Movie Review: AVATAR

Cameron’s AVATAR is a modern Star Wars

It took all of half a billion dollars to give birth to AVATAR, the brand new science fiction franchise. Starring Terminator Salvation’s Sam Worthington and the Alien franchises Sigourney Weaver, AVATAR is a brave, intelligent, invigorating, altruistic and utterly beautiful spectacle. And like all the best franchises we’ve ever seen, it’s an original fairy tale. – by Nick van der leek

Jake Sully: Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world and in here is the dream

One of the thoughts that might occur to you while you are watching AVATAR, is that for all its other worldliness, all its militarism, there’s a childlike quality to Cameron’s vision which we last saw a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. We see this in the floating mountains, in the enormous tree, and in the magical quality of the forest. I’m not going to describe it beyond saying the forests of Pandora light up like a coral reef at night.

There’s a nod of the cap to Dances with Wolves, there’s a sense of Hiawatha and Geronimo, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. There’s also a sense of the mythical knights versus the dragons. But not quite, AVATAR is its own story. You might think there is a flaw in the fact that since Jake Sully [Sam Worthington] is essentially having an out of body experience [cue the Matrix] that if he dies, as a Na’vi, well, does it matter? Well how would you feel crashing your car? Same thing. Especially if you’re a cripple, as Jake is.

You may anticipate a few plot points in this film; this won’t detract from the shock and awe you feel. I was moved to tears at times. This is the right flick, at the right time, for the world. When I emerged out of the cinema I was shaking. I said to Barry Ronge; “Do you think it was intentionally released to coincide with this Climate Conference?” In that question lies a hint that The Corporation in AVATAR are intent only in stripping the forest of what they can. The extent to which audiences will respond to AVATAR depends on whether they’re subliminally environmentalists, capitalists or militarists. I have a feeling the collective zeitgeist has been yearning to give vent to, well, its perceived guilt. See, while nuclear bombs may be the fault of scientists, the environment is the responsibility of the broader public, and that guilt is real. But the question that arises then is, how do we fight back? The answer is simply this: through AVATAR.

Col. Quaritch: [from trailer] You haven't got lost in the woods, have you? You still remember what team you're playing for?

I don’t want to ruin the flick by discussing it’s innards, so I’m going to go on two sidetracks before I wrap up. First sidetrack – why it cost $500 million, and what sort of engineering tech does Cameron bring to AVATAR. Second sidetrack, some of the performances that made an impression.

Guess where the powerhouse for digital effects for AVATAR comes from? New Zealand. Yes. From Peter Jackson’s own WETA Digital, an Academy Award winning visual effects company responsible for the likes of Gollum. What WETA does is build an AVATAR that is visually relevant to its human counterparts/ features; these being primarily Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver. WETA describe the avatars and Na’vi as animated, Jim Cameron reckons the characters are performances by actors. Both is true. Animation embellished with the movements of tails and ears.

And it’s at this point that one must reference the hard-to-describe quality that this flick evokes, which is that freedom in childhood many of us last felt, running around in nature, fearless, completely at home in an ever expanding world, and growing stronger and better for every moment spent exploring. This is an implicit fairy-tale quality that can’t be over emphasised. Some might gripe that there is no plot when falling through a tree canopy; but Cameron knows what he is doing, he knows how to fit the pieces together and how to pace the film and keep the parts relevant to each other. So, I’m happy to report that the $500 million wasn’t a wasted effort.

[To the group of soldiers on the ship to Pandora]
Trudy Chacon [chopper pilot]: You should see your faces!

Cameron is an engineer and you can see the same loaders you last saw in ALIENS here, except they’re 8th generation, bigger and bad ass. The shuttles are choppers, the weapons, the consoles, all tech is rendered beautifully by a man who understands machines. Well, what about the performances by the actual humans? Sam Worthington is perfect for his role as tough hombre with a few brain cells hanging loose between a thick Neanderthal skull. Opposite Sam is Zoe Saldana, the beautiful and athletic Neytiri, with Sigourney Weaver, in fine form, as the heroic scientist, Grace.

Stephen Lang plays the loathsome Colonel Miles Quaritch [a name that evokes ‘miles of quarries’] and Giovanni Ribisi [remember him as the geeky boyfriend in Lost in Translation] plays the despicable Company Man - Parker Selfridge [his last name sounds like ‘selfish’ doesn’t it?]. I think at least one more performace is worth noting, the latino chopper pilot played by a spunky Michelle Rodriguez.

Selfridge: [from trailer] This is why we're here, because this little gray rock sells for twenty million a kilo.

Before I wrap, a final warning: AVATAR is long, not that it feels long, but at 2 hours 3 minutes make sure you visit the little boys or little girls room before the flick starts – you’re not going to want to deprive yourself of a second.

I’m sure we will see AVATAR II and III and more. In the mean time hats off to James Cameron for taking another giant leap in cinema even after the roaring success
of TITANIC. The AVATAR franchise is likely to live happily ever after. Now let’s hope it also rubs off in our world, and the real world.

Score: A very rare 10/10
Running Time: 150 minutes

Star Trek is a bright, shiny blast from a newly imagined past

By far his finest moments take place on the brightly lighted deck of the Enterprise, where against the backdrop of limitless space, Kirk, Spock and the rest of the young crew fumble with roles that — much like the young actors playing them, including Anton Yelchin as Chekov and John Cho as Sulu — they ultimately and rather wonderfully make their own. - New York Times

SHOOT: Star Trek's mythos is based on balance. Vision tempered by logic, passion tempered by reason, rationalism and reason set free into the magic and mystery of space. A masterful premise. I always hoped humanity would become civilised in the future, adopting the broad consensus we see in Star Fleet, with the broad goal being a cashless society bent on improving itself. The Star Trek protagonists are, interestingly, all altrusists. Something rare in entertainment and real life history.

Read my review of Star Trek.

clipped from movies.nytimes.com A bright, shiny blast from a newly imagined past, “Star Trek,” the latest spinoff from the influential television show, isn’t just a pleasurable rethink of your geek uncle’s favorite science-fiction series. It’s also a testament to television’s power as mythmaker, as a source for some of the fundamental stories we tell about ourselves, who we are and where we came from. The famous captain (William Shatner, bless his loony lights) and creator (Gene Roddenberry, rest in peace) may no longer be on board, but the spirit of adventure and embrace of rationality that define the show are in full swing, as are the chicks in minis and kicky boots. Despite these visions, the flashing lasers and latex aliens, “Star Trek” is fundamentally about two men engaged in a continuing conversation about civilizations and their discontents. Hot and cold, impulsive and tightly controlled, Kirk and Spock need each other to work, a dynamic Mr. Abrams captures with his two well-balanced leads.

The Reader: A Review and a Retrospective

I avoided this flick for a few weeks because I wasn't really in the mood for a Nazi, 2nd World War, witchunt type of movie. But in the end it was either Kate Winslet or movies like Tornado (which IMDB doesn't even rate) and Finding Lenny.

I was surprised how much The Reader made me feel. It really takes you places. I've had a couple of relationships with older women and The Reader gives the right amount of empathy, passion and raw but not over-delivered sexuality to the whole process. A lot of credit has to go to Winslet - she won an Oscar for her performance - for stripping herself down not only in terms of clothing, but in terms of her persona. The flick is at times incredibly bleak, but always intriguing.

Michael: I'm not frightened. I'm not frightened of anything. The more I suffer, the more I love. Danger will only increase my love, will sharpen it, will give it spice. I will be the only angel you need. You will leave life even more beautiful than you entered it. Heaven will take you back and look at you and say: "Only one thing can make a soul complete and that thing is love."


A strange, unsolicited memory floated up to me whilst watching The Reader. When I was a small boy I developed a voracious appetite for reading. It started at the age of about 6 or 7 with Enid Blyton. The Famous Five, Secret Seven, the Adventure stories, and then I ventured into Franklin W. Doxon's Hardy Boys and Willard Price's outdoor adventure stories.

From there I went into everything else - biographies, classical fiction (I loved Wuthering Heights) and at the age of 13 I was so inspired by what I was reading, I started to write. By 15 I was ensconced in a novel (titled Versatile Flying Secrets - a mixture of Highlander, Star Wars, Braveheart and the French Open) which took me two years to write. But I digress.

As a youngster I was the most well read of my peers, and in junior school when lessons were over in some classes (if not all) the teacher would settle down to marking and hand the class over to a reader. I was one of them and eventually I was unanimously elected as the class favorite - mostly because I did not get stuck on words and could explain the meaning of most and so we could move swiftly through one exciting story after another. I remember the books of those times: The Day of the Triffids, Buchan's The 39 Steps, Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals.

The art of reading means you have to anticipate not only the flow and cadence of the writer, but also sense the ethos with which he has imbued his story. You have to represent this in the tone and levity (or lack of in one's voice). It is an incredible compliment to have readers/listeners accept your interpretation. One feels quite a special sense that although one is not the writer, one is a step closer to the magical place the writer sat or stood (the place in his or heart or mind) when he or she wrote it. And this says something important about the acuity of one's perceptions. At least, I like to think so.


The flick made me think that I would love to take my favorite books from right now [The Hours is one] and read the first or a handful of pages and record these as individual podcasts. I've recently recorded my voice and am not happy with the result, so I will probably have to practise in order to be satisfied that the voice does justice to the text (and that the exercise is worth doing in the first place). So that is something I intend to do as another ongoing project on this site.

The other aspect that rang a bell was that when I visited Germany in the late 1990's I visited the camp known as Dachau. Winslet is right to say that you can visit these camps but you get nothing from them. Nothing comes out of them. My experience was the same. The photographs spoke to me more than the clean barracks or the brickwork (which looked brand new). And photos can be found in newspapers or books or online.
I was surprised not to feel the ghosts in an area that had seen so many people die. Even the ovens looked less used than an ordinary pizza oven, giving the impression much had probably been rebuilt, replastered etc.

And I had a very strange experience in Munch, and quite unpleasant. When I left England, I shaved my head with a slight perception in my head of wanting to fit into the German modicum of neatness and precision. One day I went walking around Munich and dressed entirely in black. It was one of the most uncomfortable days I have spent in a foreign city anywhere, before or since. A lot of people shot me strange looks, and it wasn't long before I realised they thought I was a skinhead, or a Nazi. This was crushing experience for an expat South African who has to deal with people who commonly think so he must be a racist once you've told them where you're from.

When I arrived at my friend's flat in Dietramzellerstrasse and I told him how the ordinary German's had stared at me he laughed. In Germany there is still a definite feeling of guilt and unease about the atrocities during WWII. Coincidentally, South Africans carry around similar but obviously different burdens. Some countries of course have no political burdens at all, such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand, which is why these are the favored destinations for so many immigrants.

The Reader is a riveting but tragic story. It is a story that demonstrates how small substleties can steer entire lives, and how our stern judgements are sometimes salt in already deep enough wounds. It is also one of the most intelligent movies out there, so I highly recommend you catch it while you can.

8.5/10

NVDL reviews Slumdog Millionaire

The Academy made a choice this year; one that will be echoed by millions. They set a dangerous precedent in making that choice, but it is not hard to understand why. I'm speaking of course about the Academy choosing Slumdog Millionaire as its Oscar pic - best movie, best director and so on. It was either Slumdog or, of course, Dark Knight. Sure, many who haven't seen the movie (or don't know better) would have 'blamed' any Dark Knight win on Heath ledger's death.

So what is Slumdog Millionaire about and is it worth watching? I give credit to film that directs our attention to the slums of Mumbai. Any film that gets Europeans and blacks thinking about other people is worth its salt.

The problem with Slumdog is similar to the one of Valkyrie. You know what's going to happen. It wouldn't be called 'Millionaire' if the hero didn't answer all his questions correctly, so you know you're going to see a happy ending. In Valkyrie everyone knows Hitler was never assassinated so you know Tom Cruise is going to fail.

And so you can epitomise Slumdog as 'wishful thinking' and Dark Knight as 'dystopian'. What does the Academy choose as the best movie? Wishful thinking, because they believe that is what the audience wants. If you want to be rich, if you want a pretty girlfriend, just wish with all your heart and your dreams will come true.

There are some good visuals and the story is not too bad. I enjoyed a glimpse of the Proteas - Andre Nel I think - when one of the mobsters turns on the TV to watch cricket. The premise - anecdotes surrounding each question - is interesting but not really worthy of all the hype and hubris we've seen.

We learn a lot more in Dark Knight, and why we ought to take what is happening a little more seriously. Instead, as our circumstances deteriorate the Academy expects us to maintain a Jiminy Cricket Syndrome, and I think they're right. Good luck with that.

7.5/10
[I gave Dark Knight 9/10]

KAK DVD Warning: Lions and Lambs

Look, if you want to watch a movie with your girlfriend, and end up NOT watching the movie, this would be a great choice. See, it has quite an important (if tired) message, it has a classy cast, so your girlfriend is not going to think you're a retard. But she will get tired of it within about 20 minutes, and find you a LOT more interesting. Now, where were we...

Juno: A rich, funny, happy tapestry of a teenager's life (9/10)

Paulie Bleeker: Come on, let me carry your bag.
Juno MacGuff: Oh, what's another ten pounds?

The screenplay written by Diablo Cody won best screenplay at this year's Academy Awards. Many critics believed Juno was a strong contender for Oscars in other categories too, including Best Picture and Best Actress. Whilst No Country For Old Men may mirror to some extent the reigning movie zeitgeist, Juno is exceptionally fresh, spirited and infused with vigor. All the actors do a fine job in this flick, and every frame is a valuable and colourful thread weaved into the charming tapestry that is Juno's life.

The film chronicles the seasonal and emotional flux that a 9 month pregnancy involves. It is a remarkable story in that it somehow manages to evade the heavy drama and angst and misery that usually stereotypes teenage pregnancy stories...but the movie still has its bunny slippers on the ground.

Plenty of credit goes to Ellen Page for a perfect performance as the unique and irrepresible Juno. But why Juno?

Juno MacGuff: My dad had this weird obsession with Roman or Greek mythology or something and he decided to name me after Zeus' wife.
Mark Loring: Zeus' wife?
Juno MacGuff: Yeah and I mean Zeus had tons of lays but I'm pretty sure Juno was his only wife. And apparently she was supposed to be super beautiful but really mean, like Diana Ross.

The flick has a distinct color and taste and personality, mostly imbued by Juno herself, but thoughtfully and cleverly accentuated in other characters too. Jennifer Garner and Jason Batemen are transplanted out of The Kingdom and battle fatigues into an upper class suburban setting. Bateman's performance is subdued, understated and subtle, but touching. Garner's colder desperation contrasts well, and their belongings at home (guitars and a pristine lab-like bathroom and kitchen) reflect their disparate climates towards family living.

J.K Simmons (Juno's father Mac) is one of those character actors who we easily recognise, but we never remember his name. Simmons also played J.Jonah, the news editor in Spiderman. His performance illustrates where Juno gets her spirit and sense of humor from.

Diablo Cody's screenplay is filled with ear-tickling dialogue and everyday scenes that are nevertheless remarkable. A scene at the mall where Vanessa (Garner) kneels in front of the teenage girls stomach, hoping to feel the baby move, while out of focus shopper move in the background is just one example.

It is a rare treat for a flick to have none of the ingredients of the average blockbuster. There is no violence, no car chases, no explosions, no vulgarity, no sex (well, sort've). But neither is it a contrived, too good to be true fairy tale.

Vanessa Loring: How do I look?
Bren: Like a new mom. Scared shitless.

The soundtrack is great, but the best thing about Juno is its genuineness and its unique sense of humor. You're likely to leave the cinema sensing that somehow the world is a brighter, happier place than when you went in.

Directed by Jason Reitman
Cast:

Ellen Page (Juno MacGuff)
Michael Cera (Paulie Bleeker)
Jennifer Garner (Vanessa Loring)
Jason Bateman (Mark Loring)
Allison Janney (Bren MacGuff)
J.K. Simmons (Mac MacGuff)
Olivia Thirlby (Leah)