blast-o-rama. • issue 069 • 2022-12-18
blast-o-rama.
issue 069 • 2022-12-18
programming update
Hey folks! As alluded to in prior editions, this week’s edition of the blast-o-rama. newsletter will be your last until 2023! I will be taking off for the next two weeks, returning with an edition on January 8th.
Thanks!
hello from pandora, it’s way too smooth here
You want to know a weird thing about being of the online generation? When a movie sequel comes out thirteen years after its prior installment, odds are you can look back and find your review of it.
And sure enough, I found mine, from 2009 (!) of Avatar.
What’s particularly funny is that, in all honesty, I could just do a little find and replace, and my feelings on the half-billion dollar little movie that could, Avatar: The Way of Water, wouldn’t be all that different.
The plot remains cookie cutter, the dialogue, at times, cringeworthy. Heck, the whole idea of the movie seems to be built around a sort of “Remember the first one? That! But it’s DIFFERENT NOW” vibe that James Cameron made work with Terminator 2: Judgement Day three decades ago.
So, if you’re two hours into this three hour movie, and feeling kind of whelmed, I don’t blame you. The dialogue is kinda stilted, the animation is nice, but the high frame rate stuff (an idea so nerdy I’m just gonna let a YouTube video explain it (here)) is kind of distracting. What did 20th Century/Disney see in this to give James such a long leash?
But then the third act drops, and James Cameron shows the world why he’s the best action director on the planet, dead or alive. A massive battle sequence, beautifully shot and rendered, and actually made better by the films mixture of 3D imagery, bleeding-edge computer generated animation, and yes, even the use of the previously distracting high frame rates!
Add the fact that the movie addresses head on ideas of colonialism, our own taught relationship with nature, and the importance of not just our survival, but that of our future, and you have another politically bold work from Hollywood’s biggest studio, one which might pair nicely with Andor, Disney’s quiet best Star Wars product yet.
Avatar: The Way of Water isn’t necessarily going to be on my best movies of the year list, but as a film nerd, and someone who champions the theatrical experience, this is a movie that will be absolutely ruined by watching at home, and leave you gobsmacked when you watch it in a theater. So, yeah. Give that a spin. Goodness knows if my local AMC is any indication…it’s on all the screens, all the time.
Avatar: The Way of Water is in theaters now.
from across the web
Some reads I enjoyed this week:
- These ‘Luddite’ Teens Are Abstaining From Social Media - The New York Times
- Why Henry Cavill Is No Longer Superman – The Hollywood Reporter
- Satnam Singh Used to Post Up. Now He Throws Down. - The New York Times
- We’re living in an ersatz era - Vice
- Storytelling Will Save the Earth - WIRED
- Welcome to Digital Nomadland - WIRED
- The Eternal Mystery Of A Rich Man’s Politics - Defector
- Please Remove Me From This List - Defector
- The Year of the Dink: How Pickleball Took Over the U.S. - The Ringer
- A Totally Normal Conversation With Nathan Fielder - GQ
- They Fought the Lawn. And the Lawn’s Done. - The New York Times
thanks for reading.
Have a great holiday and a happy new year, all.
See you on January 8th!
-Marty