Viewing #5 of Serenity may be it for me for a week or two. I've seen it enough times in a short enough period that I started to drift off early on, though once the heist got underway the action was moving fast enough to keep me engaged. But during the fight at Inara's I found myself imagining Companion self-defense training with the Operative falling victim to pepper perfume spray, nerve Astroglide, or a high-powered "back massager" with its batteries set on overload .

Best line this viewing: "At last, we can retire and give up this life of crime."

Mal was right: Fanti is prettier than Mingo.

I noticed for the first time that Kaylee actually stepped on a wounded Jayne on her way to fuss over Simon after the folks on the mule narrowly escaped the Reavers.

Oh my god, Mirrormask.

I told you!

Hee to Matt's notation on the twins.

I liked [Cronenberg's Crash]. But it's very strange and I think some find it disturbing.

I read the book (by J.G. Ballard). That was brilliant. I have yet to see the movie, but I probably will eventually.

I read the book back around '88 or so. I remember thinking, "This is one of those books, like Naked Lunch, that is impossible to film."

I was amused to be proven wrong on both books (although the film Naked Lunch is about a writer who's writing a book much like the book Naked Lunch, so it's not exactly a film adaptation).

And they were both done by Cronenberg, right?

Yeah.

I didn't even think of that when I made my previous post.

I should buy those two on DVD.

This weekend, we watched Hell House, a documentary about a Dallas fundamentalist "scare 'em straight" halloween extravaganza. Deeply unsettling, primarily for the scenarios that these sweet, bland people created and the creepy joy they took in damning (for instance) a woman who'd just been (mock) raped or a (mock) gay man dying of AIDS. Worst of all was the conflict with the tragic family at the heart of the movie, a quietly devastated single father with four children, two of whom suffered from cerebral palsy, whose wife had cheated on him and apparently left the whole family. It was obvious how much the church supported him and meant to him, but it was also obvious how oblivious the church members were to his suffering, such as when they had him watching a domestic abuse scenario with echoes of his own life.

What a way to kick off our Netflixed Month of Goofy Horror!

I read the book back around '88 or so. I remember thinking, "This is one of those books, like Naked Lunch, that is impossible to film."

I can remember thinking that and I had read the book after it had been filmed. But it wasn't because I found the book uncinematic, it's because Ballard's prose virtuosity calls for an insanely sophisticated director. I mean his stuff in Crash is gorgeous despite every second sentence being about the marrying of foreskin and chrome.

I found the book, on the whole, to be kinda vapid but I'd put that down to immaturity on my part, not the novel's.

Someone forwarded me an interesting article (no link available--full text below) on the movie project choices by a few of the LotR alums (namely, Viggo, Elijah, Orlando, and Andy Serkis):

Brightness of 'Rings' pays off big for some By Anne Thompson Fri Oct 7,11:51 AM ET

Landing a blockbuster is every actor's dream. Especially when an actor hasn't established himself as a marquee movie star. But like many things in Hollywood, one person's opportunity is another's downfall.

Take the stars of the Oscar-winning global blockbuster trilogy "The Lord of the Rings," several of whom boast new fall movies. Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) is earning critical raves for his role as a family man with a violent past in David Cronenberg's smart-house draw, "A History of Violence." Elijah Wood (Frodo) embraces his quirky side in Liev Schreiber's Ukrainian odyssey, "Everything Is Illuminated." Orlando Bloom (Legolas) goes mainstream as Kirsten Dunst's love interest in Cameron Crowe's darkly romantic comedy "Elizabethtown," which opens October 14. And Andy Serkis (Gollum) squeezes back into his white-dotted blue body suit in order to perform the title role in Peter Jackson's remake of "King Kong," which hits screens worldwide December 14.

After a global hit, Hollywood likes nothing better than to exploit the surging fortunes of name actors with enlarged followings. Some actors listen to their agents and grab at the chance to topline big-studio commercial projects. The media jumped all over Matthew McConaughey after John Sayles' "Lone Star," as the actor landed a series of studio gigs in Joel Schumacher's "A Time to Kill," Steven Spielberg's "Amistad" and Robert Zemeckis' "Contact." Today, McConaughey has earned his stardom. "What is an agent going to do?" says one agent at International Creative Management. "Say no?"

Others continue to follow their own path. After "Titanic," Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio selected their film roles based less on big paydays or commercial potential than on working with the best possible directors. In the long term, that approach paid off handsomely for both.

Landing a blockbuster is a matter of sheer luck. That Mortensen took the role in "Rings" at all was something of a fluke. The veteran character actor ("Crimson Tide," "G.I. Jane," "A Walk on the Moon") got a last-minute call when director Jackson decided that Stuart Townsend wasn't quite right as the mighty warrior Aragorn. While Mortensen was not a fan of the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy, his teenage kid insisted that he accept the role. In the end, Mortensen's mix of manly athleticism and spirituality made him a perfect match for Aragorn.

But post-"Rings," Mortensen is still the same talent that he always was. With about 36 movies under his belt, the respected actor knows what he likes. The difference is that he now gets to talk on national television to Charlie Rose and David Letterman. But he still chooses such offbeat projects as the horse adventure "Hidalgo" or "Violence," which was brainy and arty enough to win a competition slot at Cannes. While he could have capitalized on his new fame and solidified his fan base by choosing more commercial pictures, Mortensen isn't inclined to sell his soul for box office gold. Next up is the starring role in the $28 million Spanish-language swashbuckler "Alatriste."

Mortensen doesn't appear to be following the example of big stars like Brad Pitt, who alternate between their own taste and breakout commercial hits, with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's upcoming "Babel" compensating for "Ocean's Twelve." "You have to want it," producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura says. "Viggo's ambivalent. His choices indicate that."

While Wood, who is 24, might be a much younger actor, he has nonetheless been making movies for 15 years and also possesses a canny sense of himself. "Elijah didn't do 'The Lord of the Rings' to become a movie star," says his veteran William Morris agent, Nicole David. "Nobody knew that it would be the (continued...)

( continues...) amazing phenomenon that it turned out to be. He loved the books and did everything he could to get the part."

But while Wood gained respect as an actor for his bravura performance as the heroic Frodo, playing a diminutive hobbit with hairy feet isn't exactly a ticket to leading-man status, especially for an actor who is still transitioning into a grown-up onscreen. "It's not like he bulked up and went romantic in 'Spider-Man,"' one talent agent says.

David did recommend that Wood accept several mainstream studio offers, but "he didn't like them," she says. "He does things because he believes in them and loves them." Thus Wood has embraced a range of weird and comedic roles in a series of indie films, including "Everything Is Illuminated," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Hooligans," "Sin City" and "Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over." His next roles couldn't be more diverse: He's voicing a penguin in George Miller's upcoming computer-animated feature "Happy Feet"; joining the sprawling ensemble in "Bobby," Emilio Estevez's accounting of the assassination of Robert Kennedy; and next year plans to inhabit the outrageous punk persona of Iggy Pop. Now that should erase Frodo from moviegoers' minds.

The "Rings" actor who has zoomed from zero to 100 in 60 seconds is Bloom. The handsome Brit jumped into the Tolkien adaptations fresh out of drama school, and he hasn't looked back. But even at 28, he is still finding himself as an actor. Clearly, the studios recognized his huge appeal to all the young girls who fell in love with him as the ethereally blond elf archer, Legolas. But while he has worked with A-list directors in a series of big-budget pictures, some have deployed him more effectively than others. A small role in Ridley Scott's "Blackhawk Down" yielded the starring role in Scott's less commercial "Kingdom of Heaven," which did not appeal to Bloom's female fan base. He delivered as Keira Knightley's hapless knave in Gore Verbinski's "Pirates of the Caribbean" (two sequels are upcoming) and was laudably willing to play the nonheroic, weak-chinned Paris in "Troy."

Bloom takes chances in his latest, "Elizabethtown." Playing an American for the first time, he also is depressed and passive as a sneaker designer who has just wasted eight years creating a huge flop. Just as he is considering suicide, his father dies, and he finds himself meeting the Kentucky branch of his family. The movie's longer cut met a decidedly mixed reception at the recent Toronto International Film Festival, but so far Crowe's shorter version isn't earning Bloom better reviews. "Leading-man Bloom, a charmer in action spoofs such as 'Pirates of the Caribbean,' doesn't supply the kind of comic charm this movie needs; he's not the latter-day Jack Lemmon Crowe wanted," Chicago Tribune critic Michael Wilmington writes.

In the near term, unfortunately, Bloom is likely to face some of the same criticism that McConaughey suffered. "Orlando has gotten roles he never would have gotten in his life," one agent says. "People get pushed too far too fast. He's a boy, not a man. He should be doing leads in smaller films where he can be wonderful and work his way up, so that his acting catches up to his beauty." (Bloom's indie efforts to date, the very British mock docu "The Calcium Kid" and "Haven," have not received stateside release, and another British comedy, "Love and Other Disasters," is still to come.)

The only "Rings" actor to return to the set of the next Peter Jackson movie is Serkis, who acts the title role in "King Kong" as the outsized ape who falls in love with Naomi Watts. Although he will not be visible onscreen, there's no question he acted the role opposite Kong's love interest. Jackson's team at Weta Digital plastered Serkis with reflective markers, filmed his performance with 52 video cameras and fed the results into a computer. Animators then reproportioned him to turn him into the mighty Kong.

Serkis might never be the marquee attraction (continued...)