i am effing tired

Hello everyone! I've made it home from my first San Diego Comic-Con with most of my sanity intact. Good GAWD was it huge. Four days of virtually nonstop walking and I'm still sure I didn't see everything. I do, however, have blisters where I wasn't even aware that I had skin. But the suffering was entirely worth the experience, let me assure you. There was miles and miles of crap to see and hours and hours of events to attend, but undoubtedly the best part of the con was getting to spend days with some near and dear friends I'd never before met in person.

*tear*

A very close second, however, was scoring these:

Yes, I made them write those things. Such good sports, Marc Singer and Linda Blair! But now, let us discuss some upcoming movies I heard all about:

HATCHET

Director Adam Green and most of the cast (including Kane Hodder, Robert Englund, and Tony Todd) were on-hand to discuss this "old school American horror" flick which opens on September 7. There's certainly a lot of hype surrounding this film- people were walking around wearing "Hatchet Army" t-shirts, and the crowd was whipped into a frenzy when someone came out to giveaway DVDs of slashers like Halloween and Sleepaway Camp. Before the dude would choose a winner, however, he made the crowd chant "Crowley! Crowley!"- Hatchet's killer is named Victor Crowley, and they're really pushing to make this guy the next Michael or Jason. A clever way to get the name in people's heads, but man...I was kind of grossed out to see people practically frothing at the mouth and clawing at their eyes to score a free copy of a $5 DVD.

Is Hatchet going to live up to the hype? If film festival awards are any indication, then yes, it certainly is. I saw a clip and a just-for-SDCC trailer, and from those few minutes...yeah, it looks like fun. There's no rape or torture, it's not drenched in CGI, and it's not a sequel or a remake- it's a total throwback to the slashers of yesteryear, which is fine by me.

THE EYE

Eric Charbonneau, WireImage.com

Jessica Alba made an appearance at the Lionsgate panel, unfortunately to talk about Good Luck Chuck. When asked about The Eye, however, she had this bit of amazing info to impart: "It's gonna come out, and it's gonna be scary!" WOW! I'm practically touching myself with excitement! She went on to say that the film will somehow "transcend the genre" and will be "anything we've ever seen before". I think she means unlike anything except for...you know...the original Asian version.

Saw IV

Amidst all his hair gel and gum-chewing, director Darren Lynn Bousman spoke of Saw IV and how "sick" the film is going to be. No one would say how Jigsaw manages to be alive in this sequel, but Tobin Bell was on-hand so we all know that Jigsaw will be featured. They showed a lengthy clip from the film and it was really unlike anything we've seen in Saw I-III: two guys- one with his eyes sewn shut, one with his mouth sewn shut- were chained together by their necks. There was a winch in between them that started up, drawing them closer- ever closer!- to death, and the guys started hitting each other and there was blood. If you're a Saw fan, I'm sure you'll love this...since you've seen it 3 times before.

MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN

Clive Barker and Co. gave all the skinny on Midnight Meat Train, based on his Books of Blood story of the same title, though Clive was fairly...well, not incoherent exactly, but...well, not wasted exactly, but...err, let's settle for rambly, shall we? At any rate, the trailer shown looked pretty enticing. Director Ryuhei Kitamura (Versus) promises that the film will be on level with Candyman and Hellraiser, in his opinion the "only two good Clive Barker movies".

RETURN TO THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL

Coming direct to DVD this October is the sequel to Dark Castle's House on Haunted Hill (1999), which has a group of crazy kids (including the sister of first-film-survivor Ali Larter) heading into the crazy house for some more crazy ghost-riddled hijinx. Looking as if he just walked off the set of television's Miami Vice, producer Joel Silver introduced us to an innovation dubbed "Navigational Cinema"; in other words, Return to the House on Haunted Hill will be a choose you own adventure style movie with 96 storylines- if you get the HD-DVD or Blu Ray version. At certain junctures the movie will stop and a yes/no question will pop up- "Should Tad go through the door?" "Should Katie save Tad or the map?"- and you determine the outcome with your remote. Who lives, who dies? You decide! It's actually a pretty cool idea, though being HD and Blu Ray-less, I'll have to settle for whatever regular version they put out. Le sigh.

Oh, and yes, Jeffrey Combs returns...but no, they don't explain how the survivors from the first film get off the roof.

THE STRANGERS

You might remember this one from a while back when I went all goo-goo over the poster; well, now I've seen a clip and a just-for-SDCC trailer...and I'm even more goo-goo. Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman play an ordinary couple who come home in the middle of the night only to find themselves under siege and terrorized for no reason whatsoever by three scary-mask-wearing, knife-wielding strangers. First-time writer/director Bryan Bertino said he simply set out to make a scary movie because he loves scary movies and though it's tough to fairly judge based on 5 minutes of film...this one looks damn scary. My hopes are high.

I was disappointed yet amused by the audience questions during the panel; I wanted someone to ask about, say, Bertino's influences and whether or not that poster indicates that the film will be more classic than modern, but instead people concentrated on Liv Tyler, asking her things like "Can you say something in Elvish?" (she can and she did) and...I fucking kid you not..."Do you get sad when you watch Armageddon because you already know that Bruce Willis isn't coming back?" (she doesn't watch her own movies after the premiere, but...uhh, no...and that was a weird question). It was her first ever con appearance, and she was really sweet to all the drooling nerds.

And if you're thinking "Well, why didn't you go ask the questions you wanted answered, Ms Know It All Smarty Farty Pants?", the answer is "I was approximately 876645 miles away from the microphone".

DOOMSDAY

Yaaaaaaaay Neil Marshall made an appearance to talk about Doomsday, his upcoming "dark action thriller", a tribute to those post-apocalyptic flicks we all know and love (Escape From NY, The Road Warrior). Scotland is quarantined after a deadly plague sweeps through the nation. 25 years later, the virus hits London and a team is sent into Scotland to find a cure from the survivors. Scotland, of course, has become an insane gang-and fire riddled wasteland. The trailer, I must say, was pretty intense and had everything you'd want in a post-apocalyptic thriller: car chases, crazy weapons, and mohawks. It's going to be different from anything Marshall has done previously, especially considering the fact that it has a cast considerably larger than 6. For more on Doomsday, CLICK.

Don't you feel like you were there with me? Let's go soak our barkin' dogs.