Previews Are The Best Part: SDCC 2012 Preview Night

So Preview Night is past us now, and while I know it’s not even theoretically possible that it was busier than last year – after all, Preview Night passes have been selling out since about 2009 – it sure feels like it was. A few years ago it was possible on preview night for someone to, say, get ripped to the tits on Stone Arrogant Bastard IPA for four hours before he doors opened and then cruise around the floor, staging stupid and adolescent photographs with the Jabba The Hutt prop at the Hasbro booth. If you tried that now, you would inevitably stumble into someone waiting in a truly horrific line for an exclusive S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier playset, be unable to convince said line-waiter that you weren’t claim jumping, and wind up instigating a pathetic slapfight.

There is very little convention programming that occurs on Preview Night, so the action is centered on the main convention floor. The night’s original and intended purpose is to allow people who are attending the con to obtain exclusives, or who are looking for some particular, special item, piece of art or back issue, to have access to the vendors early and get the purchase out of the way so they can enjoy the rest of the convention. As such, any actual comic news is few and far between on Preview Night… but there is certainly some, and if there isn’t? There is spectacle.

Instant Panel, Just Add Discomfort: Fifteen-Minute Dark Knight Rises Featurette

As we speak, we are en route to San Diego for SDCC 2012, enduring a combination of planes, trains, automobiles, TSA groping and hideous nicotine fits. So expect quiet for the remainder of our broadcast day.

But in the meantime, please enjoy this fifteen-minute featurette on The Dark Knight Rises. You can use it to simulate being at a big SDCC Hall H panel! Simply stand outside the room containing your computer for ten, maybe twelve hours. Try to fart copiously and often to simulate the smell. Maybe you can invite a neighbor kid in to irritate you during the process! Then sit across the room and watch the video! It’ll be like you’re actually at SDCC!

Just remember that you’re not allowed to urinate while you’re waiting in line.

To Defeat The Tree, You Must First Be The Tree – New Clip From “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer”

Ok, maybe you don’t have to “be the tree” to take it down in one fell swoop, but it doesn’t hurt to be 6’4″ like the late President Abraham Lincoln…or to dredge up and concentrate all the hate and rage that you feel at having your mother taken from you at a young age…by vampires.

As someone who loved the novel, I’m pretty excited about the movie version, which opens this Friday, June 22. A United States President who took care of vampire threats while seeing the country through a turbulent civil war – that’s a guy whose candidacy I could get behind in an election. Oh well, until our nation finds itself in the middle of a vampire apocalypse, we have this movie.

Peter Parker Taunts Flash Thompson With Basketball – New Amazing Spider-Man Clip

“Take it!” implores Peter Parker of Flash Thompson in this new teaser clip from The Amazing Spider-Man, as he holds a precariously positioned basketball out to the jock but never quite gives it to him. Somehow I think if I’d tried something like that with the school’s sport hero/bully I’d have been eating dirt. But, Parker does have those sweet, sweet spider powers to back his play.

Note to self – acquire sweet, sweet spider powers to back my plays.

The Amazing Spider-Man swings into US theaters on July 3, 2012. I’ll keep you all posted as to when I lock down spider powers.

More Amazing Spider-Man Goodness: “Cross Species Genetic Breeding!”

Ok, Rob and I have been arguing back and forth over whether or not Before Watchmen: Minutemen was a worthwhile read, or even a worthwhile project. Expect posts from each of us stating our positions, that may or may not include the words “Darwyn Cooke” and “goatfucker” in the next couple of days. In the meantime, MSN was kind enough to post a clip of new footage from The Amazing Spider-Man with the first meeting between Dr. Connors and Peter Parker. Check it out after the jump!

New Dark Knight Rises Promo Unveiled During MTV Movie Awards

Something wonderful happened at the MTV Movie Awards last night – and it wasn’t just that Jennifer Anniston was named “Best Dirtbag“, an honor that’s been overdue to her for years now. No, no. A new promo trailer for The Dark Knight Rises aired. This time with some new footage of Christian Bale in a humorous exchange with Morgan Freeman, more Selina Kyle/Catwoman, and Bane vs. Batman throwdown goodness. Check out the awesomeness!

The Dark Knight Rises hits US theaters on July 20th, 2012.

Hard As Iron: First Photos of Iron Patriot In Iron Man 3

While we comic fans are still swooning over The Avengers movie, let us not forget that Marvel Studios is not resting on the hundreds of millions of dollars that that movie has brought in the way your or I would if presented with hundreds of millions of dollars… actually, given a second thought, I would not be resting on it. I would be furiously masturbating on it. But already, I digress.

No, Marvel Studios already has Iron Man 3, directed by Lethal Weapon writer and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang director Shane Black, in the throes of principal photography. That means they’re shooting it now, in laymans’ terms, and when a geek movie is being shot? That means spy pictures are being leaked to the Internet. Such as the ones after the jump.

(And by the way – “spy pictures” is not industry jargon for “upskirt shots.” Don’t make that mistake and learn about it the hard way, like I did.)

Feets Don’t Fail Me Now

Things are a bit busy today here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office. Between an upgrade we need to run on a major site component on the Web server, and putting the finishing touches on our application for press credentials for San Diego Comic-Con, we are simply balls-out today.

So please forgive any outages you might see as we run the overhaul, and in the meantime, here’s the latest released television spot for The Dark Knight Rises, as well as three banner posters recently released by Warner Brothers for the flick.

And not only that, but we’ve got a sooper seekrit hidden The Dark Knight Rises one-sheet poster that could only be found by scanning the QR code at the bottom of one of the official one-sheets WB released last week. It’s a different kind of image than we’ve seen associated with the movie, and one that should appeal to foot fetishists and… well, probably just foot fetishists. Let’s just say somewhere, Quentin Tarantino is probably taking a break from firing off the cast of Django Unchained to look at this poster to do a completely different kind of firing off.

All are available after the jump.

This Is A Video Of A Dog. Not Spider-Man.

The preview image on the video embedded after the jump is of a dog.

For someone to imply that it actually contains a bootlegged cell phone video of an extended six-minute trailer of the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man, with not-yet-seen footage, would be irresponsible and potentially libelous.

We just really like dogs. Honest. There is no Spider-Man here.

News From KAPOW! – Rufus Sewell Teases Sequel To Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Straight from the Kapow! Comic Book Convention in London, here’s news from ComicBookMovies.com about the possibility of a sequel to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Rufus Sewell:

“They couldn’t quite make their mind up during filming whether my character lived or died actually at the end. But to tell you the truth as people kept saying, ‘I’m a vampire so it doesn’t really matter.'”

“In terms of the sequel, I mean, from what I’ve seen it looks really exciting. Until I’ve seen the entire film, I couldn’t make a pronouncement on that. But I loved doing it. Dominic Cooper is an old friend of mine and we really enjoyed working with each other. Ben I liked very much.”

“It was great fun working in New Orleans. The only regret I had is that if I had known how hot it was going to be in New Orleans, when they tried the cape and the gloves on me, I might have had something to say about it! It’s very difficult eating New Orleans food if you don’t want to be the world’s first tubby vampire of the film world, you know?”

“The experience of doing it was great fun. And if the movie is as fun to watch as it was to do, then I’d be up for a sequel possibly. But you know, I’ll hold back on that for the moment.”

In case you’ve been under a rock and haven’t heard about the movie adaptation of the book by Seth Grahame-Smith, here’s a trailer to get your attention:

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter drops in theaters on June 22, 2012.