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June 25, 2005
Serenity: Big Screen chases niche market
The internet and the blogs that arose from its primordial soup have eviscerated the news media, exposing the MSM as little more than a gypsy parade of half-wit charlatans. Unfortunately, the internet has done little to loosen Hollywood's cinematic chokehold on the shows that appear in the box office. If you've ever been to a decent Film Festival like Austin's SXSW(South By SouthWest) or Havana's Festival Internacional Del Nuevo Cine LatinoAmericano, you begin to realize that any originality and creativity is deftly liberated from the movies when they are ground, like sausages, through the Hollywood mill. The movies that emanate from Hollywood are as innocent of flavor as a grocery store tomato. But there is hope.
Currently, Universal Studios is screening a sneak preview for a movie named Serenity in select cities across the U.S. The movie is a sequel to a sci-fi tv show Fox wisely killed in 2002. But, in an increasingly common phenonemon, DVD sales took off. So, Universal Studios decided to front forty million to the project with Joss Whedon writing and directing the movie.
After screening the flick at sold out sneak previews in various cities on three dates, the screening were increased to 35 U.S. cities. Movie is scheduled for release on September 30, 2005.
I'm not a huge sci-fi fan, and I'm sure that I can pass from this world without having seen this movie. But what's intriguing to me is that a few socially inept nerds created a big screen movie targeted toward other like-minded sheeple and managed to hijack a few theatres for the preview.
Although $40 million isn't really my idea of a shoestring budget, they way that they're releasing the movie is novel, in an industry widely panned for producing stereotypical, cookie-cutter, plasticine template-based celluliod movies. Maybe this release schedule will illuminate a path that affords a greater diversity of movies to a an audience with a more complicated pallette.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/757fhfxg.asp?pg=1
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Posted by Peenie Wallie on June 25, 2005 at 11:01 AM
Comments
The movie is a sequel to a sci-fi tv show Fox wisely killed in 2002. But, in an increasingly common phenonemon, DVD sales took off.
FYI: The show is Firefly, which is currently Amazon's #7 best-selling DVD.
Serenity is the name of the ship (Firefly class) -- named after the final battle in the galactic civil war (Serentiy Valley), where the ship's captain assumed command of the rebel forces after all of his superiors had been killed.
As for the show being "wisely killed," the probable reason the ratings were poor is (1) Fox aired the episodes out-of-order, and (2) Fox frequently pre-empted the show without notice for sporting events. Nothing wise about it; they made the same mistakes that NBC did with Star Trek in the 1960s.
In the commentary for one of The Tick episodes -- another great show killed by Fox in its infancy -- one of the producers (or writers, I don't remember who) mentioned that network executives frequently say they want something "new and different." But when its actually offered to them, they try to change it to appeal to the lowest common denominator, because such shows (as The Tick and Firefly) are "too new and different." This usually kills the show, and the networks just order more American Idol and Fear Factor.
Firefly was definitely a gun enthusiast's type of TV show; not to mention it's anti-big government and pro-freedom themes should appeal to you. The show had its (sometimes serious) flaws, but the stories and production were good enough that they could be forgiven. That's about the highest praise I can usually offer a TV show or movie.
Direct links to the Serenity trailer (in case you want to download and save, so you can watch it again and again without having to stream it and waste time and bandwidth):
small
http://movies.apple.com/movies/universal/serenity/serenity_m240.mov
4.83 MB
Medium
http://movies.apple.com/movies/universal/serenity/serenity_m320.mov
8.5 MB
Large
http://movies.apple.com/movies/universal/serenity/serenity_m480.mov
21 MB
Full screen:
http://movies.apple.com/movies/universal/serenity/serenity_ifs2.mov
41MB
Right-click on the link, and select "Save as.." or "Save target as.." or whatever is close in the pop-up menu that appears (varies by browser and operating system).
The theme song (both lyrics and .mp3) are available at http://www.fireflywiki.org/Firefly/FireflyThemeSong.
Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the sky from me
Take me out to the black
Tell them I ain't comin' back
Burn the land and boil the sea
You can't take the sky from me
There's no place I can be
Since I found Serenity
But you can't take the sky from me...
And yes, I do own the DVD set, which I've watched 3 times already. Now if only they would release the (new) Battlestar Galactica series already...
Posted by: Robert on June 28, 2005 at 10:51 AM
Although $40 million isn't really my idea of a shoestring budget,
In an era where production budgets are $100 million +, it is a small budget -- not "shoestring," but pretty small. Of course, more money doesn't mean a better film. A textbook example of this is two movies with similar (and non-original) plots that came out in May 2001: Pearl Harbor (USA, $135 million) and Dark Blue World (Czech Republic, $8 million). The general reaction by people who saw both was that Dark Blue World made Pearl Harbor "look like the P.O.S. it is."
Another example is, obviously, the first Star Wars film ($13 million in 1977 = $37 million in 1999). The pressure of deadlines and budget forced Lucas to actually make some editing decisions and leave out what was not needed. After he was not limited by time and money, he gave us crap like The Phantom Menace (1999, $115 million).
Posted by: Robert on June 28, 2005 at 10:57 AM