I was lucky enough to attend the New York Premiere of DC Animated's new Justice League feature, and suffice to say I loved it. There's not a lot I can say here that Matt didn't say in his featured article.

What I can speak about are the opportunities I had to speak with Dwayne McDuffie, James Woods and Andrea Romano, who were all in attendance at the event held at The Paley Center.  Before that though, I must draw a comparison to the Planet Hulk event held only a month earlier, which was not handled nearly as well. 

Unlike that fiasco, the guests were eager to speak and fun to chat with.  In fact, James Woods could've gone on for an hour had they let him – an incredibly great and friendly personality. Almost hard to belive this is the same guy voicing the utterly opposite character in the film as Owlman.

So let's break it down: as we waited outside, the limo arrived with our guest and James Woods emerged, immediately shaking the hand of everybody – no kidding!  They popped inside and shortly thereafter, we had the chance to meet with them on the red carpet.  Dwayne McDuffie said he can't really comment on future projects, but he is working on two with DC now. He also said Marvel is trying to get him to tackle a Spider-Man project.

We asked him about whether we might see the return of Static or any other Milestone characters in animation and he told us that Icon had almost shown up in this very film but had to be dropped due to licensing issues.  He essentially said he rules nothing out and confirmed, as many of us know, that this was originally intended to bridge the periods between Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.

We asked him if he felt that anything had been cut out of the script or film that he had in his original concept and he made it clear that it was John Stewart.  It's pretty clear this was done to distinguish this team from the TV show line up. 

Andrea Romano complimented my wife on her Flash sweatshirt.  She thought Kimb's question relating to how challenging it is to cast new voices for figures so identified with other talents like Tim Daly and Kevin Conroy was excellent and said it is indeed a big challenge.

Andrea also thought that it was great that we've had such a great relationship with Josh Keaton who, in the film, voices the Flash, but most people would identify as the voice of Peter Parker or Spider-Man of the Spectacular Spider-Man series.

James Woods was literally pulled away from us after he took a great deal of time explaining his desire to keep on doing more films like this.  He actually said he hopes he gets to do 10 more.  He told us his inspiration for Owlman was truly Andrea, as she told him exactly where to go and how to get there.  Someone later asked if he was working off of William Baldwin's take of Batman and he made it extremely clear that he never knew Baldwin was even voicing Batman.

The film is really good.  Some performances are indeed stronger than others within the film (as might be expected) but overall, it's a great film.  I honestly went in thinking it'd probably be good, but I was kind of disappointed – I'd still like to someday return to the tv show's continuity.

If you truly want to know more about the film you'd be best served reading Matt Sernaker's top notch featured review.

My final word is DC Animated, The Paley Center and Newsarama did a fantastic job with planning and running this event. The film was great and the special guests (Dwayne, Andrea and James) were all hospitable, personable and incredibly charming.

5 Stars for the Organizers, 4.5 Stars for Film and 5 for the Special Guests.