_Avatar_, directed by James Cameron

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

character and plotting go hand in hand

/mckee

I think I gotta see this just to have a justified opinion.

its almost like he thinks he can buy creativity.

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

― Dif Juz Guys (Deric W. Haircare), Saturday, 19 December 2009 22:24 (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

was thinking more of Alien and Bladerunner Ridley Scott w/ a dash of Gladiator

why don't you just wish cameron handed the technology off to aliens james cameron while we're in time travel land

Terrence Malick

Agree with most criticisms but the stuff about the 'God' is explained (a bit) as being not religious per se but physically tangible (or at least as 'mystical' as the Force in Star Wars).

They want to protect the physical properties of the planet (which are the basis of their culture) rather than defending a "religion" based on faith. So the criticisms of them praying to God to save them or whatever don't really hold up. (Yeah I hated the swaying scenes too).

no, they still hold up. is it science in the ten commandments because in the universe of the movie god is provably real??

they describe the planet as being a nervous system. not very religious imo.

so the movie hinges on a character so huge as to make other plot developments irrelevant ... sweet

Deej's concerns encapsulate my misgivings. However, even though I only saw this in 2-D, I was pretty stunned.

Awesome bits:

Final battle is simply a feast for the eyes, pwns LOTR, man in robot-suit fighting with a knife = XD
Really, really blunt about Iraq war parallels = XD
Really, really blunt about global warming parallels = XD

It's a really blunt film. Everything is hyperrealised then turned up a few notches. The dialogue made me roll my eyes about 40-50 times at a conservative estimate and the characterisation wasn't strong (not to mention the story being rote and yes overly militaristic, although I think maybe the point was that they lost with war, but won with nature?) but I found myself absorbed by the scale and swoop of it all. Also, too many near-misses w.r.t. death for it to be anything other than a fantastical allegory.

Monogamy-only society = dud

rockapads: are you saying that pixar films don't show intelligent storytelling as its main selling point?

i'm saying some of the Pixar movies have really basic, unsurprising, crowdpleasing plots and i like them in spite of/because of that. wasn't meant to be negative about Pixar movies, since i liked Avatar. i was careful not to say "all" Pixar movies - Toy Story 1 & 2 and Wall-e were fairly unconventional, i thought. i went into Avatar expecting a movie meant to appeal to kids and adults alike, and that's what i got. i'm not saying it couldn't have been a little bit more nuanced and still appealed to kids, either, though.

I mean, I don't think I'll still be thinking about this film in 2 days hours, but it was a pretty rad experience. Shame it cost all that money.

yeah i had fun watching it, but i can't imagine that i'll be buying it or anything.

The huge battle worked because it combined the fantasy grace of the Na'vi with some genuinely lo-fi grungy gunplay. I think this is what Cameron is best at. Floating islands and swaying prayer scenes were p-ridiculous. When they say 'I see you' to each other in that climactic man-on-smurf romance scene at the end I had 'shake a little ass' in my head immediately.

hahah yeah. every time they did the swaying thing with the lion king music playing, i wanted to crawl headfirst into my theater seat with my hands over my ears.

i haven't covered my eyes for a love-scene in YEARS but when they first got together it was unbearable

Also, I hate pan-pipes.

OH, and the characterisation of that corporate rat driving everything on from the safety of the control-room was utterly ludicrous. I know he started to show signs of remorse towards the end (you could see it in his face - oh the stories of regret he'd have to tell to the folks back home!) but given how totally evil he'd been he probably deserved to suffer more. He was pretty much written out of the story once the battles began! I guess that might have been a good thing given how bad he was.