Free Candy For Everyone

The TV season has returned in full force and what have I been doing? Watching TV on DVD and movies I’ve already seen. But they’re just so darn good! For the longest time I’d been meaning to watch Veronica Mars, a tv show just entering it’s 3rd season next week. The first season was on sale at Costco for a mere $17.99 so I couldn’t resist and picked it up.

I’ve been watching it non-stop ever since. I’d sit down for one episode and end up watching four. It’s smart, sharp, and daring. It’s well-written and unpredictable. If you don’t know anything about it, the first season is about a girl in high school. Her best friend was murdered about a year before the show begins and she and her father have both been driven to figure out what really happened. The whole first season has this murder mystery as an underlying current that creeps up at unexpected times. It’s awesome. And just a warning - if you don’t know anything about the show and want to watch it, don’t try to read up on it on the internet! It’ll give it away, and you really want to let everything unfold at it’s own pace.

I finished up watching the first season on Saturday and just couldn’t stand to wait another moment for season two. I ordered it on Amazon that day. Should be here early this week! I can’t wait. I hope to be able to catch up before the new season starts October 3rd. Of course, I’m just going to TiVo the series, so even if it takes me an extra week to catch up it’ll still be waiting there when I’m ready.

Next up, Serenity! It was airing on HBO in HD earlier today, so I recorded it, just in case I felt like watching. Then this evening I thought “Hey, let’s just see what it looks like in HD. I’ll just watch a few minutes, then turn the TV off.” Next thing I know it’s an hour later and I’m thinking “Eh, there’s only a little bit more anyways” and then it was 2 hours and done. That movie is good. The whole Firefly thing is good. I’m hoping they’re making enough money on DVD sales to at least make them consider another movie. That’s be lovely.

I like me the TV. Good stuff everywhere.

Just picked up my copy of Serenity on DVD. I had sort of decided to stop buying DVDs, since it’s so easy to rent them. And what with having an HDTV, I wanted to wait until the whole Blu-Ray / HD-DVD thing had sorted itself out. But I really enjoyed this movie, and when I walked out, all I could think about was the cool extras that’ll be on the DVD. So now I have it in my hot little hands (well, they’re actually pretty cold hands, but who wants to edit the expression). Haven’t had a chance to sit down with it yet (it arrived from Amazon today). But I’m psyched! And if you missed it for the brief time it was out in theaters, now is your chance to catch it again. Catch it!

Serenity is almost gone from the theaters. The movie hasn’t done quite as well as a lot of us fans had hoped. But it’s a thoroughly enjoyable movie. Really! I had a friend go who had never seen the show and he still loved it. Serenity looks like it may vanish and become just another forgotten blip on the busy radar of movies that were. I don’t want that for this movie! The cast is great, the fun is just beginning, and I’m hoping for many sequels to follow. So listen up out there in cyberland, go see this movie. I promise, you won’t regret it! And if you do regret it, then you should learn to just let go of things. It’s less than two hours of your life!

I’m sort of new to this blogging thing. I still only have a handful of blogs that I read regularly, and I’m always on the prowl to find more to read. Because I care about what strangers have to say. I really do. I found Binary Bonsai today. Maybe everyone already knows about this site. But I just found it, and it was full of news that I hadn’t read elsewhere. To list a few interesing bits:

• Bioware Announces Mass Effect - It’s a “Revolutionary Action-RPG set in a spectacular vision of the future”. It’s for the Xbox 360. Maybe I will have to get an Xbox afterall. Jade Empire was an awesome game, I can’t wait to see what they have going next!
• Orson Scott Card Review Serenity - He wrote Ender’s Game, one of the best books I’ve ever read. Really. Though there’s a great interview with him at Salon. It’s five years old, but I still remember it from when it came out. The most standout quote, “I don’t want to know if the book he wrote is so different than the beautiful one I read.” But a great author talking about a great movie is worth a look, right?
• Pixar not Leaving Disney - It’s a misleading title, because the entry actually links to a commentary on why Pixar will be unable to leave Disney and will ultimately have to repartner with them because Disney owns the sequel rights to everything - Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc. (my fav), and The Incredibles. So maybe it’s right, but it isn’t a done deal yet.

I love the internet. All this information so easily accessible. You just have to persist until you find it all. All of it.

Of course I went and saw Serenity this weekend. And I enjoyed it. It was really good. The core of the show was still there - the things that made Firefly what it was. But some things were different. There’s only so much you can do with a large ensemble cast in a two hour movie. On TV, you have the luxury of unraveling each of their stories over many hours. We piece their tales together and get excited with each new detail.

Well, the movie revealed many truths about some characters, and none at all about others. One of the three people I went with had never seen the TV show, and he thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Which is great. I’m glad that Joss Whedon succeeded in making a movie that didn’t require all that previous viewing. But I think my enthusiasm for the movie was certainly at a whole other level than the newbie’s. And for sure, he didn’t get the magnitude of some of the little details of events that occurred.

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