Firefly DVD, Worldwide. Finally



Available at Amazon.co.uk

I was just sitting down to rant on about market segmentation or some such (it was released on DVD a while back as Region 1 only) , and then I checked. YES! I truly believe this is a must-have DVD in any ESL library.
It's also interesting to note that the review talks of subtitle - overdub features, but Amazon. co.uk. is still clueless in their specs. listing.
Amazon.co.uk Review
Much praised and much missed after its premature cancellation, Firefly is the first SF TV series to be conceived by Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy and cocreator of Angel. Set five centuries in the future, it is a show where the mysterious personal pasts of the crew of the tramp spaceship Serenity continually surface. In fact, it's a Western in space where the losers in a Civil War are heading out to a barren frontier. Mal Reynolds is a man embittered by the war, yet whose love of his comrades perpetually dents his cynicism--even in the 14 episodes that exist we see him warm to the bubbly young mechanic Kaylee, the preacher Book, the idealistic doctor Simon, even to the often demented River, Simon's sister, the psychic result of malign experiments.

Firefly is also about adult emotional relationships, for example Kaylee's crush on Simon, the happy marriage of Mal's second officer Zoe and the pilot Wash, the disastrous erotic stalemate between Mal and the courtesan Inara. Individual episodes deal with capers going vaguely wrong, or threats narrowly circumvented; character and plot arcs were starting to emerge when the show was cancelled. Fortunately, the spin-off movie Serenity is planned; and in the meantime, what there is of Firefly is a show to marvel at, both for its tight writing and ensemble acting, and the idiocy of the executives who cancelled it.

On the DVD: Firefly on DVD is presented in anamorphic 1.78:1 with Dolby Surround Sound. It includes commentaries on six episodes by various writers, directors, designers and cast members as well as featurettes on the conception of the show and the design of the spaceship Serenity, four deleted scenes, a gag reel, and Joss Whedon singing the show's theme tune, more or less. One of the things that emerges from all of this is how committed to the project everyone involved with it was, and is--unusually, you end up caring as much for the cast and crew as for the characters. The discs have subtitles in English and Spanish and the option of listening to the soundtrack dubbed into Spanish or French. --Roz Kaveney

Synopsis
Features every episode from the hit television science fiction programme which tells the story of the crew of a spaceship five hundred years in the future.


Posted: Thu - April 15, 2004 at 12:32 PM            

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