[Closed] Recent Viewing Part III

Bigger isn't better.
For Avatar to have won Best Film would have been a major dilution of the concept of "best" in my opinion. (Though I am perfectly happy for it to win every single major and minor award with regards to production, visuals and design)

Indeed, "Avatar" is a technological break-through, but the story is really weak and simplistic. Had it won the best picture award, that would be like sending the message that CGI trumps story.

Peter

There's truth in what you have said. While I loved Avatar it is certainly not a deep movie inasmuch as Oscar counts. (Not that every movie ever won an Oscar is a "deep" one, far from that!) Still, the story definitely misses that plus that would eliminate it to Oscar quality.
However I haven't seen The Hurt Locker so I don't know if it has it, either...

Ho-hum! I think in this case you are probably the exception.

Martijn, i really think you're giving humanity too much credit and faith. Do you really think we've advanced so much? Look around you, all the wars going on and hunger. Where do you get all the positive vibes?

Martijn, we'll join our half full glasses together and make a full one!

Interesting how you put that, the simplicity and stereotyping, by saying man is evil to go on an alien planet and do what they are doing here: squeeze everything out of this godforsaken ball for its own profit.

Avatar wants to keep it very simple and make man grow a consciousness in all too obvious ways. I certainly was disagreeing with the military and the head honcho of the corporation the whole time, which is what it's supposed to do to normal thinking people. I didn't mind the simplicity of the story, which is why it's making the big bucks I guess. Cameron's goal was to transport us into this incredible alien world and make us care for the inhabitants and what's going on in their world. He succeeded and that's all I care about. Avatar is audiovisual and emotional entertainment first and foremost, and I wouldn't look for anything more into it.

Sure, but it didn't have to be!
There's not a cynical note to be found in Star Wars, and it's as clichéd as you can get. And if you think that's a bad example (which it may or may not be, depending on whether you accept archetypes as cliché, rather than a style element of their own), just think any old Disney film in its stead.



No particular movies: Billie Jack was a relatively well-known 'crusader' on film who karate-kicked his way through corporate greed and political fraud to save noble but oppressed American Indians and threatened ecologies. Sort of a Steven Seagal avant-la-lettre.
From the seventies onwards Brando was so enamoured by the plight of the native Americans that in every film he made he wished to express the cruelty of the White Men in obsessive and often ludicrous ways (he is rumoured to have suggested adding a scene to Christopher Columbus where the clergy was seen cooking natives, for no apparent reason).

Really?
HIV atients survive today is not a product of today's discoveries?
UNESCO heritages (including wildlife preserves) are not a product of todays considerations?
No more music is composed today?
No books written?



And that, too, is a very biased choice to look at things.
I am greatly opposed against any such one-sided view.
As we see in Avatar.



That was exactly my point: the fact that the west and east have been instrumental in that during colonialism (and beyond), has backfired immensely now that the native people have taken over and redoubled their destructive efforts (the major cause of death, war and pollution in Africa and South America is due to internal strife). We have come to other insights now, which we are desperate to propagate, and where we fail, more often thatn not it's due to giant power blocks we simply cannot handle (e.g. the oil monopoly being held mainly by the insanely corrupt Saudi government).

At the same time in the middle of the Amazon, (yet another) tribe was discovered that until then had no contact with the outside world. *I* am not surprised to learn that the Brazil government -always desperate for cash- nevertheless immediately has granted them and their surroundings sanctuary to be able to live their lives as they always have. Not in a reservation. In their own forest. On their own terms.

And that is where the proof of the pudding lies. Not in the existing socio-economical-political relations we already have, and have existed sometimes for centuries (and will take many more decades to break), but in these confrontations, where in many ways we have been given a new start.

THAT is the analogy with Avatar.
Or it should have been, but wasn't.

It's not biased Martijn, it's a choice of where each and everyone of us wants to stand against things that happen around us. It's not my choice, i am in-between and i do admit there are exceptions, maybe you didn't notice that the first time around.

If you simply focus on UNESCO and HIV patients not dying (you say it as if it's an applied rule for all the countries in the world) or generally the positive things in life, then that doesn't automatically render the negative things as invalid. I told you before, and i don't want you to take it the wrong way, but if you lived in some problematic country (and i am not even talking third-world) for a month or so, maybe you'd change your opinions a bit, or perhaps loosen them up a bit. What i described you above is the reality as i - personally, see it everyday around me, it's not biased opinions. If you choose to render me invalid just like that, then it's you who's clearly biased.

^ Now, that's a point i am agreeing with

Yeap, although i don't mind 'cause clearly and sadly, balanced isn't automatically existing everywhere and in all cases.

We'll discuss that over our next candle lit dinner.