3 Short Paragraphs: How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

2019, Dean DeBlois (How to Train Your Dragon) -- download / BluRay

Meanwhile, this is a franchise I don't want to be meh about. But... maybe... I.... am? I am and always will be a big fan of the first movie, pretty stoked about the second movie and ... well, I got around to seeing this one when I got around to seeing it. Not sure why it took so long, and I don't even have The Pause to blame, as it was long before. Hell, even this post has been sitting in the hopper unwritten with little desire or energy to come out.

The movie picks up a year later from the second movie, with Hiccup and crew spending most of their waking hours finding & rescuing dragons and bringing them back to the island of Berk. The island is getting crowded and becoming somewhat of a target -- so Hiccup decides to find The Hidden World, legendary island where the humans of Berk and their dragon friends can live in peace. Little or none of the continuity from the numerous TV series are brought into the plot, and the legend Stoick left behind seems to have just been tagged on. Adding to the tension, a dragonhunter named Grimmel introduces a female foil for Toothless, a white female version. Yep, girlfriend material.

They do find the Hidden World, a lovely glowy giant mushroom environment perfect for dragons, but not really for humans. So, no utopian vision of dragons and their friends in a Happily Ever After. Not sure why the Berkians don't just then return to Old Berk, but instead they settle on New Berk. Also not sure why dragonhunters could not find the dragons in the Hidden World, if they have been finding dragons all over this northern water-filled world of inhospitable islands, flying dragons and feisty vikings & sheep. There was nothing I disliked about the movie, it was just that despite great animation, the old cast, charming lovable dragons and an incredible super-saturated magical (hidden) world, I just didn't find myself as enthralled about it as I was with the others.

I Saw This!! What I Watched Pt. iii

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Graig or David attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  Miss a Next Big Thing bad.

Part i, ii are here.

Dollhouse S2, 2009 -- Blu-ray

I did a Season 1 post during its days on Netflix. I didn't get around to a ReWatch post when I cracked the seal on my Blu-ray Xmas gift, but I thought it fitting to do one for Season 2.

Having powered through S1 again, I have to admit, the basic premise, the titillation with the Eliza Dushku doll was not there for me this round. This time it was all about the Bigger Picture, the one I knew was there, behind the scenes happening piece by piece. I believe Whedon wanted this series to be his Westworld, a scifi show with a big moral statement behind all the flash and action and exposition. Unfortunately, S2 was the last season he got, and with due notice, at least he got to rush to the finish line.

We come into the season with all the pieces in play. Ex-FBI Ballard is now inside the dollhouse, working alongside Echo, who has survived her Alpha (Alan Tudyk) ordeal, the 36 personalities seemingly expunged back to doll state. But she is really in there, a unique personality that is separate from her body's own, a person unto herself. The wipes don't work anymore. But she plays a good game for her puppet masters.

The conspiracy spirals, including and excluding characters, with Topher becoming more and more self aware of exactly how dangerous all this tech he has created can be. He has already let it fall into the wrong hands, but can he stop The Apocalypse before it happens? As we have already been exposed to the episode Epitaph One, we know he cannot.

Despite his obvious and myriad flaws, my heart is with Topher this season. He is an amoral man who thought he could ignore consequences and just have as much fun as his big brain could allow. But he is ill equipped to deal with guilt and realization when it comes slamming down. Despite that, he still makes the right decisions.

Now with Whedon knowing this was the final season, he got to go Full On Whedon inviting in all his favourite actors from Buffy and Firefly. Whedon should always indulge, not just to bring smiles to the faces of his fans, but because with the chemistry already there, the interaction becomes effortless. Alexis Denisof and Summer Glau are there briefly, enough to build great characters and further the plot (and I do mean plot) along. But they bookend nicely into the already familial interaction going on with the core cast.

The series ends on a ... well, a low note. We knew it would, as Epitaph One leads to Epitaph Two, where the penultimate episode win still collapses, and the end game of the doll tech leads to the collapse of the planet. Someone releases it into the wild creating a 80s style PoAp world full of rage zombies and a few original personality people who avoid technology while seeing sanctuary with the dollhouse gang. The world may have ended but that doesn't mean they cannot save the day.

A Series of Unfortunate Events S1, 2016 -- Netflix

The older movie was OK. Jim Carey wasn't terrible.

But the idea of Neil Patrick Harris playing Count Olaf had me rather excited. And now that I know what the word twee means, I am rather getting into the aesthetic. OK, it's true, I have always enjoyed the liberal use of mish-mashing timelines.

Plot brief. The Baudelaire children have just lost their parents, and are sent by an upwardly mobile but emotionally stunted banker, to live with their closest living relative, geographically, Count Olaf. Olaf is a terrible actor (community theatre) cum criminal who wants the Baudelaire fortune. He is not worried by the fact that he can only get it if the kids die.

As the title states and to which we are constantly reminded by the narrator Lemony Snicket (Patrick Warburton), things only get worse.

Set dressing, background design, minimal effects, costuming and songs -- all are absolutely brilliant. And so are so many of the performances, but it didn't all pull together for me. I am not sure why, maybe sliding into it being far too impressed by itself. I felt it almost wanted to be Brian Fuller meets Wes Anderson, both in styling and tone. But it never quite achieves.

And I am still amused that they cast Malina Weissman, to look like Emily Browning, from the Jim Carey movie.

ReWatch: The Book of Eli

2010, The Hughes Brothers (Menace II Society) -- Bluray

I love me some PoAp (post apocalypse) fiction. Just finished reading Wastelands 2 and that got me into the mood to poke around in some ruins. The Book of Eli is the perfect American wasteland movie, despite it heavily leaning toward the proselytizing of old time Christianity. Like most, it never really explains what happened, just presents us with an American west full of craters and covered in dust. It absorbs the fantastical element, in that no radiation hinders our hero, but sets him on a hero's journey against great odds of the human kind.

This is an incredibly stylish movie, The Hughes Brother again trying something different for this movie. I am surprised we don't see more of these guys, only having a handful of films under their belt since the iconic Menace II Society. With its washed out colours, distinctive music by Atticus Ross and nods to Kung Fu, this slides a little into concept movie, but no, really does stay firmly as an action flick.

Denzel is Eli, a wanderer of the wastelands. He heads west with his cherished Bible and his iPod of Motown classics; I am sure he has more than just Al Green. He wants to avoid conflict, but sometimes he just cannot bypass evil, slicing and dicing haggard villains with moves of his light and incredibly sharp blade. Finally, the need of a battery charge leads him to a town led by Gary Oldman, a warlord who just happens to be looking for a Bible. It is the last book Oldman needs to control the people, the book with just the right words to make him legit. Of course, the wanderer will not give up his good book.

Much of the beats and notes of this movie are from a western. He might not be a cigar chomping white guy and the music is not done by an Italian, but you can almost hear the spurs jingling. Eli comes into town, fights the Bad Guy, defeats his goons on the town's single street and saves the girl from the saloon. I will have to go check if it was noon. And further into the west they go.

Despite my apathy towards Christianity, I appreciated what the movie was trying to say. Tradition, belief and faith. I also like that Eli is bringing this book to publishers who see the importance of it next to all the other great books of history, not as the centre of a new religion. Reverence can be a beautiful thing.

Of course, the reveal is entirely magical. Eli is blind. Has always been. His Bible is in brail. Even when he loses it to Oldman, its a waste of Oldman's efforts. Not only has Oldman given up everything for it, he also gets to die knowing how much he has lost, for nothing. But Eli, having read that book on his long walks back and forth across the wasteland, has memorize all the words. And they get transcribed by Malcom Mcdowell before Eli passes from his wounds.

Solara, Mila Kunis, the girl from the saloon that Eli has saved, both physically and spiritually, dons Eli's armour (his aviator glasses) and begins her own hero's journey back east, to save her mom and free her people. Its a shame that movie never got made.

We Agree/ReWatch: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

2015, JJ Abrams (Super 8) -- cinema/bluray

the return of the double colon (which sounds painful)

Nope, didn't do the geek tradition. Did not get out and see a Star Wars movie multiple times in the cinema. Blame it on age and life. Blame it on the meh.

But I did buy the Bluray in the first week, allowing for a first post AND a rewatch post at the same time.

The first thing I have to say is that, and you may slap me for this, but I think Abrams may have been setting us up for a Star Wars universe on TV with this movie. It just felt like it was framed and styled for TV. Its hard to find precise details for this thought, but many many scenes felt they were pilot episode stylistic choices. But then big sequences like the Millennium Falcon chase scene were too big for TV, so I am not sure. Anywayz, its a blog post not a review, so thought out in the open.

Holey Moley, it was that long ago, and Kent reviewed his cinematic viewing in December.

First up, the bad. For whatever reason, be it the marketing, the hype or the current era of spoiling everything but I did not experience the butterflies I usually have associated with that first blast of brass when a Star Wars movie begins. Right there, I knew I would be underwhelmed purely based on my own psychology.

This was not prequel fatigue. Despite my well known dislike for the second and third, I stand by my fondness for the first prequel movie. I dislike the story choices that were made in the latter thirds of the trilogy, but love the spectacle. But all that was to the wayside as I approached this movie, knowing it had dispensed with Lucas's bungling and was going in its own direction. But it's an entrance, a new entry point into an existing franchise. Not a reworking, like his Star Trek, Abrams uses this movie to set his tone, for better or for worse.

I am also kind of annoyed by Abrams singing a familiar song. He hits all the right notes, but they are familiar notes. Do we need another desert planet? Do we need the Death Star's bully big brother? Do we need another trench run? Do we need another sage diminutive alien? Expanding upon that, I realized that I had very little to be awestruck by. Each movie has something unseen to show us, something unfamiliar. If Episode IV had the desert and the Death Star, Episode V had the snow battle and Episode VI had the forests. In The Phantom Menace the planet of Naboo is amazing to see, and even my dislike for the other two cannot discount the wonder of Coruscant and that amazing orbital battle. But here, we get sand planet, Death Star analog, Luke analog, Darth Vader analog, Yoda analog, trench run and destruction of Death Star. The familiarity overshadows the incredible wonder of that crashed star destroyer.

So, I like the movie, a lot, but I was not given chills.

What do I like? Because I have gone for a couple of paragraphs about what I didn't like? Well, despite being another loose clothed orphan on a desert planet, I love Rey. I love her self sufficient, anti-whiner attitude as she scavenges for saleable parts in the wreckage the previous generation's war left behind. Imagine being able to still find parts 30 years later? And she falls into the hero trope without a thought for herself.  I love Finn, because he is everything that is NOT Star Wars. He is a second guesser, not sure of himself, a hero by moral choice and he flies in the face of every character that came before. He is different. Poe Dameron, while being the best pilot in the galaxy and an ace agent for the Alliance, is a great character but I think is a bit of an egotist. His claim, "my work here is done," as they fly away from the exploding Death St.... er, Star Killer Base is a little dismissive of everyone else who was there? I think he is probably going to fall a few notches as the series continues. 

As previously said, I love the ruins of the star destroyer, I love the scene of the X-Wings speeding over the waters of the lake, I love the peek inside the new Empire and its shaky dynamics. I have always said it's easier to complain than explain what I love. But what I really love is that this movie is all about setting up a world for Rey and Finn. No, I don't definitively see love-interest, but I see them going from obvious small players to big players, and not just by chance, like Luke. They are going to actively choose their destinies, choose to expand their own roles.

That said, the Rogue One trailer gave me chills.

I Saw This!! Rewatch Fever

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our all-too regular feature wherein Graig or David attempt to write about a bunch of movies they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. Now they they have to strain to say anything meaningful lest they just not say anything at all. And they can't do that, can they?

See there's the salient point. How can I go on a hiatus when I cannot even not say something about movies that have already somewhat faded from memory & impression.

Serenity, 2005, Joss Whedon -- blu-ray
Titan AE, 2000, Don Bluth -- Netflix
Watchmen, 2009, Zack Snyder -- Netflix

When deep in the doldrums I reach for The Shelf, the shelf containing spaceships and superheroes, elves and meteors crushing skyscrapers. Something I know I will like resets me, settles me and allows me to dash the demons for a short time.

Kent, I also say this is my perfect kind of space opera. Serenity opens like all the Star Wars movies -- with a spaceship, a quick pan over the hull and in through the window, to exchange drama for a giggle, as a part breaks off Mal's boat. We are back, back amongst friends, in the comfy confines that protect us from dangerous, unfriendly space. It doesn't hurt there are plenty of guns to help protect us.

Serenity is not just a good movie because it gave us our favourite show back on the big screen. Its just a good movie that expands cherished rapscallions into epic heroes. They defeat the big bad guys, redeem a monster and expose the greatest monsters (the government) for who they really are. Big ideas. Grand ideals.

And yet, its the heart that matters the most for me. Kaylee finally gets together with Simon, River finally clears the cobwebs out of her head and Mal gets to see Inara again, and be a real hero to her. But this is Joss Whedon, so of course, he also has to tear our hearts out. Heroes never prevail without a loss, a great loss. I always shed a tear, not just for the lost leaf on the wind but the pain Simon feels when Kaylee goes down, or the utter anguish suffered by lost little River when she thinks she might lose her brother.

I love this movie.

Remember Don Bluth? Traditional animator of The Secret of NIMH and An American Tale? He was the ruler of animation before Pixar introduced toys with feelings. Titan AE was his last attempt to play in that sandbox, but rather than go for kids, he gave something to the kids that grew up on his stories. It was a space opera that begins with tragedy -- the end of the planet Earth and an exodus into deep space. It is there, we are a lost dying race, hurtling towards extinction cared little by the rest of the intelligent species. It ends with a new beginning.

While I love this movie, I think he tried too hard to make it "cool". There were lopsided rock songs, and a jerk of a main hero voiced not very well by Matt Damon. But it was in space, with nasty CGI enhanced space alien villains, so I loved it. I still do.

Space Jerk does become a hero, and gets the girl and defeats the evil aliens. Unfortunately it requires their extinction. Not sure of that moral.

Now, this was from Netflix, technically not The Shelf, but I have it on DVD so it still counts.

Not from The Shelf at all, nor containing spaceships, but tucked into this genre rewatch binge was Watchmen. The original graphic novel is still one of my favourites. It's my favourite retelling of how superheroes are supposed to be. It's my favourite dark & gritty superhero tale. It's my favourite collection of anti-heroes and ultraviolence. And it was the first proper graphic novel I read, as I missed the monthlies, and I am still convinced it is best read as one big thing.

The movie is not the comic, but it does capture some of the feel. The Comedian is still a misogynistic ass, who perverts the great American ideal. Dr. Manhattan is still a big swinging (and blue) dick who becomes so far removed from humanity, he has to leave. And Rorschach is still a growling, sociopathic narrator (probably literally does it in his own head) played incredibly by my instant favourite character actor, Jackie Earle Haley.

The movie requires a different ending from the comic, dispensing with giant space alien hentai tentacle horror for a more grounded fear of men who would be gods. While I didn't care much for the change, it does fit today. Science replacing God is a common bogeyman these days. Just today, I saw the newest street hawking bible beaters ask, "Has The Bible Been Replaced By Science?"  Yes, yes it has. And no it hasn't. They have always served different purposes. Dr. Manhattan is to be the next step of Us, but make him the villain feared by all nations & people, and the bogeyman serves a purpose. Some say that is why the CIA invented Al Qaeda.

The movie still looks good, the Zack Snyder motif of animated backgrounds supplemented by real actors. It has more practical props than 300 but as it plays out in an alternate reality, and compressed timelines not our own, I always felt the other worldliness fit this movie. I may not buy it, but I will always appreciate Netflix having it available.

Rewatch: Star Trek

2009, JJ Abrams (Felicity) -- Blu-ray

I had a rough couple of weeks (I am especially bad at adulting these days) and, as usual, that lead me to a spate of rewatching; this round was space movies.

Its not surprising this movie was made the way it was. The original cast were played out, some having passed on and most were waaay past any prime. The TNG series of movies were also out of steam, as the characters had passed even out of syndication. Enterprise did not gain enough traction to warrant a movie. It was time for something new.

Or something rebooted.

And yet, it's not quite a reboot, as it ties into the original series, via Old Spock. It also ties into Enterprise because Captain Archer has messed with his timeline so much, he has altered its future. That is my personal take on how much more techno the new movie feels, in comparison to the original series or even TNG series. The look & feel of Enterprise is so radical compared to TOS that there is no way it could not aesthetically affect the future.

We start with the perfect Star Trek opening. A lone ship, the Kelvin, is investigating a space anomaly. A massive, and I mean MASSIVE, ship emerges from the anomaly and immediately attacks the Kelvin blowing past whatever defense she had. They have to abandon ship and the first officer, one George Kirk (played by a very very non-Thor Chris Hemsworth), sacrifices himself to allow the crew to escape, including his giving-birth wife.

I love this sequence because it highlights the Federation ideals, sets the tragic tone for the movie (I still get pangs when I see the ship ripped open, and people sucked screaming into space) and sets up the fast paced action. It just looks good. I also has some weird looking aliens, more weird than were ever shown in the shows.

George's baby ("Tiberius? You kidding me? No, that's the worst") James is raised without  daddy and a legacy to fulfill. Its obviously a heavy burden for Jim is a brat, a brat that steals a vintage car (as in non-floaty, non hydrogen powered) and outruns the cops (android cop??) before driving the thing into a ravine. Jimmy grows up to be rowdy farmboy Kirk.

By now, JJ Abrams has derailed whatever conventions we have for Star Trek movies. Sure, this is an origin story, but he opens things up with tragedy, bar fights and a salaciousness that would probably have Shatner giving the thumbs up. We get it; Jim Kirk is a genius but considers himself too good for Star Fleet. He uses most of the opening of the movie as a set piece to introduce almost all the familiar characters: Uhura, Bones ("took the whole damn planet in the divorce") and, of course, Spock. We get Chekov and Sulu once we are on board.

JJ Abrams is teased for his love of lense flares (watch Fringe and you will see them used to effect) and they are never seen more than they are on the bridge of the Enterprise. All that white plastic and clear screens lends itself to playing with light. That bridge is just plain gorgeous. And think of all the different bridge configurations he had to draw upon!  I would hate to be the crew assigned to keeping all that white sparkling.

A major part of the plot is that the Enterprise shows up late to the battle with the Romulan ship Narada, because Sulu leaves the parking brake on. When they do arrive, all the other ships sent are a mass of floating rubble. How many fricking Star Fleet Academy cadets and junior officers were killed in that blunder?!? That there are any left to honor Kirk at the end of the movie is astounding, but I imagine they were able to to pack the audience with ground personnel.  Either way, losing all those ships must have further impacted the way the Federation acted in this alternate timeline, perhaps contributing to the more militarized Star Fleet in the next movie.

Despite being a reboot and an alternate timeline, Abrams has a lot of fun with references. We get Kirk romping with the Orion Gaila (Rachel Nichols from Continuum), so I  guess their "slave girl" status is moot? Kirk hacks the Kobayashi Maru. Of course, Captain Pike and the first visible loss to Pike's crew is a guy in a red space suit. I also love the reference to Archer's dog, which soundly connects the show Enterprise to this continuity.

I soundly love this version, likely more so than the movie series of the original cast. And hopefully it will not suffer the same morose fate as all Star Trek movies do, getting relatively worse as time goes by. And no whale movies please.

Rewatch: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

2010, Mike Newell (Enchanted April, Donnie Brasco) -- Blu-ray

It was my birthday and I was still having coughing fits from the remaindered lung infection, so no guilting myself about rewatching something; I just needed some fun. Prince of Persia sits in my collection of fantasy movies that I enjoy again and again. The collection evolves with technology, with many of the VHS tapes of years past yet to be replaced. They are rarely considered good movies but they are ones I enjoy.

This is of the swords & sandals sub-genre but like most, is more straight fantasy movie than historically accurate. That said, in my mind, ancient Arabia and ancient Persia have always been merged. They all include the cliches of minarets, carpets, djinn and world conquering empires. It is possible I don't have any real pop culture references for Persia. Sinbad? Maybe. But it matters not because a Disney movie based on a video game, starring entirely western actors is not going to even try for accuracy.

I never played the game it is based on (The Sands of Time), the platformer from the PS2 era of gaming. OK, I might have started it, but in my core memory, its the original side-scroller game from the 90s that stands out. The running, jumping and pre-parkour of the game was astounding for its age. So, its not surprising that the recent games and movie make use of the running, jumping, swinging and dodging that so often dominate parkour centered action scenes. Personally, not enough was used in the movie but that would have required an entirely city based movie instead of one with sweeping desert travel scenes, as anyone would expect in swords & sandals.

Its a dumb, standard movie, in the style of many Disney adaptations. That the Pirates.... movies rose above that standard is amazing, while this one keeps to the low expectations. As I already said, we have western (i.e. white) actors playing Persians: Ronald Pickup as the Persian king, Ben Kingsley as his brother, Richard Coyle & Toby Kebbell as his sons and Jake Gyllenhaal as his adopted son, the Prince of Persia in question. And of course, Gemma Arterton as Princess Tamina. The amusing thing is that Gyllenhaal, as the street rabble kid who is adopted by the kind king, affects a London street accent to offset the BBC English of the other actors. I always wonder when British English became the de facto representation of people speaking "another language".

Ahh Gemma Arterton. In a world where "the list" actually applies, she would be on My List. She has an unearthly beauty in this movie, smooth skinned and perfectly toned, that fits the role she is playing as the fabled beauty of Alamut. Amusingly though, I often mix up her role in this movie with her role as Io in Clash of the Titans. So, not so defining a role. She is to be beautiful and antagonistic towards the Hero, and she does that well enough. I wonder if a movie, where the hero and heroine bicker like old crones for most of the running time, has ever ended with them just disliking each other, instead of eventually falling in love/lust?

If there is one thing I actively dislike about this movie, it is the whole comedic addition of Alfred Molina as Sheik Amar. With his complaints about taxes and his love for his racing ostriches, the whole addition annoyed me. Still does. But he provides some additional supporting characters for our hero to draw upon when needed, a trope commonly used in fantasy movies. I feel I should trace that one back to find an origin, and suspect it starts entirely outside the fantasy genre.

You would think that if I state that there is one thing I actively dislike, I would have at least one example I actively love, as I rewatch these movies over and over again. But no, nothing of note reaches out from this movie. Its more an overall collection of magic and swordplay, visual notes and costuming, that catches me. The background shots of Alamut are fantastic, so broad and sweeping and carrying actual distance. You can see the money in this movie, in large sets like the celebration after the fall of Alamut, which even in the worst of movies, always lends a bit of a thrill for me. I just like BIG scenes, full of details and background notes.

With this movie rewatched, I almost feel I have to rewatch Clash of the Titans if not because Gemma is in it, but also because these sit side by side in my mind, very similar in structure to me, if not a bit more serious toned.

One last comment. I believe, that if there was ever to be a movie adaptation of the Uncharted series of video games, Newell could do a good job. The humor of the games as well as the big action pieces are familiar to him.

Rewatch: Avatar

This is a new segment where I talk about a movie that I have seen before, likely many times. Likely I own it, or it could show up on Netflix and I want to watch it again. But it has never shown up here before. Unlike other "reviews" this is not going to be a rehash of the plot, more my observances and things I catch only in multiple viewings.

Avatar was my first Blu-ray. It came the Christmas just after I got myself the PS3. Despite all the anti-hype, I still loved the movie. Yes, it was a retread of Fern Gully and yes it was unabashedly melodramatic. But I loved it, both visually and story wise.

As my first Blu-ray, I was and I still am astounded as to how good it looks. So, crisp, so clear and full of scenes that highlight the advances that Blu-ray represents.

The movie is one of those UI people love, because yet again a futuristic interface is envisioned and depicted. We are in the transparent screen stage of such, and the movie makes massive use of it, with the large interactive screens in the shuttle and the science lab. I especially love the way they could toss live data from the big screen onto handheld screens and continue their work while changing the way they interacted with the data. I would love to see Apple devise some similar sync-ing between MacBooks and iPads. Now, its all CGI on our screen but it is sooooo distinct looking, colourful and bright.

The designers were also smart enough to show that not all tech is going to be all glass and glamour, as Jake Sully records his diary entries with what is essentially a black plastic box with webcam. Mix of tech is a thoughtful piece. It was Jake sitting during one of the sessions, us looking through the webcam eye, that I caught myself noticing just how perfectly clear everything was, on my TV. Yay Blu-ray.

Now, Avatar is about the beauty of nature, especially the nature of this alien world that comes alive at night, through phosphorescent plant life and creatures. I still can feel Jake's awe when he finds himself playing with the plants and creatures in the firework display that is Pandora's night. And the parallel of the science lab's colourful screens and their primitive transmission of data vs Pandora and its colourful transfer of information with so little effort, is a delight in storytelling for me.

Now, almost 2/3rds of the movie is CGI and in my first few years of re-watching, I was always astounded by how seamless it all was. But this time round, I started to see the gilding on the lily. The forest, when Jake escapes from the cat-like Thanator, is beautifully done but starts to look cartoony in some scenes, especially around the native bamboo, a little too one colour, with almost no expected shading. And during Jake's arrival on Pandora, I am starting to see cut scenes from video games, which doesn't so much criticize James Cameron's film CGI as laud the advances in video game CGI movies that were made, probably because of this movie.  I am still awaiting my fully CGI movie, like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within tried to be, but maybe it is never to happen and the mixing perfected by Avatar is what the future is. Still, as Duncan Jones moves forward with Warcraft, I wonder why he is even attempting a people and monster movie if not conceiving it as mostly CGI.

A small bit that I never caught before, not knowing the history of British retailing, but the corporate goon's name is Parker Selfridge. Rather than reaching into genre history, like Ridley Scott did in connecting Blade Runner and Prometheus, Cameron reaches into real history. Oh, it could be just a name but I don't think so. Department store becomes megacorp? Could happen!

The rest of the movie, I still find myself smiling about, flaws and all. I love the destruction of the tree, the callousness of what they do, the utter distain for life other than human -- these are the Bad Guys without a doubt. Though I wonder how Trudy is not in detention after leaving the scene without firing a shot. The final battle is exciting and tragic and it must have been extremely humbling for the Na'vi to realize Jake the demon had a direct line to their goddess figure. I still like noticing that a few more of the avatar drives are working along side the liberators, escorting the remaining humans off the planet. And yes, you still have to wonder how Selfridge will put up with these savages besting him -- by coming back with an utterly mind blowing destructive force, I would imagine.

Bring on the sequels !

3 Short Paragraphs: How to Train Your Dragon

2010, Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders -- rewatch / Blu-Ray

When I first saw this movie in the theatre, I adored it.  I also knew it was going to be added to my collection of re-watchable animated movies.  But since acquiring the PS3, I have drifted to only buying things on Blu-Ray.  But I also normally refuse to buy movies full price so I spent the last year or so watching the re-sale bins at all the major sellers.  Finally, I found it in someone's bin and watched it that night.

Why do I love this movie?  It's not really about the dragon himself.  The Night Fury is beautiful in flight but really my soft spot is for the vikings.  These tough summabitches, who have established a way of life fighting off annoying dragons as if they were just the season's may flies, are both hilarious and inspiring.  I imagine they put no time at all into raiding the coasts of their nearest neighbours having to spend all that time on re-building their homes or ... well, making babies.  Cute movies don't mention the fact that people are eaten by the dragons, as much as the sheep, but really it has to happen. They are a tough, industrious folk with completely misplaced Scottish accents that just make me chuckle.

The movie is also very very dramatic.  The dragons, while comical in their cartoony look, are also pretty scary in what they can do. I very easily fall into the awe that they strike on the vikings of Berk. When things shift to the part of the story about the grand-daddy of all dragons, the sheer size of the beast is just staggering. I love watching the battle as the courageous vikings & dragons swoop and swipe at the nasty creature. The heights reached and the sheer destruction of the island they are on hits me on all the points where Michael Bay's movies never do.  I am not sure why it works so well for me but yeah, it must just be the D&D player in me.