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Serenity

Serenity is based on Firefly, a short lived TV series created for the Fox Network by Joss Whedon, the man behind the the cult television show Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
Firefly was a space Western in the truest sense of the word. It had six guns and spaceships, horses and laser pistols, intergalactic empires and train robberies.

The program centered around a band of misfits and criminals on a transport ship called Serenity, who would engage in smuggling, scavenging and other nefarious activities to survive while steering clear of the Alliance, a galaxy wide confederation of planets, similar to Star Trek’s Federation but with cooler uniforms. It had dynamic characters and interesting story lines. The viewer felt that every character, from Jayne, the boorish mercenary, to River, the fugitive psychic, was worth caring about. Unfortunately, in spite of, or perhaps because of these qualities, the Fox Network mishandled and ultimately cancelled the show.

Fox then made the wise decision to release the entire series on DVD. It sold spectacularly well, and Universal then decided to produce a movie with the same crew, set essentially in the same universe.

Serenity picks up where the t.v. series ended, but now the crew is running from an Alliance assassin who wants to kidnap River because her mind is filled with classified government information. After many trials and tribulations, including some wonderful space combat, the crew reveals River’s secrets and gives the Alliance a black-eye.

Serenity is an excellent movie, however there is one problem. Because Serenity ends Firefly’s story, it helps to have seen the original t.v. series to fully appreciate it.
Because many viewers had not seen Firefly when the film was released, the movie crashed and burned at the box office.

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Yes, well the movie really put the last nail in that coffin, sadly.

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There are more comics coming out...

Beowulf

Every tweedy classics professor worth his salt knows the story of Beowulf. The young, proud Norse warrior from Geatland (southern Sweden) travels to Denmark, slays a horrible monster, dispatches its mother, and saves the kingdom of King Rothgar. Beowulf returns to Sweden, becomes a king and dies battling a fire-breathing dragon.

The tale is very old, the first story written down in English. Given that, you’d think that the creative film makers in Hollywood would leave the story alone and would not give it the blockbuster treatment. Unfortunately this is not the case.

This relatively recent film adaptation of the legend has Beowulf being seduced by Grendel’s mother thereby being granted great power. The dragon is shown to be Beowulf’s son, a product of the seduction, and the kingdom that Beowulf governs is inherited from Rothgar, none of which are true to the Beowulf epic.

Putting aside the discrepancies in the movie’s narrative, (there have to be some since if the writers had written a script that follows the story too closely, any movie-going audience would have been bored, except perhaps Beowulf purists), the way this film was made is a bit strange. Although real actors are used to play the characters, they are presented on screen as computer-generated images. This way of creating a film may be cheaper, but it is a little odd to see Anthony Hopkins’ face grafted onto a cartoon character. It’s somewhat difficult to empathise with such characters, especially given that they are so one-dimensional to begin with.

It is my hope that they do not perfect this movie-making technique any further, although the studios probably will. For those of you who want a live-action reinterpretation of the Beowulf story, rent Beowulf and Grendel, a much better movie, starring Gerard Butler and Sarah Polley. It doesn’t have a dragon, but hell, you can’t have everything.

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Buffy the Vampire slayer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer originally made her pop culture debut in 1992, as the main character in a low budget horror movie titled, not surprisingly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The film focused on how Buffy (Kristy Swanson) a vapid Californian Cheerleader and high school student, discovers that she is one of a long line of warriors destined to battle the undead. This realization causes her to grow as a person and makes it possible for her to save her friends from being eaten by vampires and kill the villainous Lothos, the head vampire of a group of blood-sucking fiends that threatens her entire community.

Also featured in the movie were Donald Sutherland as Buffy’s mentor in the art of vampire slaying, and Luke Perry as the love interest. It had a terrible box office showing, not surprising since the movie was boring with a poor script and bad special effects.

Joss Whedon, the scriptwriter of the doomed effort, maintains that his work was meddled with and rewritten behind the scenes. He left the set during production and didn’t return.

It was not until 1997 that he was convinced to bring his spunky cheerleading heroine back from media oblivion. This time as part of a television series, once again titled Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which had the same premise as the movie, but was truer to the film’s original concept. The series featured Anthony Stewart Head as Buffy’s mentor and Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy. The show ran for seven years, and was a cult hit. It dealt with issues like abusive relationships, sexuality and peer pressure, all the time using supernatural creatures as metaphors for these problems. Personally I think it flagged in the last two seasons and should have run for only five.

Whedon’s trademark wit was allowed to shine through on the small screen and he provided us with a cast of interesting characters, including Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), Principal Schneider (Arman Schimmerman), the misanthropic head of the highschool; and, of course, Buffy’s school chums played by Alison Hannigan and Nicholas Brendan. There was also Angel, Buffy’s vampire boyfriend, played by David Boreanaz, a character who would eventually get his very own show.

The unfortunate thing about the series, is that although it is funny, exciting and well written, it is also grounded in its time. The humor in particular is centered around contemporary popular culture, which means that in 10 or 20 years time it will stop being so amusing. It will be a sad day when that happens, but I do still enjoy the show and would recommend it to any fan of sci-fi and horror.

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Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain is the story of a torrid romance between Jake Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Inis Delmar (Heath Ledger), two ranch hands in Wyoming in the early 1960s.
The film follows their romance over following years, with all its trials and tribulations, and eventually ends sadly. Both leading men do an excellent job of portraying their characters. The script, direction and music are all excellent.
It is an important movie because it deals with the difficulties faced by working class gay men and their families in a rural environment.
Unlike the movie Philadelphia, it shows that gay relationships can be imperfect, and shows us their struggles as they come to terms with their identities. Unlike The Birdcage they are not portrayed as caricatures, their suffering is real and poignant.
It is not a revolutionary film ( mainstream Hollywood seems incapable of making dramas about truly happy gay couples) but it is as close as they have come to a realistic depiction of gay love in the deeply homophobic U.S.

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Charlie Wilson's war

 Charlie Wilson's War is the tale of smalltime Texas congressman, Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) who, allied with a wealthy Texas socialite, Joanne Herring  (Julia Roberts) and an eccentric CIA agent, Gust  Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), manages to bankroll the guerrilla war against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

The acting in this movie is excellent, as is the script; and direction, provided in this case by Mike Nichols, is first rate.  The only problem I had with this film was its politics.  The American bureaucrats who fought the Cold War were in many cases, close-minded, fascistic, arrogant, and racist.  They propped up military dictatorships all over the world.  They authorized the bombing of Cambodia, imposed the embargo on Cuba and killed Salvadore Allende (the democratically elected president of Chile).  Unfortunately, the true nature of these right wing ideologues is hidden in this movie.  

The film portrays Charlie Wilson and Joanne Herring  as concerned citizens of the world.   Gust  Avrakotos, who clearly has a history of ruthlessly obeying the dictates of his political bosses, is portrayed as comic relief. 

The general thrust of Charlie Wilson’s war is that American imperialism is good; that it is America’s destiny to manipulate foreign countries to suit its own needs.  It doesn’t favour self-determination, and this definitely isn’t a movie written for the anti-Iraq War crowd.

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Takes more than combat gear to make a man Takes more than license for a gun Confront your enemies, avoid them when you can A gentleman will walk but never run -Sting, an englishman in new york