Four Days at Dragon*Con

See also: *Dragon*Con vs. San Diego Comic-Con: Which Convention Should You Attend?
*Stan Lee Has His Own Convention Now: Stan Lee's Comikaze

A good documentary can do more than entertain or educate the audience. These non-fiction films can be a wealth of inspiration too. They can lend insight into the creative process or impart some wisdom from famed creators. More often than not, they show that making awesome things happen is never easy.

Below are five nerdy and inspiration pop culture documentaries. From a behind-the-scenes look at one of the world's biggest film franchises to the story of a legendary comic book creator, these movies are filled with humor, drama and few good lessons too.

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Liz Ohanesian

Vintage video games at BlasterCon

Tucked into a corner of the Warner Center Marriott, a mid-sized room has been transformed into The Cantina. For three days beginning Friday, the place was open 24 hours a day as part of a new fan convention called BlasterCON.

The Cantina was lined in retro video games: Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Gauntlet and so many other coin-op classics you might remember from the heyday of arcades. There was a stage in the front of the room prepared to host a bevy of musicians. Some of the artists on the schedule played music inspired by science fiction and fantasy. One guest makes music with Game Boys. The house band was called Science Fiction Jazz.

BlasterCon chairman Todd Whitesel remembers when the BlasterCON team started working on this room. "It felt like that scene in Xanadu, where you're in the derelict warehouse and the potential of the space suddenly starts occurring to you," he says.

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Shannon Cottrell

By Liz Ohanesian

See also:
*How a Star Wars Art Show Came to Be
*Elvis Mitchell Picks the 10 Best James Bond Openings
*Skyfall Review: James Bond Now Has a Superhero-Style Origin Story

Plasticgod's small, block-y paintings stand up on a top shelf inside Little Tokyo gallery/boutique Q Pop. There's Jaws, the large villain from The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. There's a girl done up in gold, reminiscent of the opening title sequence from Goldfinger. In the middle is Bond, James Bond. It's a painting of the Roger Moore incarnation of the famed spy, dressed in the yellow ski suit that marks 007's infamous jump off a cliff in The Spy Who Loved Me. Hanging from the painting and over the edge of the shelf is a Union Jack parachute.

On Saturday night, Q Pop celebrated half-a-century of big-screen James Bond adaptations with a group art show inspired by the film franchise. The collection in "James Bond: 50 Years of 007 Art Celebration" was voluminous. Art was squeezed into every nearly every corner of the shop. There were paintings and prints, a small selection of DVDs and other themed gift items and a slew of golden guns carefully placed across the shelves.

See also: James Bond: 50 Years of 007 Art @ Q Pop Slideshow

Q Pop owner Christopher Mitchell played a selection of Bond themes over the sound system. Some people arrived dressed in Bond-like tuxes. One man stood in a corner, petting a plushie as though he were Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the Bond villain and obvious inspiration for Doctor Evil in the Austin Powers universe.

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The dishy media blitz for the new, fourth season of Arrested Development has begun, kicking off with Bateman's recent interview on Jimmy Kimmel. He said the timing will be unconventional, playing out in divided unison. Each episode will follow a different character through the same segment of time, but if watched all at once you'd see the entirety of the Bluth family's events, and how their actions are affecting one another.

The packaged season drops on May 26, so you'll be able to toggle back and forth on Netflix picking up at various plot points like a Choose Your Own Adventure. Oh wait, it gets weirder. Season Four forms one third of a three act story. The second and third acts will be told in the Arrested Development movie, which Bateman predicts will be out in another year.

Colossus of Clout got so excited by this news that they put together a series of album art, with each album centered around a different Bluth family member. They're great. Here's most of them, see the rest on their post.

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Liz Ohanesian

(L to R) Kutmasta Kurt, James Reitano, Kenny Keil, Chali 2na

In Nineteen Eighty Five, the comic book series by James Reitano, a group of teens come of age as hip-hop hits Santa Cruz. Their lives are shaped by the a then-budding youth culture revolving around DJs, MCs, street artists and break dancers. Technically, the story is fiction, but it's inspired by Reitano's own high school experience.

Reitano is the founder of the design and animation firm TFU Studios. He's created lots of music videos for artists ranging from The Dickies to Cut Chemist. Reitano's roots are in street art and, back in his high school years in Santa Cruz, he befriended an up-and-coming DJ now known as frequent Kool Keith collaborator Kutmasta Kurt. The connection between the two pop culture phenomena is strong for Reitano and Kurt and they aren't alone. That was the gist of "Hip-Hop & Comics: Cultures Combining," an in-depth discussion panel featuring hip-hop and comic book artists at WonderCon last Saturday night.

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Liz Ohanesian

See also:
*Buffy The Vampire Slayer Reunion Photos
*Our interview with Joss Whedon and Felicia Day

Years ago, Amber Benson was battling supernatural forces on television. The actor/author played Tara Maclay on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. These days, Benson is busy creating her own supernatural characters. She spent the past five years delving deep into the life of Calliope Reaper-Jones, aka Death's Daughter, in a series of novels published by Penguin. The final book in the series, The Golden Age of Death, is out now.

Calliope is a young woman struggling to resist the pressure to enter the family business. That plot might ring true for a lot of readers, save for one little detail. Calliope's dad runs Death, Inc. Her family's business is basically getting people from the earthly world to the afterlife. In five years, Benson has penned five novels following the transformation of Calliope from the daughter who just wanted a normal life to head of the organization. With the series coming to an end, she turned up at Dark Delicacies in Burbank for a signing on Saturday.

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Liz Ohanesian

Chris Carwithen and Matt Musgrove brought Tolkien-style songs to the stage and the live stream of the One Expected Party

If you're going to go to an Oscar party, make sure it's one involving J.R.R. Tolkien fans. On Sunday afternoon, the One Expected Party took over American Legion Post 43 for a Hobbit-centric event that lasted late into the night. We were only a couple blocks away from the Dolby Theater, but the vibe here couldn't have been more different. Amongst the usual men in tuxes and women in evening gowns, there were hobbits and elves and an assortment of other characters you thought you could only find in Middle Earth.

The One Expected Party is put together by Lord of the Rings fan site, TheOneRing.net, aka TORn. They throw Oscar parties any year that one of the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit movies has been in the running. Their first event took place at Hollywood Athletic Club when The Fellowship of the Ring was nominated. About 400 people attended the event, including director Peter Jackson. In 2004, the year that The Return of the King picked up a whopping eleven Oscars, the LOTR team headed down to TORn's party.

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Liz Ohanesian

Doctor Who fans at Gallifrey One

See also:
*Doctor Who Fans Refurbish TARDIS Console From 1996 Movie for Gallifrey One Convention (From Gallifrey One 2012)

Last weekend, Gallifrey One, Los Angeles' Doctor Who convention, sold out its 24th annual show. That's 3,200 convention memberships scored before the day of the event. Back in 2006, when the convention first moved to its current home, the Los Angeles Airport Marriott, attendance was under 800 Whovians.

The convention's success, according to co-founder and program director Shaun Lyon, mirrors the growing popularity of Doctor Who in the United States. "I don't think it's ever been as popular as it is now here," says Lyon of the series, which broadcasts on BBC America. "It really was kind of a niche thing for a long time."

For the uninitiated, Doctor Who, the British science-fiction program, can be broken up into two categories. There's what Lyon and many other fans refer to as the "classic" show. Those are the episodes that originally aired between the 1960s and 1980s, featuring the first seven incarnations of the Doctor. Then there is the current incarnation of the program, which launched in 2005 and features Doctors 9 through 11, respectively. It continues today with Matt Smith starring as the eleventh Doctor. In between those two eras, there was the 1996 TV movie with Paul McGann as the eighth Doctor.

This is just the core of the franchise. There's also a lot of related media, like books and audio dramas, plus spin-off television programs like The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood.

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Liz Ohanesian

Wear It As a Hat by Mary Winkler

From 1928 Jewelry's Captain America earrings and Lazy Oaf's Batman dresses to Black Milk's Star Wars bathing suits, the famed characters of comic books and genre films have been making fashionable waves and Angeleno Mandie Bettencourt has the scoop. For just over a year, her Geeky Glamorous blog has been keeping readers updated on the latest in licensed apparel and crafty finds that are a far cry from your run-of-the-mill Green Lantern t-shirts.

Saturday night, Geeky Glamorous took over Melrose Avenue boutique/art gallery Japan LA for a show dedicated to the girls that inhabit the world of the superfan. The show featured work from artists like Camilla d'Errico and Mr. Toast and even boasted a Millennium Falcon dress made by crafty Star Wars fan Jennifer Landa. Bettencourt says that "Geeky Glamorous: The Art Show" has been a big boost for her blog's readership. "People are more curious about fashion," she says. "They didn't realize that there were all these vendors who specialized in the kind of things that they wanted, whether it's skirts with Mass Effect or Minecraft or whatever their fandom is."

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Photo by Gendy Alimurung

Xena-philes pose at the 2009 convention.

If you're looking to relive television shows from the '70s through the '90s and profess your fandom for long-forgotten action heroes, this weekend offers a bevy of conventions to satisfy your inner geek.

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