TV
Serenity Now
While we all wait for what Joss does next, the A.V. Club has an extremely insightful discussion of Serenity in it’s ‘New Cult Canon’ feature. The line is basically this: it’s a love letter to fans that doesn’t hit the highs of the show and here’s why. And I more or less agree.
I travelled with a friend down the highway to Geelong to watch Serenity in a pre-release screening. I had a good time, liked the film, saw it once again in the cinema on general release with another friend and bought it when it came out on DVD in order to help boost sales and convince them to make more. We now know that that’s never going to happen but what the hell. At least I have it on DVD right?
But here’s the problem: I’ve never watched the DVD. Beyond that, I’ve never revisited the original Firefly series (which I also own on DVD). I’m currently watching (extremely slowly) Buffy with my highly horror adverse wife and I’m enjoying it – we’re only two episodes in and it’s still astonishingly amateurish but it’s fun. When I think of Firefly now I think of it being (a) slightly forced and (b) unfinished. Now I know that (b) is not Whedon’s fault but (a) certainty is. Firefly, I suspect, is not going to go down in history as one of the great shows. If Fox hadn’t canned it in mid-stream, the reasons it is so missed would have been removed. Hopefully it would have provided new reasons to be missed, but I don’t think we’d seen them yet.
HBO greenlights A Game of Thrones
George R. R. Martin reacts here, with links. I’m pretty excited about this – the series is human-centric enough to not require much in the way of effects and the story is complex enough that it needs TV, not movie, timelines. Who knows how well it will do but I can’t wait.
It’s Thursday. Want some links?
- I personally don’t especially care about covers – I choose books based on reviews and previous work and I think most SFF covers are rubbish. But some people care a great deal. Here’s a post at A Dribble of Ink about the changes between editions of Mark Charan Newton’s Nights of Villjamur. The comments are pretty interesting if you like that sort of thing, with all sorts weighing in, including Newton’s editor.
- Filming of the Games of Thrones pilot has wrapped. Now we wait to see what the chances of a actual series are.
- Sex advice from D&D players. Actually serious advice, not a parody.
- The AV club’s best 15 video games of the noughties.
- Next time you’re at a loss for PC or NPC, try looking up this print of Characters for an Epic Tale. (via Boing Boing)
- The BBC discusses committing war crimes in video games. (via Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
- The Times covers ‘adult gamers’. Shock, horror!
- And, finally, Kotaku celebrates World of Warcraft’s 5th birthday by finding out from people why they’ve never played it. The intro where the writer discusses how it just doesn’t live up to tabletop gaming experiences is the most interesting one to me.
Yet another THURSDAY LINK DAY!!!
- More DMing advice from Penny Arcade
- The movie Gattaca is being made into a sci-fi, police procedural TV show. Sound pretty cool!
- How we’ll cope (or not) with the Dollhouse cancellation – the 5 Stages of Grief. But, maybe we’ll get more Buffy?
- Setting up your Mac to play PC games.
- Michael Chabon on breaking out of genre and the role of fan-fiction in popular culture.
- What Stormtroopers do on their day off.
- Some guy at the Guardian reads George R. R. Martin for the first time.
- Robin D. Laws does a great real world RPG inspiration. Maybe we should change the way we do ours?
- i09’s take on what SFF books you might like if you liked some recent movies. It’s a cool idea, done well and the recommend some great books!
- Finally, The Onion A.V. Club gives us more geek fun with their New Cult Canon write up on Army of Darkness, a movie I have never seen but now really want to!
Dollhouse cancelled
Apparently Dollhouse has been cancelled but will still see out the second season.
I haven’t watched any of season 2 yet, but still this is a shame. It was an interesting show.
Adventure ideas as TV guide write-ups
Superstar RPG designer Robin Laws has made a pretty awesome suggestion on his blog on the concept of ‘player generated premises’. Basically the idea is that players give a short ‘tv guide’ style suggestion for next weeks adventure. Each session a different player takes a turn to suggest one:
- El-Haumarzeid unwittingly becomes the centre of a new religious movement.
- Lacklow learns that not every problem can be solved with a swift thrust of a blade to the eye when a thiefmaster’s convocation is held in a mysterious temple where violence is impossible.
- A normal mission suddenly gains deadly stakes when Lacklow learns that one of his missing family members may be involved. Are they a hostage? Slaves? Or something more sinister?
- Saltiamara discovers a little more about the potential destiny of the orc child she adopted.
- The local mafia tries to convince Shoryu, in his role as a pit fighter trainer, to help set up a bunch of games.
All the above are from Robin’s post – I particularly like the first of the Lucklow ideas.
The main problems I see with this are a) the issues around weaving these into a single campaign and more importantly b) the players who will do the most with this aren’t the the players who need the most help.
Players who can come up with snappy ideas about the direction of the game and their characters don’t need tricks to get them into the campaign. It’s those players who do need the help (in my experience the friend of a player who has never played before) who will never come up with quick ideas like these. Still it’s a cool way to help take the load off the GM as well…
And some TV and movie links
Just a couple of interesting news items:
- Apparently Dollhouse has been put on a brief hiatus due to the upcoming sweeps week. Hopefully the fact that its DVR ratings have been huge means that it will finish up the season – at least.
- An Iain M. Banks story has been picked up to be made into a film! Bank’s short story ‘A gift from the Culture’ from the collection The State of The Art is apparently going to be made into a film. More here and here (tip from A Dribble of Ink). No word on timing or anything else. I’ve read the story but can’t remember a thing about it and I think the book is on my parents shelf half a world away. Anyone else remember much?
Geeky TV
As the days get longer down here in NZ they get shorter in the US, which means that the Fall TV premiers are just round the corner! There is a large bunch of genre TV starting up this year as well of the return of some of my favs from last year.
Amazingly Dollhouse returns next week for it’s 13 episode second season. Despite all the evidence it was renewed at the last minute and from all reports the show is going to be building on the still of the last half of the first season. I finally got to watch the now slightly mythical “lost” 13th episode, Epitaph One, the other day and if it continues down that track it’s going to be great. Looking forward to see what they come up with.
Not so amazingly Fringe, from sci fi golden boy J J Abrams, started it’s second season on Thursday and will no doubt provide more mind bending, reality twisting, horrific plots. I was a tad disappointed by the season finisher last year, though I think that might be because the big shocker finish just doesn’t resonate as much with me as it would with American viewers. However I can’t wait to see more of Walter’s hijinks and am looking forward to seing how they play out the twist in his relationship with Peter.
Of the new crop of shows I’m looking forward to Flash Forward and the re-boot of V. So watch this space to see whether they’re worth watching, or in my case buying the DVDs for.
More SoIaF TV show news
George R. R. Martin has posted on his blog about shooting locations for the pilot of A Game of Thrones, the hopefully upcoming HBO show based on his A Song of Ice and Fire novels. It’s nice to see something happening here and we can only hope the show actually gets picked up.
A shame for all the Kiwi readers it won’t be shot in New Zealand as you could have tried to become extras!
Dollhouse – Nick’s take
So the second episode of Dollhouse has aired and so I thought I’d offer my opinions on it. Overall, I’m jsut not that impressed. I find the premise slightly creepy, Dushku’s acting exactly what I feared it would be and it’s just not very Whedon.
This last point is particularly important – I understand it’s on purpose but I like the snappy dialogue and quips and without those it’s a substandard sci-fi thriller with a very pretty but slightly crap actress in the lead role.
I trust Joss so I’ll give it a few more weeks, especially given the first line in this week’s Onion A.V. Club episode review where the review says
the line [Dushku] was pushing on the show was that it really kicks into gear starting with the sixth episode, which is written by Joss Whedon.
But after six weeks if I don’t give a crap still, I’m gone until ‘teh interweb’ tells me I’m making a mistake.