barely fatal

Hey browncoats, the allegedly ultimate Firefly and Serenity fan documentary, “Done The Impossible”, is now available for download. The official Bittorrent lacks all the DVD extras (you can buy the DVD at the website or on Amazon.com), but it features the full 80-minutes documentary in DVD/HD quality. Unfortunatly it comes as a Quicktime .mov, which prevented me from burning it to DVD, so I had to watch it on my PC, oh well.

I’m a big Firefly fan myself as you might or might not know, so I’ve had a big interest in this fan project. They have some of the Big Damn Heros giving interviews, namely Mal, Kaylee, Wash, Inara, Book, Joss Whedon and Tim Minear, and others. Adam Baldwin (Jayne) acts as the host.

Well, it turns out to be from the fans – for the fans and about the fans. They explain how it all started, ended and started again, but most of the time they talk about the passionate fanbase trying to safe their beloved show. From that perspective, it differs from the usual Hollywood marketing making-ofs one is so used to see. Firefly fans have always been very emotional about their show and they like to express it. Be it on Podcasts (The Signal, FireflyTalk) or in this film, they very often show their passion and love for what they do. For my liking, that makes the documentary a little cheesy and feel a bit long…ish. The fan-performed songs make up for it a bit, Morena looks hot as usual, Nathan … is Nathan.

However the quality of picture, sound and editing can easily keep up with professional productions, and something like that costs solid bucks. They are giving away the torrent for free under the Creative Commons License, as people would copy it anyway. I think it’s a smart move. There’s still enough extra material on the DVD – and probably no watermark – to make it a worthy purchase for the die-hard fans, especially with all the extra music tracks.

I think it’s worth watching as you can do so for free, even when it gets a bit dull and repetitive towards the middle. From fans, for fans, about fans.

I finally got to see Serenity. Let me tell you, Serenity != Firefly. That being said, let me explain, why.

First of all, I expect you to have seen either the series or the movie. If you haven’t, hell, go and rent or buy the DVD! You’ve missed a phenomenon! But first things first. On some message board (I think it was at IMDB) I read that if Firefly was like Star Trek, Serenity was like Star Wars. That’s so true.

Serenity is a mainstream compatible sci-fi action movie. It has space battles, guys with guns, a horrible threat, the evil character and the good guys on their ship. For the average sci-fi flick, Serenity is a good, solid movie – entertaining and worth watching, popcorn cinema. Firefly is about nine characters with their very own personality, intentions and secrets. Firefly has action, too, but it helps to transport the story and develop the characters. It’s not there for the sake of itself. Firefly is experimental in many facettes. Serenity, well, Serenity isn’t.

Read the rest of this entry »