Are we ever going to be able to see a "flat" movie again without calling it boring the same way we can no longer see a movie with any sort of plot or character complexity?
You need to get out more...so to speak. There are plenty of intelligent, engaging films out there, they're just not usually made by corporations in Hollywood that are more interested in turning a profit than in showing risky stimulating cinema.
The reason everything is so bland is because by the time they've passed the lameness check of the script they have to pass through audience tests and anything vaguely thought-provoking, controversial or offensive (violence aside) is discarded during the cutting for risk of offending anyone.
I've heard "Americans don't like subtitles" but seriously, if you give it a chance you might just find something that touches you in a way you never thought possible. There are many fantastic independent American films I've seen.
Perhaps if the Cinemas/Studios were concerned about falling numbers they should look at what they're putting out there and why it's mostly such lame garbage. I won't see Avatar because special effects in and of themselves are not enough to sustain my interest.
Avatar picked up it’s 4th record this weekend, beating out Titanic’s long held record of $28M for highest domestic gross for the 4th weekend with $48M. Titanic now only has 12 records to its name and several of those are likely to fall to Avatar over the coming weeks.
The largest record hold is The Dark Knight with 28 but most of those are for out of the gate records. The ones that Avatar has a change of besting are the speed to $450M domestic gross, which took TDK 27 days. Avatar is at $429 after 24 days. $21M in the next 3 days is doable, but it may be close. The last record by TDK is getting to $500 in 45 days which the Avatar should easily best by a large margin.
Saw a snippet saying all of Rupert Murdoch, Inc, the proud owners of such IQ-boosting programming as Faux Noise, is actually getting a potential stock boost from this movie.
Saw another claiming racism in that the movie has a fairly regular movie theme of the white guys saving the day (despite the fairly negative view of the US that others have claimed). Dunno about this one.
Yeah, riight... uses SOOO much more energy than shooting on location.
Have you scouted those planets? How can you be sure?
Quote:
Originally Posted by s.metcalf
You need to get out more...so to speak. There are plenty of intelligent, engaging films out there, they're just not usually made by corporations in Hollywood that are more interested in turning a profit than in showing risky stimulating cinema.
The reason everything is so bland is because by the time they've passed the lameness check of the script they have to pass through audience tests and anything vaguely thought-provoking, controversial or offensive (violence aside) is discarded during the cutting for risk of offending anyone.
I've heard "Americans don't like subtitles" but seriously, if you give it a chance you might just find something that touches you in a way you never thought possible. There are many fantastic independent American films I've seen.
Perhaps if the Cinemas/Studios were concerned about falling numbers they should look at what they're putting out there and why it's mostly such lame garbage. I won't see Avatar because special effects in and of themselves are not enough to sustain my interest.
The last film I know of with subtitles that did pretty well award-wise was "Life is Beautiful" by Roberto Benigni. I'll say that I like the film enough to own it but the denoument was incredibly short by American standards. I've noticed this often in chinese cinema as well. The amount of time from the climax to rolling credits is often just a couple minutes. I don't think that sits well with American audiences who want to know a little bit more beyond "Happily Ever After."
I find many films really care far too much about visuals and Avatar is a prime example of that. They are amazing, but really limits what a film can do. M. Night Shyamalan has become a prime example of this with no special effects. Long pauses with lame reactions shots at odd angles can only carry a weak story so far. (Signs as a prime example of this.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bergermeister
Saw a snippet saying all of Rupert Murdoch, Inc, the proud owners of such IQ-boosting programming as Faux Noise, is actually getting a potential stock boost from this movie.
Saw another claiming racism in that the movie has a fairly regular movie theme of the white guys saving the day (despite the fairly negative view of the US that others have claimed). Dunno about this one.
Wait until they break it down into shades of blue, and nose width to determine even more.
With this much cash flowing in, who wouldn't? Would've been hard to make a sequel to Titanic, though...
Nah? easy peazy. I have a plot for it and everything.
The Titanic was the middle child of 3 sister ships. The Olympic and Britannic, which itself sank in the Mediterranean four years after the Titanic. Originally thought to have been sunk by a U-boat they fairly recently found that it was a floating mine due to the explosion at the bow, not on the side.
Out of over 1000 people only 30 lost their lives, mostly due to retrofitted changes that occurred specifically from the Titanic disaster. It?s sad that we seem to be more often reactive than proactive to the world at large.
I would like to change my position and say that it would be easy to create a sequel to Titanic.
How do you think the sequel should go? This is Cameron, so a sequel is likely at least 4 years away. I hope that he makes it farther into the future with no original cast members left.
[I think it would be easy for the humans to kill them all off. Burn the planet with napalm or create a bio-weapon that will wipe them out. They really have no chance unless they took measures immediately for an upcoming attack. 6 years back to Earth, time to organize a plan and 6 years back to Pandora. At least 15 years should have passed unless there is another ship in transport to the planet we don’t know about.]
(Dammit! I should stop thinking about other people’s movies and start thinking about my own.)
Haven't seen the first one yet! WIll wait for it to come out on satellite TV later this year. Seeing Up! with the bad-fitting 3D goggles was enough for one year.
Actually, I only saw Titanic for the first time last year (I tend to be a year or two out of sync with movies/TV shows anyways; they come out late in Japan).
I would recommend seeing it in IMAX 3D, since the best part of the movie are the visuals. Forget the downsides: the amazing graphics are worth the cost of admission.
Finally saw it this last weekend in 3D. It's easily one of the top 10 Science Fiction films of all time! Yes it was basically " Dances With Wolves " but I didn't care. It was a wonderful experience and portrayed humans sadly enough just like I'd expect them to act.
I'm really glad they have this technology now because that means when " John Carter of Mars " ( in the works in case you haven't heard ) gets made it'll be that much better.
I've also heard that Avatar is one of a trilogy ( just read this in a interview with Cameron ) so there's more of the story to come ( which makes it different from DWW ). This time however it won't take so long to come to fruition now that they've done it all once and the technique has been perfected.
As science fiction goes it falls pretty flat. The story is a pedantic retread. The cartoonish characters didn't help. By that I mostly mean the human ones. It even had a montage.
Compare it to 2001, Blade Runner, Close Encounters, Enemy Mine, Dark City or even the new BSG and Avatar come far behind those.
— Avatar hit #1 again this weekend. I’m surprised it bested Book of Eli by such a large margin. I really enjoyed Book of Eli. Even with the flaws the storyline was much more engaging than Avatar.
— Avatar took it’s 5th consecutive #1 weekend. Titanic had 14 consecutive weekends at #1 but ET has the most with 15, though not consecutive.
— Avatar took #2 place by making $450M domestic gross in 28 days. It took The Dark Knight one days less at 27 days. Titanic took 81 days. No other film has made that much domestically.
— The Dark Knight won’t keep it’s record of $500M domestic gross in 45 days. Avatar is only $8M from $500M domestic gross after just 31 days. By Tuesday, only 33 days, it should beat The Dark Knight record by nearly two weeks pushing it to #2 and Titanic to #3 with its 98 days record to $500M. There are no other films in this category.
[edit: Did it on Monday in 32 days.]
— Finally, Avatar is less than $200M from besting Titanic’s 11 year record of $1.8 Billion worldwide. Note that Avatar is only in its 5th week, while it took Titanic 10.5 months to achieve its longstanding record. It’s looking good for Avatar to also beat Titanic’s $600M record and to be the first film to reach $2 Billion worldwide.
PS: If we go by ticket saes by units, not dollar value, the story becomes very different, but we don’t have those stats at hand.
As science fiction goes it falls pretty flat. The story is a pedantic retread. The cartoonish characters didn't help. By that I mostly mean the human ones. It even had a montage.
Compare it to 2001, Blade Runner, Close Encounters, Enemy Mine, Dark City or even the new BSG and Avatar come far behind those.
Then you've seen it right?
Because it's really about the experience. It's every SF book I've read that involved other planets and cultures portrayed on the screen. If it were more realistic I'm sure the Naivie ( don't know about the spelling ) would be less human but being humanoid makes us more sympathetic to them. So you've seen it right? Did you see it in 3D? Because that's really the way to see this movie.
Comments
Think about the carbon footprint of energy and expense to render and make it and then you won't.
Yeah, riight... uses SOOO much more energy than shooting on location.
Are we ever going to be able to see a "flat" movie again without calling it boring the same way we can no longer see a movie with any sort of plot or character complexity?
You need to get out more...so to speak. There are plenty of intelligent, engaging films out there, they're just not usually made by corporations in Hollywood that are more interested in turning a profit than in showing risky stimulating cinema.
The reason everything is so bland is because by the time they've passed the lameness check of the script they have to pass through audience tests and anything vaguely thought-provoking, controversial or offensive (violence aside) is discarded during the cutting for risk of offending anyone.
I've heard "Americans don't like subtitles" but seriously, if you give it a chance you might just find something that touches you in a way you never thought possible. There are many fantastic independent American films I've seen.
Perhaps if the Cinemas/Studios were concerned about falling numbers they should look at what they're putting out there and why it's mostly such lame garbage. I won't see Avatar because special effects in and of themselves are not enough to sustain my interest.
The largest record hold is The Dark Knight with 28 but most of those are for out of the gate records. The ones that Avatar has a change of besting are the speed to $450M domestic gross, which took TDK 27 days. Avatar is at $429 after 24 days. $21M in the next 3 days is doable, but it may be close. The last record by TDK is getting to $500 in 45 days which the Avatar should easily best by a large margin.
Saw another claiming racism in that the movie has a fairly regular movie theme of the white guys saving the day (despite the fairly negative view of the US that others have claimed). Dunno about this one.
Yeah, riight... uses SOOO much more energy than shooting on location.
Have you scouted those planets? How can you be sure?
You need to get out more...so to speak. There are plenty of intelligent, engaging films out there, they're just not usually made by corporations in Hollywood that are more interested in turning a profit than in showing risky stimulating cinema.
The reason everything is so bland is because by the time they've passed the lameness check of the script they have to pass through audience tests and anything vaguely thought-provoking, controversial or offensive (violence aside) is discarded during the cutting for risk of offending anyone.
I've heard "Americans don't like subtitles" but seriously, if you give it a chance you might just find something that touches you in a way you never thought possible. There are many fantastic independent American films I've seen.
Perhaps if the Cinemas/Studios were concerned about falling numbers they should look at what they're putting out there and why it's mostly such lame garbage. I won't see Avatar because special effects in and of themselves are not enough to sustain my interest.
The last film I know of with subtitles that did pretty well award-wise was "Life is Beautiful" by Roberto Benigni. I'll say that I like the film enough to own it but the denoument was incredibly short by American standards. I've noticed this often in chinese cinema as well. The amount of time from the climax to rolling credits is often just a couple minutes. I don't think that sits well with American audiences who want to know a little bit more beyond "Happily Ever After."
I find many films really care far too much about visuals and Avatar is a prime example of that. They are amazing, but really limits what a film can do. M. Night Shyamalan has become a prime example of this with no special effects. Long pauses with lame reactions shots at odd angles can only carry a weak story so far. (Signs as a prime example of this.)
Saw a snippet saying all of Rupert Murdoch, Inc, the proud owners of such IQ-boosting programming as Faux Noise, is actually getting a potential stock boost from this movie.
Saw another claiming racism in that the movie has a fairly regular movie theme of the white guys saving the day (despite the fairly negative view of the US that others have claimed). Dunno about this one.
Wait until they break it down into shades of blue, and nose width to determine even more.
Cameron has announced a sequel is now in the works.
With this much cash flowing in, who wouldn't? Would've been hard to make a sequel to Titanic, though...
With this much cash flowing in, who wouldn't? Would've been hard to make a sequel to Titanic, though...
Nah? easy peazy. I have a plot for it and everything.
The Titanic was the middle child of 3 sister ships. The Olympic and Britannic, which itself sank in the Mediterranean four years after the Titanic. Originally thought to have been sunk by a U-boat they fairly recently found that it was a floating mine due to the explosion at the bow, not on the side.
Out of over 1000 people only 30 lost their lives, mostly due to retrofitted changes that occurred specifically from the Titanic disaster. It?s sad that we seem to be more often reactive than proactive to the world at large.
I would like to change my position and say that it would be easy to create a sequel to Titanic.
How do you think the sequel should go? This is Cameron, so a sequel is likely at least 4 years away. I hope that he makes it farther into the future with no original cast members left.
[I think it would be easy for the humans to kill them all off. Burn the planet with napalm or create a bio-weapon that will wipe them out. They really have no chance unless they took measures immediately for an upcoming attack. 6 years back to Earth, time to organize a plan and 6 years back to Pandora. At least 15 years should have passed unless there is another ship in transport to the planet we don’t know about.]
(Dammit! I should stop thinking about other people’s movies and start thinking about my own.)
Actually, I only saw Titanic for the first time last year (I tend to be a year or two out of sync with movies/TV shows anyways; they come out late in Japan).
http://failblog.org/2010/01/10/avatar-plot-fail
image: http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/...-plot-fail.jpg
It has reached must see level.
It's very similar to many other Cameron movies:
- sci-fi underpinnings
- interesting and somewhat imaginative concepts
- great visuals
- hopelessly stupid, unengaging plot
I would recommend seeing it in IMAX 3D, since the best part of the movie are the visuals. Forget the downsides: the amazing graphics are worth the cost of admission.
I'm really glad they have this technology now because that means when " John Carter of Mars " ( in the works in case you haven't heard ) gets made it'll be that much better.
I've also heard that Avatar is one of a trilogy ( just read this in a interview with Cameron ) so there's more of the story to come ( which makes it different from DWW ). This time however it won't take so long to come to fruition now that they've done it all once and the technique has been perfected.
Can't wait!
Compare it to 2001, Blade Runner, Close Encounters, Enemy Mine, Dark City or even the new BSG and Avatar come far behind those.
— Avatar took it’s 5th consecutive #1 weekend. Titanic had 14 consecutive weekends at #1 but ET has the most with 15, though not consecutive.
— Avatar took #2 place by making $450M domestic gross in 28 days. It took The Dark Knight one days less at 27 days. Titanic took 81 days. No other film has made that much domestically.
— The Dark Knight won’t keep it’s record of $500M domestic gross in 45 days. Avatar is only $8M from $500M domestic gross after just 31 days. By Tuesday, only 33 days, it should beat The Dark Knight record by nearly two weeks pushing it to #2 and Titanic to #3 with its 98 days record to $500M. There are no other films in this category.
[edit: Did it on Monday in 32 days.]
— Finally, Avatar is less than $200M from besting Titanic’s 11 year record of $1.8 Billion worldwide. Note that Avatar is only in its 5th week, while it took Titanic 10.5 months to achieve its longstanding record. It’s looking good for Avatar to also beat Titanic’s $600M record and to be the first film to reach $2 Billion worldwide.
PS: If we go by ticket saes by units, not dollar value, the story becomes very different, but we don’t have those stats at hand.
As science fiction goes it falls pretty flat. The story is a pedantic retread. The cartoonish characters didn't help. By that I mostly mean the human ones. It even had a montage.
Compare it to 2001, Blade Runner, Close Encounters, Enemy Mine, Dark City or even the new BSG and Avatar come far behind those.
Then you've seen it right?
Because it's really about the experience. It's every SF book I've read that involved other planets and cultures portrayed on the screen. If it were more realistic I'm sure the Naivie ( don't know about the spelling ) would be less human but being humanoid makes us more sympathetic to them. So you've seen it right? Did you see it in 3D? Because that's really the way to see this movie.