Avatarocious (Another spectacle hits an iceberg and sinks. )

The Weekly Standard ^ | 28 Dec 2009 | John Podhoretz

[org.whodat]

I’m not the one with the tin hat.

[jimfree]

‘unobtainium’ - Was that really in the movie? Sounds like a Jay Ward concoction for a Rocky and Bullwinkle story line. (Remember the upsidaisium plot?)

[rlmorel]

Heh, that is a great quote!

[aruanan]

What they didn't tell us is that Avatar is blitheringly stupid; indeed, it's among the dumbest movies I've ever seen. Avatar is an undigested mass of clichés nearly three hours in length taken directly from the revisionist westerns of the 1960s-the ones in which the Indians became the good guys and the Americans the bad guys. Only here the West is a planet called Pandora, the time is the 22nd century rather than the 19th, and the Indians have blue skin and tails, and are 10 feet tall.

I'm amazed to see someone supposedly as smart as John Podhoretz write something so stupid. The only thing he got right (and that unwittingly) was that "the Indians" had blue skin. Does he know why they have blue skin? Does he know the relationship between the blue skin and the name of the movie? Does he know the literary background of the blue-skinned beings riding giant flying creatures?

[printhead]

“Why do you guys sit on your hats?” “Un-ass that shi*. It’s only a flare.” My all-time favorite flick.

[what's up]

Avatar was B-O-R-I-N-G and juvenile.

Can't believe the number of adults raving over such a piece of schlok.

[PapaBear3625]

$77 million for the opening weekend, and that was probably down a bit because of the weather. Not record setting, but pretty certainly well enough to make a good profit. Ugh.

$77M is not good for a film that needs to make back $300M+ in production costs. The latest Transformers movie made $200M in it's first long weekend (It started on a Wednesday, made $91M thru Thurs, then another $109M on the regular weekend).

Movies generally make about half of all the gate-money they will ever make in the first two weeks of release, and only half the gate goes to the studio in the first two weeks, decreasing thereafter.

It will probably break even with foreign sales plus DVD, but the first weekend turnout will probably seem disappointing to the studio.

[AreaMan]

Does he know why they have blue skin? Does he know the relationship between the blue skin and the name of the movie?

Do you mean this guy/chick/whatchamacallit?

[AreaMan]

Can't believe the number of adults raving over such a piece of schlok.

True

Well, this is America and at least we are free to make, mass market and profit from schlock.

We're also free to call it schlock and freely talk about the idiotic ideas contained therein.

[RJL]

They should have cited the Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London and invoked eminent domain.

Yes, we could have Al Gore selling unobtainium futures at $Trillions of personal profit and bribing fellow Dems to invoke eminent domain. Then the closing shows the big government sending men with guns to take away their home tree and imprisoning or killing those who resist big government.

[AreaMan]

No I have nothing but for contempt for anyone that is a thought policemen. Your thoughts are toward the book burning and censorship side.

"You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons... They are afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden....

A swing and a miss.

oh please...nobody said that this movie should be banned but in a FREE SOCIETY you can call out well made but idiotic art for what it is, pretty and well made yet IDIOTIC and SIMPLE MINDED.

That's all, nobody is calling for a book burning so stop making s*it up.

[Popman]

My wife and I went to see Beowolf and about 10 minutes into it I asked her if she thought the focus on the film was off a bit - I said it seemed almost animiated

She looked at me like I lost my mind

——Dear. That’s because it is-——

Boy I felt dumb

[Jeff Chandler]

When I read, a book I have the ability to separate fact from fiction.

I, don't get it.

[Jeff Chandler]

Dude, don’t you know that criticism equals censorship? That by taking offense to the ubiquitous Leftist propaganda permeating pop culture you are oppressing the sacred muse of the artiste?

Bumpkin! Rube! Philistine!

[Locomotive Breath]

I saw it. The black football player is named Michael Oher. Most of his black friends from the project are portrayed as thugs and criminals. His mother is portrayed as a crack head. When Michael begins to succeed, his black friends ridicule him and try to drag him back down again. The black community is portrayed as being far more responsible for his problems than white racism although that is portrayed as well.

The white family finds him walking down the street in the rain and let him come over to sleep on the sofa. They leave him alone downstairs while they go upstairs to their own bedrooms. In the morning, before going downstairs, the husband and wife joke to each other about calling the insurance adjuster.

Besides that, it’s got FOOTBALL.

[SuziQ]

Our 20 year old son has decided that his movie is a big ticket remake of Ferngully.

[AreaMan]

I realize the error of my naive ways...how could I have doubted the all knowing and all seeing sacred muse of the artiste?

foolish me.

[Locomotive Breath]

unobtainium is a joke I first heard as an engineering undegrad in the 70s. “Here’s something we could build but first we’ll need to get some unobtainium”. It’s engineering shorthand for a project you could do if only you had a material that was light enough, strong enough, or whatever physical property that’s keeping you from doing what you want to do.

[SuziQ]

Gran Torino is a wonderful movie about redemption. I put it in the same category at Denzel's Man on Fire.

Clint Eastwood was just delightful in his relationship with the Hmong family next door, and it was poignant that he got along better with them than with his own sons.

[SuziQ]

My sister saw The Blind Side, and just LOVED it, and she's about as far from a lib as you can get! It's based on a true story. Some white family in Texas DID take in a young black man who was homeless, and apparently, family-less, and treated him like one of their own. It sounds like a wonderful Christian witness to me, though I don't know if religion is mentioned at all.