G-FEST XVIII - July 2011

[MouthForWar]

[Xenorama]

[planetxleader]

[Inferior Rodan]

[planetxleader]

[armandv]

[armandv]

[Barnzilla]

[uglijimus]

[uglijimus]

[Gojilove]

[August]

[August]

[heroforhirerob]

[MouthForWar]

[RyanClark]

[Thomas]

[kiryugoji04]

Pretty sure he's the same character in all three too.

[TripMasterMunky]

[Thomas]

[kiryugoji04]

[MouthForWar]

[heroforhirerob]

[RyanClark]

[Thomas]

Here's a quick summary of my G-Fest 18 experience.

First the hotel. Back to the Crowne Plaza where it has gone through a renovation, which it needed, and I think it came out really well. The hotel room was nice and had a newer television that one could easily hook up their own video equipment to if they were so inclined. The common areas and ballroom and meeting rooms were all updated while keeping nearly the same layout but with new carpet that was sufficiently padded for walking/standing comfort. Common bathrooms were updated as well and much to the better. The layout of G-Fest itself really worked out well this year imo. Having the registration in the same hall that the ballrooms are in was good as it immediately put people near to where the events were. Having the artist alley across from the dealers room was also very good and hopefully drove more people to peruse the artists offerings. Using all five ballrooms the whole weekend was a big help with keeping the sessions close enough together that you could get to them easily and find them. Only complaint (minor) is the hotel wouldn't put any of the three television sets in the rear entry hall on the in house tv channel, but those tv's are bit out of the way so it didn't really matter. I did request on two occasions that they do it and they said they would but it didn't happen. Oh yeah there was also plenty of water to drink from any of the many water coolers they had placed in the convention area throughout the whole weekend. Other than the tv complaint the staff seemed to respond quickly to the cons needs.

G-Fest itself was really good this year. Due to the combination of it being held in the same hotel that people were staying at, the hotel's renovations, the roomier Dealer's Room, and the better layout for the convention as a whole. Having the bigger sessions all being held in the two separate ballrooms as opposed to one being held in one giant ballroom and the other one being held in the smaller Midway conference room as it had been for the many years that the con was at the Crowne Plaza was a big improvement. The sessions themselves were also really good. As I said previously my favorite session of the show was the IDW Comics panel with Matt Frank and Jeff Zornow, but that doesn't mean that the other sessions were lacking. Any session with August Ragone and or Damon Foster conducting is going to be excellent. These guys know their stuff and and present it in a very entertaining manner. They're like two University Professors that are interested and engaged by what other people 's opinions are on the topics that they're teaching about and they're also lot's of fun. There were quite a few interesting sessions being held opposite each other and it made it a difficult decision to decide which one to attend. Here is a link to the program to let you know what I'm talking about.

Dealers room is always pretty cool to see stuff especially since I try not to own very many toy or model items. I did pick up some items from the Dealer's Room with some of the highlights being the Toho's SFX Actress Encyclopedia which is incredible and the entire Specter Man series (I've never seen it). Here is a picture of my purchases at G-Fest.

Saturday night attended the screening of Gamera 2 Advent of Legion my favorite kaiju movie and perhaps the best kaiju movie ever made imo. There was a large number of people in attendance, which was good because I wanted Higuchi to see a high amount of people would turn out for a Gamera movie he worked on, and as an added bonus the audience was totally into the movie. Cheering for the appearnace of all the kaiju and for the appearnce of Ayako Fujitani and Hiroyuki Watanabe and the Daiei symbol and for the defeat of Legion. I had a grin on my face throughout the whole screening as it was such a good way to experience the movie, with a large group of people who were also into it. Having it have been a film print would have been the cherry on the cake of my day, but sometimes you can't have the cherry on the cake of your day, but the cake is still d*mn good.

All in all this was a very good G-Fest and I look forward to attending next years convention, which by the way I did attend the G-Fan/G-Fest session with JD and the date for next years con is undecided as is the hotel it will take place at. 90% probability it will be at the Crowne Plaza again but there are some other options he was looking into. Someone mentioned at the panel that the top guests people are most interested in are Kumi Mizuno and Megumi Odaka and another name I can't remember. Tristar's G98 was mentioned as a possible screening for next year by an audience member that also then suggested maybe we could get the gang from Mystery Science Theater 3000 to do they're thing to the movie since there are two separate groups of them that do it now as a live gig. Cinematic Titanic and Rifftrax. JD asked if anyone there liked the MST3K show and I'd say 90% of the 40 or more people in the room raised their hands and then asked if anyone disliked them and one person raised their hand. He seemed pretty surprised by the overwhelming positive response. The topic of what to screen next year is what brought up the Gino 98 MST3K idea.

As a fun aside here is the trivia questions from this years con

*edit Fixed links to show whole program book and all of the trivia questions