Category: Mini-Reviews

Ayn Rand fans who have enjoyed the TV series Firefly — and there are a lot of you — may be excited to learn that it the new full-length Firefly movie, titled Serenity, will be available for preview in select cities on May 5th. That’s a full four months before the scheduled public release of the film.
The Serenity trailer was released just yesterday. (It looks very, very good.)
If you’ve not yet discovered Firefly, be sure and read Monica White’s Atlasphere review “The Ascendance of Firefly” from last fall. Better still, buy the Firefly DVDs and see for yourself.
Here is the actual sneak preview announcement from Firefly Creator Joss Whedon, which was recently posted in the Browncoats message board:

Well.
It gets better.
As thus: The movie is very nearly finished. You’ve seen many pretty images in the trailer. But I’ve still got work to do and you’ve still got months before you can see it.
Unless.
And, no, I’m not talking Australia (but Hi, Australia! anyway), I’m talking here in the more-or-less-United States, a one time multi-city Browncoat sneak event. Thursday, May 5th at 10:00 pm, the movie (Serenity! Pay attention! Jeez.) will be playing at exactly 10 theaters in 10 cities across the country. You (or possibly someone much like you) (or possibly a robot EXACTLY like you, but with better manners and sonic arm-lasers, sent to take your place) will be able to buy a ticket to see Serenity months in advance. Not just the bitty trailer with not enough Kaylee and Book, but the whole film, in its extremely almost completed state.
You probably have some questions. How is this possible? What cities exactly will it be in? What are these changes my body is going through? All valid. It’s possible because some clown put a bunch of Universal execs in a theater full of Browncoats and dude, they came out SWEATING, they never seen energy like that. They loved it, and even though they were already wicked supportive of the movie (see: earlier posts re: we’re making the movie) they simply weren’t ready for you guys. When I whinged on about pushing the date and everyone here was posting about “what do we do till September”, they agreed to let me sneak it out.
Maybe they thought it was a fluke. Maybe they wanna see if people really do care about the flick. Or maybe they’re just treating us with respect and kindness, though that last option confuses and terrifies me as much as these changes my body is going through (I’m “perspiring” and becoming “interested in girls”, which believe me is very unsettling when you’re 40.) Does it matter? The plan works for me, and it can work for a select bunch of y’all. Here’s what I know:
The cities to be hit are:
Seattle
Austin
Sacramento
Boston
Altanta
Chicago
San Francisco
Las Vegas
Denver
The Portland of Oregon
If you’re in or near one of those, you might wanna stop by. There’s supposed to be a “Can’t Stop the Signal” page on this website (I don’t know where it is — hey, I remembered my damn password, doesn’t that buy me any cred?) There should be more info there soon about how to get in, bringing peeps into the fold, I think there’s even competetions and stuff. (All I know is I have exactly 20 Brownie points. I answered ONE triv Q and got it wrong. Forget cred. I have no cred.) Now a couple of us might just creep into one of those major metropolitan multiplexes to see if anyone does show up, so remember: swearing in Chinese ONLY.
All right. This will please the fans and satisfy the employers of Joss Whedon, so I must stop as my arm-lasers are getting tired. I politely thank you for your attention.
Should be fun.
-j.

UPDATE: I started to notify some of the usual suspects, and noticed that they’ve already blogged the phenomenon themselves. It’s good to see this movie getting the attention it deserves.

In his review of The Aviator, Edward Hudgins of The Objectivist Center compares Martin Scorses’ picture about the life of Howard Hughes to Rand’s novels and finds many parallels. About one such parallel, Hudgins writes:

Scorsese shows us Hughes’s romance with actress Katharine Hepburn beginning in a way that suggests a true integration of the pleasures of the mind and body. Hughes takes Kate on a flight over Los Angeles in one of his planes and lets her pilot it. Kate’s exhilaration matches his own and they soon land on his estate and in his bed. This scene recalls the scene from Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in which Dagny Taggart, who has built a new line for her railroad, rides in the engine on its first run on track and over a bridge made of a new super-metal with its inventor, Hank Rearden, by her side. The exhilaration and lack of any mind-body dichotomy in their souls lead them to a sexual celebration of their achievements.

Read the full review…
UPDATE: The Atlasphere has also published its own review of The Aviator and its Ayn Rand-style hero.

From Robert Hessen:
This film opened in Aug. 2003 and somehow escaped my attention. But we watched it last night on DVD and loved it. It stars Robert Duvall, Kevin Costner (who also directed) and the radiantly beautiful Annette Bening. It is an old-
fashioned Western, distinguished by moral conflicts and smart dialogue. Duvall and Costner are “free-grazers,” men who drive cattle across open country. When they come to a small town that is dominated by Michael Gambon, his henchmen murder one of their crew, so they vow revenge. If you enjoy Westerns, this film is as suspenseful as High Noon, so see it soon and let me know your reaction to it.
You can view the trailer online.

In an interview for her new movie, Jennifer Garner says:

Women come up to me and say, “I am who I am because I read Elektra when I was a kid.” I realize how much this role means to people.

Sound familiar? It’s reminiscent of the things women say about Atlas Shrugged. Whether Elektra truly bears comparison to Atlas is beyond me, but clearly there is some parallel between Elektra and Dagny Taggart in terms of their impact on strong young women.
The movie is receiving a great deal of advance publicity, and Apple has posted not only the threatrical trailer but also a “martial arts featurette” (in which this quote from Garner appears) and three clips “inside the editing room” with director Rob Bowman.
Check it out if you’re interested.

The new movie The Incredibles received a terrific write-up in yesterday’s Washington Times. The review begins:

For decades, kids have enjoyed following the out-of-this-world exploits of comic-book heroes, learning along the way about courage and the need for good to triumph over the plots of those possessed by evil. Every generation must learn its own duty to sacrifice and fight for the good.
But lately, ever since the first “Spiderman” live-action movie roared at the box office, fans of the long-lasting Marvel Comics stable of superheroes have been inundated with big, noisy, expensive blockbusters bringing these two-dimensional pen-and-ink heroes to life. Unfortunately, in attempting to dramatize Marvel honcho Stan Lee’s formula ? paper heroes deepened on the page by troubled private lives in their worlds of secret identity ? these films have all suffered in varying degrees, growing ever more dark and gloomy, almost hopeless.
While the “Spiderman” films have retained a fraction of whimsy, movies like “Daredevil” and “The Incredible Hulk” have left many fans wishing they had seen more righteous heroism and less sulky realism. In the final analysis, superhero comics work best when the reader is inspired, not left seeking Dr. Phil. Complex superheroes can make for a nice, dramatic storyline, but when they’re so tortured by personal demons, they can’t be very super, can they?
For those who like their heroes a little less super-serious than the superhuman characters of old, there is a surprisingly mature option: Pixar’s new cartoon “The Incredibles.” This film unfolds like a comic book, with lots of action. But between its animated lines, it offers real lessons about heroism, the use of talents and commitment to family. It’s not often a cartoon carries a line where a child worries, “Mom and Dad’s life could be in jeopardy … or even worse … their marriage.”

See the full review for additional information about this apparently-terrific, and refreshing, film.

Robert Hessen (who wrote several essays for The Objectivist in the 1960s) forwards us the following two mini-reviews:

Two movies, new on DVD. One is wonderful, the other dismal. Shattered Glass is the story of Stephen Glass, a young writer at The New Republic who, in 1998, was exposed as a fabulist who invented the people and events in his widely-read non-fiction stories. Hayden Christensen plays Glass, whose panic is palpable as his forgeries are about to revealed; Peter Sarsgaard plays Charles Lane, the editor who ferrets out the facts; and Chloe Sevigny is the staff writer who wants to believe Glass is a victim because she finds him so charming and vulnerable. It is a great drama, so the DVD rental fee carries my money-back guarantee.
The other film is The Cooler, which garnered great reviews for William H. Macy’s performance as a man with such bad luck that his touch or mere presence can end a winning streak for high-rollers in the Las Vegas casino where he works to pay off his gambling debts to the casino boss, gangster Alec Baldwin. Fed up with his loveless life, Macy resolves to quit and move away, so Baldwin arranges for a beautiful cocktail waitness, Maria Belli, to seduce him and thus entice him to stay. Unexpectedly, they fall in love, etc. The whole story is preposterous; the plotholes would fill up Grand Canyon. You could better spend the two hours cleaning out your garage or alphabetizing your recipes.

Note also that Shannon Ringvelski wrote a full-length review of Shattered Glass a few months ago for the Atlasphere.