_Avatar_, directed by James Cameron

So will we be seeing giant sandworms roaming the spice planet Dune (Arrakis) with wild Fremen on their backs in 3D?

"I'd love it to be 3D, of course," he said. "It's the kind of movie that has the scope to be 3D. Will they do it in 3D? I'd push for that, but I don't know. As a viewer, I've just been watching Avatar with my kids twice in the theatre already and had a blast. It's an amazing experience."

http://sffmedia.com/films/science-fiction-films/471-dune-remake-starting-again-giant-sandworms-in-3d.html

baron harkonnen flies around the room...in 3D

http://www.tensegrity.hellblazer.com/media/third-stage-guild-navigator.jpg

IN 3D!

We have just folded space from Ix...many machines on Ix. New machines.

Sold out of IMAX, saw standard 3D.

Sorry to disappoint you guys, but I totally didn't loathe this. (Except for most of everything after the destruction of Onetree or whatever the fuck it was called, which is where I would have ended it.)

Capsule review: It's always about the white folks.

So you loathed like the last 45-60 mins, then?

I wonder if Morbs is slowly becoming Armond White.

about half o' that. xp

Actually surprised the rightwing Klan types havent gone more batshit over this film.

I'd also say, Cameron, put the fucking subtitles in a readable font, but I'm not expecting to see any of the sequels.

Armond White hated this film; I did not.

It makes an alright 3D experience, but no way in hell I will watch this movie in 2D. Not worth it.

Since I saw it, I've felt that I should watch it again in 2D, because I think I might appreciate it more. 3D is kind of balls.

Morbius, what did you like about it?

Since I saw it, I've felt that I should watch it again in 2D, because I think I might appreciate it more. 3D is kind of balls.

seconded. saw this yesterday (non-IMAX) and for the most part the 3D looked like complete shit - a load of visual gimmickry trying to force the eye and ending up looking like a confusing, distracting mess, albeit an intermittently very pretty one. seriously, it was nigh-on unwatchable.

maybe this is due to a bad projector, a duff pair of glasses or encroaching blindness... but for me, at least, it just didn't really work.

I like many of the beasties, Sam Worthington (esp Na'Vi-enhanced), the anti-Americanism, some of the echoes of decades of Westerns, Sig Weaver's Hawksian tough-dame turn (but she warmed up too fast), a few instances of the Vietnam War iconography.

3D gave me kind of a headache (esp since I had to sit in the third row).

im really not surprised that u liked this morbius

more cred if you'd said so before!

Everytime I see Stephen Lang (Colonel Hardass) in a film these days, it doesn't register with me at all that he was the pudgy young actor I saw playing Happy in Death of a Salesman on Broadway opposite Hoffman and Malkovich.

http://www.nndb.com/people/815/000069608/stephen-lang-1-sized.jpg

So when they show the 3D in non-IMAX is it not in RealD with the polarized glasses? Do they do the red/cyan anaglyph glasses?

They're the same glasses, no red/cyan.

I wonder if Morbs is slowly becoming Armond White.

I don't know quite as much about Tupac.

Cameron talks messages, right-wing complaints, etc.

Palestinian protestors go blue (slideshow link at left):

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_israel_palestinians_avatar;_ylt=AubSzrTeU4Y6sijGn3y4CiR0fNdF

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s236/mezxspectrum/avatarlost.jpg

OK, I am not the swiftest rider on the culture express, but I saw Avatar a couple of days ago with my wife. I will now add my pebble to the 2000+ pile in this thread.

The storyline and characters were nothing remarkable, but were sturdy enough to carry the audience through the film without any noteworthy moments of boredom or puzzlement. The script and actors did their job just fine.

As I expected, the star of the show was the visual design. Cameron hired some very talented artists to imagine Pandora and obviously spent a HUGE amount of time refining that vision and all its details. The planet makes the movie. No question.

Re: the 3D effects:

I saw it at a very new theater (non-IMAX) and the projection equipment was up to the job. The 3D was pretty well done, not often obtrusive, and added about 50% to the overall attractiveness of the movie design, imo.

BTW, the trailers for upcoming movies were all in 3D, too. Hollywood has clearly gone bonkers for the $$-making possibilities of 3D. However, the trailers's 3D effects were so crappy, so poorly done and so cheap that they were practically unwatchable. Any movie done like that would have given me a headache inside of 20 minutes and I would have walked out. Doesn't bode well for the first big wave of 3D product.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/7222508/Palestinians-dressed-as-the-Navi-from-the-film-Avatar-stage-a-protest-against-Israels-separation-barrier.html

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01577/avatar_1577367i.jpg

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01577/local-man_1577371i.jpg

um.

(cue 4,000 dissertations on the political appropriation of popular culture.)

cue annual convention of avatar fans and memorabilia

I saw this again (3d/imax) and loved it. haters on this can eat my mangravy fwiw.

Has anyone seen this movie in 2-D? I just want to know how silly the clips will look during the Oscar broadcast.

I keep meaning to see it in 2-D. I think I'd prefer it that way.

LARPING IN 3D!

http://tinyurl.com/y9p5gfu

Portrait of The Na'vi People of Hometree Wisconsin.

o rly

this and chat roulette are signs of the apocalypse

oh, it's a joke. nevermind.

Because you, the people, wanted it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/18/james-cameron-avatar-prequel-novel

http://FunnyOrDie.com/m/3mqc

Avatar... with Babies

I have no problem seeing this movie for its visuals. Of course it would be great if it had a good script too, but a not-so-crappy script is fine by me, if it looks cool enough to make me forget the flaws in it. Movies are an visual medium, "good storytelling" is only half of the equation. None of the classic movies are classic only because of their story.

― Tuomas

Tuomas OTM! Scads of fun-haters in this thread.

Yeah, I have to say, I just saw this last night, and I liked it way more than I thought I would, and that's almost entirely because of the visuals. The characters are stock, the storyline is silly and culturally problematic, but damn, there are some sumptuous textures on Pandora. Loved Sully and Neytiri just flying through the mountains on their ikran.

The New York Review of Books weighs in.

good read
thx

basically agree with jaymc. the flaws with this movie are obvious to anyone who is not 5 years old but still feel that if you didn't at least enjoy this in 3d you kinda hate fun.

"if you didn't at least enjoy this in 3d you kinda hate fun."

I haven't seen it, but I get the feeling Hurt Locker 3D with Andrew WK would be more fun than Avatar. Can anyone who has seen both confirm?

that nybr piece was terrible.

"The message of what is now James Cameron's most popular movie thus far, and the biggest-grossing movie in history—like the message of so much else in mass culture just now—is, by contrast, that "reality" is dispensable altogether; or, at the very least, whatever you care to make of it, provided you have the right gadgets. In this fantasy of a lusciously colorful trip over the rainbow, you don't have to wake up. There's no need for home. Whatever its futuristic setting, and whatever its debt to the past, Avatar is very much a movie for our time."

groan

can someone muster SOMETHING original to say about this movie?

I still haven't seen this movie but never say na'vi!

(how's that?)

admittedly the film doesn't give you much to work with in that regard, but still.

x-post

lol

not really buyin this "avatars intellectually incoherent cause the navi are acivilized and hypercivilized" argument

escapist movie is escapist is not really a strong zing either