WOW.

Okay, I admit I refused to watch the movie until I’d seen the entire series, which shades my opinion quite a bit, but I have to say that Firefly and Serenity bring it all back for me. I mean to say that so much sci-fi spends too much time flittering around making cools worlds and icky costumes and ridiculous special effects, and that’s all you see. In Joss Whedon’s ”’Verse,” people are people. They’re greedy, loving, lonely, funny, and exasperating. The rest of the fantasy is fully imagined but never impedes on the strength of the characters.

I think Serenity and Firefly bring back the essential elements that made the original Star Wars movies so much fun: real dialogue, developed characters, and emphasis on story.

This movie is visually gorgeous and densely populated with realistic vignettes. I love Altman’s directing style – the loose dialogue, the honest little moments – and then the expansion of it to include the performances. The film is full of jerky transitions, but that’s a dancer’s life for you.

Make sure to spend at least 20 minutes with the director’s and actors’ commentary. Some of the kids pipe up, and it’s one of the most entertaining accompaniments to a film I’ve ever heard.

i know enough to know that the subtitles missed some great stuff…

Eight of France’s most important and talented actresses in the same film! Amazingly kitschy and compelling at the same time. It’s a lot like Clue in its over-the-topness.

Yet, the end of this book is a major cop-out. I enjoyed most of it, though it was a slow read. It’s such an intelligent book, diving into the psychology and social issues of older teens very deftly. It’s shockingly beautiful at some points. Then the end ruins it. RUINS it! Sigh.

This makes poetic forms fairly concrete, although sometimes I think the selected poems are too glib or sweet. It’s a great reference for me, and has actually made me look into a few of the rarer forms.

Hidier’s prose is elegant and lush throughout the book, becoming more so as Dimple grows into herself. Most of that language fits and flows, but it also sometimes dilutes the action or breaks dialog into uncomfortable pieces. She does an amazing job of presenting some big cultural questions in a way that became very personal to me. Makes you want to scream, “WHY’s that honky wearing a bindi?”

My mother hands me a “crap book” every time I come home. This is the kind of thing she reads, but it’s much more fun than the usual stuff she gives me. Brockway is very, very sharp and funny, though the book is formulaic and has lots of uncomfortably harlequin moments. Still, it’s a good vacation read.

Haydn’s never been my favorite. Always thought he had just one trick – the Surprise Symphony over and over. The Creation Mass is rife with Surprise Symphony moments. My first listenings of it (and singings) left me cold, only picking up on the surface drama – the exaggerated crescendos, the high technicality. Now, having sung it and lived in it a bit, the textures are less predictable and less technical. They have more soul. Haydn, I think, still lacks a certain mortality that I require in classical music, but he’s grown on me.

Tobin Anderson will be mine. Oh yes, he will be mine.