* Of course, in Hollywood, it’s not always easy to spot the April Fool’s story from the real thing. That’s why IESB frontloads their big possible, eventual scoop today with all sorts of promises that they’re not joking. Anyhow, it appears that #1 cult creator Joss Whedon, most recently of “Dollhouse” and “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” fame, is supposedly on the short list to direct “The Avengers,” currently being penned by Zak Penn.

If you’re skeptical about this, you’re far from alone. Just check out the slightly quizzical reaction from Whedon’s robotic and slavishly devoted cult — of which I am a known member — over at Whedonesque. (I’ve even forgiven Whedon for listening too much to Rahm Emmanuel and selling out to big pharma and not fighting hard enough to keep the public option in the health care bill….Oh, wait, wrong blog.) Still, Whedon’s known for staying in touch with his fans. I strongly suspect that, if the story were completely unfounded, he’d have posted something about it by now.

One creative point. Some fans seem skeptical that a collaboration between Penn and Whedon could work. Well, of course, Whedon has actually done any number of rewrites and polishes on other people’s scripts — a lot of folks give him credit for most of the wittier portions of “Speed” — and though Penn has been involved with some pretty conventionally dull flicks in his day, he’s not completely lacking imagination and humor. His little seen 2004 comedy-thriller mock-documentary, “Incident at Loch Ness,” has some remarkably hilarious moments,  most of them courtesy of Werner Herzog, playing himself and also taking a cowriting credit. If Penn’s good enough for Herr Herzog, he’s perhaps good enough for Joss Whedon.

* Speaking of “The Avengers,” the movie about the only actual deity in the group, “Thor,” is currently in production and director Kenneth Branagh talked about the film and his affection for the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby/et al comic books in today’s L.A. Times. This was not some random publicity glad-handing but a deliberate effort to squelch some unpleasant — and, to my ear, unlikely — rumors being reported in the tabloid press which allege open on-set criticism/anger directed at newcomer-lead Chris Hemsworth from venerable master thespian Anthony Hopkins, presumably relating to the 26 year-old star’s relative lack of experience, at least compared to Hopkins.  Hopkins, who’ll be playing Thor’s even more venerable dad, Odin, and Branagh have strongly denied the rumors and painted a picture of a happy set.

I was fairly impressed with Hemsworth’s work in the opening of “Star Trek,” so I tend to lean towards the official story here. He’s also a veteran of an Aussie soap, “Home and Away,” and history teaches us that soap vets tend to become pretty good actors when actually allowed time to learn their lines properly and develop characters. I don’t know much about Hopkins on a personal level except that he’s gotten this far in his career without these kind of incidents being an issue that I can think of. I suspect it would take a titanic lack of talent/ability to visibly annoy him at this point.

* Department of gross generalizations: A difference between British and American directors as revealed in that newest of ill-advised show-biz moments: the Twitter hissy fit. (A “Twissy fit”?)

Last week America’s — let’s make that New Jersey’s — Kevin Smith made himself look as bad as he possibly could have with a typically curse-filled diatribe at us, horrible, horrible critics for failing to love his film in the appropriate way even though it had done well enough commercially to pave the way for another, less commercial, film to be greenlit. Lathering himself up into a rage, he imagined himself forcing critics to personally pay to see his films.

Today, Duncan Jones was angry on behalf of his debut feature, “Moon” which starred Sam Rockwell in a somewhat remarkable performance. The film got very good reviews, especially for a first film, but received little publicity and not a lot of box-office. As reported by Anne Thompson, apparently losing his temper because he believed himself to have been shortchanged by manipulations on the part of his studio regarding DVDs, he went on a tirade. Well, his version of a tirade. Behold, the fury of Jones:

Just learned how we got “got” by the studio on Moon, and wont be getting any revenue from it. Very angry.

Shocked yet? Well, feel the heat coming off of this one:

Im actually quite upset right now.

I’m sorry, but I find this rage almost hilariously low key and, well, you know, English. He then deleted the tweets and took it all very politely and diffidently back.

Shouldn’t try to understand revenue reporting. didn’t have all the info. Being assured it’s all as it should be… Will stick to directing!

Not to generalize too much, but it seems to me that, at least via Twitter, English apoplectic rage is a little bit like East Coast American calm.

* Doug Liman, who knows his way around action and comedy but occasionally has problems dealing with the humans and costs involved in filmmaking, is “in negotiations” for what looks to be the non-horrendously awful upcoming new version of “The Three Musketeers” — in 3-D, of course.

* M. Night Shyamalan takes a lot crap from, well, everybody, mainly for the quality of pretty much all of his movies following “Unbreakable” (which I didn’t care much for, either). His newest film won’t have one of his famous tomato surprise twists to hamper it. “The Last Airbender” is an adaptation of a popular anime which presumably has more of an epic storyline. However, some vocal fans are up in arms regarding its casting.

To them, it’s an East Asian story and the film has most of the primary roles going to caucasians. The supporting cast is more mixed, with two fairly well known actors of South Asian ancestry, charismatic Dev Patel of “Slum Dog Millionaire” and the brilliant Aasif Mandvi of “The Daily Show” and, believe it or not, 1998’s controversial and prescient political thriller, “The Siege.” The only East Asian ancestry person with what appears to be a major role is Korean-American Randall Duk Kim. I take it that some of these roles are fairly villainous while the two young leads are whites. Given how few good roles there are for Asian-American actors  I’m tempted to opine a bit here, but I don’t feel I know enough about the original property to wade into this one.

* And, yes, there were a few actual fake April Fools movie stories, though nothing too epic. Snarky geek movie site Pajiba changed its entire reportorial mission to one of bland obedience to their corporate overlords, while Batman movies were a recurring theme in two other items. First, Michael Cera was cast as the Riddler in Christopher Nolan’s third Batman epic. Then, Nolan (and presumably Cera) were fired and replaced by Tim Burton as director and Johnny Depp as the Riddler.

* Breaking: Fake movie-related news story from last summer!

As a lifelong fan and a nearly lifelong tough critic of musicals, I love most of these films. However, this list is not so much a traditional “best of” and I’ve included one choice I definitely don’t like. (It won’t be hard to guess which.) These are musicals that I think contributed to the development of this polarizing and hard to pull off genre. They don’t hark back to times gone by or try to recapture a past glory that will never return, but actually take us into the future. That’s important now that musicals seem to have a future.

“Dancer in the Dark” (2000)

Earlier this year, the brilliant but often irritating Danish director Lars von Trier shocked hard-to-shock European festival audiences with graphic sexual violence in “Antichrist.” Back in 2000, all he needed to divide audiences was some really intense melodrama and an approach to making dark musicals partially borrowed from TV creator Dennis Potter (“Pennies from Heaven,” “The Singing Detective”).

Featuring a literally once-in-a-lifetime lead performance by singer-songwriter Björk as a young mother ready to sacrifice everything to save her son’s failing eyesight, “Dancer in the Dark” is maybe the most emotionally potent story of parental love I’ve ever seen. As a musical, it’s strange and arresting.

Like the Potter television shows and movies and “Chicago,” further down the list, the musical numbers take place in the mind of the lead character. In this case, however, it is particularly poignant as our heroine is a fan of musicals who, though she is gradually going blind, is attempting to appear in a community theater production of “The Sound of Music.” Below, she musically confesses her situation to a smitten Peter Stormare (yes, the guy from “Fargo”). Lumberjacks or not, “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” sure seems like a long time ago.

Moulin Rouge” (2001)
As the non-musical Pixar films became the dominant template for animation and the musical form lost its last apparent movie bastion, big studios began to experiment with musicals starring humans. Unfortunately for me, the first and still one of the most popular of this decade’s high profile film musicals was Baz Luhrmann’s beautifully shot, amazingly designed, dull-witted, and over-edited “Moulin Rouge.”

Yes, this musical fan is not a fan of the musical that’s been credited with resurrecting the genre. Why? A couple of sequences work, but on the whole I expect the funny parts of a movie to make me laugh and, even more important, I like to see the movies I’m seeing. As far as I can tell, Luhrmann simply doesn’t have the confidence in this film to allow us time to view the arresting images he’s worked so hard to craft, nor does he permit time to actually see the hard work his dancers and actors put in. Editor Jil Bilcock is expected to do all the performing instead.

As for what Luhrmann and his arrangers did with the various classic songs they threw into a musical Cuisinart, the less I say about it the better. At the risk of sounding like a fogey (or a member of an 18th century Austrian court), too many notes. Way, way, way, too many notes. See if you disagree.

“Hedwig and the Angry Inch” (2001)

John Cameron Mitchell pulled off a tremendous coup in adapting his stage hit, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” into a film that, though something of a cult success, is still vastly under-recognized. The live “Hedwig” was essentially a rock concert combined with a one-person show, so turning it into a relatively conventional dramatic movie meant adding a great deal of new material. Working on a very modest budget and studying his Fosse, he crafted a new kind of music film that blended wondrous David Bowie/T-Rex-style glam rock composed by Stephen Trask, outrageous comedy, and some fairly searing drama with imaginative performance sequences and elements of more traditional musical theater. That same year, Todd Haynes’ historical musical, “Velvet Goldmine,” explicitly tried the same thing on a much larger, vastly less humorous, scale with a fictionalized story of the glitter rock era. It’s actually a terrific movie in many respects, but it didn’t have the needed emotional resonance or connect with an audience in the same way as “Hedwig.”

Here, Hedwig, the lonely but unflaggingly flamboyant East German not-quite-transsexual victim of a badly botched sex change operation, experiences a wondrous musical rebirth just as the Berlin Wall falls. This, my friends, is one way to shoot a musical number on a budget. It starts a bit downbeat and slow, but it rewards a little patience.

“Chicago” (2002)

After “Moulin Rouge” became a surprise hit on DVD, it was decreed somewhere that most musicals should be over-edited ADHD extravaganzas. Largely because he had a brilliant adaptation by Bill Condon to work with, director Rob Marshall actually could have done a lot worse with “Chicago.” It’s a movie I like very much, even though it was so over-cut that I wondered if Marshall was trying to hide the fact that, as dancers go, Renee Zellweger and Richard Gere can’t really be expected to be Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. Since he shot his next film, the non-musical melodrama, “Memoirs of a Geisha,” in almost the same way, I’m still not sure.

Bob Fosse, easily one of my four or five favorite directors, basically invented the highly edited musical comedy sequence with his first film, 1969’s “Sweet Charity.” However, first and foremost a dancer and choreographer himself, he never lost site of the action even as he jazzed up the presentation in brilliant new ways. In adapting the choreography Fosse created in the seventies for the original stage show of “Chicago,” Marshall loses something. Even with a group of first rate dancers, including Catherine Zeta-Jones, he can’t hold a shot for more than a second. The miracle is the following signature sequence from the film still works, but I’m convinced it would be even better if only he’d laid off the cine-caffeine a little. (“Cell Block Tango” starts at 2:07.)

“Colma: The Musical” (2006)

Things were pretty slow in the way of half-way decent musicals during the middle of the decade. Christopher Columbus’s take on “Rent” was about as uninspired as you would expect and had me wondering why anyone liked the original show. The freakishly candy-colored direction of Joel Schumacher, which we all remember so well from his Batman movies, was combined with Andrew Lloyd Weber’s mock-classical dirges to make for a completely unwatchable “Phantom of the Opera” (I know this is true because I was completely unable to make myself watch more than a half hour of it.) Bill Condon’s attempt at duplicating Rob Marshall’s directing style on “Dreamgirls” was a lot better, but still just okay except for truly first-rate performances by Eddie Murphy and some great singing by Jennifer Hudson. I had an excuse to skip “High School Musical” because it was only a TV movie at the time.

And then, from a San Francisco suburb this lifelong Californian had never heard of, came one of those rare surprises that makes this whole cinephile/film critic thing worthwhile. A collaboration between first-time director Richard Wong and singer-songwriter-actor-screenwriter H.P. Mendoza, “Colma: The Musical” builds on the low-budget inventions of “Hedwig” by adopting the traditional singing-for-no-reason musical to the zero-budget aesthetic.

Brazenly getting around all the traditional problems with film musicals by taking a fresh, eye level approach to musical numbers and simply refusing to apologize for the fact that its characters have a weird habit of singing with an invisible power-pop band, “Colma” was also a musical version of maybe half the zero-budget indies ever filmed. A story of three eighteen year-old friends adjusting to adulthood and fraught relationships with lovers, family, and each other, it tends to drag a bit whenever the music stops. Fortunately, there’s lots of very smart pop music by Mendoza, whose style recalls They Might Be Giants and Amy Mann. After a good-but-not-great opening, the film explodes with a true single-take wonder: an eight minute, two-song “oner” that is eight of most fun minutes of any movie of the decade as far as I’m concerned.

Unfortunately, I can’t show you even part of that here, or any of Wong and Mendoza’s other fine music sequences. However, some unembeddable clips can be found on YouTube. You can also read what I wrote about “Colma: The Musical” a couple of years back here. But first, check out the trailer. It’s pretty cool.

“Once” (2007)

Of course, if you find making an old-school break-into-song musical a bit too much, you can always find a story about people who would actually perform music in real life and then simply not cut-away during the songs. You could call it the coward’s way out, but if it was good enough for Bob Fosse in “Cabaret,” it’s good enough for anyone else. And no film in recent years has used this approach more effectively than this gentle semi-romantic drama about a pair of street musicians, both with strong attachments to absent lovers, who meet and find happiness together — musically, that is. With a dash of “Brief Encounter” and little bit of “The Commitments,” “Once” cast quite a spell. Well, on me and a lot of people, but not everyone.

Still, even though the music by stars Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová is often haunting but not entirely my personal cup of ultra-laid-back modern folk, writer-director John Carney’s warmly matter of fact approach to the simple pleasure of musical perfomance made this cozy, joyful, and poignant little hang-out movie impossible to forget. Sorry, I couldn’t find any decent clips — or even a trailer I liked — online. Here, have a photo instead.

“Sweeney Todd” (2007)

The risky but logical choice of having Tim Burton, a past master of non-musical stylization, adapt Stephen Sondheim’s dark musical masterpiece, “Sweeney Todd,” paid off in into a movie musical that was both unprecedented and old-fashioned, blending classical horror techniques going back to the 1930s with a straightforward approach to the musical drama and an awful lot of blood for a musical. Though I had concerns about casting two actors not especially known for their musical theater abilities in the lead roles, Johnny Depp proved to be a strong enough singer and a great enough actor that it wasn’t a problem; Helena Bonham Carter, if no Angela Lansbury, held her own rather and the supporting cast was first-rate. As for Burton, for once his genius with the design elements of the film was matched with some geniuinely great material.

The best part was that Burton had no problem keeping things simple and letting the drama and suspense just play itself out, as in this brilliant duet of would-be murder between Depp and Alan Rickman (a better singer than you’d expect) as the vile Judge Turpin. Here, Sweeney learns that revenge may be a dish best served warm after all.

“Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” (2009)

Purists might scream, I suppose, that since it’s primarily been viewed on the Internet, this effort by Joss Whedon and various friends and family members doesn’t qualify as a movie. All I can say is that it has screened at the American Cinematheque and it’s never been on TV, and I say that makes it a movie, damnit. What, you interject, I already included this in my “TV in the 2000s” entry on Joss Whedon? To that, I can only say, “posh!” and “balderdash!” and “who cares what you think little accuracy person?” Just be grateful I couldn’t figure out how to shoehorn the musical “Buffy” episode in here, too — ’cause I was thinking about it!

Okay, before I get any more carried away over-channeling Joss Whedon’s sense of humor, I’ll tell you that the real reason I’m including this is because I really do believe that, as much as any film here, the combination of DIY financing and highly professional talent makes “Dr. Horrible” one intriguing pathway to the future of musicals and, because of how it was presented, the future of entertainment in general. Moreover, the Whedon clan understands an awful lot about entertainment and, without resorting to fancy tricks they sell a very silly musical tragicomedy about a lovesick aspiring supervillain (played by musical theater pro and comedy genius Neil Patrick Harris) and fill it with social satire, shticky jokes, and sadness. In others words, if you simply commit you can tell just about any story.

There’ll be a sequel to “Dr. Horrible,” but perhaps its example is just as important. The future of musicals is wide open and anyone can make one. Sure, not everyone can make a good one, but anyone can try and more people should. It’s a brand new day.

More recently, I thought my fandom was under relative control. But now, I’ve been asked my opinion on the ten best examples of small-screen work in this decade from the creator and guiding force of “Angel,” “Firefly,” the already canceled “Dollhouse,” and, of course, “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.” I only have to be thankful for the fact that first four seasons of “Buffy,” which contain most of that show’s greatest episodes, are disqualified because they appeared on TV sets before 2000. We take our mercies where we find them. (And, yes, if you’re about to catch up with these on DVD, there are a fair number of spoilers below for the various series, though I’ve tried to keep a few secrets.) One word of warning: my relative ranking of these shows is a matter of mood and borders on the random. In other words — don’t hold me to these choices!

Out of competition:

The Body” (“Buffy, the Vampire Slayer”) – This episode usually ranks extremely high when people make these kind of lists. Entertainment Weekly named it as pretty much the best thing Joss Whedon has ever done and maybe the best TV thing ever. The truth of the matter is that, yes, the episode where Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Geller) discovers the already cold body of her mother, Joyce (Kristine Sutherland, a wonderful asset to the show for the five previous years), dead from an entirely natural brain tumor, was probably one of the most remarkable episodes of television ever shown, and probably the only thing I’ve seen that comes close to capturing the essence of what it feels like when someone dies unexpectedly. The problem was, I didn’t find it depressing; I found it real. I didn’t feel any more like repeating the experience than I would the death of an actual loved one.

Whedon – who wrote and directed the episode himself – deserves all the credit in the world for the brave choices he made, including shooting the episode in close to “real time” and not using any music. If I have one complaint with , it’s his tendency to close emotional episodes with, dare I say it, somewhat drippy montages. His choice to eliminate music from the kind of “very special” show where other creators would lay in with three or four montages of Joyce frolicking in the woods or what have you, shows Whedon is, at heart, an outstanding filmmaker. I’ve never had a problem with his much-noted tendency to kill off sympathetic and/or popular characters. It might anger some fans, but especially if you’re dealing with inherently violent material, there’s something morally wrong about not dealing with the fact that good people are just as mortal as bad people. Still, I don’t enjoy watching this episode. If this were a movie, maybe I’d be more in awe or eager for profundity. However, if I’m going to be honest, I can’t call “The Body” a favorite and I can’t be sure it’s one of the “best.”

#10, Shiny Happy People (“Angel”) – Fans of the spin-off about Buffy’s ex, the vampire-with-a-soul detective (David Boreanaz), and various assembled demon-hunters and occasionally friendly demons, will be scratching their heads at this choice. It’s an unpopular episode from a widely and justly derided storyline involving a very weird affair between Angel’s unbalanced super-powered teenage son from another dimension, Connor (Vincent Kartheiser, now of “Mad Men“), and a suddenly evil Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter), a former high school mean girl turned lovably complex grown-up foil for her vampire boss. And, yeah, it was a little freaky for Cordy to give birth to a fully grown creature called Jasmine.

However, as played by the wondrous Gina Torres of the then recently-canceled “Firefly,” Jasmine was freaky in a good way. A being whose god-like ability to create an instant sense of peace, happiness, and complete obedience, is somewhat set off by the fact that she’s actually a deformed and decaying, if not entirely evil, monster who must consume people to live, she was every charismatic leader and every great screen beauty rolled into one monstrous ball. More than anything else, “Shiny Happy People” reminded me of Don Siegel’s 1956 film verson of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” It was another believable demonstration of how we humans are only too willing to surrender our our humanity to the first apparently completely beauteous and 100% wise being who comes along. You know, like Oprah, only less powerful.

#9. “Epitaph One”/“The Left Hand” (“Dollhouse”) — A tie for the two best episodes so far of Whedon’s most recent, most highly problematic, and most freshly canceled, series. Without going into what I think went awry with the show, about an immoral corporation providing semi-slave designer human beings for a very high price, these two very different episodes take creative risks that pay off in big ways. The DVD-only, lower-budget, “Epitaph One” is set ten years after the events of the series and makes use of its somewhat low-fi  aesthetic to create an exciting post-apocalyptic science-fiction drama that plays like a more thoughtful version of certain aspects of “The Terminator” (which Whedon is famously trying to buy). The episode features some especially good acting, both from guest stars like Felicia Day and series regulars like the always superb Olivia Williams and Harry Lennix.

The more glossy “The Left Hand,” which aired just before I started writing this, benefits from a breakneck pace, lots of prime Whedon tragicomic humor, as well as a scene-stealing guest appearance by “Firefly” and “Terminator”-alum Summer Glau as a truly messed-up techie on a soul-crushing vendetta against Eliza Dushku‘s self-aware “doll,” Echo, but with a definite crush on her enemy’s  programmer. Most of that humor I was talking comes from strong work by Fran Kranz, whose really grown into his role as seemingly 100% amoral nerdy brain-designer-genius Topher Brink, and the amazing Enver Gkojaj as, yes, seemingly 100% amoral nerdy brain-designer-genius Topher Brink. (He’s duplicated himself so he can literally be in two places at once.) The previously unknown Gjokaj may be one reason why – canceled or not, mixed reviews and controversy or not – “Dollhouse” may go down in TV history. Over the years, Whedon has shown an increasing flair for picking out shockingly good actors to populate his work in supporting roles, and Gjokaj may be one of the very best. His chameleon-like ability to inhabit a number of highly disparate characters with complete believability and – as seen on this episode – his Alec Baldwin-like gift of mimicry, pretty much guarantees that we’ll be hearing from this extremely accomplished young actor again very soon.

#. “Serenity” (“Firefly”) — High on the list of reasons why Whedon’s combination of horse opera and space opera never really had a chance to hit with audiences, the choice to air its original pilot — not to be confused with the later movie of the same name — as the final episode, and only after the show had already been canceled, is certainly among them. Just a hair darker in its outlook than the rest of the show, this “Serenity” is very much in the tradition of classic movie westerns and does a marvelous job of introducing a rich cast of characters. In particular, Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) is a combination of the swaggering Han Solo and the tragic, embittered Ethan Edwards of “The Searchers” but with a far sharper sense of humor than either and one of the best lead characters on any show, ever. Deemed too slow and not funny enough by the network and even some fans, the episode that introduced the mostly well-intentioned thieves-for-hire of the Firefly class ship named Serenity, is perfectly calibrated, comedy-laced, action film-making of the very best kind.

#7. “War Stories”  (“Firefly”) — A brutally funny combination of violence and character-driven comedy, this episode focuses on a kind of triangle we don’t often see in movies and TV. Space-freighter pilot Wash (Alan Tudyk, “Dodgeball,” “3:10 to Yuma“) is happily married to beautiful, ex-military, bad-ass Zoe (Gina Torres), but he finds himself jealous of her old combat buddy and current companion in danger, Captain Mal. Even if he can be convinced that there was never anything romantic between the two of them, he is desperate to somehow become a part of their unique relationship when it comes to dealing with life or death matters. Maneuvering himself into a situation where a real danger ensues, he not surprisingly gets more than he asked for.

This episode is notable for easily the funniest believably painful torture sequence ever filmed – a bit of inspired ultra-black comedy that Whedon might not dare to have tried in the post-Dick Cheney/post “24” world. The brilliance of the scene is accounted for not only by a great script credited to Cheryl Cain, but the top grade chemistry between Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion. To this day, they are darn funny appearing together as themselves in public, but they’ve never been better than when they were allowed to work out their issues while being electrocuted by an interplanetary criminal mastermind.

#6. “Chosen”  (“Buffy, the Vampire Slayer”) – Longtime fans know that Joss Whedon has a spotty record when it comes to season openers and pilots. However, he always seems to pull things out at the other end and delivers solid finales that leave you both satisfied and wanting more. Happily, so far, this seems to go double for series finales. The conclusion to Whedon’s most popular and long-lived show is pretty much everything fans could have wanted, providing a certain amount of closure to long-standing conflicts in thrilling and kind of beautiful ways.

As Buffy and her long-time friends, who are getting a bit old to be called “Scoobies,” face one more battle against the original evil and witness the destruction of their hometown, not everything goes so well. In typical Whedon fashion, a couple of beloved characters die (though one recovered from his nasty case of being burned to a crisp quickly enough to return as a regular on the next season of “Angel”), but the overall tone is wistfully hopeful, and fully in line with the show’s emphasis on friendship, female empowerment, and the need to tough out this thing we call human life.

#5 – “Not Fade Away” (“Angel”) — “Angel” was always the darker, meaner cousin of “Buffy.” So, naturally its conclusion is suitably more down-and-dirty and, remarkably, even better than the acclaimed wrap-up of its sister show the year prior. Largely a fantasy-noir variation on one of Whedon’s favorite movies, “The Wild Bunch,” this episode is about what happens when battle-hardened folks face an unbeatable enemy. Sure, the staff of Angel Investigations are more morally upright than Sam Peckinpah’s mangy hardcases, but this is still a tale about settling old scores in blood and a final battle that may be as ultimately pointless as it is noble. Again, not everyone survives…I think. The show’s ending is, rather brilliantly, far from completely resolved, though the tone is much more “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” than “The Sopranos” finale. In any case, Whedon’s theme of life as perpetual struggle couldn’t be more strongly underlined than by this exchange from that vampire Hope and Crosby, Angel and Spike (James Marsters), as they ponder how to take on a (mostly unseen) horde comprised of all manner of demonic beast and humanoid.

Spike: And in terms of a plan?
Angel: We fight.
Spike: Bit more specific?
Angel: Well, personally, I kinda wanna slay the dragon. Let’s go to work.

#4 “Once More With Feeling”  (“Buffy, the Vampire Slayer”) — I really love good musicals, but I really kind of hate bad ones and I can’t stand bad music. So, when I heard that Whedon was using his vacation time to write songs for a musical episode of “Buffy,” I could see that it would be easy enough to make logical in the Buffyverse, where there’s a demon available for any and all plotting needs. I nevertheless had visions of “Cop Rock” dancing very badly in my head. Directing and writing a musical is hard enough, I theorized, without the additional burden of composing all the songs yourself. Little did I know that, while Joss Whedon may not quite be Stephen Sondheim and Elvis Costello rolled into one, he’s a solid tunesmith whose music ranges from the silly but tuneful to the downright enchanting and delightful, with the occasional bit of modern-day schmaltz thrown in.

Still, it’s the stunning level of humorous and dramatic invention that makes this episode such a massively enjoyable piece of work. The plot involves a song-and-dance demon (the great theatrical tap-dancer Hinton Battle) infecting Sunnydale with a dangerously incendiary plague of musical-comedy. Unusually among musical episodes, the show is very much a part of the regular series continuity. That might have limited its appeal to curious newcomers, but the integrity it shows in respecting the internal logic of the show’s fantasy universe while commenting good-humoredly on the musical comedy tradition, makes the show all that much weightier for regular viewers. Whedon knows what all creators of great musicals know: all the singing and dancing in the world should never get in the way of a good story.

#3 “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog.” Sometime before the 2005 release of “Serenity,” I found myself at an early screening for fans, signing a birthday card to Joss Whedon. Just above the compulsory, “Happy Birthday” I wrote “Another musical?” Well, it took a writer’s strike and the burgeoning power of Web 2.0, but my timid request was answered in high style last year with the blissfully silly and often hilarious, yet ultimately rather tragic and haunting, web-movie musical about an earnest aspiring supervillain with anti-corporate leanings (the multi-talented Neil Patrick Harris). As he strives to enter the Evil League of Evil by pleasing its rarely seen leader, Bad Horse (“the Thoroughbred of Sin”), defeat his obnoxious superhero nemesis, Captain Hammer (a never-funnier Nathan Fillion), and win the heart of an adorable activist do-gooder he chats with at the laundromat (‘net star/creator Felicia Day of “The Guild“), we learn how becoming a full-fledged supervillain may create serious problems if you also want people to love you.

A true family project co-created with brothers Zack and Jed (a musician as well as a TV writer), and Jed’s then fiancee/now wife, Maurissa Tancharoen, “Dr. Horrible” has a low-budget comic book aesthetic that actually underlines its tale of aspiring artists of crime. Crisply directed by Whedon, it’s songs are some of the funniest and most haunting from a new musical you’re likely to hear these days, if a bit less tuneful than the slicker, more Broadway-inspired music of “Once More With Feeling.”

A third act plot point, however, takes a chance by daring us to take the premises of the plot to their logical, poignant conclusion that some may not appreciate. While it could be argued that the whimsical conceit might have allowed this to be one instance where Whedon didn’t actually need to keep things fictionally real by giving a cruel fate to a sympathetic character, the choice provides this brilliant mini-musical with a stronger ending and a far better set-up for the upcoming sequel than a more straightforwardly comic conclusion would have. All in all, “Dr. Horrible” proves that, even if driven off the airwaves entirely, the Whedon brand at this point has a far better prognosis for a long life than most of his characters.

#2. “Our Mrs. Reynolds” (“Firefly”) — By now, you may be noticing a bit of a trend. Yes, I love “Firefly” and I definitely would marry it, if only the courts would legalize man-on-TV show-marriage. It’s easily my favorite Whedon show and one of my favorite television shows of all time. Sure, some of that has to do with the fact that I just love a good western, but the show truly is special even among Whedon shows. It features the most consistently strong cast of any of any of his shows, and this episode introduces a very special, if then completely unknown, guest star with the appearance of Christina Hendricks (“Mad Men”). We first meet the future Joan Holloway as Saffron, an apparently shy, possibly completely submissive, member of a colony whom Mal, unaware of local customs, accidentally marries. Written by Whedon, this fan-favorite starts out as a feminist-friendly variation on a somewhat disturbing plot thread from “The Searchers,” but eventually becomes something like the perfect TV-length screwball farce, only with more violence. What more could you want?

#1. “Objects in Space” (“Firefly”) — Unlike every single other season finale he’s written, the de facto conclusion to “Firefly” resolves very little in the way of ongoing plot elements. Indeed, it appears that fact so frustrated Whedon that it probably largely led to his determination to wrap up the story arc in more suitable fashion with the movie, “Serenity.” Nevertheless, viewed on its own, this episode is my personal selection for Whedon’s all time best work ever. It features guest-star Richard Brooks (“Law & Order”), who is letter perfect as Jubal Early, a coolly brutal and mentally unbalanced bounty hunter — Whedon’s off-kilter homage to Boba Fett, in fact — sent to recover River Tam (Summer Glau), a psychotic young fugitive who has taken refuge on board Serenity. The episode gradually boils down to a highly charged and very strange battle of wits between Early and the schizophrenic-like-a-fox Tam. It’s a blend of suspense, psychology, action, and odd pathos that, if you care to look, has some existential undercurrents. (Whedon discusses those in some detail in the somewhat unusual DVD commentary he recorded for the episode.) Still, this tale of outer space cat-and-mouse between two individuals whose life experiences has rendered them both less than whole, but more than merely human, is simply great science fiction entertainment for people who enjoy thinking a little. If there’s one thing I’m bummed about from the cancellation of the show and the box office disappointment of the ensuing movie is that we may never get to see Jubal Early face off again against the Serenity crew, though a guy can always hope. (Note to dubious viewers in light of the ending: yes, Early lives!)

Those who haven’t yet seen the first two seasons can do so (for free) on the official site, but she’s also just put out a music video (cleverly titled “Do You Want to Date My Avatar”) in conjunction with the upcoming premiere of Season Three, and suffice it to say, it’s worth checking out. Day has already proven that she can sing, but I’ll be damned if she doesn’t sound even better on this hilarious geek anthem. Is a music career in her future, or will some smart TV executive finally give the redheaded beauty her due? The answer to that is still very much in the air, but for the time being, I’m perfectly happy with swooning over her by whatever means possible.