Monday, March 5, 2007

Get Ur Geek On

On Sunday, Hillary and I totally got our geek on by attending WonderCon, San Francisco's major convention of comics and sci-fi. Neither of us had ever attended one of these before, but our mutual appreciation for Buffy, Firefly,and Battlestar Galactica lead us to believe we might have more in common with the traditional attendee than we initially perceived, This may or may not be true, but there was much fun to be had.

The main attraction for us was a panel featuring Jane Espenson on gender and genre. If you didn't know, Espenson was a producer on Buffy for the final four seasons, penning such memorable episodes as "Earshot" and "Storyteller." She's also scripted Gilmore Girls, The OC, Firefly, Angel, Ellen, and currently resides on the Battlestar and Andy Barker, PI staffs. While some pre-screened internet questions may not have been the most insightful, Espenson was in fine form, talking about the metaphor of female violence, stating she recently brought up the lack of homosexuality on Battlestar to the show's producers, and given a question criticizing the writing of empowered female characters as "simply acting like men" the dismissal it deserved. Yours truly even got a question in regarding what discussions what on amongst the writers in terms of Willow's sometimes problematic turn evil.

Later we got a sneak peek of the trailer for a new fox show from Tim Minear (whose written for Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Lost, and the underappreciated Wonderfalls) called Drive. Firefly heartthrob Nathan Fillion is one of the show's stars and got a rousing ovation from the crowd when he joined a fellow castmate and two writers on a panel regarding the show. I'm not so sure about this show yet, but I'll certainly give it a shot when it premieres in April ... looks kind of like Lost meets Fast and the Furious.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I heart panel discussions, and this sounds like a good one! Glad you guys had fun.

The Kingston Film Fest starts Wednesday and I'm already getting excited for the panel discussion on Degrassi. Woot! My production prof used to direction the original series, and we've got new and old actors coming in. Should be good times.

Oh, and someone (an actor) from Battlestar Galactica is coming to speek in my class on Wednesday...I can't remember her name though. I shall let you know if anything interests comes of it.

Anonymous said...

Wow, that sort of reminds me of when the Simpsons went to the BiMoSciFiCon!