I had had a couple of articles about the biologist (or maybe it was a botanist) they hired to work on Avatar and was going to post it, but I lost it in a crash and now I can’t remember where I saw it. Cameron really did take all this very seriously.
That’s a fantastic article!
I have to post this last paragraph:
My apologies, I hadn’t even looked at the “Politics of Avatar” thread, so I didn’t know it’s been posted ad nauseum.
That’s why I’m planning to see it again, which I don’t normally do for movies (heck, I don’t even bother seeing them one time on a big screen, usually).
ETA: Colibri, that’s lovely. It is a beautiful, beautiful movie, and all this quibbling can’t take that away.
Thanks for that.
Friends,
At over 800 and rising, Avatar has the longest thread in Cafe Society. The movie is silly, shallow, saccharin eye candy.
Is this conclusive proof that most American minds are silly, shallow and saccharin?
Kids: if you are under 16 years old, this doesn’t apply to you. For the youngsters, it’s worthwhile to read and write about anything at all. You can outgrow the subject matter later. When you’re seventeen.
Regards,
KLR 650
Conclusive proof that elitists can’t plug their bitchhole up and enjoy an experience and stop sneering at people who enjoy things that aren’t high art involving gay cowboys exploring their sexuality with pudding!
(Not targetted towards everyone who disliked the movie, just posts like the one above)
I prefer to think of it as a Michelangelo spectacle with a paint-by-numbers plot.
It’s also not the longest in Cafe Society, by the way. It’s 18th (or 17th if you don’t count a moved thread that was started here). You just were probably only viewing threads in the last 10 days.
Paint-by-numbers plot, yes.
But let’s not insult Michelangelo while we’re at it.
SenorBeef (stupid name), if you want to flame me, take it to the pit. Meat-head.
You wound me, sir. My head is indeed made of meat, but it is not often that I am insulted on that basis.
I’m afraid you (and the subject) is not sufficiently interesting to pit.
Please take it down a notch, SenorBeef.
KLR 650, personal insults are not allowed in this forum, or any part of the site except the BBQ Pit. That includes responding to someone who has made a post you consider insulting.
Dear Marley23,
10-4 good buddy. I stand corrected.
Sincerely,
KLR 650
Just for the record, If LotR had been written by someone else? ran to over 2000 posts, and caused such a stir on the Internet as a whole that the boards’ server logs are dominated by a spike when it was posted from people following links here to read it. This thread is nothing to that one.
Heh - there is a certain amount of that at the Dope, no doubt about it. For the record, though, I loved this movie AND “Brokeback Mountain.” 
(I don’t remember the pudding, though - was that in the Director’s Cut?)
Yeah, don’t you remember the scene where Jack Twist looks at the wreckage of his Jello Pudding cup binge and says “I wish I could quit you”? Very powerful stuff.
There’s an old episode of South Park (Chef’s Chocolate Salty Balls) where the Sundance Film Festival is moved to South Park and Cartman says all independent movies are about gay cowboys eating pudding.
I was actually referencing the south park episode with the gay cowboys with pudding, although I understand why that reference would be more commonly interpreted as Brokeback Mountain.
Not that I have any problem with thoughtful, ambiguous films - I’ve liked plenty. I just think we don’t have to demand that every movie be one. Avatar was meant to be an experience - the filmmaker’s goal was just to get you to sit back in awe and be caught up in the moment and be transported to this place along with our protagonist. You were supposed to share his wonder, to understand why he would choose to abandon his own people and be immersed in it.
To this extent, any attempts to make this movie “deeper” by showing that the issues aren’t so black and white would just damage the immersiveness of the movie. Sure, we could’ve shown that maybe the Na’vi aren’t so great after all, maybe they treat their women like property and eat their old people. But would this have added anything to the movie? It would break the immersion, make you question whether or not Jake should really be going native. It would be ambiguity and grey areas for the sake of having ambiguity and grey areas - it wouldn’t improve the film.
Not every film needs to be a gritty, ambiguous character study (where the cowboys eventually explore their sexuality with pudding). Sometimes movies can be so immersive that they just completely take you in for a few hours and let you experience the story. That was the intent behind this one, and I think for most people it worked. You don’t have to treat every movie that isn’t a difficult to interpret arthouse movie as if it were as stupid as transformers 2.
One technical detail that impressed me: the AMP suits are designed so the driver (wearer? pilot?) is almost exactly in the center of the suit, so when the suit turns or bends the driver is centered on the point of rotation.
Dang; that’s two South Park references today that I was not aware of. It isn’t too surprising, I guess, since I don’t watch South Park much.