by canofhumdingers » Sun Apr 10, 2011 12:34 am
I made it! I still can't believe that a vacation we were already planning happened to coincide with this convention by dumb luck! It made me proud to see that the line for Mr. Nakajima's autographs was, by far, the longest in the whole building! He was just as fun and entertaining (and played to the crowd as much) as I remember from his last appearance at G-fest.
August, it was nice to meet you (I guess I actually met you at that same G-fest that featured Mr. Nakajima where you signed my copy of your book, but I didn't really talk to you any aside from the book signing). Your panel with Mr. Nakajima was very well thought out and entertaining with some really interesting info. The only negative thing I came away thinking was something you mentioned during the panel itself: it was just too short!! They really should have allotted at LEAST 2 hrs for Mr. Nakajima! He just has waaaay too much cool stuff to talk about, plus the language barrier slows things down a bit. But it was still great. I hope someone got him acting out his role in Seven Samurai on video!
It'll be interesting to find out for sure if he played Magma (that was the monster in question, right?) & just doesn't remember it, or if those reference materials really are wrong.
And I hope you are able to work out a deal to translate his biography as that would be an absolute treat to finally get in english!
On the American monster front, it was really cool to meet Ricou Browning (the creature himself from Creature from the Black Lagoon) and his orginal love inerest, Julie Adams! They were both very nice, Julie was quite talkative & interested when I told her about seeing the movie on the big screen in 3d this past Halloween.
I wish I could've seen Armand's panel on Friday & I'll be very sad to miss Ricou Browning's panel on the Creature tomorrow, but if I'm so happy I was even able to attend at all as it really was pure chance that this happened to fall on a weekend when I was already planning to be in L.A., and just happened to have Saturday free without anything already planned! And if I was only able to attend one day, today would've absolutely been my choice with Mr. Nakajima's panel!
Two things I would recommend for the next monsterpalooza:
1. a bigger space (I was shocked at just HOW crowded it was! And the line to get in was just as long or longer by the time I left around 5-ish as it was when I got there around 11 that morning!)
2. Film screenings!!! August, I'm still waiting for the announcement on when that post-poned Godzilla film fest you were planning is going to happen!
