Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog Trailer
A trailer for Joss Whedon’s 36-minute three-part SCi-Fi internet musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog has hit the interwebs. Neil Patrick Harris stars as the title character, a low-rent supervillain who’s trying to impress the cute girl from the laundromat he’s too shy to talk to (Felicia Day of Buffy the Vampire Slayer), defeat his nemesis, superhero Captain Hammer (played by Firefly’s Nathan Fillion) and gain entry into the Evil League of Evil. Whedon penned the musical with his brothers (Zack and Jed Whedon) during the writers’ strike earlier this year. Check it out below and tell me what you think in the comments!
Do Not Disturb the Dollhouse, This Fall on Fox
What happens when Niecy Nash and Jerry O’Connell of Do Not Disturb and Eliza Dushku and Joss Whedon of Dollhouse collide at the Fox upfront?
Silly good times, that’s what. Press play above to see the funny. Then sound off on which new series you’re more excited about watching this fall in the comments below. (FYI, I’m hearing very good things about both. Boo-yah!)
The Five: Shows that are better than the movie
There aren’t many TV shows made from movies that are actually better than the movie version. I’m not talking about TV shows that they made a big-screen version of (like X-Files or Charlie’s Angels), I’m talking about a big screen flick that came first, and then they made the TV series. There aren’t many that are better (and there are several that are worse: Ferris Bueller, My Big Fat Greek Life, War of the Worlds, to name a few), but I’ve come up with five I think are better. What’s on your list?
- Buffy, The Vampire Slayer: This is a no-brainer as #1, right? The movie is entertaining in it’s own right, but Joss Whedon really ran with it when he brought it to TV.
- The Odd Couple: Sure, the movie version is very entertaining, but while Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon played Oscar and Felix very well, Jack Klugman and Tony Randall were Oscar and Felix. Once they got past the odd, stagey first season of the show (no studio audience), this became laugh out loud funny, very smart, very New York City. Can’t wait til it comes to DVD.
- Highlander: God, did the movie suck. But when it came to TV, it provided a practically endless supply of plots for the character, and the villains/love interests for MacLeod were always interesting. Killing off Richie has to rank up there as being one of the stupidest decisions in TV history, but still, this was way better than the movie (any of the movies, actually).
- M*A*S*H: Sure, a very good movie, but the show had more time to really dig into the war and get into the heads of the characters more. Did it get a little preachy towards the end? Maybe, but this was uncommonly well-written and very well-cast, whether you’re talking about the Henry Blake/Trapper John years or the Col. Potter/B.J. Hunnicut years.
- The Pink Panther: OK, OK, I’m stretching things here. I understand that. But same title, character based on the title animation. I loved this show, and while a couple of the Pink Panther flicks are funny, I find most of them to be rather tedious.
Academia set to study the Philosophy of Buffy
It looks like academia is going to study the Slayer. A three-day academic conference has been at Henderson State University in Little Rock, Arkansas to study the works of Joss Whedon, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The conference is to focus more on the philosophical themes of the series. Several books have been published on this particular subject matter (one of which sits on my own bookshelves).
“It has staying power,” said Kevin Durand, an associate professor of philosophy at the school. “It’s like I tell my students in philosophy a lot of times: We’re not so much about necessarily finding all the answers as wanting to ask better questions. ’Buffy,’ I think, does that. ’Buffy’ never really leaves you with nice, pat answers. You have even more questions than when you started.”
My only question is: where were the Buffy philosophy classes when I went to college? Oh yeah, Buffy wasn’t around yet.