_Avatar_, directed by James Cameron

Avatar is the corniest movie ever made about the white man’s need to lose his identity and assuage racial, political, sexual and historical guilt.

Only children—including adult-children—will see Avatar as simply an adventure film; their own love of technology has co-opted their ability to comprehend narrative detail. Cameron offers sci-fi dazzle, yet bungles the good part: the meaning. His undeniably pretty Pandora—a phosphorescent Maxfield Parrish paradise with bird-like lizards, moving plant life and floating mountains—distracts from the inherent contradiction of a reported $300-$500 million Hollywood enterprise that casually berates America’s industrial complex.

http://www.nypress.com/article-20710-blue-in-the-face.html

Leave it to Armond to attack this from the "boo white people abandoning their culture" angle

Cameron emulates the boy-plus-car symbiosis of Transformers—but with pulsing loins, veins and orifices.

luv ya Armond don't ever change

While technically impressive, Avatar’s basically a daft version of the Transformer movies’ sci-fi, techno fantasy.

I mean, this is way more of an indictment of the movie than the "contradiction" that his central thesis or the "white man's guilt" sidestep.

always lolsome when he brings out Transformers 2, but he's really upped the stakes with his 'Gamer is avant-garde' claims.

i feel free breaking the embargo to say that this movie is a shitty dumb piece of shit

nb i havent seen it

Avatar, however, invents an alternate world to make the airy-fairy pronouncement: “There’s a network of energy that flows through all living things.” Alien-girl Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) teaches Sully how to bond with a tie-dyed, eagle-like creature by docking his wriggly tail into it.

wait, waht

no doubts now. seeing this on Thursday.

bond with a tie-dyed, eagle-like creature by docking his wriggly tail into it.

Cronenberg should've made this movie

lololololololololol of course there's also a positive Joseph Conrad reference in there

man the space ghost ad for this!

lol gawker w/the mea culpa http://gawker.com/5427160/apologia--avatar-amazingly-does-not-suck

btw was i the 1st on this to predict the awesomeness of avatar

you and i are now locked in an eternal death struggle over whether or not this movie is good

i recommend that neither of us actually see it--that will be the best way to continue our blood feud

s1ocki's rapturously positive review is what will end up making me see this

wouldve thought youd already have yr imax tickets xp

i object to this movie on moral grounds

"i, max object to this movie on moral grounds"

Cameron's going to spend twenty more years making a film just to win you over and he's going to call it "2 THE MAX"

2 the max in imax this fall

tbf this is a year where 2012 got some critical props

you max, me blue box office killing alien

gotta admit, after seeing Nine I'm a little more invested in seeing that fail miserably

Guido guido guido!

starring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson as MAX; the common man who could take no more

a friend saw yesterday and said it is easily the worst film of the decade, fwiw

gawker apologia is so pathetic ("all that stuff you thought was gonna suck about it is um in there, but its AWESOME TRUST US!" = yeah, whatever)

unfortunately the hype for this has been so carefully and exquisitely managed no way is this going to bomb

These are the schmucks who spoiled the Top Chef finale, so I hope the whole gawker office has an orgy with Joe Lieberman and they all die from some slow painful std.

oh armond

i am seeing this tonight - worried

do you have a phone you can liveblog from?

John Justen and Fluffy Bear will watch it.

a friend saw yesterday and said it is easily the worst film of the decade, fwiw

― akm, Tuesday, December 15, 2009 9:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

no way this is worse than transformers 2

you'd pray, but turning megan fox into a cgi smurf seems a step further into the dark side and I can imagine missing Bay's crudity (when not in its presence).

ok so this was way way better than expected

pro tip: see in 3d, see in imax or similar

i should clarify, the value of this film is not in the script, but yer eyes will prob fall out of your head a few times

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXCpYgd338U

lol

wanna say anything more about it? was the dialogue not as stiff as expected? the reverse colonialism cliche plot not as cliche as initially assumed? the furry porn not as blatent as the hype makes it seem? or does it just look really cool and thats enough?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBjKubN6zhU

if the film works at least on a laserium level (which everybody's saying it does) then I kind of want it to do better than the star wars prequels, even if i can't muster much enthusiasm to see it myself

wait why would anyone see this *not* in 3D? that shouldn't even be an option. glasses go on at start and stay on until a quarter through credits.

-------wait why would anyone see this

there you go!

very uninterested in a film that's sole virtue is that it "looks pretty"

that's nice

dude its so far beyond "looks pretty" its srsly a fucking quantum leap in CGI and 3d. tbh they should never have shown previews, because they look like crap but the real thing is just O_O