Posted in: Movies, Recent Updates | Tagged: abraham lincoln: vampire hunter, film, gareth evans, kapow, raid

Kapow! 2012 Day One – Abe Lincoln, Fast Girls, The Raid, Storage 24 And More

Comics editor Rich Johnston has posted his own account of Kapow! Comic Convention 2012, but since we somehow managed to avoid running into each other, the Bleeding Cool Film experience was hopefully different enough to be worth writing about.

Among the first things that I saw was new footage from Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, approximately five minutes comprising a new red band trailer and three different scenes from the film. The footage was introduced by Rufus Sewell, who plays the bad guy in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter as well as in every other film ever made in the history of cinema. The audience donned their 3D glasses, which appeared to be attempting a kind of sci-fi wraparound effect to make the wearer look cool. As with all 3D glasses they had the complete opposite effect and from a front-on perspective the audience must have looked like the dorkiest Blade flashmob ever. On the positive side, you do get to see a whip coming out of the screen in one of those it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time made-for-3D shots. That whip is a big selling point of the film, it seems, since they showed it to us twice just in case we missed it the first time.

In the shortest possible terms, Abraham Lincoln looks fun and stupid in equal measure. There was a genuinely sweet romance scene in which Mary Todd utilises the famous top hat in a creative way to ease the process of making out with a ridiculously tall man, and the quality of the moment was only slightly undermined by the regurgitated "Hero explains in serious terms his vampire-hunting/wizard-slaying/hobbit-baiting alter ego, love interest assumes he is joking and they laugh together" scene which immediately precedes it. We were also teased with glimpses of a sequence involving stampeding horses and poor old Abe caught up in the middle of it all, which looks like it will showcase the best of the 3D. The final and most entertaining clip was a scene in which Mr Lincoln attempts to take out a vampire with the use of a nineteenth century pistol, and there are a few moments of genuine suspense to enjoy before the whole thing gets cut off by an obligatory jump scare.

During the wait to speak with The Raid director Gareth Evans, I also lost my live wrestling virginity (witnessing, not partaking), since the man happened to be signing autographs directly next to the wrestling ring. I remember lots of muscular gentlemen in tight spandex, and also discovered that muscles don't necessarily equate to sturdiness; one wrestler would only need to brush up against another to send him careering uncontrollably into the ropes with a cry of "GRRRRAAARGH!!" like he was giving birth through his left nipple.

Perhaps I am not properly articulating the poetry of the sport.

Other interviews you can expect to see in the near future include writer-producer-actor Noel Clarke and director Johannes Roberts talking about their new survival horror movie Storage 24, the tale of a group of people locked in a storage facility with an alien: an homage to eighties horror with an Argento-esque score. I also caught up with Lily James, Lashana Lynch and Dominique Tipper: three of the eponymous fast girls of Regan Hall's sports movie Fast Girls, which is out next month.

At the end of the day I also ran into comic book writer Neil Gibson, with whom I last spoke when he was on the first volume of his short story graphic novel series Twisted Dark. He has now published the third volume with immediate plans for a fourth. During our short interview he managed to fully convince me that he had a working espresso machine hidden under his stall. I was tired, OK?

Today's convention will bring clips from The Amazing Spider-Man and Total Recall, as well as a mystery movie that I know absolutely nothing about. If you're at Kapow! this weekend then keep an eye out for me. I'll be wearing a T-shirt and jeans, and will therefore be impossible to miss.

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