The soundtrack for Joss Whedon's tragically short-lived TV show Firefly (2002-03) is a lot of fun. Composed mainly by Greg Edmonson, the music is a fascinating blend of east plus west, like the show's culture. You've got twangy banjos and ethereal flutes, pounding rhythm and delicate melodies. It's got such a unique flavor, just like the rest of the show.

"Inside the Tam House" offers a good example of the more eastern music, with lyrical melodies from strings and a flute laid over a trickling piano.

"Mal Fights Niska/Back Home" represents what I think of as the classic Firefly sound -- lots of strings and wind instruments and percussion. I like how this one starts a little slow, then switches to a more actiony vibe, because it definitely gives you the feeling of people facing each other, then starting to fight. Around 1:22, it then flips to the more peaceful and gentle "home" theme that makes me feel cozy and happy.

Hands-down, my favorite track on the whole album is "River's Dance." It's joyful and carefree, which the rest of the album isn't, for the most part. Definitely makes me feel like dancing!

I'm so glad that, although Firefly was short-lived, the powers that be saw fit to release a soundtrack to CD, because I have had many hours of enjoyment from listening to this.

If you've never heard this before, what did you think of it?

(This review originally appeared here at J and J Productions on August 21, 2015.) 

How is it that I've never listed off my ten favorite TV shows?  I did a list of my ten favorite western TV shows a while back, but not of my favorite shows across all genres.  Silly me.  Time to fix that.  Thank you, Eva, for posting your top ten list and inspiring me to do my own!


1.  Combat! (1962-67)  American infantrymen battle their way through Normandy after the D-DAY invasion.  Some of the very best serious writing I've ever seen on a series, and the acting is top-notch too.  The show was so well-respected that movie actors like James Coburn and Lee Marvin asked if they could guest-star on it.  I've loved this show for 23 years, and I've written and co-written close to three dozen fanfic stories for it, which I've posted under my "call sign" of White Queen at the fansite my best friend and I maintain, Fruit-Salad.com.  Sergeant Saunders (Vic Morrow) is my favorite fictional character of all time.  I've got a list of my ten fave eps here.

2.  Angel (1999-2004)  Angel (David Boreanaz) is a vampire who's been cursed with a soul.  Determined to help people for the rest of his time on earth, to make up for all the people he killed when he was evil, Angel sets up what basically is a supernatural detective agency in Los Angeles.  I was first drawn to this show because of Angel's search for forgiveness (well, that and Boreanaz' impossibly handsome looks), but I grew to love all the characters, the mystery-of-the-week format that riffed off the film noir and hard-boiled detective stories I loved, and the amazing writing of Joss Whedon and his pals.  This is the only other TV show I've ever written fanfic for, and you'll find those stories on Fruit-Salad.com too because I crossed it the show with Combat! for extra fun.

3.  The Andy Griffith Show (1960-68)  Sheriff Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) does his best to keep the peace in quiet Mayberry, NC, with the help of a host of amusing friends and family.  He's one of the best fictional fathers I've ever encountered, caring alone (he's widowed) for his son Opie (Ronnie Howard) with wisdom, love, and good humor.  I've recently introduced my kids to this show, and they love it too now!

4.  The Big Valley (1965-69)  A wealthy widow (Barbara Stanwyck), her children (Richard Long, Peter Breck, Linda Evans), and her husband's illegitimate son (Lee Majors) have a host of interesting adventures on and around their California ranch.  Loads of wonderful guest stars, loads of emotionally engaging stories, and Stanwyck's matriarch is one of my role models.

5.  Star Trek:  The Original Series (1966-69)  Starfleet personnel aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise go boldly where no man, woman, or Vulcan has ever gone before as they explore the universe, meet all kinds of interesting aliens, and generally have lots of adventures.  I've got a list of my ten fave eps posted here.

6.  The Rifleman (1958-63)  Widowed rancher Lucas McCain (Chuck Connors) and his young son Mark (Johnny Crawford) spend a lot of time getting into and out of one adventure after another in the little town of North Fork, NM.  Most of the time, Lucas ends up having to use his specially modified Winchester repeater to save the day in one way or another.  Lots of great guest stars on this one too, like Sammy Davis, Jr., Vic Morrow, Robert Vaughn, and John Carradine.  Lucas McCain is probably the other best fictional father I've ever seen, tying with Andy Taylor.  He's tough, but kind.

7.  Five Mile Creek (1983-85)  An American (Jay Kerr) and an Australian (Rod Taylor) team up to start a stage coach line back when Australia was as wild as the American West.  Another American (Louise Caire Clark) and another Australian (Liz Burch) start up a way station to feed the stage line's passengers.  And then they all have lots of family-friendly adventures, some of them fall in love with each other, and it's just generally fun and sweet and exciting and I love it to bits. Whyyyyyyyyy won't they release seasons 2 and 3 to DVD???

8.  Buffy, the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)  High school girl Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her friends (aka the Scooby Gang) battle vampires and other monsters while trying to navigate first high school, then college, then adulthood.  (Angel is a spin-off from this show.)  Joss Whedon's way with characters, dialog, and plot twists elevate this from the mindless schlockfest you might expect to a truly poignant look at life, with many of the monsters standing as metaphors for things we endure while growing up.

9.  A Nero Wolfe Mystery (2000-02)  Reclusive genius Nero Wolfe (Maury Chaykin) and his energetic operative Archie Goodwin (Timothy Hutton) solve crimes for a host of interesting clients.  This show got me started reading Rex Stout's novels that form the basis for the show's scripts, but while the books are set in the decades they were written, from the 1930s to the 1970s, the TV show sits solidly in the late 1940s to early 1950s -- just after WWII.  The show as a whole has a sort of "community theatre production" feel to it because they deliberately use the same actors week after week for all the guest characters.

10.  Lost (2004-2010)  A plane crashes on a mysterious island, and the survivors spend the next six seasons trying to survive, solve mysteries, and get off that island.  It is a very odd show, and I wasn't sure I was going to put it on this list, but my deep and abiding love for Sawyer (Josh Holloway) and the fact that I own all six seasons convinced me that yeah, it belongs here.

Interesting patterns here, huh?  I seem to really gravitate to shows that either were made in the 1960s or the early 2000s.  The only one that doesn't fit that is Five Mile Creek.

Also, I am clearly drawn to shows that involve families.  Every single one of these fits that theme!  Every show revolves around either a biological family (The Andy Griffith Show, The Rifleman, The Big Valley) or a "found family" of people who forge a family-like unit under the stress of their adventures.

How about you?  Do you love any of these shows?  Do you have favorites you'd like to share?

I have borrowed the Wisteria Writer's Tag from Mary Horton at Sunshine and Scribblings because I'm procrastinating it looks like fun.  She didn't add new writing questions of her own, so I'm just answering the ones she answered.  I happen to love wisteria, so couldn't resist this one!  Mary, you didn't actually nominate me, but I shall say Thank You to you anyway, for posting this where I could snurch it :-)


1. Thank the blogger who nominated you.
2. Answer the ten questions asked.
3. Add ten (writing or book related) questions of your own.
4. Nominate people.

1. Which of your writing projects is your favorite and why?

No, but honestly, people think this is an answerable question?  How can I choose one favorite?  Do you know the sorts of sad and lonely and unloved and disappointed looks I'd get from all the others?  I can't choose a favorite.

Now, a favorite character... weirdly, that's easier.  Right now, my favorite is Hauer, a very important person in my Red Riding Hood western, "Cloaked."  I would totally marry him.

(I hope all the questions aren't this hard to answer.)

2. Can you share some snippets from your favorite project? (and no you cannot say no to this IT IS MANDATORY)

But I just said that I don't have a favorite project.  How about I just share a little bit from "Cloaked," which I really ought to be working on instead of doing this tag?  This is the opening paragraph:

The stagecoach was smaller than Mary Rose had expected, more cramped. Two people would only just fit on each wooden bench—if you didn’t know your neighbor well already, you would by the end of the ride, she guessed. And yet, a man had contrived to fall asleep on one of those small seats, the forward-facing one, curled up on his back with his knees in the air, his dusty boots tipped up against the side, heels on the seat. No spurs on his boots to mar the wooden bench, at least. He had his arms crossed over his chest and his stained brown hat settled companionably over his face. Mary Rose wondered if all the rattling and jostling of her entrance would disturb him, but he never stirred. So she sat down across from him, smoothing out the skirt of her brown travelling dress so it would be at least somewhat presentable by the end of her ride.

(1880s traveling dress)

3. What is your favorite tense (past, present, future) and voice (first person, second person, third person, etc) to write in?

I prefer to write in past tense.  Very much so.  For fiction, that is -- sometimes I write movie reviews in present tense because that's fun.  I've written lots of fiction in both first and third person, but second person is really hard to pull off, and I don't think I handle it well, so I don't use it.

4. When is your favorite time to write?

In the morning.  Sometimes I even get to, if I can skip off to Starbucks on a Saturday while Cowboy takes the kids to the grocery store.  But I do most of my writing at night, after my kids are in bed.  Fiction-writing, that is -- I write blog posts at any time of day or night.

5. What is the most unpleasant thing you've put one of your characters through?

Okay, so... I have written and co-written more than 30 stories set in WWII, all fan-fiction for the TV show Combat! -- and the awful truth is that lots of bad stuff happens in war.  LOTS.  I've beaten, shot, stabbed, blown up, burned, and bludgeoned a lot of characters over the years.

I think the worst thing would be a toss-up from when I killed all of Saunders' squad at once in "The Better Part of Valor" and when I convinced Hanley that Saunders was dead in "Lost."  Though the latter was temporary.  I could never kill my beloved Saunders.

(Vic Morrow as Sgt. Saunders on Combat!)

I just realized that this answer totally shows that I consider emotional pain to be worse than physical pain.  It interests me much more, too.

6. Are you a more character-driven writer or a more plot-driven writer?

Character-driven, allllllll the way.  I struggle with plots.  Basically all of my story ideas start out with "Oh, this is a cool character!  I like this person.  Oh, this is another great character!  I like them too."  And then I have to think up a terrible situation, toss them in it, and see what they do.  I'm really bad at plots sometimes -- this is part of why I've fallen in love with writing fairy tale retellings.  The plot is there, I just have to put my own characters in it.

7. Are you a plotter or a pantser?

I'm a plantser.  I have to know the basic beats of my story before I start writing -- where it starts, where it ends, and some of what happens in the middle.  The plot points have to be there or I'll get muddled.  But I cannot plot the whole thing out ahead of time.  I can't outline.  When I do that, it kills the joy and I never actually write the story because all the fun and adventure of discovery is gone.

8. What is your favorite word processing system to write in and why do you like it?

I like Microsoft Word because I'm used to it.

(So I should stop procrastinating, huh?)

9. If you were left on an abandoned island with the last character you wrote about, how would that go for you?

It would go really well if I was stuck there with any of the good guys from "Cloaked."  I'd prefer being stuck there with Hauer, because as I said earlier, I would totally marry him.  And he's skilled at living off the land.  But Mary Rose and I would be good friends, and I think we'd muddle through surviving all right, as she's a great blend of optimism and sensibleness.  I'd be fine with Jubilee too.  As long as I don't get stuck there with my Bad Guy, I'd be fine :-)  I suppose I could just kill and eat him if necessary.

(OH MAN, now I've got him staring at me in aghast horror at the revelation that I would cannibalize him.  Sorry, dude, you'd totally deserve it.)

10. What is your favorite writing resource? (this could be a blog, website, newsletter, writing book, that one pet who listens to all your writerly ramblings, anything basically)

My best friend.  I could not do this without her.  She's my Ideal Reader, my Writing Mentor, my Cattle Prod, and my trustiest of Trusty Scouts.

(She's also really great at braiding my  hair.)

I was not tagged with this, so I'm not going to tag anyone either.  If you're a writer and want to fill this tag out, have at it!

I found this on Hayden Wand's blog, A Singular and Whimsical Problem, and it looked like so much fun that I'm filling it out myself.


1. What genres, styles, and topics do you write about?

For the last few years, I've written mainly westerns, but in the past I've also written a lot of fiction set in WWII, as well as several novels set in modern day.

I like to think of my style as "conversational."

As for topics, I gravitate toward interpersonal conflict a lot, especially within families.  I love exploring family relationships, and I also write about "found families" quite a bit.  I'm also fond of coming-of-age story arcs, as well as people "proving themselves."

Bonus points if you know what movie this is from.

2. How long have you been writing? 

Since I could read.  So since I was 5 or 6.  But I've been actively learning to be a writer since I was fourteen, so twenty-three years now.

3. Why do you write? 

Because God has given me a talent for using words, and I am trying to use that talent in ways that honor and glorify him and also benefit my neighbor.

Also, there are stories in my head that no one else is going to write, and I want to read them, so I have to write them.  Believe me, if there was a way for me to transfer my stories directly from my brain to a book, I would.


4. When is the best time to write?

I write best in the morning, before my brain gets cluttered up with thoughts about the day.  But for the last few years, I do most of my writing at night after my kids are in bed.  It works.

5. Parts of writing you love vs. parts you hate.

Hahaha!  In which Hamlette gets to rant.

Okay, so my favorite thing to write is dialog.  Most of the time, I just have to take dictation.  Characters talk in my head and I write down what they say.  It's glorious.  My fingers fly.  Pages add up with astonishing rapidity.  Give me a good argument where people say all kinds of things, emotions and motives are laid bare, hearts rip and mend and rip again -- fiendishly delightful.

I hate writing action scenes.  Now, if you were paying attention above, you'll have noticed that the two genres I write most are westerns and war.  And action is kind of expected in those two settings.  Lots of actions.  Gunfights and battles and skirmishes and attacks.  Hunting and raiding and patrolling and -- yeah.  And I hate writing action scenes.  I'm not bad at it, because I've had tons of practice, but I don't enjoy it.  And my best friend and writing mentor will tell you I whine about this a lot.

Why do I hate writing action scenes?  Because it takes so blasted long.  I get very frustrated with having to write out who is where doing what, and when and how they do it.  It reads quickly, but it writes sloooowly.

So basically, I'm lazy.

They're headed for trouble, and they know it.  I know it too. I just don't want to have to write about it!

6. How do you overcome writers block? 

Change the music I'm listening to, that's the first step.  Sometimes, that's all it takes.  If that doesn't work, I play a game of solitaire on my computer -- but only one.  I play a lot of solitaire while writing because something about finding the patterns with part of my brain frees up the other part to see what's happening next or work through a problematic scene, etc.

But I don't tend to get blocked for long.  I might lack motivation, but I can make myself write anyway.  I think what most people call writers block is just an absence of desire to write, and that's something you either have to learn to manufacture or do without.

I don't sit around waiting to feel inspired, because when most of my writing happens at 9:30pm after a long day of parenting and homeschooling and trying to keep the house from being consumed by dirt and messes... I ain't got a lot of inspiration left.  But that's okay.  If I just start putting words down, more words will come.

There's also this.

7. Are you working on something at the moment? 

Of course.  Many things.  I'm nearly finished revising my western Little Red Riding Hood, "Cloaked."  I'll then turn this draft over to my editor and spend a month or so lavishing attention on something else.  I might start afresh on a western that I started earlier and stalled out on.  I might start writing a western Beauty and the Beast.  Haven't decided yet.  I've got three novels and three western fairy tale retellings in my head that are just waiting for me to have time for them.

8. Writing goals this year?

I'm going to independently publish "Cloaked" -- a first for me!!!  Looking at August for the release right now.

I also want to dig into research on the Exoduster migration for my western Snow White.  And I plan to start writing either that or my western Beauty and the Beast -- kind of depends on how long my research takes.

Who shall I tag?  My writer friends who haven't done this already!  Specifically:

Cordy at Write On, Cordy!
DKoren at Sidewalk Crossings
Eva at Coffee, Classics, and Craziness
Heidi at Sharing the Journey

And if you're a writer and haven't done this tag yet, by all means, have at it!

Evangeline of An Odd Blog tagged me with this recently, and I am so grateful to her, because it is exactly the sort of blog post I felt like writing today.

The Rules
Thank the person who tagged you and link to their blog.
Answer the original six text-themed questions.
Tag six or more bloggers and let them know.

What's your favorite letter of the alphabet?  J.  I had this Fisher-Price "school days desk" toy as a little kid with all these magnetic letters, and the green ones were my favorite.  J and V in particular.  They were so pretty, so elegant, so joyfully green.

(Source)

3 words you love?  'Dream,' 'hope,' and 'peace.'

3 words you hate?  'Stop,' 'why,' and 'but.'

If you were to create a word, what would it be and what would it describe?  I make up words all the time.  I call it "Jossing" because Joss Whedon's scripts so often include made-up words or phrases that precisely mean what they need to mean, even though they didn't exist before.  So that's the word I've created, 'Jossing,' and what it means.

3 favorite punctuation marks? Semi-colon, comma, and hyphen.

3 favorite fonts?  Harrington, Baskerville Old Face, and Hobbiton Brushhand.  I use those a ton.  Oh, and Old English Text MT.  And Playbill.  And Vivaldi.  And Algerian.  I'm a bit nutty about fonts.


If you could change the way one word sounded, which would it be and how would it sound?  Okay, the word 'facade' should be pronounced fay-cayd.  In my head, I pronounce it that way.  And the way that it's actually pronounced should be spelled 'fasohd.'  And they would mean the same thing, but be spelled differently and be two totally separate words.  Now you know.

Do you know of a word that looks better than it sounds?  Churl.  It looks pretty and a little bit girlish, but so very much is not.

What are 3 words you mispronounced when you first said them aloud because you'd only ever read them before?  Well, 'facade,' obviously, since the whole world is just pronouncing and spelling that wrong.  Also, 'parabola' and 'participle.'  Oh, and 'Sepulveda' -- I still can't get that one straight.

What are 3 words you used incorrectly in your youth?  Um, I don't remember?  Seriously, none spring to mind at the moment, though I know that did happen to me now and then.  (I suspect this question is only here to provide reasons for people to post Princess Bride jokes.)


What is a word you used to use way too often and have stopped using entirely?  Well, I go through phases where I overuse a word, but I don't think I stop using them altogether, I just quit using them so much.  Examples are 'unique,' 'swell,' 'dude,' 'so,' and 'awesomesauce.'

I hereby tag: everyone!  Or rather, anyone who wants to do this tag.  I don't feel like choosing people today.  Is that so inconceivable?

Quiggy at The Midnite Drive-In nominated me for the Liebster Award.  Thank you, Quiggy!  I'm sorry it took me several weeks to finally post this.


Of course, for the Liebster, you're supposed to answer 11 questions from the person who gave you the award, then make up 11 new questions and tag 11 people, etc.  Here are my answers to Quiggy's questions:

1. What is your favorite genre of movie?  Westerns!  They are my happy place :-)

2. And what movie do you consider to be the paragon of that genre?  The Magnificent Seven (1960)


3. With which actor or actress, living or dead, would you most like to have a one-on-one (strictly platonic) dinner and conversation date?  At the moment, Alan Ladd, obviously.  I want to hug him (hugs can be platonic!) and reassure him he's a good actor and will not be forgotten.

4. If you were an actor or actress, which movie character would you most like to have played?  How to choose?  Oh, I'll just say I'd love to have played Maureen O'Hara's role opposite John Wayne in The Quiet Man (1952).


5. What is your favorite movie opening sequence, and, on the other side of the coin what is your favorite movie ending?  I love the way The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) opens, with Cold War headlines and retro opening titles giving way to grainy '60s-style footage of East Berlin that pans over the city and focuses in on Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill).  It's such a downright groovy way to kick the film off.

As for a favorite movie ending, um... I love a lot of movie endings.  Okay, just to pick one, I love how Gunfight in Abilene (1967) ends very similarly to High Noon (1952), with the sheriff having dispatched the bad guy, standing in the empty street with his love interest at his side -- only in Abilene, he doesn't drop his tin star in the dirt, he's proud to be the sheriff.  It's a nice nod to the earlier film, while ending quite differently.

6. Which movie was the worst remake ever, and which one was the best?  There are a lot of bad remakes out there, and I'm not sure I can (or want to) choose a worst.  Sabrina (1995) is the best remake I have ever seen.  The original lacks chemistry, humor, and charm, but the remake has all of those in spades.


7. If you were a director, which movie would you like to direct? It can be one that hasn't been made yet or it could be a classic in which you replaced the actual director.  I want to write, direct, cast, and produce a movie version of The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery.  I would cast Michael Fassbender as Barney Snaith, and I think maybe Elizabeth Henstridge as Valancy Stirling.


8. On average, how many new movies ("new" to you, not necessarily new theatrical releases) do you watch in a month?  Two or three, usually.  More in the summer, when I go to the theater more often.  But I only watch four or five movies at home most months, and often it's less than that, so yeah... not a ton.  That's why my TBW pile grows instead of shrinking.

9. List at least one actor, actress or director you thought SHOULD have been given the Oscar as opposed to the one who did. Specify which movie they should have gotten said Oscar.  I've always been horribly upset that Harrison Ford did not with the Best Actor award for Witness in 1985.

10. Which movie has the best dialogue (meaning most eminently quotable)?  I quote so many movies!  So Very Many.  I'll just go with The Avengers (2012) on this one, cuz Joss Whedon writes the best dialog ever ever ever ever, and that's one of the movies I quote most.


11.Which of your movie blog posts is the one of which you are most proud?  Probably my totally made-up review of the fake film noir version of Hamlet, Murder Most Foul.  It was soooooo much fun to imagine up, find photos for, and write.  I just wish it really existed!

(You KNEW I'd slip a photo of Ladd in here somewhere, right?)

Okay, I'm also supposed to list 11 facts about myself that I think are interesting.  It's hard coming up with new facts all the time, so I'm sorry if I repeat some I've used previously.

1.  I named my first dog "Spunky" after a book by Janette Oke.
2.  I named my second dog "Lucas" after the main character on the show The Rifleman.
3.  I named my third dog "Westley" after the main character in The Princess Bride.
4.  I like listening to vinyl records.
5.  I went to the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, GA, in 1996.
6.  I collect Coca-Cola merchandise and decorated my kitchen with some of it.
7.  My MBTI type is ISFJ.
8.  I love Wolverine more than Thor.  (Try not to faint.)
9.  I've eaten bear, moose, and elk.
10.  I love playing with Legos.
11.  My middle name and my daughters' middle names all end with an 'e'.

I hope those were interesting.  Now to tag 11 bloggers!

Captured by the Word (Eowyn)
Classic Film Observations and Obsessions (Jocelyn)
Classic Forever (Millie)
A Free Mind (SW)
A Girl's Place (Rachel)
J and J Productions 1809 (James)
An Old-Fashioned Girl (Rose)
Phyllis Loves Classic Movies (Phyl)
Preppies of the Apocalypse (Morgan)
Silents and Talkies (Kate Gabrielle)
Sunshiny Corner (Miss March)

Play if you want to!

Here are the 11 questions I want YOU to answer:

1.  Is there a movie that has really yummy-looking food in it that you'd love to eat?
2.  What era do most of your favorite movies take place in?
3.  What two actors/actresses have you always hoped would make a movie together, but didn't/haven't yet?
4.  If money and time and supplies (and crafting ability) were not considerations, what movie character would you love to cosplay or dress up like for Halloween?
5.  Have you ever cosplayed or dressed up like a movie or TV character for Halloween?
6.  What movie would your friends/family be surprised to learn you truly enjoyed?
7.  What's one book you hope no one ever makes into a film?
8.  Do you know the Wilhelm Scream when you hear it?
9.  When a character onscreen has to hold their breath, to you try to hold your breath to match theirs?
10.  What upcoming movies (or TV series) are you excited about?
11.  What are some of your favorite movie-oriented blogs?  (Or just blogs that post movie reviews sometimes.)


If I didn't tag you, but you want to answer these questions anyway, feel free to do so in the comments.  Or on your own blog -- you can ask me for an "official" tag if you want to :-)

Today I've got a post up here on James' blog about the soundtrack to one of my favorite shows:  Firefly (2002-03).  How shiny, huh?

In just 7 1/2 hours, I'll be seeing The Avengers on the big screen again!  And then seeing The Avengers:  Age of Ultron after it, which will be fun too, I'm sure :-)  (I hope.)  (Joss Whedon, please don't hurt me too much!)

Okay, I realize some of my choices may cause some people to question my sanity.  And how I rank them.  But remember, these are my favorites, not what I think are the best.  That would be a totally different list -- this is about the ten sci-fi movies I love the most and how often I watch them.  Keeping that in mind... feel free to disagree with me :-)



1.  Serenity (2005)

Captain Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and his band of smugglers (Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, Summer Glau, etc.) take on an Alliance assassin to protect one of their own and wind up uncovering a vast conspiracy.  I saw this on the big screen and have been a Browncoat ever since.

2.  Return of the Jedi (1983)

Luke and Leia rescue Han, Luke and Han rescue Leia, Lando and R2-D2 rescue everyone at once... and that's only the first sequence, which happens to be my most favoritest.  I've seen the first 40 minutes of this more often than any other segment of any Star Wars movies.

3.  Independence Day (1996)

A pilot (Will Smith), the President of the USA (Bill Pullman), and a variety of other humans band together to save earth from an alien invasion.  I love how it mixes serious, exciting, and funny together so seamlessly.

4.  A New Hope (1977)

An idealist (Mark Hamill), a princess (Carrie Fisher), a smuggler (Harrison Ford), and an aging hero (Alec Guinness) help the Rebel Alliance take out the Empire's greatest weapon.  What can I say about it that hasn't been said a billion times before?

5.  I, Robot (2004)

A robot-phobic policeman (Will Smith) reluctantly joins forces with a robot (voiced by Alan Tudyk) to stop a robot uprising.  Sleek and smashing.

6.  Equilibrium (2002)

A law-enforcement officer (Christian Bale) takes on the regime that has outlawed all emotions.  Imagine if The Matrix had been written by Ray Bradbury.  I just wish Sean Bean was in more of it.

7.  The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Luke learns the truth about his parentage, Han and Leia try not to fall in love, and the Empire tries to figure out what hit them.  I like half of this movie a lot, and am bored by the other half.

8.  Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

Two melllow high school students (Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter) travel through time to collect info so they can finish their homework and save the future.  Smarter and funnier than you expect.

9.  Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

A pilot (Jude Law) and a reporter (Gwyneth Paltrow) try to figure out why there are giant flying robots attacking New York City.  Retro and gorgeous and fun.

10.  Back to the Future (1985)

Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) uses Doc Brown's (Christopher Lloyd) time-travelling car to go back to the 1950s and make sure his own parents get together.  Classic and wonderful.

That's one of the first things I ever pinned when I joined Pinterest.  Just felt like sharing it here today, and also a picture of what I created today:


Banana bread!  :-9

Just pulled this week's edition of Entertainment Weekly out of my mailbox, and look who's on the cover:


Wooooooooooooooooo!  If you're not a subscriber, go pick up a copy at the book store or something.

I hope you have a wonderful birthday, O Great and Mighty Joss!


(Please don't kill Thor in Avengers 2!)

(Also, I would go see Much Ado to celebrate your birthday, except it seems that "Nationwide Release" does not equal "Coming Soon to a Theater Near Me.")

I found this picture somewhere, and it makes me smile, so I'm sharing.  That's all.

Joss Whedon and Chris Hemsworth

Behold, I am smiling :-)

I went to see The Avengers for a third time last week, this time with my mom.  I finally have a chance, a week later, to write up my thoughts on all the characters.  I titled this after the Avengers themselves, but I'll do another post later about the other characters too.  Like Loki, cuz he's obviously an important component to the film.  And Pepper Potts, and Agents Coulson and Hill.  And Nick Fury, cuz if I left him out, S.H.I.E.L.D. helicopters would probably descend in my backyard and vaporize it.  Which I wouldn't mind so much if Wolverine was aboard, so please make a note of that, any agents who might be reading this and checking my ISP coordinates or something.

Except this is The Avengers, not X-Men, which means I need to stop thinking fondly of Wolvie and instead start thinking about Thor.  :-)  Nice work, if you can get it!

So anyway, this is Thor, the god of thunder:


There are some pretty obvious reasons why he's my favorite Avenger:  broad shoulders, great hair, kinda quiet and a little broody, deep and grumbly voice.  I'm not necessarily head-over-heels for Thor, to be honest.  I think maybe I need to see his movie from last year to send me over the edge, but all the same, he's hands-down my favorite in this.  And I just spent fifteen minutes downloading pics of him so I could bring you the bestest ones here.  I love his quiet presence, the way he's all protective of us unruly earthlings, and did I mention Chris Hemsworth is both tasty and talented?


Okay, I'll stop drooling and move on to my second-favorite in this movie:  Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk.


I loved Mark Ruffalo in this!  In fact, I consider his to be the strongest performance in the film.  He does these marvelous little twitchy things with his hands, like an alcoholic trying not to reach for a shot glass.  He hunches, he shuffles, he stutters and mumbles, he wears shabby clothes in dull colors -- all to try to blend in with the scenery and get ignored.  Every time he holds something small and breakable, like his spectacles, he looks like he's trying so very hard not to crush it.  I've never seen Ruffalo in anything before (an oversight I intend to remedy), so I don't know what his usual mannerisms are like, but I found him to be the best Dr. Banner I could ask for.  And a really fabulous Hulk too.


See?  Beautiful.  And very sad, which of course makes me love him and want to give him a hug.  Probably when he's not Hulked up, though, as a Hulk hug might be a bit dangerous.

And here comes a Big Surprise!  My third favorite character is Tony Stark/Iron Man.


The reason this is a surprise is that I really disliked Robert Downey, Jr. until I saw this movie.  Not sure why, he just annoyed me.  A lot.  Maybe he will still annoy me in other things, but he uses precisely the perfect blend of poetry and meanness to pull off this role.  See?  Look how snarky he is:


Also, Stark has the biggest character arc.  It's true that Thor goes from wanting to protect Loki from himself to being willing to take down Loki in order to save Earth.  And Bruce Banner goes from hiding from his inner Hulkiness to kind of embracing (or at least enjoying) it a teensy bit.  Cap'n Rogers is pretty much Grumpy the whole time, he just goes from Grumpy Loner to Grumpy Leader.  Barton doesn't change much by himself, and neither does Romanoff.  But Stark goes from being, as Cap puts it midway through the film, "not the guy who lays down on a wire to let the other guys crawl over him" to being willing to sacrifice himself not just for his newfound buddies, but for all those cowering strangers in Manhattan.

After those three, I kind of like the other three Avengers about equally.  Here they be:


L-R, those are Clint Barton/Hawkeye, Capt. Steve Rogers/Captain America, and Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow.


I have to say, Cap is a little too white bread in this.  He's got this tragic backstory, he's got the fish-out-of-water thing going on, and he kind of just doesn't get to go anywhere with that.  But he's sweet, upright, and all about Truth, Justice, and the American Way, which is pretty much how he is in the comics.  However, I think Chris Evans had more fun playing The Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movies, and I wish he'd been able to use a little of that playful spark here.  (Yes, I realize that makes very little sense:  I wish he was more broody, and also wish he was more playful.  I often make very little sense.)

Barton and Romanoff do a lot more with less material to work with.  In their meager scenes together, they manage to convey a huge amount of history just with looks and silences and quips.  Look at them:


Even in a still like this, you can see gobs of affection, a comfortableness in each other's presence, a camaraderie that's missing between the rest of the team.  They're also the only two fully human members of the team who don't have any armor or super powers or anything else.  Just them, their assassination expertise, and their spiffy weapons versus the bad guy hordes.  Jeremy Renner and Scarlett Johansson rock in these roles, and I'd love to see a movie about their characters' history together.  Written by Joss Whedon, who understands the humans-caught-up-in-a-superhuman-battle thing oh so well.

Well, I think that about covers it.  At least, I've run out of steam and time, so tune in next time for Bad Guys and Minor Characters :-)

I went to see The Avengers again today.  I learned something important during this, my second viewing:  if you spend two hours and twenty-two minutes grinning, your face hurts for a while.  Teeth kinda ache a little too.

What can I say about this movie to make you, my faithful readers, understand how magnificent it is?  Where do I begin?

I hear music.

Where do I begin
To tell the story of how great a film can be,
A film I think that every boy and girl should see,
The simple truth about the joy it brings to me --
Where do I start?

Okay, I won't actually rewrite the entire theme to Love Story.  But only because I probably don't have time -- I am using precious and rare child-free time to write this.

I'm not as familiar with the Avengers as I am with the X-Men, Spider-man, Batman, and Superman.  All I knew about the Avengers prior to this movie, I gleaned from the occasional issue of the Spider-man Magazine that involved Spidey teaming up with one or more of this team.  My favorites were the ones that teamed Spidey with the Hulk, and of all the characters in this new film, he's the one I know the best. But let me hasten to add that I've never seen either of the Hulk's other movies (don't intend to), nor have I seen the four movies that led up to this one:  Iron Man (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), Captain America:  The First Avenger (2011), or Thor (2011).  Planning on seeing those four soon.

But enough rambling!  Because I haven't gotten to the good stuff yet!  And oh, what a motherlode of good stuff there is!  And much of it is due to one person:  Joss Whedon.


I love this picture of him.  Joss Whedon, our fearless leader, casually holding Captain America's shield while looking just like one of us, in sneakers and a faded shirt.  Only, of course, Joss isn't one of us.  He's the criminal creative mastermind behind so many genius things, from the well-known (Buffy and Angel and Firefly) to the oh-really-he-wrote-that-too (Toy Story).  His writing never fails to please me on nearly every level, from his quirky and fully realized characters to his never-predictable plotting to his zingful and twisty dialog.  And finally, finally, finally, someone has given Joss Whedon a whole lot of money and toys and set him loose to wreak havoc.  And by havoc, I mean blowing pretty much every other superhero movie ever out of the water.  And out of the sky.  And off the face of the earth.

I'm not going to recap the movie here.  You should go see it yourself, if you haven't already.  Go see it again, if you have.

Instead, I'm going to gush about the characters and themes for a bit.  Those are two things I enjoy most about any story (Plot?  What's a plot?), and they are what I 100% love about The Avengers.


What we have here is your standard Joss Whedon group of misfits and loners who need to learn to work together in order to avert impending doom.  Captain America (Chris Evans) spends more time wishing he'd died in WWII than figuring out how to live now.  Natasha Romanaoff/The Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) is an assassin who's a whizz at interrogation, not integration.  Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) is a spoiled little rich boy who alternates smarting off with showing off.  Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) specializes in archery, which is not what you might call a team sport.  Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is an alien deity bent on saving Earth even if he has to hammer the whole planet into smithereens in the process.  And Bruce Banner/The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) is more afraid of himself than any one or anything else, and would rather be anywhere but here.

Honestly, these people make most of the X-Men look positively well-adjusted!

One of the themes Joss Whedon explores over and over and over is creating your own family.  The three TV shows I know him best for -- Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly -- all involve disparate characters who probably wouldn't have anything to do with each other ordinarily, but thanks to the situations they wind up in, they forge friendships and surrogate families that bind them together long after the weekly danger has been averted.  The same thing happens here:  by the end of the film, the characters have bonded into, if not a cohesive whole, at least a functional set of friends.

Which brings me to another favorite theme of Joss's, the flip side of the friendship coin:  enemies.  Except in the Whedonverse, they're oh-so-often the same side of the coin.  Your friends can become your enemies, and vice versa.  On Buffy, season two's main villain?  Buffy's boyfriend Angel.  Season six's main villain?  Buffy's best friend, Willow.  Recurring villain Spike, on the other hand, wound up as one of the White Hats.  Here in The Avengers, who's causing all that murder and mayhem?  Why, none other than Thor's (adopted) brother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston).  And our supposed ally, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), is being much less than forthcoming with the team.  Not to mention the fact that except for the two humans, Romanoff and Barton, the rest of the team can't stand each other for the first two-thirds of the movie.

Speaking of humans, we come to another theme Joss loves to explore:  heroism.  What makes someone, to quote Zoe from Firefly, a "big d**n hero?"  Is it superpowers?  Is it destiny?  Is it ancestral lineage?  Why, no.  Heroes, in the Whedonverse, are heroes because they are willing to make sacrifices.  They're willing to sacrifice their honor, their possessions, their reputation, their friends, their families, and even their own lives, all to save helpless, ordinary people who will generally be unappreciative, if not downright ungrateful.  Season five of Buffy culminated in Buffy Summers leaping into a portal between earth and a demon dimension to seal it up and save the world; The Avengers culminates in Ironman rocketing into a portal between earth and an alien dimension to seal it up and save the world.  Both Buffy and Tony Stark began their character journeys (several seasons/films earlier) as spoiled, popular, self-absorbed, pretty people -- both wind up willing to literally lay down their lives for not only their friends, but the whole world.  Big d**n heroes indeed.

I'm running out of time here -- I'll have to discuss things like acting and favorite lines and scenes that make me giddy in another post.  For now, I will just say that I loved this movie so much, that it's so completely good and awesome and delightful, that I actually kinda want to take my parents to see it.  Because it's an old-fashioned adventure story disguised as a spangly new supermovie.  Monsters and magic may abound (they're two of Joss's specialties, after all), but the real power of The Avengers is how personal it makes the mayhem.  The real 3D special effects here are the three-dimensional characters.  Somebody, please give Joss Whedon more money and toys so he can make a sequel!

Who's my favorite director?  I'm not sure.  Joss Whedon?  John Ford?  Peter Jackson?  Baz Luhrman?  Henry Hathaway?  John Sturges?  Alfred Hitchcock?  Kenneth Branagh?  I don't know.  I don't have one specific director I prefer over all the rest.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  And, by extension, Angel, although I didn't know Angel existed until it debuted.

I'd heard of Buffy in a general way before I went to college in 1998.  Clearly, based on the title, it involved vampires, which were something I wanted nothing to do with.  Anything involving the horror genre whatsoever was just not my cup of tea. I assumed the show was scary, probably involved black magic and other un-Christian things, and there was no way I would ever watch it.

David Boreanaz and Sarah Michele Gellar

My freshman year of college, I gradually became friends with three girls I'll call Pebbles, Z, and Bon-Bon.  Z and Bon-Bon were high school besties who became college roomies.  I recall one lunch with them where Bon-Bon tried to interest me in Buffy by describing how hot one of the characters was, a vampire named Angel who was sometimes good and sometimes bad, but always sexy.  I was polite, but declined their invitation to join them on Tuesday nights in the lounge to watch the show.

Sophomore year, I shared an on-campus apartment with Pebbles, Z, and my dear friend ED (Bon-Bon didn't continue at our college, though she did stop by for a visit now and then).  And one fateful Tuesday night, I had a cold and didn't attend the evening Self Defense course I was taking for PE.  It happened to be the night of the season 4 premiere of Buffy and the series premiere of Angel.  Pebbles and Z persuaded me to watch with them since I was too sick to do homework, so I huddled in our living room, wrapped in a blanket, and grudgingly watched the shows.

David Boreanaz as Angel

I was not an instant fan, though I acknowledged the hotness of David Boreanaz as Angel.  (Completely unnecessary aside:  Josh Holloway, who went on to play Sawyer on Lost, has a tiny role in the premiere ep of Angel, "City Of.")  But I realized that they'd been telling the truth when they said the shows weren't scary or horrific, and I was intrigued enough to watch subsequent episodes that Pebbles or Z brought back from home every weekend (as our college's cable company dropped the WB network the week after the premieres).  It was the third episode of Angel, "In the Dark," that hooked me.  Like I mentioned a few days ago, it was one bit of dialog that captured my still-reluctant attention.  When asked repeatedly what it was he really wanted (while being tortured for information), Angel finally admitted, "Forgiveness."  That got me to sit up, take notice, and actually get interested in Angel, which eventually became my second-favorite show ever.  Weeks later, around the time the episode "Something Blue" aired, I became a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer too, mostly because of Spike and his unutterable coolness.  And the show's fabulous dialog.

James Marsters as Spike

And now, a decade later, I own every season of both shows.  Because Joss Whedon and the other writers of these shows are amazing, the stars are solid actors, and these are two of the few shows that actually generally line up with my own world view.  Um, yes.  Because unlike most TV shows (and movies and books) today, Buffy and Angel do not subscribe to the humanistic view that all people are basically good.  They say, instead, that all people are basically evil and need to rise above their inner badness.  Which lines up so perfectly with the Christian (particularly Lutheran) belief that we are all born spiritually blind, dead enemies of God, sinful in every way.

Yes, there are things about Buffy I don't agree with. But it's one of the few modern shows that says actions have consequences.  If you disobey your parents, you will get in trouble.  If you have premarital sex, there can be unpleasant repercussions.  If you kill someone, you will pay for your actions.  In the morals-are-irrelevant morass that is much of today's programming, Buffy and Angel take a stand against evil, whether it's the evil of a demon out to destroy the world or the evil of lying to your parents.

Plus, did I mention David Boreanaz?  Mmm.  Enough said.

Easy. Firefly.  They canceled it before it really got started. 

Sure, I'd love to have had another season of Angel -- it had just refound its stride when it was canceled.  And sure, I'd love more Nero Wolfe adventures.  But Firefly didn't even get to finish its first season, and that is a crying shame.

 This is such a shiny show, what there is of it.  I didn't watch it in its initial run, so I myself am partly to blame for its cancellation.  Firefly aired the first year Cowboy and I were married.  He was finishing college, I was working my first full-time job, and I was already addicted to Joss's other two shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.  I didn't think I had time for another show, didn't really know what Firefly was about, didn't give it even one chance.

Then the Firefly 'verse came to the big screen in 2005 with the movie Serenity.  My brother-in-law, Noumenon, asked if I wanted to go see it with him.  I love going to the movies, and it's rare I get to see one with another person, so I said sure, anything to support Joss Whedon.  I loved the concept, the characters, the writing -- instant fan.  (You can read about my initial impressions here.)  But, clearly, a show that is literally about cowboys in space was just too oddball for the network execs, and they pulled the plug.  Evil, silly, annoying execs.  Grr.  Arrgh.

(I really want this shirt!)