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Sunday, Sunday… So good to meeee…. Fortunately, Sunday offered a chance to wind down a little as most of the major presentations were out of the way and some attendees had headed home. TF could finally sleep in (but not too late) and then catch the Con shuttle bus to the convention centre for the Rogue Pictures panel.
Kicking off the event were Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, two comedy writer/actors who aren’t exactly well known over here, but have a cult following in the States for their Reno 911 series. They were promoting a side project called Balls Of Fury, about which we’d heard very little. We knew it was Game Of Death, but with Ping Pong and we’d seen Christopher Walken in a variety of silly outfits. But the scenes they showed were suitably gigglesome, with Walken proving a particular highlight. The panel descended into comedy madness when a question-asking attendee dared to accuse the boys of mocking ping-pong, which led to a stage-diving, aisle-running smackdown for one lucky – or unlucky? – Reno 911 fan. Returning to the stage clutching the man’s Con badge, Garant shouted, “Try getting back into stuff now, bitch!” Oh, and they also signed someone’s underwear. After demanding the bloke put them on. Shudder.
How do you follow that? You bring out Edgar Wright and Nick Frost to rapturous applause and then show a video introduction by a holidaying Simon Pegg. Apparently he’s giving us a gift - “these two boys” (Edgar and Nick), while Wright promised us exclusive footage from the movie. Before it could screen, we were all warned that anyone with a camera would face a kick in the nuts should we film the screen, and that camera-ladies could expect a damaged fanny. “That doesn’t mean the same thing over here, Nick” chided Wright. “I meant to say it anyway,” replied Frost.
Cue one superb montage of hedgehogs nestling in police uniforms, swans, a toilet flushing and car indicator lights flashing. With the crowd demanding more, Wright obliged with two scenes from the film. We’ll save spoiling any of the fun (you only have to wait until February anyway, right?) but we will say this: The Shaun Of The Dead boys have most certainly done it again. Fried gold.
And so another Comic-Con gasped its last. It was fun, exhausting, occasionally terrifying and sometimes depressing (hello, autograph row, where former genre TV and movie stars go to fade away into obscurity). TF wouldn’t have missed it for the world – where else do you get the chance to be a total geek without someone laughing at you. Okay, someone laughed at us once, but we took terrifying and deadly revenge on them…
