cross with joss

[freckles_and_doubt]

Good news! Serenity is a damn fine movie. Good enough that it's still well worth watching under the following circumstances:

• in the form of a pirated copy downloaded off the internet, with Dutch subtitles,
• projected onto a screen made from a sheet, and carefully ironed before starting,
• by a projector illegally borrowed from work, which requires, in order to project properly, two small tables balanced one on top of the other, two d4s to hold the front up, and a fan held next to it so that it doesn't overheat,
• in spite of which it overheats anyway and turns the picture randomly orange and blue and intervals,
• even though it's working off a bad CD copy which randomly stops every now and then and gives a whole series of gibberish error messages, with numbers,
• causing the room full of computer geeks to spend fifteen minutes in argumentative technobabble to decide what things to randomly type into what appeared to be a Linux command line in order to make it play again.

It was a rather fun evening, all told, and curiously appropriate to the rather Heath Robinson operation of Serenity herself. I am, however, despite my considerable enjoyment and admiration of the film under adverse circumstances, Cross With Joss. Since some of you deprived CT types haven't seen the movie yet, I shall hide more in-depth analysis behind the cut.

Serenity is a lot darker than Firefly ever was: apart from the fact that it's basically about Reavers, it features Tortured!Mal, Annoyed!Simon and Assassin!River. (I cannot sufficiently state how amazing River is. She moves beautifully; she's liquid and graceful and lethal all in one.) The one-liners and games with your expectations are still there; it's a Joss movie to the back teeth, but it's dark enough that you become seriously afraid that he'll kill people off. Which is just as well, since he cheerfully kills people off. I saw Shepherd Book coming, and was OK with it, although I think his Secret Backstory would be fascinating and I'd love to have seen it developed; still, the world never needs more preachers, in my book, and it was an effective piece of cinema. I am Cross With Joss, TM, because the bastard killed off Wash. I loved Wash. I loved his l33t flying skills, his dinosaur collection, his loud Hawaaian shirts and above all his dopey, sappy relationship with his wife; I am devastated that he's gone. It was a particularly effective departure, too, a trademark Whedon moment of death by random misadventure rather than Big Damn Heroism, and all the more real for that. In big-screen and surround sound, I would probably have cried buckets, so it's just as well the actual experience was somewhat less immersing. It's tended to rather assault my nostalgic, happy sense of the little world of Serenity, which in my mind has just kept on flying through the black since the series ended. It's going to take me some time to get used to the Washless Serenityverse.

I am also annoyed that Inara is possibly back. She's my least favourite character; her particular line in smug, serene, morally superior beauty makes me want to rub candy floss in her hair before booting her into a jet engine, probably while shouting "You're a whore, you silly bint!". (And then stealing her entire wardrobe). I am, however, willing to admit that this may have something to do with a certain degree of marginally possessive Captain-love on my part.

Overall I liked the plot a lot: good tension, good story, interesting development on the Reavers. The Alliance attack on Serenity's allies and havens was damned effective; the Operative, too, was a thoroughly convincing take on a calm, pleasantly obsessed and morally deluded villain. I felt there was a slightly truncated sense of consequence at the end of the movie, which seemed a bit rushed: I would have like to see for myself the Alliance take the propaganda blow they deserved. But on the whole, Hollywood needs to take some lessons from Joss on how to write an SF script that actually makes sense.

I should pause at this point to reassure you that I am not generally behind pirating DVDs off artists I admire; I've already ordered Serenity, the Region 2 DVD comes out next month, apparently, and will be airmailed to me posthaste, so I have Done My Bit For Serenity II.

It seems to have been a big weekend for sf movies. I watched an 80s anime film on Friday afternoon with first_fallen. Captain Harlock In Arcadia was... well, very anime, which means it was, in Western terms, really slowly paced, filled with apparently naive and howling character cliches reproduced with the most absolute seriousness, and had a nice line in strange anachronism and weird juxtapositions (World War II, far future aliens, pirates, samurai and German knighthood. Oy, vey). In a weird sort of way I rather enjoyed it. Not, however, as much as I enjoyed today's retro afternoon spent with wolverine_nun, watching the original Battlestar Galactica movie and the 1980s Flash Gordon. Re-watching BG is giving me an increased appreciation of the recent re-make: some very interesting resonances and updates between the two versions, and some lovely moments of homage. Flash is possibly the movie which imprinted me hopelessly with B-movie sci-fi at a tender age: I have very, very vivid memories of watching it when I was about 12. Mostly, I think, the amazing undercurrents, and in some cases, extremely up-front overcurrents, of dodgy eroticism possibly stunned me into hapless memory: phallic spaceships, shiny men's hot-pants, concubines, whippings and all. But it has survived amazingly well, possibly because it's made with such deliberate campness and tongue-in-cheek irony.

Having watched approximately 8 hours of cinema in the last 24, it's probably not surprising that I have a pounding headache; I leave you with the slightly mind-bending thought of what my dreams are going to look like over the next few days, given my recent mental diet...

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

"Flash! Flash, I love you! But we only have fourteen hours to save the earth!"

Thank you for reminding me I inexplicably forgot to put this DVD on my wish list. Your reaction to it at age 12 was exactly mine.

Hugs, Dayle

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

I am also annoyed that Inara is possibly back.

She couldn't be permanantly gone. Without that push-pull relationship it wouldn't be the same.

Re-watching BG is giving me an increased appreciation of the recent re-make

The second season of BSG has started here. I haven't formed a strong opinion yet, since the first episode only has been aired, and it had to pick up the extremenly numerous diverging strands left clifhanging from the first series, but it's got my full attention at 9pm on tuesday. Then again if I miss a show, I have the files lying around somewhere. I can bring them to SA if you want.

That familiar voice

[first-fallen.livejournal.com]

I Imdb'd (when did it become a verb, like Googled?) Peter Wyngarde, that guy who played General Klytus. He didn't do anything after FG, it seems, other than get caught in a bus station men's bathroom with a truck driver. His voice still seems damn familiar, although IMDB doesn't list anything else. He's so super-cool (in a really camp way) that he has an Xman named after him.

-jo(ty)

ps: that anime was so bizarre. it falls into the Picasso category for me, where you keep watching, hoping that eventually it will make sense, but it never does.