Over on his blog, Kevin Smith has released another new image from Zack and Miri Make a Porno, promising fans that the film's first internet-only teaser will debut on his site, www.quickstopentertainment.com, when he returns home from a trip to the east coast next week. Additionally, Smith says he'll be at San Diego Comic Con again this year (we missed ya at NYCC, Kev!), and to (most likely) look out for a panel in the big room on Friday night. Panel? Does that mean he'll have a bunch of cast members with him? Does that mean he'll debut the first full-length trailer for the film? Does that mean he'll give out candy?!

From looking at the photo, it appears we'll be getting some fun adult hockey in the flick, which, in case you didn't know (or forgot) tells of two platonic friends (Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks) who, strapped for cash, decide to make a porno. Check out a couple more images from the film in our gallery below. Zack and Miri Make a Porno arrives in theaters this fall.

On November 20, for the first time ever, a movie will be exclusively distributed via iTunes. Yes, we already heard about this briefly when our own Kevin Kelly talked with Edward Burns at ComicCon. But at the time, Burns had said he would be given a trial run, in which his latest film, Purple Violets, would be available on iTunes for four weeks beginning on October 9. That date has come and gone, and now the New York Times has revealed that the film will actually get a full, exclusive release on November 20. That means you won't be able to see it in theaters, or on DVD, or on Cable. Yet, anyway. Personally, I'm a bit shocked the idea didn't happen sooner. There's tons and tons of indie films out there that can't get good distro. Going with iTunes sounds like a great opportunity to get notice. Plus, with iTunes still only offering less than 1000 movies, and still unable to get titles from all the studios, the service would do well to increase its library with exclusives like this. The idea certainly worked for companies like Netflix, which started exclusive distribution via its Red Envelope Entertainment moniker. Maybe one day, like Red Envelope, iTunes could even produce its own movies.

The Times goes into detail about iTunes distribution, mentioning the strategy of putting Wes Anderson's Hotel Chevalier up for free download, which sparked extra interest in The Darjeeling Limited. It also points out the benefit of having short films on iTunes in general, not just for well-knowns like Anderson. The move can affect DVD rentals, though, according to Burns, who has had difficulty securing video distribution for Purple Violets now that it will be available on iTunes. The movie, which stars Burns, Debra Messing, Patrick Wilson and Selma Blair, premiered earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival, where Eric called it Burns' "best film since The Brothers McMullen ... a more mature film than anything Burns has done in the past."

Now that the dust has finally settled from the summer movie season, it's time to kick back, relax and, well, gear up for next summer's blockbusters I guess. Tony Stark, a.k.a. Shell Head, a.k.a. The Golden Avenger, a.k.a. Iron Man is yet another Marvel Comics character getting the big-screen treatment, and that hotly-anticipated flick will be arriving in theaters via a nifty set of boot jets on May 2, 2008. Director Jon Favreau has posted on his Myspace page that the first teaser trailer will be playing on Monday 9/10 during several TV shows, although the most ardent of Iron Man fans will want to tune into MTV's The Hills that day because that's where the spot will air first. The teaser will show up in a bunch of places on Monday and Tuesday, including Comedy Central's The Daily Show, CSI on Spike TV and The Andy Griffith Show on TVLand. Yeah, I did a double take on Andy Griffith too. Looks like their hitting some pretty diverse demographics.

A high-res version will also be appearing on Apple.com/trailers Tuesday 9/11. Check out Favreau's Myspace for a more complete listing of shows carrying the promo. Apparently the teaser incorporates much of the footage that was shown at Comicon -- footage which, incidentally, can still be viewed via crappy cell phone video over on Youtube. Frankly, I'm surprised Paramount hasn't yanked it, but even in substandard video, the footage looks awesome, and it's all set to the Black Sabbath song Iron Man. Nice. Can't wait to see the high-def version.

Like my esteemed colleague Kevin Kelly, I too have had a little time to relax and reflect on my recent Comic-Con International experience. Although I don't have nearly the amount of photos he has, I do have a few thoughts as to what news, events, problems and other things hit home for me during the four and a half glorious days that made up Comic-Con International 2007.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been attending the Comic-Con for many years now. During that time I've watched it grow from an event held in a hotel attended by thousands of hard-core comic book fans eagerly trading comics and excitedly talking about their favorite comic book covers, characters, artists, writers and story arcs to a giant, unwieldy beast seemingly driven not by a love of sequential art but by the Hollywood PR machine.

The event used to be about comic books and the people who make them. Now, it seems to be about movies and TV shows and the people who make them. At least in years past, the majority of movie or TV shows on display at the Con had some loose association with comics. Not this year. For example, I like Russell Crowe and Christian Bale and 3:10 to Yuma looks like an interesting film, but I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with comics -- except that Bale plays Batman in Batman Begins and the upcoming Batman: The Dark Knight.

So, it's been just over a week since Comic-Con wrapped up, and I've had time to catch up on sleep, dig all of my geek gear out of my bag, delouse my Captain Marvel costume, and process all of the pop culture I was exposed to without a radiation shield. For awhile it left me weaker than Green Lantern's ability to affect the color yellow, if you know what I mean.

You can read my bullet-pointed, bite-size-chunked roundup of the news that hit closest to home for me after the break, and also check out our massive gallery of shots from the show floor and the panels below. Comic-Con always seems like such a massive buildup each year, but when it's over you scratch your head a bit and say, "Was that all there was?" Then you start looking forward to next year.

While Kevin Bacon was absent from the Death Sentence breakfast, we did manage to corral Garrett Hedlund over eggs and ... bacon. He talked to us about starring in the movie, his relationships with co-stars Kevin Bacon and John Goodman, how he grew up with guns, and shooting very long action sequences with a lit cigarette in his mouth.

Garrett Hedlund isn't a household name just yet, but you've probably seen him on the big screen at Patrocles in Troy. He played the brash, young cousin of Achilles (Brad Pitt), and is somewhat of a chameleon. He's also been in Friday Night Lights, Eragon, and Four Brothers. With a shaved head and tribal neck tattoos in Death Sentence, he's looking to extend that streak. Click on his picture for the audio interview and read the highlights below.

• He plays Billy Darly, the son of Bones Darly (John Goodman) and is the older brother of Joe Darly (Matt O'Leary).
• He leads a gang of thugs who run a meth lab in an abandoned insane asylum. Sounds like a nice place.
• There is a great scene between John Goodman and Kevin Bacon in the movie, where John realizes that Kevin Bacon is after his son ... who in turn had killed Kevin's son.
• He's worked with everyone from Brad Pitt, to Terrence Howard, to Billy Bob Thornton, but his dad was most impressed when he told him he was working with John Goodman. "He finally feels proud of me."
• "I don't care for working with actors that just come in and read the lines and pretend that the character is them, instead of them the character. A lot of people think that they're the one to bank off of, as their personality as a celebrity. They feel that people just want to see them. Where I like trying to do something different with each role."
• They did extensive research for the role by gathering as a "gang" at strip clubs and bars, and calling each other by their gang names.
• "I had my rifle permit when I was eleven, kids couldn't wait to deer hunt ... even girls. I grew up with an environment of guns. I've always used them, and always learned how to be safe with them. If I did something like pointing the gun at the sun or did anything stupid with it, I'd get slapped in the back of the head."

Kevin Feige has what most fanboys and fangirls would consider to be a dream job. He gets to play around in the Marvel Comics toybox and bring classic superheroes to life on the bigscreen. It's like having life-sized action figures and a really big backyard to pose them in.

We spoke with him during the Iron Man press event at Comic-Con, and besides wanting his Stark Industries hat, we also asked him a few questions. Click on his picture for the audio, and read the highlight reel below.

• On asked how we could score one of those 'Stark Industries' hats, "Well, you can go back in time, and work really hard on the movie and ... I shouldn't have worn it, I know."
• "It was a challenge to decide which one of his many costumes to go with. The red and gold was a given, but there are a number of incarnations throughout the film."
• The classic red and gold armor in the film is based somewhat on the Adi Granov's artwork from the (really great) Iron Man series 'Extremis.'
• When asked how many of the actors were attached for sequels, he replied. "All of 'em." They're in multi-picture contracts, which seems to be the standard these days.
• "What I love about the Iron Man villains is, yes ... you could call a lot of them goofy these days, but the truth is they're all tech-based villains, just like way Hulk has all gamma-based villains, and Spidey has genetically altered villains. I love the tech aspect to it, and you'll start to see some of that in this film."
  
• "We're working on an animated Iron Man series right now." It even includes Unicorn!
• How different are things at Marvel Studios, now that they are independent? "Well, other than the fact that we're signing the checks now, things aren't that different."
• "There's only been a handful of times where I would have done something different [on the films] ... Elektra." He says this one in a deep voice, and I have to agree with him on that one.
  
• They currently have scripts in development for Captain America, Thor, Ant Man, Dr. Strange, Submariner and more.
• When asked about the negative fan reaction to Spider-Man 3, he said, "It was the biggest movie of the summer, I'm pretty pleased with it ... my favorite thing was watching people react to that birth of Sandman sequence." Granted, that sequence was cool. But did he see the rest of the movie?!

Okay, seriously ... that title isn't a joke. Fox Atomic invited us to have "Bacon with Kevin Bacon" at Comic-Con for a movie he's in called Death Sentence. Granted, putting those together in the same sentence makes it appear worse than the Bataan Death March, but it was actually a lot more pleasant. Although a more apt title would have been "Bacon Without Kevin Bacon," because he wasn't at the breakfast. We did manage to catch up with him later, though.

We were treated to the promised bacon (along with other breakfast acoutrements) and some footage from Death Sentence. Kevin Bacon stars as Nick Hume, your average, boring, subarbanite "nerd" (as Bacon calls him) whose life changes dramatically when he witnesses his son being murdered. After that, things click into revenge mode, and before long Bacon is a badass, hunting down the gang who did him wrong. However, it's not like a switch gets flipped and he's instantly a commando. He slowly builds from hockey dad to serial killer, although by the end of the footage we saw, he has a shaved head and is a fairly expert hand with a shotgun.

Jon Favreau has really come a long way since Swingers (and thankfully, an even longer way since Made) and I'll be the first to admit that when he was attached to direct Iron Man, I breathed a sigh of ... disappointment. I mean, how could the director of Swingers and Elf possibly do a good job with a massive Hollywood summer tentpole film? My hopes were dashed. I pictured scenes of an over-the-top villain in black hat and mustache chasing Iron Man around with a can opener. Camp style, you know?

However, after seeing the footage from the movie, not once but three times, I'm totally sold on this. In my opinion, this is going to be the big movie next summer. When you first get a glimpse of that armor (both versions), it's chilling and cool at the same time. Plus, hearing Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" is just perfect. You sold me, Favreau. Go ahead and chalk up my ticket and popcorn with a medium soda, please.

Click on Jon to activate the audio, of which the highlights are below.

• On working with Vince Vaughn again: "Vince is riding high on the comedy train right now, and we have a lot of ideas that we could do. The Marshall of Revelation, which is the Western we talked about doing, is a little gritty and darker ... although we're getting a bit too old to play the roles as I wrote them."
• Is Jarvis the Butler in the movie? "Jarvis is in the movie, let's leave it at that. In some form."
• There are three different versions of the Iron Man armor in the movie. In the footage we saw, it's the Mark 1, and Mark 2 armors ... Favreau wasn't giving up the good on the other version, consarnit.
• "I'd love to do some version of Fin Fang Foom, but you can't do that in the first movie. Maybe in the second."
• On showing the footage to the Comic-Con fans: "If you have a misstep ... you could be Catwoman overnight."
• "Downey's not a guy that you cast to put asses in seats in a huge Hollywood blockbuster, he's the guy you put in the movie when you want a great actor who will bring integrity to a project like this."

Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark in Iron Man is probably some of the most bizarre, and most genius, piece of Hollywood casting in a comic-book movie ever. I still remember when people were scratching their heads over the whole Michael Keaton as Batman news ... but he didn't have the same reputation as a dabbler in the pleasures of recreational drugs that Downey has.

However, if you're familiar at all with the "Iron Man" comic books, then you know that Tony Stark has had similar problems, including a love affair with bottles of booze. He's a troubled hero, hidden behind armor, and Downey looks to be doing an amazing job of showing the human side of a Man of Iron.

I caught up with him at Comic-Con and asked him about wearing the new suit. Click on his picture to hear the audio, which includes tidbits like:

• "This is a karma superhero, really. More than anything else."
• "Stan Lee created "Iron Man" on a dare.
• He quit smoking during the filming of Iron Man, and Jon Favreau went on a diet. (I'm sure that caused some tension on-set).
• "I can relate to someone who sees things a different way, having any sort of spiritual awakening, even if it's an out and out trauma."
• "Tony Stark is Iron Man ... he just doesn't know it yet."
• "The armor was probably tailored to the most in-shape, tallest of the stuntmen."
• He says he'd "like to do a whole bunch more of them" -- meaning sequels to this one.
• When asked who would win in a fight between Terrence Howard and himself, if they were both in a superhero movie, he coyly says "You'll see."

Kevin Smith has had a panel at almost every Comic-Con since for the past umpteen years, and the line for it is always out the door, around the corner, down the block, across the street, and stretches into Mexico. You can be sure of one thing at most Cons, and that is the fact that you're going to need to line up early to get into this thing.

Wait, I meant to say you can be sure of two things. One, line up early for anything Kevin Smith related, and two ... be prepared for a lot of swear words. This really isn't the sort of thing you want to be bringing your seven year old daughter to in her Pokemon costume unless you want to be explaining some fairly graphic things to her. If you do, get ready for an incessant stream of, "Daddy, why is everyone laughing?" Although the eleven-year-old kid in front of me sure seemed to get a lot of the oral sex jokes. Wow.

While it seems like we were just talking about Hot Fuzz appearing at Comic-Con last year, but it's now out on DVD today, and while you'll have to wait until you can get to the store or it arrives in the mail to enjoy it ... you can play the Stanford Shootout game live on the web right now. Can you possibly keep the village safe whilst jumping through the air and firing two guns? Find out right here.

Here are some tidbits from Nick Frost and Edgar Wright at Comic-Con:

• Nick Frost thinks the HD version of the DVD looks 30% better, Edgar Wright doesn't even own an HD player yet.
• Nick, Simon, and Edgar are working on a new movie, which will complete what they're calling the "Blood and Ice Cream" trilogy.
• Edgar used to work in the very supermarket featured in the film, and as a teenager he used to dream of one day coming back and "f*cking the place up."
• The DVD sold a million copies in the UK in four weeks.
• Edgar Wright was asked to direct the first episode of the new Doctor Who series, and he turned it down. Nick Frost is admittedly, "Not a Who fan." So, don't look for him on the show anytime.
• Edgar's Don't trailer isn't on any of the Grindhouse DVDs yet, but will appear on the special multi-disc Grindhouse set that comes out.
• One of the special features on the DVD is "Hot Funk", showing how they made the 'clean' language version of the film, which you can watch after the break.

In a whirlwind of Comic-Con Kevins, which involved Kevin Smith, Marvel Studios' Kevin Feige, G4's Attack of the Show Kevin Pereira, AOL's Kevin Polowy, and yours truly, I was able to get one more Kevin under the wire ... Kevin Bacon.

He's spent more time making movies than the rest of us have spent watching them, and I was able to catch up with him to talk about his upcoming thriller Death Sentence, and to ask him about some other things, including the upcoming Nixon/Frost film that reunites him with Ron Howard, Rails and Ties, directed by Alison Eastwood, and of course, the upcoming remake of Footloose.

Kick off your Sunday shoes, if you're still wearing them, and check out the video.

For comic geeks and the like, I guess San Diego ComicCon is like getting to star in your very own version of My Super Sweet Sixteen, except instead of walking away with a pricey convertible, you get an Iron Man t-shirt. But it's cool -- to some, that t-shirt is worth so much more. This year's Con was pretty damn important, with regards to next summer's crop of blockbusters. Unlike this summer where most of the films were third or fourth installments in a lucrative franchise, the summer of 2008 features a new franchise, the re-launch of another, the return (after 19 years) of one more and then a few sequels. And so I think it's safe to say there was a lot more riding on this year's Con versus the last, and I'm happy to report no one let us down. At least, I wasn't.

Last week I asked what you were most looking forward to at ComicCon. Most of you were all over the place in your answers -- from Whedon to Iron Man, there wasn't any overwhelming buzz geared toward one particular project. But now that ComicCon is over, I'm wondering if you were left anticipating something even more? For me, hearing Karen Allen will return as Marion Ravenwood to the Indiana Jones franchise certainly left me all jazzed. And that Iron Man footage -- while it was still online -- looked far better than I had imagined. Did Downey Jr. look like a pimp or what? Did a new Dark Knight image and teaser trailer make you feel better about Heath Ledger as the Joker? Or how about the announcement that Leonard Nimoy will return as Captain Spock along with a younger version to be played by Zachary Quinto? Could there be a better Watchmen cast? And are you upset that J.J. Abrams and his Cloverfield poster didn't lead us on a three-day viral scavenger hunt? Was enough information handed out, or would you have liked to see more? Did ComicCon live up to the hype this year?

So, I ask you: Now that ComicCon is over, is your 2008 anticipation meter any higher than it was prior to the convention in San Diego?

I probably should've written this post last night, but couldn't find the time to get to it. If I had written it last night, then I would've been able to include Iron Man here as well, however those tricksters over at Paramount have removed the Iron Man ComicCon footage from YouTube and so we're all sh*t out of luck. I did happen to catch the Iron Man stuff before it was taken down, and I have to say it all looked pretty fantastic. I've never been an Iron Man fan, and I was weary about Jon Favreau taking on such an ambitious project, but based on what they showed it looks like Iron Man could be the film to watch out for come next summer. Another film that has lots of people talking is The Incredible Hulk re-launch -- with Edward Norton signed up to play the green monster before he's made angry.

Luckily, the brief snippet of footage from next summer's The Incredible Hulk is still online over at YouTube (as of right this second). I'm not sure if it's just not important enough to take down, or if there's barely enough there to be worried about -- but at least I have something to hand you this morning. Unlike the four plus minutes of Iron Man stuff, this Hulk "concept art" is only about 20 seconds and it features a close-up of the new Hulk, in all his green, angsty glory. Cinematical's Kevin Kelly live-blogged the entire Marvel panel at ComicCon, and so to hear more about what stars Edward Norton and Liv Tyler had to say about their roles, head on over here. Luckily, we were also able to grab some secret footage of the Hulk's transformation which, I'll admit, is a little rough and cartoonish in its current form -- but hey, at least it's something. The Incredible Hulk will smash its way into theaters on June 13, 2008.