Big Damn Thanksgiving Weekend
Oct. 9th, 2005 06:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Two for one edition, with Thanksgiving and Serenity...
Okay, so, yesterday I did the Thanksgiving Dinner thing with the family. It was pretty good.. had good turkey, good ham, good gravy, good mashed potatoes, okay turnips and carroty carrots, and rolls, good pumpkin pie, and so on. Also there were plenty of leftovers to take home (some of which I just finished for dinner today), and no cheesy 'go around the table and everyone say what they're thankful' things I hate.
So that was cool. And there's still pumpkin pie left for later.
In other news, saw Serenity again, 2nd time, and officially making it the first film I've ever seen twice in the theatre. This time I took my brother and his girlfriend along, my treat because they really couldn't afford to go, Serenity's sadly not doing very well in the box office and I'd like to support it, and I'm just a nice guy... plus my boss said he'd pay me a little extra for coming in late on Wednesday, and the extra is basically just enough for two extra tickets. They both really enjoyed it, as did I although maybe not quite as much as the first go-around.
More specific thoughts, some spoilery, behind the cut.
So this time I went in knowing everything, and so could better focus on the memorable funny parts:
"Mal! Mal!" "Every heist he's gotta go yelling my name."
"Gee it sure would have been nice if we had some GRENADES."
"Dear Buddha, I want a pony and a plastic rocket."
"I am a leaf on the wind."
One thing that interested me was that during the flight down to Mr. Universe's world and the subsequent running fight with the Reavers, I felt a lot more tense than I can recall being the first time around. Now that could just be because the first time around I was focusing more on seeing what happened than to observing my own reaction, but still, it was interesting how that went.
I also have come up with a satisfactory (to me) solution to The Simon Problem, as I call it. For those who've seen the movie and the series, there's a bit of a continuity error, since everything in the series indicates Simon did not smuggle River out of the facility himself - he said others did it. Yet, in the movie, he does it himself. Now, that's not such a big deal to fanwank. You could simply say he told Serenity's crew that someone else got her out because he thought they might be more likely to turn him over on the feds. The problem is that while he's supposedly supervising the experiment, they basically tell him what they've done to her, making his big crime excursion to figure out what was done to her, in 'Ariel', rather unnecessary. So, I have a proposed solution:
Whoever helped Simon get River out had serious alliance ties. Now, while he might have been wanting to get River out, he a) didn't want to expose himself, and b) didn't want Simon to know about any other secret projects he might encounter on the way. So, he coached him on how to get in and out, let him do the job himself, and then, once River was safe, he used secret alliance tech to wipe Simon's memory of the rescue (and coaching) so he both wouldn't remember the mole's name or face if later captured, and wouldn't remember anything else he learned about the project or River's condition.
I enjoyed the movie and will definitely get the DVD, but I am feeling a little disappointed that the movie isn't doing so well at the box office. I guess it's a textbook example about why you don't rely on anecdotal evidence - all the time I seem to hear from people who are excited about the movie, fans who are seeing it six, seven, or more times, I hear from people who've never seen the series but still really like the movie enough to go see it a couple times... hell, I even hear a few times about theatres, this weekend, being backed... and yet it's not doing well. I can sort of understand a low initial box office, but I would have hoped the movie would have started to pick up and have a low dropoff. It sucks. Especially since I want to keep seeing these characters in more adventures. The show is just too pretty to die. Ah well. Who knows, maybe it'll start picking up some as those people who liked it but never saw the series slowly start telling people. Maybe it'll be a huge hit on DVD. Maybe Universal, instead of spending the 'half the marketting budget on the 2nd week' (which clearly didn't happen as I don't think I saw one ad after that first weekend... I've heard there were some, but there were nowhere near as many), they decided not to, and while that certainly didn't help, maybe it'll mean that the movie doesn't have to break $80 million to be profitable enough for a sequel, and it only has to do something like 50 or 60 mill worldwide now.
Oh, in other news, before we went into the movie I stopped off in the bookstore and go Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling which just came out in paperback and I've been interested in for a while. For those who've heard of the Island in the Sea of Time series, this is the story of what happened to the rest of the world that Nantucket disappeared from (to wind up in the Bronze Age) - apparently that same moment some weird phenomenon made most technology in the world simply stop working. Hopefully it'll be good.
Okay, so, yesterday I did the Thanksgiving Dinner thing with the family. It was pretty good.. had good turkey, good ham, good gravy, good mashed potatoes, okay turnips and carroty carrots, and rolls, good pumpkin pie, and so on. Also there were plenty of leftovers to take home (some of which I just finished for dinner today), and no cheesy 'go around the table and everyone say what they're thankful' things I hate.
So that was cool. And there's still pumpkin pie left for later.
In other news, saw Serenity again, 2nd time, and officially making it the first film I've ever seen twice in the theatre. This time I took my brother and his girlfriend along, my treat because they really couldn't afford to go, Serenity's sadly not doing very well in the box office and I'd like to support it, and I'm just a nice guy... plus my boss said he'd pay me a little extra for coming in late on Wednesday, and the extra is basically just enough for two extra tickets. They both really enjoyed it, as did I although maybe not quite as much as the first go-around.
More specific thoughts, some spoilery, behind the cut.
So this time I went in knowing everything, and so could better focus on the memorable funny parts:
"Mal! Mal!" "Every heist he's gotta go yelling my name."
"Gee it sure would have been nice if we had some GRENADES."
"Dear Buddha, I want a pony and a plastic rocket."
"I am a leaf on the wind."
One thing that interested me was that during the flight down to Mr. Universe's world and the subsequent running fight with the Reavers, I felt a lot more tense than I can recall being the first time around. Now that could just be because the first time around I was focusing more on seeing what happened than to observing my own reaction, but still, it was interesting how that went.
I also have come up with a satisfactory (to me) solution to The Simon Problem, as I call it. For those who've seen the movie and the series, there's a bit of a continuity error, since everything in the series indicates Simon did not smuggle River out of the facility himself - he said others did it. Yet, in the movie, he does it himself. Now, that's not such a big deal to fanwank. You could simply say he told Serenity's crew that someone else got her out because he thought they might be more likely to turn him over on the feds. The problem is that while he's supposedly supervising the experiment, they basically tell him what they've done to her, making his big crime excursion to figure out what was done to her, in 'Ariel', rather unnecessary. So, I have a proposed solution:
Whoever helped Simon get River out had serious alliance ties. Now, while he might have been wanting to get River out, he a) didn't want to expose himself, and b) didn't want Simon to know about any other secret projects he might encounter on the way. So, he coached him on how to get in and out, let him do the job himself, and then, once River was safe, he used secret alliance tech to wipe Simon's memory of the rescue (and coaching) so he both wouldn't remember the mole's name or face if later captured, and wouldn't remember anything else he learned about the project or River's condition.
I enjoyed the movie and will definitely get the DVD, but I am feeling a little disappointed that the movie isn't doing so well at the box office. I guess it's a textbook example about why you don't rely on anecdotal evidence - all the time I seem to hear from people who are excited about the movie, fans who are seeing it six, seven, or more times, I hear from people who've never seen the series but still really like the movie enough to go see it a couple times... hell, I even hear a few times about theatres, this weekend, being backed... and yet it's not doing well. I can sort of understand a low initial box office, but I would have hoped the movie would have started to pick up and have a low dropoff. It sucks. Especially since I want to keep seeing these characters in more adventures. The show is just too pretty to die. Ah well. Who knows, maybe it'll start picking up some as those people who liked it but never saw the series slowly start telling people. Maybe it'll be a huge hit on DVD. Maybe Universal, instead of spending the 'half the marketting budget on the 2nd week' (which clearly didn't happen as I don't think I saw one ad after that first weekend... I've heard there were some, but there were nowhere near as many), they decided not to, and while that certainly didn't help, maybe it'll mean that the movie doesn't have to break $80 million to be profitable enough for a sequel, and it only has to do something like 50 or 60 mill worldwide now.
Oh, in other news, before we went into the movie I stopped off in the bookstore and go Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling which just came out in paperback and I've been interested in for a while. For those who've heard of the Island in the Sea of Time series, this is the story of what happened to the rest of the world that Nantucket disappeared from (to wind up in the Bronze Age) - apparently that same moment some weird phenomenon made most technology in the world simply stop working. Hopefully it'll be good.
