Hall H has been home to some strange films over the last few years; films that most wouldn’t think would have a place during an event called Comic Con. Then again, the entire expo has shifted gears so much in recent years that we shouldn’t really be super surprised by anything anymore. I guess that’s why a movie with John Cusack playing Edgar Allan Poe and an action film by Steven Soderbergh are playing here this year.
The Relativity Media panel is set to begin shortly and I’ll be live blogging straight from Hall H! Keep refreshing this page for comments and footage descriptions!
12:22: Moderator is on stage to introduce the panels. Bringing together scary stories and ass-kicking women.
12:25: Haywire will be up first. Here's the trailer!
12:28: Pretty asskicking trailer, though the movie looks a tad bit generic. Basically Gina Carano being set up and left for dead and she goes on a revenge spree.
12:29: Steven Soderbergh, Gina Carano, Channing Tatum on the stage!
12:30: Soderbergh built the movie around Carano after seeing her fight in an MMA match on CBS. He was amazed nobody thought of making a movie around her before.
12:31: Soderbergh didn't have the story immediately in mind, but contacted Lem Dobbs, who he worked on The Limey with, to work on the script and it all came together. Gina says that Steven told her it was going to happen fast or not at all.
12:32: Apparently Tatum actually asked Carano to kick him harder at one point. Probably not the greatest idea in the world. Tatum says that he has been a huge fan of MMA for a while.
12:34: Carano describes Mallory Caine as a former military special ops woman who gets the job done and gets double-crossed. Caine is a professional who believes in what she does, follows in the footsteps of her father (Bill Paxton) who was also in the military.
12:35: The movie opens with the Carano and Tatum in a diner where things go horribly wrong. Then she steals a car from Michael Angarano, they go back to where the story actually began, and then it plays normally.
12:36: Soderbergh says fights are shorter than you normally see because he's going for reality. Actors were padded a little bit, but you can tell that there is some serious amount of pain going on. Poor Michael Fassbender. Everything was very choreographed. About to show a clip featuring Fassbender and Carano in a hotel room.
UPDATE: Here is the clip description:
They enter the hotel. Quiet, peaceful. Fassbender in a suit, Carano in a dress. They open the hotel door, she takes off her shoes. She thanks him when she lets him in. He slams her in the back of the head and slams her into a wall. Amazing fight breaks out. They tear the hotel apart. Serious punches. Slamming vases. No hyper sounnd effects, just sounds real. Skilled, trained fighting. She puts him in a chokehold, Fassbender slams her into a wall. She kicks him through a glass door. He throws her into a TV. They then land on the bed where Carano takes Fassbender’s head between her legs and starts squeezing until he just about passes out. She throws him to the floor, gets a gun from under the mattress, puts a pillow over Fassbender’s head and fires. Guess his role in this movie is fairly short.
12:37: Ewan McGregor is the boss, sends Carano to Dublin to team up with Fassbender and spy on someone. During a dinner she discovers that she is being framed for a murder. Fassbender doesn't know she knows when the seen happens.
12:42: Clip was incredibly awesome. No hyper-stylized fighting, just really real and brutal. Will have full description coming later
12:43: At the start of shooting Tatum hesitated hitting Carano with a ketchup bottle, but then she called him a pussy. Then he did it, she hit him, and he didn't want to be hit again.
12:45: Tatum says he can't talk about G.I. Joe 2 but is looking forward to working with The Rock (who threatened to pop his head off if he said anything)
12:46: Carano says she enjoyed being banged into all the stuff and it was incredible. Then she realized what she just said. Insert plenty of laughter.
12:48: Soderbergh said he got into the industry just because he loves loves movies.
12:49: Question about Soderbergh's retirement: "Matt Damon is about as discrete as a 14 year old girl" Drunken conversation while shooting Contagion and it was in the paper. Soderbergh was going off. Nobody wants to hear about quitting a good job, and it got blown out of proportion.
12:49: Soderbergh tells a story about Fassbender getting hit in the face with a vase. Soderbergh told him not to look at the vase. He looked at the vase and got it full in the face. That take is used in the movie, but he was hurt.
12:49: Haywire is over, time for The Raven!
12:56: James McTigue comes out to introduce trailer. Movie takes place in last five days of Edgar Allan Poe's life.
12:56: Trailer looks really interesting. Very dark and uses Poe's best-known stories in interesting ways.
12:57: Alice Eve gets buried alive. Had to eat a lot of dirt - James threw it in her face (he claims it was clean)
12:57: James McTigue draws comparisons between the film's themes and tones with Misery, Jaws and Se7en.
1:03: Poe says there's nothing more tragic than a beautiful women dying. Cusack says it was Poe's raison d'etre
1:05: Women were a big part of Poe's life. John says it was all conjecture that he wasn't there, but Poe didn't like the company of men - saw any man and wanted to fight and insult him - he just felt more comfortable with women. His vision of women was very idealized that went back to losing his mother and first wife dying and abandoning him. He was a bit of a rock star and go to high society functions, go to the white house, get drunk and thrown out.
1:07: Many of them read "Poe: A Life Cut Short" to prepare for the film. Also a lot of letters out there on tape with the music of Lou Reed.
1:08: Cusack is about to start The Paperboy. Alice Eve just finished Men in Black 3, finished Entourage. McTigue is just trying to finish The Raven. Luke Evans is playing a psycho in a horror film and has Immortals and The Three Musketeers...oh, and The Hobbit.
1:11: Cusack says the idea of the movie is like someone's dream about Poe.
1:13: Apparently there's a scene in Luke Evans' new movie where he cuts someone up and climbs inside their body. Holy shit.
1:14: Requests for questions for Alice Eve. Next guys up asks what it's like for John to work with Alice Eve. While working John asked why it was so great working with Alice, and James said, "She has a secret."
1:16: John calls the film a pop movie and an art movie at the same time.
1:19: Any plans for John to work with his sister again. Alice says, “Children.” Hooray for incest jokes.
1:19: That's all she wrote! Now we wait for the next one!
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