_Avatar_, directed by James Cameron

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

like who?

xpost: I vote Ridley Scott

werner

Coens

neveldine/taylor

CRANK 3D!!

as spectacle, enjoyable, as cinema, offensive to yr intelligence.

yeah, not to discredit cameron's achievement here: it would have been so easy for the spectacle to fall flat but he carried it off very well, and it was nice to have some action shots that weren't shot ultra-close and ultra-quick for once but I can't wait till someone marries the spectacle and the cinema a bit more capably

^agree.

ebert's star wars comparison is way off -- there is nothing here nearly as iconic as the characters from that

xpost: I vote Ridley Scott

― Tannenbaum Schmidt, Saturday, December 19, 2009 5:07 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

are you shitting me, have you seen what that dude has done lately

haha so im reading this thread for the first time now:

district 9 meets ferngully

― am0n, Friday, October 30, 2009 2:31 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark

otm

ebert's star wars comparison is way off -- there is nothing here nearly as iconic as the characters from that

― unicorn strapped with a unabomb (deej), Saturday, December 19, 2009 5:13 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

seriously. main character here is such a dud - i mean luke was too but he was surrounded by pretty great characters and he was a believable hick kid, not a muscly hollywood action lookin dude

i think i said it upthread, but it is really the exact same plot as d9

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.

haha this is pretty otm

xpost: I vote Ridley Scott

― Tannenbaum Schmidt, Saturday, December 19, 2009 5:07 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

are you shitting me, have you seen what that dude has done lately

― akira goldsman (s1ocki), Saturday, December 19, 2009 4:17 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

A Good Year 2: The IMAX Experience

as cinema, offensive to yr intelligence.

didn't offend mine. i liked this movie the way i like a lot of Pixar & Pixar-type movies. i guess i feel like the movie was intended for a slightly younger, slightly less jaded audience than i belong to, and i can find very few things wrong with it that wasn't a matter of aesthetic preference. for the type of movie it was, it succeeded. i doubt that i will go out of my way to watch it again, but i know several people who will and they aren't people anyone would consider dumb.

Does Pandora have legal, readily-available abortions?

― Thulsa Doob (Jon Lewis), Friday, December 18, 2009 11:48 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is the kind of ethical dilemma that could never exist on pandora -- pretty sure god wouldnt enforce premarital celibacy but once you've gotten laid by god's tree im pretty sure its shotgun wedding time

for the type of movie it was, it succeeded. i doubt that i will go out of my way to watch it again, but i know several people who will and they aren't people anyone would consider dumb.

― richie aprile (rockapads), Saturday, December 19, 2009 4:27 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

i dont see how anyone could think there's anything remotely interesting being said in this film

rockapads: are you saying that pixar films don't show intelligent storytelling as its main selling point? i personally couldn't give a toss how they look when there are stories as good as wall-e and finding nemo.

yeah i mean i loved wall e, it was sorta borderline w/ the hollywood liberal environmentalism stuff but it never overwhelmed the love story or anything. you cared more about the characters

wall e the floating ipod is more iconic than the blue dorks (c)s1ocki of avatar

seriously this movie could have been saved if the main char. used his knowledge of humans to figure out how to use the natural world to defeat the humans. instead he just martyred a bunch of them, then god saved everybody. ughguhgugh

"spoilers"^^^

pretty sure the solution to environmental catastrophe is praying, then. james cameron is the dude on a street corner w/ a 'world is ending' sign & a bigger bank account