Mandatory movie post

Since everyone and his uncle seems to have held forth on this, I have a few words about the great Avatar.

I saw it in an IMAX last week and was totally underwhelmed. Sure, the special effects were interesting and novel but almost everything else was sub par. The dialogues were leaden, the attempts at humor were so weak that I am still confused about whether they were indeed such attempts or not, the performances were unimpressive and most annoyingly, the characters defined "stock" and "stereotype".

The scientist, arrogant at first and motherly later, the embodiment of a woman staking out her territory in a man's world, generally consigned all female scientists to a skeletonized cliche. Most prominently, the general or colonel or whoever he was must have been the most stereotypical Curtis Le May wannabe I have seen in a long time (of the "Yeah, we are gonna bomb those critters back to the stone age" variety). Plus, the "law of economy of characters" seemed to admirably kick in halfway through since you could tell exactly which brave-hearted souls were going to die.

In short, the story was generally childish and the direction was terrible. I expected much better from Cameron who I consider to be a pretty good even if not great director. Compare this with "Titanic" which even with the love story and the Bollywood type drama is still a fantastic movie.

I really hope Jimmy does not get another chance to yell at the top of his voice on the stage at the Oscars this year.