The Solaris panel
by JoBlo

Who was there?
Director James Cameron

And yet another surprising treat at this year's San Diego Comic Con came in the way of a king showing up to pay tribute to his "people" as uber-writer/director/producer James Cameron (TITANIC, THE TERMINATOR, TRUE LIES) popped over to say "hey" and to give us a little skinny on his upcoming sci-fi project entitled SOLARIS. He actually produced the film this time around, while artsy director Steven Soderbergh took the helm in both the directing and writing duties (he is editing the film right now). One attempt at translating Mr. Stanislaw Lem's novel to the big screen was already attempted back in 1972, as Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky took his vision all the way to the Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Palme D'Or. The Soderbergh/Cameron version is set to be released on November 27th of 2002, and for anyone who has yet to see the teaser trailer (although it REALLY doesn't show much, so don't expect anything), click here. The film stars George Clooney.

Cameron, who looked extremely relaxed and confident before the buzzing crowd, went on to say that he was initially interested in directing the picture himself, and that it took years to finally acquire the property, at which point, Soderbergh "came out of the woodwork" and they all decided to see what he could do with it instead. Cameron looked very forward to seeing what Steven had done, and was happy to report that he had made it very "accessible" and that he'd "never seen anything like it." Wow, that is high praise indeed, coming from the big-budget monster movie-maker himself (then again, maybe he's just blowing smoke up our asses-- he is the producer, after all). In fact, Cameron also told us that he had seen the very first "rough cut" of the film just last week, and that Soderbergh had told him that it was still not done and that he had some stuff to work on yet, but Cameron said that after his viewing, he told Steven to "Cut. Print. Walk away." Yes, he loved it. I guess he must've really loved it since he actually wandered all the way down to San Diego to plug it so enthusiastically at the Con.

At that point, Cameron said that he was going to show us the first clip of the movie ever seen before and that it was a 3-4 minute sequence from the actual film. He also gave us a little background on the story itself, with details about the plotline which has to do with the future and certain scientists who go out to a space station, only to find some people missing from a nearby planet called SOLARIS. At this point, Cameron joked about how it actually sounded a bit like ALIENS, but went on to give a few more details on the plot, before rolling the clip, which featured only Clooney walking around in the space station. According to the IMDB, the plot summary of the film explains: "Upon arrival at the space station orbiting an ocean world called Solaris a psychologist discovers that the commander of an expedition to the planet has died mysteriously. Other strange events soon start happening as well, such as the appearance of old acquaintances of the crew, including some who are dead." 

The footage that we saw really didn't show us any action, dialogue or effects, but it did feature some creepy, brooding score resounding in the background, Clooney walking around (almost in anticipation of something popping out or scaring him) the space station very, very slowly, discovering some blood on the pristine floor and following it along the way. It almost felt like it was in slow-motion, but it was just moving very slowly...pretty tense. It reminded me of the space station scenes from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, but that's a comparison that many will surely make. The clip ended with Clooney finally seeing something odd in another room and walking in to find a couple of bodies wrapped in body-bags. He opens them up to see the faces of the people and--- well, that's where the clip ended.

What was especially surprising was that Cameron sincerely claimed that Clooney's performance in the film was "Oscar worthy". Interesting. He went on to say that the clip wasn't a good indication of the rest of the film, which had a lot of dialogue and other events happening, of course. He did say that it was more for "the thinkers" in the audience and that it wasn't a special effects extravaganza, by any stretch of the imagination (sounds like an updated version of 2001 to me). Basically, it's an intellectual science-fiction film, which is all good in my book.

Asked about his future projects, Cameron did say that THE FANTASTIC FOUR do "rock", but that he "didn't have any plans to do it right now." As for any other sci-fi movies, he said that the adaptation of a certain manga title was on his "short list" at this point. All in all, a decent time with the king of our world.

SAN DIEGO COMIC CON 2002

The Arrow and I went down to San Diego for yet another awesome COMIC CONVENTION this year (check out our 2000 and 2001 reports respectively), and let me tell you...there was a lot of shit going on and lots of cool and surprising cameos. Starting Wednesday, each of the panel coverages will go up, so check out what's to come below. And yes, the always popular PHOTO GALLERY will be up on Friday.

The Hellboy panel:
Writer/director Guillermo Del Toro, actor Ron Perlman and writer/artist Mike Mignola discuss the upcoming comic-to-film project, as Del Toro sneaks a few dozen "fucks" in there before the panel's first 10 minutes is up.

The Bulletproof Monk panel:
Actor Seann William Scott and actress/babe Jamie King sit down and discuss their collaboration on the upcoming THE BULLETPROOF MONK, which also co-stars the very cool Chow Yun-Fat.

The House of the Dead panel:
Writers Mark. A. Altman and Dave Parker discuss the 2003 release of yet another video game making its way to the big screen: THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD. And what's this about a VAMPIRELLA movie? Stay tuned.

SONY/COLUMBIA

The XXX panel:
Actress/babe Asia Argento hops on stage and tells us a little something about herself and her upcoming movie with a certain Vin Diesel. Does Vin show up unexpectedly?? (only in my dreams... ;)

The Tooth Fairy panel:
Actress/babe Emma Caulfield discusses her upcoming foray into genre flicks with TOOTH FAIRY, and the Arrow takes a few moments to discuss the film with director Jonathan Liebesman. Tooth-pulling ensues.

NEW LINE

The LOTR: The Two Towers panel:
No footage was shown but we did get a couple of bits tossed our way, as well as some cameos by Frodo, Pippin and Merry themselves (aka Elijah Wood, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan).

WARNER BROS

The Ecks vs Sever panel:
Actress/babe Lucy Lui sits next to actor/Darth Maul Ray Park and director Kaos (who explained the origins of his name) to discuss their collaboration with the man with the golden cock, Antonio Banderas, in a little something called BALLISTIC: ECKS VS SEVER (and yes, it's also based on a video game).

The Dreamcatcher panel:
Actor/all-around cool guy Jason Lee and actor Timothy Olyphant get on stage to field some questions about the film which they are presently shooting, based on a Stephen King novel, entitled DREAMCATCHER, but are instead pelted with questions about Kevin Smith movies and requests to repeat cool quotes from said flicks.

The Terminator 3 surprise:
Unbeknownst to most, director Jonathan Mostow was nice enough to drop by the Con, in order to show off a few minutes of the highly anticipated sequel to the sequel of THE TERMINATOR. Another "small" cameo dropped by to pay his props to the fanboys, a gentleman by the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

UNIVERSAL

The Hulk panel:
Director Ang Lee and producers Gale Anne Hurd, Larry J. Franco and Avi Arad stop by to show us some stills of the 2003 release of THE HULK (that's right, no actual footage or pics of the green monster...darn!) and answer some questions.

FOX

The Solaris surprise:
Yet another big surprise came in writer/director/king of the world James Cameron showing up for a quick Q&A about the upcoming sci-fi flick SOLARIS (which he produced and Steven Soderbergh wrote and directed), as well as a 4-minute clip from the actual movie, starring George Clooney.

The X-Men 2 panel:
Director Bryan Singer was nice enough to leave his Vancouver set of X2 and come down to Diego for some questions from the audience and to show us the coolest 2-minute clip that I saw all weekend. Wow!! The man apparently has only been shooting from about 3-4 weeks, but from what we all saw of the clip...this movie looks like a fuckin' slam-dunk!

The Daredevil panel:
This was one of the biggest panels with writer/director Mark Steven Johnson leading the pack, alongside DAREDEVIL himself, Ben Affleck, as well as producer Avi Arad, Gary Foster and comic guru Joe Quesada. Yet another exclusive clip was shown from the movie, and it will also be discussed.

The official 2002 JoBlo.com Photo Gallery:
Pictures from our trip to California / Vegas for anyone who gives a shit. Here are the links to last year's photo gallery and the one from 2000.