D23 : John Carter Footage Breakdown

We took a moment to survive a category 1 hurricane but now we are BACK into our D23 roundup with Steve Sievers of level27media.com giving us a rundown of all the wonders Disney had on display. Plenty to ooo and ahh at still to come! For now, we jump back into the Disney Films presentation for a little John Carter action...

Sean Bailey, President of Productions of Walt Disney came out to talk about John Carter. This 3D movie is based on the 1911 novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs who is most famous as the author of Tarzan. Sean introduces Producer Jim Morris and director Andrew Stanton to the stage. Andrew talks about how he read the books and 1970's Marvel comic book series as a kid and has been picturing this movie in his head since then. The movie follows John Carter, a Civil War veteran from Virginia who goes through a cave and is transported to Mars. There he finds himself amid the chaos of war and learns that with less gravity he is now stronger and can jump higher than the natives. The stars of the films hit the stage including Taylor Kitsch who plays John Carter (from TV’s Friday Night Lights & Gambit in the Wolverine movie. I personally think it is about time he got a lead in an action movie!) Lynn Collins comes out next. She plays Dejah Thoris who guides John Carter on his adventure on Mars. Willem Dafoe is last on stage, playing Tars Tarkas, the alien from Mars. Willem's character is CG in the film but he wore a grey motion capture suit on set and had to walk around on stilts in the desert. Willem talked about how he had to train for weeks before shooting to figure out not only how to walk on the stilts but act on them as well. Lucky he didn't have any falls out on the rugged terrain. Taylor Kitsch was proud to say he did most of his own stunts!

Next up: Eye Candy! First, they showed the trailer ..

Then they showed a bunch of clips from the film. Here’s the skinny:

1: John Carter first wakes up on Mars. He comes across a nest of alien eggs hatching with these cute babies crawling around. An alien group is riding these alien looking horses (you get the picture..it’s an alien jamboree) across the plains. One of them throws a spear at John. John jumps out of the way and quickly learns that he can jump way higher than he normally could. One of the aliens gets off his horse and pleads to his fellow aliens to not hurt John. It is Tars Tarkas, who tries to communicate with John (the aliens don't speak English.) Tars drops his gun and the spears he has on his back. He tries to get John to jump again because no one has ever seen that before. John does it, but jumps over Tars to the weapons he has left at the bottom of the hill. One of the other aliens, still on his ride, starts to fire his gun at John but Tars shields him from the bullet. END OF CLIP

2: John Carter wakes up in a jail cell with his hands chained to the wall. The camera pans down and we see that the cute, newly hatched aliens from the first clip are on the ground around him sleeping with many of them curled up in his lap with legs like little puppy dogs. Many women in the audience can be heard saying Awww how cute. (GOLD!) John uses his Mars super strength to break free. He starts to explore and meets his new best friend, an alien dog with 12 legs. The dog instantly falls in love with John and all it wants to do is lick his face. John tries to run away but the dog keeps following him. Finally John does his super jump to get away, but every time he does this, the dog appears next to him. During the next jump, we see the dog uses his 12 legs to run as fast as the Flash and is able to climb up the rocky terrain without hesitation. END OF CLIP

3: John Carter has his warrior gear on (what he wears in the trailer) and is in the private chambers of Dejah Thoris (she looks just like a human.. seems human or human-like aliens are a race on Mars.) She is a princess and is being forced to marry someone from a rival (tribe?) on Mars to try and keep the peace. At this point you can tell that she and John have fallen in love. John is trying to talk her out of the marriage. She attempts to give him a blue medallion and have him speak an oath to become leader of (I would assume) her warrior clan. Meanwhile the door is getting knocked on and people are trying to break in. She tells John she has no choice and looks down at his finger at the wedding ring he wears (we assume he is married to someone back on Earth.) She starts to teach him the oath and as he repeats it, the medallion begins to glow. He stops on the last phrase of the oath and she yells at him to "Say it!" Meanwhile the door bursts open and people come rushing in to her chambers ask "are you ok?" Yes, she replies. "Are you alone in here?" She sadly turns her back and a tear comes out "Yes...I am alone." END OF CLIP

4: John and Tars are sentenced to death and are in gladiator arena that looks straight out of a scene from Star Wars : Attack of the Clones when they are on Geonosis. John’s left ankle is handcuffed with a long chain to the wall while Tars is injured on his right side and holds his wound in agony. A gate opens and a huge White Ape with 4 arms emerges. The ape attacks Tars and John but both keep dodging out of its way. John is trying his best to pull the chain out of the wall to free himself. The audience in the arena are cheering loudly and we see someone in a kingly-type press box say "Release the other one." Another gate opens and a second giant white ape with four arms comes out. END OF CLIP

Check out more images from D23 by CLICKING HERE!

D23 2011 : The Avengers Footage

Skipping ahead to the panel most people hit up this Disneypalooza for.. Steve Sievers of level27media.com gives us a rundown of the footage shown for next year's most anticipated movie...The AVENGERS!!

Producer / President of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige comes out to talk about The AVENGERS( coming May 2012)! I was hoping he would also talk about other Marvel movies in the works but he didn't say anything. Right off the bat, he introduces a clip saying "I know why you guys are here!"

The clips starts out with Nick Fury looking at Loki, who is in a giant glass dome jail cell. Nick goes over to a control panel and says "You if you scratch my glass you will fall 30,000 feet to your death" We can safely assume they are on the Shield Helicarrier. This is confirmed when the bottom of the jail opens up and we can see clouds below. Loki says he is impressed with this jail, but it wasn't designed to hold someone like him. Nick goes into a rant about how Loki tried to take the cube and use its power for bad and "kill for fun." Loki goes into a rant about how humans don't know how to use the power of the cube to tap its full, ultimate power. Mean while Thor, Captain America, Bruce Banner, Iron Man, Hawkeye, & Black Widow are watching this on a security camera from a round table somewhere in the helicarrier. Bruce says "Wow, he really grows on you, doesn't he?" Nick starts to leave the jail area and says "Well let me know if ultimate power needs any magazines."

In the next scene, Iron Man is behind a bar making a drink (sort of looks like he is at his house) and says "Let’s do a roll call, shall we? We’ve got two assassins.." with a quick shot of Black Widow and Hawkeye behind a destroyed car, on a bridge, firing their weapons. "We got the God of Thunder and the living legend who even looks like a living legend.." with a shot of Thor swinging his hammer at Captain America, who blocks it with his shield (why are they fighting each other?!) "..And then me!" Shot of Iron Man flying over the NYC sky line. We then see that Tony is talking to Loki at the bar. Loki says "Well I have an army" (sadly we don't see a clip of his army). Tony takes a slip of his drink and says "Well, we have a Hulk" and flips over to a close up of Hulk's face with him Roaring!!!! End of clip.

Kevin Feige brings out the cast including Chirs Hemsworth (Thor), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Cobie Smulders (S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Maria Hill) and Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man) .. and the crowd goes nuts. Robert Downey Jr grabs the mic and says "Hey, I haven't seen that clip, lets show it again." They show the clip again and then the cast takes a bow and leaves. NO ONE ELSE SAID ANYTHING???!!! I was wondering if they were running late or something or maybe they just didn't want to give anything else away.

Seems odd Disney would go through the effort of bringing in most of the cast just to wave hello and go off to do private interviews with press, especially considering they had no panels at San Diego Comic Con. Jip! Seems like a missed opportunity to me.

























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D23 2011 : Planes & Wreck-It Ralph Revealed

Day two of Disney's massive D23 Expo began with me shoving Steve and Chelsea in a seat for three hours plus for a look at every movie (animated or otherwise) on Disney's slate got some sort of mention, clip or general introduction by cast and crew. Here's the vitals on "Planes" and "Wreck-It Ralph to get things started...

Steve: We got there an hour before hand to make sure we got a good press spot. The line outside went around the building. It was like a scene of Hall H from SDCC.

Me: yea i heard a lot of people were turned away?

Steve: Yes, a lot did. They say the arena holds 4,000 but I don't believe that. Could only imagine what it would be like if SDCC moved there. The presentation started out with a Walt Disney Studio Montage and then Rich Ross, Chairman of Walt Disney Studios came out. Rich said "I'm like you! I'm one of Disney's biggest fans!" The presentation starts with Disney Animation films in the works as Rich said a quote from Walt Disney "Animation is our bread & butter!" Then John Lasseter was introduced to the stage. (For those who still don't know who he is..he was the director of Toy Story/ Toy Story 2/ Cars and is Chief Creative Officer at Walt Disney Studios & Pixar Studios. The first film he talked about was "Planes". The film takes place in the cars universe...well actually above the cars universe which they use as the tag line in the teaser clip they showed.










Me: I think it's creepy the cars can go inside of bigger living vehicles....it's just weird...but we don't talk about the "Cars" universe among friends. It just raises too many questions...

Steve: Me too, but I'll still go see this!

Me: Me too!

Steve: The story follows a small crop duster name Dusty Crop Duster (naturally), a single engine plane who is orange and white and voiced by Two and a Half Men star Jon Cryer. When brought out on stage he said "I was so geeked out when I got asked to do a 'plane session'! To be a part of the cars universe is ridiculous. I must say that if you have a chance to do it, do it!" They showed a teaser trailer which had music from White Zombie- "More Human then Human", which I thought was weird for Disney. It was like a scene from Top Gun, on an aircraft carrier in sea, F-14 and F-18s were taking off the run away and Stealth Bombers flying high in the sky. Then a small single engine plane is brought up on the flight deck and the music stops and we see Dusty, who looks so excited to be there with the big jets, but he quickly turns to a puddle of nervousness when he is about to take off. He flys off the air craft carrier and we over-hear him screaming off camera as two F-14 planes are watching what is happening. One of them asks the other "Think he will be ok?" The camera then cuts to Dusty writing "COOL!" really big in the sky with his awesome cloud making skills. END OF CLIP

The next movie they brought up was "Wreck-It Ralph". Ralph is a 8 bit video game bad guy who travels to different arcade games to try and prove that he is a good guy.

Me: ....That rules

Steve: It does! John C. Reilly voices Ralph and Sarah Silverman voices Vanellope von Shweetz. Rich Moore, the director of the film, comes out. He also worked on The Simpsons & Futurama so I cheered really hard for him! They showed the first 4 mins of the film which is mostly storyboards and unfinished work but still cool. Ralph is a big guy who is only good at smashing stuff with his big arms. He climbs up the side of the building like the classic video game "Rampage" and stands at the top on the road and smashes down and dances like "Donkey Kong" in the classic DK video game. Then enters Fix-it Felix who looks a lot like Mario but wears blue instead of Red. Fix-it-Felix is the character that kids control in the game at the arcade. He is the hero who jumps around with a magic wrench which he somehow got from his father that...you guessed it...fixes the damages that Ralph causes to the building. The arcade closes and when all is clear (no humans around), the characters in the arcade get to be themselves. The animation then switches from 8 bit style to classic Pixar style! All the residents of the apartment cheer on Fix-It Felix and then go home to their apartments while poor Ralph has to go sleep in his "home", which is a huge pile of trash. After Ralph tucks himself in with a pile of bricks he stares off at Fix-It Felix in the apartment complex as everyone gathers around him to hear his heroic tales. Ralph talks to himself about how he wishes he could be that good guy and people would like him. The next scene is Ralph at a Bad Guy Help group which looks like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with a circle of bad guy characters sitting on folding chairs at a community meeting center. A ghost from Pacman was in the group! One of the bad guys was talking and said "The other day I pulled a leg off some guy and I was bashing his leg over his head and I said to myself why am I doing this? I'm not a bad guy inside.. but then it hit me, someone has to be the bad guy in the video game!" Ralph talks about how he wishes he wasn't a bad guy. Then a zombie cuts him off by saying that being bad isn't shameful when suddenly a character that looks a lot like Kano from Mortal Kombat rips out the zombie's heart and the group laughs. The group ends their meeting with them all holding hands and says the Bad Guy Oath. Thats the end of the clip! The director brings Sarah Silverman and Jack McBrayer (who voices Fix-It Felix) onto the stage. They talk about how Ralph goes to the Central Station, which is a way he can travel from one arcade game to another. The first game he travels to looks just like Halo with all the characters wearing something similar to Spartan armor. That is wear Ralph meets Sgt CAlhoun (Jane Lynch from Glee). Ralph then travels to Sugar Kush, which is a car racing game and finds out a plan is in works to end all the arcade games for good and must SAVE THE DAY!









The Director asks Jack if he ever thought he would do a voice for a Disney film and he answered "My Own voice irritates me, so I never imaged doing a voice for a Disney cartoon!" Sarah was asked what she thought of Pixar movies and she remarked "I have a love hate relationship with Pixar films because I hate how they remind me of my inner feelings of love and stuff like that, but they are so entertaining that I always go see them all."

We are going to break this off right here as Steve has a MASSIVE pile of notes and hell..it is 2am when we are writing all this up. Sleep calls! Tonight we will have more so check back often!

CLICK HERE to dive into our Flickr where there are already pics of the rest of the presentations including the stars of Brave, Monsters University. The Muppets and THE AVENGERS!

The CLICK HERE to browse the rest of the show!

Special Thanks to Steve and Chelsea of level27media.com!

D23 2011 : The Sievers Geek Out : Day 1 Report!

Those who attend San Diego Comic Con yearly noticed this year's con had a great big hole in it that could only be filled by the mammoth mouse shoes of the Disney juggernaut! Most notably was the absence of panels for upcoming Marvel films and their crown jewel, The Avengers!!!! This being the case, we made a mad scramble to find out where we could get a taste of that sweet, sweet venger' lovin'. The answer was D23. Initially, we'd guess D23 was the name of the crate "Top Men" were inspecting at the end of Indiana Jones..BUT NO! D23 is Disney's own fan wonderland, packed to the brim with presentations, panels, costumes, and miles of merch all stamped with the mouse's seal of approval. Steve and Chelsea Sievers (of www.level27media.com ) hit the con floor for Idle Hands and at the start, this was a marriage of convenience and one we were very thankful for. Little did we realize the Sievers are UBER DISNEY FANS!! Early on we expected some pretty pictures and funny stories of tattoo'd gentlemen bearing their flesh before their ejection from the show floor. Now we knew we would get MAGIC! Ah yes...the dorkiest of Disney magic only two full grown adults playing like 5 yr olds could conjure. Enjoy.

After day 1, we caught up with Steve via the interwebs and nabbed this report:

Steve: When you first walked in they had some VAN from the TV show LOST (I never got into that show so I don't know how important it was.) Walt Disney's personal limousine was also there and a giant Black Pearl pirate ship which was almost as big the van. The limousine was pretty pimp! Walt would be driven to all his premieres back in the day in this very car. They had this huge stage next to it which had artists from Disney Radio and actors & actresses from Disney Channel TV shows, of which I knew none of them. When I was walking by some guy who worked for Disney Radio asked me if I had an iphone and wanted the Radio Disney App on it I said "do I look like I listen to Radio Disney?"

Me: Were u wearing ur ultra stylish hat?

Steve: Yes I was!

Me: hehehe...Then yes...quite possibly.

Steve: Yea that is true. After that we waited in line to get into the Disney Dream Store. Waiting in line was a theme of the day, similar to SDCC. You to wait in line for panels, wait in line to get into sections of the convention, etc. The Dream Store had a lot of exclusives in there including the 101 Dalmatians Pin, Tron Monorail (only 3,000 made with either blue or yellow light cycle on it), and Vinylmation figure exclusives with a cool Mickey Mouse or Davey Crockett. It was packed and I had to wait in a longer line to check out and buy the merch (another SDCC mad dash for exclusives type moment.)

Me: Did they entertain you while u waited to buy stuff?

Steve: Yes, by coming over and showing you more exclusives pins you should buy! Right by the dream store was this amazing auction where you could bid on a pirate ship from the Peter Pan ride from Disneyland, a huge skull and crossbones standee from Pirates of the Caribbean and more. Next we went to the Disney VoluntEars (get it? EARS? Wokka.) area where we got to fill out postcards to send to the troops overseas and also stuff bags of goodies that will be sent to the troops which had a stuffed Mickey Mouse, DVDs, Camera, Disney Notebooks, Stickers, & Pencils. We then got in the long line to get into the D23 Arena for the "Walt Disney Parks & Resorts" Panel. For Disney Freaks like my wife and I who visit Disneyland 2-3 times a month (A MONTH?!! Holy frik.), it was amazing! It started out with the premiere of the park's new Mickey Mouse Costume worn by someone playing some mean drums (the new costume has an animatronic head with working mouth and eyes!!) SO COOL!!! The 2 hour panel was basically one long Disney commercial for all their parks including vacation spots like the new one opening in Hawaii next week and new cruise ships.

Me: Have they incorporated The Muppets and Marvel into the new plans?

Steve: No, not at all. Rumor is that they are in talks to open a Stark Expo in Tomorrowland at Disneyland & World. I personally think that is amazing, but I know a lot of people don't want to see Marvel Characters at Disney parks. Coolest part was the change of Fantasy Land at Disney World in FL where the new Snow White ride will be a roller coaster built to look like mine carts that sway back and forth as they roll along through the Dwarf's mines with the "Hi HO" song playing! The ride ends at Snow White's cabin. The panel also showed what the Shanghai's Disneyland is going to look like. They just started building it. Their castle will be the biggest one and the first that isn't based on something from a specific movie (as Disneyland's Castle is Sleeping Beauty's and Disney World's is Cinderella's.) After the panel ended, we hit the dealer's area filled with toys and mountains of Disney pins as well as a ton of art work. Even the US Postal Service had a booth. You could buy Disney Stamps and then get them signed by the artist who did the artwork for them...not sure how that works. Did people sign the backs of them? Each stamp got an autograph...some things are best not answered I suppose. After checking out the dealer section, we hit the Mattel booth which had a ton of Cars toys and new Toy Story figures which feature the gang going to outer space. My fav is the toy T-Rex in his space suit! They also had some cute small figures from Toy Story with scenes from the latest film. We got in line for their exclusives and picked up your exclusive Black & White Woody there. (Thanks Steve!!) Then we got in line for the Disney Store exclusives. You have to wait in line just to look at them. The Disney Store exclusives were over priced Christmas ornaments (Just Mickey & Minnie in snow gear and a Mickey from Fantasia) and this huge Crystal Tree with Mickey under it for $150. We ended the day scoring some more Tron Monorails for friends and happily found there was no line at all as the con was about to close. Then we went to Denny's to celebrate our awesome day with pancakes!

Me: YAY Pancakes!

Tune in tomorrow for more coverage and CLICK HERE for some excellent pics snapped by Steve and Chelsea of level27media.com!