WE saw avatar the 3-d movie and thought if was fantastic!
any one see it?

Saw it a couple of weeks ago. The 3D effects were amazing. I loved how the leaves seemed to touch me. The colours were so pretty and the artistery wonderful.

But the underlying ideas bothered me - you know - attempts at colonisation, the expected exploitation, the insensitive destruction, loss of innocense, the saviour from the 'superior' race.
I suppose I am particularly sensitive having lived in colonised countries much of my life. There are positives of colonisation, none of which were shown.

Dear Beth and Isis,

The last movie I saw was the Chipmonks when I took my friend's kid to a move a couple of weeks ago.
Before that, I had not been to a movie in at least 4 or 5 years.
I would have missed lots of the references in Avatar: Lord of the the Rings, Matrix, . . . .
(I read the reviews and stay up to date but I don't see movies -- I get enthralled and upset -- better to watch on TV)

M.

Avatar is not yet released here - i guess it is about to be as i am seeing "coming soon" ads for it.

I don't know if i will be able to see it in the theatre or not. i would like to, i just don't know if it will be doable.

I am glad you enjoyed it so much Bizi. I read the summary on IMDB and it sounds interesting.

~ waves ~

I think there will be an avatar 2.
yes isis there were definately messages along with this movie.
Progress just came rolling thru, kind of like the native american indians.....

maybe I am wrong about a 2 coming out as this was so expensive to produce have to see if they can break even I suppose.

visually gorgeous movie!

Hi,
I almost didn't have the stomach to read this, but finally managed.
Be careful if you decide to read. Gory and sick. Is out in the Guardian today.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ound-important

I haven't seen it yet,but I hear it's really good. BF

Dear Isis,
This is one reason I don't go to movies.
After one gets past the visual effects, the movie can be disturbing.
M.

One could just watch a movie for the sake of ENTERTAINMENT? And maybe not to extrapolate symbolism and parallels past where the movie chooses to place them? Allow the movie to determine the course, and not some previous events it doesn't reflect "accurately." It's a movie, not a news report.

Some movies do bother me. I have not entirely figured out why some movies bother me and some don't. Most Sci Fi and Fantasy don't bother me even if there is combat... but war movies i can't watch, even if it's fiction, perhaps because it is too "realistic" i dunno for sure though. Action movies i'm so so... depends on the movie, the actors, and my mood at the time.

Avatar sounds interesting to me. Just because there are parallels with a horrific historical precedent doesn't make a movie silly in my books. I don't generally read critiques before i go to watch a movie, but the article posted went beyond a critique. it started out bashing Avatar and then went on and on and on about the Native American genocide as a subject on its own - which it actually is. I did start wondering if various "atrocities" are featured in the movie or not - i kind of am guessing not, but if they are I probably will NOT want to watch it. (Bizi feel free to let me in on this deep dark secret, perhaps privately to avoid spoilers for other readers.)

Art does not HAVE to imitate life, but when it does it certainly CAN tweak it to make it prettier. By golly, if art couldn't do that, we'd be in one sorry place, for sure!

Anyway my guess (for one who has not seen it yet) is that Avatar probably has intrinsic entertainment value as fiction. I don't see that a movie that has similarities to historical events, but a different ending, necessarily was meant to rewrite history and appease people. Different movies have different ways of entertaining. This one is certainly not a documentary nor historically set - it is set in the FUTURE... and if people do reflect on the parallels, i think it's cool that a movie can portray an alternate, better ending. Hello, hope? What if we saw in it a positive message "Let us not allow history to repeat itself." And anyway, why leave audiences with Great Vortices of Racial Guilt in the pit of their stomach... that would be a whole different kind of movie. Anyone who wants to see that can watch Last of The Mohicans and OD on racial extermination. Personally, I have enough guilt thank you i don't need to get it socked to me by a movie.

sidenote... I think Dances With Wolves is a beautiful beautiful film which largely honors the Sioux while showing the tragic and relentless persecutory mindset of the "white man" that would eventually take from them their land and way of life. It is not perhaps the most realistic film either, but it had valuable elements of realism. I watch it most times its on even though i always cry.

~ waves ~

Completely agree with waves. Commercial films are meant for entertainment. Entertaining is their aim and is what sustains them.

Toy guns are also meant to be only toys. Yet there is a school of thought that says that it sneakily desensitizes children about gun violence. But are the manufacturers interested in this perspective? No, because that is where their living is.
Not many parents were concerned before - a plastic gun is a plastic gun - but now I see more and more anxiety, often to the point of not giving the child a toy gun that has come as a gift. And I am not referring to my own group of friends but to a large number of adoptive parents of different age groups and life choices who I monitor in my capacity as adoption counsellor.

Same with violent video games.
And there are others.

I've needed to be particularly careful ever since my daughter was born and I can not say I have always been successful. The temptations of shinning lights, flashing colour and the adrenaline of competition always triumph, specially in the years when hormones are raging.

I find it difficult to be objective about concepts promoted by 'entertainment' when it has the ability to insidiously undermine sensitivities to the plight of weaker life.
In the end of course individual view point is what matters - as a line in something I saw on TV - one is victim to a thought process that makes sleep easier.