I'm not generally excited by birthdays, but I have to admit that today was a pretty good one. I received well wishes from family and friends, Sylvia surprised me with a beautiful boxed set of the Harry Potter books, my colleagues at work surprised me (literally surprised me by using a clever ploy to lure me to the main meeting room) with cake and said nice things about me behind my back (reported to my face later), and Sylvia and I finally managed to see Avatar, a stunning technical achievement with a darn good story too, damn the naysayers.
I try to be self-sufficient, but every once in a while it's nice to know that you're loved and appreciated by the people in your life. Thanks very much, everyone.
"Damn the naysayers"!? How about just a severe shucky-darn to them?
ReplyDeleteOtherwise it's the Pope and me spending eternity face down in a pool of molten sulphur, and here comes Jeffrey Dahmer, and he's like, what're you guys doing here, and we're all like, well, we didn't think the story for Avatar was all the strong.
You owe it to yourself to go and re-screen Dances With Wolves. That film touches on 80-90% of the story arc of Avatar, takes the same amount of time, but tells the story with much greater emotion, depth, and character. For good measure, if you can find a copy of FernGully, you should see that as well, James Cameron mined that film like it was made out of pure unobtanium. Avatar has more flashy action and way, way more compelling visuals, though. It deserves to be watched twice, but it does look derivative after you see those other films.
City Of God has damned fine story telling, Downfall as well, if you can stand the dark material. Almost anything by Stanley Kubrick. I would not put Avatar in that league, story is it's weakest attribute.
Avatar has a better story than I can come up with, at least it's better than Toilet Chase.
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P.S. Happy Birthday to you, youngling!
I can get behind a severe shucky-darn. Sure Avatar is derivative, but I think the basic story is worth revisiting, particulary in these days of resource plundering and environmental destruction - I couldn't help but think of the oil sands when the giant dump truck drove by early in the film.
ReplyDeleteDownfall is definitely on my list, and has been for ages. It's probably time to just suck it up and put in an order at Amazon...
I think we should send Toilet Chase to Cameron's agent, just to see what happens.
Happy belated birthday! I'm shamed that I didn't remember we celebrated your 40th 52 weeks ago, but it's grateful I am that we get a chance to get together even when there is no occasion. You are a good man Earl J. Woods, and a good man to know!
ReplyDeleteAnd I liked Avatar too.