_Avatar_, directed by James Cameron

what the

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT1wXm-rqLo

okay I am going back to listening to songs based on WoW samples

wow the lead chick in fern gully totally anticipates zooey deschanel

"This movie makes me emo. Thinking about it makes my nose do that chloriney thing you get right before you start crying. I am SO GAY for this movie that I can’t stand it. And you know what? Having finally seen it, I don't even care what the haters have to say. I am a happy meniscus that your spite sauce slides off of. I'm lifted."
http://www.theawl.com/2009/12/flicked-off-with-mary-hk-choi-avatar
(kinda digging the awl lately)
comments are fun too

xp drowned in a gulley

Ha Simon I was thinking Fairuza Balk.

that review i just posted was the first one that made me actually want to see this thing

"Avatar" is staggering. It’s seismic. Evolutionarily speaking it is cladogenesis in a thunderclap. Punctuating the balls outta equilibrium. Think about it: You can’t bit torrent this shit. And even if some very industrious pillager cops the glasses and figures out how to do it in the way it was intended to be seen, that person is a hope rapist that should be shot in the face for dream treason because James Cameron and a gang of wizards made this beautiful, beautiful thing for us—in 2009 of all years. We should ALL hold hands about it.

is this lady brent dicrescenzo?

Hahah

dream treason

hope rapise!!

t

the planet's gone mad.

i kind of want to see this dumb thing now

http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/famecrawler/2008/02/01-07/captain-planet-tom-cruise-ted-turner.jpg

@coryischaki: 10 word Avatar review: Space marines vs Roger Dean painting set to Enya.

pretty much. whether that's a bad thing depends on you.

I liked this.

I watched this at an IMAX theater and thought it was very good. If I happened to be 8, I think it might have fucking blown my mind.

^^

I'm still learning how to read 3d. There are bits where the depth of field is v. shallow, and my eyes are roaming, trying to focus on things that will never come into focus. Recipe for watery eyes, that.

If I happened to be 8, I think it might have fucking blown my mind.

This is how I feel about Kung Fu Shuffle, and that's far from an insult.

Somehow I doubt this is the same level of awesome, tho.

stet - when u do can u code ilx in 3d - shd only take u 10 mins

birthday sundae in 3d, it's what we've all been waiting for

stet - when u do can u code ilx in 3d - shd only take u 10 mins

The valuing of the tech over the art is a bit of problem, no?

http://www.slashfilm.com/wp/wp-content/images/avtr-4181.jpg

oops wrong pic

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v216/sexymollusk/ironicnotfunny/zz7b3af938.jpg

is it just me or was the other avatar driver totally shaggy from scooby doo

that's not very flattering to sigourney

other avatar guy was from the exact same hampshire college hacky sack matthew lillard care bear cousins family as the sidekick driver from speed racer, just another way in which this shit failed to live up to my beloved gold standard of long dumb cgi action epics

well i guess tbf i have no serious preference between the two scrawny doofs except that i don't think the guy in speed racer had a hacky sack goatee and also that archetype becomes more annoying the further away we move from 2000, however:

lead guy: that shitty guy <<<< emile hirsch
the girl: i like saldana & i guess she had more character but i grew up w/xtina ricci in the 90s, so
color palette: blacklight posters, lisa frank, money grab nature museum rainforest exhibits from 1994 < photoshop color selector, paper rad, seizures, dumb shit
slimy corporate villain: 'go' star giovanni ribisi < that guy who looks like chris hitchens
old lady crush: sigourney > sarandon (this is like mentioning that God the Creator could outrun usain bolt or some shit though)
was john goodman in it: no < yes
did anyone say 'get that weak sh*t off my track' in it: no <<<< yes
u r sexually attractive but god as my witness i will never watch another episode of lost: michelle williams = matthew fox
questionable stylistic bugaboo: papyrus <<<<<<<<<<<<< rotating head wipes

avatar sux

i saw this at 3:30 pm & went for happy meals at 1230 am and could not accurately identify my toy's character

'go' star giovanni ribisi

if you mean the film with tom cruise's wife and tail diggs, then ribisi wasn't in it.

speed racer is the nuts. avatar doesn't look like it comes close.

that said, with a lot of you guys being all cptn save-a-smurf, i'm now starting to ponder whether to see this...

don't post your review until you've had the happy meal and taken that into account

oh weird, i have no idea what i confused go with other than 1999 in general

i was surprised by how much i liked ribisi though! when he first showed up i was wondering what kind of weirdo scientology challenge he completed to get put in a wide release movie at the end of this decade but he was p enjoyable

i got cat zoe saldana but i thought it was supposed to be her dad. her face lights up when you wave your head in front of it, sometimes

this reminds me that i still thought the alien romance was kind of weird

do they do a vege happy meal these days?

who will mint more furries per capita between cat saldana and kristofferson the fox

whoever said ribisi is playing jeremy piven was otm

i was thinking chibi vince vaughn but pivs is way closer

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v216/sexymollusk/ironicnotfunny/zz7b3af938.jpg
http://i47.tinypic.com/rmilms.jpg

XD

http://s2.thisnext.com/media/230x230/Im-Afraid-I-Just-Blue-Myself_1F0591CB.jpg

Saw this at the IMAX - PHENOMENAL.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. Sorry.

Okay, on a technical level, Cameron has been completely vindicated imo - this really is some next next next level stuff. I was fucking agog at how beautiful some of this was.

Story wise, it did the job. It is such a nuts-and-bolts, A->B job though. Rigidly 3-act structure, hitting every beat (er, inciting incident - half commitment - midpoint reversal - enemy closes in - darkest decision - confrontation). I was gonna say screenwriting 101 but it doesn't even have any subplots.
It really could have done with something to shake things up a bit. A betrayal, a character reveal, anything. But no. Saying that, though it was all terribly predictable I was drawn in, I went along. It was cornballs but I didn't much care, it still got me rooting for the big blue guys.

The Na'vi are yer basic noble savage, it's true. Apart from sexy alien girl who is sexy, none of them had fleshed out characters. Though I did like how they looked, the design of them w/ev. I know some had a problem with the Na'vi for some reason. I thought they looked good.

Cameron's dialogue is still Cameron's dialogue. You know. His strength has always been memorable one-liners, even when they were examples of how cheesy his writing can be ("Hasta la Vista, baby"?). I don't think there was anything particularly memorable here though. Maybe in time.

Did I say how much I really, really enjoyed this as a moviegoing experience? Such a good thing to be carried away by on a bitterly cold, dark winter's night. This is my favourite sci-fi film of the year - and this year, that's actually saying something! - and I can't wait till I go and see it again next Wednesday. So there.

i09 have some good articles about Avatar. Their review of the film is fair imo: http://io9.com/5427555/avatar-wont-make-you-go-native

Bit of a ramble, that.

Rigidly 3-act structure, hitting every beat

Rigid or not, this still sounds like praise to me. Think: "Alien3".

Ok, shit. I guess I'll see it. Or else stop bitching.

Have managed to avoid all hype for this and got to see it tonight. I'm always against justifying a lame story with pretty visuals, LOTR did nothing for me - but this is on another level. You can really lose yourself in it. Don't even think about watching it on a computer screen.

The story is decent, I suppose, although once you've seen half of it you can predict every element of the rest of it (sadly - can't they throw in a few surprises once in a while?). I expected it to be fairly snappy from the opening - I had no idea how fantasy-like it was going to be; and thought the premise could have delivered a better story with a few less cliches - maybe from the science side of things - but this just fizzled out.

If anything spoiled it, it was the dialogue. It could have been a great movie, but man. OK, it was fine in places, but when it was bad, it was really bad. It absolutely baffles me how movies this expensive can just get away with this kind of writing.
Disclaimer: I've mainly been watching the Wire and not much else these past few weeks, so have been completely spoiled, writing-wise.

xpost - above review pretty much OTM, particularly about how it could have done with a shake-up somewhere.

This is my favourite sci-fi film of the year - and this year, that's actually saying something!

Was this a watershed sci-fi year and I just slept through it or something?