September 05, 2005
Serenity
Before you read further I need to point out that it is very late, I am pretty tired, and I have probably over edited this post to death. Also I am breaking with my recent tradition of using Star Trek episode titles as my post title. It just made more sense to use a title from the 'verse' I am writing about this time. Keeping all of that in mind please, enjoy.
So what have I been up to lately? Easy, I've kept myself knee deep in Firefly. Let me try to explain myself
Back in '02-'03 when Firefly was actually a TV Series I was a big fan, when I heard the show was canceled I was not only upset and depressed but pretty angry as well. It is not often for a show to come along that will stop everything and just watch. Generally when I watch something I also am doing other things. It is an attention thing, I have a difficult time concentrating on just one thing at a time. Firefly was different, it was well it was different and it was wonderful. I can probably count on less than 3 fingers how many times something has upset me enough that I have written a letter. Matter of fact I don't even remember what the other two or so letters were about... But Fox did hear from me on this one!
Over time the sting went away, sure I stayed with the online Browncoats for a while. Unfortunately the attention problem thing hit me and I fell away from the message boards and the sites, I suppose a couple of years can do that. However I never forgot about Firefly, actually up until a few months ago I still had a VHS copy of "The Train Job" episode which I would watch (and enjoy obviously) occasionally.
So last month I decided that since the release of the movie Serenity is coming up I should rent the DVDs from Netflix, I went to my queue and put disc #1 at top spot on my list. A day later it arrived, that night I popped it in the DVD player, watched the pilot episode "Serenity", and after the episode was over I pulled the DVD from the player, put it back in it's envelope sealed it and sent it back. The pilot reminded me that Firefly is NOT a rental Firefly is a Def finite Buy... and buy I did.
A trip to Amazon wielded nice results and soon as the set came to my door. I paced myself only one to two episodes a night, that way I could enjoy it longer and wouldn't risk burning myself out. Once or twice I did fight with myself to watch "just one more episode" but I only cracked once. After about a week I had finished my first rerun through the series, my first impression was something along the lines of "Wow! So much better on DVD" Now remember I loved it on TV but the DVD is just a better experience.
So why do I love Firefly now? Well it's still different, it's still Sweeeeet (A term I have now officially stolen from Joss Whedon), but this time around I was able to completely immerse myself in the show and really realize what all is there. I don't even know where to start with the praise, if you have read much of what most other fans have said I will probably sound like a broken record, but here goes...
The show is just beautiful, the widescreen formatting allows you to take in just that much more detail. You really see how much effort was put into every scene, every planet, every costume, every inch of the ship... It is amazing how well they meshed all the different cultural aspects together.
The writing was excellent, I am a big fan of keeping a continuity and they definitely had that under control. Even though there was always an ?event of the week? there was still an underlying theme to pretty much everything that happened throughout the season. There also was a very good amount of not only character development, but also character history. All that and I didn't even mention how smart the dialog could be, even when it was being dumb. Not only smart but inventive, and emotional as well. Fear, worry, anger, laughter, frustration, sadness, those are just a few of the states you might find yourself in during the course of the show, and honestly I do not have the words to describe it but it is very easy to become so involved that you can feel these emotions along with the crew.
The praise for the creative areas of the show aren't just contained to the writers though, how about the costume designers, constantly coming up with interesting new looks based on different period in different geographical locations. Or translators having to not only take phrases like ?motherless goat of all motherless goats? and translate them into mandarin, but then also having the unenviable task of helping the actors learn to pronounce them once translated. Even the camera work played an important role in helping you ?feel? the mood and atmosphere.
What is there to say about the special effects other than to praise them as top notch. However I feel you really can't appreciate the effects fully until you watch the extras on the DVD that deal with them, very nicely done indeed.
And finally (at least for now) I will talk about the cast, how talented can one group of nine actors be? As you can tell I have watched these episodes more than a couple of times and I cannot find a weak performance. But really their acting performance is only a part of what makes them the perfect group for his show, what makes them perfect or Firefly is that like all of the fans and Joss himself these actors seem to legitimately love the show, like anything else in life if the people involved really really dig what they are doing the end results almost always made all the better because of it.
Now a few linkable goodies for all the Browncoats out there (if you click on a few of them you might even learn if you ARE a Browncoat.. and if you aren't you really should .be)
Official Site Some nice info, very cool wallpapers and even a screen saver. Worth checking out.
Fireflydvd.net Good site with some info on the community, also a nice forum with some good people.
Browncoats: The Official Serenity Fan Site This is where you should go to learn about being a Browncoat.
Here and here are a couple of good pages to look at to understand what the actors are saying when you hear them speak in Chinese. Just think how nice it would be to learn these phrases yourself and use them on the unexpecting.
Last but not least A quiz to see which character you most identify with.
For me the quiz result does fluctuates depending on mood and the amount of honesty I use in answering... But I just now went through it and came up with Mal (63%). So there you have it, this is your Captain speaking and I am telling you to go check out Firefly, hit the sites and on the 30th get yourself in line and go see Serenity.
Posted by Pierce at September 5, 2005 01:52 AM | TrackBackbtw, set up a custom page on news.google.com then add a custom news search For "serenity movie" with quotes to see lots of great news & reviews for serenity-then check it daily
Posted by: promo at September 14, 2005 11:46 AMI watched them this summer on DVD since I'd never seen the show before and it's just so good. And I'm in love with Jayne.
Definitely one of my top things to buy soon.
Posted by: Kymberlie R. McGuire at September 9, 2005 07:14 PM