| How far can you get into the comments on Norman Borlaug's obit before you are too annoyed to continue?
I feel some population posts germinating.
Question for the older people out there who currently feel the human population should be half what it is now: back in 1970 when the population was roughly half what it is now, did you think it was about right or did you think perhaps it would be better if the population was roughly half what it was then?
Nicked from elfs | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment   |
| Today we finished watching the third (and apparently penultimate, as poking around IMDB tells me they've just finished shooting the fourth and last) episode of The Tudors. I can see why they decided to end it as Henry's schtick is getting a bit old. This season ends with the casting-off of Anne of Cleves (played by Joss Stone) and Henry taking up with Catherine Howard, who will be wife number five, and the downfall of Thomas Cromwell, leaving Howard and Catherine Parr (the sixth and final wife) and "Henry's descent into madness" for season four. I personally could see a great season five featuring Edward, Jane Grey, and Mary, with the season ending with Mary's death and the accession of Elizabeth, but apparently the writers are moving on to a different project.
The historicity of the series is always pretty minimal. You watch it for the soap and for the pretty people, or you don't bother watching it. I've had a lot of fun with the really bad history in places; the jousting scenes in season one were a particular hoot. This season was kind of annoying as they dealt with the Pilgrimage of Grace, which is all Yorkshire business, and conflated a lot of it in ways that sort of made sense plotwise but, as usual, did little justice to the story.
The biggest problem I had with the season was in the second half, where they were trying to sell Joss Stone as the Flemish Mare, Anne of Cleves. The problem isn't that Henry thinks she's ugly. We could explain that as a matter of him being hung up completely on Jane Seymour, who really was a relief after the divorce from his first wife and the execution of his second. The problem I had was that the series itself seemed to reinforce the idea that Joss Stone was ugly and horsey, which is frankly incredible. She's not so skinny that you'd expect to see her ribs if you saw her naked the way Catherine Howard is (you never see Anne naked), but that doesn't make her ugly. It was a real low point for shallowness in a series that I expect to be nothing but shallow.
Religious business as it impinges on politics continues to play a big part in the series, which is part of why I'm sorry they're not doing a fifth season. There were definite parallels between Cromwell and Sir Thomas More in season one, both in terms of their handling of heretics and their final fates. But the real downer in this series has been the increasing jackassery of Henry himself. It's not just his childish temper tantrums about the Pilgrimage of Grace, or the easy way even Brandon, his bff, manipulates him by leading him with his dick. It's that he was smarter in the previous seasons and now he's dumb enough to fall for the transparent flattery of giggling Catherine Howard, whose nature and eventual fate are already heavily telegraphed in the one episode she appears in this time around. I suppose I should be admiring the acting chops Myers is displaying in showing Henry's fall from young and feckless to older and less mature, but they're slowly getting rid of what we were clearly supposed to like about him in earlier seasons, and that's kind of sad.
According to this article, now that he's finished with the Tudor era, the writer has moved on to a new project: Camelot. I don't know whether to be excited or afraid, very afraid. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| From The Nation:
"If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear." Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008. Also present was Amnesty International's Sarnata Reynolds, who wrote about the incident in the 2009 report "Jailed Without Justice" and said in an interview, "It was almost surreal being there, particularly being someone from an organization that has worked on disappearances for decades in other countries. I couldn't believe he would say it so boldly, as though it weren't anything wrong."
Pendergraph knew that ICE could disappear people, because he knew that in addition to the publicly listed field offices and detention sites, ICE is also confining people in 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices, many in suburban office parks or commercial spaces revealing no information about their ICE tenants--nary a sign, a marked car or even a US flag. (Presumably there is a flag at the Veterans Affairs Complex in Castle Point, New York, but no one would associate it with the Criminal Alien Program ICE is running out of Building 7.) Designed for confining individuals in transit, with no beds or showers, subfield offices are not subject to ICE Detention Standards. The subfield office network was mentioned in an October report by Dora Schriro, then special adviser to Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, but no locations were provided.
Link thanks to Constance Ash.
I'm not sure what can be done about this sort of thing-- there's contributing to Amnesty International and Southern Poverty Law.
I post about these outrages, but I have no idea how to convince people who don't see them as outrages, and I don't see how they can be ended (or mostly ended) unless the general public is revolted by them. Maybe I'm looking for too much of a magic bullet, and it's at least as much of a long hard slog as making slavery illegal.
I should probably read more about Abolitionism (especially in the countries that used the law-- I don't think a civil war about the justice system is feasible or desirable) and see how much of it was "we aren't the kind of people who do that sort of thing" even when we obviously are, and how much was "we need to do better than we have been". | | comments: 10 comments or Leave a comment |
| One of the changes in my life is movies. Reading is now very hard for me; I can read, but it’s ten times as laborious — still — and it’s exhausting. But movies is easier. So I’ve begun, late in my life, teaching myself the classics. One of my lists is Roger Ebert’s 4-star movies. So far, I have watched The Thief Of Baghdad, In a Lonely Place, 12 Angry Men, and The 400 Blows.
I watched The 400 Blows yesterday. And I discovered another dismaying thing: if it is not English, I have to expend translation time — ten times as hard, basically — trying to keep up, flickering my eyes up and down, everything watching, not comfortable, not lost in the movie. By the time it’s ending, I’m again exhausted. The 400 Blows is really good, but I’ve going to have to watch it again, tomorrow, because I was literally lost for much of it.
The ending shot was powerful, though.
Originally published at parlando. You can comment here or there. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Spotted going around:An Italian singer wrote this song with gibberish to sound like English. If you've ever wondered what other people think Americans sound like, this is it. I think it's pretty neat, because it really does sound like American English to me, for the most part.
This post originated at ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん: Solarbird Makes Noises, on Dreamwidth. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| Movie star Brittany Murphy is dead of a heart attack at 32.
She went into full cardiac arrest early Sunday and could not be revived, the Website TMZ reported.
Ah, drugs. Or marathon running without training first. Or perhaps a birth defect of some sort. Sad; I always liked her. My favorite movie was the underrated Cherry Falls, which poked fun at slasher movies by reversing the usual sexual politics of promiscuity=death.
Like many people though, bad decisions and limited range haunted her career, which lately boiled down to certainly not being fired on the set of a movie, the direct to Netflix Deadline, and, of course, over 200 episodes of voice acting on King of the Hill. (She was the voice of Luanne.)
Shockingly enough, the first page on non-safesearched Google Images results for Luanne King Hill is mostly cartoon pornography.
Also shocking, the Daily News report I linked to was written by someone I was in the ISO with years ago. | | comments: 10 comments or Leave a comment |
| Poll #1501365
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 105The actor whose portrayal of Perry Mason should be considered most iconic is | | comments: 25 comments or Leave a comment |
| A lot of my friends are skeptical about the Senate health care bill, and I don't blame them for that, but I'll join ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) barking_iguana in recommending "Liberal Pragmatist's" take and say that it will do a lot of good and deserves to pass.
Now obviously, since I'm employed by the Democratic Party, I have a vested interest in seeing a bill pass (although I doubt it will have much political impact on the state level). I also don't know how much weight to place on the (odious) anti-abortion provisions, since I won't be directly affected by them. Still, I'll stick my neck out and say the House and Senate health-care bills deserve to pass, and it will be a great day for the nation when some combination of the two becomes law.
In the meantime, please tell me why I'm full of shit in comments. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Something on my flist has broken the margins of my flist, reducing its readability by a lot. | | comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
| I went to see handel's messiah at the Symphony tonight, with all my colleagues -- I'd decided to sit this one out *before* I got h1n1, and then the hamthrax meant that I'd miss so many rehearsals that it would make it impossible anyway. But I could spectate! And I did. I sat in the best seats in the house, which is the very back row of the third balcony, with your back up against the wall; we stood there to sing for the Planets, and you've never heard such beautiful, crystalline sound. That's where I always sit now. And it does have the advantage that nobody can really see you, and the row of seats in front of you is low enough down so that if nobody's sitting in them you can prop your feet on them.
You sure can see everything else, though! Like the couple in front of me getting to second base throughout all of Part II and some of Part III! Seriously, they were making out like teenagers, and his hands were inside her shirt and there was rubbing and moaning. At the symphony!! I don't think of myself as a prude, but seriously? SERIOUSLY? During the chastisement and the Crucifixion? That's the time to play grabass? The standing for the Hallelujah Chorus caught them quite off guard, though, and they had to hastily comport themselves and the gentleman had to hold his jacket in front of his groin.
But then they went right back to it! I was astounded. | | comments: 10 comments or Leave a comment |
| From this story:
O'Quinn wasn't done yet. He appealed the arbitration award, and claims were still pending at the Court of Appeals in Tyler and Texas Supreme Court when he was killed Oct. 29 while driving on a rain-wet road at almost twice the 40-mph limit. Passenger Johnny Cutliff also died (his family has filed suit against O'Quinn's estate).
I remember reading about this accident and wondering how O'Quinn could have gotten himself killed driving on Allen Parkway in the rain. Now I know: he was doing almost 80. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Thanks to those who replied to my last post. The universal consensus is that the responsible adult thing to do is continue carrying thousands of dollars in decade-old debt. Which is kind of what I was thinking, satisfying as it would be to get Sallie Mae out of my life.
This must be classifiable as some species of cosmic irony, though. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Last post for today, I promise!
Dylan Meconis has a really great Medusa character design that I adore so I used it as reference for my very first attempt at sculpting a face.
It came out a wee bit creepier than I intended and though it's obviously a Medusa I don't think it really looks all that much like Dylan's Medusa. Oh well.
( A Turnaround ) | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
|  On Etsy Now!
These are about double the size of my previous potted tentacles. Reg'lar pots were .5" and tentacles usually stood about 1.5" high. These pots are 1" and 1.5" tall with the tentacles practically tickling the sky at 3" tall.
Top-down view so you can see the pearly beaded "soil" they're sprouting out of.
( Individual Portraits )
I like to keep my fingers busy. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Shed less.
Anyone else out there have to routinely vacuum cat-hair off the heat exchange system on your fridge? | | comments: 19 comments or Leave a comment |
| So I'm heading to the East Coast in early January which means that there are only two weekends left in which I could ostensibly throw a Monster Mash before I go - the weekend of the 26th and 27th and the weekend of the 2nd and 3rd.
Does anybody want to make some Monsters before I go? Otherwise there won't be another Monster Mash* until I get back in March or so, save for the Monster Mash I'll be doing on in Boston.
If you wanna make monsters with me, call out now and pick a date or forever hold your peace ... or something. ;)
* Of course anyone can make their own monsters any time they want to, but there won't be an official Mimi Monster Mash till I get back. ;) | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| The reason I've written so little about the health care debate is that for months, the strategy to get as good a bill as is possible with this Congress is to exaggerate its faults and to act like if the bill doesn't get better, liberals will walk away. And most of the people taking that position believe, or in many cases, as Nate mentions and I've been thinking, have convinced themselves, that without those improvements, the bill really isn't worth it.
Of course, the bill is worth it, no matter how disappointing it is that we can't do better. Many, many lives will be saved by people who are now uninsured getting coverage.
I don't like what the insistent, blinkered, war-like mentality is doing to the progressive movement. But it has been useful to have people acting as they have acted. Whether it's been worth the cost, I'm not sure. But calling people on their shit has seemed like it would get me in a lot of arguments to little positive effect. So I've been sort of muzzled.
Nate Silver, who seems never to fear causing a ruckus, discusses some of this at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/extremely-premature-retrospective-on.html | | comments: 8 comments or Leave a comment |
| In one short links dump:
- When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like "Avatar"? - Analysis - io9 :: "This is the essence of the white guilt fantasy, laid bare. It's not just a wish to be absolved of the crimes whites have committed against people of color; it's not just a wish to join the side of moral justice in battle. It's a wish to lead people of color from the inside rather than from the (oppressive, white) outside. // [ . . . ] // Whites need to stop remaking the white guilt story, which is a sneaky way of turning every story about people of color into a story about being white."
- thete1: "I know it's racist, Te, but the special effects look awesome!" :: "But if you *do* believe it's racist and you're spending money on it anyway... fuck you."
[*] The "what these blue people need is a honky" one, not the live-action version of the cartoon (which is actually titled The Last Airbender). I already said (probably) all I have to say about that. | | comments: 28 comments or Leave a comment |
| I mentioned a little while ago that "Three Twilight Tales", my short story from Firebirds Soaring is going to appear in the Strahan and the Horton Year's Best volumes.
I've now found out that Escape to Other Worlds With Science Fiction, which appeared on Tor.com and which is set in the US in the Small Change universe, is going to appear in the Dozois Year's Best. This is incredibly cool, partly because I very seldom write short stories and therefore it's lovely to have two different ones in three different Year's Best anthologies, and partly because I've been buying the Dozois anthologies every year for at least twenty years. So appearing in that is extra exciting because it feels... canonical. Also, in addition to whatever I get paid, I'll save the money I'd otherwise have spent on buying it.
So that makes me feel all happy and bouncy. | | comments: 15 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", Judy Garland | | Subject: | From the comments at MRWD | | Time: | 08:31 pm | | Current Mood: | muddling through, somehow |
|
| MyRightWingDad is an archive of right-wing e-mails--the propaganda, racist jokes, and other ugliness which gets circulated among the people who think that "death panels" are an actual part of the proposed health care revamp. I read it regularly just to see what's being said sub rosa among the American wingnutia.
The comments are worth skimming, even though they're usually just "Snopes debunked this one in 2002" or "Nice to see there's no racism in America any more." But this collection of "Jesus was really a..." jokes had some good ones I hadn't seen previously:
Anonymous said...
There were 3 good arguments that Jesus was black:
- He called everyone brother
- He liked Gospel
- He didn't get a fair trial
[. . . ]
But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was a Californian:
- He never cut His hair
- He walked around barefoot all the time
- He started a new religion
[. . .]
But the most compelling argument of all - 3 proofs that Jesus was a WOMAN:
- He fed a crowd at a moment's notice when there was virtually no food
- He kept trying to get a message across to a bunch of men who just didn't get it
- And even when He was dead to the world, He had to get up because there was still work to do....
| | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| Drabblecast will be running joanierules.bloggermax.com as a podcast in less than two weeks.
For your information, the podcast will alter the following terms from the story to suit the presumed audience of Drabblecast.
"Kuntdrip, fuckyu Frog bitch" will now be "Vag-face, F-U frog bitch"
"Fucking cat" will now be "freakin' cat"
"cunt" will now be "dick"
Please mentally reinsert these words into the stream of the story as you listen to the podcast, which I will link to on the 30th of this month. Remember, that's cuntdrip, fuck you, fucking cunt. One more time: cundtrip, fuck you, fucking cunt. Please do not mess up the order of these terms when listening.
Thank you for your time and attention. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Yesterday, Z made the exact same joke that I made in this post in 2003. "I don't know much about Art... except about the time he went off to Egypt and bought a bunch of papyruses," he said.
Also, he spontaneously made carandol's pun where I say "We need [something we happen to need]" and the response is "No, we knead bread."
Then there's a thing I read on the back of a matchbox when I was a kid. (Can you imagine being desperate enough for things to read that you'd read the back of a matchbox? Or if you did that it would have anything worth remembering?) The joke was two people on a pier. One says "Isn't it windy? The second says "No, I think it's Thursday." The first replies "So am I, let's have a cup of tea." I told Z this joke when he was a child of an age to appreciate it, and he took to it, and so occasionally when it's windy (though not usually windy enough that you can't hear what the other person's saying) and one of us remarks on it the other will respond with "No I think it's Thursday" and so on. The thing is that both his girlfriend and rysmiel have picked this up -- it's odd to think of this little bit of a matchbox joke lasting so well and gaining a wider audience after so long. You never know what people will remember, and take up. I imagine someone paid to write matchbox jokes and having six to do before knocking-off time scribbling that one down and being mildly pleased when it passed muster and was printed and never imagining that more than thirty years later it would be appreciated by a new generation. I mean it's not Shakespeare or Douglas Adams, it was only a matchbox. | | comments: 24 comments or Leave a comment |
| So now that shabbos is over, we can join the media frenzy around the Snowpocalypse of '09.
Report: It's snowing. A lot.
Anticipated impact. Sleep. Watch TV. Relax some. I could use that, frankly.
Actual impact: deal with Aaron suffering cabin fever.
More later, as we cover the awesome drama that is SNOWPOCALYPSE '09!!!!!!!!! | | comments: 9 comments or Leave a comment |
| So, you looked at the title of that and thought "ugh," right? That sounds exactly like some hippie crap they'd feed you in the 70's while enthusing about the benefits of a macrobiotic diet and frequent colon cleanses. And then they'd give you carob-tofu cheesecake for dessert. I mean, kale AND brown rice? For real?
OK well banish that thought from your head, because this is fucking delicious. I bought it frozen from Beechers, thought it was scrumptious, and attempted to re-create the recipe myself. The first time, it was good enough that one of my dinner guests put back everything else on her plate and just ate three helpings of the gratin. The second time, last night, I took it to a dinner party and everyone raved about it, even the guy who hates kale. In fact that guy took seconds.
This is a great holiday dish, because in addition to being delicious, it also has whole grains and dark green leafy vegetables in it. It's a pretty good antidote to a table that, traditionally, is basically a huge pile of carbs and fat. Not that this is fat free; far from it, though it's not like my creamed onions recipe. But the extra fat doesn't take away the nutrition of the other ingredients, you know.
The two things to be aware of are 1) the brown rice takes forever and a damn day to cook and 2) the kale must be chopped really, really, really fine. This is a time for your good knife and a big cutting board.
Ingredients:
1 large shallot
6 tbsp butter, divided in two
2 cups SHORT GRAIN brown rice
6 cups of whole milk
1 large bunch kale, enough to make 2 cups when finely, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
1 tablespoon stock concentrate (chicken or vegetable)
6-8 ounces of extremely sharp cheddar-style cheese; I've used Beecher's Flagship, but you could probably experiment
1/2 cup of bread crumbs
METHOD:
Melt half the butter in a large (LARGE) frying pan, fait-tout, or wide saute pan. I suppose you could use a 4.5 quart or larger saucepan too. Anyway, dice the shallot fine and saute in the butter until it is starting to brown. Add the rice and cook for a couple of minutes over high heat, then add the milk. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and cook for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the rice is no longer aggressively chewy. Add the nutmeg, cayenne, mustard, and stock concentrate, and return to a simmer. The mixture will still be somewhat spludgy at this point.
Chop the kale extremely, extremely finely, almost as though it were an herb rather than a vegetable. Stir the chopped kale into the rice mixture and cook, stirring occasionally, until it goes from dark green through bright green and into a sort of a dull, overcooked-looking green. Kale is not a tender vegetable; it can take it. At this point, the mixture should have absorbed enough liquid that you could scoop it with a slotted spoon without leaving too much liquid behind. Scrape it into an 11x17" baking dish.
Grate the cheese and top the gratin with it. Sprinkle the bread crumbs on top of the cheese; melt the rest of the butter, and drizzle it on top of the bread crumbs. Bake in a hot oven (350, or whatever the other things you're cooking need, it isn't particular) until the cheese is bubbly and the bread crumbs are browned. Serve and eat. | | comments: 16 comments or Leave a comment |
| I've been working on a couple of the songs that I wrote during NaNoteWriMo. "Amber" needed nearly nothing, really, but I'm working on keeping the rhythm that drives it intact without it being overbearing, which is a performance thing. "Shout at the Desert" needed a better ending and another verse and the extra structure that was hovering between being a second chorus structure and a second verse structure turned out to be a second verse structure, so now there's chorus, A-verse, B-verse, bridge, and intro/outro pairs. I'm not entirely thrilled with the last iteration of the A-verse, but it works for now, and the new outro is a lot better than the one it had.
So I was kind of up until 2am making sure that was right. Really the first two-thirds of the song is the same as before, and musically there's a little arrangement change but that's it.
Tonight I'm going to go see this show at Wayward Coffeehouse, so that'll be fun. ^_^
This post originated at ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん: Solarbird Makes Noises, on Dreamwidth. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Title: Hogswatch Eve.
Rating: PG.
Fandom: Discworld.
Synopsis: How does Susan feel about Hogswatch?
( How does Susan feel about Hogswatch? )
Today's fandom suggested by fireriven. To suggest a fandom, pairing, or situation for tomorrow, please comment on this post. Only comments on THIS POST will be considered for tomorrow. | | comments: 24 comments or Leave a comment |
| In the meantime, enjoy the Renaissance Fair from Hell (particularly those of you who remember how shitty videos could be in the 1980s):
| | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| I sure was glad that one of the friends I saw Avatar with last night ordered an extra large popcorn, because I needed a puke bucket to sit through that movie.
Also, it was in 3D, which made me a little dizzy.
Avatar is a nineteen-hour long film about a stupid ex-Marine who is employed by one of those The Companys one often hears about in science fiction movies to infiltrate the native American Indian/blue panther population of a planet because all the good stuff—a propertyless mineral called unobtanium (haw haw, I write scripts and look at the Internet!)—is under their giant tree. The Marine, who was injured and without the use of his legs in his human body, is named Sully (because he is SULLYING a natural world) and there is a careful scientist named Grace (because she is not exploitive and horrible and can be said to live in a state of GRACE) and an old soldier in charge of blowing things up whose name I didn't catch, but it was probably something like Colonel McEarthrape. (Because he likes to RAPE the EARTH, even when he isn't on it!)
The central conceit of the movie is that Sully and others can "drive" avatars that look just like the Big Blue Indian inhabitants, and that way can communicate and ultimately gain the trust of the indigenous population. Sully doesn't know a word of the native language, doesn't know anything of the local flora or fauna, and has no experience in his new body (voted Sexiest Space Gay at Furcon 2154's art show!) but he's American! Fuck Yeah! So it all works out for him. Despite satellite and radio technology, The Company has no way of tracking the location of the avatars either...well, not in the first act. Later on, they flip the avatars on and off at precisely the right dramatic moment. "I came here to tell you—" *thud*
Avatar does represent a step forward in science fiction film in that it is only forty years behind science fiction literature rather than the usual fifty years. The filmmakers were clearly terribly worried that Stupid American audiences wouldn't get their opus—I'll sum it up for you right now, it's Dances With Ewoks—that they gave Sully an extended voice over explaining most everything occurring on-screen. The choice of Sam Worthington, whose Tony Danzaesque voice grates at the best of times, to do the voice over is just one of those things filmmakers do to show that they are just as stupid as the audience. So don't feel bad, youse guys, that you got laid off the week before Christmas and this cartoon cost $350,000,000 to make. ($75,000,000 alone was for Sigourney Weaver's Botox treatments. The woman was born in ninteen forty-nine, people! I believe the rest was spent on sleeveless T-shirts for Michelle Rodriguez. Which is strange, because I'm sure she has plenty at home.)
There are also lines like this: upon entering the bio lab, "This is the bio lab." A great predatory bird, we are told, is called Last Shadow. "Because it's the last shadow you'll ever see," Sully figures out and explains to the audience. "Gee, thanks Einstein," the audience responds. When there's a fight, people say, "Let's dance!" The stupid guy is told, "Don't do anything exceptionally stupid," by a smart person—sadly nobody followed this bit of advice. The Weasely Company Dude calls the natives "savages" because he didn't get either the HR or the PR department reports on Respecting Others, plus that way we'll know he's bad! McEarthrape says, "We'll fight terror with terror," I suppose because saying, "I'M EEEEEEVIL! EEEEVIL I TELL YOU AND I LOVE TO RAPE...THE EARTH!" would have been considered too realistically gritty. When I wandered into the lobby for a few minutes just to look at the carpeting and came back I was still able to predict every line of dialogue despite surely missing a very important tree or something. The natives have their own language too. It sounds like this: "Ook Ta Lo lo Shvan." Just to make sure acting was as difficult as possible. Also, they are Pernesque dragon riders!
Anyway, Sully meets an Indian princess who senses his pure heart because some dandelion fluff falls on him. She takes him home and everyone inexplicably agrees to teach this young and extremely stupid warrior all the ways of their clan. These secret ways involve traversing video game landscapes and carefully looking at leaves because, as they explain in every title at the metaphysical bookstore at the end of my block here in Berkeley, Everything Is Connected. (Sully had never heard such a thing!) Then there is some furry CGI sex—the audience laughed—and the stupid stupid Indians wake up all surprised that the bulldozers are coming to tear down their Home Tree.
Our little Keeblers, you see, just don't comprehend the "sky people" despite having learned English and such. Like those primitive but noble American Indians, they are childlike and foolish as they try to use their arrows against attack copters (which only works in the third act, not the second), but they have a great wisdom and thus Sully decides to become their leader. His battle plan is, as of course it must be, GO FOR IT! Then it's a nine-hour long battle of Endor. Also, Michelle Rodriguez dies. I knew that was going to happen because she was in the movie.
Much has been made of Avatar's stunning visual sense, generally from people who never flipped through an issue of Heavy Metal in their lives. The night exteriors look more like those black light posters people used to hang in their dorm rooms in the 1970s. You know, back before the invention of fun in 1987. Everything's glowing because, as it turns out, Everything Is Connected. Despite the many native clans (Horse clans! Just like Indians! Clans that live by the sea! Just like Indians! Clans that live in a single giant tree! Just like...oh.) banding together under the leadership of Vinny Barbarino and all the hardware The Company has its command, the war is settled by a one-on-one karate fight between McEarthrape (in one of those robosuits from Aliens) and Sully. Just like King Philip's War in American history actually. Too bad nobody taught King Philip karate, eh, eh? Sucker!
Anyway, there's a second magic tree and it is made out of that fiberoptic stuff and it is also God and so all the CGI creatures we saw in the first act come back and kill all the helicopters and stuff and Sully gets permanently avatared and gets to have blue furry sex with Uhura from Star Trek forever. The funny thing is that the filmmakers probably thought they were making a kick-ass movie about the depredations of capitalism (you know, like the BUDGET of this monster!) and the horrors of genocide, but they really just made one about how Hollywood liberals are the most obnoxious assholes in the world. Anyway, I hope everyone involved in his movie contracts mouth cancer so they can no longer say things like, "Yes, I agree to work on Avatar II: Avat Tarrer" except for Michelle Rodriguez, whose lips I'll protect from free radicals by covering them with my lips always and forever.
I suppose I'll mention a few positives. An early scene in zero-G is interesting. The crazy CGI spaceships and labs are treated as everyday objects—indeed we don't get our first character telling us to be impressed by going, "wwwoooww" until the scientists show up at some floating mountains. (It's a "flux vortex"! A what? A SHUT UP JUST SHUT UP AND LOOK AT THE FLOATING MOUNTAINS!) There's a bit in the second act where we see Sully in his wheelchair and they CGIed his legs to look a bit skinnier then they had before—he's not been exercising at all because he is spending too much time in his avatar body. They then ruin this subtle and clever bit of filmmaking by having him put on shaving cream while staring forlornly into a broken mirror.
Avatar is as stupid as Transformers 2 and for those with a brain in their heads is twice as offensive. I'm not easily offended; I even think the White Guy Becomes An Indian thing can be done well on rare occasions—Howard Waldrop's Them Bones comes to mind—but this movie was just awful. How awful? I left as soon as the credits started to roll, but even as I ran for the lobby I heard a snippet of lyrics from the end credits theme. Here's the first verse:
Walking through a dream, I see you
My light and darkness breathing hope of new life
Now I live through you and you through me, enchanted
I pray in my heart that this dream never ends
Now imagine your school days, and someone handing you these lyrics in the form of a note. And when you open up the note to read it, they start crying because they just love you so much and wanted to share their feelings for you through poetry. Wouldn't it be better if aliens just came down and killed us all? See, I knew you'd see what I mean. | | comments: 115 comments or Leave a comment |
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