Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Some of you may have noted that along my sidebar of "Roosts," is the Firefly Fan Site. Firefly was a short-lived series created by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel.) about Captain Malcolm Reynolds and the crew of Serenity, his Firefly-class spaceship. It's been called a western in space, and it is that, but it's also so very much more.

Sadly for all of us, the series was canceled, even before all the episodes of the first season were shown (though you can now get them all on DVD or Blu-Ray). However, the Impossible Happened: the fans made such a stink about it, that the movie Serenity was made.

During the recent writer's strike, Joss and his brothers wrote Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog in such a way that they wouldn't violate the issues the strike was about. It was a 43-minute-long movie, originally released only on the internet. It's now available at Amazon. As usual, Joss and company did such a great job, it won the People's Choice Award for "Favorite Online Sensation."

I tried to get this from Netflix, but they didn't carry it. Since I love pretty much everything Joss Whedon creates, I dove in and bought the DVD from Amazon. Mr. ShellHawk and I watched it yesterday, and we both absolutely loved it.

Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris) is a budding evil genius, whose main concern is to gain membership in The Evil League of Evil. Another concern is getting up the nerve to ask out Penny (Felicia Day), the girl of his dreams. He keeps running into her at the laundromat.

His third concern is his nemesis, good guy and superhero Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion). Hammer eventually discovers Horrible's love for Penny, and makes it his mission to woo the girl for himself. Amongst these revelations are well-written (of course) and well-sung songs (it is a musical, after all), great acting, and a tight, well-constructed script.

You can go to the official site to see this shiny gem on the web.

As an aside, Mr. ShellHawk had decided he wants to be Dr. Horrible for Halloween. I thought it would be difficult to find size 14 white rubber boots for him, but it seems we've scored on that front. I can't wait to see him in the costume because he's already a mad scientist, and I'll have an excuse to tart up some goggles for him.

Now all I have to do is figure out my costume.