The LOTR: The Two Towers panel
by JoBlo

Who was there?
Director Peter Jackson (video message)
Special Effects dude Richard Taylor
Surprise guests:
Actor Elijah Wood
Actor Billy Boyd
Actor Dominic Monaghan

As most of you already know, I'm not the greatest connoisseur of all things Tolkien, so this was one of those panels which I felt was mostly going to go over my head. As it turns out, it wasn't as bad as I thought, in fact, some of the special effects statistics were staggering, to say the least and Jackson's message to the crowd was slick. One thing that I did expect but didn't get during this panel was new footage of the upcoming THE TWO TOWERS though. It would have been nice if they had screened the 10-minute behind-the-scenes footage at least, since it's going to be on every copy of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING dvd, which came out yesterday!! (only 3 days after this panel took place). Oh well, I guess you can't have it all. What we did get was the trailer shown a couple of times, lots of applause (folks love their LOTR!) and a few neat surprise guests, all of whom came out in their flip-flops.

Director Peter Jackson also started the whole panel off with a heartfelt video message transmitted on the big screens, on which he sincerely apologized for not being in San Diego with the rest of us geeks, because he was still in New Zealand working on THE TWO TOWERS in post-production. He did thank everyone for making the first film such a grand success though, and acknowledged the power of the many LOTR fans in the audience and around the world. He also promised that he would make it out to California, and specifically, the San Diego Comic Con, one of these years, because he'd heard about how amazing it was and wanted to come and pay his respects, personally. The whole thing felt real and was pretty sweet of the big lug.

Jackson's video message was followed by a featurette of the upcoming LOTR video game, due out November 2002, which looked quite cool, if I say so myself. The game allows you to run around Middle-Earth and kick-ass as the characters from the book/movie. The graphics were really great and it looked like a month's worth of fun, if you dig that kind of thing.

That was followed by yet another featurette, but this time, it was about THE TWO TOWERS, and more specifically, actor Christopher Lee (can you believe this dude is 80 years old!!-- looking great for his age), and showcased a few behind-the-scenes snippets from the movies. Peter Jackson also noted how Lee was "one of the biggest LOTR fans" that he'd ever met and that he knew that Lee actually read the book "at least once a year for the past three decades". Jackson said that he didn't even have to speak to Lee about his character of Saruman since the man "already knew him inside and out." Lee was also interviewed and revealed that he had always dreamt of seeing LOTR make it to the big screen, and hoped even more so, that he would eventually get a part in the possible film. Lee said, "It just goes to show that sometimes...dreams can come true."

That was followed with Richard Taylor getting up on stage, the man behind the WETA group, who took care of many of the effects, make-up and costumes in the movies, who went through his entire experience with director Peter Jackson, starting from their New Zealand days on BAD TASTE, MEET THE FEEBLES, DEAD ALIVE and so forth. He also showed a small montage of his company's effects from Peter's films, which was somewhat impressive (I gotta go rent THE FRIGHTENERS again) and explained that after the former film, Peter wanted to do a remake of KING KONG, but that his plans had fallen through. Then one day, Peter told him that he wanted to do THE HOBBIT with his group. Richard and his team apparently started working on designs and stuff for about two months before Peter came up to him again and said that he'd "changed his mind".  Luckily for all involved, he decided that he wanted to do the entire LORD OF THE RINGS instead, and the rest as they say...is still history in the making.

After the montage of clips, Richard brought out several of his teammates on the effects group, as well as some of the actors who had to endure the many hours of make-up to get into their characters (Lawrence Makoare who played Lurtz in the film spoke about how it would take him 11 hours a day to get into his entire make-up gear-- they would start working on the man at 10pm and finish at 9 the next morning). After all that was said and done, three special guests were invited out and the crowd went bonkers as Frodo, Pippin and Merry themselves showed up in the flesh, better known as Elijah Wood, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan. This was followed up with a Q&A for all involved, but to be honest with you, there were VERY FEW substantial questions asked. It was basically a lot of people asking for autographs and pictures and shit. Kinda annoying and the rest of the crowd agreed as every other bullshit request would be followed by a massive groan from the audience.

Overall, the panel wasn't as boring or exciting as I thought (no new clips?), so there you have it.

Click here to check out the official LORD OF THE RINGS website
  

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.