The year in film to date marked a true highpoint around Oscar time and now has lulled into a world where ‘Meet the Spartans’ topped the US box office in the past few weeks. In the midst of any tacograph of creativity there is usually some talent worth watching but in an age of as much production being leant to marketing as the quality of movies I can’t help but look for that great white hope of ideas and talent. One director I am really enjoying is Marc Foster, who has shown tremendous diversity in delivering the wonderful ‘Finding Neverland’, the sombre ‘Monsters Ball’ and you can’t but be intrigued by the potential of him being at the helm of the new Bond. J.J. Abrams is working consistently in the background of a number of TV shows and some large scale movie projects but I can’t help but feel there are only some few degrees of separation between him and the output of Jerry Bruckheimer, while Zac Helm heralded as the second coming after the over rated ‘Stranger than Fiction’, has yet to deliver upon any early promise and M. Night Shyamalan proved to be a one trick pony with an indecipherable name. Readers, what I am missing in my life is a Joss Whedon-type or better yet some new material from Joss Whedon.

Before I get into my praising of Joss Whedon and his stellar work, if any of this seems fanboyish then so be it - he rocks. And on. Whedon is perhaps his own worst enemy, his departure from the Wonderwoman project was said to be acrimonious and his relationship with the powers that be were strained from the beginning. Too big a project to be left to his own devices as essentially happened on ‘Serenity’ his delayed delivery of a story that sought to introduce a complex character within complex surrounds did not meet the rote franchise superhero formula required of him. We may think the school boy crushes and frustrations of wealthy billionaires are complex but not when you consider them within the context of the layers Whedon has added to the superheros he has created. After 7 years of TV, he still managed to mine worlds of emotion, humour and challenge from the characters in ‘Buffy: The Vampire Slayer’. It was a treat to watch some of the moments of the final series tie back beautifully to the original themes of the show reminding us of how rich a show Whedon created. So too in ‘Firefly’ there was the production value of a movie put into 12 half hours of television and they rank as some of the funniest and best made television I have watched. Whedon expounds on the philosophy behind his storytelling in this interview, this excerpt on is opinion of spoilers describing exactly what I admire in his work:

It’s the idea of surprise being the point of storytelling, and the most honest emotion, because it’s truly humbling. Surprise means you have to reassess what you thought. It means that you were wrong about the way things were structured, and that’s exciting, and really important. It also makes for a good story. I mean, The Sixth Sense is fine the second time around, but honestly, the first time around, it’s dazzling. When it matters, when it makes a difference, letting a story happen to you, letting a narrative take place instead of just waiting for placeholders is a better experience, and it feeds you. We need narrative, it feeds us in a particular way, and deconstructing it completely before you’ve actually experienced it, I think it leaves us unfed.

With ‘Firefly’ cancelled and its movie resurrection considered a financial failure, projects in either TV or film have been lacking. Apart from 2 episodes of ‘The US Office’ which he directed in 2007, we have seen no new material from Whedon since 2005. Whedon, a fervent supporter of the writers strike did man the picket line on more than one occassion acting as a spokesperson, otherwise his time has mostly been committed to developing comic books continuing the stories of ‘Buffy’ and ‘Angel’, as well as his long term association with the X-Men comics. This is all good and well but I like live action and smart story telling and if we must suffer Carmen Electra and Britney Spears parodies at No. 1 can we at least not hope for some quality further down the list.

This in mind I have looked into what we can expect from Whedon in the future - distant or otherwise. ‘Goners’ a supernatural thriller and ‘Cabin in the Woods’, a horror movie, are both projects written by Whedon which he has proposed directing, though neither are green lit and ‘Goners’ has been subject to many re-writes in a pattern all too familiar with Whedon’s projects. At the 2007 Comic-Con the oft-mooted ‘Ripper’ series, focusing on stories surrounding Giles from ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’ was said to have been all but agreed with the BBC, though little follow up on this does not inspire confidence. All is not lost though as with the writers strike now over, Whedon has teamed up with Eliza Dushku (’Faith’ from ‘Buffy’) in a show called ‘Dollhouse’.

“Dollhouse” stars Dushku as Echo, one of a group of secret agents living in a futuristic dorm. Each has the ability to be imprinted with custom personalities and abilities for special assignments. When they return, their newly acquired memories are wiped. The show follows Echo as she takes on a variety of assignments—some romantic, some adventurous, some uplifting, some illegal—and gains awareness of her role and confinement.

A 7 episode commitment and hopefully a debut of the show later this year should see a welcome return of Whedonesque to our screens. It remains frustrating to think of the well deep list of ideas not being developed due to a system so afraid to take a chance yet that will stretch an idea to within an inch of its life when someone else has been brave enough to do the groundwork.