weird words

You won't be surprised that I have to confess that I've fallen behind with my assignments.
Still, there's something else I have to get out of the way before I can finish my marking. (I'm nearly there and will call it a night after posting this, which means I've got to get up early tomorrow morning.)

This afternoon - while avoiding the desk of course - I watched a documentary on arte about the legend of the Flying Dutchman. For those of you who have got access to arte, it is repeated on January 14: description in French.
I remember that once upon a time frenchani wrote a post connecting the Buffyverse and Wagner's opera The Flying Dutchman. I can't remember much of it and I'm definitely not a Wagnerianer, but I would be interested in revisiting it. Do you still have it somewhere?
It was interesting to see how this legend of a ghost ship was fleshed out and went through several re-workings and versions especially in the 19th century with its penchant for gothic stories. Pirates of the Caribbean is probably the best-known and newest incarnation of the many ghost ship stories around.
Then I suddenly realized that I wrote about a ghost ship not so long ago when I linked The Rhime of the Ancient Mariner and Serenity. I had focused on the captains in my earlier post, but I forgot about the ships.
And here is another twist: When Mal and his crew travel to Miranda through Reaver territory, they masquerade as a ghost ship. He doesn't kill the albatross, but he still chooses to become the captain of a ghost ship - for a short time only, of course. And again, we get to see the unusual perspective - the living attempting to fool the the other ghost ships. Of course, for the sailors of the past encounters with ghost ships were just as scary as the tales of the reavers are for the folks in the Fireflyverse.

Remember that post from way back about entertainment as opposed to serious cultural offerings? That it might make Serenity a hard sell?

Well, it looks like the reviewers don't quite know how to classify this strange beast.

Serenity opened in Germany last Thursday. In my town they are currently only showing it in German. Their loss. I won't sit through it again in the dubbed version. There are trailers on television, but you have to be 16 to be able to see the film - I guess Mr Universe is responsible for that.

Yesterday afternoon I had a look at the first reviews.

( high and low )

Apart from that there was the usual bad research - where someone put Nathan Fillion in I, Robot and the stuff that was directly taken from the press releases as well as several interesting interviews with Joss Whedon.

I've been trawling the web for German news about Serenity. Take a look at this gem.

Information value of this piece: zero.
Amusement factor: priceless.

So, the Serenity preview was booked out [heck, they've been giving away tickets everywhere], the German fans were very happy and Joss, Nathan and Summer answered the audience's questions, even though they had been pestered by journalists in their swanky hotel all day. No problem for them though, because - wait for it - they had had pumpkin soup in a restaurant the night before.

Huh?

Nevermind. It's publicity. No spelling mistakes and the reader is informed that the film is opening in Germany on November 24.

It may seem like overdoing it, but I'll write two separate posts reviewing Serenity. One is going to be spoilerfree but I'll cut it nevertheless, because you might not want to read the review. You might not be interested in it at all or you might want to see it without my thoughts in your head. And having two posts allows you to comment on the spoilerfree review without stumbling across the spoilers.

Here goes: ( the spoilerfree version )

I've managed to reserve two seats to the Serenity pre-screening on October, 2. This means I only have to stay away from the boards for two days.
I've been in email correspondence with the guy who helps Universal Germany promote Serenity - he seems to be active in the German Star Trek fan community and I doubt that he's a browncoat himself.
[As an aside: We might have to find a different term for the German fans, as there are unfortunate connotations - brown clothing will forever be associated with the Nazis.]
Anyway, this promoter guy told me that Universal hadn't decided yet about the language of the film. Let's hope they'll go for the original - I wrote back begging for the English version. I am going to write to Universal Germany as well. It would probably be a good idea to get the German fans together to make sure we get to see Serenity as Joss Whedon intended and not in some butchered dubbed version. Except I don't know any German fans save for a few who frequent Whedonesque. I lost touch with the friend who got me into Buffy in the first place. And anyway, some of them might prefer to watch the film in German or at least with subtitles.
I'm getting nervous about how Serenity will do in Germany. As you may know there was a Firefly-Marathon in a cinema in Munich on September, 10 with all episodes of the show and after that a screening of Serenity. I've managed to unearth an article (in German) about this shindig - roughly 100 people showed up, it was a fun experience, the review is positive. Universal had a flyer full of (translation) mistakes - not along the lines of Jewel and Joss are married, but still grating. You can find it here and try to spot the errors.
Let's hope there are a few more people at the screening I'm attending and let's hope that the mainstream press will notice Serenity soon.

News: There is a press screening in Hamburg on October, 7, with Summer, Nathan and Joss. Universal has invited a group of German internet fans (those most active on a German firefly board, two folks from slayerverse.de...) to help them spread the word. There has been an article in the mainstream media - in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - but I haven't read it, because they want to charge me 0,85€ to access it.