Pics from Serenity screening

This is the line. We arrived at the theater an hour and 15 minutes prior to the start of the show, only to discover a couple hundred people had beaten us there. You can't really tell from this shot (& incidentally all my other line shots are shit), but the line extends to the far wall, around the corner and all the way down THAT wall.


These guys came dressed as blue hands. They were at the front of the line. Apparently they arrived five hours early in order to guarantee their place at the head of the line.

A film-goer dressed as Kaylee from Shindig.


And another person dressed kind of like Kaylee from the pilot. Nice parasol!


So I am really digging my new phone, but I'm glad I didn't buy it for the camera :-)

Serenity

Had the opportunity to go to a preview screening of Serenity last night. This is my sort-of mini-capsule review. There will be no spoilers.

Let me open by saying that I was terrified going into this film. I had two very grave and opposing concerns. First, that the film would be too much of an "inside story," meaning that unless you were already a fan of the TV series, you Just Wouldn't Get It. In other words, that it wouldn't work well as a film, but more like a long episode projected on a bigger screen.

Second, that the opposite would be true: in order to make the movie play to a larger crowd, they would have to water down the Firefly universe to the point where it was unrecognizable.

I'm pleased to say, now that I've seen the film, I feel that my concerns have been addressed. It's a damn fine continuation of the Firefly storyline. The characters are clearly the same characters we know and love. At the same time, insofar as I was able to, I tried to watch it with a bit of detachment and an eye for whether or not it's a good film. And I believe it is. I think the filmmakers have done as good a job as one could reasonably expect to give people enough of a crash course in the backstory as they will need to get on board.

A few minor worries I had from watching the trailer turned out to be moot, as well. For example, I thought River's fighting looked a little too graceful, too languid and dancelike. Whether they used a different take, or sped the film up, or what have you, that's not a problem I had with the finished sequence.

The version of the film shown was not final, but it felt pretty close. A couple of the effects shots felt a little bit jerky. The print had not been, I think the industry term is "color-corrected" -- some shots, particularly the interior close-ups, were way too dark. Some of the music was not yet final. And there were no closing credits. But otherwise done.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished film in September. No, scratch that, what I really want is the DVD, with commentary . . .

Before the showing started, I took some pictures of the line and suchlike with my new camera phone. If any of them don't completely suck, I'll get them posted once I get home and can upload 'em.

City of whiffs redux

One of the guys I work with informed me that they messed with travel powers, drastically reducing your accuracy when they are turned on. Which, as anyone with super-speed knows, is ALL THE TIME.

Apparently they have reversed that change, but are planning to nerf travel powers in a new and interesting way soon.

City of whiffs

With the new patch out, logged into City of Heroes for the first time in a couple of months today. Took my lvl 28 claw/regen scrapper and picked up a timed mission I had refrained from taking the last time I logged in. Go to DA, carve some meat off a few Devouring Earth, recover a couple of artifacts. No problem.

I enter the mission door and I'm faced with yellow minions and orange LTs. Excellent, this will be good xp. Leapt into the fray . . . only to miss repeatedly. Like 15 whiffs in a row. On the orange mobs, I was literally only hitting on crits. Ye gods, every single attack I have is one-slotted with a green Acc SO. Apparently Cryptic made some SERIOUS tweaks to the combat system.

I check the boards -- can't believe people aren't up in arms about this. If this was UO, there'd be 500 people threatening to delete their characters and quit.

OK, so they made PvM a little tougher. Probably a side effect of adding the PvP arenas. And it's not like it didn't need it -- I rarely got KOed back in the day. So I'll do what UO players do -- adapt.

I leave the mission door, run to a contact, and fill up on yellow pez. Back to the mission door (42 minutes remaining). I also notice, on checking my enhancements, I've got a +3 Acc SO just sitting in my inventory wating for me to level (probably from completing a story arc). One of my attacks does -DEF to the target, so I replace one of my damage slots with that. Between changing my tactics to lead with that attack, and judicious use of yellow pez, I manage to take down even the +1 LTs. Yay! I find the 4 mission artifacts, then I figure instead of hitting the exit button, I'll clean up the spawn inside the instance. And what happens? "Disconnected from mapserver". Log back in and it happens again. Which is a bummer, but I'm not a masochist. I call it a night.

Moral of the story? No idea. Maybe "MMOs change, get over it?"