Nick Kyme

…and I’m here indoors in front of my laptop scribing this blog post. Sheesh – I must be nuts.

Taking Sam’s advice, I’m going to ease off a little today. I plan to do some work on a few synopses later (possibly this evening when it’s cooler – man, it is tricky to get any writing done when it’s so nice and warm outside. Where’s the grim darkness of the UK when you need it eh, Steve? He’ll know what I mean… ).

So, what else is in store? Well, I have some fairly mundane chores to do: cutting the grass, cleaning the house a little and so on, but I plan to take a trip into Nottingham city centre to peruse the Blu-rays, as I recently purchased a PS3 with all of its Blu-ray compatibility goodness. Yes, I am now the console king. A blog post will be forthcoming about my experiences of this high-definition phenomenon.

First job today, after eating breakfast and watching a couple of episodes of the excellent Star Wars: Clone Wars series (again, a blog post is imminent on this subject), I headed over to the Royal Mail sorting office. Regular readers of the blog will know that my front door letter box is made for a house a mouse would live in (it’s very small and narrow), so virtually nothing except the ubiquitous swathes of junk pile (mainly concerning elections and so forth – ugh!) seem to get through. Consequently, I had a bunch of parcels to collect and was happy to find the latest graphic novel in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer season eight series amongst them! I’ve been reading this series quite keenly and enjoying it a lot.

If you’re into Buffy, by the way, check out my post on the talk about the new movie – without Gellar and the gang!

Well, that’s pretty much my itinerary for today. The grass cutting and then a jaunt into Nottingham centre beckons. Just time to show you these bad boys that I saw of the FPI website. They are soooo going on my writing desk. Who ya gonna call?

Taking my daily dip onto IGN.com, I come across a story related to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The full schtick is here but, in summary, plans are afoot to re-launch the Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise with a new Hollywood movie that takes a darker slant on the popular late 90’s/early noughties (man, I hate that phrase) television series.

Knee jerk reaction to the popularity of Twilight? Dollar signs in place of pupils? Who knows?

What I do know is there’ll be no Gellar (despite the fact her movie career seems to have stagnated somewhat). Nor will characters Xander or Willow, or Spike or maybe even Giles appear… It seems the re-launch, headed up by the writers/producers of the fairly diabolical early 90’s movie (but hey, it spawned a great and popular TV show, so not all bad) is not going to have any of the old slayer baggage. Not even the aforementioned movie will impact on it in any way. ‘Continuity be damned’, they say, ‘this is a do-over’ (a phrase, incidentally, associated with a fairly lacklustre show call Tru Calling that starred Buffy’s Eliza Dushku – she was Faith, by the way, though now in another of Whedon’s struggling sf series, Dollhouse – see the linky?).

Fair enough, I guess. Much like Star Trek got its own lick of super-white emulsion by way of a fresh start, courtesy of some dubious time-travelling/alternate-reality antics (I’m not a Trekky, Trekker, Trekkster or whatever they’re called, but I just saw the movie this weekend and thought some aspects of that, while completely understandable in wanting to free up future movies from the shackles of geek continuity, were a little bit forced) and the Batman franchise had a very successful overhaul at the hands of Chris ‘The Maestro’ Nolan, it seems that Buffy is going the same way.

‘A new generation of fans is needed!’, is the battle cry from the studios, no doubt. Shame though, as I was quite a fan of the old Buffy TV show. During its seven season reign, there were a lot of highlights and some rightly deserved awards nods. It was the show, I think, that put Whedon on the map. He knows it, knows the characters and the mores, so maybe that’s why he’s going no where near this revamp (pun wholly intended, folks).

I am, I confess, a little disappointed. Part of me always hoped that Buffy would return to the small screen. I’ve even been following the continuing adventures in the graphic novels (season eight, don’t you know) and am enjoying it immensely. So, when I saw the headline ‘Buffy is back?’ my hopes were high. Inevitably, they were dashed on the cruel rocks of reality.

If it goes ahead, this movie, it could spawn a new dawn for Buffy (no pun intended on that one, ardent Buffy and Michelle Trachtenburg fans) and maybe take the franchise in a new and exciting direction. But take heed, Hollywood executives and wannabe revampers, part of the reason for Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s popularity and longevity was its tone, its melding of teenage angst and good ‘ol horror. Dark is good, I like dark – it works for Batman, but Buffy? Hmm, not so sure.