No “Da Vinci Code” for Me

For all I know the writing is perfectly competent.  I suspect that the movie is well acted (though many critics seem to have their doubts).  Nor do I have any problems with the possibility that the plot is derivative, nor fear that religious organizations will crumble under the onslaught of its fictional claims.

So why am I going to avoid this sterling work?  Simply put, I am offended by the title.  It is, as far as I can tell, an ungrammatical bit of complete gibberish.  It cannot be a reference to a great renaissance artist, for then it would be named “The Leonardo Code”.  If it were a reference to a small town in Tuscany, it would simply be “The Vinci Code” or “The Code of Vinci”.  However, it is none of those — it is the “Of Vinci Code”.  Quite frankly, I don’t think that this is what Mr. Brown meant, and if he can’t be bothered to get a 3 word title right, I’m afraid I just don’t trust him with the intricacies of a tightly plotted novel.

Now, I did for a moment think that I had cracked the code when I noticed that many people are spelling the name as two words rather than three.  Aha!  This must, in fact, be a reference to ‘Davinci’, a small town tucked in between Davignac and Davenport.  Alas, I was unable to hunt down any natives to confirm for me that the novel was set in their fine town; nor any maps to show me the location of this sub-city; nor, indeed, did I find any references to it at all.  So unless “The Davinci Code” is investigating the code of silence that allows this micro-metropolis to stay so well hidden, I fear that another truly brilliant theory must be consigned to the waste bin.

As will my plans to read the book or see the movie.

Watch me soar!

This is a followup for my previous postings about "Serenity".  It seems that there are a few loose ends that I neglected:

• I mentioned how much I like the original Firefly theme song.  Michelle Dockrey of "Escape Key" has expanded it into the chorus of a full-length song.  Check out the lyrics and the BitTorrent at the Escape Key song page.
• Somehow my review failed to mention that the movie introduced two new major characters who weren’t in Firefly.  David Krumholtz, who I’ve mentioned before for his role in "Numb3rs" plays another fascinatingly quirky character as "Mr. Universe"; while Chiwetel Ejiofor does a truly excellent job as the unnamed villain.  As Tom Smith has noted, most modern movies don’t know how to portray a proper villain, but this fellow was definitely worthy of the name.
• Stackable Bards has done a round-up of other reviews of Serenity from around the Blogosphere.  (Update: Blogcritics has done likewise, with an almost disjoint set of reviews.)  It looks like the initial buzz is pretty darned good.

Can’t Stop the Signal!

As promised, my lady and I went tonight to the advanced screening of Serenity, and I am now reporting back. I’ll render the short version first, in blogger-speak: SqueeOMGWowSquee! However, since I strive for a touch more nuance in my writing, I will proceed to expound at greater length for your edification.

First, a note about the showing itself. The crowd at the theater was moderately sized but enthusiastic. This means that the folks promoting the event did not, as I had feared, over-book the hall and reached exactly the sorts of folks who should hopefully make good reviewers. I met up with Rob of Unspace and his wife Nancy in the lobby, and enjoyed chatting with them before the show. It’s always good to meet fellow bloggers in person. Universal representatives were tossing out t-shirts, baseball caps and posters to anyone who could catch them. My years as a juggler paid off, allowing me to snag a t-shirt on the way by, while Rob and Nancy ended up with a cap and a t-shirt — so we were all happy. But that’s not the important part — you want to hear about the danged movie….

First impression: it’s tight and it’s solid. The first two minutes catapulted us through three levels of reality in clean succession; then tossed us into another scene just as tightly paced. From there, we knew we were in for a wild ride, and we were right. There were a few (intentionally) slow moments to let us catch our breaths, but it was a serious roller coaster ride. There were many great lines; laugh out loud moments; tear-jerkers; and profundities. There will be things you don’t expect, even if you’ve got the TV series memorized; and you will care about the universe and the characters even if you’ve never seen the TV series. Lest you’re worried that all the good moments were in the trailers…well, they’re not. Half of those were from the first ten minutes of the film.

I want to expand upon the notion of familiarity. I watched the whole series when it first aired, but intentionally avoided watching the second run so that I could enjoy the movie as a stand-alone, and I really think that it will work either way. It does not spend a lot of time introducing you to the cast of characters, but they feel very real and complete from the first second you see them because their history has been written and played out, and both the actors and writers know exactly how they need to interact. Best of all, once you see the movie and fall in love, you can go back and watch 14 hours worth of character definition, back-story, and rollicking good fun. I have it from good authority (i.e. most of the theater) that if you’ve recently re-watched every episode it is still a great movie and a wonderful completion of the tale.

And what of the plot? Well, I’m not going to give away any details beyond the tiny snippets you got above. But it is certainly very well structured, grand in scope, and kept me (quite literally) on the edge of my seat for much of the movie. If there are no more stories in the Firefly universe, I will be quite satisfied that Joss told the story he needed to tell, and told it in glorious style. If there should happen to be more, well, Mr. Whedon has established his credentials — he’s just as good on the large screen as the small, and I trust him to do right by us.

Here’s a hint as to how much the movie involved us. Approximately 15 minutes before the end of the movie, the film broke — sudden flash of white; no sound; interruption of a very important scene. This was actually the first time I got to hear what I sound like when I scream in actual horror. (I’ve been in auto accidents — I just go quiet and brace myself; I scream on roller coasters, but that’s just for fun, and obviously fake; horror movies just make me gasp.) I wasn’t the only one. I think that many folks briefly thought that this was part of the marketing gimmick — that they were going to make us wait till friday to see the ending — and it would have gotten very ugly. Luckily, we realized that it was an honest accident and calmed ourselves down fairly quickly. The folks from the theater were very nice about it and kept us informed, and the projection crew rewound the film enough that we didn’t lose any context. Still, the whole thing made all of us realize how much we had become engrossed in the film. It had grabbed us all where it counted.

Now I’ve got to ask: Is there anything that disappointed me about the movie? Yes, actually, there was one thing. I really love the theme song from the show, and was disappointed that they didn’t sing it during the closing credits. So I’m going to close with the final words of the song:

Have no place I can be; since I found Serenity.
But you can’t take the sky from me.

You can’t take the sky from me…

I just found out from Instapundit that Joss Whedon’s Serenity is showing an advance screening here in Pittsburgh next Tuesday.  Even better, there handing out press credentials to bloggers who sign up in advance.  (You don’t have to promise to do a review of the movie, much less a positive one, but clearly they are banking on us liking the movie enough to do so.)  I’ve got mine, and am certainly looking forward to being the first guy in my lab to see the movie.  (There were "rough cut" advance screenings as early as May 6th, so I certainly won’t be the first person I know who’s seen the movie, but that doesn’t keep me from being excited.)  For those who don’t want to rush out to the advance screening, the official theatrical release is on Friday, September 30th.

So what is Serenity anyway, and why the odd quote in the subject line?  That’s a long story.  (Those of you who already know it can skip to the next post, or stick around.  You might learn something.)

Joss Whedon is the man behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel.  He is a genius.  (For definitive evidence, consider "Once More with Feeling", the Buffy musical.  Sure, it’s a grand romp through the BuffyVerse.  Sure, the songs are excellent, with some truly excellent wordplay.  Sure, it’ll rip your heart out and leave you in tears at the end.  But the true genius shows when you realize that this apparent throwaway episode also fits in flawlessly as a vital part of the show’s continuity.  But I digress.)  So when he set his mind to a science fiction series, many of us were hooked before ever he started filming.  Once we actually saw the result, we came to realize that he hadn’t let us down.  The show was quirky, with a "hero" who thought nothing of kicking the bad guys into a jet engine to get their attention; an engineer who’s love for her engines isn’t necessarily  just platonic; a mercenary who has to really stretch to be considered any sort of a good guy (and yet who has an entire mining colony literally singing his praises); and a half dozen others just as odd and interesting.  As you might guess from the above, it was largely character driven, with the plot-lines (while solid) taking a back seat to the interactions of the very real and interesting people who crew the starship Serenity.  Dedicated Whedonites everywhere settled comfortably into their couches, secure in the fact that Joss had indeed scored another home run.

Alas, the show aired on FoxTV, who did a pretty good job of crippling it’s chances.  They showed the episodes out of order; they pre-empted them regularly; and after twelve episodes (with three more filmed but never aired) they yanked the series.  Now Joss Whedon, as well as being a genius, also cares about his people and his shows, so he vowed to find some way to bring the show back.  I don’t know what wheeling and dealing went on, but instead of moving to a different channel, it was reborn as the movie Serenity.

I’d guess that the studio expected this to be a fairly small release, with a built-in audience and enough explosions and action to rope in the people who’d never seen the show.  Apparently they did not expect their initial trial showing to be invaded by dedicated "browncoats" (Firefly fanatics) who gave it rave reviews.  So apparently, they sent it back to get a budget upgrade, and some really inspired marketing.  You see, on the same day they released the trailer, they announced that they’d be showing a "rough cut" half completed version of the film in a very small number of theaters on May 6th.  The dedicated fans went crazy, booked flights to appropriate cities to see it, and gave it rave reviews.  The response was so good that they did the same thing twice more, to steadily larger crowds.  (Remember, this wasn’t the final movie, which is finally completed now and being released on September 30th.)  I was, alas, not part of the original crowd.  I’m not fond of flying, and Chicago was a bit farther than I was prepared to go.

Now there doing this one more time.  Rather than relying on jaded professional reviewers, the folks behind the movie are recruiting the blogosphere to check out the movie and bring word back to the world at large.  I, for one, thank them for the opportunity, and will do my part.  Tune in next Tuesday night, and I’ll let you know what I think.

Update: My review is now up.