I don't ask for autographs, I don't send fan letters, and I certainly don't wait around in front of hotels or press lines -- but I do get to attend some verrrrry geeky movie events, I do have a few very cool friends, and (get this) I'm a pretty friendly and sincere guy. So sometimes I get cool snapshots. Call it a hobby inspired by the time I did a (very brief) Sundance interview with the monolithic James Woods and walked away without a photo with one of my actor-heroes. (Despite the fact that I had a perfectly good camera in my pocket.) Plus I work for a cool movie blog, which means I can get photos like these and actually call it ... work! (muffled giggles)

My gracious thanks to everyone in and behind the photos. And my apologies to everyone else for my always looking so bald, sweaty, and tired. (You only see pictures of me when I'm exhausted. Plus I'm just plain old goofy looking, so save your comments.)

I've mentioned this before, but it's worth reiterating here: I don't really enjoy doing interviews with filmmakers and celebrities. I fancy myself a somewhat "creative" writer (not necessarily a good writer, but hopefully a creative one), and the interview format doesn't really leave all that much room for creativity. If I gave you a list of all the famous people I PASSED on interviewing, you'd probably call me a clueless buffoon. And you may be right.

But one thing I do enjoy is doing a casual interview with a filmmaker who doesn't really have a current project to "push." This way we can just talk about movies in general, and I don't have to feel the pressure of "focus on his NEW movie!" So when Erik sent me a list of five or six people that I could talk to from Genius Products (the home video distributor of Harvey Weinstein's films), I told him "Nah, thanks, unless you desperately want coverage of someone." But then I looked a little closer: Um, Frank Darabont was there to do some chatting? Uh, yes please. Anyone who's ever seen The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, or The Mist knows that Mr. Darabont is one hell of a good filmmaker -- but anyone who's ever listened to one of his audio commentaries also knows that the guy is one of the most articulate, passionate, and well-prepared directors under the sun.

What can I say about our first full day at San Diego Comic Con? First off, there are people everywhere -- I'm absolutely starving (because lines to get any sort of food are tremendous) and everywhere I look someone has fake blood on their body. It's the most surreal experience ever -- sort of like attending a Woodstock-like concert in Fantasyland. But I dig it, and we're trying to do as much as we can, see as much as we can, and bring it all back to you without absolutely losing our minds.

Below is a collection of costumes from the first day of San Diego Comic Con '08. (I don't think I have to tell you which one is my favorite ...)

More coming ... including word from Max Payne, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Red Sonja, Frank Darabont, Twilight and, well, more, more, more ...

Cinematical's Official Comic Con '08 Hub

Were you in The Shawshank Redemption? Did you work on set? Were you otherwise involved in the production? If so, you're invited to a 15-year reunion this August in Ohio. Someone having something to do with the 1994 Oscar-nominated film has put together a weekend-long event and a really snazzy website providing details. Oh, and if you're merely a fan of the movie but had nothing at all to do with its making, you can attend as well. A few of the things on the itinerary do cost an admission fee, but only because there are prison and museum tours involved, plus a concert featuring a southern rock band.

Many people consider The Shawshank Redemption one of the best films of the '90s, maybe even of all time, so there are likely plenty of people who'd be interested in a little trip to see the film's shooting locations and meet with extras and crew members who helped create the film. Apparently there aren't many people on board just yet, but if the word gets out to enough people, there's a chance of making this a huge deal. Maybe principal talent like Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Stephen King and/or Frank Darabont could even make room in their schedules to make an appearance. And then, perhaps this can be a yearly thing, like Star Wars conventions and Lebowski Fest.

[via Pop Candy]

Well, this is an interesting find, Dr. Jones. Apparently, a PDF document claiming to be Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods, as written by Frank Darabont, has found its way online. There's no word yet on whether it's the real deal, and I haven't had the time to read through the whole thing, but it might be worth a look. To recap: Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) wrote an early draft of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Legend has it Steven Spielberg really liked his draft, but George Lucas did not. Thus, Darabont eventually left the project -- one he'd worked on tirelessly -- time went by, and David Koepp finally wound up with it.

But what happened to Darabont's unused script -- the one Spielberg apparently loved? Who knows. Some people say aliens took it one night when Darabont wasn't paying attention, while others believe it was buried with one of them rare crystal skulls in the mountains of Peru. Regardless, folks are saying it's now online and you can read it right here. I'd do it fast, though, because someday a crazy wild-eyed scientist or a kid (or an angry studio) might show up lookin' for that there script (which includes both Papa Jones and Marion, by the way).

Again, it could be an elaborate fake. Nevertheless, I suppose you now have something to read while on the shi .... ahem.

[Thanks IHoM]

According to Screen Daily, Law Abiding Citizen now has a director in Frank Darabont. Citizen is the first movie to be produced under Gerard Butler's production shingle; you can read all about Evil Twins and its upcoming slate here (I am gently encouraging you to be interested in this fledgling company).

Production is set to begin on August 18th in Detroit, which I hear is becoming the new Shreveport. It's being filmed on a shoestring budget of $40 million, and the screenplay has been penned by Kurt Wimmer.

The plot has been changed quite drastically since it was first tossed around. Originally, Butler was an assistant D.A. who finds himself at the center of a traumatized victim's vigilante plot. Now, it has been revamped into the story of a criminal mastermind who controls a city from the confines of his prison cell. (Which explains why Darabont was drawn to it, and why he's a good pick. Prison dramas are a good specialty for him.) Butler is the assistant D.A. who stands in the mastermind's way.

Warning: Spoilers for The Mist obviously follow.

Though it opened to an enormous collective yawn, I thought that Stephen King's The Mist -- just released on DVD -- was one of the very best films of last year. Perhaps more accurately, I thought it was a movie that Frank Darabont and Stephen King tailor-made for me. There were moments in it that completely embodied everything I love about the horror genre: when a disheveled, bloodied Jeffrey DeMunn barreled into the supermarket, yelling that "there's something in the mist," the terror in his eyes and voice chilled me to the bone. That intersection between the mundane and the fantastical, the film straddling the line between the world we know and some place far beyond our imagination, is what makes that moment, and many others in The Mist, so scary. It approaches its supernatural conceit with an unforgettable combination of horror and wide-eyed wonder.

Screenwriter Christopher Hampton (Atonement, Dangerous Liaisons) recently spoke to Collider about his upcoming projects, including the Iva Toguri biopic that he's writing for Frank Darabont to direct. Toguri, a Japanese-American who was in Japan during WWII, was one of only a handful of people in U.S. history to actually be tried and convicted for treason, for her participation in Japanese propaganda radio broadcasts aimed at U.S. servicemen. (You may remember a scene in Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers in which the soldiers listen to the creepy broadcast of Orphan Ann -- Toguri's radio moniker -- in which they're told about fictional U.S. war defeats and also told that their sweethearts back home are cheating on them.) Toguri would also sign off her broadcasts to the troops as "your number one enemy," although she later claimed this to be tongue-in-cheek.

In fact, the case against her was notoriously flimsy -- seven out of eight treason charges were dropped, and although she was convicted and imprisoned, she was later pardoned by Gerald Ford. The one charge that prosecutors snagged her on was related to a broadcast she made in October, 1944, in which she can be heard saying "Orphans of the Pacific, you really are orphans now. How will you get home now that all your ships are lost?" Hampton's screenplay will portray her trial as "a witch hunt. She was absolutely innocent," he says. "Her trial happened to be the longest and most expensive in American legal history at the time -- in the late 40s ... the contours of the story are beginning to emerge and I'm starting to know what I have to keep and what I don't need."

Sky News reports that two prisoners -- Jose Espinosa, an alleged gang member awaiting sentencing for manslaughter, and Otis Blunt, facing robbery and weapons offense charges -- escaped from Union County jail in Elizabeth, New Jersey on Saturday night. Using improvised tools, the men removed cement blocks from two walls, squeezed through the holes, jumped to a rooftop below, scaled a 30-foot high wall and hopped a razor wire fence to escape from what was considered the most secure area of the prison. The men had only been prisoners for a couple of weeks. Pretty exciting little news story, isn't it? But why am I telling you about it on Cinematical -- the world's greatest movie news website?

Because the escape was apparently inspired by Frank Darabont's modern classic, The Shawshank Redemption! (Which was adapted from Stephen King's novella, but let's just assume these boys saw the movie.) You see, the inmates covered up their escape holes with photographs of women in bikinis! I guess had they used Rita Hayworth posters, it would have been far too obvious. In addition, they put dummies underneath their blankets to give the illusion that they were still in bed -- a trick I'm assuming they swiped from another awesome movie -- Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The escapees left a note saying "Happy Holidays," and thanking a guard they claim helped them escape. The jail -- and I'm sure many more to follow -- have banned posters and photographs from prisoners' walls. Espinosa and Blunt are said to be armed and dangerous, but if the movie taught us anything, they're probably just going to meet up on a beach somewhere and live out their days happily.

With The Mist coming out this week, which just so happened to get a solid review from our James Rocchi, a new interview with Stephen King has gone up on VH1, via MTV News. The discussion focuses on his relationship with long-term collaborator and Mist director Frank Darabont. In his review, James says: "The plot is vintage King, placing ordinary people in an extraordinary circumstance." This is precisely what King discusses -- praising why Darabont has been successful with his adaptations, via his "adult sensibility," and why some other directors aren't taking on his novels.

Specifically, he says: "A lot of times, filmmakers don't really seem to understand ordinary people. I think there's a reason that David Lynch has never made a Stephen King film, or John Waters, because they don't really get ordinary people. But Frank does." I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that's because they both do their own work, not adapt a popular novelist for mass appeal. Waters has made his career from unique stories about the quirks of society, so let's focus on Lynch. I presume King never watched The Straight Story, Twin Peaks, or most of his other work for that matter.

Reducing Lynch to someone who doesn't understand ordinary people is like someone reducing King down to a plebian, gory horror writer. Take Straight Story, Twin Peaks, or even the wilder works like Lost Highway. The two creators are much more similar than King would care to admit. The difference is that he tackles ordinary people with extraordinary happenings rationally and clear-cut, while Lynch is the postmodern artist of the theme. There's lots of "ordinary" people in Lynch's work -- it's just that he spins the arc in a different manner, one that's not always understandable. Alvin Straight is as "ordinary" as they come. As is many of the Peaks characters, or others. Most just go mad in maddening circumstances. Hmm. Sounds familiar.

I've said my peace, but what do you think? Is King the paragon of the ordinary, or are Lynch and he more alike than he realizes?