_Avatar_, directed by James Cameron

and hell, i'll stan for star wars but there's just no question that for today's seven year old this is going to be mindblowing, fandom-defining stuff. eh, maybe you gotta see it in 3D.

if it makes sense, i think in trying to be very plain about things, it produces quite a lot of dialogue that is worthy of eye-rolling. it likes a cliche, and it likes a Big Statement. other problems come from things being skipped over, or geared exclusively towards massive and unrealistic events. insane moves. jurassic park feels way more organic, if that makes sense.

ooh zing! 2D is perfectly enough for me cheers :P

(i mean, my problems with the movie wouldn't have been helped by 3D!)

jurassic park is also not very po-faced and has jeff goldblum as its voice of reason, not preachy earth-mother na'vi types, sorry 2 b grinch who stole xmas

complaining about the dialogue in this movie is like complaining about the melody in james brown

2D is perfectly enough for me cheers

okay but this is like saying "i saw the jazz singer without sound and it was eh"

i think that particular false dichotomy was discussed upthread.

i was dazzled by this film visually and am confident i would have been yet more dazzled in 3D but i don't think extra dazzlement would have rectified my misgivings. a movie is more than a picture. it's also a narrative

Obviously the narrative was a bit of an afterthought and not exceptional in any way, but I imagine that you knew that going in, so why not let the movie play to its strengths? For the same reason I don't want to go to IMAX to watch a really great narrative film that was shot on Handicam, you know?

because i was watching it with a friend having met him in a very impromptu style, and the only convenient screening was at the tottenham court road which didn't have 3D capability

then 2 days later the rest of my family saw it in 3D x_x

I gotta bad feeling about this

use the force, luke

"You can waste time with your friends when your chores are done."

there's nerd shit and there's dork shit.

white people drive like this, but black people drive like this.

You want it to be one way, but it's the other way.

there's things i like, and things i don't like

you say po-tay-toe

giovanni ribisi's charachter should have been played by paul giamatti

― kelis navidad (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, December 26, 2009 4:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

It's the type of character that would normally be played by Paul Giamatti but Ribisi plays it like he's playing Jeremy Piven in Entourage.

Paul Reiser of all people did a much more believable smarmy corporate type in Aliens. Way more insidious.

Shit like that and all the cool space military hardware and critters made me wish I was watching an Aliens 3D movie.

Actually Cameron should have made this an Alien sequel where a space marine falls in love with one of the Aliens

Last time, it was Resurrection. This time, it's a Love Connection!

LOL!

aliens vs eharmony

likes: dismembering, parasitic colonization of the universe, literally scaring the shit out of you hehe
dislikes: flamethrowers, swearing, being hungry - i get crazy, for real lol! ;)

how about that commercial where the guy bought a shitty lg phone so he can project the avatar trailer on the wall for his coworkers

what about this coke zero ad where GIROGIO FUCKING MORODER is watching from the wall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APQ2OxgCNzE

very interesting piece about an earlier version of the movie's story:

http://chud.com/articles/articles/21969/1/PROJECT-880-THE-AVATAR-THAT-ALMOST-WAS/Page1.html

yeah I feel Cameron played it safe w much if not all of the final movie, probably because you only get one shot at animating those scenes... you can't really shoot and reshoot scenes in the normal sense

plot q: was it the upsidaisium that kept the mountains floating?

Saw it at Leicester Square in 3d last night.

I'm not sure it's a good film, but the overall experience was very pleasant - something like a weekend abroad, with new sights to stimulate and refresh the visual cortex.

>probably because you only get one shot at animating those scenes...

I don't know about that - unless Cameron works with CGI very differently than other (big budget action film) directors then he's got almost infinite control over the shots before they go through the final rendering process.

(I didn't read the whole of l'bloomer's link so may be missing the point here, though)

I was reading that with the camera/tech/whatever he's got, he could film the actors in the empty space and through the viewfinder see an xbox-quality rendering of the fx of whatever he was pointing at.

boy that wasn't explained well at all.

no, no. made perfect sense and it's true.

i have purchased my ticket for an 11 pm 3d/imax avatarification. big blue people better bring it.

some of the stuff in that article def does seem like it would have made for a better movie. but a lot of it, you can tell why it was changed.

avatar 2: tsu'tey tang

estimated 2nd weekend gross: $75M, down from $77M. usually blockbusters will almost halve their box office in the second week. in comparison titanic made more on its second week than its first (largely because it opened on the same day as a bond movie).

it will definitely make its money back.

i now cannot escape papyrus.

do you think cameron will point at the audience and say "i see you" during his acceptance speech?

followed swiftly by him raising his oscar and ululating

well, that wasn't bad ... but it did ultimately make me feel guilty for spending $13.50 on an imax movie instead of, like, trekking in patagonia or the amazon or something. or hell, even being outside.

i guess i was really feeling the ecomessages maaaaaaan

dud my imax ticket cost $17.50

chew on that 4 a min

Is it only when people are at death's door that the Na'vi all have to sit around the tree and spin and hold each others' shoulders and chant? If you had to do that every time someone got, say, a major injury, that would be a real pain in the ass.

^^ this qn should be part of the health care debate

this was a good time and the story/dialogue is really not worse than hollywood norms. tons of movies have plots at least as ridiculous, and almost none of them ever make me feel like i'm dodging missiles on dragonback. and all the gaia worship stuff is hokey as hell but hokey gaia worship isn't really like a moral flaw imo. plus i liked how the whole planet seemed designed to be seen under a black light. i think cameron is kind of a suburban-basement stoner at heart.

yeah i kinda liked the hippy-dippy roger dean look of a lot of it.

The whole biolumescent look of Pandoran was inspired by the coral sea beds he witnessed during all the scuba dives he took between Titanic and this, wasn't it?

Toys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JWk_JIE3Ow

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

http://www.empireonline.com/images/image_index/hw800/35110.jpg

http://www.collider.com/2009/12/27/weekend-box-office-avatar-edges-out-sherlock-holmes-on-the-biggest-christmas-weekend-ever/