So a couple of weeks back I had the opportunity to check out this year’s StarFest convention. StarFest is basically the science-fiction/fantasy convention in Denver, this being the 32nd iteration of the annual meet-up. I only was able to attend Saturday and Saturday ended up being shot pretty handily due to other commitments.

Anyhow, the convention felt massive. I had been to the Marriott Denver Tech Center for the last couple of Nan Desu Kan anime conventions but the convention area never felt quite this active. The convention had something going on in every room and even bleeding out into the hallways. There’s even a convention within a convention aptly named HorrorFest for those seeking other thrills. There’s a bevy of panels, an ample dealer room, a handful of video rooms and table top gaming rooms, a room devoted to model kits and a very large and diverse art room for the art auction.

I only got to check out a couple of panels. The big panel of the day was the presentation of the remake of Get Smart starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway followed by a brief question and answer session with Masi Oka (Hiro on Heroes) and Nate Torrence ( Dylan Killington on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). Despite the MC telling the crowd Mr. Oka was not there to answer questions about Heroes we still got a healthy dose of Heroes related questions. The Q&A ended up being pretty light. Most of it ended up being fluff about working with the various stars on the movie, the DVD side movie starring their characters, and various questions floating back to the work they did on television before they made it big. The actual Get Smart clip preceding the Q&A left me a little mixed on the movie. I’m not familiar with the original series enough to weigh in on how true to the source the remake appeared to be. Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway have good rapport with each other in the scene and it’s definitely got the right tone and humor. The close out of the scene turned out to be a really poor comedic choice and served nothing to enhance the action preceding it. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised since the film comes from director Peter Segal who has worked on some real comedic winners with the likes of Adam Sandler and Eddie Murphy. I don’t think the preview really swayed me one way or the other but it at least reminded me the move was still coming out.

The panel was followed by a quick trailer of Speed Racer from The Wachowski Brothers and starring Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, and John Goodman. I’m surprisingly interested in this film because of the high definition filming techniques they used to capture it. The film looked like it’s going to be a two hour long acid trip. About 80% of the trailer showed cars not actually on the road and it seemed like the film was basically centered around Speed’s family and unraveling a conspiracy in the racing league. Yawn. This will probably be a mediocre film based on The Wachowski’s last couple of offerings. At least they had the good sense to put in the classic sound effects from the TV show.

I did get a chance to check out the art show, the model kit show, and the room of consumerism. The dealer room had a lot of neat little trinkets, DVDs, apparel, toys and an unhealthy collection of rare and expensive autographs from a variety of stars. I had a couple of brushes with celebrity when Adam Baldwin’s (Jayne from Serenity/Firefly) autograph session shuttled past. There was Nichell Nichols (Uhura from Star Trek) who parted the sea of nerds and helped out small wayward group with our exodus from one of the panel rooms. Fitting since it was Passover at sundown. I also watched Zachary Quinto (Sylar from Heroes) walk around and check out the upstairs areas of the convention.

The last event I checked out was the costume contest. This was the first contest I’ve actually sat through the whole thing and only because a friend of a friend was in it and the rest of the convention was practically dead. Highlights included a duo of Lego Men, a large scale Gundam costume, a way too into it Wolverine, sexy Ghostbusters (because I love sexy and pieces of the horrid film Night at the Museum. Thankfully there was only a minimal amount of Final Fantasy costumes which is the Blue Collar Comedy tour of cosplay as far as I’m concerned. Unfortunately, there was a good deal of people who had no shame and came out with there Gary-stu costumes on top of the excruciating skits. The worst of them involved a menagerie of music cuts between a mock argument for some lovers or some bullshit like that. I’m so sure this was a brilliant idea when the conceived it and they were thinking it would be so original and people will love them for gracing them with such an original idea. Well it wasn’t. Frankly I can’t decide if I was more embarassed for them performing it or for the audience who had to watch and clap for it. Despite the technical guffaws and other issues, the MC at least could be entertaining and I will have plenty of pictures to laugh about on a rainy day In short, I doubt I’ll be watching too many costume contests in the future. Or invited back to see one as the case may be.

StarFest 2008 turned out to be pretty neat and a little more relevant to my nerd tastes. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to check it out again and sit in on more of the panels and get to see more and take part of what the convention really has to offer rather than the tiny nibble I got this year. It’s nice to see a convention this cool and attended by a great deal of prominent celebrities in the Denver metro area. I look forward to next year’s convention.