James Cameron has created a film that has bested his own Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) and brought the fight to influential sci-fi masterworks Alien (1979) and Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980). And that's saying something.
History tends to repeat itself. In the past, sailing ships embarked on intercontinental travel first out of curiosity then out of greed when it was discovered that money could be made, and lots of it. Flags were planted, territory claimed, and Pandora's Box got sprung. Today, sailing ships have been replaced by corporate flagships and though less blatant, the principles of territoriality and making money, and lots of it, remain.
Avatar takes place in 2154 AD, a time when humankind has unravelled the secrets of outer space travelling and has embarked upon interstellar exploration in spaceships. In fact, all of that is old news and technological advances have been made to serve the more mundane and immediate aspects of life, like making money, and lots of it.
Cameron, as director and co-writer, deployed a Chrichtonian storyline where the idealistic scientific world finds itself in strife against the evil corporate world. But he did so with a twist. The science is never explained properly. And how could it be? Or more importantly: why should it be? The film isn't about the science. In fact, it has nothing to do with it. The science is a mere vehicle for Cameron to introduce you to the world of Pandora.
Pandora is an Earth-like moon of a Jupiter-like planet. It's a place pristine and virgin, breathing with life, throbbing with vitality. It's a phantasmagoria bathed in hues of blues, purples, violets, whites, and greens. It's Paradise; it's the stuff of myth. And, indeed, in creating Pandora, Cameron must've had borrowed freely from mythological lore.
For starters, as in many a myth, trees play an important role in the lives of the Na'vi, the native people of Pandora. On Pandora grows the sacred Tree of Voices, which to the Na'vi forms an important part of the "soul" of the rainforest. It's where the Na'vi comes to pray and connect with their ancestors.
Which is akin to Australia's Aborigines mythology, which tells of a force that is left latent within the earth by ancestors and that is accessible to their descendants in the form of djang, stored-up primal power which collects in sacred places (e.g. a tree or rock). Djang allows the Aborigines to tap into their people's whole spiritual resource at an instant's notice. It can also be evoked by the rituals and dances which reunite the people with the ancestors. The Na'vi has something akin called Eywa and they can literally and physically tap into this power.
The ancients saw nature as full of divinity and the Na'vi too reveres the natural world. When the Hometree of the Omaticaya (the Na'vi clan central to the movie) got felt by human forces, you sense that tribe members are deeply grieved and that they have been wronged. Hometrees are these massive, massive trees that house the many Na'vi clans. It is where the clan members sleep, eat, work, and learn. Each Hometree is located above a rich deposit of unobtanium, an extremely valuable mineral (with a rather tacky name: unobtanium, unobtainable?), that will become the root cause of the strife between the human mining outfit RDA (the Resources Development Administration) and the Na'vi.
Linkages are made to the Maya and Norse mythologies, both of which recognized the existence of a World Tree (which, according to the Maya, held together the cosmos and, according to the Norse, linked the worlds of the gods, mankind, the giants, and the dead). The Na'vi have instead the Tree of Souls, a giant willow that, moon-wide, contains the highest concentration of Eywa, and which forms Pandora's heart and brain that controls the global biological network -- each being on Pandora is a synapse of a global nervous system, making the moon a living breathing entity in its own right. Which bears resemblance to what the Aborigines believe with their creation mythology Alcheringa or "Dreamtime", in that the land is as much part of the spiritual plane as the physical. A land, or so the Dreamtime stories go, where at the age at the world's dawn a giant ancestor race had walked the land.
The Na'vi people, a sentient hominoid species, are ten feet tall. They are fair and sensual, elfin and feline, bright blue of skin, and evoke resemblance to the Masai in their elegance and warrior culture. Cameron brings the Na'vi to life through ground-breaking photorealistic motion capture animation technology, and he's gone so far as to give them a unique language, much like JRR Tolkien did for his elves.
A key Na'vi character is Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), princess of the Omaticaya clan, who befriends Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and through whom we will get to know the Omaticaya. Sully is an ex-marine, and paraplegic, and who has taken up the offer of high pay to replace his slain scientist twin brother on Pandora as an avatar controller in the Avatar Program. He's offered the job as he has a genetically-compatible human's mind to his late sibling, a prerequisite for the expensive avatar technology to work.
The Avatar Program is a creation of the RDA, the largest single non-governmental organization in human space, which has identified a method to mix Na'vi DNA with human DNA to create hybrid bodies called avatars. Humans can control these avatars through a telepathic link. This allows humans to explore the alien inhospitable world and to blend in.
With their avatars, botanist Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver, yes of course Sigourney Weaver) and biologist Norm Spellman (Joel Moore) are going to the wall in their effort of identifying what makes the Omaticaya tick, until Sully arrives. In avatar mode, Sully is physically transformed. To his delight, he can walk again. But after the first tentative steps into the alien world, he's also mentally transformed, and as he gathers intelligence he becomes more and more attracted to the Na'vi and their way of life, while the corporation, represented by fierce Chief of Security Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and ruthless SecFor administrator Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), are growing more and more impatient.
Humans are portrayed as the bad guys, and the Na'vi as more humane than the humans themselves. Which is by design. Cameron portrays the Na'vi as humans should be ideally, who are then juxtaposed against humans as is. And this is what underpins the movie, and it's powerful, what in the context of today's world where everything seems to go down the drain. The dreamscape imagery only amplifies this visceral emotion. And seen in this light, Avatar is not only a sci-fi actioner, it's also a fable.
When I took in Avatar (in 2D, but I may see it again in 3D), sitting in the row directly behind me was a bunch of boys, kids really, with voices barely broken, heckling and being a general nuisance. They weren't bored or anything, but, and it takes one to know one -- boys being boys -- it really is just their defence mechanism against strong emotions springing into action.
Avatar is rumoured to have been fourteen years and $350 million in the making. They were well spent indeed.
(Running time: 162 minutes)
Monday 21 December 2009
Wednesday 16 December 2009
So I saw 'The Waterboy'
On local station RCTI. Bobby Boucher Jr. (Adam Sandler) is a 31 year-old good-meaning dumb-ass water boy for a loser backwater college football team still living with his mom, 'Mama' Boucher (Kathy Bates as a Pippi Longstocking gone hillbilly), who, after having opened "a can of whoop-ass" on one of the team's football players during training, is promoted to join the team by Coach Klein (Henry Winkler), who has discovered a way to harness Bobby's talent for carnage. To funny results, I must say.
Sandler has three built-in slider controls labelled "idiocy", "rudeness", and "sappiness" which he twiddles with to channel himself in all of his films. In The Waterboy (1998) the three are kept in check.
(Running time: 90 minutes)
Sandler has three built-in slider controls labelled "idiocy", "rudeness", and "sappiness" which he twiddles with to channel himself in all of his films. In The Waterboy (1998) the three are kept in check.
(Running time: 90 minutes)
Monday 14 December 2009
So I saw 'Do or Die'
On local station Trans TV. And I'd like to congratulate the genius that picked and aired Do or Die (1991) at the late, late night slot. I mean it. This movie isn't bad, it's stupid. But it's so stupid, it's good.
Kane Kaneshiro (Pat Morita playing the bad guy) has a beef with longhaired buxom secret agent Donna Hamilton (Dona Speir) and longhaired buxom secret agent Nicole Justin (Roberta Vasquez) and so, to satisfy his sense of humour, he's going to kill them in a game where he will deploy six teams of assassins one at a time. Donna and Nicole make a phone call to HQ and their boss assigns Rico Estevez (Erik Estrada of eternal CHiPs fame) to lead a counter-attack team made up of an equal number of hunks and more longhaired buxom babes. Kane monitors the progress of each of his six teams on a 64 KB computer from his bedroom in the company of an oriental longhaired buxom babe, but Rico and friends manage to thwart each assassination effort in an acting job where the only emotion that permeates through is the hunks' horniness for their longhaired buxom colleagues.
And who can blame them? Longhaired buxomness is after all, like, the highest level of hotness there is.
(Running time: 97 minutes)
Kane Kaneshiro (Pat Morita playing the bad guy) has a beef with longhaired buxom secret agent Donna Hamilton (Dona Speir) and longhaired buxom secret agent Nicole Justin (Roberta Vasquez) and so, to satisfy his sense of humour, he's going to kill them in a game where he will deploy six teams of assassins one at a time. Donna and Nicole make a phone call to HQ and their boss assigns Rico Estevez (Erik Estrada of eternal CHiPs fame) to lead a counter-attack team made up of an equal number of hunks and more longhaired buxom babes. Kane monitors the progress of each of his six teams on a 64 KB computer from his bedroom in the company of an oriental longhaired buxom babe, but Rico and friends manage to thwart each assassination effort in an acting job where the only emotion that permeates through is the hunks' horniness for their longhaired buxom colleagues.
And who can blame them? Longhaired buxomness is after all, like, the highest level of hotness there is.
(Running time: 97 minutes)
Wednesday 9 December 2009
So I saw 'Ninja Assassin'
The first time I saw a ninja movie – really walked my ass to some establishment and parked my ass down to see a ninja movie – was more than twenty-three years ago. In between then and now I did see American Ninja (1985) (but never saw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [1990] because of a complete lack of interest on my part), but that was on the telly from the comfort of my living room when I had nothing better to do.
This establishment I walked my ass to was the local yellow-painted community centre located behind my parental home and which stood on the far end of the local playground, which in turn stood adjacent a small field of grass bookended by net-less goals. Writing this down I now see what the planners had in mind: a place for parents to take the kids to for some wholesome romping and for some wholesome refreshments afterwards, available at the yellow-painted community centre.
As far as wholesomeness is concerned, I don't think that learning how to blow smoke from your nose behind the bushes that lined one side of the field is particularly wholesome. And as far as parents taking their kids are concerned, there were none. It was pretty much Lord of the Flies. The only adult I remember to have had graced the grounds was an elderly man who would sit on one of the wooden benches that lined one side of the field and watch me and my buddies play football and give the occasional commentary. I think he watched us once, maybe twice, to never be seen again (I like to fancy him to be a football scout of sorts).
If we weren't playing football, we would hang out at the yellow-painted community centre – i.e. during the rare occasion it would open its door. It had no set business hours, which probably was because it hadn't any business to speak of. A local cover band of sorts would occasionally rent the place to practice, and we would watch. And it had a bar, and grown-ups would smoke and drink beer.
It was during one of those rare occasions that it opened its door that I saw the ninja movie. In a rare instance of doing something resembling a community centre, it screened the ninja movie, though I'm not sure it even was for the entertainment of anybody other than the proprietor and his patrons; forget flyers, news was passed by word of mouth. When we got there, someone took out some extra chairs and planted these in front of the grown-ups that were already sitting in front of the TV and VCR. I was a bit apprehensive; the patrons were foreign, i.e. not from the immediate neighbourhood –they never were– and a funky smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke hung in the air, which all added to the experience, but I sensed that we were welcome.
I don't remember much of the movie other than that it involved a sacred samurai sword hidden somewhere in a cave and that while we were watching, grown-ups sitting at the bar behind us were chatting, smoking, and drinking beer. I didn't know any of the Western actors and actresses that were in it, but they don't matter. It was all about the ninjas and their ways of the mysterious. Don't even try to understand the ninjas: they're from the Far East, that's how they do things over there. The video's graininess added to the movie's somewhat forbidding quality. But the medium of video would do that to all kinds of movies, not just ninja movies. Stick a videotape into a VCR and you would enter a world of magic. This was all before the invasion of the Internet, cellphones, and email. It was the age of the Pager. Movie stars were still movie stars.
And so Ninja Assassin is the second ninja movie I saw and, yes, it was like at the yellow-painted community centre, but without the graininess it has lost some of its mystique, even if the fight scenes are dazzling and the bloodletting would put any slasher film to shame.
But here is some word of mouth: go see it.
(Running time: 99 minutes)
This establishment I walked my ass to was the local yellow-painted community centre located behind my parental home and which stood on the far end of the local playground, which in turn stood adjacent a small field of grass bookended by net-less goals. Writing this down I now see what the planners had in mind: a place for parents to take the kids to for some wholesome romping and for some wholesome refreshments afterwards, available at the yellow-painted community centre.
As far as wholesomeness is concerned, I don't think that learning how to blow smoke from your nose behind the bushes that lined one side of the field is particularly wholesome. And as far as parents taking their kids are concerned, there were none. It was pretty much Lord of the Flies. The only adult I remember to have had graced the grounds was an elderly man who would sit on one of the wooden benches that lined one side of the field and watch me and my buddies play football and give the occasional commentary. I think he watched us once, maybe twice, to never be seen again (I like to fancy him to be a football scout of sorts).
If we weren't playing football, we would hang out at the yellow-painted community centre – i.e. during the rare occasion it would open its door. It had no set business hours, which probably was because it hadn't any business to speak of. A local cover band of sorts would occasionally rent the place to practice, and we would watch. And it had a bar, and grown-ups would smoke and drink beer.
It was during one of those rare occasions that it opened its door that I saw the ninja movie. In a rare instance of doing something resembling a community centre, it screened the ninja movie, though I'm not sure it even was for the entertainment of anybody other than the proprietor and his patrons; forget flyers, news was passed by word of mouth. When we got there, someone took out some extra chairs and planted these in front of the grown-ups that were already sitting in front of the TV and VCR. I was a bit apprehensive; the patrons were foreign, i.e. not from the immediate neighbourhood –they never were– and a funky smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke hung in the air, which all added to the experience, but I sensed that we were welcome.
I don't remember much of the movie other than that it involved a sacred samurai sword hidden somewhere in a cave and that while we were watching, grown-ups sitting at the bar behind us were chatting, smoking, and drinking beer. I didn't know any of the Western actors and actresses that were in it, but they don't matter. It was all about the ninjas and their ways of the mysterious. Don't even try to understand the ninjas: they're from the Far East, that's how they do things over there. The video's graininess added to the movie's somewhat forbidding quality. But the medium of video would do that to all kinds of movies, not just ninja movies. Stick a videotape into a VCR and you would enter a world of magic. This was all before the invasion of the Internet, cellphones, and email. It was the age of the Pager. Movie stars were still movie stars.
And so Ninja Assassin is the second ninja movie I saw and, yes, it was like at the yellow-painted community centre, but without the graininess it has lost some of its mystique, even if the fight scenes are dazzling and the bloodletting would put any slasher film to shame.
But here is some word of mouth: go see it.
(Running time: 99 minutes)
Saturday 5 December 2009
So I saw 'The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift'
On local station Trans TV. And though it's bollocks, it's very good bollocks.
When Tokyo Drift (2006) did the rounds in movie houses here I gave it the cold shoulder. Space, cyborgs, organized crime and that sort of things are more up my street. Not cars. And so I thought, how exciting could a movie, a second sequel to a movie, about cars and street racing be, that is set in Tokyo to boot? Not that I have anything against Tokyo, but if a Hollywood movie isn't even set in the States, isn't that saying something? Or so I thought.
Not that I have anything against cars either. I like to watch them, preferably on the telly (Top Gear, top-notch), but should they all disappear by tomorrow, fine with me. Let's take up bicycling. But, anyway, to give you an idea where I'm coming from, this is me and cars: Mercedes boring, Volvo boring, BMW gooood. And I like my cars to have personality: so classic cars gooood.
Having said that, in Tokyo Drift the cars and the racing (drifting, to be precise) --the main attractions here-- deliver. And on top of that, the movie works on other levels as well.
The movie had already started when I tuned in and I landed slap bang in a scene of Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) walking up to a residence somewhere in Tokyo. He rings the bell, twice, and an older man in a bathrobe opens the door. It turns out that he isn't expected for another day and caught on the hop the older man asks for a moment, closes the door, and when he opens the door again, fully dressed this time, he lets out a woman who I assume to be a call girl (in any case, she's never seen again). Sean is invited in and the residence turns out to be a claustrophobic pigsty. At this point I expect the two to engage into some bullshit banter about this, that or the other, but they don't. Turns out the older man isn't some buddy of his; it's his old man (Brian Goodman as Major Boswell). The awkwardness is palpable. It's a son and his dad being dysfunctional. I'm hooked, now reel me in.
While this isn't Lost in Translation (2003), you feel for Sean on his first day in Tokyo. Director Justin Lin, who shot this picture in Tokyo and LA, captures the local colour as we follow Sean on his commute from home to school. Lin spreads out some story real estate here to make you care for the main character, who speaks with a rich twang, which only serves to accentuate his "gaijin"-ness. I would be intimidated on my first day in Tokyo, yes sir.
But Sean's a big boy. He can handle himself. And before you know it, he's found himself in company of street racers that hold drift competitions at a parking building. Drift (n), as defined by my dictionary, is a motor racing term meaning "a controlled skid, used in taking bends at high speeds". And that's exactly what these peeps do, they take bends at high speeds, and burn rubber like it's nobody's business.
They have a D.K. and everything too; D.K. standing for Drift King (played by Brian Tee). And D.K. has a girlfriend: Neela (Nathalie Kelley). Sean makes the mistake of hitting on Neela and unbeknownst to Sean, D.K. (a dabbling yakuza) and his right-hand man Han (Sung Kang) are watching from afar. This can't be good. This has been done. Or so I thought. The scene takes a left-field turn as Han takes Sean under his wings. Han munches on munchies; Han's suave; Han's a rogue; Han runs a business. Han's friggin cool, and before you know it every time his name pops up in dialogue I mentally add "Solo" to it. Yes, he's that cool.
The story is set up and it's time for the main attraction: cars and drifting, and in Tokyo Drift, Lin has put together some of the most beautiful eye candy sequences of cars in motion. Glistening, tricked up, beefed up Japanese cars give chase to each other in a way that makes you think: How come this director was overlooked for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)?
The most amazing shot is that of a bird's-eye view of a line of cars drifting in sync, as if they were performing a ballet, on a road snaking down a moon-lit mountain slope. You would almost expect a couple of dwarves and Tinker Bell peeking out from somewhere up, it's that surreal.
In that scene Neela is behind the wheel and Sean's riding shotgun. You know she's not really driving, stunt-peeps are, but the effect doesn't disappoint: she looks cool and sexy. Mr Michael Bay, if you want to make women cool and sexy, this is the way to go. You put them in charge.
Tokyo Drift ends on the right note as Vin Diesel (The Fast and the Furious [2001]) makes a cameo as Dominic Toretto who challenges the new D.K., Sean, to drift against him. It's The Karate Kid on wheels with a mean handbrake.
(Running time: 104 minutes)
When Tokyo Drift (2006) did the rounds in movie houses here I gave it the cold shoulder. Space, cyborgs, organized crime and that sort of things are more up my street. Not cars. And so I thought, how exciting could a movie, a second sequel to a movie, about cars and street racing be, that is set in Tokyo to boot? Not that I have anything against Tokyo, but if a Hollywood movie isn't even set in the States, isn't that saying something? Or so I thought.
Not that I have anything against cars either. I like to watch them, preferably on the telly (Top Gear, top-notch), but should they all disappear by tomorrow, fine with me. Let's take up bicycling. But, anyway, to give you an idea where I'm coming from, this is me and cars: Mercedes boring, Volvo boring, BMW gooood. And I like my cars to have personality: so classic cars gooood.
Having said that, in Tokyo Drift the cars and the racing (drifting, to be precise) --the main attractions here-- deliver. And on top of that, the movie works on other levels as well.
The movie had already started when I tuned in and I landed slap bang in a scene of Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) walking up to a residence somewhere in Tokyo. He rings the bell, twice, and an older man in a bathrobe opens the door. It turns out that he isn't expected for another day and caught on the hop the older man asks for a moment, closes the door, and when he opens the door again, fully dressed this time, he lets out a woman who I assume to be a call girl (in any case, she's never seen again). Sean is invited in and the residence turns out to be a claustrophobic pigsty. At this point I expect the two to engage into some bullshit banter about this, that or the other, but they don't. Turns out the older man isn't some buddy of his; it's his old man (Brian Goodman as Major Boswell). The awkwardness is palpable. It's a son and his dad being dysfunctional. I'm hooked, now reel me in.
While this isn't Lost in Translation (2003), you feel for Sean on his first day in Tokyo. Director Justin Lin, who shot this picture in Tokyo and LA, captures the local colour as we follow Sean on his commute from home to school. Lin spreads out some story real estate here to make you care for the main character, who speaks with a rich twang, which only serves to accentuate his "gaijin"-ness. I would be intimidated on my first day in Tokyo, yes sir.
But Sean's a big boy. He can handle himself. And before you know it, he's found himself in company of street racers that hold drift competitions at a parking building. Drift (n), as defined by my dictionary, is a motor racing term meaning "a controlled skid, used in taking bends at high speeds". And that's exactly what these peeps do, they take bends at high speeds, and burn rubber like it's nobody's business.
They have a D.K. and everything too; D.K. standing for Drift King (played by Brian Tee). And D.K. has a girlfriend: Neela (Nathalie Kelley). Sean makes the mistake of hitting on Neela and unbeknownst to Sean, D.K. (a dabbling yakuza) and his right-hand man Han (Sung Kang) are watching from afar. This can't be good. This has been done. Or so I thought. The scene takes a left-field turn as Han takes Sean under his wings. Han munches on munchies; Han's suave; Han's a rogue; Han runs a business. Han's friggin cool, and before you know it every time his name pops up in dialogue I mentally add "Solo" to it. Yes, he's that cool.
The story is set up and it's time for the main attraction: cars and drifting, and in Tokyo Drift, Lin has put together some of the most beautiful eye candy sequences of cars in motion. Glistening, tricked up, beefed up Japanese cars give chase to each other in a way that makes you think: How come this director was overlooked for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)?
The most amazing shot is that of a bird's-eye view of a line of cars drifting in sync, as if they were performing a ballet, on a road snaking down a moon-lit mountain slope. You would almost expect a couple of dwarves and Tinker Bell peeking out from somewhere up, it's that surreal.
In that scene Neela is behind the wheel and Sean's riding shotgun. You know she's not really driving, stunt-peeps are, but the effect doesn't disappoint: she looks cool and sexy. Mr Michael Bay, if you want to make women cool and sexy, this is the way to go. You put them in charge.
Tokyo Drift ends on the right note as Vin Diesel (The Fast and the Furious [2001]) makes a cameo as Dominic Toretto who challenges the new D.K., Sean, to drift against him. It's The Karate Kid on wheels with a mean handbrake.
(Running time: 104 minutes)
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