This year’s Comic-Con International was looking like it would be a bit lame with studios like Marvel, Paramount, Warner Bros, and other big companies dropping out of the festivities entirely. That means we won’t be seeing massive lines for Hall H and a glimpse at Henry Cavill in the Superman suit or footage of Thor and Hulk whomping on each other.

Instead we’re getting some of the lesser known properties in that famous football stadium-sized room known as “Hall H” such as The Knights of Badassdom and Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil. With the very first day of programming for the ‘Con announced, it looks like we’re going to be getting just that, and a truck load of TV.

One good note is that all things Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 will be in the early half of Thursday, leaving the rest of the weekend vampire free (except for those Southern vamps from True Blood).

Check out the full day’s schedule after the jump, and head to their official Scheduler app, so you can make official the things you want to see that weekend!

Continue Reading →

With E3 over, the next big summer event in the geek world is Comic-Con in San Diego. Every year, more than a hundred thousand people descend upon San Diego, taking over the city and enveloping it in geekdom.

There isn’t a corner you can turn without seeing a Green Lantern T-shirt or a bar you can walk into that doesn’t have a revised comic book inspired martini list. It is nerd paradise.

But, Comic-Con isn’t all Batmobiles and conversations with Jim Lee. There is a darker side to the Con that becomes increasingly apparent (and annoying) once you get there.

As much as we love the Con, there are a few things we wouldn’t mind living without for our week in San Diego.

Twilight

The past few years, Comic-Con has been invaded by screaming teenage girls and even louder overeager cougars in search of their first glimpse of the latest trailers of the Twilight saga. Twilight is not comics. It’s not even geek.

Ask any person on the street to tell you what they imagine a vampire looks like before Twilight came out and not a single one would mention “sparkles.” The vampires that most people love revolve around sex and violence, not good Christian values and celibacy. Real vampires don’t shimmer, they kill people.

Continue Reading →

This weekend we got the first look at the final Twilight film adaptation at the MTV Movie Awards. The story was broken up into two films with Breaking Dawn Parts 1 & 2.

The second and last film is releasing later this year and has a bit of a detailed back story, so be sure to keep up with this heavy plot.

In the highly anticipated next chapter of the blockbuster The Twilight Saga, the new found married bliss of Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) is cut short when a series of betrayals and misfortunes threatens to destroy their world.

After their wedding, Bella and Edward travel to Rio de Janeiro for their honeymoon, where they finally give in to their passions. Bella soon discovers she is pregnant, and during a nearly fatal childbirth, Edward finally fulfills her wish to become immortal.

But the arrival of their remarkable daughter, Renesmee, sets in motion a perilous chain of events that pits the Cullens and their allies against the Volturi, the fearsome council of vampire leaders, setting the stage for an all-out battle.

We’ve got the first trailer for you to check out after the jump, so hit that, and be sure to hit Breaking Dawn Part 1 in theaters November 18th.

Continue Reading →

We’re less than 2 months away from the third film in the Twilight Saga, titled Eclipse, to hit theaters, but that won’t slow down Summit Entertainment, as they’ve already locked the final film, Breaking Dawn, in with a release date of November 18, 2011.

Between this release date and news of Academy Award winning director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters) joining the project, we’re getting a good amount of answers for a film that was once called by producers “unfilmable.” Questions we still need answered? Will this book be adapted into two films, much like the adaptation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows? Also, can we expect the same 3D treatment that just about every other film next year will be getting?

This new release date puts Dawn up against some pretty heavy hitters, including Real Steel starring Hugh Jackman, from comedy director Shawn Levy, as well as Relativity Media’s Immortals in 3D, Happy Feet 2 in 3D, and the Shrek spinoff, Puss in Boots.

It’s no doubt that Dawn will take the weekend, if not the month of November in the box office, but the questions now lie with the production. Can Summit and Condon film the “unfilmable”? We should find out later this year, as Breaking Dawn starts shooting this fall.

While Twilight was a guilty pleasure, its sequel New Moon just made me feel guilty. Guilty for paying a sitter, guilty for the gas I wasted, and guilty for buying into the Twilight phenomenon to begin with. A wretched excursion into franchise baiting, New Moon is flat out an embarrassment for everyone involved.

Briefly, if you don’t know the story of the sequel, Bella Swan is a mortal in love with a vampire, Edward Cullen. Towards the beginning of New Moon, Edward realises that it is too dangerous for Bella to continue seeing him, so he pretends that he doesn’t love her anymore and disappears. Bella behaves like a petulant infant and doesn’t leave her room for months because she is a narcissistic, co-dependent teenager.

When she finally emerges after months of alienating friends and family, she sidles up to Jacob, a local boy of Native American descent, who also is a werewolf. Bella then becomes co-dependent on Jacob, because that is what she does. She also becomes a thrill seeker, because whenever she endangers her life (via cliff diving, motorcycling, etc) she sees a floating spectre of Edward pleading for her to quit engaging in said risky behavior. In her melodramatic mind, this is how she can be close to her beloved Edward, if only for a second. That’s a healthy depiction of true love, right?

Continue Reading →