Reign of the Whedon

The Serenity marketing machine is (thankfully and impressively) in full swing as it heads into the home stretch this week, with an aggressive TV campaign that has happily coincided with the launch of the Fall season (and even includes an ongoing TiVo promotion). But what's most striking is the high-profile global publicity the film has garnered, with feature stories in The New York Times, USA Today, Toronto Star, The Scotsman, Australia's The Age and many more the past few days - including a very entertaining TIME Magazine combo interview with Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman. But perhaps the best of the current batch is by M.E. Russell of The Oregonian, who has posted his uncut, 9,500-word interview with Joss online (the second-longest I've ever seen). Also interesting: vfxblog interviews visual effects supervisor Loni Peristere.

Serenity has been my favorite movie of the year ever since I saw the rough cut back in May. I'll finally see the finished version Tuesday, and then attend the Austin premiere Wednesday (after which I could probably die happy if I still didn't have so much else to do right now).

P.S.: In related news, Fox Music has at long last released Greg Edmonson's Firefly score online as a downloadable mp3 soundtrack album for a mere $10. It's beautiful. (Oh, and you can buy that t-shirt if you click on it.)