Comic Con Musts for Art-House Snobs

For art-house goers/film snobs like me, my interests in annual convention that takes place in San Diego are next to nil. And while I don’t circle the Comic Con event on my calender, all the hoopla surrounding the event (which begins mid-week this week) basically baited me into scanning thru the huge amount of events. And you know what? While Hollywood seems to have invaded this thing many years back, so has the independent and foreign film scene. Here are a list of five items that the fan boy in me will be tracking on the slew of online movie sites covering the event.

* Bill Plympton: King of Indie Animation— Animator Bill Plympton. I got into Plympton a little late, he’ll be presenting tons of stuff…here’s the description:  (Idiots and Angels) presents Horn Dog, the fourth smash installment in his famed, Oscar-nominated “Dog” series. Bill will screen some of his new animated shorts, including Mexican Standoff and Santa: The Fascist Years and present some early scenes from his work-in-progress feature film Hanky Panky.

* 20th Century Fox and James Cameron present Avatar: — The guilt pleasure of the year, I’m looking forward to the twittering madness once the screening of 3D footage has concluded. Cameron has been working on this for 14 years.

*Focus Features: Thirst: Park Chan-wook makes his way from Cannes to Comic Con to show clips from the movie, discuss his career. 

*Warner Bros. — The studio gives a closer look to their upcoming slate with Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are and Richard Kelly’s The Box being the main interest. Rumors are the Spike won’t be there. WB will also give first looks at The Book of Eli, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Jonah Hex, and Sherlock Holmes.

*AMC: The Prisoner — I’d be getting my geek if I were down in SD for this item. The re-imagining of the classic, cult television series conceived by Patrick McGoohan. Jim Caviezel and other cast and crew members will divulge what we should be expecting for this coming November. Being seeing you.

Also:…

Other items of key interest: Terry Gilliam discussing the underwhelming The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, Overture Films promoting the release of Christian Alvart’s sci fi flick Pandorum, Matthew Vaughn giving some world premiere footage of Kick-Ass (will this be the first time a studio picks up the rights from a convention center?), Miramax setting up shop for Mike Judge to discuss Extract, and a pair of Sundance films pushing to get more word of mouth out in Sony’s Black Dynamite and Roadside Attractions’ Mystery Team.