By Maura Reilly Aug 2, 2007, 10:45 GMT
Sunday is supposed to be a mellow day at Comic Con International. It’s Kids Day and there are all sorts of delightful poppets running about in costumes. However in Ballroom 20 (the Sunday substitute for Hall H) things were decidedly darker.
A still from 'Right At Your Door.'
Roadside Attractions started things off with Right At Your Door, and present were writer and first-time director Chris Gorak, producers by Palmer West and Jonah Smith (A Scanner Darkly) and stars Rory Cochrane and Mary McCormack. The story is about a dirty bomb attack on downtown LA. A husband played by Cochrane barricades himself in his house after his attempts to reach his wife who works downtown are thwarted. The wife (McCormack) returns from contaminated part of the city and he’s torn between letting her in and exposing himself and keeping her outside.
A short shoot and limited budget were some of the challenges the production faced. The actors found it difficult keeping that level of emotional intensity up through out filming. And trust me; it’s intense just watching it! When asked if it were scarier doing this movie as opposed to something like Private Parts, McCormack explained that Private Parts was “scary in another way.”
Roadhouse Attractions picked up the film at Sundance in 2006 (yes, 2006) for $3M. At one screening a member of the American Red Cross complimented the director on how accurate the portrayal of crisis was. Gorak was impressed having relied on a limited amount of factual information regarding terrorist tactics and dirty bombs. The movie is set for release August 24th.
Here be dragons. The long awaited D-War, aka Dragon Wars is making it onto the big screen. Producer James Kang brought actors Amanda Brooks, Craig Roberston, Jason Behr and some clips to get the crowd going.
Now I had to look up the synopsis because it wasn’t clear in the trailer or even when the panelists tried to explain it just what was going on. Based on a Korean legend (the director is famous Korean director Hyung-rae Shim) Los Angeles investigative reporter Ethan Kendrick (Behr) discovers that not only do dragons exist but he is the reincarnation of an ancient warrior sent to protect a very precious pearl housed within his girlfriend Sarah (Brooks). She is supposed to give up her life and this pearl to a good Immogi (that looks like a giant serpent to my way of thinking) so that it can become a dragon. Notice I said GOOD Immogi. There are bad Immogis out there and they want that pearl too. And so starts the wars.
You gotta figure that a movie based on a Korean legend seeped in concepts like reincarnation, with a Korean director who only said “action!” in English and one of the stars unaware what CGI meant (Robertson admitted that he didn’t until Jason explained the acronym) had to be maddening to work on. But all the panelists were excited to see the end result and had high praise for each other and their leader. D-Wars opens September 14th. http://dragon-wars.com/
The creators of Crank have returned to Comic Con with something new to get the old adrenaline going. Pathology, written my Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor is the story of a young medical student who falls in with other doctors in training who have invented a game of who can pull of the perfect murder.
Milo Ventimiglia (Heroes) plays Ted Gray, an anti-hero as Milo puts it. His chief rival is the sociopath Jake played by Michael Weston (seriously he played Enos in the Dukes of Hazzard). But Ted has to watch himself, Jake’s girl Juliette (Lauren Lee Smith, Trick r’ Treat) has got her eye on him and that won’t bode well with Ted’s fiancée, Gwen (an absent Alyssa Milano). Ted begins to descend into darkness and decadence with the encouragement of Jake, Juliette, and Griffin (Johnny Whitworth, Empire Records and 3:10 to Yuma) and has to battle back for redemption.
The cast, producers and director spent a lot of time in the LA Morgue (Whitworth even bought an official hat) observing 17 autopsies. In fact at one point Milo asked if he could assist on one. For the director Marc Schoelermann the morgue offered a kind of simplicity in function and purpose that translated into their production designs. (The producers joked that Marc really stretched the $5 budget they gave him, making the film look like a million dollars.)
Marc also pointed out how people who work in morgues are able to set aside the macabre sentiment of working with the deceased to do their jobs. They handle bodies almost like a piece of meat at the butcher. He went on to say that when you stand back and look at it, it’s the most vulnerable you can ever be, you have absolutely no control over how your body is treated. Unconventional methods used for dissecting, like taking bodies apart with tree shears shown in the first-look trailer is not uncommon.
The cast talked about some of their favorite aspects of working on the film. For Weston it was the scene with three hookers for which he “prepared for weeks.” Getting to play with blood and guts was a big draw for most everyone in the cast and crew but especially for Lauren who would bury her hands in the fake intestines. Milo was drawn to the character of Ted since he saw the hero is just as dark and tortured as the bad guy.
As a special treat 5 lucky audience members won a meet and greet with the cast after the panel and one very lucky winner (sadly not yours truly) won iPhone. If you’re interested in learning more about Pathology I was part of a series of roundtables with the cast, producers and director. Stay tuned for that report. The film opens in November.
With that we come to the end of Comic Con International 2007. I would like to thank with deepest appreciation: Special Correspondent Tracey Brown, Photographer Marcy Gaston, the ever accommodating staff of The Sheraton: Mission Hills, and of course all of you for reading. Well done! You made it to the end!
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