AVATAR

So I saw "AVATAR" last night.

First let me say that AVATAR is actually in 4D - 3 dimensions and time. We had to wait in line at the IMAX theater for an HOUR before they let us in to be seated! Jerks.

I give it a B-. It both managed to exceed and fall short of my expectations.

**Some spoilers ahead, but none that you didn't see coming.***

- The script wasn't as awful as I thought it would be. And the acting wasn't too terrible either.

- I knew in advance that it was the same general story as "Ferngully" (and Pocahontas, and Dances with Wolves, etc.) but certain shots and lines of dialogue were lifted DIRECTLY from Ferngully! Maybe James Cameron thought that nobody would notice, but Ferngully is one of my top three favorite movies of all time. I noticed. Maybe one day I will even do a shot-for-shot comparison of the plagiarized scenes.

- I HATE what they did to CCH Pounder! I was under the impression that the Na'vi animation was neat because the Na'vi looked like the actors that played them. This was more or less true of Zoe Saldana and Sam Whatsisface and that Norm guy. But look what they did to CCH Pounder:
Just look!

- Sigourney Weaver rocks my socks off. She was awesome. Maybe the Na'vi could have saved her life if they hadn't taken the time to wrap her in leaves before trying to heal her. What were they thinking?

- Giovanni Ribisi was pretty good, too.

- I don't care if Michelle Rodriguez almost always plays the same character. I like her.

- I felt like Colonel Badguy should have been played by Robert Patrick.

- I liked the part where the giant Mecha fought the giant jungle panther.

- For me, the most compelling scene was wherein Jake Sully gets his pet pterodactyl. That was a cool scene.

- The narrative economy was very tight. Kudos! Well played.

- The idea of the trees having synapses was really cool - original, even. I wish the movie was more about that and less about Ferngully.

- Okay, AVATAR probably should have won best sound design. I guess. Of course, I haven't seen The Hurt Locker, so I don't really know.

- The 3D: Here's my beef. Yes, the film was visually stunning. But I don't think it really added anything. Ostensibly, the point of 3D is to create a more immersive viewing experience, to make the audience feel like they're really there on Pandora. Instead, the 3D effects were distracting - they onlly drew attention to themselves. "Look what we can do! I bet you wanna reach out and touch those space jellyfish, huh?" No, I'd rather pay attention to what's going on, thanks. I think that a good director can give the viewer an immersive experience with more traditional techniques. I know James Cameron can! Remember that scene in Titanic when the ship goes end-up and the one guy falls off and hits the smoke-stack on the way down? I saw Titanic five times in theaters and every single time the guy hit the smoke-stack every single person in the audience cringed and went, "Ooh!" Just the camera angle and the sound design puts the viewer there. There were no moments like that in AVATAR. (That being said, Titanic is coming back to theaters in 3D. And I'm shooting for a sixth time.)

- My other beef: Eywa ex machina. Sure, the white guy comes in to save the day. But when it looks like all hope is lost even for him, the deity *literally* comes to the rescue. F'real?

The image in this post was yoinked from somewhere on the Internets.

Keep Pushin', Watson

Sherlock Holmes was rad!

*Possible spoilerishness ahead*

- There were two women of any importance in the film, which sucks but is more than Guy Ritchie usually has. It is unfortunate that they were both such flat stereotypes - the Good Wife and the Sexy Thief Rival/Love Interest. I felt like more could have been done. Mary, especially, had potential, I thought.

- Could someone please direct me to some good Holmes/Watson slash fic? kthx

- The narrative economy wasn't too tight. I get it, Guy, you like boxing. But that scene in the boxing ring wasn't really necessary, now was it? When you have a film where every little detail is supposed to have significance (as Holmes points out to Mary), there should be no flab unless it serves some red herring purpose.

- I don't usually like it when movies set up the sequel with such a groaner of an ending, but I look forward to the continuation of this franchise, so it's fine.

- Actors I would like to see more of: Mark Strong (Lord Blackwood), Kelly Reilly (Mary), Hans Matheson (Lord Coward)

- I would like to see it again at home so I can pause on images from the Book of Spells so I can see whether the Hebrew actually says anything. It didn't look like it, but maybe? The word "tzedek," meaning "justice," appears on an object on Sir Thomas' desk, and the word "shlemut," meaning "completeness," appears under the throne Blackwood sits on when he passes around the goblet.

- I'm not sure how I feel about Blackwood. He was a pretty neat villain, but his goal was pretty dumb. World conquest? Such a tired objective. And his means - a chemical weapon? Really? Kinda weak.

Ponderings

Lately I've been thinking a lot about:
- Fashion
- Art!
- Subcultural aesthetics
- Communities

At some point I may or may not put these thoughts into blog form.

Good Riddance

I know I did a post with some year-end lists last year, but I really dislike year-end lists. I dislike decade-end lists even more.

2009 kind of sucked. A lot. There were lots of good things, but I'd rather not look back at them in a blog post in list format. A list of things I'm looking forward to in 2010 isn't much better than a year-end list, but here goes anyhow:

Movies:
Frozen
The Wolfman
Shutter Island
The Crazies
Kick-Ass
Toy Story 3
Inception

Music:
Contra - Vampire Weekend

Wow, is that it?
What else is there?

UPDATE: How could I forget!? Season 3 of Breaking Bad!

Silver Bells, Silver Screen

Some of my favorite Christmas movies, in no particular order:

Survive Style 5+


Die Hard


Gremlins


Bad Santa


Batman Returns


Brazil


I'll Be Home for Christmas




And just for good measure, the alternate ending to It's A Wonderful Life

Friends Forever, or until further notice

Of all the ridiculous and alarmist articles I've read about Facebook, this one is particularly upsetting. Writing for O, The Oprah Magazine, Tim Jarvis writes:

Increasingly, if you're not plugged into a social network, you feel out of the loop. But as scientists start to study our newfound connectivity, some worry that we're heading for a massive friender-bender.

"It can be exhilarating, at least at first, to connect with long-lost friends," says network science expert Steven Strogatz, Ph.D., a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University.

But the downside, he worries, is growing confusion between our weak ties (people who might be useful in referring us to a good dentist or helping us find a job) and our strong ties (those we're very close to).

"The distinction between genuine friends and acquaintances is becoming blurred. Users are spending time maintaining relationships with people they don't really care about."

First of all, the dude is a professor of applied mathematics. 'Nough said.

But more importantly is this weak/strong tie distinction. Why is it so bad for the line between friends and acquaintances to become blurred? Right now, I don't have a whole lot of close friends in my area who I can hang out with. I'm out in the middle of suburbia. In order to connect to people I can either hop on the T for an hour or I can go online. On Facebook, if I comment on the post of someone who I haven't really seen in a long time, I don't consider it maintaining a relationship with someone I don't really care about. It isn't time wasted. Who knows who I might end up connecting with at a deeper level? What good would it do to burn those bridges?

The article then goes on to talk about how "Heavy reliance on the rapid intake of certain information -- especially in younger, developing minds -- could have consequences on our morality." Oh no! Think of the childrenz! The next generation is going to be completely unfeeling and immoral! So clearly the thing to do to avoid being unfeeling and immoral is to cut ties with people with whom we don't have "strong ties." Yes, mass un-friending is the key to future happiness.

Black, White, Yellow, etc.

This "Characters Unite" spot shows on the USA network during commercial breaks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tpVjt2IhvQ

Can you guess what bothers me about it? I'll give you a hint: it's 0:12 seconds in.

How to pick a Halloween costume (if you're a chick)

1. Decide what you want to be.
2. Make it sexy.

Easy!

Here are some examples:

You want to be the great detective Sherlock Holmes:


Now, make it sexy!

Or if you want to be horror monster Freddy Krueger:


Just sex it up!


If you're not sure how risque you want to be, sometimes there's a range:
Normal:

Sexy:


or Slutty:


As long as you're showing some leg and some cleavage, it doesn't really matter what you are.
Are you a sexy clown? Or sexy Wonder Bread?

Nobody really cares!

Of course, you might offend some prudish feminist-types if you sexualize something like a dead body:


or an infant:

But they just don't know how to have fun! Let's go egg their houses!


All images taken from elsewhere on the internet.

Why Film Studies Matters

I've been thinking about grad school. One of the "nice" things about graduating from college into a recession is that I have a lot of time to think about what I *really* want to do. There are lots of things I could do, lots of things I want to do. But after much thought, if I follow my passion I will go to grad school for film studies.

Although I was (am?) an English major, I mostly took film classes. I did the work I am most proud of in those classes. So why wasn't it readily apparent to me that I would want to continue my education in that field?

Well, it's not very practical. When I tell people I want to go to school for film, the response is usually along the lines of, "Oh, you want to make movies?" And then I explain that actually, no, I don't want to make movies. I want to watch movies, and read about movies, and write about movies. "You want to be a reviewer." No. I want to be a theorist. Theory, by definition, is not practical.

Going to grad school for film studies would prepare me for pretty much one career: academia. This was where my passion hit a snag. I didn't think I had any interest in being a professor. And what interest I did have was more about the perks (summer vacation!) than about a desire to teach. So why spend all that time and money studying film if it's not going to get me anywhere? Well, because I love it. But isn't that selfish? Is there any field more self-serving than film theory? Nobody gives a damn! It's all an academic circle-jerk. I want to do something with my life that matters.

But then, as I was trying to articulate my frustration with Zombieland to a friend, it hit me: studying film DOES matter. What I want to do isn't just analyze and write about film - I want to show people why it is important to do so. I want to teach. (It fits! Life makes sense!)

When I look at the body of work I've produced from my years in college, the issues that come to the fore are very real - how gender is codified on screen, what it means to look at a body, the visceral reactions people have to certain images. If you can't sleep at night because you're too spooked from watching El Orfanato, that's real. If you tear up just thinking about Jack Dawson sinking into the freezing Atlantic Ocean, that's real. If a director in Japan and a director in Germany both use horror-comedy to explore queer issues, teasing out why is no less important than unifying quantum mechanics and general relativity. It matters.

Now to put my theory of why I want to go to grad school into practice and go buy a study book for the GRE.

Zombieland wasn't that great.

There. I said it.

I love a good zom-com (that's short for Zombie Comedy), so I wasn't going to pass on seeing Zombieland. I should have.

[Disclaimer: possibler spoilage ahead.]

By my count, Zombieland is the first mainstream US zom-com to come out of the uptrend of zombie movies over the past decade. And it is indeed decidedly mainstream, ie., lackluster. Here are my issues:

- Lack of Conflict
"Zombies are a conflict!" you might say. And you'd be wrong. In any good zombie movie - whether horror or comedy or in between - the zombies are merely a catalyst. The real conflict is between the living. Zombieland didn't have any of that.

- Not That Funny
I can't remember a single good line. Looking through the memorable quotes on imdb, I'm unimpressed.

- Tallahassee
Woody Harrelson's character is problematic. And by that I mean that it's a half-assed characterization. They try and give him some back story and emotional weight, but it falls flat. If you want to see a real zombie-killing badass, take a gander at Guitar Wolf:







Now THAT's a badass.



- US-centric
The opening of the movie says that the United States of America has become the United States of Zombieland. During this voice over, the camera zooms out to show the whole globe. Um, what? If the whole earth is affected, why call it the United States of Zombieland? Why not Planet Zombie?

- Heteronormative
The happy ending is the formation of a nuclear family unit. Yawn.

- Genre Identity Crisis
Any good zom-com recognizes and plays with the conventions of the zombie movie genre. Zombieland recognizes them (to some extent) and doesn't do anything with them. Columbus' zombie survival rules are cute, but more of a nod to the parafilmic zombie fandom than to its predecessors. In terms of self-awareness, Zombieland scores some points for having Bill Murray as himself. But even that seemed out of place. The fact that the poster uses the critical acclaim that it is "the funniest movie since The Hangover" is disappointingly appropriate in that the type of humor was nonspecific to its genre.

I am disappointed in Zombieland. It could have been more, but I'm not surprised that it isn't.

For some *good* zom-coms, check out:
- Wild Zero (2000) - Japanese rock n' roll zombie movie
- Shaun of the Dead (2004) - British zom-rom-com (that's zombie romantic comedy)
- Dance of the Dead (2008) - Indie US teenage zombie movie
- Fido (2006) - Zombie movie meets Douglas Sirk