Entertaining Weekend

Last summer when we were on Vancouver Island I found a boxed set of the entire series of the show Firefly...for only $20! It was a great deal, but it's been sitting in my DVD cupboard ever since. On Friday night, my friend Jennifer was passing through town and stopped overnight. At dinner I was raving about how much I loved the Avengers and how great Joss Whedon is, and how I really need to get my butt in gear and watch Firefly. She responded with, well, why not right now?! So we did! It had been a long week and we were both really tired, but we watched the first two episodes on Friday night, and a third one on Saturday morning before she left. It's so great! Firefly...where have you been all my life?!

And unlike the heartbreak I just suffered with Sanctuary being cancelled on me, I know that there's a limited amount of Firefly, so I won't suffer sudden but inevitable betrayal. :) A friend asked me about my favourite character, but after only three episodes, I haven't decided. Mal's sudden dispatch of the bad guy in 'Train Job', while understandable, left me a bit shocked, and his initial treatment of Inara was just dastardly, so while I know he's the 'hero' I'm not sold on him yet. Wash and Zoe are awesome - I love that this show has a functional married couple, which you don't see much of, and the fact that Zoe is such a strong, non-sexualized female character is just SHINY. Kaylee is pretty perky - I haven't decided yet if that's going to get on my nerves or not, so the jury's still out on her. Shepherd Book is a bit of an enigma - I'm suspicious of any character presented as religious, because so often they end up getting a bad rap, so we'll see. Inara...well, I struggle with her a lot, because, um, well, for her employment being NSFW, if you know what I mean - it just seems kind of objectified, but it certainly does add quite a bit of tension to the show. :P Simon is really cool - besides the fact that he shares a name with my own brother, he gave up his entire cushy life to rescue his sister, which I think makes him the hero of the show. And Jayne is just a nut-job!

I think my favourite thing about Firefly, besides the fact that it's character-driven, is the way they talk. They have a slightly archaic syntax, and alien swear words, which makes the conversations really interesting to listen to. I've only watched three episodes so far - between conference planning, school, and the fact that I'm also trying to re-watch Sanctuary season 3, Stargate Atlantis season 4, Clone Wars season (3?), not to mention stuff on YouTube, I've got my plate pretty full. Plus trying to save my sanity by having some fun!

Speaking of fun, I LOVE the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra - it's one of my top five favourite things about Calgary. (The other four are the Calgary Comic Expo, the view of the mountains, my friends...actually, I think I only have a top four. :P) Every spring when I get my flyer in the mail with the upcoming season I circle everything I want to see the way I did with the Sears Wishbook when I was a kid. Then I narrow it down to something reasonable and pick the things I REALLY HAVE TO SEE.





This weekend it was an ABBA tribute, with a Finnish vocal group called Rajaton. I'm not sure I can explain how good it was. I've been going to the CPO for about eight years, mostly to pops concerts, and I don't ever remember masses of people literally dancing in the aisles, or not one, but TWO standing ovations/encores. They had great vocals - their acapella numbers were incredible - and great presence and were so smooth. The CPO always does a fantastic job at whatever they play, and something about the combination of these two groups was just magical. Really, music is quite magical - you have all of these people from different walks of life, and when they're warming up it's audible chaos, but then the concert master comes on stage and raises his violin, and the orchestra starts tuning, and you can get a hint of the magic waiting to be unleashed. And then the conductor comes out, waves her magic wand...and you're carried away on a sea of sound as all of the disparate parts are unified. Just magical! If you're anywhere near Calgary, check out the CPO's 2012/2013 season - if you've never been to hear a live orchestra before, you're in for a treat that everyone should experience at least once in their lives!



The Avengers, or, The Genius Who Is Joss Whedon

Warning:

Contains spoilers for the Avengers, Thor, Captain American and possibly Iron Man.

As a child, and still as an adult, I prefer book with lots of words to books with lots of pictures. I know comics and graphic novels work for a lot of people, but they don't really work for me, so this Hollywood craze with setting comic books to movies hasn't been a huge hit for me. I liked the first Batman, but didn't see the second because of the goriness. I saw the Spiderman ones with Toby McGuire and was underwhelmed. I saw the first version of the Hulk with Eric Bana and was again underwhelmed. I did see and LOVE Captain America, thanks to my great interest in Second World War and revisionist history, so when I heard that Joss Whedon was directing the Avengers, which would include Captain America, I decided to get caught up on the rest of the cinematic backstory before seeing the movie.

Some elements of Captain America are key to the Avengers, although they're elements I'd totally forgotten about, and the movie makes enough reference to the backstory that someone who hadn't watched Captain America would probably figure out the Avengers. The ending of Captain America really left me hanging; more so because of the relationship aspect than anything else. Peggy Carter was a serious female character, and I totally shipped them. Look at the nice clean-cut all-American couple, battling evil Nazis/Hydra! Awww...so doomed! :(

I was moderately excited about catching up on Iron Man, because I love Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes.

I'm not sure how I missed the mental connection, but I was really disappointed when Iron Man started speaking with an American accent. :P The idea of the suit was interesting, and his character is so much like Han Solo I couldn't help liking him, but I felt like there was too much time spent on how the suit was actually created and not enough time on other plot stuff. I still can't decide how I feel about Pepper Potts - sometimes she was awesome, and sometimes she just sat there and screamed for help. I suppose that makes her a fairly realistic and human character, but I'm not sold on it. Also...did you notice that his friend Rhodey was played by two different actors? That threw me off a bit! Anyway, I feel like the story was sort of interesting, but despite the fact that Iron Man got two movies, unlike everyone else, his story wasn't really key to the plot of the Avengers. Instead of two Iron Man movies, I would have liked to have seen one about Hawkeye and the Black Widow.

I quite enjoyed Thor. The cast was really good, and the plot of Thor is totally key to the Avengers. Did I mention the cast was good? I had seen and quite liked Tom Hiddleston in War Horse (actually, he was probably the best part of that movie) and it took me a bit to recognize him as Loki because the transformation was so complete. Also: Jane and Thor.

Another star-crossed relationship! Gah! We saw Thor the night before we went to the the Avengers, so I went to the theatre all ready to see Thor and Jane run. I mean, have some happy resolution to their relationship...and I hoped Jane would do some serious alien butt-kicking.

The Avengers was funny. It was epic. It had great one-liners. It had eplosions. Captain America said that there's only one God! It did an amazing job of tying together all the different backstories and cameos from the various movies. Agent Coulson! Hawkeye! The Black Widow! Nick Frost! Bootstrap Bill Turner! SO GOOD! Joss Whedon directed this movie like a maestro. It sadly did not even come close to resolving my shippy plot lines, but I didn't actually notice that until the movie ended, I was so caught up in it. I totally need to see it again...

Also, make sure you stay till the bitter end of the credits...it's totally worth it! There's a clip part-way through the credits, but don't let that fool you...it sets up the Avengers Sequel very nicely, but there's another fun one right at the very end.

So...if you haven't seen any of the movies, watch Captain America and Thor, in that order, and then hustle down to the theatre to see the Avengers ASAP!