her teeth are too hollywood-perfect-teeth-like for this lunchbox chick not being some kind of viral something.

just noticed this, wasn't she buffy's sidekick on the vampire show?

The series is set in the year 2517, after humans have arrived at a new star system, and follows the adventures of the renegade crew of Serenity, a "Firefly-class" spaceship. The ensemble cast portrays the nine characters who live on Serenity. Whedon pitched the show as "nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things".

The show explores the lives of people who fought on the losing side of a civil war and now make a living on the outskirts of the society, as well as the pioneer culture that exists on the fringes of their star system. In addition, it is a future where the only two surviving superpowers, the United States and China, fused to form the central federal government, called the Alliance, resulting in the fusion of the two cultures as well. According to Whedon's vision, "nothing will change in the future: technology will advance, but we will still have the same political, moral, and ethical problems as today.

Mal - Latin, for bad.

I found this while searching for the reason firefly was canceled.

---------------------------------------------
Memorandum

To: Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy Television Incorporated
From: Shillton Skankowski, FOX Television Entertainment Network Group
Date: February 19th, 2002

Dear Joss,

After that power brunch we had yesterday I just thought I'd send you a memo and let you know that I've talked with the other executives here at FOX and we've decided to give your little space western idea another chance. However, and I'm sure you'll understand why, we ask for a few simple adjustments to your marvelous show idea before we can continue.

1. We need to have things blow up more often. Something should blow up at least once in between every commercial break. Two or three things blowing up in between each commercial break would be even better.
2. The women on the show should kiss the men on the show more often, and each other just a little less (as in, not at all).
3. The name "Firefly" doesn't seem to properly convey the idea of a space western. We recommend you rename the show "Space Western" so that the viewers don't confuse your show with a PBS documentary about fluorescent beetles.
4. The focus groups who reported to my assistant after viewing one of your episodes said they didn't really understand who the bad guys were. We recommend you have all the good guys on the show wear white hats and all the bad guys wear black hats, so the viewers are better able to keep track at a glance just who they're supposed to be rooting for.
5. We recommend you add a new character to the show. A cute little girl. Focus groups respond best to dark haired girls who are about nine or ten years old. We know this is a science fiction program so we recommend you make her a robot who speaks in a monotone manner and takes anything other characters say very literally, to comical effect.
6. The women on the show are wearing too many clothes.
7. You put the show in outer space but I don't recall there ever being any actual aliens showing up. So we recommend you get some of your makeup guys from the Buffy tv show and have them doctor up some extras to make them look like Little Green Men or something. Also make sure they're wearing black hats.
8. Drop that Ron Glass guy. He's a bore.
9. Focus groups reported that the rooms inside the spaceship looked too much like a poorly furnished studio apartment. We recommend you repaint all the sets to make them look more like those cool sets on that old Star Trek show. Make sure there's a lot of bright flashing lights and "beep beep" noises in the background.
10. The women on the show need to be prettier. Go wherever you got that cute Gellar chick and hire some more who look like that.
11. Get in touch with the Jim Henson Company and add some aliens that are actually muppets. Kids like muppets. You can't go wrong with muppets. Or maybe get that guy who does ALF. He's been doing some phone commercials recently, but I'm sure he's available. Make ALF a guest star every few episodes and maybe we can get the 1-800-COLLECT guys to put a commercial on your show.
12. Make the 'future' of the Earth a little brighter. People wanna believe we're gonna do better. Right now the show's outlook is just a little depressing.

Of course you'll understand that we will not be offering any more money for these changes. In fact in order to broadcast your fine television show on our network, we ask for a simple retainer of $250,000.00 per episode, to defray the costs regarding a lack of interest among advertisers.

We look forward to working with you again.

Sincerely,
S. Skankowski

---------------------------------------------
Memorandum

From: Joss Whedon
To: Shillton Skankowski
Date: February 20th, 2002

Dear Skanky,

Get Bent.

As always,
Joss

I miss Buffy =(

Thanks! Should work again now!

In reply to this comment by eric3579:
*dead

>> ^Linz:
>> ^Payback:
Jamie Bamber (Apollo, Battlestar Galactica) is remarkably British too. Obviously American accents are easy, because whenever an American feigns a British accent, it sounds absurd.

James Marsters excepted of course.

JAMES MARSTERS ISN'T BRITISH?!


Nope, the gentleman who portrays Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, aka William The Bloody, was born, grew up, and still lives in CALLY-FORN-EE-AH.

Giles (Anthony Michael Head) -who is very British- was his voice coach, from what I understand. Even members of the crew didn't know he was a Northern Cali boy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Marsters

Favourites

1) Season - Autumn (which intrigues me)
2) Place in the world - woods. coast. bluebells.
3) Children's book - Magnus Powermouse
4) TV Series - I collect them (alias/24/buffy/angel/babylon5/west wing) but possibly west wing if pushed. (edit FireFly)
5) Word - nembler
6) Film - LOTRO-(extended edition all 3 parts as 1)
7) Curse - bollocks. it sounds good. satisfying. improves with volume.
Creature - Smokey
9) Past time - completing System Shock 1 for the first time on 4/4/4/3
10)Person - ... I have many important people, but I would like to have 1

Which one?

11) Dog or cat - Cat. Yes they are evil bastards. Evil bastards need love too.
12) Sweet or savoury - savoury. Take my chocolate and I will eat you for it.
13) Cereal or Toast - Hot toast with butter and things made by someone else is wonderous
14) Tan or pale - pale. I think. Try me.
15) Shoes or barefoot - barefoot when warm and soft and nice
16) Desktop or laptop - Desktop. Laps are for other things
17) Drive or walk - Drive. But walking to work is great.
18) Drama or comedy - Good drama lasts. Good comedy was funny.
19) Sex or food - Both (sex involves eating)
20) Futurama or Simpsons - Futurama. Simpsons hasn't been funny in a long time. it is tiered. it should mumble quietly in an old peoples home.

The Sift

21) Your fave personal submission - I love that this sifted
22) A great comment on one of your vids - This comment by Constitutional_Patriot
23) Most off the wall member - I dont keep my member on the wall? oh, VS, sorry...
24) Favourite user name -
25) Your most used channel - comedy/music
26) Personal dumbass moment - submitting a vid to rant about something, and then deciding the vid was itself guilty of thing it/I was ranting about and discarding it.
27) Best avatar - probably mlx or oxdottir
28) Partner in crime - my15Min for TED pimping might be closest
29) Do people offline know of your sift problem - Yes. My t-shirt tells them so.
30) Idea for the site - Sifter dating.

About you

31) Where do you live - Penryn Cornwall, UK
32) Smoker/non-smoker - Non. Have smoked cigars for the taste. I stopped when passive smoking from friends ceased being unpleasant...
33) Left or right handed - right
34) Hair colour - brown. whats left. or strange colours in the beard.
35) Relationship status - interested
36) How tall - 5-10 with heals
37) Children - Not yet.
38) Ever had an operation - 6 ish. (and this isnt a pissing competition but for me septoplasty was the least. GA and a bit of bleeding)
39) Best feature - feel free to find out and complement me
40) Use four words to describe yourself - my dream was nice</yawning>

If you could...what, who, when etc

41) Bring a famous person back from the dead - Elvis. he could convince people he really died. only he could.
42) Give 50 grand to any charity - cancer research
43) Send someone on a one way ticket to the moon - me!
44) Relive a moment in your life - smokey
45) Have a superpower -
flight
46) Find out one thing you've always wanted to know - did she?
47) Have the opposite gender deal with something you have to - gwizz mrfisk and farhad have this covered, but AC's would not be a fair exchange
48) Be president for one hour - release any sealed evidence on the bush years incompetence (including anything incriminating a certain my blair)
49) Delete a period in history - -10 AD to +10 AD and such like
50) Achieve one thing - contentment

Meh Satanists, I imagine that a teenager might find it edgy, witty and subversive, but it's 100% counter-culture kitsch. Buffy fans, the lot of 'em.

I'm a massive Whedon fan. Buffy, Angel, Firefly/Serenity, but I gotta say, this trailer... didn't really do it for me. It also didn't strike me as a "Whedon" show. I don't know.

I'll definitely tune in to check it out, big fan of the concept and cast, but I'm just not quivering with anticipation...

Is that Tara from Buffy? I wondered what happened to her...

I frigging hate this. Buffy fans are a weird species. My one friend knew how much I hated this series, but seemed to think this epsisode would win me over. Lulz, as if.

That's an interesting point. I don't think there's any correlation, however, between artistic accomplishment and "selling out;" the latter does not necessarily impede the former, nor does corporate success DEFINE artistic accomplishment. I certainly don't believe one can measure artistic accomplishment by the number of commercials your song is in, or how much playtime your song gets on all the radio stations. But again, I would argue that those things are side notes and perhaps useful tools towards achieving your own intrinsic accomplishments.

I look at it this way: an artist, the true, down-to-earth, sincere artist, is going to create art no matter what. The art, whether highbrow or lowbrow, gets made either way, and of course it will be judged whether the artist seeks approval or not. I think it's a problem when the artist seeks only the approval of others: "critical success" and financial success. You can say plenty of nasty things about that person, but the truth of it is they have some degree of talent and want to make money with it- that's fair. It's not ideal and it ain't the Beatles, but it's fair. Now... the "true" artist is ever-changing, ever-improving, and most importantly, ever-creating, no matter how she is judged. The twist is that it costs a lot of money to be any kind of artist, and even on a low budget, that artist is going to need money, even if only as a means to create more art. Thus, by allowing a song to be used in a big commercial (in this case for a corporation whose public image isn't too bad) she achieves that means. It doesn't mean her creation is meaningless, and it certainly doesn't mean that her future work will be either.

If you define "selling out" as "selling your art," then everyone does that. If you define "selling out" as "selling someone rights to use your music," then Yael here is clearly selling out. But none of these meanings seem at all "bad" to me. If I were to define "selling out," I'd probably go with "catering your creations to fit someone else's needs." Even that, though, doesn't seem all that bad. A fine artist who works commissions is essentially doing just that. Any hired illustrator is at least partially doing that. Any film composer or ad agency, same deal. Any of these people could be "selling out" just so they can fund the art that they WANT to create. Moreover, in the process of "selling out" they may find fulfillment in the work they are doing. In this particular case, Yael isn't even doing that; she's merely selling rights to use her song, presumably created as her own song and not a jingle, in a commercial.

On a side note, the commercial marketplace is becoming more and more viable a venue for music artists, I think. High-end ad firms have people that seek out, scout, if you will, the newest and freshest sounds. Obviously they are paid to do so for the success of the commercial and corporation, but that doesn't change what they aim to do. For a while, I kept my thumb on the pulse of popular TV like Buffy and the OC, which miraculously discovered piles of unknown(to me) bands. To relate to visual art (which I guess is the world I'm comfortable with), I'd liken being asked to be on the OC or an Apple ad to being asked to display in a commercial gallery with dozens of artists whose work you know and like. In this world, I think those who take on these jobs either learn to enjoy them, or simply use them to feed the efforts they DO enjoy.

Phew. Finally, upvote for the Lynyrd Skynyrd ref.

So THAT's where i knew her from. Been saving my Buffy box set to rewatch when its faded a little more, so i'll pick up on that when i eventually get to that part.

i knew the main girl looked familiar! her name is felicia day, and she played one of the new slayers on the last season of buffy the vampire slayer. /trivia

Well, he *did* have a music career BEFORE joining the Buffy cast...

This has the title of something that won't be sticking around for very long. Should have been something along the lines of Lost, CSI, Buffy (became the defacto title), Heroes, Scrubs, Friends etc.

Read this article about what you U.S folks will be seeing soon;

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070520/ap_en_tv/ap_on_tv_new_season

"This fall you'll be able to watch a man who can bring back the dead with one touch, a time-traveling reporter, a modern-day vampire, a bounty hunter for the devil, a 400-year-old immortal man, a family of cavemen and a bionic woman. There are cruel twists, too; the immortal man becomes mortal if he falls in love; the man who can raise the dead kills them again permanently with another touch, a complicating factor when his late childhood sweetheart is involved."