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Started by rcallicotte, August 20, 2009, 02:59:11 PM

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Walli

Seen it today and I must say: a must see!

Story is okay. Nothing groundbreaking, but still interesting and I liked the characters. The visuals are breathtaking though. I watched it on a "regular" screen with reald technology, they use circular polarized lenses which has the advantage that you can move your head without loosing the 3d effect.
The visuals would have been great in a regular movie - but 3D was just amazing.

domdib

#31
Saw it in the Glasgow IMAX - my jaw is still on the floor  ;) We knew Cameron could do action and romance (of which there is plenty) - but we didn't know he could do beauty! My guess is this will become the defining film for all young geeks - a bit like Star Wars was for my generation.

Am going to see it again next Monday with my wife - this time in a regular cinema, so I can compare the two - all in the interests of scientific research, you understand  ;)


old_blaggard

#33
Good links. I like it when people do some more intensive readings into films like this.
http://www.terragen.org - A great Terragen resource with models, contests, galleries, and forums.

Walli

#34
no, not really into depth. This sentence : "and its ilk as white fantasies about race" and that one: "When will whites stop making these movies and start thinking about race in a new way" shows, that the writer himself should start thinking about race in a new way.
For me (only read one link, I have to admit), this is just a white person trying to be overly political correct, not more and not less.
And this often leads to strange results.

Just as an example: here in germany they had a disucussion about a school book. Some people claimed it was "mild" racists (sorry, hard to write stuff like that in english for me, I hope you get what I mean).

They claimed in this book only german  children where visible - but there have to be other races too - because in school there are a lot of foreign people.
Then the authors said, okay, we rename some of the kids - but that also was not okay, because there was no "visible sign" that they are foreign.
So sometime those overly, political correct people are very racist themselves. Because for them the foreign kids had to be of other color. And apart from that - do we then need different books for different schools? I mean, we have schools where the percentage of foreign people is about 75%, other schools the percantage is probably just 15%. So do we need a book for each "percentage" that reflects the world out there.

If people have to fight about stuff like this, then we still have a "race problem". If people would get over it and simply would not care if its asian, african, european or whatever, then the problem would be solved. But I fear this won´t be the case, because there always will be "anti-" people, there always will be overly political correct people that have to be "anti-anti".
And about stories repeated over and over again - this happens since the greeks.

CCC

I have to agree with Walli here.

In the US we have many PC people as well that are quite common in most news media with a few celebrities. Our school system and some politicians are notorious for this silly ideology. Personally i do not believe in race (i believe in cultures) and believe all people should be equal. After all were only humans, right. One race, the human race.

FrankB

Quote from: Kadri on December 22, 2009, 09:48:13 PM
http://io9.com/5422666/when-will-white-people-stop-making-movies-like-avatar

Cheers.

Kadri.

What a STUPID article! I never get around as to why some people like to interprete all sorts of mad things into stories, dissecting it based on ridiculous assumptions, ... instead of just enjoying the story.  ???

Kadri

#37
Quote from: FrankB on December 23, 2009, 07:14:26 AM
....

What a STUPID article! I never get around as to why some people like to interprete all sorts of mad things into stories,
dissecting it based on ridiculous assumptions, ... instead of just enjoying the story.  ???

FrankB , Walli is right in a way. But the article has right points too i think . I am sick with films , romans (Tarzan ?), comics  etc.
with one man , who happens to be white and someone from Europa or ABD and such ,
who teaches new and most of the time better (!) ways of life  and technology to the natives .

I liked the film in a way .For the visual world he created so real.

But the problem  is the Story ,  FrankB  unfortunately .

The problem is a little more broader then race i think ....imperialism ,
capitalism  etc. would maybe more appropriate . But race  problems come with this too...  

Kadri.

FrankB

In this story, the exact opposite happens. The hero (and the imperialistic culture) is not successful with teaching things to the natives, instead the natives have the superior culture and way of life.

There is no hint that in the distant future that white is somehow superior among mankind. It's just mankind "in general" that is invading an alien world.

Anyway, the invaders are not displayed as the better culture, the opposite is the case.

Cheers,
Frank

Kadri

You are right , Frank . But in the end who becomes the leader of the native rebellion , or the natives in general ?

Kadri.

FrankB

a man, reborn as a native ;)


TheBlackHole

Great. That article could have ruined Avatar for millions before they even get a chance to see it. Then they would go on and on about how they hate the movie because it's "racist" (which it's not) without even seeing it, thus ruining it for millions more and if it was published just before the release and referenced by a huge, popular site, Avatar could have been a flop just because of one article.
They just issued a tornado warning and said to stay away from windows. Does that mean I can't use my computer?

Henry Blewer

Sometimes a stick is just a stick. English class nearly ruined my enjoyment of reading with all the stuff about analysis of the stories. Thank god I re-learned how to just enjoy the story.
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

Kadri

#44
Guys i understand your feelings and thoughts but i have friends who would puke on such a film  and i can understand them too .
What you are saying is like put your reason behind and only watch it with your feelings. I don't think that is right.
Especially in a film that speaks about imperialism-capitalism environmentalism and such .
You can not handle these kind of thinks with only your feelings or enjoy the story kind approach .
Writing like this seems that i only watch art films or so...   No!
In my background are films like Star wars and such films beside the really good ones , so i can relate.

I want to say it in this way :

What Star Wars was and is today , Avatar will (nearly ... because i think it is really much better then Star Wars) be the same 40 years later.
Groundbreaking (or great) in visuals but really flawed in substance .

Cheers.

Kadri.