Unfettered Brilliance: Body Language

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Body Language

Reel One: Over at the Rewatch, things are heating up as Spike can't decide if he loves Buffy, wants to viciously murder Buffy, or (quite possibly) both. Joyce is sick and Buffy discovers that there are some things that Slayer strength just can't fix. This week's commentary is in the extremely capable hands of Rhonda Wilcox and is well worth a thoughtful read. She focuses on the nonverbal aspects of the episodes being discussed and she'll give you a few things to think about. Pour a cup of coffee and pull up a chair, won't you?

Reel Two: I'm (slowly) getting the syllabus together for the fall film class. I want to switch out a few films from last semester - I'm sticking with the same focus this semester, then I'll probably switch. The hard part is knowing that you only have a limited number of weeks and so much to choose from! Alas. It'll get done, but I'll still fret that something wonderful was left off. Part of my own body language these days is the protruding and bitten lip as I consider what stays and what just has to go.

Coming Soon! A project that I've had on the back burner is finally moving to the forefront. For those of you who are local, expect to see a new show on TV19 after Labor Day devoted to movies. While it will include reviews and comments about new releases, we accept that there are so many other outlets for that sort of information, so we're planning to use about half the time to discuss movies that have some sort of link to the new releases - as an example, we might talk about Cowboys & Aliens (warning: the link contains sound) for the first segment, then have a round robin of favorite Harrison Ford flicks after the break. That sort of thing. I'm looking forward to it and I hope to see you in the lobby!

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Points of Interest

Lurker's Guide - Excellent fan-run resource guide for Babylon 5

Breaking Bad - The official AMC site for news and recaps about the best show on television

Mockingbird's Nest - What I do outside of my day job

Ensley Guffey's Blog - Musings and links worth noticing

Nik At Night's Blog - Most things TV, including the 2011 Rewatch

TV Tropes - What you've seen, over and over and why it matters

Slayage - Whedon given the scholarly treatment

Whedonesque - Clearinghouse of all things Whedon

BuffyWorld - Shooting scripts, screenshots, and more

Who?

K. Dale Koontz may have watched too much television as a child. She learned to count via Sesame Street and first learned that genres could cross-pollinate through M*A*S*H. When she discovered Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the die was cast. In 2008, McFarland published her book Faith and Choice in the Work of Joss Whedon which focused on themes such as redemption, choice, and consequences in Whedon's work up to that point. (She's fairly sure Volume 2 could be written to include Dr. Horrible, Dollhouse, and The Avengers.) She is a founding member of the Whedon Studies Association (a great group of people, but don't mention Twilight. Just sayin'). She has presented original work on the Rossum Corporation in Dollhouse, Kitty Pryde, and Japanese anime. In 2014, she and co-author Ensley F. Guffey worked with ECW Press to publish the critically-acclaimed Wanna Cook? The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Bad. Her most recent project was to team again with Ensley and ECW to publish A Dream Given Form, which is the only guide to all the canonical works in the Babylon 5 universe. That book is currently available for preorder and will be released in September of 2017. Dale is available for speaking engagements and only occasionally uses puppets in her presentations.

What?

I have long been interested in storytelling - how we do it, why we do it, and what happens when we mix things up. This interest might be the result of being born and raised in the American South, a region that has long celebrated the involved story over the quick answer. Television - the good stuff, anyway - does this brilliantly. Far from being film's red-headed tacky cousin, good TV lets characters and relationships build slowly and often mixes up genres, so horror is next door to humor and fantasy rubs shoulders with procedurals. This blog focuses on both the "good stuff" being broadcast that catches my fancy (with a special emphasis on Babylon 5, since that's the book that's in the process of being written right now) as well as film. The films are usually new releases being watched for TV19's weekly Meet Me at the Movies, although I reserve the right to veer off into classics and under-appreciated gems as well. Older posts cover what my introduction to film class was up to - currently, I'm not teaching that course, but who knows what the future may hold.

Notable Whedon Work