Month: March 2016

Salt Lake Comic Con FanX 2016 – Celebrity Panels

Thanks to the more intimate experience at FanX 2016, I was able to attend several celebrity panels. Here are some notes from these experiences. Included here are Levar Burton, Alan Tudyk, Chandler Riggs, Gillian Anderson, and Kate Beckinsale.

Levar Burton

After receiving the first three questions in panel, which were all relating to Reading Rainbow, he made a comment that the people in Salt Lake City were a lot more sophisticated than those at other conventions. About half of the questions in the 50 minute session were focused Reading Rainbow.

The TV mini-series Roots has been remade and will be released Labor Day weekend. 4 two hour parts with 4 different directors. Levar Burton, a producer of the mini-series (and star of the original series), said it was an amazing feeling to be working on the project 40 years after making the first one.

Question: Why didn’t you have more relationships on TNG?

Burton: I don’t know. I mean, I think I’m a decent looking guy. Every member of the crew had sex on that ship, except for me. Even the android.

Question: The Leah referenced in “All Good Things…”, was that Leah Brahms?

Burton: Yes.

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Daredevil Season Two

Most people (myself included) thoroughly enjoyed the first season of Daredevil. It wasn’t perfect by any means, hampered by an increasingly meandering story as it went on and a finale that dropped the ball in a multitude of ways, but as an introduction to this new part of the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe? It did a good job of setting the tone for the rest of the Netflix shows, something followed up by and capitalised on by the significantly better Jessica Jones.

Although the second season of Daredevil fails to reach the heights set by Jessica Jones, it’s still an improvement over the first season in nearly every way – primarily thanks to the way that show-runners Doug Petrie and Marco Ramirez seem to have listened to and acted on criticisms of the first season. The most obvious strength that the second season has over the first is also the most simple – the second season of Daredevil has enough going on to actually justify it’s length.

There are two fairly distinct stories at play in the second season of Daredevil. The first sees the introduction of fan-favourite character Frank Castle (also known as The Punisher) to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a murderous vigilante who is terrorising Hell’s Kitchen as he seeks revenge for the death of his family at the hands of criminals. The other sees Matt reunite with Elektra Natchios, an old girlfriend from Matt’s time in college who is significantly more dangerous than she may appear at first glance.

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Jack’s Bad Movies: Wing Commander

IMDB’s description:

Blair, a fighter pilot, joins an interstellar war to fight the evil Kilrathi who are trying to destroy the universe.

This jacket cover makes the movie sound pretty exciting, so I'm optimistic. They definitely aren't allowed to misrepresent a movie on its cover.
This jacket cover makes the movie sound pretty exciting, so I’m optimistic.
They definitely aren’t allowed to misrepresent a movie on these things.

The opening credits say based on the games and novels by Chris Roberts. Then it says directed by the same Chris Roberts. Video game design and making movies are basically the same, so I’m sure in hindsight this will be viewed as the good decision it obviously is. You don’t want to bog down a film production with a director who has experience or a proven track record.

The movie opens with some exposition that mankind was conquering space and everything until they ran into a race of aliens called the Kilrathi and now they are in a desperate war against them. On the space station Pegasus, it is business as usual, until a Kilrathi fleet comes out of nowhere and easily destroys all the ships and boards the station. Their target? The computer that allows humans to travel through space. The CO of the station tries somewhat comically to shoot and smash his way into the computer room to prevent it from falling into enemy hands, but to no avail. Instead he sends out a little distress pod and goes down with the station. The Kilrathi now have access to the CO’s computer! Let’s hope there wasn’t anything inappropriate on there…

Now we cut to a small cargo ship, the Diligent. This ship has a crew of one old guy (Tchéky Karyo) named Taggart and two rookie pilots being transported to their first assignment in deep space. The two pilots are Lt. Blair (Freddie Prince Jr.) and Lt. Marshall (Matthew Lillard). Wing Commander is the second of what is apparently five match-ups of Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard. Matthew Lillard, of course, having his acting career destroyed by Scooby Doo movies, and has subsequently spent the last 12 years of his life doing little else other than rehashing the character Shaggy.

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