CCI: Alice, "Avatar" and Edward!

The organizers of Comic-Con International didn't waste any time in trotting out the big names. Day 1 of the 40th annual celebration of all things nerd began with the principal cast members of "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" and a Disney presentation that boasted Johnny Depp and Tim Burton plugging the new "Alice in Wonderland" flick (click here for a high-res trailer), as well as the formal announcement of "TRON Legacy," starring Jeff Bridges and Olivia Wilde.

Star power aside, the big attraction of the day for this homebound blogger was the first public presentation of footage from James Cameron's "Avatar," the long-gestating 3D science-fiction project that will be the director's first big movie since "Titanic" in 1997. (And we all remember just how big that one was.) Cameron has apparently been using this 12-year absence to perfect his 3D technology, which he put to use in the undersea documentaries "Ghosts From the Abyss" and "Aliens of the Deep." This wave of 3D movies is getting awfully tiresome -- "Alice" and "TRON" will be 3D as well -- but if anyone can make the technology live up to its promise, it's Cameron. Say what you will about the man's skills as a writer; he is unmatched as a technical innovator. Next time "True Lies" is on cable (which is just about every day), take a good look at the effects in that movie, and remember that they were achieved in 1994.

Unfortunately, the stream of videos coming out of Day 1 is pretty slow. I was hoping to bring you all kinds of goodies today, but the studios behind Thursday's panels are apparently being stingy. This hopefully won't be the case for the rest of the weekend; we should definitely see some video from the "Lost" panel on Saturday.

G4's Web site does provide us with a live-blog from the "Avatar" presentation, and here are the highlights:

• 25 minutes of the film were shown

• Blogger Stephen Johnson describes the footage as such: "This is like no other movie you have ever seen. It's ambitious, and entirely original, full of digital effects, flawless executed, in an entirely imaginative world"

• Sigourney Weaver, star of Cameron's "Aliens," appears in the film and took questions at Thursday's panel

• 15 minutes of "Avatar" will be shown for free on select IMAX screens on Aug. 21, according to Cameron himself. No word on how that will actually be accomplished.

Hopefully some brave soul will leak footage from this to YouTube this weekend and we can get a peek for ourselves.

More to come ...