Unfettered Brilliance: January 2008

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Next Week!

Our next class begins next Thursday! I'm not sure about the room yet - it'll be best to check in at the main desk in the Jack Hunt Campus Center when you arrive Thursday night. Class will follow our usual format of a quick overview of characters and themes, followed by watching the episode. We'll then take a brief break, then come back for what is sure to be a spirited discussion about how families are portrayed in the work of Joss Whedon.

This go-round, we'll be moving beyond BUFFY to include ANGEL and FIREFLY. Each episode will get our attention for two weeks. We'll start with the BtVS episodes "Pangs" (Season 4) and "Family" (Season 5). Then we'll move on to the world of ANGEL and focus on "Through the Looking Glass" (Season 2) and "Fredless" (Season 3). Finally, we'll wrap up with a look at Whedon in space with "Safe" and "Out of Gas" (alas, both from Season 1, as FIREFLY only got about half a season - trust me, you'll wish there was more!)

Please - tell your friends! There's plenty of room left. See you there!

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Countdown!

Just a couple of reminders - the next Whedon class begins on Thursday, Feb. 7. The six-week course will run through Thursday, March 13 with each session meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. We'll be exploring just what makes a group of people a "family" in this class, which will utilize examples from Whedon's shows Buffy, Angel and Firefly. Familiarity with the shows is nice, but not necessary.

If you've been wanting to show your skeptic friends/family members what all the fuss is about, this might be the class you've been waiting for! Contact the Continuing Education department at Cleveland Community College to register. They can be reached at (704) 484-5324.

In other Whedon news, please indulge me for a moment - I have to crow about this. McFarland has included my upcoming text on faith and Whedon in their Spring catalog (I'm also available for pre-order on Amazon! Go on, follow the links!) The text is slated for a June release and has no bearing whatsoever on the upcoming course - I just was thrilled at seeing another concrete step happening in this l-o-n-g process!

See you in class!

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Copyright. It's not just a good idea. It's the law.

It really is - see Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution.

Unfettered Brilliance by K. Dale Koontz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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