Supanova 2014

After enjoying Supanova – the pop culture expo – last year (as mentioned in this catch-up post), I'd pretty much decided I'd be going again if they announced at least a couple of interesting guests. The first names they threw out were Natalie Dormer (who plays Margaery¹ Tyrrell in Game of Thrones, and was in Elementary and the first Captain America film) and Kristin Bauer van Straten, who's Pam in True Blood.

Needless to say, I didn't buy my tickets based on that – a sensible move, since both of them dropped out well before the event, much like the early headliners the previous year (Peter Dinklage and Summer Glau) did.

But I was still expecting some people worth seeing – and boy, did they deliver: a month or so before the event I got an email confirming the final list of guests, including Peter Cullen (the voice of Optimus Prime), Jack Gleeson (the odious Joffrey from Game of Thrones), Tahmoh Penikett and Jamie Bamber (Helo and Apollo from the reimagined Battlestar Galactica), James & Oliver Phelps (the Weasley twins from Harry Potter) and Alan Tudyk.

Alan Tudyk.

Alan Tudyk, from A Knight's Tale, Firefly/Serenity, Dodgeball, I, Robot, Death at a Funeral, Tucker & Dale vs Evil, Dollhouse, Wreck-It Ralph, Arrested Development, Suburgatory, Frozen and Big Hero 6.

Alan Tudyk, one of my all-time favourite actors, whose body of work includes some of my favourite films and television shows. Someone who would not have very many ahead of him on the list of  people I'd like to meet. I got the email at work; it took all my energy to not shout out loud about how happy I was at finding this out. But on the inside I was leaping around screaming like a complete idiot.

Tickets were bought very soon afterwards.

Last year I went on the Friday night, which proved valuable, since I got to see a talk about Tintin, and a session with Mark Addy and Jerome Flynn (King Robert Baratheon and Bronn from Game of Thrones); this year there wasn't anyone in particular on who I wanted to see, but we went anyway, just to get our paper wristband pass things – a terrible idea, since it means you have to keep the damn things on all weekend, which is kind of gross – and for me to get my token for Alan Tudyk's signature and avoid the (likely) longer queues on the other days.

We did catch the opening 'ceremony' though, which meant getting to hear Peter Cullen and Jeremy Shada (the voice of Finn from Adventure Time) speak, as well as a stack of sci-fi/fantasy authors including Garth Nix and Robin Hobb. Once that was done, we left.

Saturday morning we headed in with the intention of having a wander around before it was time to line up for Jack Gleeson; during this period I took the opportunity to line up and get Alan Tudyk's signature on a blu-ray copy of Tucker & Dale vs Evil that I'd bought for just that purpose.

The message is a quote from the film, and it reads: "Jamie, 'It's been a doozy of a day!' Alan Tudyk"

I'd spent a good while trying to think of something clever to say to him, but I couldn't come up with anything beyond telling him that Big Hero 6 wasn't coming out in Australia until Boxing Day – and that it was going to be up against the final Hobbit film; this, at least, elicited a groan from him.

 After that we lined up for Jack Gleeson – who turned out to be extremely bright, a great conversationalist and (though I think I did already know this) Irish. Oh, and a brunette. It was perhaps the most entertaining of the talks that I'd seen, before or since. He answered all the questions he was asking in an entertaining and genuine fashion. I was very glad I'd gotten the chance to see him.

Next up were Jamie Bamber and Tahmoh Penikett – both have done quite a lot, but are most well known (and were here specifically because of their roles in) the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series. They were also good speakers – panels with more than one person are often better because, even if the questions are bad, they can draw on each other for inspiration – so that was another good one to have caught.

And that was it for Saturday.

Sunday we headed in, not too early, but with enough time to line up to see James & Oliver Phelps, the Weasley twins. They were somewhat quieter than expected, given their on-screen personas – but, funnily enough, one (I can't remember which) turned out to be more gregarious than the other. But they had some great stories about the Harry Potter films.

At some point we bumped into my friend Justine from JusZ Cosplay, who on this occasion was in her Steampunk Zatanna costume. It's always good to see Justine dressed up – as you can see from the page she's a hugely dedicated and talented cosplayer.

We also spent some time wandering around the dozens of vendor stalls; it's amazing the range of stuff on offer, both in terms of mass-produced and hand-made.

Finally it was time to see Alan Tudyk's session – I was a little surprised that his wasn't as well-attended as the Phelps twins; at any point during the weekend when I was near the signing section Tudyk always had the biggest lineup – and we got pretty good seats. As expected he was very entertaining; he's evidently done of a lot of conventions, and barely needs any prompting or audience questions to start talking. He also had the novel idea to bring along a stack of random collectables to give away to people who asked questions

Unsurprisingly, most of the questions were about Firefly, though there were a few about his different voice acting roles, and his work in Dollhouse. I'd have liked to ask him whether he knew when they were making Frozen if it was going to be the massive success it was going to be. But I wasn't close enough to a decent spot for microphone access. Still, it was a great session; his ease at talking to the crowd combined with the number of interesting anecdotes he had to relate. Sadly, the time went by far too rapidly, and before long it was all over.

And that was Supanova 2014. I had a great time, so I'll almost certainly be there again in 2015.

¹Have I ever mentioned I hate the spelling of that? Because I do. It doesn't look right.

Pixar in Concert

On the weekend Rochelle and I went to see Pixar in Concert at the Festival Centre – it's a show combining clips from Pixar films with the music from those scenes performed live, in this case by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.

How To Train Your Dragon 2

The other night I went to the cinema to see the sequel to one of my favourite animated films of recent years, Dreamworks' How To Train Your Dragon – a film I rate amongst my all-time favourite animated movies, alongside The Incredibles; Monsters, Inc.; Despicable Me and Up¹. The combination of great story, excellent animation, humour and a superb cast – Jay Baruchel in particular as Hiccup² – actually took me by surprise; I was not expecting it to be as good as it was.

While I'm certainly aware of the tendencies of the vast majority of sequels to be disappointing – and no small number to be truly dreadful; check out my blog post on the topic here - I remained optimistic that this would be one of the (rare) good ones.

Sadly, I was wrong. It's not something I can describe without major spoilers – beyond noting that the problems are almost entirely plot-related; everything else about the film is as good as or better than the first – so if you don't want to have key plot twists revealed, stop reading now.

Pacific Rim

I'm not sure which was the first piece of promo material I saw for Pacific Rim – I have a feeling it was a huge poster at the Piccadilly cinema which showed the head of the Jaeger¹ 'Gypsy Danger' – but it certainly got me interested enough to look further into it. When I found out what it was about – human-operated giant robot-like mecha fighting giant monsters – I was keen to know more; when I read it was to be directed by Guillermo del Toro, director of Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy, I decided to put it on my 'to-see' list.

Prometheus

After the first preview for Prometheus came out, I got very excited. The original Alien film is a true classic, and I'm a huge fan of Aliens – although I always like to point out that they're effectively two different genres of film and shouldn't be compared against each other. Sure, the sequels weren't that great – I ignore the Alien vs Predator films entirely; I saw the second of the two¹ and hated it – but I wasn't so put off by them that I wouldn't be prepared to revisit the universe if someone came up with a good story.

And the story for Prometheus looked good – very good. Set before Alien², it was about humans discovering and travelling to a planet via directions from cave-paintings, seemingly implying that aliens had visited the planet in the distant past. On this planet they would discover alien life and – since it's a sci-fi/action film – have some sort of disagreement with it.

Skyfall

It wasn't a given that I would go see Skyfall; while I was a big Bond fan when I was younger, watching pretty much all of the films, things had changed. I had, come the end of the Brosnan era – when I was old enough to know better – realised just how hackneyed they'd become; while I'd liked Goldeneye, both The World is not Enough and Die Another Day were poor, and Tomorrow Never Dies only tolerable.

When they announced the re-casting of Bond with Daniel Craig I was happy - I've liked him in pretty much everything I've seen him in, with his small but significant role in The Road to Perdition being the standout¹ – and I was even happier they were hinting that it would also be a reboot of the style, since that was the biggest problem; they'd gone way overboard with the gadgets, the seductions and the double entendres.

The week that was #31

Have had a pretty busy month or so – luckily I've had enough time to crank out the occasional post – but I've been up to a bit lately, so it's time for an update.

My Romantic History

Finished the show I'd been stage managing - I did intend to include a writeup in this update, but once I started I realised there was enough material to constitute a standalone post and will post it another time.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

After a succession of serious roles (namely Alonso in The Tempest¹, Glenn in Suddenly at Home, Ross in Macbeth and Evan in Don's Party²) over the last few years, I was in the mood to do something a little lighter – either a musical or a comedy. I was probably leaning more towards doing a comedy because I'd be more likely to get a lead (or a least a major) role in a play than I would a musical, but as the shows for the 2013 season were being announced, I realised there wasn't anything that particularly caught my eye; therefore, the best option for me would be a musical.

Disney and Lucasfilm

Just a quick post on this, since it's been a topic of discussion on the internet and amongst the geekier of my friends (Sean Fewster, an Adelaide journalist, wrote about for The Punch), and I want to jump on the bandwagon before it gets all the way out of town and into a galaxy far, far away.

Basically – if you haven't already heard – Disney Pictures have bought Lucasfilm and everything that goes with it (i.e. the rights to Star Wars and Indiana Jones; they may be other 'brands' as well, but I haven't heard any mentioned) for the rather astonishing total of $4.05 billion.

The week that was #29

This week's post covers a tv show about cricket, a musical comedy gig, a recent Stephen King novel about time travel, and one of the best films of the year.

Howzat! Kerry Packer's War

[For the non-Australians/Australians who don't know the story, this was a tv mini-series about a man named Kerry Packer, who was an Australian businessman whose primary interest was in broadcasting and publishing; in the late seventies he wanted the television rights for cricket and was refused. He found out many of the players were dissatisfied with the poor wages they were paid (relative to the money the organisations were making) and together they attempted to stage their own cricket competition. As you can imagine, it was not well-received by the very traditional cricket boards around the world, and it went to the courts.]

I started watching cricket in the early 80s, by which time all the events covered in the mini-series had taken place, so most of what I knew about the formation of World Series Cricket came from some televised interviews with Ian Chappell – mostly that the players were extremely poorly treated by the cricket boards, who were making large amounts of money but refusing to play the players what they were worth.

The Week that Was #28

Top Girls

I reviewed State Theatre's production of Top Girls; you can find the review here.

It was a tough review to write, mostly because while I'm not entirely ignorant of feminism, I wouldn't presume to be an expert. But the play itself has strong feminist themes, so there was a need to demonstrate at least some insight.

Some other reviews:

No Plain
Kryztoff Raw
Marginalia
Barefoot Review

Barrymore

Another filmed play – though not through the NT Live program (which I've mentioned here and here) but rather a collection of Canadian film and theatre companies – Barrymore, starring Christopher Plummer, is (somewhat unsurprisingly) a play about noted stage and film actor of the early 20th century, John Barrymore. He was one of the legendary Barrymore acting family (his brother Lionel, sister Ethel and father Maurice were all actors; Drew Barrymore is his granddaughter) and a very interesting – and tragic – character.

The Week that Was #27

Okay, so I'm going back to the weekly – well, try at least – blog post thing, doing short summaries of things that have happened recently. This one, though, is going to include some stuff a bit further back than the last week or so, simply because there were longer blog posts that I decided to not finish.

The Dark Knight Rises

While I wouldn't call myself a fan of Christopher Nolan's Batman series – I didn't like the first one all that much, and while I did like aspects of the second, that was mostly because of Heath Ledger's amazing performance as The Joker – I did want to see the third and final installment, both to see how they ended it and (once again) because of the supporting cast, in this case Anne Hathaway (for whom my fondness is already documented here) as Selena Kyle/Catwoman and Tom Hardy as Bane.

Three reviews

I've been slack in my blogging lately, for lots of reasons; some good (busy) and some bad (vaguely disillusioned about certain things) – but now I'm back with some thoughts on a few things I've seen recently – a filmed play, a stage musical and the biggest cult film of all time.

One Man, Two Guvnors

I missed this the last time it was on, so I was very happy that they decided to replay it – the National Theatre Live production of the multi-award-winning One Man, Two Guvnors.

The Avengers

A couple of Mondays ago I saw The Avengers; then, a few days later, I saw it again. So, it probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise that I've written about it – though it's taken me a bit longer to finish than I anticipated; such is my life at the moment.

Oh, and medium-level spoilers ahoy. I don't like doing that, but I really can't talk about the bits that I liked without giving too much away. If you want a very brief review it's as follows: it's a stunningly well-written and well-made action blockbuster film with great characters and some of the cleverest and funniest dialogue I've heard – albeit with a couple of fairly minor flaws.

Thorough review below the fold.

Soundtrack Albums

Using pop music in films is a great way to establish mood (either on top of or instead of the film's instrumental score) and, for those set in a specific point in time, an easy way to help establish the period. Releasing these for sale to has proven to be a rather handy moneymaking venture, since soundtrack albums sometimes sell very well indeed – The Bodyguard, Dirty Dancing and Saturday Night Fever are in the top ten best-selling albums of all time.

And whether the songs are specifically written for the film or not they often provide very interesting combinations that you wouldn't otherwise find together in one place. I've bought quite a few over the years, and, after some thought, I came up with four albums that I consider my favourites – as well as some notable mentions.

Fright Night

This week I saw a film I've keen to see since I'd heard it was getting made: the remake of the classic 1985 comedy/horror, Fright Night. I liked the original, which starred William Ragsdale, Chris Sarandon and the delightful Roddy McDowal. But it was the fact that the Roddy McDowal part (well, sort of) would, in this version, be played by ex-Dr Who David Tennant that really drove me to go see it.

So, it's about a guy (Anton Yelchin) who discovers his neighbour (Colin Farrell) is a vampire, and with his mother (Toni Collette), his girlfriend (Imogen Poots) and an eccentric stage magician/vampire expert (David Tennant channeling Criss Angel), tries to defeat him.

Cowboys and Aliens

While I like to think I've developed, over the years, a somewhat sophisticated taste when it comes to film – manifested more in what I'm choosing to not see than in what I'm choosing to see; I refused to see the last Transformers film, for example – but I'm still a sucker for the occasional 'popcorn flick'.

And, based on what I had read/seen about it, the recently-released Cowboys & Aliens fell under that category. Directed by Jon Favreau, whose work I'd admired in the two Iron Man films, and with Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford in the starring roles, it certainly had some potential.

So, off I went. Spoilers ahoy.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 2)

This week I saw one of the most anticipated movies of all time: part two of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. And since I wrote a review of the first one – and almost always need an excuse for a blog post – I thought I'd do the same for part two.

The story – oh, and you'd better believe there are spoilers

So, the first film ended with Harry and friends escaping from the clutches of Bellatrix Lestrange and her unpleasant cohorts at Malfoy Manor – but losing¹ Dobby the house elf in the process. Meanwhile, Voldemort raids Dumbeldore's tomb and takes what he finally realised was the Elder Wand – the most powerful wand in the world.

Frankenstein & Sucker Punch

I visited the Palace cinema twice in two days (Sunday and Monday) for two somewhat different kinds of entertainment, despite them being broadcast in essentially the same medium.

Frankenstein

Not a film – a filmed version of a play; England's National Theatre have done a series of these over the last few years – I saw their Hamlet (which was brilliant) a few months back – and they seem to be successful enough to be continuing with them.

This particular production was a stage adaptation directed by Danny Boyle (director of one of my all-time favourite films, Trainspotting, and winner of the Best Director Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire) and starring Johnny Lee Miller (also from Trainspotting) and Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Sherlock Holmes in the brilliant BBC tv series, Sherlock. One of the more unusual aspects of the production was that Cumberbatch and Miller would alternate the roles of Frankenstein¹ and the creature on different nights.

The King's Speech

Even though I'm in the middle of writing my Fringe 2011 preview, I had to take the time to write a quick review of The King's Speech, which I saw Monday night.

It is 1925 and Prince Albert¹, Duke of York (i.e. the younger son of the current monarch of England, at this point George V; the elder son is always the Prince of Wales) has a problem; he has to give speeches – the King having embraced radio as an effective means of communication – and he stutters badly.

After trying numerous different 'experts' his gives up. His wife Elizabeth (who we know better as the Queen Mother), however, does not; she visits Lionel Logue, an Australian speech therapist (and failed actor), and she convinces Albert to seek his help.

Tron: Legacy

As soon as I heard it was finally being made, I knew I wanted to see Tron: Legacy. The original was one of very few films I saw at the cinema as a kid¹, and I remember being completely blown away by it.

Yesterday I got myself to the cinema to see it.

¹My parents weren't exactly cinema enthusiasts, and we lived too far away from my town's cinema for me to get there by myself.

Story

Spoilers ahoy.