I don’t want to overplay the premise that Tom’s coma caused him to miss out on a bunch of movies for too long, but I really wanted to bring Avatar back into the fold somehow. I mean, when the movie makes half a BILLION dollars worldwide in only 4 weeks, it’s kind of irresponsible to ignore it.
I talked about watching Avatar a few days after it came out on December 21, so I won’t rehash all of the details here again. Seems kind of pointless. I guess you could say that’s another reason I don’t want to revisit all of the movies that came out in December that I didn’t do comics for on the site. Eventually things will balance out again.
Not much else for me to talk about today except to remind you that tonight is THE FINAL EPISODE OF THE TRIPLE FEATURE.
I’ve you’ve been a fan of the weekly podcast I’ve done with Joe Dunn from Joe Loves Crappy Movies and Gordon McAlpin from Multiplex for the last three years, then we would really appreciate it if you could swing by TalkShoe.com tonight at 9:00 PM CST as we record our final episode. We’re going to be sharing our picks for the Top 10 movies of 2009. But we’d also like to take the opportunity to have fans of the show call in and send us off on the right note.
Usually we record for one hour. But tonight, we’re going to play it fast and loose. The show could go on for two hours – maybe three. Who knows? It all depends on the turn out we see in the chat field tonight.
So set your alarms – 9:00 PM CST at http://www.thetriplefeature.com. Be there for the end of an era.
Thanks and I’ll talk to you soon!
Hey, baby. How was Avatar.
It's great catching up on the stuff I missed. But watching the movie, I couldn't help but think Avatar was more like Fern...
Fern Gully in space?
Um, yeah.
And what's up with the Na'vi being blue and living in the forest? It's like they're...
Intergalactic Smurfs?
Sorry, but since you were in a coma for a month, it was easier for me to keep up with all of the snarky comments you usually steal from the internet.
I haven’t seen Avatar yet, but it’s not for want of trying. I want to see it on an iMax theatre but there is only one in Shanghai. People have been standing in line to get tickets starting about 4am daily. These days you can only buy two tickets at a time and the price has been raised. The people who were standing in line at 4am and bought tickets then resell them at movie time for an even higher price. The whole situation is ridiculous but that’s what happens when there is just one iMax theatre in a city of 20 million.
I haven’t seen Avatar either and probably won’t make it to theaters. $13 is quite a bit of money to plunk down on a film that holds no interest story wise. I know, I’ve heard it all. “Don’t go for the story, go for the visuals!” and “This film is important because of the technology used to make it!” seem to be the reasons most give me to convince me to see it but I can honestly say that none of the trailers made me the slightest bit interested and if this really is how films will be made from now on then I guess I’ll catch up when something interests me in a few years.
I don’t think the visuals are entirely the reason to go see Avatar. Yes, the story is boilerplate. But the movie is really a rare breed in terms of the communal movie going experience. What Cameron has created and the manner in which he has distributed it has resulted in one of the very few movies of the last 5 years that you NEED to see in theaters to fully appreciate.
…because it won’t look as good on a home theater for several years.
Yes, the visuals are pretty much the only reason to see the movie – the plot is completely unbelievable, and I was irresistibly reminded at one point of a Calvin and Hobbes strip, where they are playing checkers, Hobbes has just taken all of Calvin’s pieces but one, Calvin says that Hobbes has fallen into his trap, and Hobbes replies something to the effect of “your remaining piece must have one heck of a plan”.
Just watch this’ll be the only night talkshoe actually works.
Avatar is without a doubt one of the best movies of the decade IMO. I still give the nod to The Hurt Locker for my favorite movie of the year, but Avatar’s the one that I will still remember 20 years from now, and will undoudebly become one of those classic movies that every new generation of moviegoers will want to catch up on, like Star Wars. Apparently, Cameron has a trilogy planned for Avatar… I only hope its followups can be half as impressive as the first one was!
I’m with Jimmy on avatar, only I’d add, gas and parking to expenses and the fact that I’d be taking about 6 hours (with the drive to Seattle and back) out of my day to see a movie for the sake of being current and seeing something pretty.
As for The Triple Feature I’m a little sad to see to go, sometimes, during the past three years, it was the bright spot in otherwise difficult week.
I will try to be there for the live recording of the last TripleFeature. I may also be out trying to see Avatar, since I’m behind on my movie-watching. 😉
It will be very interesting to see how a three-quel goes with a TV show. Makes you wonder if Cameron is trying to start his own Star Trek franchise.
I just saw Avatar two days ago, and wow. The visuals blew me away, and I wasn’t disappointed at all. Maybe it was because I was expecting a re-telling of a classic plot line, and not something ‘new’. (As a aspiring writer and avid reader, I have long come to believe that there is no such thing as a new plot. Just different ways to tell them. All that is are plots being told in different ways. The skill of the storyteller is to make sure you are never bored.)
So I loved it. I loved the plot, and though I wish that they spent more time on the secondary characters I recognize that it would have been hard with the plot and world development (heck, it was 2:40 long and it still seemed like it needed to be longer!) and I really wish they had shown the scene with him taming the thing. (will keep it vague to prevent spoilers.)
To me the key was it kept me entertained, it caught my imagination, and it made think. Sure, we have heard the points of the fable many a time before, but that doesn’t mean it still doesn’t make a valid point. I do wish I had more emotional involvement with the characters (though I cared, I never was near tears in a death scene), but I say three out of four ain’t bad. Better than most movies, I think.
I think the key is to not expect a brand new, grand breaking story with this piece. Expect a familiar fairytale, a classic re-telling. Let your imagination catch that way. I think that is the best way to describe the movie, a sci-fi fairytale.
Just a question about site traffic. Were those the years when you were still linked to the voting site for “top comics” or something like that? I remember voting for theater hopper back then. I know something the voting site became unreliable. Is there a new voting site that would put you in a more public forum?