_Avatar_, directed by James Cameron

'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?

Ok, Moon was good. I'll give it that.

moon star trek and district 9 were well received by sci-fi movie fans

generally speaking

Star Trek was awesome. But if that's sci-fi... ok, I don't mean to sound sanctimonious, at least not more than usual, but you see where I'm going here.

Isn't Avatar pretty solidly in the fantasy genre, anyway?

it's sci-fi fantasy. i mean there's some quasi-scientific explanations for stuff. no actual magic or anything like that. but yeah, humanoid aliens, etc.

So I went and saw it tonight too.... And yeah, the technical achievement is a game-changer. I'm sure every single nut, bolt, tree, leaf, computer display, cloud, floating jellyfish-looking thing, spaceship, etc. was blueprinted and argued over for weeks, but in the end it looks like Cameron and crew flew out to some weird Gaia planet and simply filmed on location. There's a few self-referential "look at me I'm 3D!" moments towards the beginning, but the 3D was never intrusive and in the way. Seeing this in a theater is an absolute requirement.

The movie itself is straight-up Edgar Rice Burroughs with a little Harry Harrison thrown in (esp. the first Deathworld book). Totally ridiculous and heavy-handed but no worse than, say, the original Stargate movie or The Fifth Element. My only wish that the supporting cast wasn't quite so anonymous. Unlike Aliens, where you knew every single marine and had some emotional investment with them, the rest of the Avatar cast were just kinda there.

Certainly not the best movie I've seen this year, but well-worth seeing.

Also, I think several dozen new xeno-prefixed words need to be coined now. Xenophile, xenophobe, and xenomorph don't seem adequate enough to describe this thing.

a b c's review is a++++++++++++++++++

reserved tickets for an imax showing on monday - can't wait

There's a few self-referential "look at me I'm 3D!" moments towards the beginning...

yeah, the golf ball rolling into the cup, the coffin being slid into the drawer... if anything I thought these obviously gimmicky shots were the ones which least showed off the impressiveness of the tech

I agree with stet tho tht it can be hard to read the 3D a lot of the time and can be v.tiring to watch

dunno where my nearest imax is. probably that london.

whoever said ribisi is playing jeremy piven was otm
― tiger's wood (latebloomer), Saturday, 19 December 2009 08:36 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

even had more hair thn normal I though

I gotta admit, every time I read another 'game-changer/will change the way you think about movies' bit, no matter how qualified otherwise...it kinda makes me want to hit someone. (Not you guys, that'd be rude.)

yeah i still haven't seen anything that looks above and beyond a final fantasy cutscene (it was ff10 that had the blue warrior types right?)

http://content2.myyearbook.com/zenhex/images/quiz4/16697/16697_res8.jpg

voiced by bender! :) the more you know

man this movie was pretty bad

Avatar: came close to losing my shit. Happy to join the crowd and clap in appreciation after our collective minds were blown away (somewhat).

Yeah the plot and dialogue are rudimentary, shit was GREAT!!!! to look at at, and the action was good enough.

i think the impressive visuals did a really good job of making me feel like my time watching this was worthwhile, but they didnt really make up for some pretty hilariously bad parts

SPOILERZ!!!!!!

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ok so fern gully: the next generation has some pretty crappy cameron-style dialogue, that i can deal with. im willing to put up w/ cardboard bad guys -- some of the best movies have these things, & it COULD be, like part & parcel of the film's style. i dont demand complex bad dudes per se.

but as a statement about, like, life and stuff? pretty awful. the deus ex machina resolution??

what is he saying about our current problems today -- that the corporations tearing down the rainforest are bad? umm well duh ... apparently the solution is that mother nature has to go hitchcock's the birds on everybody, because thats the only thing that will help noble savages fight the oncoming tide of modernization. the fact that the main character basically throws this entire race of ppl into the path of oncoming guns was so gross ....

and its not even that creative a movie when it needs to be!! like ... when they were like "our people know these mountains well ... the oncoming invaders just have guns and explosives" i was expecting the people to use some clever traps or something design out of wildlife, i.e. ensnaring these guys in vines or setting up traps w/ boulders, something clever & creative ... instead they somehow find a few guns themselves, and just go for straight-up violence? Just throw themselves into the path of a bunch of dudes with machine guns? then they get torn to shit. then, luckily, mother earth (or whatever) heard this dude praying through his hair & sends a bunch of wildlife to overwhelm them w/ sheer numbers? is that the lesson here, that if only mother earth was a cognizant being everything would work out?

also, i cant believe they used that LOL romcom cliche where the guy is forced into the situation, doesnt love the chick at first but grows to love her over time, she discovers they were forced to be together & gets mad, then forgives him. soooo lazy!!

he sets up this plot like obvious past historical brutalities, but he has nothing to say about any of it ... like, bad people r bad? ok.

i dont get how this is a 'future of cinema' type film. my bro mentioned how in 'alien' apparently ridley scott couldn't afford a full sized ship so he got creative & put his kids in kid-sized space suits to make the ship look larger on camera ... there is none of that kind of innovative thinking here, cameron's response to a problem like that is "throw more money at it till we CAN do it" --- ooh, floating islands? really? thats the best he comes up with? fake rhinos? pterodactyls still exist? so totally unimaginative.

that said, parts of it look really beautiful & i do enjoy that almost puff daddy level of "if i throw enough money around, it'll at least be impressive if nothing else"

SPOILERZ FURTHER

even if u take it as being about, like, the title, about falling in love thru an avatar or whatever ... even that is philosophically undercut by the fact that he can turn into the avatar with the right prayers to god!! its so afraid to actually confront the ethical scenarios that he sets up on an honest level, everything is cheat saved by divine intervention

*is a cheat

Deej, i agree with all of that. And in some small way, yes paying to see this will give only give creedance to bolster Cameron's "cause" / counter your arguements (at least in a $$$ = justified film experience).... but if he can do a Terminator quality idea/ploy/script with Avatar quality techology as his next project, I figure its worth getting behind Avatar.

plus I entered the cinema intending not too think too deeply about the "Message", just gawp at pretty things and allow myself to flinch / recoil at shit being blown up in my augmented "direction"

the other thing that had me rolling my eyes was when that one pilot chick was all "this is not what i signed up for!!!" & stops firing missiles ... what?? do you really think theyd get wishy-washy ppl like that on a mission like this in the military?? i mean think of how much effort the right wing went into in this country to get ppl on board for iraq ... you have to have some kind of propaganda thing where ppl are convinced about the justness of their cause, or the righteousness of their victory, if she's that easily swayed ... at least district 9 show the dehumanizing elements to justify ppl's cruelty towards the aliens, know what i mean?

plus I entered the cinema intending not too think too deeply about the "Message", just gawp at pretty things and allow myself to flinch / recoil at shit being blown up in my augmented "direction"

― Tannenbaum Schmidt, Saturday, December 19, 2009 2:59 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

its not like i was looking to criticize this stuff!! it was pretty surface-level obvious

xpost: not specifically aimed my post at you, deej.

xp deej i agree with you about the lack of military tactics - i was also disappointed by that. though the nature's revenge angle was ok with me, i was hoping for some guerilla style stuff.

the other thing that had me rolling my eyes was when that one pilot chick was all "this is not what i signed up for!!!" & stops firing missiles ... what?? do you really think theyd get wishy-washy ppl like that on a mission like this in the military?? i mean think of how much effort the right wing went into in this country to get ppl on board for iraq ...

there were plenty of conscientious objectors in Iraq. plus, this wasn't the military, it was a Blackwater-like security company working for a corporation which is a big distinction in terms of loyalty imo. my main problem with that scene was that her character wasn't really fleshed out at all prior to that, so it was really out of the blue. and wouldn't she have done that the first time they attack the na'vi? i think maybe it would have been better if they had taken a few minutes to show how disgusted she was after that first attack (i don't recall them even showing her during the first major attack), but there were just too many characters in the movie to flesh anyone out very much. maybe in the inevitable 4-hour special blu-ray edition...

yeah i guess i mean that it seemed like the only reason to have her do that was so she could rescue them from prison later on & get the main character moved to the tree. so they were like, uhhhh i guess she'll have a crisis of confidence in the mission? lets throw that in.

deej thank you for helping me decide to not ever pay to see this film.

<3 u deej

also

I gotta admit, every time I read another 'game-changer/will change the way you think about movies' bit, no matter how qualified otherwise...it kinda makes me want to hit someone. (Not you guys, that'd be rude.)

― Ned Raggett, Saturday, December 19, 2009 8:18 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

totally agree with this. everybody needs to just CALM THE FUCK DOWN about this movie for a minute.

camera can go eat a brick for all I care, put this tech that he's developed in someone actually capable's hands and then we're talking

cameron