DUBBY'S DVDISCUSSION - AVATAR

DESERVES OSCARS BUT WHICH ONES? AVATAR IS THE NEW BENCHMARK FOR ESCAPIST ENTERTAINMENT; THE ULTIMATE ON-SCREEN DREAM
Ijust saw Peter Shaffer's Royal Hunt Of The Sun about Pizzaros taking off the peaceful Peru for gold. The Hurt Locker and Avatar done by an ex-hus- band and wife is about one set of people taking things they want from another. The Hurt Locker by Kathryn Bigelow is, in the end, about oil in Iraq. Avatar is about earthlings wanting unob- tainium, a valuable element.
Both are up for nine Oscars but Avatar has set a record at The Box Office beating Cameron's own Titanic.Give it to James Cameron and Avatar for being what Thomas Leupp calls, "A sci-fi epic every bit as wondrous and imaginative as promised. Prepare to be amazed." And I was.
But I join Thomas Leupp.
In his opinion, "I don't know if Cameron has revolu- tionised the movie-watching experience (as he famously promised) but he's surely im- proved upon it."
Andy Lowe is more effu- sive, "Cameron's aim is to take our franchise-frazzled minds and plug us back in to the mainline; to conjure the wonder of those early silent- movie audiences, aghast and alarmed as a steam-train chugged from horizon to foreground.
Avatar is the new bench- mark for escapist entertain- ment; the ultimate on- screen dream. More suspen- sion of self than suspension of disbelief.

It's a motion picture where everything seems to move.
And it's utterly captivating. A glistening banquet for the senses.
So, let's be clear... Avatar is much more than a film.
It's an audacious, awe-in- spiring work of modern art that reinvents and redesigns the whole process of sitting in a darkened room staring up at a screen. Sure, it's taken him ten years, but Cameron has achieved no less than a re- birth of cinema."
I personally agree with it all. And I loved the way we get to the heart of things.
Says Thomas Leupp, "Avatar wastes little time before unleashing the specta- cle of Pandora, the stagger- ingly lush planet upon which the tale unfolds. Through the eyes of Jake Sully (Sam Wor- thington), a crippled ex-ma- rine who navigates Pandora vicariously through a bio- engineered surrogate (aka, an avatar), we are intro- duced to the planet's bound- less, breathtaking collection of wonders, all created from scratch, rendered with un- canny fluidity, and present- ed in the most realistic and immersive way ever wit- nessed on film.

Occasionally, Avatar's technical triumph is be- trayed by its maddeningly derivative storyline, which borrows from countless films about oppressors switching sides and going native. Sent to gather intelli- gence on the Na'vi, Pandora's blue-skinned indigenous population, for an Earth- based mining consortium, Jake becomes enamoured with the proud, peace-loving natives. Soon enough, he has joined their tribe, taken a na- tive girl for a wife (Zoe Sal- dana), and organised an army to help repel the earth- lings.The Bad Guys (Avatar's moral perspective is as monochromatic as Pandora is colourful) who initiate the assault on the Na'vi are led by a tag team of grotesque, absurdly one-dimensional villains: Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) the khaki- clad, bottom line-obsessed corporate administrator of the mine; and Miles Quar- itch (Stephen Lang), a bug- eyed, muscle-bound sadist who commands the mine's vast security force. As Pando- ra's Cortez and Pizzaro, they form a potent one-two punch of arrogant imperial- ist caricatures, deriding the noble Na'vi with sophomoric slurs like "blue monkeys"."
Give Oscars to Avatar for Art Direction, Cinematogra- phy, Film Editing, Music (Original Score) which is re- ally extraordinary, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Visual Effects.
But so busy was James Cameron being visually bril- liant and creating great art he didn't have a good script, too many clichés and one di- mensional earthlings.
So in the end what it all boils down to is, does it deserve the Best Picture Os- car? I think not. But every- thing else is Cameron's. He earned it.