Avatar review

1 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

this film made me cry!!, 27 Mar 2010

By

J. Clay

This review is from: Avatar [DVD] (DVD)

i'm only puting 1 star for this film because when i saw it at the cinema it made me CRY! i havent cried so much at a film since i saw new moon, honestly this was the most amazing dilm ive seen since new moon. the only thing that would make this film better is if they someow crossed it with new moon so you could have BELLA and EDWARD togehter on pandora, they could live in piece in harmony with Nature and with each other, there are no werewolves or bad vampires on pandora are there!

really this film gets FIVE STARS!

Reviews:

A. Vlad says: Nice attempt, troll.

Mr J. A. Hetherington says: An opinion is one thing... but REALLY?! There are no words.

Lee J. Simpson says: Are you for real?

Chapman says: Worst. Review. Ever.

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I'm amazed that these comments were all made within a few hours of submitting the review last night. There's a lot of Avatards lurking about Amazon, clearly. To be fair, though, people only have to click on my profile link and look at my other reviews to see that I'm obviously a troll with nothing better to do.

Apart from abusing Avatar fans, I got a job at Durham starting in October. It's left me in the weird position of having July and August free without any work or research planned and I'm trying to work out how to fill them. My ideas so far include one or more of the following:

1) Going on an intensive French course somewhere, probably Lyon

2) Going hiking

3) Sitting at home watching Deadwood

4) Renting a cottage in Donegal through July

Re. number 4, I'd aim to get a place with 2 bedrooms so anyone out there who fancies a summer break in the west of Ireland could come for a week of their choice and we'd share the rent for that week. (The cottage would be about €400 per week.) So if that tickles yer fancy get in touch; if I go ahead I'll need to find somewhere pretty soon in order to book a whole month.

It's a good day to die

Starship Troopers 3 is one of the biggest mistakes ever committed to celluloid, but this song makes it worthwhile.

Car laptop tray

I despair, I really do. (Click to enlarge.)

Eating like a caveman

For the last month I've been following my first ever conscious diet. I started it because I happened to stumble across an online article which led me to the homepage of Arthur De Vany, a professor of economics and fitness guru who's developed something called Evolutionary Fitness. His fairly simple argument is that the best possible diet and fitness regime for humans is the one to which evolution adapted us over millions of years. This does not include any foods produced by agricultural techniques.

This got me looking into the so-called Paleo Diet, which led in turn me to the low-budget comedy documentary Fat Head by Tom Naughton, a kind of rebuttal to Morgan Spurlock's problematic Supersize Me. The basic message of the documentary is that the dietary meme that has been repeated in western societies for the last fifty or so years (saturated fat = higher cholestoral = heart disease) is completely bogus, and always has been.

According to this new (for some people, not so new) theory the healthiest diet for human beings is high in vegetables and high in saturated fat from meat, fish, eggs and nuts, with liberal amounts of sugar from fruit. The most important thing is to avoid simple carbohydrates and trans-fatty acids, since they raise blood sugar levels, cause the body to store the sugar as fat and in many people can lead to diabetes and heart attacks. This means no cereals or grains or starchy foods - corn, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes - and only naturally occurring oils for cooking, so out with corn oil, sunflower oil, any kind of vegetable oil, all of which has to chemically extracted from the plant, and in with ladlefuls of butter and extra-virgin olive oil.

As an experiment I decided to go cold turkey on all cereals and grains and stick with the diet for a month. Since for years I've basically eaten some kind of cereal or grain with almost every single meal, this left me rather disoriented for a few days, but I bought a basketful of herbs and spices, explored forbidding corners of the vegetable market and looked for good lean meat, and soon, for the first time ever, I realised that cooking was actually rather fun.

Having tried it out quite strictly for a month, I see no reason to stop. I've decided there's no point being fascist about it if I'm in the mood for a hot cross bun or a pizza or a takeaway, but so far I haven't missed bread or pasta or rice at all. That in itself says something about my body's needs, I think. I've been experimenting with a few different recipes which I may post at some point. The best thing about the revelation, though, is that suddenly this...

... is good for me. Yes. A good heavy fry-up of quality meat and eggs in a pan of olive oil or melted butter is good for me. All that oil and saturated fat does not clog up my arteries. It was all a humungous myth which has been soundly debunked by the latest research, even if the massive momentum of the health and food industry, with the occasional exception such as the Atkins Diet, will not advertise this fact for years. Provided I also eat lots of fresh vegetables, I could have a fry-up every morning for the rest of my life (minus the bread, of course), and my body would thank me for it. This is happy news indeed.

Oooohhh yeah

Beckship Troopers

During one of my occasional trawls through the blogosphere of the rabid left I came across a clip from Mr Glenn Beck's opinion show on Fox. Beck has hit on a genius formula of being so absurdly irrational and extreme that he is effectively beyond parody. He seems to frustrate the left in part because his arguments are not really arguments at all, but a series of disjointed assertions repeated in similar forms over and over again, like some kind of multi-layered conceptual jazz experience aimed at an audience of Neocon traditionalists.

Anyway, Beck is not very interesting any more. He's like a car alarm that's gone off outside your place of work and shows no sign of stopping; one just has to try to get on with things and try to ignore it. But he said something in the clip which actually made the sci-fi nerd in me laugh.

He was ranting about recent leftist groups who have been protesting against budget cuts in education. Apparently they've been waving suspiciously red banners and claiming that education is a universal right, and indoctrinating schoolchildren with such socialist propaganda.


Beck: Education is not a right, it's a privilege! How many of our students even look at that "right" as a privilege? They sit there, they don't listen! [dramatic pause] Because they don't have to earn it. Unless you earn it, you don't value it.

Leaving aside the fact that moaning about how children never listen in class rather undermines his claims that they're being successfully indoctrinated with anything, his words reminded me of the classroom scene from Verhoeven's classic 90s ultraviolent spacefest Starship Troopers, which, in case you haven't seen it, is set in a kind of Nazi Star Trek version of the future.


Michael Ironside: Let's sum up. This year we explored the failure of democracy, when the social scientists brought our world to the brink of chaos. We talked about the veterans, how they took control and imposed the stability that has lasted for generations since. You know these facts. But have I taught you anything of value this year? Hm? You - why are only citizens allowed to vote?

Student: It's a reward. What the Federation gives you for doing Federal Service.

Michael Ironside: No. No! Something given has no value!

He took the words right out of Beck's mouth. Beck strikes me as the kind of fellow who might watch Starship Troopers and not realise that the whole package is an ironic spin on Robert Heinlein's thoroughly un-ironic book.

It's bollocks, of course. None of us "earned" the right to be born in the first place. Does that mean we don't value our own lives?

We're not talking about university or college education here. The debate is about basic education. What kind of nutter goes on national TV and claims that no child in the country should have an automatic right to a free, state-provided basic education? What century is this guy living in? Not in the distant future century of Starship Troopers, sadly.

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Someone commented that my blog wasn't allowing anonymous comments, so I've fixed that now. Sorry.

Killing two turds with one stone

Now there isn't much that Vlad and I agree on, but there are two things which have exercised our combined ire recently.

1) The existence of Avatar fans.

I don't mean people who saw the film and thought it was okay, who were impressed by the effects but not much else. I mean the hardcore fanbase which has sprung up in the last couple of months and is spreading on the internet like bubonic plague. Unsympathetic souls have christened them "Avatards".

First of all, this review explains why the film is overrated, dull and manipulative.

Yet it's just the sort of thing that seems to suck people in. Using a highly scientific method of measuring internet opinion, I typed "avatar is shit" into Google. It got 24 million hits. If I type "avatar is awesome", it gets twice as many. That can't be right.

There are Avatar forums devoted to dealing with post-Avatar depression - for people who are depressed, I should add, not because they just paid good money to put on some silly glasses and be bored for two hours, but because after being sucked into Cameron's cliched and preachy utopian fairytale they find themselves unable to deal with the imperfections of the real world.

And while the film has its share of normal fans, there are some who regard it as a life-changing experience, a call to arms for social and political revolution. It's basically provoked a crude form of environmental activism for people with short attention spans and a penchant for blue faces.

Personally I don't see how the derivative "alien" culture of the Na'vi (another pet hate: arbitrary use of apostrophes in alien or fantasy names) can inspire anyone but the most feeble minded. Honestly. It's a hokey mush of noble savage clichés and a language that any skilled linguist could bash out over a weekend.

Worst of all, now my toes curl in embarrassment every time I hear someone use the phrase "I see you". Thanks, Cameron. You've spawned another generation of confused sci-fi nerds whose idea of personal fulfilment is to waste their time learning to live a pretend culture and language, as though Star Trek didn't already fulfil that need. Tolkien, as a professional philologist, constructed his fantasy languages for his own half-secret personal enjoyment. He never expected that anyone would take the trouble to learn them.

2) U2, especially Bono

Vlad has already covered Bono's latest insult to humanity, i.e. his continued existence. U2's 2009 tour helped the band reap over $100m last year and involved perhaps the largest physical expression of arrogance ever made by any rock band, including U2.

Compensating for something, Bono?

One would think that a band which was able to impress people with its musical skill wouldn't need to resort to stuff like this. What's Bono going to do next, rebuild the Pyramid of Cheops on the banks of the Liffey as his burial tomb?

I gladly concede that U2 has had some good moments. Sunday Bloody Sunday is a decent protest song, and I think With Or Without You is a beautiful ballad. But they've produced no more than you'd expect for a band which has lasted three times longer than Napoleon's empire and produced a dozen more full-length albums than he managed. As the saying goes, you throw enough shit against the wall, some of it's gonna stick.

The best you can say about them is that they haven't got any worse in the last thirty years, but that's mostly because they haven't developed at all. There's a simple test. Listen to their 1980 debut album Boy, and then listen to 2009's No Line On The Horizon, and try to identify any meaningful progression apart from the increased pretension of the title. The same echoey guitar riffs, the same warbling vocals, the same vacuous lyrics.

Being unable to expand into new creative areas in all that time, apart from regular forays into whatever they judged to be cool at the time (pacifism and Americana in the 80s, techno in the 90s, themselves in the 2000s), must be indicative of a serious lack of talent. But then U2 has always been mostly about impressing people. They are like the golden boy who is a little too eager to prove himself to his parents because he knows, deep down, that he isn't really all that golden.

For an example of a band which has developed ten times as much as U2 in half the time, you could do worse than listen to the back catalogue of Wilco. Jeff Tweedy doesn't need massive robot crabs to impress people.

That sounds like a line from a cheap novelette

Moogface came for a visit last week and we went about doing things in Vienna, kicking off an action-packed few days with a craaazy two-hour seminar with visiting medievalist Prof. Philippe Buc at the Institute for Medieval Research. I know how to treat a lady!

Then we took the subway to Prater, site of a big funfair which promised craziness without bounds. Unfortunately everything was closed because it was the middle of fucking winter, something which had escaped my notice. We shuffled about in the snow for a bit and Moogface made full use of the only form of entertainment available by sticking her head in this thing, which killed an hour or so. She is easily amused.

It's probably a good thing that Dizzy Mouse was shut.

But the fun didn't stop with medieval seminars and closed funfairs, oh no! We also went to Latin mass in the undercroft of the cathedral, which was like normal mass except more penitential due to the lack of cushion kneelers and comprehensibility. Mel Gibson was actually standing in the corner inviting people to whip him.

And we watched an old black and white film in a musty little cinema. (It was The Third Man of course, so mustiness is part of the experience.) This necessitated a trip on the Riesenrad, although our plan to re-enact the famous scene from the film was thwarted by the old couple sharing our cabin, and the locks on the doors.

"Or do ghosts only fly by night, Dr Winkel? You got an opinion on that?"

Moogdroog also managed to use some kind of secret healing powers to fix me, or at least I made a sudden improvement on the day of her arrival, which meant I was actually able to take her around the city and we didn't have to stay in my flat watching badly dubbed episodes of Friends and repeats of The Weakest Link, which is about the only show broadcast on BBC Entertainment.

I saw my physio for the last time yesterday and she ran out of things to do to me. With luck I'll be fit enough to try a short run in a couple of weeks. Six weeks of crippledom has taught me two things: 1) be careful when sledging; 2) Vienna is a good place to get sick. There are so many doctors here, chances are your next door neighbour will be one. The doctor I went to was actually called Dr Galen. You don't get any more highly qualified than that. I was half expecting my radiologist to be called Dr Xavier Ray.

Tomorrow I have to go to the Institute for a project meeting to discuss an article I've written for their latest edited volume. It's the first time the people here will be giving direct feedback on something I've written, and I'm fairly shitting myself at the prospect of their hardcore Viennese historiographical faces staring at me.

"So, Herr Dr Clay, please justify your academic existence."

That photo is from 1892 I admit, but the only thing to have changed is the intimidating facial hair. My only consolation is that nobody at the Institute is really an Anglo-Saxon expert, so they might not notice all the glaring historical errors I made.

Bellamy's People vs People Like Us

During our increasingly desperate attempts to find quality comedy on the internet, moogdroog and I recently rediscovered a late 90s BBC comedy series called People Like Us. I remember watching a couple of episodes when it was first broadcast and thinking it was amazing, but it sank into obscurity following the arrest of its creator, Chris Langham, under somewhat awkward circumstances, and as far as I know wasn’t given a repeat broadcast.

Now the BBC have kindly put the entire first series up on YouTube. I believe People Like Us was the first major attempt by a British comedian at the mockumentary format, years before Ricky Gervais tried it out it with rather more success. But whereas The Office, despite the mockumentary conceit, is still essentially a sitcom, People Like Us remains cruelly true to its adopted genre and is hence much more innovative, and also funnier.

Each episode deals with a different profession - solicitor, estate agent, photographer and so on - and follows about various characters. Chris Langham plays the (almost) never-seen interviewer Roy Mallard, his awkward, slightly confused voice always off camera, sometimes providing voiceovers which manage to twist rules of grammar and sense into increasingly convoluted balloon-animal sentences with a subtlety that borders on genius.

“The instinct to find a roof to put over our heads, like eating, copulation, and then sleeping, is something we share with the rest of the animal kingdom, except for animals that don’t have heads, like worms, or that don’t copulate, like worms either...”

Or the countless throwaway gags during interviews:

Roy Mallard: What would you be doing if you weren’t an estate agent?

Estate Agent: God… [looks confused]

Roy Mallard: I just meant hypothetically.

Estate Agent: Oh, right. I mean, I don’t think I am especially hypothetical.

Roy Mallard: Right.

Estate Agent: Not, you know, really.

Roy Mallard: No, fair enough.

Every other line, no matter who delivers it, is wonderful. The density of humour is amazing. The central characters in each episode, including Roy Mallard himself, are basically losers - frustrated, unlucky, well-meaning losers whom we admire because they fight so hard not to acknowledge their own tragedy. It helps that Langham enlisted an array of largely unknown but talented comic actors, many of whom are instantly recognisable now, David Tennant, Bill Nighy, Jessica Stevenson and Mark Heap among them.

The best way to appreciate this is to watch it immediately after half an hour (or as much as you can stand; I managed 15 minutes) of Bellamy’s People, the latest sewage to be oozed out of the BBC comedy pipe, which feels like an attempt by a 12 year old to combine People Like Us with Little Britain, but without the funny bits of either. The characters are tedious, one-dimensional stereotypes (look, it’s funny because he’s really fat!), the format is unconvincing and overblown (the show spends the first five minutes advertising itself), and, worst of all, Bellamy, with his trendy hair and stupid smug face, has none of the endearing helplessness that draws you into the world of Roy Mallard.

Comedy is an art form. And good art should be trying to say something. Sometimes comedy is sociopolitical satire (That Was The Week That Was, Not The Nine O’Clock News, The Thick Of It, The Day Today, The Armando Iannucci Shows) or ironic pop-cultural commentary (The Glam Metal Detectives, Spaced, Garth Marenghi's Dark Place), sometimes it lures us deep into the human condition and moves us with pathos (Fawlty Towers, Extras, Peep Show, The Royle Family, This Is Alan Partridge, The Office), or flips our world-view on its head with surreal brilliance (Round The Horne, The Goon Show, Monty Python, The Mighty Boosh, The League of Gentlemen). Often it is several of these things at once (Till Death Us Do Part). Sometimes it starts off promising and turns shit (Little Britain). Sometimes it is just shit (My Family). Occasionally it is even offensively shit (The Fast Show, most comedy on Radio 4, including the precursor to Bellamy's People, Down The Line).

Probably the best comedy of the last 20 years. Buy it!

Anyway, my point is that good comedy should leave you moved or enlightened, even if at a depth that makes you dig deep in yourself to find it. People Like Us does this brilliantly. The genius of the show is that it purports to be a clinical analysis of modern day (well, late 90s) English society, and through its artifice of incompetence, tragedy and emotional tension manages to tell us much more. Bellamy's People, on the other hand, is basically a freak show. Except all the freaks are fake. And who wants to pay to see that?

Rotherham Revisited

As I'm still out of sorts and have no more to tell of Vienna than that which I observe while prone upon my floor, I have recovered and reposted an old blog entry from 16 December 2006, in part because Vlad, in a commendable effort to save as many people as possible from the pain of experiencing Rotherham at first hand, is presently leading an online tour of his home town.

*

They order, said I, this matter better in Rotherham--You have been to Rotherham? quoth my manservant, turning quick upon me with the most civil triumph in the world.

Of course I struck the bounder soundly across his chin with my cane for his impudence, & as his unconscious form crumpled to the floor like a discarded pair of breeches, I thought to myself, Well, surely t'would be a fine thing to visit the place, tho' it be some hours distant--& despite the clouds of foulness which I saw daily at the southern end of Precentor's Court, above the pigeon-coop of the Dean's town house, disgorg'd, no doubt, by the unfortunate burg itself--One ought, I mused further, bear a stout mind in the face of such evil.

So in a matter of minutes I had embark'd by steam-locomotive with two gentlemen friends of mine, worthy fellows & solid companions. Is it, quoth Mr. McKibbin, one of the pair, the case that in Rotherham the sun is render'd quite invisible to the human eye?--Nay, replied Mr. Wilson, Esq., the third of our number, 'Tis not so--for when t'were, t'would be that denizens of Rotherham would be as pasty & wan as geese; &, as is quite often observ'd, they are known abroad by their ruddy & sun-burned complexion. Aye, said Mr. McKibbin, but 'tis also true, Sir--as I have often observ'd of my own labourers--that the wind can render one's face most rough & uncouth without the aid of the sun. To which answer'd Mr. Wilson, Esq., It is so; perhaps one best recognizes a Rotherhamite by his uncouth gait and shifting eyes.

With such banter did we pass the journey; I--for the most part—watched the green fields slowly give way to great mountains of ash, piles of rusty, long-dead industry & endless stretches of ruin'd abodes, such as one imagines are inhabited by the sorry spectres of Hell itself.

Upon arrival in Rotherham we were approach'd by a crudely-featured, dwarf-like creature which introduced itself as Alexander, & promised us an insightful & illuminating tour of the town, should we deign him worthy of a half-shilling; which--following some conference-being agreed, we took the sorry fellow into our service.

Our guide first led us to the market of the town, where he said--& though to render his gutteral speech into English would be an offense to that noble tongue, I shall capture the tone & temper of his words as best I can--In t'olden days, t'market were t'bigger than t'day; an' all t'folk used to come righ' longways to barter and sell t'wares; ee by gum, them were t'days; now us folks mostly come 'ere to kick us faces in an' take smack be'ind t'fish counter.

Our guide's informations had left poor Mr. McKibbin in a state of some distress & confusion, worsen'd, indeed, by his severe aversion to crowds & to common people in general; we thus hasten'd our guide & left said place of barter.

Whereupon we saw the Rotherham Central Library & Arts Centre, the most accomplish'd architecture of the town by common account; -By my word, said Mr. Wilson, Esq., looking over the edifice with dubious eye, Why, 'tis the very image of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice; do you not agree, Mr. McKibbin? -Why--said the other, having recover'd from his previous disposition--I do believe you are right; one would scarcely imagine that such a treaure could be hidden away in so secluded and hostile a place.

Having cast due appreciation upon the stately dwelling-place of the Muses, our surly guide led us atop a small hill, where we entered a museum devoted to curiosities & antiquities; I have precious little stomach for such distractions, being of a naturally delicate and refin'd nature; & so it was with some horror that mine eyes fell upon a glass case containing a six-legged feline; in retreat, I blunder'd into a large bear--tied to a post, I saw with no little relief--& narrowly avoided its gaping maw and claws, of no mean size. Mr. Wilson, Esq., showing remarkable fortitude--no doubt acquired during his many years as a bear-trainer on the Russian Steppes--stood beside the beast & treated it with such gentleness as t'were a yapping mongrel or starling.

At once the poor creature shut its jaw and bow'd its great head with remarkable grace. I can't get out, declared the bear, - I can't get out, straining at its chains; - God help thee! said Mr. Wilson, Esq., But I'll let thee out, cost what it will; & with that he set about pulling apart the chains which were denying the gentle creature its liberty. In an instant they were broken; the beast, with a great roar, lumber'd from the room towards freedom; which affectionate sight was follow'd almost at once by screams of delight & surprise from Liberty's citizens.

We betook ourselves from the scene with some pleasure, not wishing to trespass on the happiness of others; -Our work here is done, quoth Mr. Wilson, Esq., to which I laughed in agreement, & Mr. McKibbin likewise.

There was little else with which to occupy ourselves once we had traversed the Market, admired the Library & set a bear at liberty; -Fare well, stout Guide, said I once we had return'd to the station, & furnish'd our loyal companion with a half-shilling.

-Nay, said Mr. McKibbin, but look you upon him; why, by his very visage and posture one sees the wicked mockery of Nature, the belly of misfortune, so to speak, whence comes little but s-, if you will forgive my crudity; pray grace the fellow's palm with another half-shilling, for he has served us dutifully & will no doubt suffer for the want of it within a fortnight.

-Give him not a farthing! declared Mr. Wilson, Esq., hitting our guide with some force about the temple. -The fellow is surly & unpleasant to gaze at, &, as you know--& know we did--life has little to recommend it but what Beauty offers; & this fellow offers nothing, but indeed taketh away, as is oftentimes said of the Devil himself. Go therefore! cried Mr. Wilson, Esq., to our unfortunate sometime servant, -Go, take your penny, & spend it on vice you neither deserve nor can afford; else--by G-!--I shall dash your brains upon the pavement with my billy-club.

Our guide fled in much distress, clutching his precious half-shilling; & with a tear I saw him depart, for I consider'd him a fellow most hard done by in the world--But such compassion is a weakness of mine, gentle reader; for well I know that the poor & ignorant are to punish'd in their faults, not encourag'd in them; -And though both I & Mr. McKibbin were for a short time out of temper with Mr. Wilson, Esq., for his brusqueness of manner, he was soon forgiven; & with light hearts we boarded the train & bade Rotherham a lusty adieu!