Wednesday 20 April 2016

RETRO REVIEW: London Film & Comic Con (Winter) 2013 - A Detailed Review

Guests met and discussed in this review :-

• Jon Bernthal (Shane Walsh in “The Walking Dead”)
• Michael Rooker (Merle Dixon in “The Walking Dead”)
• Julian Glover (Grand Maester Pycelle in “Game Of Thrones”)
• Walter Jones (Zack in “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers)
• Chavo Guerrero Jr. (Wrestler)


Two quick notes before we get started...

1) If this is your first time on "Shangel's Reviews", I'm currently reviewing every single episode of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" in depth. A list of all the reviews I've written so far can be located here. While these have been on hiatus for a while, they will be back in full force from early June.
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With that being said, let’s get started, shall we? 


This is the third and final review in a series of reviews I’m going to label “retro reviews”. I’ve been attending conventions for many years, but I only created this blog and started keeping detailed accounts after “Hallowhedon 5” in October of 2013. Any conventions I attended before that date have been lost to time and merely exist inside my own mind. So, I’ll probably never get around to writing reviews on those because I’ll have forgotten so much of what makes my reviews standout – the details! I remember my interactions with the guests perfectly, but it’s not really enough detail to create a high quality review, so those will remain inside my brain, unless I ever create memoirs one day. However, it’s not all doom and gloom, gentle readers. Before “Hallowhedon 5”, I attended three other conventions in 2013 – “Cardiff Film & Comic Con”, “LFCC”, and “LFCC Winter”. After each of those events, I wrote a semi-detailed review and emailed it to my friend Jon. This means that I can go back and piece together the conventions from those emails and create reviews that I think are worthy enough to be published here. So, with that being said, welcome to the final “Retro Review”. These will be shorter than my usual convention reviews because some of the details will have been lost to time, but hopefully there’s enough here to hold your interest and give you a feel for what the event was like.

“LFCC Winter 2013” was the first time Showmasters had experimented with a winter version of their flagship show, “LFCC”. It took place over the weekend of the 5th and 6th of October at the Olympia in London...shocking, London Film & Comic Con taking place in London, who’d have thought it? For this particular event, myself and my friends Hannah and John decided to head down to London for just the Sunday, which I regret in hindsight as Billie Piper was there on the Saturday alone and I’ve yet to meet her. No matter, it will happen one day. I have faith. 

 

We arrived at the Olympia at around 8am, which is a little later than I usually like to arrive for an event in London, but as this was a first-time winter version, I figured the queues wouldn’t be anywhere near as bad as the summer “LFCC”. I was correct. We were perhaps 50th in place for the pre-paid tickets. I think that this can partly be attributed to the fact that many people can’t afford multiple events per year and also that this event was obliterated by cancellations in the two weeks before the event! Kevin Sorbo, Chad Coleman, Roy Dotrice (noooo!), and Ernie Hudson were all amongst the last-minute high-profile cancellations, which left the event a little thin on the ground for headliners. Kevin and Ernie didn’t affect me, I met Chad a couple years later, so it’s only Roy Dotrice that stings to this day as I’m a huge fan of his work, and the likelihood of me meeting him now is slim as he’s in his early-mid 90’s. The doors opened on time at 9am, and we were into the venue and looking at the merchandise stalls by 9:03am. That’s efficiency, right there. We decided to check out the merchandise first because it allows you to get your bearings and get a lay of the land before heading over to meet guests. You can see where everyone you wanna meet is located and you can buy awesome merchandise. Not a bad way to start the day. Within a matter of fifteen minutes, I’d bought a replica of the Operative’s sword from “Serenity” (the movie continuation of “Firefly”) and a replica of a Reaver dagger that River Tam uses in “Serenity”. £40 gone and the day had barely started! It came with a nifty little sheathe included too. Both were placed into a sealed box and taped up using tape that said “DO NOT OPEN, WEAPON INSIDE”, helping to ensure that it was not opened until after the convention. That many people, genuine swords at the arena...could be a recipe for disaster.

By 10am, we’d finished checking out the merchandise, so I decided to make the conscious effort to meet Jon Bernthal before the regular attendees could enter at 11am (gold/early bird ticket holders only before 11am), as I figured his queue would be the largest of the day out of anyone I wanted to meet. In hindsight, I wish I’d met Paul McGann and Noel Clarke at this event too...stupid Shangel! In my defence, I had less money back in those days. I moseyed over to Jon’s autograph table to grab a virtual queuing ticket and I was meeting him within 10 minutes. 



 
 (Myself and Hannah dressing up for the occasion)

Jon Bernthal: Jon didn’t have a Showmasters crew member with him that I could see. Instead, he had his agent, Sean Clark, with him, who happens to be the agent for many of the cast members of “The Walking Dead”. In fact, Sean was with Norman Reedus at “LFCC” a few months earlier. While waiting for Jon to finish talking to the person in front of me in the queue, I started chatting to Sean, as I’d spoken to him briefly at “LFCC”. Jon turned out to be my favourite guest of the day by some margin. While everyone I met was polite and friendly, Jon seemed to go above and beyond the call of duty, especially as his queues were gigantic all day and he therefore had many people to get through. I mentioned to Jon that I’d met Sarah Wayne Callies a couple of months earlier and she’d written “To Shane (not that one!)” on my autograph and then followed it up with a verbal “because he’s dead” before laughing. Jon laughed loudly and then said jokingly “what a bitch!”. The first swear word of the day and it was barely 10am...it was going to be a good one, people! We discussed “The Walking Dead” for 3 or 4 minutes before I remembered something that I’d read on the Showmasters forums the previous day (preparation is key, kiddies). I read that Jon was wearing a hat for his studio photos and that he was wearing it for a very specific reason. The person who wrote that particular comment said that we should ask him about it. So I did. Jon said that he was in the process of filming a movie called “Fury”, starring Brad Pitt, Shia LeBeouf, and Michael Pena, where Jon plays a bit of a mental case. Therefore, as part of the role, he was presently sporting a ridiculous haircut, which he was embarrassed about and didn’t want people’s photos to turn out badly because of it. Obviously, this was like waving a red flag in front of a bull, so the next thing out of my mouth was, “Jon, Jon...you can’t be telling us about an embarrassing, ridiculous haircut without whipping it out for us”. Jon laughed and then took his hat off to reveal a haircut that was indeed pretty ridiculous. It was semi-shaved, semi-long, and had a section missing. I had to - semi-successfully - stifle a laugh. It was a terrific five minutes or so. Guest Type = Conversationalist. 


 

“What’s a conversationalist?” 

I’m glad you asked. 

A few years back, after attending many conventions, I devised a system whereby to categorise my experiences with guests and their level of interaction in order to compare the quality of my experiences across conventions and time. I have O.C.D., shut up. The following three types were found :-


·       The Responder: This type of guest is often polite and friendly. If you ask them a question, they’ll happily answer. If you comment on something, they’ll respond or smile gratefully. However, they won’t carry the conversation forward, you have to. These are the most common type of guest, and this is what you expect when meeting someone at a convention. This is a great category to be a part of.

·       The Groucho/Big Guest: There are two aspects to this category. Firstly, you have the groucho. The groucho is there for monetary purposes or is generally just having a bad day, or is a bit of an ass. If you meet enough people, one of them is bound to be an ass! The grouchos aren’t interested in conversations above a few words. They’ll say ‘hi’ (sometimes they don’t bother with that), sign, say ‘bye’ (sometimes), and you’re on your merry way. Of course, in certain situations this is relevant and expected, which brings me to the second part of this category, the big guest. Some guests are going to be insanely popular. Such as Stan Lee at LFCC ‘14, who had an entire building to himself basically. When you get a huge queue like that, the guest can’t take a lot of time with everyone. If they did, many people would go home disappointed at not getting to meet them at all. Therefore, the convention company and the guest want to get through as many people as possible. You cannot have a huge guest and expect to get above a minute with them, which is perfectly fair.

·       The Conversationalist: This is easily my favourite type of guest. They’ll answer your questions with a smile, ask you questions in return, and are happy to chat for an extended period of time (extended = above 2-3 minutes), regardless of where the conversation leads or how long you’ve been talking. Obviously, there has to be some cut-off point if there is a queue behind you, but you leave the experience feeling euphoric and like you gained a lot more than just the autograph you queued for.

Now you know and can bear this in mind for the rest of the review. Don’t you feel enlightened?

After finishing up with Jon, I headed over to the wrestling section of the autograph tables, which hosted four people. Going into the event, I knew I was definitely going to meet Chavo as I’m a huge fan, while Hernandez, Kelly Kelly, and Maryse would be determined by available funds and time restraints. Ultimately, I only ended up meeting Chavo.

Chavo Guerrero: Chavo was a very friendly guy, as I was expecting. I’d been following Chavo’s career for about 15 years by this point, so I’d read many interviews, listened to many podcasts, and watched numerous documentaries in which he was involved. So I felt as though I had a certain feel for who he was as a person before coming into the event. As I approached the table, Chavo’s queue was empty, so he was perusing a Lucha Libre wrestling book that another fan had left with him so he could see if his grandfather, Gory Guerrero, was in it. Chavo is a third generation wrestler, with his grandfather being one of the most decorated and well-known wrestlers in Mexican history, his father and three uncles (including Eddie Guerrero) all being successful wrestlers, and now some of his nephews and nieces have entered the fray too. While I adored Chavo, his uncle Eddie was one of my biggest heroes in life and was a great inspiration to me before his untimely death in 2005 at 38 years old. We talked about Chavo’s wrestling career, what it was like growing up in a house with a wrestling ring in the back garden, we talked about his grandfather, we talked about Eddie, we talked about Eddie and Chavo’s run as a tag team, Los Guerreros...it was a very long conversation. As I was leaving, I asked if it would be possible to get a picture with him, which Chavo enthusiastically obliged to. Even though I had a studio photo booked with Chavo later in the day, it’s always good sense to have a backup in case the studio photo turns out shit. Great experience once again. Guest type = Responder.


Walter Jones: Straight after leaving Chavo’s autograph table, I headed over to Walter, who was situated just behind Chavo and the other wrestlers. Walter was, of course, Zack in the “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers”, the original Black Ranger. MMPR was, as far as I can remember, my first obsession in life that wasn’t named “wrestling” or “Star Wars”, so meeting Walter was a very exciting experience for me. Especially as he was also in an episode of my favourite ever television show, “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”. The instant I arrived at his autograph table (which was empty at the time), Walter started shaking my hand and smiling widely. Enthusiastic starts are always great ice-breakers. As part of the collection of 8” x 10” pictures you can choose to get autographed, there was a still from when Walter was on Buffy. I said “Hey, cool! That’s a still from the Buffy episode ‘Fear Itself’!”. After confirming that I was indeed a nerd, Walter chuckled and looked impressed that I recognised the picture from “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”. I don’t think Walter was expecting anyone to recognise him from the show, as he appeared so briefly and it was 14 years before this convention took place. After, Walter spotted my forearm tattoo, so he grabbed my arm (in a friendly way) and started inspecting and admiring it. He asked about the history of the tattoo, so I told him about my best friend’s death in a hit-and-run car ‘accident’ and filled him in on our history with the Celtic knot. Walter mentioned that a good friend of his, Thuy Trang, had died in a car crash in 2001. She was the actress that played the original yellow Power Ranger in MMPR. We proceeded to discuss MMPR and his experiences on Buffy for a while, before I thanked him and headed on my merry way. He shook my hand a grand total of five times in the end...what a friendly man! Also, I couldn’t believe he was 42 here! He looked in his late 20’s at the most. Guest type = Responder.


 
  
Steve Cardenas, the second red Power Ranger and the actor that portrayed the red ranger in the movie, was situated next to Walter, but a lack of available funds meant that I had to miss meeting Steve on this occasion. We continued to merchandise hunt for a while, as Julian Glover wasn’t arriving until later in the day. We also stopped at the Challenge TV area, which was showing wrestling and promoting TNA being on the channel (that’s a wrestling organisation). Alex Shane was there as part of the promotion. Alex is an English wrestling star who spent a long time on the UK indies. As I was walking past Alex and the female Challenge TV employee that was there with him, they noticed my Chavo Guerrero autograph and we got talking. They told me that Chavo had saved the wrestling talk the previous day because the other three were either really shy (Hernandez) or just looked bored (Maryse/Kelly Kelly). We talked for a while longer before I headed over to photo area B for my 11am photoshoot with Jon Bernthal. I believe Jon was the only guest of the day to have a split-shoot, so that there was one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I was about 30th in queue, which was totally fine, as I had a little time to kill after this photo was taken. When I got to the front, Jon yelled out a very enthusiastic “SHANE!” before the photo was taken. Jon recommended a menacing badass pose, which is what we went for. Jon looks badass, I look entirely vindictive. I may have slightly overposed, actually, but the photo turned out pretty good.

 

With the photo taken, there was a free hour or so with nothing to do. We’d checked out the merchandise stalls. Twice. I’d collected all of my autographs except for Julian Glover, who wasn’t arriving until 12:30pm, and my other photoshoots weren’t until the afternoon. After buying a studio photo with Walter Jones (which I wouldn’t have done if he wasn’t so nice) for later in the day, we headed over to one of the food areas to get some lunch, which was ridiculously fucking expensive, as you can imagine. My friend John then split off from myself and Hannah in order to attend some of his Star Trek photoshoots, while I bought a beautiful art canvas for “The Walking Dead” for £20, which sits in my living room to this day. I love canvases...canvasi...I love multiple canvas word! I also bought a little key ring of Serenity (the ship from “Firefly”) and a Nerd Herd identification badge from “Chuck”. With only £9 left in my pocket (with Julian’s autograph money taken into account already), we carried on walking. Hannah bought an R2-D2 onesie. We also spotted a family that were all dressed as Transformers. There was a man, his wife, their 5-6 year old son, an a six-month-old baby, all dressed as Transformers. It was absolutely amazing. They must have walked 40 steps in 15 minutes because everyone wanted to get a picture of them.

Next up, it was time to head over to photo area A for my photoshoot with Chavo Guerrero. While still respectable, the queue was vastly inferior to Jon’s, which meant I was 5th in queue. Chavo remembered me from earlier, the photo was taken, and it turned out well. Smooth, fast, efficient, easy. By this point, it was approaching 12:30pm, so we headed over to Julian’s autograph table to see if he was there. He was, but his queue was so ridiculously long (not using virtual queuing though) we carried on walking and decided to go back later. We headed to the first floor balcony, where you can see all of the ground floor perfectly, as we were trying to find John, who should have been back by now. We bumped into Jon Bernthal on the way up (thankfully, not literally), who smiled happily at us as he walked past. He was on the phone at the time and I distinctly heard the word “Michael”, which makes me theorise that he was talking to Michael Rooker, who was about to enter the venue to visit Jon and Sean Clark. After a break and much looking for John, we spotted him down on the ground floor perusing the merchandise stalls by the entry doors to the venue, so we raced down the stairs in order to catch him before he’d wandered off somewhere else. By the time we got there he had, of course, disappeared. As we were glancing around looking for John, we noticed a man in a black baseball cap and sunglasses walking towards the exit, being ushered out by three security guards. After intially thinking someone was being kicked out, then thinking that one of the guests was leaving early, I noticed that it was Michael Rooker! He was being hounded by a mob of people trying talk to him and get a picture with him. Apparently, Michael had ‘joked’ on Twitter earlier in the day that he was going to attend “LFCC Winter” in order to visit Jon Bernthal and Sean Clark, who I believe is Michael’s agent as well as Jon’s. Turns out, it wasn’t a joke! He was only in the venue for about 10 minutes because he instantly got recognised as he was looking at some of the merchandise stalls, and was swiftly mobbed. After a crowd started gathering and some 20 selfies were taken with people, security had to get him out of the venue. As Michael was approaching the entrance doors to leave, he stopped for a few more selfies, while the security guards were still trying to get him out of the building “for his own protection”. I turned my mobile phone onto camera mode, slid it to Hannah, and said, “I’m going for it”. I slipped between the security guards like a ninja and was the last person to get a picture with him inside the venue. Oh, Hell yeah! He asked which camera it was, I pointed at Hannah, he smiled widely, posed with his middle finger up ala Merle Dixon, laughed his ass off about the fact he just posed with his middle finger up, gave me a manshake (a handshake with hands up, not down), hugged me, thanked me, and exited the building in a mass of security and attendees. You could feel that Michael was loving the attention and the stir that he was creating, and you could feel that he was a good dude. He’s also in my favourite episode of “Chuck”, so that was another reason why meeting him was awesome. So few people knew he was there and even fewer of those managed to get a picture with him. I felt so lucky that I was in the right place at the right time and managed to ninja my way around the security. Absolutely 100% luck, but it’s one of my favourite convention stories. 


 

After that, I was – and I cannot stress this enough – bouncing off the walls with exitement and adrenaline. It was all so unexpected and exciting, I felt as though I’d just won the lottery. I’d now met both Dixon brothers from “The Walking Dead” in a matter of months! Granted, the picture turned out a little dodgy colour-wise because it was taken so quickly, but it was still a passable quality and free! While Hannah was trying to slip me a sedative, we found John. I tried my best to tell John ‘the tale of the Rooker’, but it all spilled from my mouth as one long, excitable jumble. It was word vomit at its finest. After taking a moment to zen, we headed back to Julian Glover’s autograph table and his queue was still very long. I suppose that’s what you get when you’ve been in four or five big franchises and are only appearing for half of one day. Also, his autograph was only £10 at this particular time (it’s £15 now), so it was a bargain as well. Understandably, Julian had a “no posed photos” sign up, which was to be expected as he was A) 78 years old at this point, and B) Only attending for a matter of hours. This didn’t affect me at all as I already had my studio photo with him booked for later.

Julian Glover: Bless him. Julian comes across as so warm, so caring, and so full of energy. We discussed “Game Of Thrones” and the role of Grand Maester Pycelle (which was originally intended for Roy Dotrice, but Roy fell ill and was unable to accept the part) for a few minutes before we left. I didn’t want to take up too much time as his queue was gigantic, but the time I did get with Julian was very enjoyable, even though I inevitably wanted more. Thankfully, I got just that at “LFCC 2015”, where I was able to talk to Julian for an extended period of time. Total, total sweetheart of a man. Totally worth the £10. Guest type = Responder. 

At this point, I was four autographs down (out of four), 2 studio photos down (out of four), had met Alex Shane unexpectedly, and had a picture taken with Michael Rooker unexpectedly. After spending a few minutes chilling out and composing myself, it was time to head over to studio photo C for my photo with Julian Glover. First thing I noticed (Julian was sat down during the autograph process) was that Julian was fucking massive! He must be a solid 6’2”. I had no idea he was so tall. The photo came out really well and is still one of my very favourites to this day. After leaving Julian’s photoshoot, I saw Sean Clark crossing the hall, so I grabbed a quick picture with Sean too. 

 

The final thing to do was head to photo area B for Walter Jones’ photoshoot. Walter had brought either the originals or replicas of the black ranger helmet and also two Megazord callers from the show, and was offering people the option of using one or the other as a prop for the photoshoot. Naturally, I asked for both. I held the helmet, while Walter called a Megazord with the callery-thing. The photographer joked that there’s always one person who wants everything. Too right. I am paying, after all. Walter was more than happy to do this and I think he expected it to happen sooner or later. Turned out pretty great as well!

 

Everything was completed by 4:30pm, so we were gone and back on the road by 4:45pm. I must admit, this convention exceeded my expectations because I went in with them being pretty low after a few cancellations and not that many people left to meet. However, three of the four photoshoots turned out great, the other one turned out pretty good too, my four autograph experiences were pleasant, and I had an impromptu picture taken with Michael Rooker for free. Can’t ask for more than that! Time for the most important question of the day, would I go again? I did in 2014. However, I did skip the 2015 winter version of “LFCC”, as I was already too busy with conventions at that time of the year.


FINAL SCORE: 7.5/10

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