"i don't wanna explode!"

[jazzfish]

The Scotiabank theatre is showing a bunch of older movies in digital format for $6 apiece. I've been here long enough that this seems like a remarkably good deal; a month or so ago, a 4 PM showing of Tinker Tailor was $13 per ticket. Last night was Serenity, which we watched in the company of several folk from gaming. Good times, good company. Been awhile since I'd been out to dinner with a larger-than-small group.

The movie... doesn't hold up as well as it might. Bits of it feel blatantly manipulative, Inara and Kaylee are ciphers, and they didn't give Zoe nearly enough to do. (So it's pretty much The Mal And River Show, with Simon along for plot and Jayne and Wash for different kinds of comic relief.) The plot's perfectly fine at least, though I wonder how lost you'd be if you didn't know the series.

Today has been a wash. Plans included: finishing this story, plot noodling for another, and writing ALL the email. Instead I wrote some (though not all) of the emails, poked at the story, lazed around on the internet and the Device. Meh. And realised that I'd forgotten I'd signed up to write a story this month. Exciting. Maybe it'll make up for this one being stalled out at what looks like ten feet from the finish line. bleh. Leaving it alone for awhile.

I disapprove of my lack of energy and motivation. I don't know what to do about it, either. And now it's the end of the weekend and back to work tomorrow.

Comments

[thanate]

I saw Serenity first, and was mainly astonished by the fact that River & Simon were in the series. The impression I got from the movie was that this was our intro to River. I think the gratuitous killed off character bits didn't quite have their intended impact, but other than that the movie worked as stand-alone.

Write, you.

[jazzfish]

Huh! I think they had to write it that way because River's the one plot device character who really needs an introduction, otherwise the movie makes no sense at all.

Tryin'. :7 (Thanks.)

[fadeaccompli]

I went to see the movie with my parents, who'd never seen any of the episodes of Firefly, and they liked it enough to get it for themselves when it came out on DVD--and then go get a box set of Firefly, too, so they could watch that. So while there are several things that work better and have more impact for someone who's seen the series, it seems to hold together well enough for first-time viewers too.

[jazzfish]

Huh, okay. Cool. (Your parents sound exceedingly awesome.)

[fadeaccompli]

They are! My dad's a scifi fan of the old school, and they were deeply pleased when I went to college and started filtering more recent scifi stuff back to them in turn. Babylon 5 was a grand hit.

[jazzfish]

You're in the "B5 is worth watching" camp, then?

[fadeaccompli]

Mm, yes, with some caveats. The first season is, like many first seasons, wildly uneven; a lot of its Exciting New Things have been done so often now that they come across as standard or cliche, rather than ground-breaking and original, which drains some of their impact; and the fourth season rushed to finish up a bunch of storylines, making the fifth season not really necessary. (I've never watched the fifth season, and don't particularly feel this to be a lack. I may get around to it some day.) It's also a bit Product Of Its Times, though, much like Star Trek, it strives earnestly to be progressive, and often succeeds.

All that said? Yes, I recommend it. Still one of my favorite TV shows ever.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

$6 each is a good deal for movies, even if they're older. There used to be several older theaters down in LA and Santa Monica that did that, but I haven't checked them out in ages.

Weekends go too fast, don't they?

Good luck with the writing!

[jazzfish]

I still have memories of 75c nights at the local second-run in B'burg... nearly a decade ago now. Somehow the price of real movies has fixed in my head at $7.50, which won't get you in much of anywhere any more.

Thanks. Here's hoping.

[zaph.livejournal.com]

I saw the movie first and thought it was pretty good. But I think the problem is that taking a complex, character-driven ensemble TV series and turning it into a plot-driven action movie requires some significant and unfortunate sacrifices.

And oddly, the movie made less sense to me once I'd seen the series, mostly because the River backstory completely contradicted pretty much everything from the show, though I obviously didn't realise that the first time I saw it.

also:

[talk about Serenity]
Today has been a wash.

really? REALLY? :)

[jazzfish]

Hm, okay, that's three votes for "saw it first and it was fine," so, cool! I sometimes wonder if the problem was that the ensemble cast was too large: Leverage has five characters, and you get to know them well enough to be interesting and then there's a bunch of awesome stuff happening that the neat character bits make more awesome. Eh. Too late now, in any case.

Contradicted? I guess... it's been long enough since I've seen the show that it felt more like 'fleshed out.'

And, I didn't even notice I'd said that until this morning. Then I figured I'd leave it in, see if anyone else did. :)