The handful of episodes on the Firefly: The Complete Series
DVDs range from the merely enjoyable to the great, but Joss Whedon’s Firefly is somewhat frustrating as a “complete series” because he wasn’t given time to complete it, or even to put a satisfactory ending on the show’s television incarnation.
Mysteries abound after the final episode, with the secrets of many of the characters frustratingly only hinted at, at best.
That said, the series is one of the strongest science fiction television series to date and marks a maturation of Joss Whedon’s craft — many of the same archetypes from his Buffyverse appear here, but in more complex and satisfying form. Well worth seeing for any science fiction fan, particularly those who prefer their starships a little more Millennium Falcon and a little less Enterprise.
Strongly recommended.
The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test
Pure Nerd
56 % Nerd, 47% Geek, 0% Dork
For The Record:
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.
The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the “dork.” No-longer. Being smart isn’t as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.
Congratulations!
I feel vindicated.
Lucas Agrees to Write ‘Star Wars’ TV Series
Star Wars creator George Lucas has agreed to write a 100-episode TV series of the classic sci-fi epic.
The series will focus on the missing years between Revenge of the Sith and the original Star Wars movie, released in 1977.
Producer Rick McCullum said at Monday night’s Empire Awards, “We’re very excited–we just got confirmation George Lucas has committed to writing the Star Wars TV series.
“I guess this is the news all fans have been waiting to hear.”
Yeah, because if there’s one thing the last three (well, four) movies got right, it was the writing …
- In related news: Indy 4 script completed. Well, Harrison Ford says it’s ready, because George Lucas turned in a final script. The good news is that Steven Spielberg is doing a rewrite before the cameras start rolling. Me, I’m hoping for the McCarthy era, Soviet thugs and Rachel McAdams as a university colleague of Dr. Jones.
One for now, one for posterity:
- I may have been influenced early on by Peter Parker and Clark Kent (who says comics don’t warp young minds?), but it was Edward R. Murrow, when I first heard about him in AP Government class my senior year in high school, who really showed me that journalists not only could change the world, but at times, have the obligation to try.
Whatever you think of the easily drawn parallels to today’s political situation, see Good Night and Good Luck ASAP. A great film, a great reminder of the mission of journalism and a great — and accurate — glimpse into the often-times nail-biting world of journalists doing the right thing, as they see it, consequences be damned.
“Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.” – Edward R. Murrow
Murrow is still The Man when it comes to journalists.
- Jenn says she sees the return of my creepy sarcoidosis internal bleeding blotches on my shins. And we’ll have fun, fun, fun until her daddy takes the T-Bird away.
Listening to this week’s episode of the always-awesome radio show/podcast, The Business, I listened with amusement to the stories of reporters talking about what a nightmare it is to report on Hollywood.
I had no idea about any of this back in 1997, when I was working at the Potomac News and the second team for the $75 million disaster flick Deep Impact came to Prince William County, Virginia. They were there to film an evacuation scene on Interstate 66, heading out of Washington, DC as the comet approaches Earth.
My editor was told that we would be given a chance to participate in the scene — i.e., sit in my car on the blacktop for eight hours and write about the experience — which sounded like a fun little feature story.
I also got word that they’d be casting for said scene at middle school in Manassas in the gym. The news hole is always hungry, so I called for days and days, trying to touch base with someone — anyone — involved in the production to talk about what the process was like. Because movies don’t do a lot of casting in suburban northern Virginia, it was a story we all agreed would be of interest to our readership.
But I got nowhere with the telephone calls. The day approached and I said to myself, “Self, they’re meeting in a public venue” (this is obviously before the Columbine killings turned public schools across America into closed campuses) “and there’s no controls over who is coming and going, so it’s a public gathering. Just go and cover it.”
So I did.
The story came out in the paper, and a nice little slice of cinematic life it was.
And then a publicist for the production called up and screamed at my editor, saying I was banned from the set (Interstate 66) and that they didn’t want to see me anywhere near their production. My editor, Barb, eventually calmed her down enough to agree that another reporter could have the coveted sit-on-the-road-for-eight-hours gig. A non-features reporter got the story, and pretty much phoned it in.
This all seemed (and seems) highly irrational to me, but it’s apparently the way it goes in entertainment journalism, where information can be tightly controlled by the entertainment companies and the journalists are forced to dance to irrational whims. It was a shock to me, and I spitefully chose to not see the film, even if it does feature President Morgan Freeman.
In the end, Deep Impact commercially came in second to the other disaster-from-space flick to come out in 1998, Armageddon. I like to think it was my boycott that made the difference.
