Avatar (The Final Word)

A follow-up to this post, and, implicitly, this one and this one. Hype be damned, and insecure, delusional fans, too.

Avatar is a number of things, many of them great, even if the film isn’t quite the cinematic game changer Hollywood moguls would have you believe (certainly no more so than director James Cameron’s previous techno-feats Terminator 2 and Titanic). As entertainment goes, it is, above all else, extremely cheesy, and whether or not one enjoys the film largely comes down to their taste for this particular brand of unrestrained earnestness.

Click here to read the rest at Suite101.

R.I.P. Dennis Hopper - "Do you know that 'if' is the middle word in 'life'?"

The Road

Watching The Road, one gets the sense that the material – here, the story of a father and son surviving the end of the world as we know it, having originated in Cormac McCarthy's award winning novel of the same name – isn't one best suited by the cinematic treatment, and that to remove it from the page (where words can ignite thoughts and burn extensively in the mind in ways that cinema rarely achieves) is to automatically lessen the impact.

Click here to read the rest at Suite101.

Links for the Day (May 18th, 2010)

1. It came from "Metropolis": The legacy of a classic. For the whopping two of you who haven't seen this yet, Matt Zoller Seitz provides a few choice examples of Fritz Lang's cinematic influence. Bring on that restored Blu-ray, already!

["Paramount, the film's U.S. production partner, severely cut "Metropolis" so that theater exhibitors could schedule more showings per day. Film scholars’ 80-year quest to find and restore the excised material ended last week when a 25-minutes-longer version, which uses recovered and restored footage to flesh out the film's plot and characters and burnish its themes, is now showing at New York’s Film Forum."]

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2. Jim Henson: Saying Goodbye 20 Years Later. A touching personal essay on the life and influence of one our great recent artists.

["After the box office failure of Labyrinth and the low ratings for his television shows The Storyteller and The Jim Henson Hour, Henson began negotiations to sell the company to the Walt Disney Company to save the Muppets and give him more time on the creative side of show. Less than a year later, Henson began feeling flu-like symptoms and started feeling sick and constantly tired. Early on May 15, 1990, he was having trouble breathing and began coughing up blood."]

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3. Republicans forgot that Susan B. Anthony was a socialist. Silly donkeys.

["I was amused to learn this weekend that Republicans have organized a new group called The Susan B. Anthony List. No doubt a knock-off of the influential Emily's List, a political action committee dedicated to supporting the political campaigns of women to public office who support women's equality and a host of related issues.The Susan B. Anthony List, as its website indicates, does the opposite. It will support women who specifically oppose women's reproductive rights."]

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Quote of the Day: “Much as I deplore the horrible crime of child-murder, earnestly as I desire its suppression, I cannot believe...that such a law would have the desired effect. It seems to be only mowing off the top of the noxious weed, while the root remains..” - Susan B. Anthony

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Image of the Day: Classic cinema makes for unlikely children's books. Click through for more of the sublime. Hattip: Chris.

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Video of the Day: Feelings on my mind, from of the best albums of the 90s.

Chloe

Chloe is an affecting look at the dual natures of trust and sexuality (by way of a fraught marriage), yet it comes saddled with what many viewers might be unable to initially look at as anything but a major and potentially narrative-invalidating hiccup. Even as an odd and perhaps unjustified turn of events, as a potential schism it isn't enough to derail an otherwise compellingly told and altogether spiritually inhabited character study.

Click here to read the rest at Suite101.

Hot Tub Time Machine

Hot Tub Time Machine is a refreshing dose of low-concept comedy, made impressive in both in its own inherent, bloated ridiculousness (see plot-description functioning title) and the full-on commitment it receives both in front of and behind the camera. “Do I really get to be the asshole who says we got in the hot tub and went back in time?” says Jacob (Clark Duke), at once confirming the at-hand obvious and skewering plot condescenders.

Click here to read the rest at Suite101.

Alice in Wonderland

The line separating movies and theme park rides is blurred yet further by Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, a creatively exhausted upchuck of Lewis Carroll's classic for the patience-deprived. Thrown haphazardly onto the screen with little consideration for anything other than stimulation overload, this CG-driven extravaganza is at once overripe and underwhelming, a bombardment of halfhearted quirk lacking both a distinct personality and a basic appreciation for cinematic spectacle.

Click here to read the rest at Suite101.

Daria: The Complete Animated Series

In the world of Daria Morgendorffer (Tracy Grandstaff), there are two kinds of people: those with functioning brains and those without. At least, that's how this seminal MTV series began in its scathing, manifesto-like early seasons, in which the titular anti-heroin's antisocial antics are viewed as the only sane recourse to being forced to endure year after year of mental subjugation by a society that thrives on double standards and the illogical.

Click here to read the rest at Slant Magazine.