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[venchka]

Originally Posted by Buddha

Zenchka,
I agree with you on why you should go, and that is in part why I went.
For pre CGI, try Humphrey Bogart in B&W, or Beau Geste. If you want to see a historically accurate movie, try 'The Great Locomotive Chase' by Walt Disney.

Even I watch newer movies than those.

[KeithnFW]

And that's not all their was.
You had the love story, the story about a guy overcoming his own handicaps, the story about everything being connected by a common energy, the story about how different cultures can learn from each other, the story about fighting for what you believe in no matter what... lots of good stuff going on in a 2.5hr movie.

Does it finally solve the Nikon vs. Canon debate?

[venchka]

That would take all of the fun out of life as we know it.

[jeffkohn]

I'll wait and rent it on blu-ray. I've read enough reviews to know I won't like it much, but I'm sure it will be technically impressive.

It's obvious they were recreating the whole native american fiasco and it was obvious earthlings had already destroyed their own planet and were now destroying another.
It's not preaching, it's just the truth. And sometimes the truth hurts.

Sorry, but I hate preachy movies. I want to be entertained, not talked down to by the self-proclaimed elite who think they know better than the rest of us. What's sad is that the preachier the movie, the worse it is because the story and characters almost always suffer for it. Usually you can see the plot coming from a mile away.

[Buddha]

"Even I watch newer movies than those."

Venchka,
I could come back with variety of sarcastic remarks, but I thought you were looking for some good movies to watch. Those most certainly are regardless of when they were made. I thought it was interesting that Walt Disney made the most historically accurate movies of his time.

[Hein0100]

I saw it in 3-d and It was amazing. I could sit through it a few more times tonight and not be bored with it. I loved it.

[venchka]

Originally Posted by Buddha

"Even I watch newer movies than those."

Venchka,
I could come back with variety of sarcastic remarks, but I thought you were looking for some good movies to watch. Those most certainly are regardless of when they were made. I thought it was interesting that Walt Disney made the most historically accurate movies of his time.

Last week was Bogart Week on one of the cable channels. Good stuff. I will dredge up the Disney movies from my youth. Thanks.

I have no idea if it is historically accurate, but "The Wild Bunch" sure feels accurate. On my 10 best ever list.

[Murph]

Agreed, its Dances with Aliens, don't preach to me, entertain me.

Originally Posted by jeffkohn

I'll wait and rent it on blu-ray. I've read enough reviews to know I won't like it much, but I'm sure it will be technically impressive.

Sorry, but I hate preachy movies. I want to be entertained, not talked down to by the self-proclaimed elite who think they know better than the rest of us. What's sad is that the preachier the movie, the worse it is because the story and characters almost always suffer for it. Usually you can see the plot coming from a mile away.

[d2creative]

Originally Posted by jeffkohn

I'll wait and rent it on blu-ray. I've read enough reviews to know I won't like it much, but I'm sure it will be technically impressive.

Sorry, but I hate preachy movies. I want to be entertained, not talked down to by the self-proclaimed elite who think they know better than the rest of us. What's sad is that the preachier the movie, the worse it is because the story and characters almost always suffer for it. Usually you can see the plot coming from a mile away.

Wow, talk about preachy.
I guess I just don't get why the story is seen as "preachy" and why the movie can't just be enjoyed. Especially this one. It's like saying that any movie about the Holocaust is preachy. Or Miracle on 34th St is preachy because it pushes the belief that Santa is real. Avatar does not have an agenda. It's not like they are pushing a global warming scare or an abortion agenda. They just borrowed a few facts from world history to base a story on.
I for one am glad I can just enjoy it. In fact, I think I'm going to have to go enjoy it for a second time.

[Buddha]

Amen!

[Cajungaltx]

Double Post

[Cajungaltx]

Not sure if you guys know it - but a significant number of James Cameron movies are 'preachy'....

In some interview he did on Avatar he says that he just held a mirror up to show us our "blighted history"...

The thing that strikes me as most hilarious... is that all of the technology... all of the marvels that are the reason the guy even has a job...and the reason why he had the millions to make this movie...and even stands a snowballs chance in hell to recoup some of that said millions....is because of the country is today because of our 'blighted history'...

I like his movies... love Aliens...Terminator... all of them... but I don't go see movies to get my personal value system... I go...and suspend reality for the 2 hours I see it...then return to my regular life... some of the folks in that industry seem to take a permanent suspension from reality...

[Sonny]

It's a friggin movie! Geez, quit making it out to be more than it is!! Go or don't go...nuff said!!!

I plan on watching it.

[johnastovall]

I like this kind of Cameron preachy:

"I say we take off, and nuke the site from orbit."

[Murph]

From Another site the review:

Not Right-Wing Friendly

The political import of Avatar -- and there's no waving this aspect away because it's right in your face start to finish, and especially in the third act -- is ardently left. It is pro-indigenous native, anti-corporate, anti-imperialist, anti-U.S. Iraq War effort, anti-U.S.-in-Afghanistan (and anti-troop-surge-in-that-country, or strongly against the thinking of President Barack Obama and Gen. Stanley McChrystal), anti-rightie, anti-Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, etc.

Yes, it's very teenaged adolescent in its super-imaginative wacko visions and exuberant energy levels, but politically it's pure Che Guevara (more the Motorcycle Diaries or Che-in-Cuba version than Che in Bolivia), Noam Chomsky, Hugo Chavez, Howard Zinn, Gore Vidal, Oliver Stone, etc. Cameron is an earth-hugging lefty from way back (the flagrant despise-the-arrogant-rich current in Titanic being but one example) so this should come as no surprise to anyone. I for one am cheered and heartened.

If Sarah Palin sees Avatar and then sits down and actually thinks about what it's saying (which is always a dicey proposition, I admit), she'll hate this movie. Because Avatar hates her and her kind. Some righties will pretend to like it ("great popcorn flick! took my kids!"), but they'd have to be in major denial mode not to recognize that Avatar is much more MSNBC than Fox News. It really spits on the Fox News philosophy/worldview. If Cameron had for some inane reason put a Fox News-type character in the film, he/she would end up with a Na'vi arrow through his/her chest, trust me.

Call it the most flamboyant, costliest, grandest left-liberal super-movie anyone's ever seen -- a political tract that cost Rupert Murdoch God knows how many hundreds of millions to make and yet is totally pro-loincloth, pro-native, despise-the-greedy, hug-the-earth, worship-the-earth, down with the soulless short-end, down with the us-first, masters-of-the-universe thinking behind the Goldman Sachs/Timothy Geithner culture and up with the eternal/spiritual in all cultures and all corners of the globe. The tragedy of the Vietnam War echoes all through this film. Somewhere Ho Chi Minh is smiling.

Cameron explains the anti-imperialist current to John Anderson in a forthcoming N.Y. Times Sunday piece: "I'm...a child of the '60s. There's a part of me who wants to put a daisy in the end of the gun barrel. I believe in peace through superior firepower, but on the other hand I abhor the abuse of power and creeping imperialism disguised as patriotism. Some of these things you can't raise without being called unpatriotic, but I think it's very patriotic to question a system that needs to be corralled, or it becomes Rome."

Spoiler: I leave it to the community to decide whether there's a huge 9/11 metaphor in Avatar or not, but I felt one (although politically it makes no sense in the context of the film.) Call it a reverse 9/11 image. I'm not talking about the destruction of a man-made super-structure but a natural one. I'll leave it at that and wait for reactions.


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