Films

[williamjm]

It's been a while since I last made a post here. I notice that in my last post I made a similar observation. I remember when I first posted here asking whether I would really use it much (other than for reading/commenting on other people's posts). Apparently, the answer is no. Oh well.

When I have posted I tend to have made some sort of comment on a film or TV show I've just seen, part of the reason I haven't really posted anything recently is that I've hardly been to the cinema in the last few months. There just hasn't seemed to be anything on that I wanted to go and see, it seems to have been a fairly mediocre summer in terms of the Big Screen. Fortunately there does seem to be a few films coming out soon that I want to see.

I've also seen a couple recently, I saw David Cronenberg's "A History Of Violence" last week, it was quite good, not as weird as some of his other works (which I think might be a good thing), perhaps more similar to "The Dead Zone" than any of his other films.

Today I went to see "Serenity". Recently I've been watching the DVDs of the short-lived TV series "Firefly" (which "Serenity" is based on), it was a very entertaining show even if only a couple of episodes really came anywhere close to realising its full potential. Serenity was also very entertaining, probably the best movie I've seen this year[1]. It both provided satisfactory closure to the series' storyline and was also a good story on its own merits. I could quibble about some plot holes (particularly during the final part of the film), but I'm entertained enough that I don't feel inclined to do that. The only thing I wasn't too keen was the main antagonist, "The Operative", whose fairly pretentious character seemed to belong in a different movie[2]. I would also have preferred if the climax of the film hadn't been the main hero and villain engaging in melee combat, something that is definetely overused in TV/cinema.

[1] Not too great a compliment, the only other really good movie I've seen is "Batman Begins" and that was let down a bit by its comparatively weak third act.

[2] "Err, Joss, the scriptwriters of 'Equilibrium' just called, they'd like their Black, sword wielding, philosophical, secret government assasain who works for sinister quasi-Fascist-government-who-think-anesthetising-their-own-population-is-a-good-idea character back."

Comments

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Errrr, no to footnote [2]. The idea that one could rip-off a half-arsed bumbling shitfest like Equilibrium is amusing. Making a case for Joss pinching from the same source material is better. But Joss does it better in many ways, the most important is that his kung-fu doesn't make people openly laugh in the cinema.

The Operative works well because he's the mirror of Mal, right down to the opposite reactions from seeing the recording.

[williamjm.livejournal.com]

I wasn't seriously suggesting Joss ripped off Equilibrium (especially since Equilibrium didn't have an original thought in the whole movie), the character just seemed slightly reminiscent. Although he did have a sense of humour, which is a big difference I suppose.