Posted on 12/29/2009 1:37:32 AM PST by Schnucki
It is a children’s film dragged out to 162 minutes
Cinema history has been made in America. Box-office takings hit a new record of $275 million over the Christmas weekend, largely because of Avatar. Unless you have been living in a small cave, or perhaps on Pandora, the planet where the film is set, you cannot have missed the Avatar marketing campaign.
Every billboard and bus is sporting a picture of a blue fella with a yellow eye. Every newspaper has run a story on how this is the film that will finally revolutionise 3-D cinema (a full 55 years after The Creature from the Black Lagoon waved his webbed paw slightly nearer an audience’s face than previous technology allowed). And the marketing has worked — audiences have been flocking to see James Cameron’s first movie since Titanic came out in 1997.
So it’s a pity that Avatar absolutely sucks. It’s true that the 3-D stuff is awesome. For the first time, we have a 3-D film that doesn’t have a random scene with a ping-pong ball (House of Wax), a rake (Friday the 13th, Part III), or a woman having sex with a lamp (The Stewardesses), purely to show the audience how 3-D it is.
Avatar isn’t in 3-D for a gimmick, it’s in 3-D because it creates an immersive experience for the viewer. Pandora feels touchably real; it appears to stretch out around you, in minute detail, in every direction.
But that’s where the good stuff ends. Avatar is, in essence, a children’s film, dragged out over 162 minutes. The plot is risibly thin: evil earthlings (Americans, obviously. Period drama has evil Brits, present- day drama has evil Arabs, but in the future, Americans are the villains) are trying to destroy the woodland habitat of the tree-hugging Na’vi.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Go see The Blind Side instead. Well worth the price of admission.
I don’t go to movies much since no need to endure anti-Amerian hollywood tripe.
But Blind Side - which is based on a true story - with Sandra Bullock - is simply wonderful.
Who is going to see this movie? Science fiction fans? Twelve or thirteen year old girls who think it is some kind of “love” story?
“They don’t need to name the characters ‘Busha’ or ‘Chenie’.”
Indeed, by letting the characters use terms like “shock and awe” “counter-insurgency” “preemption” etc. most adult members of the audience picked up on the code and quickly figured out they were watching a replay of Iraq, where the U.S. allegedly brutalized the local population and sacrificed its own blood and treasure in pursuit of oil (”blood for oil”).
That this cartoonish version of the war in Iraq inconveniently did NOT culminate in the U.S. takeover of Iraqi oil assets (calling into sharp question the accuracy of the worldview of that war’s most vitriolic opponents) apparently failed to affect James Cameron’s deeply ideological (and likely partisan) views about the U.S. and its role in the world. Instead of viewing the Iraq war as a
gift of liberation to tens of millions who had been brutalized for many years by a dictator, progressives like Cameron will always frame it as a war in which we exploited Iraq in pursuit of corporate interests. It is hard to imagine most Americans feeling prouder of their country after viewing Avatar, and sadly, I believe that is part of the director’s not so subtle intent in creating this film.
Who has watched this film? A surprising number of freepers who should know better. Patronizing and enabling a big-time lib propaganda maker because of their thirst for 2 hours of entertainment. And who aren’t willing to lift a finger doing the practical steps required to starve the lib system, even a tiny one.
They might have well bought ten copies of the NY Times.
If liberalism works,it is pushing us toward a future of bigger eyes and smaller brains..............
nah, but there's a SSgt Barnes from Platoon/Col. Nathan Jessup from "A Few Good Men"...there's a litany of other cliches including the obligatory macho hispanic chick that flies choppers, the sensitive Indian (dot not feather) and the chain smoking female that is more macho than the Marines.... and on and on..
Pocahontas with the talking tree/ Dances with Wolves with the soldier going native after banging the hot native girl/ yawn.... had to take the teen agers so I went to see what they were watching. The propaganda is subtle enough to get by my 7th grader, my 9th grade boy thought it was "lame", the 11th grade girls liked the love story but "yeah, we see how the earth guys were made bad and the soldiers weren't like grandpa"....so it was a wash. I fell asleep during part of the 8 hour fight sequences... but it only felt like 8 minutes.... underwater.
The left uses propoganda with virtuoso-like skill. They use a technological hook---state of the art 3D filmmaking---to draw people in to a movie that seeks to indoctrinate them with leftist ideology.
Until lovers of liberty find the means to counter such projects, we'll be fighting with one hand tied behind our backs.
This is the paradox of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - To allow exercise of an unrestricted freedom of speech is to allow those who would destroy the First Amendment and the Republic the ability to organize, form parties and use propaganda to advance their cause.
Lincoln’s way around the paradox was to say, “The Consitution is not a suicide pact.” In other words, the freedom of speech is not absolute and cannot be used to overthrow the Republic.
Therefore, I say Hollywood should be banned from the production of propaganda movies UNLESS said motion picture is advertised as “PP” - Propaganda Picture.
Avatar took about $75 million, which is a large 2nd-week number, and beat 1st-run movies for the weekend.
It’s total take is still below “New Moon” though. :-)
I take the opposite view. The political “right”—conservatives and libertarians—should be engaged in the propoganda war. The right seems oblivious to the strategic importance of art, literature, music, movies, etc. They have left the entire field to the left. Same goes with the education industry. Our side needs to establish and maintain a presence in these arenas. We’re not even in the fight.
LOL, another one.
My husband and I MIGHT see it when it hits our local cineplex cheap theater and I can get coupons for $1 admissions. I don’t think Cameron and Hollywood will get much profit from that.
If you’ve seen Dances with Wolves, Matrix, Braveheart and Last Samuri you’ve seen Avatar without the CGI.
I consider “Avatar” the movie to be about the same as “Obama” the candidate. All special effects and no substance and yet many people warned still reward the media for fooling them.
I consider the “Visually it was a great movie but the plot was leftist crap” by those who spent money to see it the same as “Historically it is great we have elected an African American but we didn’t think he would be so much a leftist” from those who may of voted for him or didn’t vote against him.
D.W. Griffith “Birth of a Nation” or Leni Riefenstahl “Triumph of the Will” is about the same class of great artistic masterpiece yet work of propaganda.
Dances with smurfs in the Matrix with a little Braveheart and Last Samuri tossed in.
Technological saavy cannot redeem a turkey of a film, no matter how much it tries.
I disagree with most critics, who characterize the film as a "greenie" manifesto. The film actually denigrates Western European (most notably, American) culture and heritage. The straw men it creates are stunning and obvious. But most of the unwashed masses will lap it up as gospel.
Being one of those not tuned into the inane pop-culture conversation that pervades society, I really didn't know the underlying message in this film, only that it was a ground-breaking technological wonder. Had I known then what I know after seeing it, I could be $10 richer now (and Cameron could be $10 poorer.)
This movie is great. It creates the same kind of emotional effect as did the original Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.
People should not jump to the conclusion that it is an anti-conservative film, or that it somehow tries to or succeeds in portraying America in a bad light.
Just watch the film, and enjoy. Worth seeing twice.
If one is looking for possible subtext messages in Avatar, here are two: 1) unbridled (American) militarism in pursuit of commercial interests is bad; 2) the people risk being crushed. I think both are true, but 2 dominates. The elaboration is that WE, conservatives, are the group most like Avatar’s native people, and are at risk of being crushed by government.
Therefore, imo, the dominant message in Avatar is supportive of and harmonizes with conservative values.
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