Average Jane at the Movies

Woohoo!  I got to see two movies in one week – what a delightful treat.

On Thursday night I saw "Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride."  It had a good mix of humor and ghoulishness, and I liked it despite my general dislike of exposition in song.  Many of the characters (particularly the two brides) owe their general shape and appearance to the Rankin/Bass stop-motion specials of the ’60s and ’70s.  Tim Burton didn’t pass up any opportunities at homage to the stop-motion pioneers:  in one scene, the manufacturer’s label on a grand piano reads "Harryhausen."

"The Corpse Bride" is probably the shortest movie I’ve seen in a long time, but the length felt right for the relatively simple folk tale that provided the plot.  If you’re a Tim Burton fan, you’ll want to prepare a spot for it next to your "Nightmare Before Christmas" DVD.

Yesterday I finally got to see "Serenity."  I say "finally" because it came out on Friday, and yet I had to wait until Sunday for my schedule to open up so I could go.  As it was, I went alone – I couldn’t convince my husband that the magic of TiVo meant that he didn’t have to be home the instant the football game started.

It was AWESOME!  Low budget?  Sure.  A tad insider-y for people who never watched "Firefly"?  Yes, maybe a tad, but I suspect it was enjoyable enough on its own merits to be entertaining even for someone who hadn’t already immersed themselves in the characters and backstory. 

I gasped out loud at one or two scenes and I recall saying, "Aw, shit!" – also aloud – at one particularly shocking event.  I’m not a theater talker, people!  I just couldn’t help it after my recent "Firefly" DVD-a-thon. 

My only criticism of the movie was that I had a little difficulty understanding some of the dialogue.  Maybe it was the sound system in that particular theater…or maybe it’s my poor, heavy-metal-overdriven ear drums.  And, yes, I realize that some of the dialogue is in Chinese – I’m talking about English dialogue.

I sincerely hope this will become a movie series (even though this one wrapped up a lot of loose ends, just in case).  It’s kind of fun to be able to be all fangirl about a movie, especially compared to my lackluster interest in the final "Star Wars."  In the meantime, I need to think about who might want to accompany me to see it again…