Supanova 2004 convention report
It's been almost a month now since I went to Supanova, so I guess it's past time that I said something about it.
To sum it up, I had a blast. I've been going to Supanova and its earlier incarnation, Comicfest, for years. It's more of a commercial convention than a fannish one, and the main draw for me is the shopping - dozens of vendors selling comics and SF merchandise and gaming stuff and, in more recent years, anime and manga.
There's usually a fair line up of special guests as well - in the past, I've gotten to meet some really cool people like Virginia Hey, David Mack, J G Hertzler, Robert O'Reilly, and the guys from Team Red Star. This year, there were a couple of guests I was pretty excited about, the main one being George Takei (SULU!!!).
George Takei (Sulu, Star Trek)
George Takei is someone I'd probably describe as a lovely gentleman. He was an articulate and confident speaker - as you would expect from someone who's spent so long on the convention circuit - and full of wry humour. He also had the most wonderful voice. He opened by paying compliments to Sydney, which he has visited before, and talked about how he'd done the BridgeClimb and tried Balmain bugs.
He spoke about the impact of Star Trek when it first aired - how until then television was seen as lightweight entertainment, instead of something that could educate, inform, challenge, and inspire. Listening to him talk about these things *was* pretty inspirational.
He also gave insights into things like his favourite episodes ('The Naked Time', because Sulu got to run around with a sword and do some swashbuckling, and 'Mirror, Mirror', because he got to play a dark version of his character). His favourite of the movies was Star Trek VI, which he said should have been subtitled 'Captain Sulu to the Rescue'. He had a thousand and one other fascinating stories to share, and it was a great experience to hear him speak.
John Noble (Denethor, The Lord of the Rings)
Supanova had originally advertised that John Rhys-Davies would be one of the special guests, but he ended up being replaced by John Noble instead. The first thing that came into my mind when I saw him was, "He looks pretty normal without the wig." I hadn't actually realised he was an Aussie actor. He was a pretty good speaker too, and he had lots of entertaining anecdotes about the making of the movies.
When it came to Q&A time, the first question was, "I heard that all the cast members got to keep something from the movies. What did you choose?" The response: "You just had to ask that question, didn't you?" Apparently he didn't get to pick out anything to keep, which he said he was still bitter about. According to him, after the filming was done, most of the actors got callbacks to redo lines, and that was when they were distributing the various props. But he didn't get a callback ("Because I did it right the first time!") and so he missed out. He'd wanted to keep Denethor's sword, and he told us he was still trying to find out what had happened to it.
He also talked about filming a scene that involved him falling backwards onto some stairs, which Peter Jackson made him do seventeen times (without the benefit of any padding). And he told us he had seen the Extended Edition of The Return of the King (since he had to do a commentary track for it) and that he believed it was a vastly superior movie to the one that got the Oscar. And of course he talked about how Denethor wasn't really evil.
Xenia Seeberg (Xev, LEXX)
I'd watched the first season of LEXX and enjoyed it a lot, especially the performance of Eva Habermann as the original Zev. So I'd been been kind of wary about the idea of her being replaced in the second season by Xenia Seeberg as the new Xev.
But after hearing Xenia Seeberg's talk at Supanova, I was a little less apprehensive about it. She told us about what she was trying to do with the character - give her more range, make her more three dimensional, have her do comedy as well as drama - and it sounded pretty interesting. She also mentioned that she had actually been offered the role originally but had turned it down. She was approached again when Eva Habermann left, and this time she accepted it. She also talked a bit about what it was like on the set, and about the other work she'd done. The questions were sort of sparse, since LEXX is kind of an obscure series and a lot of the audience probably weren't familiar with it. But still, it was a reasonably interesting session.
Shopping
I bought much more than I planned to at Supanova - mostly zines from Artists' Alley, including the latest Moshi Moshi, the long-awaited second issue of Knee Pockets, the first volume of The Angriest Video Store Clerk In The World, a manga called Acacia Destiny which was put together as the author's HSC major work, and a whole heap of other stuff. Also got a trib copy of Shounen Ai: Boys' Love Remix (thanks pirochan), and zero_sum gave me a really cute keychain of a superdeformed Paine. And I found something I'd been meaning to get my hands on for a while - a copy of the Witchblade Deluxe Collected Edition, which is basically the first eight issues of the Witchblade comic compiled into a graphic novel. Bwahahahahah. Expect a review soon.
So that was my Supanova - a pretty good experience all round. Looking forward to the next con - Manifest, coming up in August...
To sum it up, I had a blast. I've been going to Supanova and its earlier incarnation, Comicfest, for years. It's more of a commercial convention than a fannish one, and the main draw for me is the shopping - dozens of vendors selling comics and SF merchandise and gaming stuff and, in more recent years, anime and manga.
There's usually a fair line up of special guests as well - in the past, I've gotten to meet some really cool people like Virginia Hey, David Mack, J G Hertzler, Robert O'Reilly, and the guys from Team Red Star. This year, there were a couple of guests I was pretty excited about, the main one being George Takei (SULU!!!).
George Takei (Sulu, Star Trek)
George Takei is someone I'd probably describe as a lovely gentleman. He was an articulate and confident speaker - as you would expect from someone who's spent so long on the convention circuit - and full of wry humour. He also had the most wonderful voice. He opened by paying compliments to Sydney, which he has visited before, and talked about how he'd done the BridgeClimb and tried Balmain bugs.
He spoke about the impact of Star Trek when it first aired - how until then television was seen as lightweight entertainment, instead of something that could educate, inform, challenge, and inspire. Listening to him talk about these things *was* pretty inspirational.
He also gave insights into things like his favourite episodes ('The Naked Time', because Sulu got to run around with a sword and do some swashbuckling, and 'Mirror, Mirror', because he got to play a dark version of his character). His favourite of the movies was Star Trek VI, which he said should have been subtitled 'Captain Sulu to the Rescue'. He had a thousand and one other fascinating stories to share, and it was a great experience to hear him speak.
John Noble (Denethor, The Lord of the Rings)
Supanova had originally advertised that John Rhys-Davies would be one of the special guests, but he ended up being replaced by John Noble instead. The first thing that came into my mind when I saw him was, "He looks pretty normal without the wig." I hadn't actually realised he was an Aussie actor. He was a pretty good speaker too, and he had lots of entertaining anecdotes about the making of the movies.
When it came to Q&A time, the first question was, "I heard that all the cast members got to keep something from the movies. What did you choose?" The response: "You just had to ask that question, didn't you?" Apparently he didn't get to pick out anything to keep, which he said he was still bitter about. According to him, after the filming was done, most of the actors got callbacks to redo lines, and that was when they were distributing the various props. But he didn't get a callback ("Because I did it right the first time!") and so he missed out. He'd wanted to keep Denethor's sword, and he told us he was still trying to find out what had happened to it.
He also talked about filming a scene that involved him falling backwards onto some stairs, which Peter Jackson made him do seventeen times (without the benefit of any padding). And he told us he had seen the Extended Edition of The Return of the King (since he had to do a commentary track for it) and that he believed it was a vastly superior movie to the one that got the Oscar. And of course he talked about how Denethor wasn't really evil.
Xenia Seeberg (Xev, LEXX)
I'd watched the first season of LEXX and enjoyed it a lot, especially the performance of Eva Habermann as the original Zev. So I'd been been kind of wary about the idea of her being replaced in the second season by Xenia Seeberg as the new Xev.
But after hearing Xenia Seeberg's talk at Supanova, I was a little less apprehensive about it. She told us about what she was trying to do with the character - give her more range, make her more three dimensional, have her do comedy as well as drama - and it sounded pretty interesting. She also mentioned that she had actually been offered the role originally but had turned it down. She was approached again when Eva Habermann left, and this time she accepted it. She also talked a bit about what it was like on the set, and about the other work she'd done. The questions were sort of sparse, since LEXX is kind of an obscure series and a lot of the audience probably weren't familiar with it. But still, it was a reasonably interesting session.
Shopping
I bought much more than I planned to at Supanova - mostly zines from Artists' Alley, including the latest Moshi Moshi, the long-awaited second issue of Knee Pockets, the first volume of The Angriest Video Store Clerk In The World, a manga called Acacia Destiny which was put together as the author's HSC major work, and a whole heap of other stuff. Also got a trib copy of Shounen Ai: Boys' Love Remix (thanks pirochan), and zero_sum gave me a really cute keychain of a superdeformed Paine. And I found something I'd been meaning to get my hands on for a while - a copy of the Witchblade Deluxe Collected Edition, which is basically the first eight issues of the Witchblade comic compiled into a graphic novel. Bwahahahahah. Expect a review soon.
So that was my Supanova - a pretty good experience all round. Looking forward to the next con - Manifest, coming up in August...