Serenity

I just saw Serenity, which was everything Star Wars should have been but wasn't due to George Lucas being a political ninny who can't write his way out of a paper bag. Julian Sanchez has an excellent review that draws out the philosophical themes of the series and film. I plan to see it at least once more before I finalize an opinion, but for now I am still on monosyllables like "whee!". Some brief thoughts (highlight to read; spoilers below):

-No men with blue sticks of death!
-Kaylee got skinny for the movie. I adamantly disapprove. She was far cuter with a rounder face.
-If the gamble pays off and Universal lets Whedon make more of these, he's going to have to work hard to rebuild the level of character interaction and sexual tension.
-The death of Shepherd Book mostly upset me because now we'll never learn the secrets of his shadowy past. But Wash's death genuinely shocked me. He had a special place in my heart based on our first glimpse of him playing with the dinosaurs.
-The directing was iffy in places, mostly in terms of how the actors were shot in closeup. The battle scenes were better.

All that aside, this is the best SF movie to come out in years and you should see it even if you weren't a Firefly fan. My newbie companion's reaction was, "wow!" My unspoken reaction was "more, please!" Go, go, go.