It's important to be warm

Tonight was the preview of the much anticipated (by me and many Browncoats) of Serenity. And it was very shiny. There was also free stuff, including a t-shirt big enough to fit both Ian and I inside it. This was welcome as the theatre was more than a little chilly and I enjoyed having another layer on over the light sweater I brought. Also, a poster and a ballcap. Ian looks quite fetching in the ballcap, though it should’ve been brown, not black, for plot consistency at least.

I was thrilled to get my passes, even though there was nobody checking them, and the ftp they sent me to get images just crashed my machine. Eh, I stole Bill’s images and they’re likely more fun. I also found out through that LiveJournal circle that Grace Hill media is scary Republican and now they have my name. Eww. Ah well, if the true libertarians (who find a comfy home in the Serenity plotline) would realize their mistake and leave the Rep. party, Roe v. Wade would be safer. But I digress…

No spoilers just yet, but I must tell you, having the film jump at the most climatic scene of the film, at a preview full of fans, well, it gets ugly. And apparently, you can stop the signal. (Joke courtesy of Ian, thank you, he’ll be here all week.)

The poor guy working the theatre had to come down in front of a nerdily rowdy group and tell us they’d have it fixed soon. So I walked up to the concession and told the girl behind the counter that she should authorize me for a refill on my root beer. She did. The film restarted and didn’t miss anything, thankfully.

The film went at full speed, certain from the start that it is a film and not a very long tv episode. This point was brought painfully home when the film jumped, but also in a less troublesome way with the heart-racing that pretty much began after my mild acceptance (small annoyance) at the minor storyline adjustment that opens the film. After that opening sequence, the hook is deep and you’re running along with them, adrenaline fueled, eyes peeled.

Ian and I are both ready to see it again at the regular opening on Friday. Twice in a week, yep, that’s a good film. It will work well for fans, and for those who have never seen an episode nor visited the Whedon’verse. The humor may catch them off guard, but hopefully the audience will have enough brains to get it.

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HERE BE SPOILERS

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As to the plot-line problem, this isn’t much of a spoiler as it is the very first scene. It’s better to get a shift like this out of the way. Shifting how Simon gets River out doesn’t bug me as much as it could’ve. Talking with another preview-goer, she said it’s as if they just stepped sideways off the TV plot-line, running as a very close alternate story. That’s fine. There were no apologies, and it would’ve been far more awkward to drag it out with the number of characters implied in the TV version, not to mention that it wouldn’t have made as rich a relationship between the siblings.

Another TV-to-film shift, also noted by the nice folks next to us, chatty before the show and during the unintentional intermission, is that both Simon and Mal are much angrier in the film. This suits them, and also cuts to the chase the way a movie needs to, and TV shouldn’t. Well played.

For the record, the intermission happened during the knife-fight just as Mal was professing his fondness for all of the seven sins. Very inconvenient!

Then there are the deaths.

Ok, Whedon, you know that you can abuse us with killing off truly fantastic characters. I know this from Buffy. I am not afraid. But, oh, it is mean all the same. I expected death and carnage, but this, well, this was a clean and very sharp knife right through a fan’s heart, so expertly delivered, I didn’t feel it until after I hit the floor, splashing in a pool of my own blood.

I will lift this from another Browncoat:
Joss Wheadon had a Q&A after the screening I saw and his justification was that he wanted to make sure there were consequences for the crew getting into the tight spots they did, and killing Wash was an attempt to punch the audience in the emotional stomach as hard as he could and then move on without giving them any real chance to process it or linger on it.

Well, that’s true enough.

No one got out of this without real consequences, and that in and of itself shows Whedon as a strong author in addition to everything else.

Of course, as a film-goer as well as a fan, I hope for a sequel/prequel/whatever. The main problem is that the show was cancelled far too soon, with so much left unsaid. Buffy was a story fully told, and it’s great that it got to be that. This show had the potential to do that too. I hope they get a second round because it’s just a wonderful set of tales locked in there, ripe for picking.

Filed by joy at 11:56 pm under visuals
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The new local KnitOne store had a KnitIn two Sundays back for those suffering in the wake of Katrina. As I’m not in a place to give much of a fiscal nature, I wanted to give from my heart and hands. I have thus knitted my very first baby blanket. Yesterday it went off, with many other lovely things (including Zig’s first hat!)

I also tossed in a hat I made awhile back when I was on a baby-hat frenzy. The blanket itself was rather disappointing to me as I shoulda done sumthin’ about stockinette curling so much, but…oh well, I wanted the garter stitch in the middle. It’s really lovely soft and squishy for those rotten times when you have to put a little one down on something unpleasant like concrete.

Filed by joy at 11:16 pm under crafty
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I’m ever so ever so very excited that Serenity opens in less than 10 days. As Susie arrived in town last night, there is plenty of time to indoctrinate her into the fold with the DVDs. I also have a growing list of those who are in with me for going to the midnight show, wherever it may be, the moment the tix are on sale.

Joss Whedon is my Master now.

Superhuge thanks to Bill for this link.

And since I scored tix to the blogger’s preview, I am to post this official synopsis for the unenlightened:
Joss Whedon, the Oscar® – and Emmy – nominated writer/director responsible for the worldwide television phenomena of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE, ANGEL and FIREFLY, now applies his trademark compassion and wit to a small band of galactic outcasts 500 years in the future in his feature film directorial debut, Serenity. The film centers around Captain Malcolm Reynolds, a hardened veteran (on the losing side) of a galactic civil war, who now ekes out a living pulling off small crimes and transport-for-hire aboard his ship, Serenity. He leads a small, eclectic crew who are the closest thing he has left to family –squabbling, insubordinate and undyingly loyal.

Filed by joy at 4:09 pm under life
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My Farm Share veggies were starting to go off. Best thing to do is chop and freeze for the winter. Soups. Stews. Happy warm food. Oh autumn, I love you.

You know how when you first toss hot peppers into a frypan, the sizzle smoke can make you cough up a lung? Well, just chopping these particular peppers was sending me into coughing fits. I didn’t touch my eyes, but somehow, I must’ve touched the top of my lip. I don’t remember doing it at all. I’m careful not to touch my face when chopping as I’ve learned this lesson before. I got the white, the red and the green all in their own little ziplocks, labeled HOT PEPPERS, wash my hands, and start to get ready to chop the less potent items like tomatoes and carrots. Well, then my hands began to burn, not the tips, the backs of my fingers! The burn grew, and then the lip started. Small running around occurred as I ran up to interrupt Ian that the peppers were in fact *really* *really* hot. When the burn got too much, I busted out the yogurt, being the only dairy product in the house. I spooned out a small bit into a shallow bowl and commenced treating it like lotion.

First it helped my face, then I licked my lips. After all, it’s food. HOTTEST RAITA EVER! I mean. Damn. Hot.

I must look rabid right now. My hands still hurt, but they’re well enough to type. My lip on the other hand, is smeared with white, and underneath that, a lovely shade of ouch red.

Ow. Ow. Owwie.

Ow.

Filed by joy at 10:21 pm under life
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I’m so proud of my disciple Zig. She’s knit her first functional item. And a dang cute it is.

Filed by joy at 9:56 am under crafty
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I’m a bit embarrased to buy such a fancy phone, but it’s SOOOOO pretty and shiny and awesome! Not to mention that it’s the phone I’ve been saying they should make for a few years now. I’ve already got my 100 songs chosen to put in there. Expect a LOT more pictures of random stuff, like my lunches. Oooooh, I’m geeking myself out completely.

Filed by joy at 3:04 pm under life
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This was the view out to our alley on Thursday. The land shark has since moved on. We wish it well.

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More Katrina articles you should read. Seriously. Shout out to Susan for two of the three and to Kari for the perfect description of the government’s crime: Structural Violence.

Edit: The EMSnetwork website moved the original (and more strongly worded) account of their people in Nola. It can only be found elsewhere. Here are the new (less, um, potent) stories.

How do you say control of free speech? or manufactured truth? It probably doesn’t help that both of the writers/survivors are active Socialists.

Filed by joy at 5:28 pm under politics, visuals
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I’ve been upset for days about Hurricane Katrina. I can’t stop reading the web, watching videos, being unwell over it. Zig says “Life is survivor’s guilt, ’til you’re not a survivor anymore.” Ah, true.

There have been so many incredible, poignant, hard posts and articles about it. As with the tsunami, it is not Nature that defined the disaster, it is humanity. After 9/11, as much as I disliked the government of both the nation and NYC (lingering impressions from earlier events), I was proud of my country for coming together, supporting one another, and surviving the terror. The leaders took control swiftly and, as insane as those days immediately following were, the nation was able to believe we could get through this tragedy.

Things have changed.

I’m a big government kind of girl. I believe in the social welfare state. The black hole of Homeland Security is not my kind of big government. Homeland Security is the new oxymoron. The Bushites cut the funding for FEMA, de-clawed it by deleting its Cabinet position, installed an utter idiot to run it, then blame the locals after de-funding every program that protects them. It’s this flavor of political policy that delivered upon us this deep wound in the slow death of all American Cities. The federal system exists to tie together the cities and states, and it’s doing an exceptional, tactical job of destroying cities and those that call them home. This is visible in complex issues inherent from No Child Left Behind to Eminent Domain, to this most recent and far less subtle example of our NeoCon Government’s classist hatred of all things and people urban. God is the only one to save you if you happen to be poor in this country, the poor being likely urban, or at least concentrated in urban areas. We already knew the NeoCons are racist and misogynistic; that is no surprise. We also knew that their religion is as deep as the skin on my teeth. They believe only in their way, which is only about power, and focusing that power to fewer and fewer people. The pillars of faith in doing good and caring for those less fortunate aren’t showing themselves in these men who claim to be Born Again. Well, unless you happen to be Jeb and you’re your brother’s keeper when it comes to delivering an election or two.

The devastation waged on the city dwellers of New Orleans, as well as the rural southern poor along the coast, is a crime against humanity. That’s a strong statement, and I only say it because it is true. No one need have died. Cuba, remember that little third world country?, THEY can get everyone out of harm’s way, and we, the great U S of A cannot. It has been said by people more in the know than I am that this is proof absolute that should this country be attacked without warning, we would be in utter tatters. Hurricanes give ample warnings, and for the past thirty or so years, we’ve known that New Orleans was at greater and greater risk.

The outright lies that the government has told, from claiming that no state of emergency was called, to the blatant ignoring of the pleading from the leaders in Nola, sicken me as much, if not more, than the manner with which he addresses the stricken. How dare they turn back doctors, trucks of water, people with the ability to help! How dare they insinuate that people will be better off for this! They dare because they can get away with it. The water and electricity should be back up in three to five years, if you go according to bid-winning Halliburton’s track record rebuilding Baghdad. Let’s not even discuss normalcy of living yet.

The only thing I can be proud of are the individual stories coming out from the disaster, from regular people to even some of the media, who actually spoke some truth to power over the last week, on live tv of course, where the networks couldn’t stop them.

NPR informs me we’re having two days of mourning for the loss of the aged and sick Judge Rehnquist. Of course, I’m no fan of his, though I can appreciate that it is fitting to have a state ceremony. That said, they organized this mourning pretty damn fast, while most of the rest of us who live in the reality state are still mourning the loss of probably 10,000 mostly anonymous citizens, not to mention the loss of a great city, and perhaps a whole piece of the American Cultural Quilt that is the Gulf region.

If Michael Brown doesn’t get his balls served to him, preferably in a gumbo…if they manage to spin this to be the fault of the city itself…if people still insist that Bush is doing an ok job…I don’t know what will happen to this country. I can’t believe that they might actually get away with destroying everything that makes America worth believing in. We as a nation will not survive the disaster that is coming, slowly, and with ample warning signs.

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Edit: my god, even if you didn’t click any of the other embedded links, read this one.

Filed by joy at 11:35 pm under politics
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Hurricane Katrina is a tragic disaster that is plenty documented elsewhere. Foamy the Squirrel sums it up pretty damn well.

Edit: Actually Zig did it one better, in the context of the cultural climate of fear.

Filed by joy at 10:50 am under life
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Along with at least a dozen or so others, I was in a tall warehouse space at night, ostensibly on a dock, though no water was actually in sight. It was a part of a party, though this wasn’t really the celebration part. I had the sense of the group including some of the older CMU grads, but I didn’t actually know anyone there. It seems we were in or near a city in China. There was an earlier part to all this that may have shed light on the plot, but all I recall is a scene of two people walking away, just outside this warehouse, down a cement passage, disappearing as the light gave out.

We were waiting in the large space, milling around, semi-social. We were all traveling this evening as a loose (almost tour) group, so people were dressed for an urban party with offhandedly cool elements, funky skirts with walkable shoes, etc. I walked through the space, passing people chatting, big plastic bowls of pretzels on grubby tables that were part of the more typical function of the building. I headed towards the bench that was basically claimed as my spot to dump stuff while I walked around.

There were a few handmade books or cards there waiting for me, dropped off while I had been outside watching a scene I can’t recall. One was obviously the most interesting, made by Carl & Betsy’s five-year old daughter for me. I had the impression that she had created a few like this for various people there that evening. The book was made with sheets of thick colored cellophane, almost like light gels, punched together with a stapled spine. Holding the book in my hands, I could hear the pages crinkle from the pressure of my fingers even in the echoey space. The colors of the sheets varied between several jewel tones, dominated by deep reds. Inside, stapled or glued bits of paper included strips of lined paper with one or two words written across the top and small drawings torn off of larger sheets and glue-sticked in. One spread of pages had two little pictures of Betsy laughing on each side of the gutter fold, the sort that would be taken by a machine at a mall or airport, then trimmed in an oval around her head. One full color, one in that fake sepia tone those machines offer. The strip of blue lined paper stapled on the left side had the word Mama written in loopy cursive pencil centered on the leader line. There were other bits glued and stapled all around including other stickers, papers, and perhaps a feather or two. I explored my book, completely charmed of course, gathered up the other things of mine from the bench, then went looking around the warehouse space for a safe place to keep my quarry. The next stage of this weird gathering would involve a short trip in a small plane and I didn’t want to take my book with me as it would be safer waiting at the warehouse for my return.

Filed by joy at 10:06 am under dreams
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