Festival Season 2016

The HFPA lounge at comic-con has been jumping. It was a lot of fun hanging out with some of the top talent in town to showcase their work.

Stan Lee, Robert Kirkman and the average fangirl/fanboy own this town. There is no way to talk about Comic-Con.

With Comic-Con International 2016 in full swing, the stars came out of their respective galaxies and descended on San Diego to greet fans and meet the journalists of the HFPA at our lounge.

A special ,monumental premiere screening of Star Trek Beyond with live musical soundtrack opened Comic-Com in a fitting tribute to a beloved franchise now more than half a century old. We spoke to the cast of  Justin Lin’s film about the message at the heart of Gene Roddenberry’s creation and why the movie’s opening is emotional and bittersweet in light of the tragic death of their friend and costar Anton Yelchin.

"Pokemon Go is a new level of invasion. They are data mining every person in this room.

The night was balmy and gorgeous, lasers pierced the sky and Michael Giacchino's epic soundtrack filled the open-air Imax theater - the first one ever - built especially for the premiere of Star Trek Beyond on San Diego's Embarcadero Marina Park. In an added note of emotion, a minute of silence in honor of Anton Yelchin marked the beginning of the festivities.

The whole cast of Star Trek Beyond was on the improvised stage at the Embarcadero Marina Park, where the folks of Paramount built an impressive open air theater for 5000 people – including the first ever outdoor Imax Screen built for the purpose of showing  the film to the lucky guests  of the World Premiere, the night before the official opening of Comic-Con 2016. There was one shadow over the party, though.

The rites of summer: as the country boils and ocean breezes cool the shores of San Diego, fanboys and fangirls, cosplayers, trekkers and assorted enthusiasts of all things sci-fi, fantasy,horror, comix or pop/geek culture descend upon the city's Convention Center for an immersive weekend of comraderie and celebration. Gone are the days of 1970, when a small group of friends banded together to create what was, at the time, just a comic-book convention (the first in Southern California).