I really like the Firefly television series . . . and not just because I like Joss Whedon’s work and want to support him . . . although I do.

Firefly is rather special. It is science fiction without the aliens with a nice Western post-Civil War feel.

Now . . . we have some good words coming out from folks who have seen the first screener of the film . . . see Ain’t It Cool News, DarkWorlds, and CHUD.

Granted, the film has been delayed to a Sept. 2005 release instead of Spring . . . and most of the folks posting rave reviwers are already Firefly fanboys and fangirlz . . . but, that’s okay. I’m a bit more than a fanboy myself.

From reports, lots of loose ends from the Fox-murdered series get tied up . . . lots of them. Also, lots of effects stuff with space battles, air combat, and sword fights. And . . . reavers . . . big scary reavers. River and her story are the central bit so perhaps we’ll learn some more about her and what the government did to her. One report says that the show brings more Solo-esque characters to the screen since . . . Han Solo. Koolness.

I just hope that with all the extra money Whedon had to throw at the movie for the big screen that the production could afford some better Mandarin coaching. The television series mixture of English and Chinese in a future where the English and Chinese speaking cultures have mixed in some ways along with a hodgepodge of other cultural mixings and collages is really quite interesting . . . unfortunately, I have yet to meet a native speaker of Chinese who realizes the actors are attempting to speak Mandarin until AFTER I tell them it’s Chinese and then half the times I have to translate the Chinese for the native Chinese speakers.

Professional actors should be able to mimic the tones and sounds if they are instructed in simple tonal shifts. Mandarin has four tones, they are important. Actors should be able to sing the damned dialog if necessary. However, if their coaching isn’t strict, they won’t know they’re not getting it. In many ways, it sounds a bit like John Wayne’s Mandarin when he played an old riverboat captain in Canton who smuggles a village to freedom in Hong Kong. The coaching for that old film was done by a Cantonese speaker with little actual Mandarin ability and that was heavily accented plus Wayne didn’t know tones from Jar Jar’s codpiece. If you give them good models to mimic, the actors should be able to handle things. It’s unclear if the Firefly problems are due to bad coaching or bad dialog acting, but since it’s endemic to every single character in the show, the latter seems more likely than the former.

Of course, even with the lousy Mandarin, the television series is wonderful and well worth your viewing. The movie should prove to be even better. Dammit, September seems to far away.