Weird Things

I was part of the 100+ group booking to see Serenity in Wellington last night. (Reports on the size of the booking have varied between 130 and 170 so I'm not sure how many were actually in it) and it amused me to see how many people from overlapping fields of interest came. There were Medieval Guilders and Science Fictioners and Board Gamers and Roleplayers and SCAers and many friendly Americans whom I suspected (and later found out for sure) were employed by Weta. Also the manager of the local laser strike, Sara from my Latin class, an ex-Hoarde member and an assorted miscellany of other people that I couldn't categorise so exactly. The weird thing? How many of these people all knew each other, or had friends in common, or knew each other by LiveJournal handles as Friends of Friends and wanted to know what each other looked like. (Mashugenah, did ThreeMonkeys ever catch up with you?) No seriously, about half the conversations I was in that evening included the question of what someone's LiveJournal handle was. It was good to get out for the costume party in Coyote Ugly before hand as well, worth even having to drag my costume around with me all day because I didn't have time to go home and get changed. Companion was a very popular choice, bringing with it, as it does, the opportunity to dress up to the nines. There were also some Kaylee's, Browncoats, generic Chinese/Euro mismash and a Woman with Blue Hands. She even had the gadget that makes peoples eyes bleed.

The movie itself was excellent. I'm not going to discuss it except in general terms - good plot, characters that I cared about, scary bits, sad bits, funny bits, exciing bits. Joss Whedon pulls no punches with this movie. It's also a technically accomplished movie, although as the story pulls people in very strongly it was very rare for me to pull out of suspension of disbelief to think about how cool the effects were. What did shake me out was not controllable by the movie makers. (Well, I suppose it was controllable, on a technicality.) I recognised one of the actresses in a very emotionally traumatic scene and, as I was used to seeing her in a romantic comedy, the dissonance was very very weird. River was absolutely gorgeous, especially in the way she moved. I sometimes wonder if the actress was found first and the part written for her, she fits it so well.

My one not-very-spoiler: Hang on to the end of the credits, there's a very nice guitar solo of the original theme tune.

And yet another weird thing: as I was leaving Varsity I was accosted (in the nicest possible way) by a large, friendly, red-headed giant who used to know Catherine in Palmerston North. He remembered her kindly and, as I was feeling a bit low at the time, getting to bask in a wave of reflected good feeling made me feel much better about the world.

Stephanie