Serenity (2005) – Capsule Review

After hours of listening to fan podcasts and rewatching the entire TV series on DVD, there was no way that I wasn’t going to love Serenity. And as a fan hoping for sequels, I’m glad that most reviews and audience response seems to agree. Despite the sci-fi trappings of this movie, it’s the interesting characters…

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TV Roundup: Oct. 1, 2005

I think the TV gods are toying with me. When I complain that Threshold had too much character and not enough aliens, I get Surface. When I complain about too many last minute twists in premieres, I get a great twist from Veronica Mars. Night Stalker was the only new show this week, and it…

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TV Roundup: Sept. 26, 2005

Overloaded, overwhelmed… this past week has been fraught with new and returning shows… can’t eat, can’t sleep… must watch TV! NEW SHOWS How I Met Your Mother was funny, and Neil Patrick Harris (forever known as Doogie Howser) was a definite standout, but the pilot episode did not have the “I love this show already”…

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Corpse Bride (2005) – Capsule Review

Director Tim Burton’s previous voyages to the land of odd (such as Edward Scissorhands, Big Fish, and Ed Wood), have led audiences to expect his films to be completely off-kilter. However, while Corpse Bride obviously skews towards the ghoulish, that is all that really separates it from your average animated romance. There are splashy musical…

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The Pleasures of Cinema: Toronto International Film Festival 2005

Over the last few years, the Toronto International Film Festival has become a glamourous celebrity-filled event as Hollywood comes to our fair city to promote its latest films. I’ve only been attending for a couple of years, but for me it’s still more about seeing some interesting movies that might not make it to the…

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TV Roundup: Sept. 17, 2005

Supernatural may be the show that finally fills the X-Files’s old spot as the show that I watch with the lights out. It’s definitely scary and the first episode had a shocker of an ending. Now that the background has been established, I suspect these creep-hunting brothers will start meeting their monsters-of-the-week. Threshold was the…

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TV Roundup: Sept. 11, 2005

This was the first week of the new fall season, but not too many shows debuted. I had already given up on Prison Break and Rome after watching a couple episodes of each. New this week, Reunion, the drama that follows six friends for 20 years after their high school graduation, each episode covering a…

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Some People Call’em Space Cowboys

An introduction to Firefly/Serenity Set in a future where humanity has left behind the “Earth-that-was” and spread out across the galaxy, the short-lived show called Firefly focused on the rag-tag crew of the Firefly-class spaceship called “Serenity”. Preferring to avoid the law, they travel among the numerous desert moons where people live a “wild west”…

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Fall TV 2005: Everything New is Blah Again

Kids go back to school, leaves start to change colour, and the networks roll out their new shows—fall is an exciting time for TV geeks (or at least it should be). After last year’s success of several hot new shows, this year seems less promising. They still walk (or float or swim) among us You…

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