If you're a big Joss Whedon fan, you should save some wall space for these awesome (and totally affordable) vintage-travel-style posters designed by Adam Levermore-Rich and inspired by Whedon's short-lived sci-fi series Firefly:
Aren't those great? You can find them (as well as several other designs in the same series) at ThinkGeek.
This weekend's big geek news item was the announcement that Joss Whedon has made a mysterious adaptation of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. I'm not sure why Whedon was compelled to film it in secret, and I'm even less sure why he chose the dorky promotional image featured above.
However, I am not the best person to judge. As far as I'm concerned, no one should bother filming Much Ado About Nothing at all. Seriously, I cannot stand that play. Stories about wronged women suffering in silence are one of my least favorite things, so all the Hero-and-Claudio scenes leave me nauseated, and I've always found Benedick and Beatrice's "merry war" take on flirtation insanely irritating. (On the up side, at least they deserve each other...)
While poking around my local Target store over the weekend, I ran across the newly-released "motion comic" Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight DVD. I had never heard of the motion comic format, but now I'm better informed: motion comics are cartoon/comic hybrids, and (judging by this one, at least) they are incredibly cheap-looking—i.e., stuff moves, but barely. Check it out:
Seriously, the combination of unrecognizable voice actors, C-grade animation, and terrible artwork (which we've been complaining about since the comic's debut issue) makes us even sadder that the legit Buffy cartoon never made it on-air.
I've only been keeping half an eye out for news about the proposed Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot, but I did see an article on the MTV Movies Blog that (gently) chided series creator Joss Whedon—who, it must be said, has been playing the "noble sufferer" role to the hilt—for not mentioning the fact that Warner Bros. actually offered him the first shot at the Buffy movie, which he declined.
...of course, it's possible the studio is lying, and they just didn't want to trust their franchise to the dude responsible for the final two seasons of Buffy . I'd actually understand either way.
Sadly, I grew so bored by the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics that I didn't bother to read the last six or so issues. I have 'em... and I might get to 'em eventually... but it'll need to be a slow, slow day on the reading front, you know? However, I realize that there are people out there who love the series, and those people should take note of the fact that Jones has released a limited-edition line of soda featuring artwork from the comic. I don't think they've done anything too exciting with the actual flavors (bubblegum, grape, green apple, etc.), but if you've got $12.99 burning a hole in your pocket and you want to blow it on six bottles of soda, congratulations: now's your chance.
According to Digital Spy, Dark Horse will be coming out with another "season" of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic.
I'd be happier about this news if the first season hadn't been such a disappointment. The ideas were good and the quips were snappy, but the series never seemed to gel into a decent comic. Every other issue left me feeling like the story was being written by people who were talented and clever but had no clue how to write for the comic book format. It's possible next season will be better, but my hopes are not high.
There are semi-plausible rumors floating around that Joss Whedon's comic book version of the eighth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer might get turned into a web-based animated series.
No idea how realistic this idea is, but I'd watch it, and with more enthusiasm than I've felt for the comic books. Not that the BtVS comics are bad, exactly... but one definitely gets the feeling that these are TV writers trying to work in a medium that they don't fully understand. Hopefully an animated version of the show would allow them to tell the same story in a format better suited to their talents.
Well, TPTB have finally made up their minds: they do want a Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, but one without Willow, Xander, Spike, Dawn, et al. Oh, and without Joss Whedon, the man who took the original one-note-joke movie and turned it into five seasons' worth of truly great TV.
I guess this means they'll be sticking with the original version of the character, or taking the series in a completely new direction, seeing as Buffy's friends played such a significant role in the TV series. Hmm... I wonder if they'll bring back Pike, too?
Note: While I totally realize the TV show was vastly superior and and all, all this uproar does kind of make me want to re-watch the original movie. Is that wrong?
Awesome news, guys: formerly-defunct network The WB has revived itself as TheWB.com, and they're showing free, full episodes of Joss Whedon's Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The site's slower than molasses (at least on my computer), and you need Abobe Flash Player 9 to get any of the videos to work, but I'm still choosing to regard this announcement as a personal gift from the heavens.
P.S. They're also showing the entire first (and best) season of my beloved Veronica Mars. Not much of a Wordcandy connection to this series (although I'm told Rob Thomas did write a couple of YA books...), but I'm stoked nonetheless.
The TV gods are giving us a taste of what might have been, in the form of a three-minute-long clip of the proposed Buffy the Vampire Slayer animated TV show, which never actually came to development:
