Packing for EuroOSCON

pdcawley@bofh.org.uk (Piers Cawley) — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 03:29:00 -0500

My new combined laptop and camera bag arrived yesterday, a Crumpler December Quarter. It’s a little snug for my 17” Powerbook, but it’ll serve. The question now is, what cameras do I pack?

It turns out that Amsterdam is possessed of a pro lab that can do a 4 hour turnaround on black and white dev+contacts (and presumably not much longer for dev+scan).

So, do I take advantage of this, ditch the D100 and come armed solely with my F100, a couple of really nice lenses and a pile of Neopan 1600?

I think I do. I don’t want to start having to use the flash when I’m shooting indoors and, even with the kind of fast lenses I have to hand, I don’t trust the D100 over about 200 ISO so it’ll pretty much require flash assistance. Meanwhile, I know and trust Neopan 1600, it’s been my default film pretty much since I started taking photos and, whilst it may be grainy, it’s good grain. It worked for EuroFoo after all.

Looks like it’s decided. I’ll be the guy with the big camera who isn’t using flash.

Had we but world enough, and time: Serenity

pdcawley@bofh.org.uk (Piers Cawley) — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 00:51:00 -0500

Joss Whedon’s Firefly was a sf series that was never given time; episodes were jumbled by the network and the show got cancelled just when it was starting to build a serious fanbase. And that’s all she wrote.

Except, as fans of Buffy and Angel know, Joss Whedon doesn’t tell the same stories as everyone else. He managed to hold his cast together and found the funding to make Serenity. It isn’t quite the film of series they didn’t have time to make, but it comes close.

Capsule review: I liked it. I liked it a lot. You should see it.

For a slightly longer, and possibly spoilery review, kindly step behind this curtain…

I really liked Firefly. I pulled the episodes down via bittorrent as they became available and watched them in all their lo-fi glory, putting up with jaggies, out of sync audio and the rest. I bought the DVDs, downloaded the soundtrack and, a couple of weeks ago, went to one of UK’s “Can’t Stop The Signal” previews of the finished movie and laughed in all the right places as, instead of the usual previews, Joss introduced the film.

The film is great. Like most modern sf films, it’s something of a ride. There’s even the cliche of the big fight over the bottomless pit in there somewhere. But there’s snappy dialogue and food for thought too, and some beautifully violent fights (everyone else take note, casting a dancer as your lethal weapon is a good move).

However…

But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near

—Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

You can almost hear Time’s chariot as you watch Serenity. The shows were never slow, but the film rattles along at astonishing speed: there’s no time for sitting round the galley table; no time to give sense of lives being lived; no time for Shepherd Book; no time for anything that isn’t going to be relevant within the space of this film. Most films do this, but it’s more noticeable when you already know the characters from a TV series.

The decision makers at Fox took that time away. The bastards. I really want to see Serenity get spun off into another TV series, but the grapevine has it that that’s not going to happen—apparently Fox won’t relinquish the rights. The bastards.

“If you can’t do something smart, do something right”

Thomas More: The last temptation is the final treason,
To do the right thing for the wrong reason

—TS Eliot Murder in the Cathedral

If the film has a message, and I think it does, it’s the same one that Whedon sent in Buffy and Angel. Morality is about personal choice. When it comes down to it, integrity is all that we have and that integrity only exists if you have the freedom to do the wrong thing. For Joss, the greatest sin is taking someone’s freedom to sin from them, because by doing that you take away their chance of redemption.

Which brings us perilously close to politics, but I’ll save that for another entry.

Just A Summary : Tag film, everything about film

Packing for EuroOSCON

Had we but world enough, and time: Serenity

However…

“If you can’t do something smart, do something right”