quiet trickster

Spent much of yesterday in a blind rage at the internet.

Oddly enough, not an entirely negative experience.

The truly excellent Joss Whedon (of Buffy, Angel, Firefly/Serenity, parts of Toy Story and miscellaneous uncredited script-polishing, including Speed, and just general awesomeness), was supportive of but frustrated by the recent WGA strike, and, in his own words (via whedonesque):

I finally decided to do something very ambitious, very exciting, very mid-life-crisisy. Aided only by everyone I had worked with, was related to or had ever met, I single-handedly created this unique little epic. A supervillain musical, of which, as we all know, there are far too few.

The idea was to make it on the fly, on the cheap – but to make it. To turn out a really thrilling, professionalish piece of entertainment specifically for the internet. To show how much could be done with very little. To show the world there is another way. To give the public (and in particular you guys) something for all your support and patience. And to make a lot of silly jokes. Actually, that sentence probably should have come first.

The result is Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, due to be released in three parts over one week in July.

Here’s the Dr. Horrible trailer:

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

The Internet embraced this (the internet loves Joss Whedon, and the combination of Whedon, free stuff and singing supervillains is pretty much unbeatable), and, so, about twelve hours after Act 1 was launched, the Dr. Horrible server crashed.

Hence the blind rage.

Not entirely negative, because it’s gratifying to know that the Whedonites have it in their power to cause the server collapse. And because I finally managed to watch Act 1 this morning, via a temporary site, and, yeah, worth the wait. (I’m not going to review it yet - I want to wait until all 3 acts are up)

It’s actually written by Whedon with his brothers and a sister-in-law (from which one can only determine that Ma Whedon would have been proud: more concrete evidence of this can be found in this speech given by Whedon to Equality Now):

The main site should be fully functional by now at www.drhorrible.com, with the first act up now, and the next two going online over the next few days. If the site’s crashed again, try the fan site for news. There’s also outlying areas on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace…

It’s only going to be free until 20th July - there are plans for a DVD release and so forth.

Oh, and there’s a online comic strip about Dr. Horrible’s nemisis, Captain Hammer, available from Dark Horse Comic’s Myspace page, written by one of the other Whedons, Zack.

Go! Watch! Buy T-shirt!

Rather good low-budget SF film from Mexico, the debut feature of Alex Rivera. It does show it’s budget in the CG effects (think mid-90s TV level), but for the most part makes the best of it.

No stunningly original ideas (1 part Matrix, one part Minority Report, and so on…), and the themes/subtext are pretty obvious - Mexico/US relations, migrant workers and the exploitation thereof, water rights - but the story itself carries along quite well. It doesn’t attempt to create a ‘futuristic’ future, instead focussing on the depressed rural areas and Tijuana slums of a near-future Mexico cut off from the US. Instead of migrants, the country supplies the US with workers through the ’sleep dealers’ of the title: factories where workers are plugged in and remotely connected to robots in the States. Of course, spend too much time plugged in (as workers desperate for extra cash often are), and bad things happen.

This particular theme is eventually downplayed - possibly the movie couldn’t address the larger issue on this scale of film. Instead, it focusses on the connections between three characters - the young man who has to come to the city to work when his father is killed by the company who owns the water, the city girl who meets him and sells her memories of him even as she falls for him, and the remote fighter pilot responsible for his father’s death. It’s this third character that leads to the rather weak ending, as he tracks down the young man in order to apologise and try to make amends. This leads to rather forced (and rushed) attempt at a Hollywood ending, and although the film is explicit in saying not everything is resolved, it remains unconvincing.

It’s a shame, because the set-up is convincing and atmospheric, and the leads are sympathetic if a little two-dimensional. It’s always good to see SF films from outside Hollywood - there’s plenty of horror and fantasy (to whatever degree), but far less straight up SF.

Another strong contender for best title of the festival, this is a cute, funny little Korean film about a guy struggling to get his feature film debut made - or indeed, written.

There’s a slightly twitchy cross-cutting of stories/timelines/fact/fiction that could get irritating, but luckily it’s executed with enough irreverence to be endearing. Lots of nice comic touches, with a particularly neat central concept, whereby the central character (who loses his girlfirend because he talks too much), attempting to write about a character with aphasia, first develops aphasia, and then finds himself making sounds like musical instruments when he attempts to speak (only able to be understood when heard through electronic equipment).