E sad više nema zajebavanja! Tatko se vratio. Kreće AVATAR

[Le Samourai]

Jedino još Rodrigez ume da napravi dobar film.

Odmah je jasno da nisi gledao poslednji mu film Shorts. Auh, kakva skaradna i ponizhavajuca loshost!

[Milosh]

Ja bih gledao neki dobar film, ali ne prave ih više.

Ako ovde misliš na dobre SF filmove oni jesu retki, ali ih ima. Ja bih tu svakako ubrojio pomenuti District 9, a iz poslednjih godina bih dodano Children of Men (remek-delo) i sjajni Sunshine koji priča već viđenu priču, ali na, po meni, efektan način i to posebno vizuelno (ali ne u smislu efekata već režije). Moon iz ove godine je vredan pažnje, mada je mogao biti i bolji, a Los Cronocrimenes iz prošle godine je jedan od najboljih filmova na temu puta kroz vreme, iako je u osnovi pre svega odličan triler.

[Ygg]

Children of Men i District 9 su poprilično dobri, mada ih ja ne bih nazvao remek djelima. Los Cronocrimenes je strašno zabavan filmčić, zaista sam uživao dok sam ga gledao. A Sunshine je bezveze. Dosadan je, mislim da sam negdje na pola filma prestao da pratim priču. Ako je priče uopšte i bilo. Moon još uvijek nisam pogledao.

[Le Samourai]

Sunshine ima strashan problem u trecoj trecini, kada sa jedne filozofsko-kontemplativne ravni horor izmeshta u neke skroz neodgovarajuce slesher okvire.

Pa ipak, uprkos toj velikoj mani, ne mogu da kazhem da nije odlichan zbog svega ostalog shto je uradio kako valja.

[Ygg]

Meni je ta filozofsko-kontemplativna ravan bila potpuno šuplja. Tako da sam izgubio interesovanje za film prije te zadnje trećine. Kolega i ja smo negdje napola prestali da pratimo svu tu nazovi filozofsku priču i ostatak filma smo gledali površno uz ćaskanje. Možda bismo i prekinuli sa gledanjem da se odjednom nije počelo kao nešto dešavati (to je ta zadnja trećina), te smo ipak istrpili fim do kraja. Sve u svemu, razočarenje.

[Lord Kufer]

Pogledaću ove bandite.
Sunshine mi je bio malko dosadan.
Za Rodrigeza, mislio sam na Planet Terror.
A ovaj dečji film sam gledao, pa i nije baš tako katastrofalan, daleko od toga.
Moon je simpatičan, ali koliko su ga hvalili unapred, stvarno ne zaslužuje.

Zanimljivo, svojevremeno je bio jedan odličan španski film, Mutanti, super dobar crni humor i zajebancija. Nema ništa od njih novo?


Ove godine je bio i Star Trek. Dobar kao pilot epizoda eventualno nove serije. Ali, što vreme više odmiče, nemam neki posebno negativan odnos prema tom filmu, osim što mislim da je priča previše ekstravagantna da bi se uklopila u ST timeline. Ne bi bilo loše da naprave seriju, ionako nema nikakvih SF serija na vidiku.

Zna li neko hoće li biti možda serija Caprica?

[Ghoul]

Zanimljivo, svojevremeno je bio jedan odličan španski film, Mutanti, super dobar crni humor i zajebancija. Nema ništa od njih novo?

misliš na Acción mutante.

njegov reditelj je nanizao više odličnih i vrlo dobrih filmova, ali je njegov zasad najnoviji - The Oxford Murders (2008) - zabrinjavajuće BLJUZGAVO BEZUKUSAN i šupalj i bez duha.

[Lord Kufer]

Koji su mu još dobri, da to overim?

[Tex Murphy]

EL DIA DE LA BESTIA - filmčina!

[Ghoul]

sad odosmo u skroz drugu temu, al ajde:

OBAVEZNO:
El día de la bestia (1995)
Perdita Durango (1997)
La comunidad (2000)

MOŽE:
800 balas (2002)
Crimen ferpecto (2004)
Películas para no dormir: La habitación del niño (2006) (TV)

[Lord Kufer]

E super! Sad imam šta da gledam... Izgubio sam ga iz vida, a on je režirao onog popa s đavolom  To je super film.

[mrkoye]

Traže nešto drugo. Neki sistem koji je u vezi s upotrebom nove tehnologije, ili koji je zabavan pre svega. Ako je u skladu s nečjim predstavama, takvi će reagovati pozitivno.
Da sam klinac, sigurno bih uživao u tome kako je sve predivno animirano. Ali sada tražim još nešto pride.

klinci ne uživaju u tome kako je sve predivno animirano, nego uživaju u tome što se identifikuju sa junacima jedne epske priče, koja jeste ispričana sto puta - ali je ipak nova nekome ko ima petnaest godina.

[crippled_avenger]

Milosheva lista je dosta diskutabilna,

SUNSHINE Danny Boylea je nezapamćena budalaština kakvu nismo očekivali od velikog reditelja. Ja sam taj film već uspeo da potisnem i na neki način izbrišem iz svojih sećanja na Boylera. Nemam problem sa tim što se Milosh loži na ovaj film. Svako ima pravo da se loži na neki glup film, a ja to pravo koristim svakog dana, ali ipak nije okej da se ljudi pogrešno ubeđuju da je ovaj film zaista dobar.

CHILDREN OF MEN je cool ali najpre kao eye candy zbog svojih famoznih kadar sekvenci. Ipak, ja volim taj film, ali teško da ga je moguće voleti zbog nekog intelektualnog sadžaja. Realno, u ovom filmu, koga briga što se ne rađaju deca, glavna je jurnjava i dizajn.

DISTRICT 9 je old school Cameron. Time me je pre svega kupio i njega isto volim, ali opet teško da tu ima neke emotivne produbljenosti i intelektualne dimenzije. Ako je koji film cheesy onda je to ovaj u kome on spakuje cvetić ženi uprkos tome što se pretvorio u vanzemaljca. Mislim, to je okej, sve u rok službe, ne možemo stalno gledati filmovi u kojima sodomizuju decu, ozleđuju genitalije i slave ništavilo (naprosto nema ih dovoljno ), ali nemojmo se praviti da je ovo suptilno ostvarenje.

Što se MOONa tiče, o njemu smo Mehmet i ja već rekli toliko toga da je to već zamorno...

Međutim, ono što je interesantno na ovoj listi jeste da su svi ovi filmovi u polazu na neki način pretenciozni (izuzev DISTRICT 9 koji ima tu političku dimenziju ali je u suštini zezanje). Zanimljivo je kako je sine qua non kvalitetnog SFa u poslednje vreme postala pretencioznost.

I još je zanimljivije kako ona ima sve manje pokriće u filmovima poslednjih godina. Na neki način, pretencioznost je postala neka vrsta šminke na filmovima, kao što je ranije bio eye candy, dopunski humor ili šarm zvezda. Sad je kao, "aj da snimamo rokanje, ali i da ubacimo kako stvarnost u stvari nije stvarnost" a bottom line je rokanje. Ili, "aj kao da ubacimo vanzemaljce koji su došli na Zemlju sa svojim moćnim energetskim oružjem i da bude rokanje, ali pošto je malo glupo da tako bude banalno, aj da bude i priča o različitosti..."

To je meni okej, ali nas vraća na ono što je govorio Will na temu NINE MILES DOWN. Teorijsko tumačenje žanrovskog filma je počelo previše da utiče na autore, sad svi oni namerno ugrađuju podtekst umesto da se opuste i da prave spontane narative koje ćemo mi sami promišljati.

To je ta tzv. estetika remek-dela sa kojom je počeo Cameron (i njegova generacija uopšteno gledano), a to su potpuno zaokružena dela koja pokušavaju da funkcionišu na svim nivoima, s tim što verujem da je to kod njega išlo spontano. Onda se potom razvila ta ideja filmova koja moraju svima da se dopadnu, koja mogu i za svadbu i za sa'ranu, koja su unapred i denotativna i konotativna. To je dovelo do pojave tih reditelja koji su jači na rečima nego na delu tipa Guillermo Del Toro.

Ili recimo, Alfonso Cuaron, koji je sjajan reditelj, na DVDu CHILDREN OF MEN ima Žižekove komentare. Pazite, on već na DVDu ima teoretičara koji je tu da objasni. Dakle, dobijaš ceo paket. I film, i filozofiju iza filma. I delo, i objašnjenje zašto je ono značajno. To smo ranije sretali u nekim knjigama, uglavnom klasičnim gde se u predgovoru da neka vrsta konvencionalnog teorijskog tumačenja dela.

Priznajem, SUNSHINE se zaista nije prikrivao iza pretenzije. U njemu nema rokanja, u njemu ničega, "osim milion tona teškog Sunca."

[Tex Murphy]

Potpisujem ovo za Đecu i za Distrikt, a Mjesec i Sanšajn nisam gledo. No mislim da se mora priznati da Distrikt, jednom kad prođe onaj idiotski dokumentarni dio, postaje đavolski gripping akcioni film.

[Ghoul]

dimbo je, ovog puta, 100% u pravu.
po SVIM stavkama.

s tim što je meni CHILDREN OF MEN mnogo više od rokanja i kadar sekvenci: ja sam tu plakao ko malo dete prvi put kad sam gledo (a i na reprizu isto), i to prosto mora da se računa, makar i ne mogla da se oko toga isplete neka grdna diskurs-analiza i isprđevina od mega-teorije.

prosto, ja retko telesno reagujem na filmove - retko se glasno smejem, retko puštam suze, a još ređe se ježim ili uzdrhtim (erotske nadražaje ne računam, jer je njih mnogo lakše izazvati na nesuptilne načine) - i zato svaki put kad me film isprovocira na ovu vrstu reakcije, ja to poštujem.
čak i onaj nesrećni PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, koji mi je sasvim gnusan ideološki i estetski - ne mogu da poreknem da me je naježio na 3-4 mesta.

znači, ja poštujem tu visceralnost ugođaja, čak i kad je ispražnjena od značenja ili je upitnog značenja (kao u TERMINATORU 2, npr.), i veoma poštujem kamerona zbog njegovog umeća pravljenja nail-biting adrenaline-pumping akcionih scena.

u AVATARU nema ništa od toga.
fletlajn.

nit me je nasmejao (humora vrednog pomena nema nimalo), nit me je naježio (kako je to, recimo, na bezbroj mesta činio u prvom, pa i drugom TERMINATORU, o ALIENS da ne govorim), nit me je uzbudio svojom akcijom u smislu 'jo, šta će dalje biti, kako će iz ovoga da se izvuku, gotov je, nema šanse, nema spasa, sad je jebo ježa, evo poginu, oh nene ne ne neee...'

i ovo poslednje me je najviše zaprepastilo.

sve, sve, al nisam očekivao da ću ovako neinvolvirano da posmatram tatkove akcione scene.
čak i u jebenom TITANIKU, kad je leo vezan lisicama u potpalublju a voda nadire, bilo mi je beskrajno napetije i uzbudljivije nego u bilo kojoj sceni AVATARA.

[Le Samourai]

čak i jebenom TITANIKU, kad je leo vezan lisicama u potpalublju a voda nadire, bilo mi je beskrajno napetije i uzbudljivije nego u bilo kojoj sceni AVATARA.

I samo zbog ovoga, neko bi trebalo da PLATI.

[Milosh]

@avenger

Dakle, ako sam dobro shvatio, ti zapravo ne voliš kad sam autor unese ili bar pokuša da unese značenje, ideje, simboliku i sl. u svoje delo na očigledan način, već bi radije da bi to naknadno pročitaš ili učitaš ukoliko te konkretni film inspiriše. Ok, i to je legitimno, mada ja nešto drugačije pristupam filmovima, i mislim da je baratanje podtekstom više stvar veštine nego stvar nekog opšteg principa. Savršeno me zabole šta je npr. Cuaron stavio na DVD kao dodatak i sa kakvim je pretenzijama pristupio filmu dok god su te ideje dovoljno zanimljive i prisutne u filmu kao njegov integralni deo i u tom kontekstu funkcionišu. AVATAR je film koji je, osim na nekom bazičnom nivou, toliko lišen ideja da nudi dosta prostora za učitavanja, međutim, nije baš inspirativan za to, pošto je i na nivou proste žanrovske priče film otaljan - dakle, podtekst na stranu, film ima problema sa tekstom - tako da jedino može pasivno da se gleda i da se u tome koliko-toliko uživa. Bar što se mene tiče. Svi ovi pobrojani filmovi imaju da ponude više, kad je reč o priči i likovima, a to što su neki od njih u startu pretenciozniji od AVATARA ja ne smatram kao zamerku.

[Milosh]

znači, ja poštujem tu visceralnost ugođaja, čak i kad je ispražnjena od značenja ili je upitnog značenja (kao u TERMINATORU 2, npr.), i veoma poštujem kamerona zbog njegovog umeća pravljenja nail-biting adrenaline-pumping akcionih scena.

u AVATARU nema ništa od toga.
fletlajn.

nit me je nasmejao (humora vrednog pomena nema nimalo), nit me je naježio (kako je to, recimo, na bezbroj mesta činio u prvom, pa i drugom TERMINATORU, o ALIENS da ne govorim), nit me je uzbudio svojom akcijom u smislu 'jo, šta će dalje biti, kako će iz ovoga da se izvuku, gotov je, nema šanse, nema spasa, sad je jebo ježa, evo poginu, oh nene ne ne neee...'

i ovo poslednje me je najviše zaprepastilo.

sve, sve, al nisam očekivao da ću ovako neinvolvirano da posmatram tatkove akcione scene.
čak i u jebenom TITANIKU, kad je leo vezan lisicama u potpalublju a voda nadire, bilo mi je beskrajno napetije i uzbudljivije nego u bilo kojoj sceni AVATARA.

I meni je to bio najveći problem tokom gledanja filma, inače bih bio spreman da oprostim neke stvari, ali kada te neki film do te mere ostavi hladnim nekako je prirodno da se čovek zapita zašto je to tako tj. da li se filmu ima šta realno zameriti.

[Ghoul]

inače, tačno je ovo, da je pogubno po film kada se podtext suviše samosvesno ubaci u text: najbolji primer je pozna faza opusa dejvida kroneberga.
on je praktično sjeban kada je pročitao previše analiza svojih filmova i kada je suviše samosvesno pristupio gradnji zapleta ovih novijih, sa barem pola mozga (ako ne i više) svesnog značenja koja pritom proizvodi.

ne verujem da je kroni tačno znao o čemu mu je SHIVERS, RABID, BROOD, SCANNERS ili VIDEODROME - mislim, znao je instinktivno, ali je pre svega pričao neke priče koju su mu se 'javljale', nije tim filmovima pristupao kao esejima.

počev od MUVE pa nadalje, on pravi ESEJE u slikama.
neki su (meni) zabavni zbog audio-slika (kao CRASH) ali neki su mi baš žešće iritantni u svojoj autoreferencijalnosti (kao EXISTENZ) ili u svojoj banalno-očiglednoj jednodimenzionalnosti (SPIDER, HISTORY OF VIOLETS...)

[Milosh]

Pogubno je samo onda kad nije dovoljno dobro promišljeno i kad to rade oni koji tome nisu dorasli, mada je ponekad čak i u takvim slučajevima moguće poštovati nameru. Ja inače volim filmove-eseje kad ih snimaju oni koji imaju šta da kažu, a i znaju kako da to vizuelno ispričaju na efektan način, tako da ne smatram višak samosvesti kao nešto što je loše po sebi (inače bih mogao da otpišem kompletnog von Triera npr.)

[crippled_avenger]

Avatar is king of the world with $159.2m overseas launch
20 December, 2009 | By Jeremy Kay

Avatar recorded the sixth highest day-and-date launch in history as Fox International's epic adventure grossed an estimated $159.2m from 106 markets.


Combined with the $73m North American debut, James Cameron's film has amassed $232.2m worldwide in its first weekend and should see Fox International past the $2bn mark by Monday. Fox International will become the second company this year after Sony Pictures Releasing International to achieve the feat and only the sixth in history to do so.

Fox sources said based on early market-by-market analysis this was the highest non-franchise, non-sequel launch ever recorded. In the company's widest launch to date Avatar played on 14,461 screens, of which an industry record 3,671 showed the film in 3D. Avatar's launch had long been regarded as a litmus test for the format and results were encouraging as 3D accounted for roughly 25% of the total screen count and brought in 56% of the gross. It should not be forgotten that heatre owners charge premiums on 3D tickets.

This was the fourth highest day-and-date launch of an extraordinary international year behind $237.1m for Warner Bros Pictures International's Harry Potter 6, $166.2m for Sony Pictures Releasing International's 2012 (adjusted for markets), and $165.4m for Paramount/PPI's Transformers 2. The all-time mark remains $251m set by Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 in 2007.

There was a new record for IMAX, too, rounding off a strong year for that company. Avatar played on 58 IMAX screens internationally and set the highest grossing opening weekend on $4m and recorded IMAX's first $1m-plus single-day gross on Sunday.

The opening weekend grosses in descending order:


Russia.
353 3D screens – 27% of total screen count, 54% of total box office.
Second highest industry launch behind Fox's Ice Age 3

France– $19m (€12.7m) from 1,083 for 60% market share
450 3D screens – 41.5% of screens, 70% of total box office.
Second highest Fox launch behind Star Wars: EP3

UK– $14.2m (£8.6m) from 1,130
456 3D screens – 40% of screens, 76% of total box office.

Germany– $13.2m (€8.8m) from 1,128 for 58% market share.
350 3D screens – 31% of screens, 70% of total box office.

Australia– $11.3m (AUD $12.3m) from 588.
264 3D screens – 45% of screens, 68% of total box office.
Third highest Fox launch, including previews, behind The Simpsons and Stars Wars: EP3

Spain– $11m (€7.4m) from 789 for 65% market share.
225 3D screens (28.5% of screens) generated 48% of total box office.
Highest Fox launch excluding previews

South Korea – $10.8m (KRW 12.5m) from 860.
116 3D screens – 13.5% of screens, 31% of total box office.
Highest Fox launch

Mexico– $5.8m for 61% market share.
241 3D screens – 16% of screens, 46% of total box office.
Second highest industry launch for non-sequel behind Spider-Man

Brazil– $5.5m.
16% 3D screens, 36% of total box office.
Third highest Fox launch behind Ice Age 3 and Wolverine.

India– $4.3m (203.1m rupees) from 756.
54 3D screens – 7% of screens, 26% of total box office.
Highest Hollywood launch

Taiwan– $3.5m (TWD 115.3m) from 254
254 3D screens – 44% of screens, 75% of total box office.
Highest Fox launch.

Sweden– $2.2m (SEK 15.6m)
22 3D screens – 15% of screens, 36% of total box office.
Highest Fox launch

Elsewhere, Avatar grossed $2.1m from 145 in Holland; $2m from 102 in Denmark for Fox's highest launch; $1.9m from 68 in Hong Kong (where 3D was on 90% of the screens and accounted for 97% of total box office); $1.8m from 355 in Thailand for Fox's highest launch; $1.7m from 196 in Belgium; $1.7m from 140 in Switzerland; $1.6m from 101 in Singapore for Fox's highest launch; $1.4m from 123 in Norway.
The film took $1.3m from 185 in Malaysia; $1.3m from 185 in Austria; $1.1m from 92 in New Zealand; $1.1m from 298 in The Philippines; $1.1m in Chile for the highest non-sequel and December industry launches; $1.05m from 147 in Indonesia for Fox's highest launch and fifth highest industry launch; and in another record Fox launch, $155,000 in Vietnam from 17 including two 3D screens for 26% of total box office.
Summit International's New Moon added $10.7m from approximately 6,200 sites in 67 territories for $381.1m.

Sony Pictures Releasing International's 2012 grossed a further $9.3m from 6,350 screens in 77 markets for $574.1m. Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs added $1.8m from 905 in 27 for $75m.

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International's A Christmas Carol added $6.3m from 1,650 sites in 44 territories for $159.1m, while The Princess And The Frog added $5.7m from 2,250 sites in 11 territories in its second weekend for $15.8m.
Up added $4.4m from 1,868 in 21 for $409.8m and will overtake Ratatouille by the middle of the week to become Pixar's second highest overseas grosser. Old Dogs grossed $1.5m from 1,200 in ten for $15.7m.
Warner Bros Pictures International's German title Zweiohrkuken added $3.8m in Germany from 907 screens nationwide and has amassed $24.3m. Where The Wild Things Are added $2.7m from 1,526 screens in ten markets, for $10.4m.

Ninja Assassin stands at $1m from 975 screens in 19 territories for $19.3m. In its second weekend in South Africa Invictus added $155,000 from 73 screens nationwide for $567,000.

PPI launched Broken Embraces in Australia, reporting $111,000 from 23 sites. The international running total including UPI territories stands at $32m. Celda 221 continued to perform strongly in Spain, grossing $501,000 from 219 locations in its seventh weekend of release for a $12m running total. Law Abiding Citizen added $477,000 from 314 sites in the UK for $9m.

Universal/UPI's Public Enemies added $900,000 from 324 sites in Japan for $4.5m after nine weekends. The international running total stands at $113.4m.

The Mexican family film Nikte opened in Mexico on $400,000 from 423 sites and ranked fifth. Latest figures from UPI put The Invention Of Lying on $13.4m, Inglourious Basterds on $198.3m, and A Serious Man on an industry-wide $7m.

Prevedeno na jezik brojki u odnosu na budžet, AVATAR je za prvi vikend otplatio 116 miliona svog budžeta.

[Nightflier]

  All Energy Is Borrowed: A Review of Avatar

by Gary Westfahl

All right; the special effects in James Cameron's Avatar are indeed dazzling, and one can regard the film as ground-breaking in demonstrating, more so than any other recent film I know of, that computer animation can not only hold its own against live-action film but might actually replace it. Yes, 500 million dollars invested in the latest technology does enable a filmmaker to make twelve-foot-high, blue-skinned aliens generated through performance capture just as sympathetic and involving as skilled actors filmed in the ordinary fashion. Still, after filmgoers have emotionally experienced those aliens' agonies of defeat and thrills of victory, some will feel compelled to actually think about the story that has enthralled them for almost three hours, and they are the ones who will feel less inclined to celebrate Cameron's achievement.

Prior to the film's release, the internet buzz was that Avatar was a ripoff of Poul Anderson's classic novelette "Call Me Joe" (1957), and admittedly there are some significant similarities: both stories involve paraplegic men who assume mental control of artificially created alien beings designed to survive on harsh alien planets, decide that they prefer being active aliens to being handicapped humans, and eventually choose to be aliens all of the time. But Anderson's novelette took place on Jupiter, not a distant world named Pandora, and featured a newly created sort of intelligent being introduced to an environment without intelligent life, not an enormous humanoid crafted to resemble, and mingle with, members of an indigenous intelligent species. Thus, even if its basic concept is not entirely original, the film does take it in a different direction. Yet the film also recalls Anderson's work in a broader fashion: one of that author's many talents was filling his alien worlds with memorably distinctive flora and fauna, as indicated by one evocative passage from "The Queen of Air and Darkness" (1971): "Blossoms opened, flamboyance on firethorn trees, steel-flowers rising blue from the brok and rainplant that cloaked all hills, shy whiteness of kiss-me-never down in the dales. Flitteries darted among them on iridescent wings; a crownbuck shook his horns and bugled." Here, although the larger, dinosaur-like creatures that inhabit Pandora are mostly things that we have all seen before, Cameron additionally provides his world with many smaller and subtler forms of bizarre alien life — such as tiny purple lizards, floating fluorescent wisps, and spiraling plants that contract into a bulb when touched — that represent precisely the sorts of extraterrestrial life that Anderson might have envisioned and described.

Anderson is not the only science fiction writer that this film brings to mind: its larger-than-life warsuits, manipulated by soldiers inside of them, are reminiscent of predecessors ranging from the fighting suits of Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers (1959) to those in the Gundam Mobile Suit anime series (1979-1980), and a key subplot, depicting how members of the Pandoran race, the Na'vi, form a lifelong mental bond with large flying creatures that they then ride upon, seems lifted right out of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight (1968) and its many sequels. Still, the science fiction story that most closely resembles Avatar has to be Ursula K. Le Guin's novella "The Word for World Is Forest" (1972), another epic about a benevolent race of alien beings who happily inhabit dense forests while living in harmony with nature until they are attacked and slaughtered by invading human soldiers who believe that the only good gook is a dead gook. In sum, recalling the old Hollywood axiom that stealing from one source is plagiarism while stealing from several sources is research, one can say that James Cameron's Avatar is well researched. Or, as Cameron might defend himself, quoting one of his platitude-spouting Na'vi, "All energy is borrowed, and someday you have to give it back."

When you follow in the footsteps of giants, though, you may also replicate their mistakes, and this enormous exercise in borrowing-and-giving-it-back is particularly striking in the ways that it echoes both the virtues of Le Guin's story — a richly developed alien ecosystem and culture — and its major flaw — a one-dimensional portrait of an implacably evil military commander which engenders a one-dimensional and unpersuasive message about saintly savages being oppressed by scientifically advanced warriors. The problematic and uncharacteristic didacticism of her story was recognized by Le Guin herself in the "Afterword" she wrote for its original appearance in Harlan Ellison's Again, Dangerous Visions (1972), wherein she complained that in creating the story she had been forced by her muse to "moralize," even though "I am not very fond of moralistic tales." Of course, while Le Guin was writing, the still-raging Vietnam War was very much on her mind, and "The Word for World Is Forest," like Avatar itself, invites consideration as a parable about that conflict. Yet emotions that were appropriate in 1972 can seem anachronistic in 2009, and while one might posit that all filmmakers who matured during the Vietnam War must someday deal with that subject in their work, Cameron is entering the game rather late in his career, which makes his state-of-the-art film seem curiously old-fashioned in one respect. Bluntly, a character like Cameron's Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who calls the natives "roaches" and is eventually observed grinning in glee as he kills yet another alien, might have been acceptable thirty years ago, but he must be regarded today as nothing more than an outdated and offensive stereotype; Vietnam was one thing, but whatever else occurred in Iraq, there were no psychopathic American colonels fiercely dedicated to the genocidal slaughter of its citizens. (And a brief reference to "shock and awe" tactics cannot conceal the fact that this film is all about Vietnam and has nothing to do with the Middle East.) One might posit, perhaps, that this film was intended as Cameron's belated apology for Aliens (1986), a film that appeared to glorify all-out war against beings that didn't look like you — which might explain why he summoned Sigourney Weaver, the chief alien-killer in that film, to here play Dr. Grace Augustine (whose very name announces graciousness and nobility), a compassionate scientist who opposes military action against the aliens on this world.

As another similarity, Le Guin's story, like Avatar, is moralistic about not only the oppression of native peoples, but thoughtless destruction of the environment as well. In this case, the violent elimination of the aliens on Pandora is primarily motivated by a desire to gain access to rich deposits of a valuable gravity-defying metal (and hey, if you want to demonstrate your complete contempt for scientific plausibility, you might as well call this impossible, McGuffin-like substance "unobtainium"). We are told that in the twenty-second century, humans have already despoiled their own planet — "there is no green there" because "they killed their mother" — and Earth is later described as a "dying world." The hoped-for happy ending to Avatar is that the human race might be stopped before they can utterly ruin a second planet. If these environmental concerns seem more contemporary than condemnations of the Vietnam War, they are ultimately just as clichéd, and the best commentary on the merits of this theme is provided by Cameron himself: when the alien-inhabiting Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is first being instructed by Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) in the wise ways of her people so as to earn acceptance into her tribe, he responds to one of her lectures by thinking, "I hope this tree-hugger crap isn't on the final." Soon, however, Sully has swallowed all of her tree-hugger crap hook, line, and sinker, and knowing that "the wealth of the world is all around us," and that there is a "network of energy that flows through all living things," Sully is properly indignant that the human settlers on Pandora would strive to destroy the Na'vi's sacred tree to do some mining, and he joins his adopted people in resisting their efforts.

If these stale sentiments do not seem as offensive as those in the 2008 The Day the Earth Stood Still (review here), that may simply reflect the fact that Cameron has placed them in a more intriguing setting and chosen actors more talented than Keanu Reeves to deliver them. What is disturbing is that Avatar marries its argument against ravaging one's environment to an argument against scientific progress itself. The film's position could not be clearer: Living off the land in a forest is good; living in a protective metallic shelter filled with scientific devices is bad. Killing animals with a bow and arrow is good; killing them with machine guns is bad. Riding through the air on the backs of pterodactyl-like creatures is good; riding through the air in futuristic helicopters is bad. Using scientific methods to turn you into an alien is bad; hoping that a magical goddess in a tree can perform the same trick is good. The only value of machinery is that, in a pinch, natives are allowed to temporarily employ guns and grenades in order to destroy the people who brought them and restore the planet's preindustrial tranquility. And this has to represent the ultimate irony of Avatar: James Cameron has spent half a billion dollars on the most advanced technology available in order to argue that we all need to abandon advanced technology and return to the simple lifestyles of ancient Native Americans and other noble savages. Well, if that's the way you feel, Mr. Cameron, why don't you abandon filmmaking and go live with the natives in Papua New Guinea, where you could assist them in staging the rituals that help to make their simple lives so much more satisfying than ours?

Cameron also conspicuously stacks the deck in arguing for the benefits of living naturally: when Sully first enters the Pandoran forest, the film acknowledges that nature is filled with both wonderful and terrible things when Sully is almost killed by two gigantic predators and by smaller dog-like animals. However, once the Na'vi resolve to teach Sully about their idyllic lives and benign philosophy, these dangerous animals completely vanish from sight, the forest is re-envisioned as a lush paradise, and the only perils involve the Pandoran habits of running madly along narrow tree branches and leaping across chasms (which would logically result in most natives dying from fatal falls well before they reached adulthood, but hey, this is a movie, and having them move with more reasonable caution would be much less exciting). Then, just when you have entirely forgotten that this wondrous forest was ever home to horrible monsters, all of them abruptly reappear — because it's revenge-of-nature time, and now they are the good guys since they are trying to kill humans instead of aliens.

A related irony is that the philosophy being espoused in this movie — give up your scientific devices, simplify your lifestyle, find happiness in everything that is natural — was once epitomized in the phrase, "Small is beautiful." Yet in Avatar, more often than not, large is beautiful. As if convinced that audiences would only feel they were getting their money's worth if everything was big, big, big, Cameron has focused his creative energies on one enormous construct after another: huge warplanes, towering fighting suits, twelve-foot-high aliens, monstrous trees, dinosaur wannabes, an immense waterfall, huge floating mountains . . . . After a while, your mind becomes numb, these objects no longer impress, and you long for more of the aforementioned little touches of the outré that were observed earlier in the film. Frankly, Cameron should have spent more time on rainplant and flitteries instead of flying tanks and thundering triceratops. (Yet this tendency toward gigantism may also be a subconscious byproduct of undertaking to make an incredibly expensive film that surely represents one of the most mammoth projects in the history of cinema; indeed, so many people contributed to this production that, for the first time I can recall, the closing credits did not place every name on its own line, but crammed related names together into paragraphs. Clearly, it would have taken much too long to list them all in the usual fashion.)

If there is a theme in Avatar which is not entirely threadbare, it lies in the notion that it will someday not only be possible, but even desirable, to give up one's natural identity and assume an artificial identity. Traditional narratives often argue that people should accept who they really are and should not try to be something they are not, as illustrated by stories like the Twilight Zone episode "The Trade-Ins" (1962) and the film Seconds (1966). But here, Jake Sully comes to reject his real life as a partially paralyzed soldier and embraces a new unreal existence as an athletic alien: mentally returning from one experience in the forest to his human base, he says that "Everything is backwards now. Outside is the real world; back here is the dream." Crafting and inhabiting a dream world, then, is being celebrated, not chastised. It might have been more interesting if Avatar had posited that all of the Na'vi, not just a few agents like Jake Sully, were originally created by human scientists as convenient devices to explore a hostile alien world, although they soon went entirely native and were inspired by the new environment to develop their own distinctive culture and beliefs; this would have made the entire race the embodiment of a human dream and might have made the unlikely pleasures of the Pandorans' lives, and their evident mimicking of the practices of pre-technological humans, a bit more palatable.

In addition, the process of profitably reinventing oneself undoubtedly had personal relevance to James Cameron, since Avatar represents his return to feature film directing after a twelve-year hiatus, and there is evidence that he regarded the task as his own rebirth as a new kind of film director. Prior to being formally accepted as a member of the tribe, Jake comments that "Every person is born twice. The second time is when you earn a place among the People." I wasn't keeping track of every single date in the small print at the bottom of Jake's video reports, but I believe that Jake's initiation and second "birthday" was exactly, or almost exactly, the two-hundredth anniversary of Cameron's own birthdate of August 16, 1954. And while I would not be enthusiastic about seeing another film like Avatar, Cameron's record as a director indicates that he rarely chooses to repeat himself, and he may be capable of next producing a film that would blend the technological breakthroughs of this one with a more original and meaningful story — that is, if Avatar is successful enough to earn him another 500 million dollars to play with.



Gary Westfahl's works include the Hugo-nominated Science Fiction Quotations: From the Inner Mind to the Outer Limits (2005) and The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy (2005); samples from these and his other works are available at his World of Westfahl website. His recent books include two collections of essays -- Science Fiction and the Two Cultures, co-edited with George Slusser, by various hands, and The Science of Fiction and the Fiction of Science, by the late Frank McConnell -- the Second Edition of Islands in the Sky: The Space Station Theme in Science Fiction Literature, and its companion text The Other Side of the Sky: An Annotated Bibliography of Space Stations in Science Fiction, 1869-1993.

[Ghoul]

kao i u slučaju TITANIKA, tako će se i sada rulji mazati oči ciframa o ZARADI; ok, sve je to lepo - i kad smo već kod rasprave o PARAMA a ne o VREDNOSTI, kako glase SRPSKE CIFRE?
kolko je AVAVTAR steko u srbskim ćumezima, ovaj bioskopima?

[Lord Kufer]

Ima svi redom da ga tuže za svoj deo ćara 
Biće belaja 

[mac]

Otkud ti to da će da ga tuže? Pa film se vrlo dobro isplaćuje.

[crippled_avenger]

Awards Watch: Directors Roundtable

Dec 15, 2009, 06:09 PM ET
In the last of The Hollywood Reporter's annual Awards Roundtable series, THR's Elizabeth Guider and Matthew Belloni gathered six A-list directors -- Kathryn Bigelow ("The Hurt Locker"); James Cameron ("Avatar"); Lee Daniels ("Precious"); Peter Jackson ("The Lovely Bones"); Jason Reitman ("Up in the Air"); and Quentin Tarantino ("Inglourious Basterds") -- for a candid discussion of filmmaking at the highest level.

The Hollywood Reporter: Do you guys consider yourselves outsiders or insiders?

Jason Reitman: Dead silence. (Laughs.)

James Cameron: If we're all outsiders, who's on the inside?

Quentin Tarantino: Well, actually, that's a very interesting question to start off with because I did my first movie in '92, so this was the year I actually counted how long I've been in the business. Officially as a director, that's 17 years, and I think for the first 10 years I did consider myself an outsider. But if you last this long and you're not just doing marginal work -- which could be great work -- but you're not just doing marginal work for the people who like your stuff at film festivals, then I guess you actually kind of are in the inside. I remember going to the Governors Ball dinner and actually feeling like I was part of the room -- that these are my people.

Peter Jackson: I guess I'm the guy with the geographical situation, living in New Zealand. So I definitely feel like an outsider. Like, in New Zealand, we don't film ourselves having breakfast. It just never happens.

Reitman: I've done this every day of my entire life. (Laughs.) My father set up a camera.

Jackson: To me, this is an alien culture. Hollywood is the other side of the world and it's another planet.

THR: Even though you directed one of the most well-received trilogies in film history.

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Jackson: I'm not really thinking about filmmaking as such. I'm thinking about the culture of Hollywood and the business. We're so far removed from it, which I like. I'll be staying down there, having my breakfast in peace and quiet.

Cameron: I'd like to answer his question for him. You're an outsider by process but you're an insider by the types of films that you make. You love the big spectacle films.

Jackson: Yeah, sure I do.

Cameron: And I think I'm probably the same in the sense that I like to make films for the mainstream, for the global audience. I'm not interested in making a film for film festival crowds. I'd just as soon not meet people and talk about the movie. And I don't mean that in some disdainful way, it's just the movie should be the movie. But I don't consider myself a Hollywood insider in the sense that, well, first of all, I didn't have an agent for 15 years and don't have a manager, don't have a publicist, I just like to live quietly and stay out of the public view as much as possible. I don't go to parties, don't do lunches, don't do dinners, I just like to hang with the fam when I have free time. So I guess that's an outsider by process and insider by result, maybe.

Kathryn Bigelow: I think of it as a community that's very pourous. I don't think of it in a bifurcated way. There's a ton of mobility and it's really all based on the content, the idea. If your idea is strong enough, you're embraced. Otherwise you're marginalized. I think it's really a merit-based, very porous, elastic community.

Reitman: I somehow grew up inside without ever feeling inside, and by the time I was trying to be a director I felt completely outside. I was told my entire life that nepotism was going to pave the way for my career -- and no one wanted to make my first film. I had "Thank You for Smoking" written for five, six years and no one would finance it. Nepotism failed me. My first film was financed by a San Francisco Internet millionaire, one of the guys that created PayPal, and my entire career has been film festivals. It was the independent directors -- I remember lining up to see "Pulp Fiction" in Westwood -- and it was directors like Quentin and reading Robert Rodriguez's book. I remember telling Kevin Smith, "You're one of the reasons I became a director," and Kevin said, "You were on the set of 'Ghostbusters,' I'm the reason you wanted to become a director?' " (Laughs.)

Jackson: So every time we use eBay and PayPal are we still paying off your first film?

Reitman: Those comic books you bought helped pay --

Lee Daniels: I feel like an outsider, and even the films I've produced have been done in Harlem and I only come here to cast. I never felt embraced.

THR: But what about the strong response in Hollywood to "Precious"?

Daniels: It's really nice. Now I feel sort of embraced. I feel this weird, sort of, "Am I part of (Hollywood)? Oh my God, I guess I am. I don't know.

THR: Kathryn, you've seen filmmaking from inside and outside the system, correct?

Bigelow: Actually, all my films have been independent. So even though some people think they're studio films, they were only studio at the end of the day when we had a distributor.

Tarantino: Talking about seeing films at a film festival, I saw "The Loveless" during its one screening at FilmX, all right.

Bigelow: That was '82

Tarantino: It was '82 and you know why I saw it? Because I was a huge fan of Robert Gordon. It was like, "Oh, wow, the Rockabilly singer is in a movie? Cool!" It was just one screening of "The Loveless."

Bigelow: And that was it. (Laughs.)

THR: Jim, you mentioned wanting to make films for the big global audience. But it's getting more expensive to produce those kinds of films. How much is money now a factor in the creative decisions you're making?

Cameron: Money is always a factor at any scale of film production, and sometimes smaller films are much harder to finance than bigger films. In fact, I would say almost always smaller films (are harder). It took me two years to put together the financing for a $20 million film ("Sanctum") that we're doing down in Australia right now, and it took almost no time at all to put together "Avatar" -- at least to get "Avatar" rolling in the sense that the studio was funding preproduction to develop the look; they still had a bail-out (opportunity) at a certain point if they didn't want to go forward. It was easier to get that process going because of my history with Fox, but doing an independent film, it's much harder putting the money together, and you've got to really, really do exactly what you say you are going to do. There's no room for experimentation and there would be no way to make a movie like "Avatar" under those constraints because there's too much R&D involved, there are too many variables going into it.

THR: Do you end up underestimating what you think the budget will be in order to get financiers interested or overestimating so there are no surprises later?

Daniels: Go on the low side and then ask for extra later, once they like it.

Reitman: I've always wanted my movies to be as cheap as possible so I have as much control as possible. My first two films cost $6 million and $7 million each and this one cost $25 million and that freaked me out a little because I thought I'd be giving up control, to a certain extent. I almost wanted to try and pull it back, but with the amount of cities we were shooting, it was impossible.

Cameron: It didn't go any farther than the $6 million or $7 million, though, did it? When you make a movie for $20 million, you feel like you don't have any more money than when you were doing it for $6 million.

Reitman: Yeah, you know, you're absolutely right. It wasn't all of a sudden as though we had luxuries on set. It was the same.

Tarantino: I want my movies to cost as little as they possibly can so they have to make back as little. The pressure is less and I want my stock to stay good. As far as cost and what we get back, track record is not bad. The last three movies I've been wrong by $6 million or $7 million but I'm always trying to do it for $30 million or something and it turns out to be $38 million.

THR: That doesn't get you into trouble?

Tarantino: The only time I ever had a situation like that -- and it worked out fantastic -- was on "Kill Bill" because we were trying to do some action sequences that really had never been done before. I was trying to do them Hong Kong-style, not the American style of shooting, and -- these guys can tell you -- to do some of the best action you're ever going to see, it takes time. It just takes time. You need to be there. It takes days. And you don't know you're done until you're done. You can try and put it on a schedule, but if you ain't done you ain't fucking done! If it's not getting you off, it ain't done, so that means it just takes time. You can make up time with story points but on the action it's going to take it's own rhythm.

Cameron: Don't get worked up about it. I've been wrong by more than that entire budget. (Laughs.)

Reitman: That's the line of the morning.

Tarantino: We literally had a situation where it was like this runaway train because "Kill Bill" was actually costing drastically more than what we said it was going to (cost). While we were in China, Harvey (Weinstein) went down to the editing room and my editor had to show him an assembly of some of the stuff we had done and Harvey had to decide: Do I go forward with them or do we pull the plug or do we put a big leash on him, what's the deal? And after he saw the footage, he liked it so much he called me up and said, "Quentin, just go make your movie."

Reitman: And then you got two movies!

Tarantino: It worked out really good.

THR: Quentin, at the producers roundtable, Lawrence Bender mentioned that for "Inglourious Basterds" you funded development and some preproduction yourself. Why?

Tarantino: Oh, that was easy to do. I know my movies are going to get made, so that's not an issue for me. But I don't like to make a deal unless everything is completely -- I want my deal to be good, so I don't make it under any situation where I am in a negative place. And I knew we needed to get going right away, so I just financed everything until we made our deal. I didn't want to have to make a deal in order to do some cockamamie bullshit. I know it's gonna get made so it's not a big thing.

Jackson: It's the same here. We always find that it's easier if you fund your script development yourself, you don't take a fee for the script.

Tarantino: I completely agree with that.

Jackson: "The Lovely Bones," which we've just done, we paid for the rights to the book ourselves, we wrote the check, we developed it ourselves. If we're doing conceptual art, we pay for that ourselves. We only ever go to a studio when we have a complete package and know the budget. It comes down to people. It comes down to you and somebody else (at the studio) on the other end of the phone that you're talking to, and I think that transparency counts for a lot. Honesty and transparency, and then if you do get into the situation where you're going $6 million over or whatever it is, everybody can see it happening way in advance -- you're not hiding it -- and people can make very rational decisions. The only conflicts we have are procedural ones. Like the process we always insist on now with making films is we always build into our budget a pickup shoot in postproduction. Because I feel once you've shot the movie and you've cut the movie, you want to do another three weeks of shooting. You're just going to want to because there are ways of making the film better. Studios will always say, "Don't put that in the budget, we don't want that in the budget, if you want to do that come and see us, we'll decide," and I never trust that, so we always insist that our pickup shoots are part of the budget. That's the argument we always have, but on the other hand we usually win that argument because it's common sense and we shop (the project) to different studios and we go with the one that agrees to allow us to do that. But honestly you're dealing with a person, you're not dealing with a faceless corporation, you're dealing with other human beings and having a relationship with those people is very, very important.

Bigelow: I think that transparency is really important. On "Hurt Locker," I had to convince people that shooting in the Middle East was going to be all right and nobody was going to be killed, so I went over there, financed it myself and did the scout, came back with all the materials and the locations and met with the Royal Family (of Jordan). I don't think anyone would have taken a flier unless that initial leap had been done.

Cameron: You have to do your due diligence so that (the studio) can do theirs. They're responsible to their boss and to a board or whatever it is. They're going to have to do the due diligence on your project, (figure out) that you're not going to go psycho, you're not going to go out of control, that it makes sense, that the film that you're making makes sense at the budget that you're making it at.

Jackson: From a dealmaking point of view, where you lose ground a lot is if you do the deal to make the movie too early ... and (there are) a whole bunch of things you haven't thought of. Then suddenly you have to ask for things, they chip away at your deal, and they want things in return. So it's better to spend your own money and get things sorted out. Then it's pretty straightforward.

THR: Lee, did you have money problems getting "Precious" made?

Daniels: I went over budget on my film because the financier -- I had just finished producing a film for her and she's like, "OK, what do you want to do next?" And I said, "I want to direct a movie about a 400-pound black girl," and she said, "OK." I said, "What? What?" So I rushed into production without really thinking about the crew that I normally work with because they were all scattered. I was so shocked that I started hiring people without really doing the due diligence. Then, as I was two weeks into production, I hated everyone, there was no one I had worked with, they weren't responding, they didn't get the story, they didn't get me, and I had to go back to the investors and say, "Listen, guys, I have to shut down production and reshoot most of this."

Cameron: That's a tough conversation.

THR: You did that face to face?

Daniels: I did, and it was really a great thing. They really believed in me and it was beautiful that they did.

Cameron: I'm gonna try that next time.

Tarantino: Good for you. Good for you for (saying), "You know what, this isn't working and I can't tell my story with these people," as opposed to just persevering and making the best out of a bad situation. Good for you because you wouldn't have that movie that you have now if you had worked under those situations.

Jackson: You've got to rely on your instincts. There are always those moments that come when you just want to go the easy way out but your gut is screaming that you've got to make those changes and you've got to follow your instincts. You've got to do it and it's always the hard road. You ignore that at your peril.

Tarantino: If you really love your project you have to make some choices from time to time that risk it going away. You actually have to risk killing your baby if your baby is going to grow up the way you want it to.

Cameron: To make the movie in any way that you will want to put your name on it, from the very first conversation you have to be willing to walk out the door. Only by being willing to walk away from it can you have the strength to make the film the right way. The first time you cave, it's just a series of caves.

Tarantino: You get no respect for it, either.

THR: Tell us about one particular moment where you had to do that.

Cameron: That started for me pretty early on. I was four or five days from starting to shoot "The Terminator" and I was meeting with (producer) John Daly -- may he rest in peace -- and he said, "I don't really understand this story about this guy that comes from another planet and we need to have a story conference." And actually it was (writer-producer) Gale (Anne Hurd) that had the balls; she stood up and said, "That's ridiculous. We're four days from shooting." (She) walked out and I was like, "What she said!" (Laughs.)

THR: Was there a point where you almost walked away from "Avatar"?

[crippled_avenger]

Cameron: Well, you know, "Avatar" is a little bit different because I talked these guys (at Fox) into writing this big check and if I'd walked out, that would have been just too irresponsible. No matter what went wrong on the shoot, we had to figure it out. I told them, "No, it's going to be fine, we've got this all worked out," (then, aside), "Guys, do we have this worked out yet?" And we didn't.

THR: What are specific sacrifices you're willing to make to maintain final cut?

Reitman: Less money. At the end of the day, I feel like there are many versions of the same movie that can be made. I'll just take mine, for example. There's a version of "Up in the Air" that can be made for $500,000 and there's a version that can be made for $100 million. I would do it for as little as possible to make sure that I still had complete control. I remember the big question: We had George Clooney but there was a question about Vera Farmiga early on, and I was getting pressure because I had written a great women's role that there was a lot of interest in, and I wrote it for Vera. I just believed in her. I remember seeing her in "Down to the Bone" at Sundance and thinking she was spectacular. I thought she was amazing in "The Departed." I had met with her and I just knew she was the one. She was going to have a baby two weeks before we started shooting and because of that there was this additional amount of pressure of, "Look, she's going to have a baby two weeks before she starts, and by the way, this actress and this actress, they would love to come and play across George." And there was just no fucking way.

Daniels: There are a couple films that I've been offered that I love (but) I ended up taking a film that I love more because they offered me final cut. The payday is not there but I have final cut so that's important.

Cameron: I've had final cut for a long time and I've never invoked it.

Daniels: Really?

Cameron: Because I've always believed that the people paying the price, writing the check, have an opinion and we need to work this out and we need to be partners. If they feel strongly about something --

Tarantino: But that's a great loaded gun to have in your holster.

Cameron: Better to have a gun and not need it than to need it and not have it.

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Reitman: Once you have final cut, you actually don't get into those conversations. I find it becomes much more relaxed. I had it for the first time on this film and this time I never had to say, "Well, by the way, I have final cut," because wow! We're having such a reasonable conversation. They supported you throughout, right?

Daniels: They completely supported me.

Reitman: So it's not as though you felt, "Thank God, I have this gun in my pocket."

Bigelow: I didn't have to invoke it on "Hurt Locker."

Reitman: They must have been scared of you after seeing your film!

Tarantino: Actually, the thing to me that is more of a dealbreaker than final cut -- because I've had final cut for a long time, I can't imagine not having it now -- is the whole market research process. I have in my deal: I don't do that. I have one screening with an audience -- no cards, no focus group, I just watch the movie with the audience, me and (editor) Sally (Menke), we see how they react. Two weeks later, locked cut.

Reitman: Wait, didn't you show ("Basterds") at Cannes and make adjustments after that?

Tarantino: Yeah, but that's not a market research screening, that's a screening at the Palais.

Reitman: You should have handed out cards at the Palais. (Laughs.)

Tarantino: I always do something after that market research screening but I don't care about the audience's opinion individually. I don't care about the cards.

Cameron: It's the vibe in the room.

Tarantino: It's the vibe in the room. Look, you know when your movie plays well and when it doesn't, and what'll happen oftentimes is a movie totally plays well, everyone's happy and then the cards contradict exactly what you watched happen in the room.

[crippled_avenger]

Daniels: What do you think when that happens? Because that's happened to me.

Tarantino: I think people get holier than thou when they get these cards. They take the high road. If you're doing genre shit, then you're really in trouble.

Jackson: I also think the problem is the interpretation of the cards. The difficulty is that somebody sees the result on a card and they think it's because of this, but the real reason why people are responding is because of a combination of six other things. So there's a skill in actually knowing how to interpret (the feedback) and the danger is not so much the fact that you're showing it and getting feedback but in how people interpret that feedback. Somebody could say, "I didn't like this because this guy got killed," but it could (have) nothing to do with that, in reality. It's psychological.

Cameron: As long as the filmmaker is in charge of the market research process. That's the way it needs to work. You can have audiences saying things that are kind of a gestalt effect over the course of a film and the second the studio asks you to take this out because somebody didn't like it in that moment, they're not thinking about the effect it might have six scenes later and how something that they loved and that plays beautifully now won't play. They don't think holistically, and the problem with the cards is it gives the studio guys ammunition for specific agendas that they've had all along. They've got a hard-on for this scene or they've got a hard-on for this scene and all they've got to have is one card they can point to that doesn't like the scene and suddenly they're right.

Bigelow (to Cameron): On "Blue Steel" -- I don't know if you remember this -- somebody in the focus group said they didn't like Ron Silver -- and he's the bad guy. They were like, "Reshoot it!"

THR: What did you do?

Bigelow: I just held firm.

Jackson: Final cut is one thing but there's also casting approvals, script approvals are very important, there is a whole range of approvals. Final cut is just one thing. With most of the people at this table, if you're originating a project and you're not reading other people's scripts, if you're actually originating the thing from the very beginning, then to me it's a natural that you've got to have control over everything from the very beginning. Because it starts in your brain; that's where it comes from.

Cameron: I was just thinking to myself, "How long does it take a discussion of directors sitting around a table to devolve to kvetching about the studios? Four minutes?" (Laughs.)

Reitman: It's a weird thing. I've been around directors my entire life. I grew up the son of a director, so I've been kind of conscious of this for a long time: There are very few people who understand how to direct. It's one of the most complex things. It's impossible to explain. All of us have done so many panels and sat through so many interviews where you're asked, "Why did you do this? How did you do that?" Process questions. You would never ask a musician why they play notes. It is an impossible thing to explain why a scene here will make the audience feel this way so by the time they get here they will feel this (way and) that will make the ending whole. There is no way to describe why a scene is important or why it works. We want our audience to feel a certain way and instinctually, through trial and error, we have found the way. If I do this and this and this and I make these thousand decisions right every day, they will simply feel this feeling as they walk out of the theater.

Cameron: It's trust in your instincts.

Reitman: There are maybe a few hundred people on Earth who understand that, yet there are tens of thousands of people telling those few hundred how to do it better. (Laughs.)

Cameron: I was having this conversation with myself coming over here about instinct. Because every filmmaker says it's instinct. It is instinct, instinct informed by an extremely analytical process. And usually what happens is you have an analysis that's Byzantine that connects down to a moment where it's a flip of the coin -- and then it's instinct. But the important thing is once you've made that instinctive decision you shouldn't have to justify it because you're getting paid to have that filter. You've proven you have that filter and you're getting paid now for that filter.

Reitman: But you have to learn how to justify it. That becomes part of the job, frighteningly enough.

Cameron: I've found that big-budget movies are a curse and a blessing. You can do amazing things, you can do amazing visuals, you get that big machine all warmed up and you're turning out spectacular stuff. But you're playing a different game. You're playing a game where all those controls that you can have as an auteur on a smaller scale, you don't have any more. You have them but you don't have them, because you have to be very realistic about the fact that you are now spending so much of the studio's money it shows up on the radar of their annual budget, so they are your partners and you've got to bring them along by the hand, they've got to understand why you're doing things. The better you can elucidate why you're doing something -- even if you're doing it instinctively -- if you can analyze and elucidate your instinctive call and give it some form, give it some wordplay, it just works better for them. If you go, "I just feel that way, damnit!" It freaks them out.

Bigelow: You're sharing ownership.

Tarantino: Let me ask you a question, though. That brings up something that's interesting. You are in a situation where you're making the movies you want to make but they cost a whole lot so you have to be responsible for that. So in that scenario -- I'm going to use the Laser Disc example because I'm assuming it's on DVD but I know it's on Laser Disc -- there is the version of "The Abyss" that played theatrically and then there was your big Laser Disc version. Which do you consider your movie?

Cameron: This is interesting. I was led astray by the market research process. I was not savvy. I had never done it before. We didn't do it on "Aliens," didn't do it on "Terminator." We just finished the film, put it in theaters, no bullshit, no screening, nothing.

Reitman: Shut up.

Cameron: I showed it to the studio but we didn't have time to do a screening on "Aliens." So, the first time I did it was on "The Abyss," and I misinterpreted the cards because I didn't know how to operate the process. And we showed it to an audience in Texas, two screenings back to back. One with the wave scene at the end, and one without. And they hated both versions! (Laughs.) So I said, "Well, at least make it short." So, to answer your question, I like the wave version better when we finished the visual effects on it and it worked.

Tarantino: It's funny. You immediately go to the wave thing. I'm thinking about all the camaraderie stuff you have with the guys at the very beginning. When I saw the big version, I thought, this is so wonderful! This is really bringing it together.

Cameron: Well, look, I learned some lessons from that. I learned: One, the filmmaker's got to be in charge of the market research process and not let other people interpret the cards for you. You've got to sit with the cards in some kind of Zen state and try to first of all get past the egregious handwriting. (Laughs.) You've got to look at the author: 12-year-old male. You've got to get patterns. And the patterns are like going through the chicken guts. You become a shaman.

Reitman: You're like a psychologist. Why does someone say something? This is a metaphor for everything in the directorial process. You realize that you didn't know enough about that part of filmmaking and you realize you have to become an expert in each element or have someone that you trust implicitly that may as well be attached to you, part of your DNA. You have to become a producer, you have to become a writer, you have to understand all these jobs.

THR: What's the toughest scene to film?

Daniels: There was a dance scene, a party scene in "Precious" where Precious got her award. And it didn't feel like a party to me. It didn't feel real, it didn't feel honest. I fixed it to my liking in post where I actually went into parties and the environment and actually put a mike around and brought words and sentences and phrases into the scene to make it honest.

Tarantino: The scenes that always give me trepidation leading up to them are the big cinematic scenes, big action scenes. Because I don't want to be a piker. I want them to be awesome, all right. So if I'm doing the car chase in "Death Proof" I want it to be one of the greatest car chases of all time. But I've never shot a car chase before. Part of it, if you haven't done it before, is you're gonna learn how to do it as you do it. You gotta know, I'm not going to know exactly how to do it on the first day, but I'll figure it out over the course of it and that's going to be cool. But there's trepidation leading up to it because I want it to be great and I want it to be awesome and it's mine to eff up. I always look at it -- like, the fire scene, say, in "Basterds" or the fight sequences in "Kill Bill" -- and it's like, I think I'm pretty good, so I want them to be magnificent. And if they're not, then I've officially reached the ceiling of my talent.

Cameron: Don't worry, you'll work again.

Tarantino: I always want to risk bumping my head. I want to see where that ceiling eventually happens.

Bigelow: Shooting in a Palestinian refugee camp, there was a lot of trepidation. Everybody said, "That can't be done." We had Americans running around in digitals shooting M4s at 3 o'clock in the morning. There was a lot of anxiety about it. We had a little extra security. (But) I was determined to shoot there, architecturally it was perfect and you know what it's like when you get it in your head, this is where you want to shoot. So we went in there, shot the sequence, and at about 2 o'clock in the morning a camp elder -- there was a little disruption at the beginning, a little friction, a few riots, very small -- but a camp elder came out and gave me tea. So I knew we were going to be all right. But we hadn't done the gunfire. So at about 4:30 in the morning -- now, this is a Palestinian refugee camp, and we're running around shooting their M4s and I'm thinking the place will explode. Not even a bathroom light goes on. (Laughs.)

Cameron: They could hear it wasn't an AK-47 so they went back (to sleep).

Bigelow: Another night, another M4.

Reitman: "Really, the M4s are starting at 4:30 this morning? Oh ..."

Jackson: I like shooting a lot of big stuff and I'm not really so worried about that. If I wake up in the morning and say, "Oh, I've got to go shoot that bloody scene," it's usually sitting around the dinner table talking. With all the eyelines. The worst example was on the first "Lord of the Rings" movie, we had this thing called the Council of Elrond where the group of characters all had to sit in a circle of chairs. There were about 12 leading characters and eight pages of dialogue with people in these chairs. One person talks to this guy, then this guy talks and he's got to swivel his head. And I had to get all the eyelines right. It took me about five days to shoot that and it was torture. It was hell on earth and it was the most simple scene in the world. I didn't do anything fancy. Those are the scenes where I don't have fun and I don't particularly enjoy what I'm doing.

Cameron: Group scenes are difficult, I always dreaded them. Shooting under water is difficult. Doing big action, shooting a lot of extras. All those things are difficult. But if we define "hard" as the thing we're most anxious about, then for me, it's times when I'm going for something that is a little bit cinematically vague and stylized. I'm trying to do something that I haven't done before, I'm trying to give the audience a feeling through the use of camera, and I'm looking for something and I don't know what it is. You can take the most complicated, big action sequence and you can break it down, storyboard it and deconstruct it down to its components, and you've always got a map. But if you're there with some extras and you're trying to do something odd -- like the actor is dying and you're trying to put the audience in their head to see what they're seeing, and you don't know, are you going to do it with lighting? Are you going to do it with some kind of lens effect?

Jackson: I've just done an entire film like that! And it was hell on earth, but carry on ...

Cameron: When you're going for some kind of cinematic trope, you see other people do it but it never applies. You can't take their idea.

Jackson: One thing that helps me with those scenes is to play music on the set. Do you do that?

Daniels: I do. To get me in the mood.

Jackson: It depends a little on the dialogue but I'm happy to loop a lot of the dialogue later. If it helps the actor who has to get into the state of mind you're describing, I'm very happy to have music playing on speakers.

Cameron: (Jackson) said he did it in an interview and I went, "That's a good idea," so I did it.

Tarantino: I actually have music playing in between takes. My sound guy has a bunch of songs, we're always playing music as the crew is getting ready for the next take. For instance, (in "Basterds") that whole thing with David Bowie's "Cat People", as she's putting on her shit, I played "Cat People" every time we did all that stuff. And actually Melanie (Laurent) is really musical so she really got into the rhythm. The whole crew gets into the rhythm. If you're using music and you're kinda doing it like it's gonna be in the movie, that's the stuff that the crew actually feels like they're watching the movie. It's not just a separate piece. They all get their dick hard, they all go, "Oh, this is gonna be awesome!"

Bigelow: I never have any time in between takes. I'm always shooting. I can't imagine that. I want that schedule.

THR: Jason, you were shooting in airports, so --

Reitman: Oh, there was music, we just couldn't turn it off. (Laughs.) I got so close to ripping a speaker out of the ceiling. It's one of those moments where you realize you've done everything you can, you have hundreds of people on the set, you've spent the money, you've done the right prep work, your lights are there, and you're in an airport so you've dealt with 12 different security departments, and then all of a sudden, you're about to do a take, and there's this twinkling coming from the speaker above your head. And you realize there's one human being who controls this Phil Collins song, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Cameron: You're in his world now.

Reitman: Exactly. And that the moment where you go, "OK, I guess I can be one of two directors. I can be the director who literally reaches up in the ceiling, rips the speaker from the panel." That's one director. Or I'm just gonna sit here and we're going to think about looping it. Actually, someone found a way to unplug the speakers. But that speaks to another element that's important to directing, which is: every time you go to direct something, you're doing something that no one has ever done for the first time. It's part of the reason that all of us got excited about directing in the first place. But it makes every day shooting insane. But if you were doing something that someone had done before, then it would be boring, there would be no reason to do it.

THR: Do you guys believe there is such a thing as a director's personality?

[crippled_avenger]

Reitman: I used to think that. But then I started meeting directors and they completely run the gamut. I've had conversations with Spike Jonze, who is so quiet and uncomfortable, and I've talked to Quentin, for example. (Laughs.) They're all storytellers. I think there's perhaps a confidence and arrogance in knowing we have something to say but the way that each one goes about it seems to be very different.

Tarantino: You would think being a leader is one of those ingredients, but it often isn't. You would think being decisive would be one of those ingredients, and it often isn't. (Laughs.)

Cameron: Is there a good director's personality? I'd say decisiveness might be required.

Jackson: If you're not decisive, you've got to pretend you are.

Tarantino: It doesn't have to be the right decision, it just has to be a decision.

Cameron: It's binary. Everybody comes to you for the decision and you're the decision mechanism.

Jackson: At the beginning of the day when I walk on set and privately I'm thinking, "What the hell am I gonna do?" and I go on set and I say as decisively as I can, "OK, let's get the actors, let's do the blocking, and we'll do this, this and this, and then we block it a few times," and I'm desperately trying to cover and not let anyone know that I don't have a clue. By the time you've blocked it a few times, you've got a plan and everything's OK. But (there's) that first 10 minutes on set where you've got to fake it and you don't really know what you're doing.

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Cameron: It's critical to create an environment among the crew and the actors that allows for the fluidity to find the thing you're there to do. And be honest about it. "All right, guys, I don't know what the hell we're doing. Let's do this, go over there, that's good." There's a finite amount of time you can fuck around but be honest about the fact that you don't know exactly how it's gonna work. That puts the ball in the actors' camp.

Jackson: I always think it's great to have the actors run a scene, not at full performance pitch, but simply half-energy, run the scene a few times and I just walk around in circles. I just circle, looking for interesting little lineups, little accidents, where things pop into nice compositions, and you slowly just get your shot list together.

Reitman: When was your first movie where you were confident enough to do that? My first movie, "Thank You for Smoking," I had everything planned out, and I was terrified to show up at set not knowing what to do. And "Juno," I was more confident, but this was the first time where I would show up on set and feel like it's OK that I don't know what I'm going to do because I'm confident in myself, I'm confident I have the right people and we're going to find it.

Cameron: On "Terminator," which was really my first film because I got fired after a few days on what is supposedly my first film, I mapped it all out, I storyboarded everything, I was super prepared, I had my roommate at the time, Bill Wisher, who was another writer, I got a camera and took pictures of him acting out every moment of the film. In wardrobe. And from those I drew everything out. I was super, super prepared. Now I've never done that since. That gave me my confidence to come in and say, "Camera goes here, stand there." You know what I mean?

Reitman: So by "Aliens" you were willing to show up and go, "You know what, today I don't know what we're doing."

Cameron: No, I'd show up with a Viewfinder and I'd look around the set and I'd figure it out. I didn't try to preimpose my architecture. I wanted the place to talk to me.

Bigelow: I have to physicalize it. I have to get out there in the location, not hypothetically, and look at the actors.

Reitman: And see what happens when people talk to each other. Or shoot each other. (Laughs.)

Bigelow: In this environment, that's going to dictate if you're going to go from A to B and your set's maybe 300 meters long, that's going to dictate. You're not going to be able to do it at a table read.

Jackson: Storyboards and your shot list are almost like a fallback position. If you can't think of anything else, you've got that to fall back on.

Cameron: Storyboarding is the act of removing possibility before you have enough information to remove it. That's why I don't believe in it. I don't do it.

Tarantino: I don't do it, either. One of the things that's interesting, though, is there's another artistic reason for everything we're talking about, and that is: Look, I don't do storyboards, from time to time I'll do shot lists, just to shoot it for free, basically. If I need some weird piece of equipment, I figure it out that way. Then I leave them at home and show up and make it up. One of my big reasons for doing that is, look, I've written the scene, rehearsed the scene, maybe -- or not -- and maybe I know what I wanted when I wrote it. But now we're shooting the scene and it's Tuesday. Tuesday's got to play into this artistic process. How you feel today, the day you're shooting the scene, how you feel driving into work today, if something fucking happened that changed shit yesterday and now you have a different feeling, now the actors have a different feeling. That's what we're here to do, capture these feelings on these days. It's got to be a living, breathing organism.

THR: Would it bother any of you if the studios thought of you as a "difficult" director?

Reitman: James?

Daniels: James?

Cameron: I was waiting for that. (Laughs.) It would bother me, one, if it were true. And, two, if my cast thought that. I don't care what the media thinks because they're not standing on my sets seeing what goes on. It would bother me a lot if my cast thought that. Hasn't happened yet, so --

Tarantino: That probably would bother me. But what does that even mean? If my crew feels that way ... well, they don't. They have a great time. You tend to work with the same people, but then that's a weird thing too because after a certain point you don't want to get too comfortable, all right, so that's something you've got to be careful about. That's the way directors tend to go, the older they get. I'm still in that place. I want to people who know me and know what I want, but at some point there needs to be new people added to that thing or you just ...

Daniels: What defines "difficult"? Difficult is knowing what you want and not leaving until you get it?

Reitman: That's directing. Every actor I do a Q&A with says, "Well, Jason knows what he wants." And it half sounds like an insult but half is like, "Yes, that's my job."

Daniels: Often times that is perceived as difficult.

Tarantino: When I think "difficult" I think, you're trying to cut your movie and you're fighting with the studio about it. And you're not letting them in on the process.

Bigelow: It's a collaborative process. And I try to keep it as collaborative as possible.

Reitman: I'd rather be difficult than lost. I'd rather my actor say, "Well, he keeps on coming at me until I give him what he needs," than, "He doesn't seem to know what the hell he wants or what he's doing."

Daniels: There's a scene in "Precious" where Mo'Nique is dancing with a leotard on and it made no sense at all. She was like, "Why am I dancing here?" And I said, "Just because. Just do it." She couldn't figure it out. Then she succumbed and she did it and it just, sort of, was. It was a moment.

Bigelow: It's trust, more than anything else.

Cameron: You've got to explore stuff even if you don't exactly know why. You're the only person on set that can do that. An actor can go after something but really they're going to ultimately be judged by the editor or the director. But the director is the only one that can get a scent and go after it. I think the most important thing, I've found, is to give yourself the freedom, at least within boundaries, to do that. To go off the map, to go off the plan. It's the hardest thing to do. OK, we briefed on this, this is what we said we were going to do today but we're shooting this direction.

Tarantino: One of the most exciting times on a set, though, is if it's your last day on a location, and you know you probably need about 35 shots to get it off and you don't think you're going to get those 35 shots and you're freaking out the next night, and you come up with a way, at midnight, after everyone's gone, to do it all in one shot. So you can get out of there. And you show up the next day and you're like, "Guys, guess what?" Not only are we not going to do those 35 shots that we know we can't do, this is gonna be a one-er. That's exciting. That's filmmaking. The cinematographer freaks out, but that's his fucking job.

THR: Over the past few years studios have begun questioning the value of casting star actors. Do you agree?

Bigelow: You cast not for marquee value but for performance and talent. The right actor for the part. Anything else is a compromise.

Daniels: I like working with friends that I'm comfortable with that know my DNA and also fit the character descriptions. I'd rather work with someone I know personally than a mega-star or a really talented, brilliant actor.

Reitman: George (Clooney) made my movie so much easier to make. And most importantly he was perfect for the part. But there was just as much interest in Ellen Page playing Juno as there has been in George playing Ryan Bingham in "Up in the Air." So it was a blessing to get the movie made, but once we were making it, he was perfect for it, and now that we're actually putting it out there, I've found that there's just as much excitement about what he's bringing to the role as there was about this young girl who's playing Juno.

Bigelow: I found the same thing with Jeremy Renner. Same kind of interest. Who is this guy?

THR: But Jim, you must have known you'd have an easier time interesting a massive audience in "Avatar" if you'd put a major star in the lead role.

Cameron: We figured we were going to be spending so much on the effects that there wasn't going to be a whole lot of coin left when you turn the bag upside down to hire a $20 million actor. And I think the studio felt the same way. I'm comfortable working with unknowns or relative unknowns and making my own judgments on whether they're the right people for the roles. The only real stars I've worked with were Sigourney (Weaver) and Arnold (Schwarzenegger), if you think about it. I worked with Arnold three times but the first time he wasn't a movie star yet. He's a friend and Sigourney's a friend, so I feel very comfortable working with them. For me to work with a star, it's not something I wouldn't consider, but I'd have to do my due diligence, find out what they're like, get to know them. Find out if we can be eye-to-eye.

THR: The director Renoir made a lot of films and then stopped to write novels. Is there anything you'd consider doing instead of directing?

Tarantino: I intend to quit at 60. And I'm going to do exactly what he did. I'm going to write novels and cinema literature, stuff like that.

Bigelow: You have a plan?

Daniels: And he's very serious about it.

Tarantino: Well, she brought up exactly what I plan to do.

Cameron: I want to die directing. But I took my hiatus already because I figured I can still be directing when I'm 80 but I can't be doing the deep ocean expeditions, riding around in a zodiac on a 20-foot sea when I'm 80, I'll break my neck.

Tarantino: I would add more to that. If it actually gets to the place where you can't show 35mm film in theaters any more and everything is digital projection, I won't even make it to 60.

Cameron: Oh. Nobody's told you? (Reaches out hand.)

Tarantino: It hasn't happened yet!

Reitman: Let's not turn this into a fight.

Jackson: It's coming down the pike pretty quickly, Quentin.

Tarantino: Well, maybe I've got one more.

Daniels: I'd like to teach acting in the Bronx.

Reitman: If I couldn't direct I don't know what I'd do. I'd want to tell stories in one way or another, whether it was just convincing people to listen to me or whether I became I writer. I can't help but feel that's what I was put on Earth to do. I was scared of the idea of becoming a director and I went to college and I went premed. Because I was very familiar with the idea of how people perceived the children of famous filmmakers. If you were the son of a famous director, most likely you were a talentless spoiled brat with an alcohol or drug problem to boot. Why enter a profession where that was the going idea of me? I went and I thought, "I'll be a doctor, no one questions why you become a doctor." And my father took me aside and said, "Being scared is no reason to do anything." He told me to follow my heart and become a storyteller, and I realized in that moment that my entire life, all I've wanted to do was tell stories. So I really don't have an answer to your question. Because it seems like dying.

Bigelow: I always want to make films. I think of it as a great opportunity to comment on the world in which we live. Perhaps just because I just came off the "Hurt Locker" and I'm thinking of the war and I think it's a deplorable situation. It's a great medium in which to speak about that. This is a war that cannot be won, why are we sending troops over there? Well, the only medium I have, the only opportunity I have, is to use film. There will always be issues I care about.

Jackson: There's one area of directing that I'd love to improve upon. I tend to get involved in big movies that take two or three years of your life and I see what Clint Eastwood does and what Ridley Scott does, and they're able to do those films and also mix it up with these in-n-out, seven- or eight-month (films). I think that's a real skill and talent. I'd love to learn how to do that. So not everything took three years for one project. I'd love to reinvent the way I work, to some degree.

[Lord Kufer]

Otkud ti to da će da ga tuže? Pa film se vrlo dobro isplaćuje.

Ovi što im je pokrao štoseve i teme.

[Ghoul]

ne bi mu bilo prvi put.

tako je još sa prvim pravim filmom krenuo u neovlašćenu pljačku, al je na kraju morao da isplati harlana elisona + da ga kredituje, za TERMINATORA.

he he, kameron je tatko na hohštapleri!

[mac]

A to. Bre što sam glup, nije ni čudo što mi se film sviđa

[crippled_avenger]

Jedna od prednosti rada u Srbiji je to što kritičari slabo prate filmove i onda ne znaju odakle si šta ukrao, naročito na nivou replika

[Ghoul]

A to. Bre što sam glup, nije ni čudo što mi se film sviđa

you can say that again!

[Alex]

I love AVATAR – and it isn't because of the 3D, the big blue people, the alien landscape with floating mountains and it's version of flying critters. It isn't because of the mech armor, the flying battleships and the wasp-like helicopters. It is because of the story.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/43430

[Le Samourai]

 

[crippled_avenger]

Kod nas je imao 15 092 gledaoca...

[Ghoul]

Kod nas je imao 15 092 gledaoca...

opsa.
lepo.

šta je second best, iza ovoga?
mislim, u skorije vreme.

[Ghoul]

anyway, ja rekoh, a vi vidite:
http://ljudska_splacina.com/2009/12/avatar-2009.html

[crippled_avenger]

Hm, pa 2012 se lepo otvorio svojevremeno...

[Ugly MF]

muziku kao da je pokrao od Bregovica, pola filma kuknjava....

[Ghoul]

eto, muzika je toliko bezlično ogavno užasno generička da sam je smesta izbrisao iz sećanja i nisam je ni pomenuo u rivjuu.

[Ygg]

anyway, ja rekoh, a vi vidite:
http://ljudska_splacina.com/2009/12/avatar-2009.html

Ovo je jedan od najpromašenijih rivjueva koje sam pročitao ikad. Ti kao da uopšte nisi vidio film, već si prošao pored njega. Ne slažem ama baš ni sa čim što si naveo u rivjuu.

A to me iznenađuje, jer su mi tvoji prikazi horor filmova odlični i redovno ih iščitavam. Ponekad mi se dopadne neki film koji ti popljuješ ili ne dopadne film koji ti ishvališ, ali bez obzira na to, nikad do sad nisam imao zamjerki na tvoje rivjue. Ali sad sam morao da reagujem.

Dakle, reakcija:

[Ghoul]

he he, već sam navukao grdan hejt na sebe na netu - avatarulja će da me razapne, grdni neki linkovali ovaj rivju, pljuvanje po ghoulu sve u 16.
ali, to je sve business as usual.

ja rekoh i spasih dušu svoju.
ti mi reci šta je to trebalo da vidim u filmu, a nisam.

btw: ocena 3 (***) nije loša; to što se u rivjuu zadržavam na lošim stvarima je samo zbog disproporcije očekivanje-isporuka.
iako je ovo groundbreaking TEHNOLOGIJA, nesporno je da je u pitanju jedan od slabijih kameronovih filmova. čak i AMBIS je bolji od ovoga.

[Джон Рейнольдс]

Pročitao sam reakciju one Ivanice i jedno nikako ne shvatam. Zašto se ljudi LJUTE kad naiđu na nekog kome se ne sviđa isto što i njima ili je prosto neistomišljenik? Nema tu ni pokušaja kontraargumentacije, čak i pošalice, sprdnje, zezanja, makar i malicioznog. Jok, bato, odma' - ne valja ti ovo ništa, nikad od tebe čovek, trte-mrte. To, čini mi se, (a i to mi ide na živce, pa je 100% povezano) ima koren u tome što gomila iskreno smatra da je njihov ne stav... nego guzica... pardon, mišljenje, najispravnije moguće, a da su oni sami na nekom više evolutivnom stepenu, šta li, otvorilo im se treće oko i sve im je jasno, te svako ko ne vidi tim trećim, automatski je crvoliki stvor kakav na planeti iz Avatara nema. Često srećem te komplekse više vrednosti, imam čak i teoriju o genezi istog, ali neću mnogo da tupim. Tehnika je nikad jeftinija i svako može da se dokopa kompjutera i Interneta, pa je to u VR-u izraženije, ali je česta pojava u RL-u.

Razmišljam sad nešto, što bi ja kao poštovalac lika i dela Uveta Boleta trebalo da radim?

[Lord Kufer]

Emocije su izvor nasilja...
Emocionalna inteligencija - izvor ratova 

[mac]

Da je Ghoul rekao samo "ne sviđa mi se Avatar" niko mu ne bi "A" rekao. Evo sličnog primera: koja je razlika između iskaza "ne sviđa mi se tvoja žena" i "tvoja žena je gnusobna greška prirode"?

[Lord Kufer]

Nema bitne razlike, samo je veća verovatnoća da će reči "gnusoba" i "greška prirode" naići na unapred pripremljenu reakciju.

[Le Samourai]

Da je Ghoul rekao samo "ne sviđa mi se Avatar" niko mu ne bi "A" rekao. Evo sličnog primera: koja je razlika između iskaza "ne sviđa mi se tvoja žena" i "tvoja žena je gnusobna greška prirode"?

Ali Avatar, suprotno verovanjima, nije ljudsko bice sa emocijama koje bi trebalo uzimati u obzir.

[Lord Kufer]

Ne reaguju ljudi nego emocije. One su mehanizam, a ljudi ih trpe.