Saturday, September 5, 2009

What's the Sitch? The *other* Whedonverse News of the Week

Two time Cap'n Nathan Fillion will be making an appearance at the Apple Store in Soho, NYC on September 18th. Me thinks he might also pop by Joss's Dr. Horrible event the following Monday because, why not?






Marc Blucas has been cast in the film Witchita alongside A-listers Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz; Grows "crustache".








Angel's Elizabeth Rohm will be making a guest appearance on the upcoming season of never-getting-better Heroes. She will also be on the season premier of 90210, which mean she'll probably be somewhere inside of Sunnydale High - a.k.a Torrance High School, where both 90210 and Buffy were filmed. Full circle, baby.




Angel wins the honor of "Sexiest vampire" by beating who Michelle calls "Twilight guy. " Hee! So innocent. Better than "RPatz", though.







TV Squad does Whedon's Top Ten Big Bads and gets extra points for #5 on the list. Good stuff.








TFAW.com is doing 40% off all in-stock Whedon comics from June '09 & earlier this weekend! You can also pre-order on Super Scott Allie's Exurbia over there. Look out for our exclusive interview with Scott about Exurbia this coming week.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Happy 600th Post!!

Smidge reads Buffyfest every morning, right before her minions place freshly fallen leaves all over her body.

Wowzers! I almost missed it! I had no idea our anniversary post was approaching. Congrats on 600 posts mostly well done. There was that one where the commenter told Bitsy he sucked, but fan rage has got to us all before. Ha!

*raises glass* To the next 600! *clink*

Felicia Day says, "Charisma Carpenter has a giant vagina."

Apparently that's what Miss Penny just said to Queen C herself on the Buffy/Angel panel at Dragon*Con. Thankfully, this is all in reference to the birth of Jasmine.

Charisma's response? "It talks and is called Frankenpussy."

Ha!

We're following the twitterfeed of @thegingerpire all weekend long for Dragon*con updates. Look out for her recap at the end of the weekend, right here on Buffyfest.

September Silliness - The Buffy Episode Tournament (Round 1a)

FYI VOTING IS CLOSED FOR THIS ROUND

Ok, here it is kids! What's it gonna be, what's it gonna be? Which Buffy episode is the fan favorite? Which makes us scream "Joss!" at the TV more than any other? By the end of the month, we'll know.


This is a massive tournament with 128 randomly paired episodes fighting for the title. This time around we have a new polling system so everyone can see what's winning without waiting for our tally. Round 1 is broken into 4 regions with 16 matches in each. Let the games begin!


Voting for this part ends Sunday at 11:59 pm EST at which point Round 1b will begin.

By the way, if you need a refresher, click here for the full list of episodes and their descriptions.


Region 1: Sunnydale
Location: The Bronze








































If your curious to see the entire bracket of Round 1, click here to enlarge:

Thursday, September 3, 2009

The Massive Buffy Episode Tournament a.k.a "September Silliness"

So way back before this little here blog began, we were just a few friends and fellow fanatics of the Whedon. We'd have private forum arguments, send mini email news alerts to each other (well, Michelle mostly just sent pics of Boreanaz in the bathtub, but that's a whole other story) and of course have our yearly Buffyfest. What we'd also do is tournaments, which is what inspired our now notorious March Madness Whedonverse Character Tourney, this past Spring.

One time I'm pretty sure we did a Super Episode Tourney with, like, every single damn Whedon episode of anything ever. It didn't actually end with a winner because there are only 3 of us and Bitsy refused to break a tie betwixt Michelle and I. He was taking a stand and now we'll never know what the best episode of anything ever was. We did end up managing to agree on a strictly Buffy Episode Tourney and we thought we'd share the results of the top 4, below. The results definitely don't define our collective top 4 episodes ever. It just sort of happens that way in tourneys. I think "OMWF" got knocked out in the second round by "Hush" or something, and yet "Homecoming" made it to the top 8. Go figure. Anyway, here goes:

Spifrillyria's Final Four:
Lover's Walk vs. Innocence
The Gift vs. Becoming pt. 2

I'm not going to bother letting on what took the top prize since we're proud to announce we'll be opening it up from scratch, to the masses, starting tomorrow September 4th. An internet wide Buffy Episode Tournament! This will be known as "September Silliness." We're starting with the top 128 episodes as we had to eliminate 16 to fit them in the brackets (I don't think "I Robot, You Jane" will mind) and will keep going all month long.

Here's a teaser of the bracket. Get ready because there are some tough calls even at this early stage! "Passion" vs. "The Body"? How to choose? This is how "Go Fish" ends up lasting 3 rounds.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Top 8 Happy Moments (Sorta) in the Whedonverse

Last week, inspired by an SFX article, Buffyfest came up with our own list of the Whedonverse's Greatest Tearjerkers which you can find here. We've decided to balance out the sadness with some of the happy, albeit fleeting, moments throughout the years. Trust me, it's much harder than you'd think and I'm not sure anyone will leave this post feeling happy. Sorry.


"I Will Remember You"

Buffy and Angel in bed and laughing with ice cream. It's a rare moment when you see either of these two so happy and relaxed, so when they're doing it together, it must be a really happy moment. Of course, we all know how that ultimately ends.





Dr. Horrible

Captain Hammer just might sleep with the same girl twice! But, then she dies.








"Sleep Tight"

The beginning and I mean only the beginning of that episode. Angel is all "Daddy's here" when Connor is fussing. He's so happy and then...and then...damn you Wes.






"Bad Eggs"

Buffy's grounded at the end of that episode, but she's all smiles as she secretly smooches with Angel through her bedroom window. Uh, that episode ends well I guess, but then..oh, never mind.






"All the Way"

There's really nothing funny about Season Six at all, but Anya's excitement about her engagement to Xander is one of the happy moments. Of course, she eventually gets left at the alter and then sliced in half a year later, so...yeah, okay, moving on.





"Passion"

Giles is about to get back with the woman he loves and he's about to (one would assume) get some, so he's all smiles as he enters his house to find the lights dim, rose petals strewn on the floor and...oh, dammit.






"Seeing Red"

Willow and Tara get back together and they're happy and Dawn's happy for them, but as I mentioned above, Season Six will suck the happy out of anyone, so by the end of the episode Willow's all, "Tara? Come on baby. Get up." I hate you Powers that Be (meaning Joss)!




"Graduation Day Part II"

The end when the gang is sitting outside the school and Oz tells them to take a moment. They graduated/survived. That's a happy one, right? It doesn't matter that Buffy's beau just skipped town leaving her with a bite mark scar and a bunch of other internal scars that will last till the end of the show and that Cordy ends up with visions that nearly kill her, but not before an evil god takes over her body and Willow goes evil and Oz skips town and Xander dumps his bride. Oh well, I tried.


And Honorable Mention goes to...


"Surprise"

Even though there's nothing truly happy in this episode, attention must be given to the fact that Angel was REALLY happy by the last scene, enough to make his soul go bye-bye.


Screencaps courtesy of Screencap-Paradise

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

This just in: Interwebs succumb to the Bean



So you remember how on Sunday I was saying that Buffy's dream man in a perfect world would be Dean Winchester? Well, it turns out, that's becoming a fairly common belief. Now the article in that hyper text link talks about the similarities between the two (putting a heavy influence on the fact that they've both died and been forcibly resurrected to continue fighting a battle they were full and ready to check out of). To me, though, there's more that binds them than death.

For one (and this too got a mention) they both have siblings who are always getting themselves into trouble. Granted, Sam might not be so inept at everything that involves, you know, being a functional human being but he does seem to go waltzing directly into harm's way at every possible turn. Now I realize not everyone here finds Dawn to be... shall we say palatable? Sure, why not. Still, I kind of wonder what it would be like to see the Summers Sisters driving around in the Metallicar fighting evil. I actually think that could be super awesome.

But I'm going on a tangent. The real thing I want (what everyone should want) is a story about Buffy and Dean (or Bean, if you will). So what's the sitch? Why these two? Well, I'll tell you. It's more than just their both being hot (although that certainly does help). It's more a philosophical similarity, a code of ethics, a series of goals and the means in which they might achieve them. Did I already mention the hotness because, if not, hello hotness. I mean, for realz, yo. Damn.


Back to the philosophy. Let's switch roles for a second. Imagine it's Sam and Dean high above a growing maw that leads to hell on earth at the end of the Gift. What do you think Dean would do? Would he push his brother in and call it a day? See ya, Sammy! No. He'd do exactly what Buffy did. He'd save his kid brother and sacrifice himself. In fact he does pretty much exactly that at the end of Season Three of Supernatural. Neither Buffy nor Dean are afraid to make the hard decisions and they both fight for the ones they love no matter the cost.


Looking at Buffy in the comic, now more than ever she needs someone to rely upon. I mean just look at how alienated she's become from her friends. She just killed future Willow, Xander is still on the list of suspects for who might be Twilight, Giles is with Faith, and Dawn is... well let's just say she's being pretty Dawnish. Buffy needs a hero by her side. Can't be Angel because, let's face it, he really is almost definitely Twilight. Spike? I shudder to think if only because I think they are by far at their best when as far away from each other as possible (it's funny what mutual disdain and abuse will do to a relationship). Buffy needs someone new, someone who knows how to face off against the vampires, the demons, and all the other ooky uglies who jump out from under the bed. I don't know if I'd mentioned this already but the guy should probably be really hot because, let's face it, Buffy has EARNED IT.

Enter Dean Winchester. He's a brash badass with just enough goofiness to match with Buffy's tendency to get a little beer bad from time to time. He's got a soul, he's not a vampire so no curses involved, he wants to save the world but knows he can't keep doing it forever. Without so much as a single super power he can go toe to toe with any baddie. Let's see Xander Harris match that (P.S. he can't). Also? Jensen Ackles is the sexiest man alive. The end.

What's that? A skinless misogynist and his witchy pseudo girlfriend are trying to help an evil mastermind put an end to magic and destroy Buffy completely in the process? Well tell Buffy to jump into the Metallicar because it's time to go for a ride to kickass ville and "Eye of the Tiger" is playing on the radio. I bet they'd have the situation well in hand before they were even hungry enough to stop in a midwestern diner. Oh and... I gues Sam and Dawn and come along to. You know, for the lulz.