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Lord of the Rings - Web Log Reports
Comic Con 2003 Day 4
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Views expressed in these reports are those of Ian Smith only, and do not in any way reflect the views or opinions of The Official Fan Club, TheOneRing.net or any other fan organisation that might have linked to this site!

Preview Night Day 1 Day 2 Day 3, page 1 Day 3, page 2 Day 4 Panel Transcript
With a flight back to the UK scheduled for mid-afternoon, the Brits hadn't really intended to attend the last day of Comic-Con - if only we'd been forewarned of flight delays owing to the British Airways unofficial strike at Heathrow! In fact we popped along to say our "Goodbye"s and to pick up the last lithograph from New Line - which turned out to be the complete set of three already handed out, making us feel rather foolish about having queued for each of the previous three days to get them one-by-one. They ran out very quickly as lucky Sunday attendees realised what was being given away.

Kate Beckinsale at Underworld and Van Helsing panels on Saturday

Hugh Jackman

Official unveiling of first Spider-Man 2 poster for Doctor Octopus

Sala Baker with the girls from The Dark Side

 Sean Astin was doing signings all day at an exhibition floor stand that proved virtually impossible to track down, and there was the usual queue chaos when we eventually found the right stand, with people in a shortish queue for Freddy vs Jason actor Robert Englund thinking they were in the queue for Sean - organisation for these signings really does need to be a LOT better next year as yet again, the queueing system was unfair! In the end we just didn't have time to hang around, although friends who did have enthusiastic reports on how warm and friendly Astin was and apparently he was joined by Andy Serkis doing signings later on that day.

A quick "last trip" round the hall revealed some amazing life-size statues of Lurtz, a Prologue orc and gollum on rock - available for purchase 'pending license approval', and not badly priced at eg $700 for Gollum. But before we knew it, it was time to say our goodbye's which seemed to take forever as late-arriving members of our party rolled up wanting to repeat the whole 'group hug' process again and again!

Susan, who'd kindly put three of us up for a few days before we got to the convention, selflessly missed the New Line session on the Saturday, to queue early for the hobbit signing that took place on the Saturday immediately after the panel. Some of the fun pictures I've taken over the last few months have involved one of our friends, Bill Powers, from the San Diego, who is still stationed out in Kuwait. Susan took one of my pictures of Bill from last year's Comic-Con, had the head blown-up life-size and we have taken photo's of it in various compromising positions (most of which are unsuitable for a family friendly site) at various events this year. Bill was instrumental in helping me get such good photo's last Comic-Con, reserving seats, helping me lug my gear around etc and I missed him this trip out. Susan managed to get Elijah, Sean and Dom to sign the blow-up of his head that we'd been using (photo shown bottom right as Susan does not want to risk sending the original out to Kuwait with an unreliable postal service) and which is now "in retirement" awaiting Bill's return to San Diego in August.

And that was Comic-Con! 		Spider-Man 2 producers Marvel's Avi Arad and ?

Doctor Octopus actor, Alfred Molina

Andy Serkis with the sculpture of his CGI counterpart

Hobbit signatures on Bill Powers' head
It remains only for me to thank all those, too numerous to name individually, who helped out with getting these photo's and enabling me to put these reports together. This year was much easier thanks to the $10/day wireless Internet activity available in my hotel (Thanks to Susan and John Brock for sorting all that out). It's my name at the top of these pages (because, after all, it IS all about me!) but the fact is these reports and photo's only happen because of the hard work of a lot of un-named fans. Thanks everyone - you're the best, and the Brits in my party look forward to seeing you all again next oscar party!

Just a quick final note: British fans, constantly complaining about how hard done to they are with all these events abroad, might want to check out the Collectormania 4 web site since pretty much the same cast members (Andy Serkis, Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan) are expected to be appearing there (although at the time of writing this hadn't been confirmed on the main Home page, it was confirmed by the organisers in its forums).

Remaining planned weblogs for the end of this year:
October 4th: Collectormania 4 (Three hobbits and Gollum do signings at Milton Keynes)
November 16th: RingCon*2003 (John Rhys-Davies, Craig Parker, Bruce Hopkins and other cast members in Bonn, German)
November 25th: Red Carpet Premiere Tour (New Zealand) There may be an additional weblog from The Edinburgh Festival in August if I can get some LOTR-related photo's.


Don't forget you can check out reports of lots of other Lord of the Rings -themed events in the Web Logs section
Email: ian@iansmith.co.uk