Avatar

So as promised I got the star rating for Avatar up on Saturday. However, I thought that a little more discussion about it was in order.

As far as this film representing the next leap forward technologically in film, I can tell you unequivocally that you can believe the hype. It is hands down the most amazing looking film I've ever seen. Cameron has managed to create a living, breathing world in a way that has never been done before in the history of film. And he has done it, presumably, almost exclusively with CGI. And the fact that I say "presumably" is itself a remarkable statement. Because I simply can't tell. There are things I saw which I have no possible idea how they would have been created without CGI, but there's no "dead giveaway" that makes me able to say for sure that it is. I think that Cameron learned (which, sadly, George Lucas did not) that most of the time where you run into trouble with CGI is when you have CGI characters present with non-CGI ones. He sidesteps this by basically making everything (and everyone) CGI. I counted only a very small handful of scenes where CGI and non-CGI characters were present in the same shot, and the shots were either so brief or they were so laden with other effects that your eyes aren't drawn to the differences. Ccompare this with, for example, the scene near the beginning of The Phantom Menace when we first meet Anakin. Anakin's master is all CGI and we don't believe for a moment that he's actually in the shot with the actors.

It only took me about 20 minutes into the film to realize that it was a guaranteed Oscar winner. Seriously, if it doesn't win Best Visual Effects they should just do away with the award. Sorry Star Trek, looks like you picked a bad year to come out.

Basically the movie looks so amazing that even if everytime a character had opened their mouths to speak chimp noises came out instead it still would have been a 4/5 star movie. So it should have been a no-brainer for it to earn 5 stars. So why only 4.5? Well, the story and dialogue are quite underwhelming. The story (in its largely spoiler-free form) is basically The Last Samurai meets The Secret of Mana. It's a serviceable story and it's never boring but it also abounds with cliches. I can totally forgive that, because the look of the film is so spectacular that in a way it's nice to be in the confines of a familiar story. You can feel free to look around and admire all the little details (and believe me there are a TON) without having to worry about getting lost. The dialogue, however, is another story. There's at least a half dozen examples where one character says to another character something that the other character would obviously already have known and it's clear that the only point is to provide expository dialogue. It just feels very unnatural. Also, there is just no form of subtlety here at all. As just one point that isn't a spoiler of any consequence but just summarizes it perfectly, the humans on the planet are mining for a rare mineral. And rather than just name it something that already exists, the writers decide to invent a new one and the name they choose is "unobtainium". The film is unabashedly pro-environmentalism and anti-war. There's nothing wrong with that but, again, some form of subtlety would be nice. The worst part is that it's unnecessary; the themes would have come through just fine without several characters basically outright stating them. It feels dumbed down, and maybe that's the point. All in all, it's certainly not something that ruins the movie but it is a detraction. I just wish they'd spent maybe $2-3 million less on the effects and invested in a decent rewrite of the dialogue.

Overall, the movie is just what it promises to be: a true cinematic experience. If you are thinking that you will eventually see it, do yourself a favor and see it the way it was meant to be seen: on an IMAX. The 3-D is awesome but not compulsory, in my opinion, but the large screen is. I don't know how the film will hold up once it gets to Blu-Ray but I guarantee you anyone that pops it in for the first time is going to say "wow, this would have been amazing to see on a huge screen." Don't be that guy (or girl).

I Am S-M-R-T

So, I have been playing a lot of online poker recently. And surprisingly enough, I have been doing well for a change. I bought in for $105 over the Thanksgiving week and through last weekend I had cashed out $300. But I started to feel a little bored with it and thought "you know what? For once in my life how about cashing out while you're still doing alright and before you get to the point where you've suffered 12 bad beats in a row and are vowing never to play online again?" So on Wednesday night I cashed out $100 of the $109 left in my account and thought "ok, I'll just screw around with this last $9 and then I'll take a break for a while." So that's what I did. And here's where the smartness comes in. At 10:00 at night on Wednesday I decide to enter a $3.30 tournament with 865 players. And I start doing really well. But at about 11:30 I start doing the math and realizing that with 250 players still left even in the best case scenario I'm going to be there a while. But what can I do? I'm certainly not going to just give up and go to bed. So I keep playing and playing. We get down to 45 players left and I'm actually the chip leader - but it's 1:30. Finally, I lose a couple bad hands and get crippled and then the final blow comes when I flop top pair (Jacks) and push only to run into pocket Aces. I'm out. It's 2:25. Final finish: 20th place. My payout? $8.54. Yep, I missed out on about 4 extra hours of sleep for less than $10. To those of you who are single (or at least don't have kids) that's probably not that big of a deal but let me assure you that when you are the parent of a 3-month-old sleep becomes quite precious indeed. It's sure as hell worth more than $2.14/hour. And of course, I just turned around last night and lost the remaining $14 in my account so really it was all for nothing. Oh well, at least I now really will be done for a while and I still did turn a profit (again, for now).

Leaving work in less than an hour to see Avatar. I'll have at least my star rating of it up by tomorrow (I know you all can't wait). Next week I am in the office on Monday, working from home on Tuesday, and then have the rest of the week off. As much as I will miss Christmas in Texas, it will be nice to just have 5 days off and not have to travel anywhere farther than Aurora and Tinley.

For you sports (and especially Cubs) fans out there, it was just reported that the Cubs finally traded Milton Bradley; and no, it wasn't for The Parker Brothers. It was for Carlos Silva, who is arguably the worst starting pitcher in MLB right now. The worst part about all of it is that I now can no longer make fun of the Sox for trading for Juan Pierre. My only hope is that during the Crosstown Classic next year I get to see Pierre bat against Silva. I'd like to know what happens when a player who specializes in hitting very week ground balls to second meets a pitcher who specializes in giving up towering home runs?

Playing Catch-Up Again

So as you might be able to tell if you look to the right side of this page, I've continued my recent kick of watching lots of movies (or at least lots more than I have in some time). And the result has been rather underwhelming. While I didn't expect the likes of Terminator and Angels & Demons to wow me, I had high hopes for Up in the Air. And while it was "good", I actually despised the ending so much that it seriously crippled my appreciation for the movie as a whole. Without giving anything away, it has one of those endings which make you re-examine earlier events in the film and realize that they don't make a whole lot of sense. Very disappointing. Still, given that as of this morning it got nominated for 6 Golden Globes (including Best Picture) I appear to be in the minority. As a side note, it was nice to see that my 2 favorite films so far this year (Inglorious Basterds and 500 Days of Summer) were also nominated for Best Picture.

I've got tickets to see Avatar in 3-D at the Navy Pier Imax on Friday. I initially bought tickets to it with the idea that it would be a fun, mindless sci-fi action movie. Now, however, after seeing Ebert give it his most glowing review ever, IGN come pretty close to that as well, and it too getting a Best Picture Golden Globe nomination, I would have to say that my expectations have definitely been raised. I can't really argue with the people who say that the previews do not look promising, but my response is this: please name me one feature film James Cameron has directed that isn't good (at least in the last 25 years)?

I'm still following the health care debate closely but I don't even really know where to start with that. Four months ago I wrote (of Democrats) "if you sit there and worry about every opinion poll and detrimentally alter the bill to fit the popular mood of the hour, you've got a good chance of ending up with a spectacularly crappy bill. And that's what'll get you killed in the election next year." Sadly, this looks to be exactly the route that they are following. I've seen the focus since that time shift dramatically from "we need to pass sweeping health reform that will ensure that every American is covered and that costs are kept down" to "we need to do everything in our power to pass something so it doesn't look like we've just wasted an entire year." Other than the actual Senators currently out pushing it, I don't know a single person that likes the current Senate bill (though, since it seems to change almost daily, I'm not even positive what the "current" Senate bill incarnation is).

Ironically, about the only that Republican-leaning and Democrat-leaning voters can agree on these days is that this bill is terrible. If they pass it in its current form, it will basically achieve nothing they set out to do other than (maybe) insuring a few more uninsured. It will do nothing to increase competition or keep costs from sky-rocketing, and they didn't even make an attempt at litigation reform. And even for the extra people who will be covered, with the amount that the bill's going to cost it will almost undoubtedly end up being far cheaper if the government just sent those people a check every year for the rest of their life and told them to buy their own insurance from a private insurer. And that's before they end up adding all the inevitable pork that will go in via the amendments that will be necessary in order to get this thing passed. As low as my expectations always are for the Democrats to be unified when they control Congress, I really stand in awe of their ineptitude right now. It reminds me of watching the Bears this season. You can learn to take the losses. There's no shame in just flat-out getting beat. What is so hard to swallow is when you don't get beat; you beat yourselves. I am constantly reminded of the Lewis Black joke: "The Democratic party is a party of no ideas, and the Republican party is a party of bad ideas. So you got the Republican standing up saying 'I've got a really bad idea' and the Democrat stands up and says 'and I know how to make it even worse'." Or, to paraphrase Lyle Lanley, "Y'know, a Democrat in power is a little like a mule with a spinning wheel. No one knows how he got it and danged if he knows how to use it."

Back to the Cold

So anyone who has been following Christy's blog knows that we just got back from spending Thanksgiving in Houston. It was a great trip and we did a lot of relaxing but both Christy and I managed to catch a cold on our last day there and combined with the turn in weather it has made the adjustment back a little more difficult than usual.

A few people have asked me for my opinion on the "climate-gate" scandal. I think that this guy sums it up for me pretty well. If you don't feel like reading that article, the gist is that I think it's an embarrassment and I am a staunch believer that scientific dissent should never be bullied or silenced for political, theological, or ideological purposes. But I think the outrage has been severely misdirected. The ire should be reserved for the individuals involved in the e-mails. Instead it seems to be being used to suggest that the whole case for climate change has now somehow been undermined, and that's just not true. The fundamental evidence behind climate change being real and man-made remains as strong today as it did 2 weeks ago, and nothing I've seen in any of the e-mails changes that one bit. Yes, there are admissions of things that are unknown and unexplained, but that is hardly a smoking gun. Every year scientists find out new pieces of information on evolution and make corrections to prior assumptions, but each revision does nothing to call into question the initial theory put forth by Darwin 150 years ago. Creationists like to leap on every change and reside in the margins of what is still not known to "prove" that evolution is incorrect, but that is just a failure in understanding the scientific process. Something as complex as evolution or climate change is unlikely to ever be modeled to the point of 100% accuracy, but it is not necessary to achieve that level to draw the conclusion that they are correct. Still, again, that does not excuse a lot of the bullying and dismissive tone and tactics in the e-mail. Like it or not, one of the consequences of free speech is allowing others to put forth misinformation and things you don't agree with. History has proven that where science is concerned the facts always win out in the end, even if it takes a lot longer than some people are comfortable with.

Not much else going on right now. I updated my reviews with a few more movies I've seen. I was surprised how much I enjoyed Adventureland; I highly recommend it. The new Christmas Carol, while decent, really just made me want to go home and watch the Muppet version, which I dutifully did on Tuesday. I'm also finally getting around to reading again. Currently, I'm making my way through What the Dog Saw . . . and Other Adventures; the new book by Malcolm Gladwell (of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers fame). This book is actually just a collection of articles he has written for The New Yorker over the years but it is just as compelling as his other books, even if it doesn't have a single common theme like his other books. At about 20 pages per story, they are long enough to be meaty and substantive but also short enough to be accessible for people who don't like making a commitment to reading 400+ pages.