Life is a State of Mind

If you are a Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Fray, Firefly, Serenity, and soon Dollhouse), you probably already know about Can’t Stop the Serenity, let this just be a reminder to you that it’s this weekend in many places.

Closest to me is Arlington, Virginia at the Cinema ‘n Drafthouse. Tonight at 9:30 and tomorrow at 4:30. Sadly I cannot attend as I will be hosting a La Belle event, but if you can you should go. The funds raised go to Equality Now (Joss’s favorite charity). It’s a lot of fun. If you are not a Buffy or Firefly fan already, I strongly urge you to drop everything, run out and buy the DVD boxed sets and catch up with the rest of the world. Best television series ever. Mine is an evil laugh!

How freaking cool is it to discover that your father-in-law and his wife are already huge Firefly/Serenity fans?

If you have not seen any Firefly, I guarantee you’ll love it after you’ve watched 2-4 episodes. The DVD boxed set of the series is running about $14 at Target and other big box discounters. Grab yourself a copy. It is the best television show ever made.

Watch Firefly first, and in the order of the DVD discs.

Then, if you can, watch Session 416 (aka: R. Tam Sessions) at http://www.session416.com/

There is a short comic series that takes place between the series and the movie called Serenity: Those Left Behind that is interesting to read and available through Dark Horse comics.

Then watch the feature film Serenity last. It is also available on DVD in several formats.

Trust me - you’ll love this material for the themes, the dialogue, the stories. Joss Whedon at his very best. Erci and I watch the shows over and over again.

Stephen O’Regan’s “They’re Made out of Meat” film of Terry Bisson’s short story (same name) won Grand Prize at the Science Fiction Museum’s SF Short Film Festival in Seattle this year. It can be viewed for free on Atom Films or YouTube.

Perspective is everything.

Yesterday Erci accompanied me over to Atelier de la Charrette to help Bob and Peter, Winterbadger, and Bryan test a game of “VSF: Actions at Parroom Station” before Bob goes to Historicon to expose more steam punk fans and miniatures gamers to the allure of the Martian landscape. We arrived a little bit late and had to run Japanese and Prussian units along with Bryan’s Americans against a rebellion in Parroom Station itself, where Peter and Winterbadger were running insurgent royals and the rebel mob of Martian city dwellers.

Losses were atrocious, but the Imperial Earthmen barely managed to regain control of the city. An early indicator of how rough the action would be was Winterbadger’s brilliantly concealed gun taking out my entire unit of Japanese regulars with a single shot in the first turn of the game!

Note to self, charging into insurgent cities in flying column formation is perhaps a little impetuous and rash… It was a lot of fun.

We learned to make a few tweaks to the game scenario I think, and it was a pretty game. We took lots of pictures so Bob could post them online at Parroom Station when he gets time.

If you like gaming with miniatures and steam punk, or just want to see more Parroom Station, try catching Bob at Historicon next weekend in Lancaster, PA, where an example game will be run. If you can’t make it to the convention, check out Parroom Station online.

All the Victorian SciFi action left us tired and hungry so we headed over to Herndon’s Worldgate for Charlie Chang’s yummy buffet & BBQ, then caught “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” with B&L. It was not as good as the first movie, but still lots of fun and a nice action-packed yarn. Stay through the closing credits if you go to see it, there is a silly surprise at the end.

Random web surfing last night led me to the Studio Ghibli website, and it looks to me like they may be working on an Anime version of Ursula K. LeGuin’s wonderful Earthsea Trilogy, or parts of it (my Japanese is rusty). The author has nothing about Ghibli on her website as of this writing, but this could be really, really cool. The Sci-Fi channel’s miniseries on Earthsea was horrible, but Miyazaki’s crew at Ghibli might be able to do this story some justice.

The flash based background on their website certainly looks promising! At first I asked myself why they’d use Flash for a simple background, but resizing the browser window makes the reason obvious, very cool.

Does anyone know more about a potential Anime version of Earthsea? I can read that something is happening in July of 2006, but not a lot more.

Update: Twitchfilm.net has a discussion about the Ghibli project, it is apparently Hayao Miyazaki’s son Goro who is pushing the project, and it is probably going to be interesting, but may get mangled too. Reading a bit deeper on Ursula LeGuin’s website, it appears she may no longer have control over the film rights to Earthsea, which would be very sad.

I am pleasantly surprised that Aeon Flux turned out to be pretty good. Pleasant, fun, and fast; a decent adaptation with surprisingly good dialogue. Marton Csokas really shines as Trevor Goodchild, and both Charlize Theron (Aeon Flux) and Sophie Okonedo (Sithandra) are very watch-able throughout the flick. Plenty of eye-candy for the tight-fitting clothing fans, and just enough special effects and stunt work (ok, perhaps a little too much), but not overwhelming.

Erci’s one complaint is that it was not as dark as the MTV Anime series, and I’d have to agree. They may have put too much effort into trying to maintain the Anime feel to it (the colors lacked depth and subtlety in tones - just like a comic book, just like the MTV series). One thing I did not like about the MTV series - was how waif thin everyone was - and that mostly remains the same in the movie. The movie actually has a plot (something the series mostly didn’t) and perhaps a message about nature versus human control, maybe. The real gem is Mr. Csokas’ acting though - I know I have seen his face before but am having trouble placing it. Perhaps it was The Bourne Supremacy or The Fellowship of the Ring, though he was not a major character in either. Worth a matinee price.

This long Thanksgiving weekend has held both Erci and I house bound with colds, so we have been very domestic, cleaning, watching movies and shows off the Dishplayer, and catching up on kitty-play time with Bailey the cat and ferret chasing time with Leonardo.

Spanglish good clean fun. I have been wanting to catch this for ages, and it finally came up on HBO and got captured on the Displayer for viewing. I normally do not like Adam Sandler, but he managed another decent role here, and Paz Vega is amazing as Flor.

Brother Sun, Sister Moon looks to be beautiful, but our Netflix copy was scratched on arrival (that does not happen very often, only about three out of 60 discs so far), and it had to go back only partially viewed. It looks to be beautifully shot depiction of Francis of Assisi. though some of the costumes look a little anachronistic.

Rome (the HBO and BBC series) is really shaping up to be awesome. The physical settings, clothing, and material goods are 95% spot on dead accurate, which is astonishing for a mainstream production. I guess having so many great living history groups in England is really helping producers get this stuff right finally. There are some occasionally glaring anachronisms, but they are few and far between (stirrups!?). The show is making a point of graphically portraying a society with social morals very different from our own, and I love that about it. There have been scenes with full frontal male nudity, and scenes were servants and slaves of the great magnates of Rome stand by ready to serve their masters while their master have passionate intercourse. The raunchier side of Rome is show perhaps a bit too much, but I think they may be catering to a demand from their audience. I confess I was slow to warm up to this series because I saw it as bumping Carnivale off the air (grrr!) - but I have to confess Rome probably has much wider appeal.

24 was playing all day on Friday, and it is quite riveting, I was getting hooked by the end of the day. I totally missed this when it was in it’s first run, but wow the acting is great (though I saw several continuity and logic flaws that I’d probably have not noticed except for the all day marathon nature of my viewing them). Great stuff, I may have to find season two someday when I am home sick.

Donnie Darko - WOW! I cannot believe I missed this in on screen or even in the first rental runs of the DVDs. My SciFi buddies who saw it let me down by not making me go see this awesome causal time loop adventure. Stunning, beautiful, and artistic the way Dark City is, but far more intellectually engaging. If you have not see it, go rent Donnie Darko now. If you liked Being John Malkovich or Memento or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you will like Donnie Darko too. Thanks very much Katrina for raving about Donnie Darko, I would not have seen it but for your recommendation.

Wow - yesterday brought the amazing news that transparent aluminum, as depicted in Star Trek IV (aka: Save the Whales) is close to reality, sort of (they are actually talking about super-strong, transparent ceramics).Topping that, today brings us the news that flexible electronic paper displays, like those described in Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash” is closer to reality. That’s really cool!

Is this Sci-Fi becomes Sci-Fact week or something?

Last night we went to see Serenity at WorldGate. For all you Firefly fans out there, it was awesome, though also more than a little sad. “That Evil Joss” pulls off several more of the bait the viewer and then surprise the view stunts he became famous for in the Buffy, Angel, and Firefly TV shows. There are several surprises, more Alliance history is explained and Reavers are no longer such a mystery. This is mostly a show about Mal and River, and a new character, who is quite compelling, though very scary.

If you are a fan of good Science Fiction, you must go see this movie, it is impressive. It combines rich, deep characters with action and story. Unlike so many movies, some good guys to get killed, and that is where the sadness comes in.

I believe this movie will be great even if you never saw the Firefly TV shows, though some of the depth in the characters may not show through. For fans, it shines. Now I have to get some dinosaur toys to glue to my own “console” (my monitors and desk at work).