Supanova 2011: Artists Alley

Artists Alley is the place at Supanova to discover both established and indie comic artists, as well as artists who create works based on cult pop culture themes. The comics above are from chums who occupied the Monster & Robot Industries stall. Pop below the cut to see more of their work, and some of my other favourites from the weekend.

Sunday HNNNG #1

Those Supanova posts are still on their way, but I need an outlet for a few bits of squee I've had bottled up for a while. Firstly:

 

HNNNG! The first movie was so good that I pretty much have no words for how much I'm looking forward to the sequel. Since Iron Man 2 and Transformers 2 I've been a bit wary at getting excited over sequels, but this can't POSSIBLY stink as much as they did, so it's all good (I am however prepared to eat my words in 6 months time)! It's released in the USA on the 16th of December, but we're not getting it in Australia until the 5th of January. Boooooo! At this stage I wouldn't expect I'd be desperate enough to torrent it, but we'll see how well my resolve stands up in December.

David Tennant as an eyeliner-wearing vampire hunter with a shotgun. HNNNG. Delightfully, we get this BEFORE the USA, on the 18th of August (they get it on the 19th, but whatever, small victories). You know what, I don't even really know what this is about, apart from him hunting vampires, and Colin Farrell being a vampire. That's all I need tbh. I always thought 'Fright Night' was a fairly campy name, so I was surprised when the movie seemed quite dark in the trailer. I know it's a remake, but still. Camp.

THIS. Oh my word. This looks so wonderfully terrible. When I first saw this was coming out, and I read the cast list, I was pretty excited. Orlando Bloom! The guy who played Mr Darcy in the new Pride & Prejudice! The kid who played Percy Jackson! The dude from Inglourious Basterds! Then I saw this trailer. My dreams of Orlando being a shit-hot Musketeer were dashed. My dreams of D'Artagnan not being a total twerp were dashed. HOWEVER. Buckingham has the most badass hair I have seen in a long time. And there's flying ships with cannons. And flamethrowers! And Milla Jovovich doing a whole lot of that slo-mo fighting thing that seems to be her forte. And D'Artagnan almost being stabbed in the face. This cannot possibly be as shit as Pirates of the Caribbean 4, so I am holding high (okay, slightly above average) hopes for this one. It comes out in Australia on October 13, and I plan on seeing it opening weekend before everybody else goes first and tells me it's shit and breaks my heart.

Pimpin'

Supanova 2011: Cosplay

One of the things I most look forward to every year is seeing what characters people choose to come along dressed up as. Most people aren't particularly hardcore about wanting to entering the cosplay competition, so there's some hilariously DIY concoctions to go along with all the jaw-droppers which are clearly the result of a lot of money and effort. Most of the really fancy ones tend to be anime or video game characters that I know nothing about, so the ones that get me excited are the more 'conventional' and creative ones, like last year's kick-ass Batman, and these guys dressed up as the crew from Misfits. Overall I'd say the cosplay probably wasn't as plentiful as last year. After seeing some photos from the east coast Supanovas, Perth has to pick up its game! There were some really cool ones though, so head below the cut for a few snaps from both days.

Supanova 2011: Lootz

I'm going to split up my Supanova coverage into three or four posts, as if I do it all in one post it will be super gigantic, and the photos of the cosplayers and whatnot won't be in the paper til Thursday (the paper gets to publish everything first, so despite how much I totally want to bombard you with event photos, it'll have to wait).

One thing the paper DOESN'T give a rat's ass about is photos of my phat lootz!

PHHAAAAAT. I didn't buy as much crap as last year, though I probably spent a similar amount of money due to all the autographs I got. Head under the cut to check out how I mis-spent all my money!

Supanova 2011 preview!

In less than a week the nerd circus will roll into town for this year's Supanova Pop Culture Expo. It's quite impressive how the country has embraced it over the last few years, within four years it's gone from being a bit too uncool for the general populace to a hugely popular and busy event.

Last year I didn't have much interest in the 'Supa-Star' guests, so spent most of my time shopping and taking photos of the cosplayers, but this year the lineup is awesome. Of particular interest to me are Sean Maher (Simon Tamm From Firefly), Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto from Torchwood) and James Marsters (Spike from Buffy). Cary Elwes and Luke Perry were on the original lineup, but when they had to pull out they were replaced by Tom Felton from Harry Potter.  I'm hoping the Felts-hysteria takes some of the heat off the others, I do want autographs, but I'm not massively excited about the thought of lining up for an hour for them. There was like a ten minute line for Karl Urban two years ago, and that was well enough for me. Though Karl was super. I liked him a lot.

Anyway, because I'll be spending quite a bit of my time lining up for stuff and attending 'seminars' (horribly awkward Q&A sessions with the talent), I doubt I'll be taking as many photos as previous years. Will probably take my smaller camera in case of photo-emergency, but I won't be going out of my way.
Just in case I am a bit slack in the photo department, here are a few I was too lazy to post after last year's Supanova.

My main goal for this Supanova was to not spend anywhere near the obscene amount of money I spent on (really awesome) stuff last year, but given it will cost me over $100 just for the autographs (collectively, not individually), I may have to be realistic about how much I'll really be restricting myself. James Masters is doing a concert on the Saturday night, and the novelty factor will be high, so I already have a ticket to that. Also bought a ticket to the Supanova After Party on the Sunday night which essentially involves hanging out with James Marsters & Gareth David-Lloyd. That ticket was a wee bit expensive, but how often will that opportunity present itself? Hopefully there will be free drinks. I'd expect free drinks for the price.

I hope Ianto wears a suit.

Kiss My Camera 2011

Don't know how relevant this post is actually going to be, cause I'm not sure if the exhibition is still running, but last month was the start of the annual Kiss My Camera music photography exhibition run by WAM, as part of the WAMis. 50 photos all up, and for the first year included...absolutely none of mine. If I'm 100% honest I wasn't overly happy about it, but y'know. These things happen.

The gallery of the finalists is available to view at http://www.museum.wa.gov.au/explore/galleries/kiss-my-camera-2011-finalists. Jordan Shields won the Grand Prize with his portrait of Drapht, which was well deserved.

My submissions for your viewing pleasurez:

Jane's Addiction, Soundwave

Josh Pyke, Fremantle

Kasabian, Metro City

Operator Please, Capitol

Rufus Wainwright, Perth Concert Hall

 

Buried in Verona, Amplifier

When merchandising goes bad

I have been forced back into the blogosphere by an item I found and purchased yesterday. I buy a lot of dumb shit all the time, but never before have I been quite so compelled to share the ridiculousness.

So, yesterday I was at Priceline, and I would go so far to say that I blame Suzanne for the fact I was there in the first place. Her blog has opened up my eyes to the shiny appeal of the world of cosmetics, and Priceline is the primo place to go for said things.  So yes. All Suzanne's fault.

Anyway, I was in Priceline, walking past the perfume cabinets, and I saw this staring at me from the bottom shelf:

What. On. Earth.

Anyone who knows me well will know I have a 'slight affection' for boybands of the 90s, and Westlife are no exception. I liked them back when they were called Westside. Yeah! Look at me being all pop elitist! Yeah! Anyway, I saw this thing (whatever it was, I didn't even really look at it properly to be honest) was $12, so promptly tucked it under my arm and headed for the counter.

At home I opened it up. First the removal of the LUXURIOUS PLASTIC SLIPCASE:

Roses and a bit of a crap font. Nice! Time to pop the box open and see what treasures are inside:

Faux velvet, more roses, more crap font! I found an 'Eau De Parfum', a body lotion and a shower gel. Interesting. Upon spritzing some of the odour on my wrist (I'm having a hard time conceding and calling it a 'fragrance' at this point)  it was clear it was aimed at three groups of potential buyers.

• The Elderly, who would be happy with just about anything as long as it covered up the stench of Death.
• Little Girls, who just don't know any better.
• Twenty-Somethings, buying it for The Lulz.

I'll admit, when I first smelt it I thought 'Oh, it's not THAT bad!' It was quite dense, and tended to hang over you like a foggy cloud of odour as opposed to a subtle perfume, but I guess that's value for money? EVERYONE EVERWHERE WILL SMELL YOU! *shrug* The best way to describe it would be 'mature' (like the stinky perfumed talc that old people got from Avon about 20 years ago) but with a sickly sweet after-smell. Quite strange. Smelt the body lotion and the shower gel, they seemed similar, but much milder and a little sweeter.

Despite being something that I'd never wear myself, I did assume the perfume to be 'okay'. That is, until 4 hours later when I was headachey and nauseous and no amount of washing of my arm could remove the choking fog from my body. I'm wearing the jacket I was wearing last night and I CAN STILL SMELL IT. This is some potent crap. I'm far too terrified to use any of the other products now.

Sadly (or perhaps not), the Westlife fragrance set is destined to never again be worn by a human person, and will live out its days on a shelf in my bathroom. Cause it might smell like shit, but it sure does look nice!

"Why the fuck did I agree to this shiiiiiit?"

I give the Westlife fragrance set 1 Schnicky out of a possible 10.