Wow. A fantastic review.

gossi | December 14, 02:58 CET

Some standout bits:

"Whether you are a fan of the series or haven't heard about it until now, whether you like science fiction or typically shy away from it, Serenity is the very essence of entertainment."

"With the exception of the marketing-enhanced "Zombie Attack" cover art, this is a very solid DVD presentation that should please the fans."

"I hesitate to make such a bold assertion, but this is very likely the best commentary I have ever listened to."

zeitgeist | December 14, 03:00 CET

Everybody sure loves that cover art. *bites zeitgeists toungue*

gossi | December 14, 03:01 CET

Hey! Not your job, gossi - I'm taking my tongue and going over... here! /wanders further away :)

ETA - this is all in reference to this thread wherein gossi slams Charmed and which also includes lines like "If I was a hot female..." and "Three hot young females save the world each week with their fingers, in pulse pounding hot action..."

zeitgeist | December 14, 03:02 CET

Damn! Is Mrs Gossi reading this? I'm going to be in trouble! She'll set her cat on me. It's a fearsome beast.

ETA: zeitgeist, I think you've given away the secret about why I don't work in television, or films, or anything: "hot action" and "typing" is never a great pitch. Unless you're, you know, making The Matrix 4: Where Did The Audience Go.

[ edited by gossi on 2005-12-14 01:08 ]

gossi | December 14, 03:07 CET

Depending on how things go, we may have to do review dump threads for the Serenity DVD. Just letting people know in advance. I doubt it will have to come to that, but you never know.

Simon | December 14, 03:07 CET

Wait, there's a Mrs. Gossi? Forgive my Black Books reference (or celebrate it and join in!), but when I hear Mrs. Gossi I can't get any further than imagining you in a dress.

zeitgeist | December 14, 03:08 CET

There is indeed a Mrs Gossi, it's not just cross dressing this year. She's a several year Whedonesque reader with no account (pity her!). I can say anything about her, in fact, and she can't answer it. She's really Amber Benson. Yes. Kind of. Ish. Well, not really, but she's hot.

I was at a Serenity screening (me? never) the other week where we had somebody with a really deep voice. I got them to do the Shipping Forecast. It was very Black Books. I can do a surprisingly good Bernard impression after a bottle of red wine, too.

gossi | December 14, 03:11 CET

Depending on how things go, we may have to do review dump threads for the Serenity DVD. Just letting people know in advance. I doubt it will have to come to that, but you never know.

Well, it might. I suspect that a number of reviewers who liked the film, when doing their DVD mentions and/or their "year in review" pieces, will be re-mentioning Serenity.

The One True b!X | December 14, 03:19 CET

"Millwall, Millwall, you're all really dreadful, and your girlfriends are unfulfilled and alienated". Sorry, couldn't turn down the invitation to quote some Black Books...

Hopefully reviews like these are what will propel the DVD into massive sales figures. Does anyone know how much impact DVD reviews have on sales (thereby offsetting the much-adored cover)?

[ edited by Special Agent Dale Cooper on 2005-12-14 01:53 ]

[ edited by Special Agent Dale Cooper on 2005-12-14 01:54 ]

Special Agent Dale Cooper | December 14, 03:27 CET

I've no idea, Special Agent Dale Cooper. I didn't think I'd ever read a DVD review before buying a DVD, but funnily enough I got a mail from DVDTalk.com today about their Serenity review. Turns out I'm on their monthly newsletter email, but I always just bin it. So I must have used their website at some point to read a review.

Either way, the more press mentions of the movie the better.

gossi | December 14, 03:35 CET

So, gossi, how did you meet this woman person? Do tell...

Special Agent Dale Cooper - "Skinheads?! Perfect!!!!"

zeitgeist | December 14, 03:44 CET

zeitgeist, at a movie premiere for something called Serendipty. Or something. It had Joss Whedon's wife in it.

gossi | December 14, 04:13 CET

Joss's wife did a bang-up job in that role, BTW.

Looking forward to gossi's starring role in the new smash-hit comedy, Premiere Crashers: "Blue Sun t-shirt? That's like a bullseye, man . . ."

SoddingNancyTribe | December 14, 04:20 CET

No one has commented on it yet, so I suppose I am the cleverest here.. Actually, the person who wrote the review is.

Quote from the article:
"Rounding out the crew is the man they call Jayne"

"The man they call Jayne." If you need to think about that phrase for more than 2 seconds, you don't belong here :P

Very clever; and a hearty chuckle to boot!

*hums "The Hero of Canton"*

[wcip]Angel | December 14, 04:23 CET

Hmph. The one Cusack movie I haven't seen all the way through, and Kai is in it. Figures.

Glad to hear she did well, though. What part did she play?

Willowy | December 14, 04:33 CET

There are 9 Deleted Scenes totaling a little over 14 minutes...


...I thought there was supposed to be over 25 or something?

MySerenity | December 14, 04:43 CET

No, no, Willowy, t'was a joke. At least, that was my understanding. Remember some of those reviews that said Jewel was Joss's wife? And for Serendipity, read Serenity. Kidding around. You know how it goes . . .

SoddingNancyTribe | December 14, 04:54 CET

Maybe Willowy was joking too?

electricspacegirl | December 14, 05:06 CET

So Gossi, when did the Mrs. part happen, and why weren't we invited to the wedding?

Angel, I came to the conclusion a long time ago that I don't actually belong anywhere, so how about spelling it out for me as though I was the idiot-child of the family? :-)

newcj | December 14, 05:16 CET

Having now actually read the review, I can agree it's terrific. But this jumped out at me:



I must signal my emphatic disagreement - I thought it worked wonderfully well, and wanted more in the movie. Not sure why the reviewer had an issue with it, frankly.

SoddingNancyTribe | December 14, 05:26 CET

Figure I'll mention this here -- my brother is on IM and mentions that he is watching Bones and just heard the line:

"Your robot reminds me of you. You ask it to turn, it stops. You ask it to stop, it turns. You ask it to take out the garbage, it sits on the couch watching reruns of Firefly"

zeitgeist | December 14, 05:31 CET

newcj:
The author of the article cleverly and underhandedly alluded to the song "The Hero of Canton", by presenting Jayne in the article as "The man they call Jayne", which are the opening lyrics to the song :)

...

Or perhaps it was just me who thought that was kinda neat.. :|

[ edited by [wcip]Angel on 2005-12-14 03:38 ]

[wcip]Angel | December 14, 05:38 CET

Sorry, [wcip]Angel, I think I just got so used to that being a flan thing (referring to Jayne that way) that I didn't even bring it up. Definitely neat :)

zeitgeist | December 14, 05:41 CET

Ha! ESG (like the new caps, btw!), thank you for providing me an easy out, but SNT knows my typed inflections too well! I'm chagrined to say that I didn't pick up on the joke this time.

*Smacks forehead big time* because I AM aware of the original 'Jewel is Mrs. Whedon' gag that we all were privy to weeks (or was it months?) ago.

See, now I'm all paranoid, questioning all my memories... Looks like that little trip to Disneyland made me all Dopey!

:P

Willowy | December 14, 08:33 CET

Moreover, the fight waged by Mal and his crew is not simply the result of circumstance bearing down upon them but the pursuit of something noble and important. They don't have to be in this fight; they choose to, and it's this dramatic core that separates Serenity from so many other films in the genre.

Just wanted to say that the author stated something about Serenity that I think made it that much more affecting for me.

Ronald_SF | December 14, 10:03 CET

You know, until very recently -- and I truly have no idea why --I assumed Gossi was, well, a Mrs. or a potential Mrs. him/herself.

Time to go see "TransAmerica."

bobster | December 14, 12:44 CET

You'll be amazed how many people have met me at Serenity things and gone "Oh, god... you're a man". That's a special feeling.

Premiere Crashers

You have no idea how true this is. I found a photo of Kirsty and I stood on the red carpet press area in Edinburgh next to what I think was Sky TV. Kirsty was wearing a Serenity badge and me with a hand held MiniDV camera. We stood out.

Wedding? Me and Mrs Gossi can't decide what to have for christmas lunch, dude.

[ edited by gossi on 2005-12-14 11:39 ]

gossi | December 14, 13:38 CET

"My oven can cook anything... my oven can cook ... bits of oven" and now back to the DVD review: I'm really looking forward to the Easter egg !Of note, there is an insane easter egg showing the genesis and complete finished product for the Fruity Oaty Bar commercial. The level of disturbing hilarity occupied by this feature defies description"

I love the advert, so this is great news.

Fence | December 14, 14:05 CET

Wow, this review made me want to watch Serenity. And I've seen it six times, and have a totally legal copy on my hard drive.

I feel like printing out this review and passing it around to anyone I've ever met, talked to, seen, or heard of.

UnpluggedCrazy | December 14, 15:02 CET

I must admit I have always found it ever so slightly annoying. Not to the point where it is in any way a problem, but it would not be on a list of my favourite things about the show/film. I tend to agree that it "sounded better in concept than on the screen." Having said that, I can't give you a specific reason to explain why I think this and I fully appreciate that I am very much in the minority.

alien lanes | December 14, 17:04 CET

Woo hoo, my copy came through today from PlayUSA! On the down side, I've got to say the cover looks even worse in the flesh, so to speak. It's got that shiny look of one of those lame silver hologram stickers, and looks more like a cheap videogame than one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever created. But we've done enough moaning about that...

Special Agent Dale Cooper | December 14, 19:19 CET

Sorry to hear about the cover. Has to make those of us who sent them as gifts to the uninitiated more nervous. Well, please add your comments on the extras when you've seen them.

dreamlogic | December 14, 19:48 CET

Angel, Thanks for the explanation. I was reading too much into your post. Like zeitgeist I took the phrasing for granted as the way Jayne is commonly referred to by fans. You are right, it is a nice signal that the author is actually a fan.

Gossi, Ah, I get it. So you are just playing house. That can be fun. It seemed a little quick for it to all be official with the i's dotted and the knots tied. ;-)

I liked the Chinese. One of the things I actually liked that is often misrepresnted, like in this article, is that it was not all swearing. There were all sorts of things said to each other from Wash telling Zoe something caring as they went separate ways in the original pilot of Firefly to Kaylee telling Mal what she thinks of him in Our Mrs Reynolds. (At least I think it was OMR.) Now these were Joss episodes so there may have been an emphasis on swearing in other episodes, but my point is I thought it was more than a simple or cheap device to let the characters swear. The one problem I found was that NF's diction is not alway great (I love him as Mal but the truth is the truth.) and because it is sometimes difficult to understand a line in English, also having the Chinese will make trying to understand all the lines frustrating. Was that line Chinese or garbled English? How much effort should I put into figuring out what the words were? (Example: Mal has an exchange with Simon when he is rescuing them from the witch burners. Even the people doing the subtitles say something like "garbled" instead of whatever Mal's line is. I don't think it was Chinese, but if it was, I wasted alot of effort trying to understand I line I wasn't meant to.)

newcj | December 14, 19:56 CET

Black Books references, Gossi's special lady friend, and Willowy being mistaken all in the one thread.
sigh...
Somedays, I do so love this board.

nixygirl | December 15, 04:39 CET

newcj, I think the garbled line you want in "Safe" is: "Doctor, I must say, your talent for alienatin' folk is near-miraculous" to which Simon replies, "Yes, I'm very proud." I had to listen to that about 100 times to get it.

zencat | December 15, 04:56 CET