "I have nothing to do with this show,
which is probably why it is so f---ing good." (No fraks for Mr. Smith.) The
panel began with a trailer of the coming season, which featured a frisky,
kissing Adm. Adama and President Roslin (Adama to Roslin: "If I'm a Cylon,
you're really screwed"); what appeared to be a President Tom Zarek; and lots of
guns, fighting, blood and misery. Yep, as Moore put it, "things aren't
pretty."
We've seen creepy (Jokers), dorky (a corpulent Superman or two),
and skimpy (the ladies at the Spirit booth) — but Disney Animation was on hand to
pony over the cute. Employing a rare less-talk-more-visuals ethic largely
missing from this year's Comic-Con, the studio started by unveiling close to 20
minutes of Nov. 26's Bolt. Interestingly, the two directors, Chris Williams
and Byron Howard, made no mention of the film's original helmer, Chris
Sanders — or the fact that he left the project after locking horns with studio honcho
John Lasseter. The duo unspooled footage in which we see this superpowered
canine TV star (voiced by John Travolta) in all his absurd, Michael Bey-esque
splendor: flipping a villain's car over by head-butting it; dangling that
vehicle over a bridge; and smashing through a concrete wall. The catch: Bolt,
who contends that styrofoam is his kryptonite and cats are his nemeses, is oblivious
to the fact that he has no powers in real life. And that's where the buddy film
kicks in — with the dog recruiting a hyper (and possibly irritating) Hamster fan
of his (Mark Walton) to spring some buddies from an animal shelter, in a giggly,
hyperactive heist scene.
Bolt proved suitably entertaining...then immediately lackluster,
once director Pete Docter (Monsters Inc.) came out and debuted a few scenes
from Pixar's Up (pictured). An effusive fan likened the picture to the work of the Japanese
great Hayao Miyazaki (Castle in the Sky), and such a comparison would be heresy
were it not sorta true, based even on the small chunk of footage shown. Here, a
78-year-old widower gives the (metaphoric) finger to retirement-home reps — and
fulfills his late wife's itinerant dreams — by strapping a clown convention's
worth of balloons to his chimney and taking off for South America. As his house
glides through the sky, citizens look up in tacit wonder — and, indeed, it is hard
not to get swept up in this lovely, whimsical sequence. Later, we learn that a
plucky 9-year-old Wilderness Explorer stowed away on the ride (the kid, you see,
needs one just more Wilderness Explorer badge: assisting the elderly!). Of
course the pair make for a timeless Odd Couple, pulling the still-levitating
house along with them as they trek through the strange and majestic landscape
in search of a waterfall. You'll have to wait until May 29, 2009, to see Up; in
the meantime, feast your eyes on a wee teaser that Pixar has just posted at
Disney.com/up.
Unless you've been avoiding your computer and television (or just don't care about comic books), you know that Comic-Con took place this past weekend in San Diego. The costumes, the LARP-ing, the sneak peaks. And PopWatch was there to cover it all.
The funniest event at 
The 
The cast and exec producers of 
We've seen creepy (Jokers), dorky (a corpulent Superman or two),
and skimpy (the ladies at the Spirit booth) — but Disney Animation was on hand to
pony over the cute. Employing a rare less-talk-more-visuals ethic largely
missing from this year's 
