A night at the Saturn Awards…

I should start off by saying that, sadly, “Not Forgotten” came home from the 36th Annual Saturn Awards empty-handed on Thursday night. Sorry…

But one of the things I learned about attending my first big-time award show (as a nominee!) is that it really is an honor just to be nominated. I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true. And seeing as the folks who put on the Saturn Awards are some of the coolest, geekiest, sci-fi, fantasy and horror fans imaginable (people like me!) I was even doubly honored.

Seriously, I have never felt more at home in a room full of Hollywood phonies, and that’s because these people were not your everyday Hollywood phonies.

No way, man, these folks were the real deal. That Starlight Ballroom was busting at the seams with talented, creative, film-loving freaks and geeks of every shape and size…and those people know how to party, yo!

This year, the Saturn Awards were held at the Castaway Restaurant in the hills overlooking Burbank…and if there was any doubt as to where you were when you got out of your car, the scads of little alien heads at the bar and the life size astronaut suit on the red carpet totally clued you in.

Still wondering what award show you were at? Well, perhaps you should ask that fellow over there in the Samurai Stormtrooper costume, or the man driving the moon buggy in a grungy space suit. I swear, amigos, I never stopped smiling all night…that place was fanboy heaven.

Rubbing shoulders with people like Sam Raimi, Leonard Nimoy, Billy Dee Williams, Guillermo Del Toro, Malcolm McDowell, the lovely Anna Torv from “Fringe”, cast members from “Heroes”, “Chuck” and “Breaking Bad”, iconic “The Greatest American Hero” star himself, William Katt, and actually being touched by the dude who played touch-happy Jacob on “Lost” (Mark Pellegrino)…I mean, shit, who needs an award with a line-up like that?

Of course, we would have loved to have won our category — we lost to Rod Lurie’s “Nothing But The Truth”, which includes no sci-fi, fantasy or horror to speak of — but, we were having too much fun to dwell on the loss for long. I mean, the food was great, the bar was wide open — Daddy had three mojitos and a chocolate vodka martini, but who’s counting? — and the vibe at the Castaway was awesome, so, what’s to complain about?

And on top of all that coolness, I managed to score two gift bags at the end of the night. Sure, I felt a little greedy lugging them around the after-party in the courtyard, but what can I say, I loves me some free shit. And when that free shit involves “King Kong” and “Avatar” DVD’s, well, all the better!

Thanks again for the nomination, guys…long live the Saturn Awards! To see a full list of this year’s Saturn Award winners, please click here.

And to see more of my super-nerdy pics please click here.

“Not Forgotten” nominated for 2010 Saturn Award

Speaking of Sci-Fi…a few weeks back I got the super cool news that “Not Forgotten” had been nominated by the Academy of Science Fiction Fantasy & Horror for a 2010 Saturn Award for Best DVD Release. Yay! I didn’t blog about it then, because I wanted to make sure I got invited to the show first…and guess what? I did! So, whoo-hoo…let the celebrating commence!

If, like most non-hard-core sci-fi geeks, you have no idea what the Saturn Awards are, please allow me to fill you in. The Saturn Awards have been given out to the best of the best sci-fi, fantasy and horror films, TV shows, plays and home video for the past 36 years, and unlike the Oscars who traditionally shun such genres, these guys are true fans of the first order.

This is the organization that in the past has given Best Film Awards to “The Empire Strikes Back”, “Aliens”, “Poltergeist”, “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” and “Children of Men”…smart, bold genre movies that more staid institutions completely shut out. I used to read about these rocking, underground award gatherings in Starlog and Fangoria magazines when I was a geeky kid…so, to have something I co-wrote and associate produced be nominated at all, in any category is kind of mind-blowing.

And the fact that I will actually be attending the show tonight, rubbing elbows with the creators and cast of “Lost”, “Avatar”, “Star Trek”, “Harry Potter” and the like…well, shit…I might just explode!

However, in the highly-unlikely event that I actually do make it through the show tonight intact, I promise to post some pics soon, so, stay tuned. To see a list of all this year’s Saturn Award nominees, click here.

“Cloverfield” on DVD

Rented the insanely over-hyped Godzilla-lite movie “Cloverfield” over the weekend and all I can say is…wow…what a disaster, literally. This movie sucks so bad that it might just be one of the worst movies we’ve ever seen. And that is really saying something as we see tons of movies.

If the annoying, herky-jerky camera work doesn’t make you wanna hurl, than the acting and dialog surely will. I’m not kidding, the script is so bad you can’t even laugh at it. And this cast of pretty WB/CW rejects is so terrible that Christine and I were actually rooting for them to die.

Not to give too much away, but let me tell ya, when the most annoying character, Marlena, met her end in a spectacularly gory fashion, I literally stood up and cheered. Of course, the way she died — like so much of this crass marketing scheme of a movie — was lifted directly out of another movie (“Alien”) but hey, at least she died, so we were happy.

As for the camera work, yikes. I already have a hard time not throwing up during good movies with hand-held camera work — “Husbands & Wives”, “Breaking The Waves”, etc. — and when the movie is bad, wow, it kind of multiplies the nausea factor by a million.

Now, before you call me a film snob, let me say that bad acting and bad writing I can forgive — we have enjoyed some really bad scary movies over the years — but the biggest problem I have with this movie is that it’s not a movie at all. Seriously, “Cloverfield” plays like an extended YouTube video, and in fact, would probably have been much better had it been confined to three minutes instead of a 84.

You can almost hear the “story and plot be damned” pitch: “It’s BLAIR WITCH meets GODZILLA for the YouTube age”. I kid you not, that’s all it is. There is absolutely no explanation for anything that happens in this movie and the framing device (again clearly stolen from another movie) that this tape was found by the military is laughable.

Trust me, man, if the military found this talky, God-awful videotape, they would do some serious editing and skip to the good parts. Yes, I said good parts. Because this movie has two scenes that are pretty amazing. If you’d like to see the movie for yourself sometime, stop reading now while I discuss them.

SPOILER ALERT: The first scene that is worth checking out is when the monster attacks the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s very cool and totally scary.

And the second (and only other!) scene worth seeing is near the end of the movie when we spy the monster being bombed by the military. Shot from a helicopter as our surviving heroes (if you can call them that) are whisked to safety, it is our only clear view of the monster and it looks pretty damn cool.

And then, just when it seems like he’s beat, the monster jumps up and takes the helicopter down. Wow! This scene isn’t just awesome, but it is probably the only truly original scare in the entire film. Too bad the rest of this boring, crapfest sucks so much ass…

At the end of the day, I guess the best thing I can say about “Cloverfield” is that, thankfully, we saved some money by NOT seeing it in the theater. So, yeah!