Movie-Con II thoughts

I didn't do the full two days at Movie-Con, but saw more than enough great stuff to make my visits to the BFI Southbank on Saturday and Sunday definitely worth it, although I wished I'd seen the Iron Man 2 footage that Robert Downey Jr introduced on Sunday morning. It was Downey Jr's second appearance at Movie-Con, he and Guy Ritchie having stepped on stage on Saturday afternoon to raptuous applause to introduce an extended trailer for Sherlock Holmes that was part of a big Warner Brothers' presentation. The crowd went nuts, especially when Downey Jr mentioned that Ritchie "blew off Comic-Con, big mistake". The footage I must say looked fast-paced and action-packed, and, for the most part, fun. It's not your typical Holmes film. I did like Rachel McAdams crack about Holmes and Watson's constant flirting. Not sure what Conan Doyle would have made of it all, though.

The rest of the Warners' presentation went down a storm too. Extended peaks at the A Nightmare On Elm Street reboot which looks more serious than before, Jonah Hex, (which looked very cool), Ninja Assassin (ditto) and Where The Wild Things Are. We saw the behind the scenes featurette that I linked to a while back, plus the trailer and a complete scene which was so delightful and gorgeous I can't begin to tell you...

For me Saturday had begun with the screening of several scenes from Kick-Ass, most of which I'd seen before but not on a big screen and not with an audience who reacted exactly the way the filmmakers would have wanted, ie. they went completely bonkers. As they did when the afternoon's secret screening was unveiled and the title card "Peter Jackson Presents..." came up, meaning it was District 9. (I'd already seen it, so I went to the bar instead.)

Saturday also saw a Triangle presentation and a brief Q&A from its writer-director Christopher Smith (Severance, Creep). The clipped looked intriguing (and gory) but the twisty nature of the plot made talking about the film a tad difficult.

I was back on Sunday afternoon for Disney's 3D presentation. But before that, British writer-director Stuart Hazeldine showed a clip from his debut feature Exam which he described as "The Apprentice in purgatory". All set in one room, it was remarkably tense if short. I want to see the rest of it. Now.

Disney's presentation featured A Christmas Carol (impressive but I don't think they've totally eradicated that dead eye thing that mo-cap throws up, although the ghost of Jacob Marley was really spooky), Up (glorious), the trailers for Alice In Wonderland (great to see on a big screen and even better for it) and Toy Story 3 plus the Tron Legacy clip that I previously posted here.

And finally there was Avatar. Well, two scenes to be precise, about three minutes in total, which they showed twice. Plus a video intro from James Cameron. We got to see some blue-skinned aliens and some strange beasties on Pandora that looked like they'd escaped from an intergalactic Jurassic Park. The CGI was pretty cool, as was the 3D, but is it the revolution in filmmaking that everyone's claiming? Who the hell knows...