IAMZOE'S BLOG

iamzoe

Edinburgh highlights (no spoilers)
Friday, August 26, 2005

So I started writing this and got a bit carried away... what can I say - I don't get to go to premieres every day. These are edited highlights; hopefully they don't read too patchy:

REVIEWS (SPOILER-FREE)
Our share of the audience was made up of my grandma and my mum (who hadn't seen Firefly), me and MyWash (who had seen Firefly) and our friend SW (who can write his own review):
My grandma (who's 81), reckoned it was 'better than Star Wars' (by which she meant episode 3, the last film we saw together on the big screen) because 'it was more grown-up'. She also 'liked the spaceships'.
My mum thought it was 'a bit like Babylon 5' (that's good). And she likes that picture Joss Whedon likes in the National Gallery too.
MyWash thought it was great.
As for me, unless I misheard, the film has an excellent use of the word 'addle-pated' - that must be its first outing in cinemas this year.

The film also got a big one-page review on Wednesday and 5 stars (that's top) in the national newspaper, the Scotsman. That's almost unheard of -and the review was excellent, the guy really seemed to have 'got it' - even though he said at the start he had never watched Firefly. The Scotsman also seemed to have fallen in love with Summer Glau - they had five pictures of her (and two of Joss Whedon) over two days.

THE FILM - AND THE STARS
At the end of the premiere I had been a bit vexed for the cast that most of the questions were either directed at Joss Whedon or were of the 'sing us a song' or rambling variety. I think the thing was that people who asked questions were people who had saved them up and had been dying to ask them for ages - things about Buffy and whatnot. It was all very good natured though, and there was one question that gave everyone a chance to speak - asking what their favourite part of the film was. I suppose if you'd just seen the film, you'd not really be in the state to ask smart questions. It's more of a sit-down-after-and-ask-what-hit-you film - in the best possible way. We certainly didn't go out afterwards, which had been the tentative plan.

On the Wednesday afternoon, we weren't really expecting the cast to be there, as it was an extra screening - but Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion, Summer Glau and Morena Baccarin all showed up to introduce it! I hope either Universal or the EIFF were paying them good money, because they really went out of their way to be nice to everyone. Just before the film started, Nathan said he had something for the people in 'the cheap seats' (that would be us, up at the back - down at the front was mostly reserved for film festival types as far as I could see from the badges they were all wearing). He ran up, and handed out a whole bunch of Serenity movie flyers - most people probably didn't even notice till the lights went up at the end that they were signed by him, Morena and, I think, Gina Torres. My grandma is so pleased with hers. I just thought that was such a nice thing to do. It's because he's Canadian, man. Actually, my mum had a weird question - is he bilingual? I suppose he could be, being Canadian, even from Alberta, but she reckoned he had that intonation people have when they often speak another language to English. You hear it a lot in Gaelic speakers where I grew up. Actually, you even get Gaelic speakers in Alberta.

Why am I talking about Gaelic? Well at least it's about language, which is one of the great things about this film - the script is so beautifully written. The accents could be a little hard for this Scot to catch, like in Firefly, but it was one of the many things that was even better on second viewing. It deserves to do so well, because it's good - and because the cast and crew deserve it. I still completely believe in these characters - and my respect for Zoe as a character has not diminished one little bit.

THE JOSS WHEDON INTERVIEW
For the Joss Whedon interview, the questions were really good. The same Australian guy who'd introduced the film on the Monday did the interview with Joss Whedon, covering pretty much his career to date - I never knew he worked on Waterworld! - and allowing plenty of time for riffs and sidebars on interesting topics. Both of them were excellent speakers - I don't know who the interviewer was, I'd had an idea the director of the film festival was a woman, but he did his job very well. I was a bit nervous the talk would shatter some illusions, or, at the very least, that Joss Whedon would make that common Scotland / England slip-up that Americans seem unable to get their head around, but I was not disappointed. Well, there was one 'here in England' mistake, but he recovered spectacularly well. He came across as a very intelligent person - and someone whose shows you could analyse and talk about for hours, because he had put that much work into them.

COMMENTS

Friday, August 26, 2005 7:16 AM

SIMONWHO


SW? What kind of fool would have initials like that? Nice review and more nice things being done at the hands of our BDH's. Also glad to see that's three generations who liked the film.

One thing I've not seen about the talk was Joss said "I liked Waterworld"; cue stunned noises around the cinema. "I mean, I like the idea of Waterworld." Festival Director: "Oh sure, everyone likes the *idea* of Waterworld. Everyone likes the *idea* of Communism." Joss promised to steal that one.


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