Let Me Rest In Peace

I watched the Buffy musical episode, "Once More With Feeling," the other day to write this piece on it for work. A college roommate of mine was a huge fan of the show, so I've seen a few episodes (including this one), but that was easily six or seven years ago. I've never been able to get into the show, even though everyone tells me I'd love it and thinks I'm insane because I don't.

It's hard to evaluate an episode from such a late season when you don't watch the show, but even from a musical theatre standpoint, I didn't like the episode. I found it really boring--there were a LOT of ballads, which made the episode drag for me, and I found most of the lyrics heightened to the point of being ridiculous, especially in Buffy's big number at the end ("Something To Sing About," I think it's called). I don't mind that the vast majority of numbers are about character, rather than plot--especially since the revelations in those songs feature hugely in the storyline overall--but those songs didn't tell me anything about who those characters are, except that Spike and Buffy are angsty. The songwriting in Dr. Horrible, which I'll write about later, is much better in my opinion.

I don't think the episode is bad; I say a lot of good things about it in my article. I just don't see what's so great about it, and I certainly don't think it's the best musical episode ever. A lot of my dislike may simply stem from my dislike of Buffy overall. The show is too precious, takes itself too seriously, and tries too hard to be funny and weird for my taste. I know this is just a personal preference thing; again, I know a ton of people who love Buffy. It's also possible that I just don't like Joss Whedon's TV shows, since I couldn't make it through the Firefly pilot.

(Although I hear the show gets better, and if I judged all shows by pilots, I wouldn't like True Blood or Battlestar Galactica.) I like Dr. Horrible a lot, though, and as I've mentioned before, I LOVE Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, so I'm willing to say that my taste is just weird and leave it at that.

Why I Don't Understand Movie Awards

I didn't grow up watching movies, so I just don't think to see movies the way most people do. I also find it hard to sit through movies when I watch them at home--I get distracted really easily, and it's hard for me to sit still for more than an hour at a time unless I'm writing. It's weird; I have no problem seeing movies in the theatre (although again, I don't that often) or seeing shows, and I can watch a lot of T.V. episodes back to back. I think I'm suited more to T.V. than to movies in general (although I don't watch very many shows), but that's another post.

So because I'm not really into movies, I've never been into the Academy Awards--or any awards, really, other than the Tonys. It seems weird to me; I don't understand how you can compare EVERY SINGLE MOVIE RELEASED IN ONE YEAR to each other when they can have totally different resources, intentions, styles, and techniques. Looking at this year's list of nominees, it really seems like the Oscars are about standard Hollywood films, with a few foreign and indie ones thrown in. It's hard for me to understand what the point is. But that's because I don't really watch movies and that whole world is very foreign to me, I guess.

I think a lot of why I find it kind of confusing is because I'm looking at it from a theatre perspective. The Tonys have their share of problems, but they look at a set number of shows: just the ones that opened on Broadway in that given year, which limits the number of shows enormously. It's definitely possible for everyone on the nominating committee to see every Broadway show, but there's no physical way anyone could see every movie ever released in one year. I mean...maybe you could...but there must be so many!

I also have a hard time understanding how you can compare like, an action film, a romantic comedy, and an animated film. It's true that musicals and plays can be very different from each other, but at least they have the same basic space and tools to work with. The script mattering more in theatre than in movies makes a difference, too. I honestly don't know what criteria people use to evaluate movies objectively. Direction, I guess...but I have a hard time understanding directing in terms of film, so I'm kind of at a loss with that, too.

My boyfriend is a huge movie nerd, and he tried to explain all this to me the other night. It must be so frustrating trying to explain stuff to me when I haven't seen 90% of movies that everyone else has seen...and when I don't understand how a movie can win Best Screenplay and Best Direction and not win Best Picture. It's a strange, fascinating world, and I'd like to understand more of it. Which means I need to watch more movies.