Why The Haters are WRONG about Avatar

If there has been one thing this Oscar season that has been driving me absolutely crazy it's the vehement hatred being thrown Avatar's way by, in many cases, people who haven't even seen the film or just don't "get it". You would be amazed how many arguments I have gotten into over Avatar and the funny thing is it's not even one of my favorite films of the year. I mean I respect it and think James Cameron's directorial achievement is staggering along with it numerous technical breakthroughs. That being said, the story is full of archetypes that border on cliche, the dialogue is only a step above Lucas's "best" banal and sappy writing, and the lead character we are supposed to care about leaves a lot to be desired. There is a lot to criticize about Avatar and many of the criticisms are valid, but they are missing the point altogether. The art and beauty of film from the beginning has been about transporting an audience to another place. It provides an escape from their everyday lives. Film lets human beings wildest dreams come true on screen. I cannot think of a film in recent memory that has accomplished this in such a daring and mind blowing way as Avatar. It is a film that displays the power of human imagination and the modern limits of cinema in a way that is staggering. If Avatar is nothing else it is a grand vision come true and what a vision it is. The world of Pandora is lush and rich and visually stunning. It pops with colors, light, atmosphere and inventive and at times even scary creatures. It is a fully realized world and Cameron sucks you directly into it through the technological breakthroughs that he spent years researching and perfecting. The 3D in Avatar is all about fully immersing you into the experience and not throwing random objects in your face. It creates such a depth of field that has never been accomplished before on screen that you can clearly see where every single blade of grass fits into the geography. You feel as if you are standing there with these people in this story. But where Avatar really shines is in its performance capture. It takes what WETA Digital did with their work on Lord of the Rings and expands upon it to create photo realistic characters that act, breathe, speak, and look like they are giving a true performance. Much has been questioned about whether performance capture really counts as acting - the answer if you know anything about the technique is a resounding yes. Cameron and his team spent painstaking hours making sure that the original performances of his actors were preserved from the smallest details to the biggest gestures. And then yes they were enhanced. Performance capture isn't about replacing acting, it's about enhancing it for films where fantastical elements are very much in the foreground, such is the case with Avatar.



And while all these technical breakthroughs would be impressive by themselves it all wouldn't matter very much if the movie wasn't any good. But that's just the thing - Avatar is a good movie. No it's not great, but my god it is thrilling and at times even overwhelming. Cameron is in such control of his medium and you can feel his presence in every frame of this film. His action sequences are the best in the business and with Avatars final battle he proves that no one can direct action quite like him (further proof see Aliens, Terminator 2, True Lies, and the last hour of Titanic). And how could you possibly forget the first Banshee flight sequence, or when the floating mountains are first revealed, or the night time tour through Pandora on the way to the village? These are all images that have burned themselves into my memory. They are unforgettable.

And while Cameron's story may have been cliche, he is telling it in a way that hasn't been done before - that's right in space on a new world with wonderful creatures and IDEAS. Cameron packs a lot of IDEAS into Avatar, some of them obvious and some of them more subdued. There is a reason why Avatar has been connecting with audiences all over the world and it's not because of the 3D. Many countries do not even have 3D theaters, in fact over half the people in the United States that have seen Avatar have seen it in traditional theaters not in 3D or IMAX. No, the reason why people all over the world are spending their hard earned money again and AGAIN to see this film is because of its universal themes, which include but are not limited to pro-environment, anti-war, human rights, anti-capitalism, and the bond between humans and nature. For many Avatar has been a semi-religious experience. People have reported depression because they can't live on Pandora. If that isn't a wonderful display of the power of cinema then I don't know what is. Avatar is hated because of all the money it has made and all of the hype behind it. And in many ways it was over hyped, but in other ways it lived up to A LOT of that hype which is more than I can say for most big budget Hollywood product. And what a lot of people seem to forget is that Cameron and Fox were taking a huge risk on Avatar. This was in no way a sure thing. The film cost upwards of 500 million dollars because of the technology being developed for something that had never been attempted on this large of a scale before. Cameron and his crew have earned every cent they have poured into this project, which was obviously a project of passion and love. Avatar is really good filmmaking even if it isn't great storytelling and people need to start realizing this and quickly. There is a good chance that Avatar WILL WIN the Oscar next Sunday. My money is still on the Hurt Locker but it would not surprise me if Avatar pulls through at the last minute. There is nothing that Hollywood loves more than a genuine risk that pays off with popularity and most importantly of all tons and tons of money. But I have a feeling Cameron could care less about all of this. He already has his Oscars from Titanic, which also suffered from inevitable backlash due to it being "the king of the world". But you know what even if Cameron is not the King of the World he certainly can lay his claim to being the King of Modern Hollywood Cinema. And you know what? That's not a bad place to be and he's laughing all the way to the bank.

Shocking Academy Awards News

It looks like The Academy is trying to atone for their sins, especially after last years debacle when both The Dark Knight and Wall-E, two audience and critical favorites, failed to be nominated for best picture.  It has just been announced that starting this coming Oscars there will be 10 nominees in the Best Picture category.  Yep you read that right, 10!  Basically what this comes down to is that the Academy is desperately trying to appeal to the current generation of film goers and I'm guessing it hopes that by having ten best pic nominees, we will end up with more box office hits in the mix.  So does this mean that something like Star Trek could make it into the mix?  Or better yet could Pixar finally receive a best picture nomination for their deserving Up?  The answer is... well maybe.  I can see that this decision by the Academy could go one of two ways.  We could end up with more films that people genuinely like and actually go see... or we could end up with more "prestige" pictures that Academy voters already like, but aren't quite good enough in their eyes to merit Best Pic consideration.  That means last year films like Doubt and possibly even Australia could have made it in for a Best Pic nomination.  That is a very scary thought.  I don't think this will do anything for the independent market as if the film is really well loved it will make it in the final five.  I don't think The Wrestler or Rachel Getting Married had nearly enough votes last year to get any where near the final five, let alone the final 10.  And as for Blockbuster, I'm assuming this may only really help one or two a year.  I think possibly The Dark Knight would have made it in last year had we had this 10 nominees rule in place then... but even that seems iffy.  The Academy simply can't be trusted to nominate the films that deserve recognition because they go for the same types of movies over and over again.  And god forbid a Foreign film end up in the final 10, all hell may just break loose.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out come years end.  I think we will either end up with what will equate to a very interesting top 10 list, or a glorified prestige picture list that no one will really care about.  If the Academy truly uses this opportunity to shake things up and make the race more interesting than I am all for it.  But part of me is very scared of what the outcome will be.

So now I'm going to make a prediction and we shall see how close I am come years end.  I'm going to be optimistic about it for now and my predictions shall reflect that.  THIS YEARS BEST PICTURE NOMINEES WILL BE -

 

AVATAR

BRIGHT STAR

INVICTUS

THE HURT LOCKER

THE LOVELY BONES

NINE

PRECIOUS

SHUTTER ISLAND

STAR TREK

UP

Keep in mind nobody knows anything and this is both an optimistic and safe set of predictions.  We shall just have to see how the year pans out.  Click Here to read the press release.  One thing is for sure - The Oscar race just got really interesting.

The Films I Love: Saving Private Ryan

In the 1990's director Steven Spielberg arguably made the two most important films of his career.  The first, of course, being 1993's groundbreaking and monumental Holocaust Biopic Schindler's List and the second being 1998's harrowing war film, Saving Private Ryan.  The opening twenty five minutes alone are now a part of film history.  Most agree that the opening battle depicting the landing of Omaha Beach and the invasion of Normandy is the greatest modern combat scene ever put on the screen.  It has been given this prestigious title because it is unflinching in its depiction of gruesome violence, nauseating disorientation and the sheer horror of battle.  This scene would be enough to ensure Saving Private Ryan's enduring legacy as a great war film.  But what makes the film earn it stripes after the opening is it's pure and true human quality.  In the end Saving Private Ryan is just as much about the camaraderie between soldiers and the bond between all humans who fight for their country as it is about the horror of war.  Because of this Saving Private Ryan is probably the most positive, patriotic, and humble anti war film ever made.  It realizes that war can at times be a necessary evil, but does not shy away from the atrocities that can and have been committed.  It is a film that salutes the veterans that have served this country and depicts them in a sincere light.

I should state outright that Steven Spielberg is my favorite filmmaker.  His name has become synonymous with people of my generation who love film.  It is almost a cliche for someone my age to say that he is their favorite filmmaker.  But I cannot deny my beliefs.  There is a reason why Spielberg has such an enduring legacy in the history of post 70's filmmaking - he has captured the hearts an imaginations of disenfranchised film goers the world over.  He abandoned the bleak and sometimes hopeless filmmaking style of the sixties and seventies and instead made optimistic films that made you look to the stars and beyond.  If one were to look at his filmography no one can disagree that he has made many indisputable modern classics that have changed the way that we look at movies - Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Jurassic Park, and Schindler's List.  His work post Private Ryan has been much more experimental and bleak with Minority Report and Munich (the former being one of the best science fiction films in twenty years and the latter being the most challenging film Spielberg has ever made).  In a way Saving Private Ryan really seems to be a transition film for Spielberg.  He made the film for his father, who served in WWII.  It's a very adult film, much the same way Schindler's List was.  In Ryan you can see Spielberg struggling with the things that have made him the director that he is and trying to move on into something more bleak and honest.  Spielberg is examining the mind of a soldier and why we fight and die for our country.  In a way it's a more difficult film than Schindler's List because in that film it was very clear who the villains really were... not so much in Ryan where one German in particular is brought to the forefront and explored.  At the end of the film we realize that all these men were fighting for their country, which can at times be a very dangerous moral decision - case in point Nazism and to some extent the war we Americans are fighting now in the Middle East.  

What Saving Private Ryan deals with so well is the price and weight of a human life.  What does it mean to kill a man?  What are the implications?  And how much is the life of one man worth?  These are questions that the film explores, but it doesn't necessarily find an answer because there probably isn't one, especially not in war.  But the deaths in Private Ryan hit hard because we are forced to witness them in brutal detail and the deaths of the central characters hit even harder because we hear parts of their stories and can identify with them.  The main characters of the film are just normal men caught in an extraordinary situation and a monumental moment in history.  The film takes stock war movie characters and turns them on their head.  Take for instance the Vin Diesel character, who looks like the tough brute, but in actuality turns out to be the ignorant soldier with a soft heart.  It's a great switch on a stock character.  But the most surprising of the leads is Tom Hanks who plays the man in charge, but he is no John Wayne war hero.  Instead Hanks is a normal man who was a school teacher back home and is now taking charge of a group of men and he knows that many of them will not make it home to see their families ever again.

Tom Hanks's performance is really what holds Saving Private Ryan together and makes it human.  He is the glue behind all the decisions, right or wrong, made by the characters in the film.  He holds men's lives in his hands and the decisions that he makes ends up killing many of them.  But he rationalizes that the sacrifice of one mans life means that he saves hundreds more.  The problem with his rationalization is that in the case of his mission during the course of the story, he has to save one man.  How many men is one man worth?  Hanks is quiet yet commanding of the screen and his scene where he breaks down after the death of his medic is powerful because he has to hide his true emotions by cowering in a ditch as he cries his eyes out.  Even more powerful still is the monologue he delivers describing who he really is as the moral of his men starts to wane dramatically.  It's probably Tom Hanks's most subtle performance and as a result one of his very best.  I would argue that he was robbed of the Oscar for this film, but at the time he was lucky to even be nominated considering his more showy competition that year (including Roberto Begnini who won for Life is Beautiful and Edward Norton for American History X who many at the time felt was robbed). There are many other great performances in Saving Private Ryan both large and small including a very young Matt Damon in the title role.  His monologue (which was entirely improvised) towards the end of the film describing his last night with his brothers is probably the most emotional part of the entire film.  It's rewarding for the viewer to see that Ryan isn't an asshole and that these men did not necessarily die in vain.  

Saving Private Ryan is one of many films that Steven Spielberg will be remembered for long after he has passed (which I hope will not be anytime soon, the man has many years left yet).  But more importantly it will be remembered as one of the greatest war films ever made.  It is a testament to the veterans of our country who fought, bled, and died for not only our liberty, but for the worlds.  As veterans day approaches, I would recommend anyone who has not seen this film or not picked it up in a while to do so. You wont regret it.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Dir. Steven Spielberg

170 Minutes

Academy Award Nominations: Best Actor (Tom Hanks), Best Art Direction, Best Make-Up, Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay, Best Picture

Academy Award Wins: Best Cinematography, Best Director (Spielberg), Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Film Editing

Note of Interest: In a strange and awful move by the Academy they decided to award Shakespeare in Love the best picture Oscar over Saving Private Ryan.  While the former has been quickly forgotten, the latter lives on.  Smart movie Academy...

The Films I'm looking Forward to Oscar Season 08

Well now that the Dark Knight has come and gone (well not really, this thing is making huge money and is going to be around for a LONG TIME), I need to find some new films so obsess about.  Luckily Oscar season is upon us and I begin to salivate just thinking about it.  Unfortunately, there isn't too much coming out this year that I am dying to see.  Most things are just curiosities to me, especially since A LOT of the films coming out this Oscar season still don't have trailers... Come on Studios, lets get it together.  You don't have much time left to start building your awards hype machine. Five Months and counting.  So below are a list of films I am looking forward to with their respective trailers (if available). 

Australia -  

I'm going to admit it... I'm a big fan of Baz Luhrman and his crazy antics as a director.  I found Strictly Ballroom to be a delightful, if light weight first feature.  Romeo and Juliet was a visual tour de force, but lacked real Shakespearean emotion.  With Moulin Rouge I felt he hit it out of the park, balancing his theatrical directing style with a larger than life story in gay Paris, with outstanding performances from Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor and Jim Broadbent.  The film may have seemed a little silly, but it had real emotional weight and it practically re-invented if not fully revived the movie musical.  Chicago should have been a little more thankful a full year and half later when it opened.  Now Luhrman is tackling serious historic subject matter with the bombing of Australia by the Japanese during WWII.  His muse, Nicole Kidman, is along with him for the ride once again.  It all stars Aussie hunk Hugh Jackman, who desperately needs to get noticed for his brave acting.  His role in The Fountain should have brought him far more accolades.  The film will surly be a visual triumph if the trailer is any indication, but I'm not sure how Baz's directing style will mesh with the serious subject matter.  Take a look for yourself.

Blindness -

Bad Cannes buzz be damned! I am still dying to see this film.  Julianne Moore is still one of my favorite actresses despite the fact she hasn't had a worthy film in years (I don't count Children of Men considering she was in it for all of five minutes).  The director is the same one who brought us City of God and The Constant Gardener.  I have high hopes.

Burn After Reading -

I'm a big fan of the Coen brothers.  I always have been.  I thought that No Country for Old Men was a brilliant motion picture, but I was disappointed when the Academy chose it over the similarly brilliant but often more divided There Will Be Blood.  It looks like after last years dark thriller on the nature of man, they are following it up with what they do best - dark comedy.  The film has an all star cast and the premise is wickedly funny.  The trailer has sparked my interest, but the past few Coen comedies have been forgettable, lets hope this doesn't follow down those same lines.

Che-

If this film ever finds a distributor I will be oh so happy.  I have been following the development of this film since it was announced.  Steven Soderbergh is an interesting director and this is one of the most ambitious projects he has ever tackled.  I either really love his work or despise it.  But the casting of Benicio Del Torro is inspired and the subject matter deserves proper film treatment.  But the question remains, will the film actually come out this year?

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 

This film has had me captivated since I first heard about the project.  I love David Fincher, though I am not a fan boy who worships his every move.  He's had some ups and downs... and I am one of the few admirers of him who felt that Fight Club was all style with watered down supposed substance.  However, I did feel that Zodiac deserved far more credit than it was ever given and its omission at the Oscars last year was baffling.  This year they may have a chance to make it up to Mr. Fincher as he is directing Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchette and Tilda Swinton in an adaptation of a F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, which is likely to be visually captivating.  I hope the film can be as emotionally exhilarating as its visuals, however the trailer certainly has me intrigued.

Doubt - 

Meryl Streep replaces Cherry Jones in a role that seems pretty fit to get her another Oscar nomination.  It will need to be good to replace the god awful taste in my mouth as a result of the horrendous Mamma Mia! Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams also star.  It will be nice to see Amy Adams in a role that doesn't require her to be the cutest thing on the planet every minute.  But some are saying that Hoffman is miscast... Could be a sign of things to come.  I haven't seen the play so I cant comment fully, but I will say I do respect Hoffman as an actor and he is capable of far more than most people seem to give him credit for...

Milk - Sean Penn is playing legendary gay activist and politician Harvey Milk in this docudrama.  Gus Van Sant is directing.  It could really go either way.  It's a great story and one that should definitely be told, but can they really do it better than the Oscar winning documentary The Life and Times of Harvey Milk did?  Doubtful.  But I am hopeful.  There is great talent behind this picture.

Miracle at St. Anna -

Spike Lee in general is a man who just pisses me off.  He's made some great films, but his politics can get ridiculous and his recent verbal pissing match with Clint Eastwood was just uncalled for.  However, his new film looks great and could very well pay tribute to the African Americans who are largely ignored for fighting in the second great war.

Quantum of Solace -

Casino Royal was a refreshing re-invention of the Bond franchise.  This sequel looks even more promising.  Daniel Craig is quite possibly the best thing that could have ever happened to this franchise.  Again, his was a much overlooked performance last Oscar season.  Unfortunately, I don't think the Academy will rectify that decision with this sure to be crowd pleasing sequel.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona -

Woody Allen is one of my all time favorite directors and after his comeback with Match Point I expected him to continue to do great things... unfortunately I was sorely disappointed by the unfunny Scoop and the amateur Casandra's Dream (minus the great Tom Wilkinson).  However, this looks like a return to form for Woody and if the buzz from Cannes is any indication, Penelope Cruz may just be up for an Oscar nomination.

Other films I'm interested but not completely sold on yet - The Changeling, Frost/Nixon (mostly just because I hate Ron Howard), and Revolutionary Road.

And last but not least, the film I am dying to see but have to wait well into next year to see...

The Watchmen -

The trailer says it all.