Review: "AVATAR" is the Best Picture of 2009

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 14 (of 2009) by Leroy Douresseaux

Avatar (2009)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: USA/Germany/France
Running time: 162 minutes (2 hours, 42 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language, and some smoking
WRITER/DIRECTOR: James Cameron
PRODUCERS: James Cameron and Jon Landau
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Mauro Fiore (D.o.P.)
EDITORS: James Cameron, John Refoua, and Stephen Rivkin
Academy Award winner

SCI-FI/FANTASY/ACTION/ADVENTURE/DRAMA/WAR with elements or romance

Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Wes Studi, Laz Alonzo, Dileep Rao, and Matt Gerald

Because he has directed such Oscar-winning films as The Abyss (1989), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and Titanic (1997), I believe that James Cameron is one of the few directors who, using whatever advances in film technology available, can make any kind of movie and always make it a good movie. [Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are the other two.] Cameron has even developed advancements in film technology, and that makes me wonder if anyone other than he could have created the new film, Avatar.

Avatar is everything good that you have heard about it and more. Cameron has cast a titanic spell of movie magic that will immerse the viewer in an adventure that pits eco-harmonious blue warriors against a mechanized, imperial war machine. The center of Avatar, however, is a surprisingly simply story about an alien warrior who fights not for his own world, but for the world of the woman he loves.

Avatar takes place in 2154, a time when Earth has run out of oil. A moon called Pandora (one of many moons orbiting a giant gas planet) has a rare mineral called Unobtainium, which is the key to solving Earth’s energy problems. This alien world materializes through the eyes of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic former Marine. Even with his body broken and being confined to a wheelchair, Jake’s DNA makes him useful.

The RDA corporation recruits Jake to travel light years to the human outpost on Pandora, where it is mining Unobtainium. Because humans cannot breathe Pandora’s atmosphere, a group of scientists and researchers, led by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), have created the Avatar Program, in which human “drivers” have their consciousness linked to Avatars. An Avatar is a remotely-controlled biological body that can breathe the lethal air. These Avatars are genetically engineered hybrids of human DNA mixed with DNA from the natives of Pandora, a humanoid race called the Na'vi. The Na’vi are 10-feet tall, with tails, bones reinforced with naturally occurring carbon fiber, and bioluminescent blue skin. They live in Hometree, a gigantic tree that sits on top of the largest deposit of Unobtainium on Pandora. RDA Administrator Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) wants the Na’vi to relocate, but they have fiercely resisted.

Reborn in his Avatar form, Jake can walk again. He is given a mission to infiltrate the Na'vi. A beautiful Na'vi female, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), saves Jake’s life and also witnesses a sign that makes her think that Jake is special. Neytiri convinces her clan to take Jake into the tribe, the Omaticaya. However, the chief charges Neytiri with teaching Jake to become one of them, which involves many tests and adventures. Jake’s relationship with his reluctant teacher deepens, and he learns to respect the Na'vi’s way of life. When Selfridge becomes impatient and moves to force the Na’vi out, Jake must decide whose side he will take.

Watching Avatar, with its world of phantasmagorical creatures and plants, one cannot help but marvel at the technology used to create this film, but the audience shouldn’t be fooled by this panorama of color and movement into focusing solely on the marvels of scientific cinema. Avatar is indeed an extraordinary story, one that recalls Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves. In Wolves, a solider wounded in spirit finds healing amongst a Native American Indian tribe, and then sheds his skin (his military uniform), becoming one of the tribe. In Avatar, a marine wounded in body, Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully, sheds his body for a new one, but it is his soul that is transformed.

Like Dances with Wolves, Avatar has a romance that is the heart of the story. Behind the CGI that created so many of the things we see on screen and past the motion-capture and performance capture that created the Na’vi, Jake Sully meets Zoe Saldana’s Neytiri and practically everything that is Avatar hinges on their love story. The narrative offers messages in support of environmental conservation and biodiversity against the cold, insatiable hunger of imperialism. This gives Avatar plenty of dramatic conflict, but as usual, Cameron finds the human center of his own technological, cinematic spectaculars. There was the mother-daughter bond in Aliens and the star-crossed lovers of Titanic. Now, warrior boy meets sexy tribal princess and technical virtuosity has a heart. Cameron makes you feel what his characters feel – the joy, the anger, the sorrow, the chills, and, when the battle begins, all the thrills. Avatar may be a monumental achievement, but it is also a fantastic tale.

10 of 10

Monday, December 28, 2009

NOTES:
2010 Academy Awards: 3 wins: “Best Achievement in Art Direction” (Rick Carter-art director, Robert Stromberg-art director, and Kim Sinclair-set decorator), “Best Achievement in Cinematography” (Mauro Fiore), and “Best Achievement in Visual Effects” (Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, and Richard Baneham, and Andy Jones); 6 nominations: “Best Motion Picture of the Year” (James Cameron and Jon Landau), “Best Achievement in Directing” (James Cameron) “Best Achievement in Editing” (Stephen E. Rivkin, John Refoua, and James Cameron), “Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score” (James Horner), “Best Achievement in Sound” (Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson, and Tony Johnson), and “Best Achievement in Sound Editing” (Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle)

2010 BAFTA Awards: 2 wins: “Best Production Design” (Rick Carter, Robert Stromberg, and Kim Sinclair) and “Best Special Visual Effects” (Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham, and Andy Jones); 6 nominations: “Best Cinematography” (Mauro Fiore), “Best Director” (James Cameron), “Best Editing” (Stephen E. Rivkin, John Refoua, and James Cameron), “Best Film” (James Cameron and Jon Landau), “Best Music” (James Horner), and “Best Sound” (Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson, Tony Johnson, and Addison Teague)

2010 Black Reel Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Supporting Actress: (Zoe Saldana)

2010 Golden Globes: 2 wins: “Best Director - Motion Picture” (James Cameron) and “Best Motion Picture – Drama;” 2 nominations: “Best Original Score - Motion Picture” (James Horner) and “Best Original Song - Motion Picture” (James Horner, Simon Franglen, and Kuk Harrell for the song "I See You")

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Negromancer Says Hello to August

Welcome to Negromancer, the rebirth of my former movie review website as a movie review and movie news blog. I’m Leroy Douresseaux, and I also blog at http://ireadsyou.blogspot.com/ and write for the Comic Book Bin, which has apps for the iPhone and Palm smart phones.

All images appearing on this blog are © copyright and/or trademark their respective owners.

The Daze of Love in (500) Days of Summer

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 59 (of 2010) by Leroy Douresseaux


(500) Days of Summer (2009)
Running time: 95 minutes (1 hour, 35 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for sexual material and dialogue
DIRECTOR: Marc Webb
WRITERS: Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber
PRODUCERS: Mason Novick, Jessica Tuchinsky, Mark Waters, and Steven J. Wolfe
CINEMATOGRAHER: Eric Steelberg (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Alan Edward Bell
Golden Globe nominee

ROMANCE/DRAMA/COMEDY

Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Geoffrey Arend, Chloe Moretz, Matthew Gray Gubler, Clark Gregg, Patricia Belcher, Rachel Boston, Minka Kelly, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Richard McGonagle (narrator)

(500) Days of Summer is an uncommon romance. It is certainly sweet, whimsical, and charming, but not in a syrupy way. (500) Days of Summer isn’t a “chick flick.” It’s the kind of unique love story that crosses age and gender lines0 to capture imaginations and maybe even hearts.

The film focuses on Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a trained architect who works as a writer at a Los Angeles greeting card company. He is also a young man who believes in that one-of-a-kind love – the soul mate – that person destined to be his one and only. So when this hopeless romantic meets his boss’ new assistant, Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel), the fuse is lit and it’s Day 1 of Summer. Tom is so certain that he has found the woman with whom he will spend the rest of his life.

Problem is, Summer doesn’t believe in destiny – not at all, which doesn’t stop Tom from going after this lovely, witty, intelligent woman. Still, Tom and Summer begin to date, although she tells him that she does not believe in true love and does not want a boyfriend. When Summer suddenly dumps him, around Day 290, Tom begins to sift through the days they spent together, looking for clues as to what went wrong as he heads towards Day 500 and a revelation.

(500) Days of Summer uses a nonlinear narrative to tell the story, jumping backward and forward over the 500-day span of Tom and Summer’s relationship. I don’t know if that really does anything for the film. It feels more like a gimmick than a storytelling structure that would actually benefit the story. In fact, moving about in time so much causes the middle of this film to dry up to the point of being catastrophically dull.

What sets (500) Days of Summer apart from standard movie love stories is the role reversal. This time it is the male character, Tom, who is clingy and smitten and believes in true love, a role usually assigned to the female character. Summer is more like the guy character found in the typical romantic comedy (or rom-com). She’s doesn’t buy into destiny and the boyfriend-girlfriend dating game. Summer just wants to have fun with no strings attached and no commitment – a trait usually applied to shallow male characters.

I think that having the guy character be so lovelorn and infatuated is a novel idea, but having that character performed by a talented actor like Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes him more than just a novelty. Gordon-Levitt gives Tom richness and depth so that he is more than just charming and sweet. A love-struck fool, he is determined to grapple with the issues of love and romance in a way that will not always give him a satisfactory outcome.

Sadly, Summer is not as well developed as Tom, and the character is more of a supporting player. Luckily Zooey Deschanel is pitch perfect in her usual deadpan way, and her brooding turn as Summer makes the character more than the shallow creature that the screenplay seems to think Summer she should be. Deschanel has a way of surprising us in the way she makes Summer’s emotional displays, her smiles and frowns, seem unexpected and… well, delightfully surprising.

I cannot really call (500) Days of Summer a romantic comedy because, for one thing, it is even more a drama than it is a comedy. Secondly, because Tom’s relationship with Summer is also an arc in which Tom learns a lot, (500) Days of Summer is like a coming-of-age story. Its unique spin on love-at-first-sight is presented in a way that will appeal even to audiences who avoid romantic comedies and love stories. Any way you look at it, (500) Days of Summer may just leave a smile on your face.

7 of 10
B+

NOTES:
2010 Golden Globes: 2 nominations: “Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy” and “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy” (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)

Saturday, July 31, 2010

VIZ Cinema to Screen Hiroshima Doc

VIZ CINEMA PRESENTS THE POIGNANT DOCUMENTARY WHITE LIGHT / BLACK RAIN TO COMMEMORATE THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ATOMIC BOMBINGS OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI

Academy Award Winning Director Steven Okazaki Captures Emotional Stories Of Extraordinary Resilience

Film Premiere To Present A Special Q & A Session With Survivors And The Friends Of Hibakusha Organization

VIZ Cinema, the nation’s only movie theatre dedicated to Japanese film, is proud to present a screening on August 6th and 7th of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Okazaki’s White Light / Black Rain, a moving documentary about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought about the end of World War II.

Tickets are now available to attend a special Premiere Event for White Light / Black Rain on Friday, August 6th at 7:00pm that will also include a Q&A session with several survivors and the Friends of Hibakusha, a San Francisco organization dedicated to supporting U.S. citizens and Japanese-American survivors of radiation exposure from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A portion of ticket sales will be donated directly to the Friends of Hibakusha.

Tickets for the event are $15.00 and are now available for purchase online at the NEW PEOPLE / VIZ Cinema web site at: www.vizcinema.com. General admission tickets for the screening on Saturday, August 7th (no reception or Q&A) are $10.00. No discounts apply.

After 60 years, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th, 1945, continue to inspire argument, denial and myth. White Light / Black Rain provides a detailed examination of the bombings and the aftermath and features interviews with fourteen atomic bomb survivors (known as hibakusha), many who have never spoken publicly before, as well as four Americans intimately involved in the bombings. While Japan would go on to emerge as a leading global economic power in the wake of World War II, the country’s psyche would remain forever altered by these terrible events. Through a succession of riveting personal accounts, the film reveals the unimaginable destructive power of atomic weapons, the inconceivable suffering, and extraordinary human resilience of the survivors.

Trailers, screening times and more information available at: www.vizcinema.com.

Director/filmmaker and third generation Japanese American Steven Okazaki has explored the Japanese American experience extensively through a variety of acclaimed documentaries. He has received a Peabody Award and been nominated for four Academy Awards and won an Oscar in 1991 for his documentary Days of Waiting: The Life & Art of Estelle Ishigo. He also was a co-recipient of the 2008 "Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking" Primetime Emmy Award for White Light / Black Rain. Okazaki is based in San Francisco, CA.

VIZ Cinema is the nation’s only movie theatre devoted exclusively to Japanese film and anime. The 143-seat subterranean theatre is located in the basement of the NEW PEOPLE building and features plush seating, digital as well as 35mm projection, and a THX®-certified sound system.


About NEW PEOPLE
NEW PEOPLE offers the latest films, art, fashion and retail brands from Japan and is the creative vision of the J-Pop Center Project and VIZ Pictures, a distributor and producer of Japanese live action film. Located at 1746 Post Street, the 20,000 square foot structure features a striking 3-floor transparent glass façade that frames a fun and exotic new environment to engage the imagination into the 21st Century. A dedicated web site is also now available at: www.NewPeopleWorld.com.

Review: "Eternal Sunshine" is a Spotless Delight

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 196 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Running time: 108 minutes (1 hour, 48 minutes)
MPAA – R for language, some drug and sexual content
DIRECTOR: Michael Gondry
WRITERS: Charlie Kaufman; based upon a story by Charlie Kaufman, Michael Gondry, and Pierre Bismuth
PRODUCERS: Anthony Bregman and Steve Golin
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Ellen Kuras
EDITOR: Valdìs Óskarsdóttir
Academy Award winner

DRAMA/ROMANCE/SCI-FI with elements of comedy

Starring: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, and Tom Wilkinson

Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) has just had a really bad break up with his girlfriend, Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet), but there is still more bad news. Clementine has undergone a psychiatrist’s (Tom Wilkinson) experimental procedure in which all her memories of Joel were removed. Joel is frustrated by the fact that he still loves Clementine deeply, although she often irritates him greatly, so he undergoes the same procedure to erase his memories of her. The film then moves into Joel’s mind as the setting, and the procedure works backwards in time, removing the most recent memories first. So we see a memory, watch as it fades or is destroyed, and Joel’s mind moves backwards to the next oldest memory before that one is likewise scragged. Midway through the process, Joel decides realizes how much he still loves Clementine and doesn’t want to lose his memories of her. He begins to move parts of his time with her into places of his memory where she doesn’t belong, like his childhood. That only alters his other memories, and as his mind travels farther back in time, he wonders if he’ll retain any memories of Clementine when he awakens in the morning and the procedure has finished.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is another brilliant screenplay from the mind of Charlie Kaufman, author of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. As usual, his scripts are directed by excellent filmmakers; in this instance, the director is Michael Gondry, known for his work directing music videos for Björk and The Chemical Brothers. Gondry expertly directs the inspired madness of Kaufman’s script. The film, for all its surreal moments and shifts both in “real time” and dream time,” makes sense. Gondry also weaves out of this a poignant and genuinely heartfelt romantic drama.

The performances in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind range from great to pretty good. This is Jim Carrey’s best work and one of the few times he completely looses the clown and turns his creative energy and his longing for acceptance into a fierce, dramatic performance worthy of standing with the best “serious” actors. Kate Winslet is good…of course, and she does a better working class or ordinary American woman than most American actresses her age. The supporting roles are great with Kirsten Dunst making the most of a small part, but Tom Wilkinson is either a bit too aloof or too distant, or maybe the script didn’t give him enough.

At times, the film seems like a nightmare from the mind of the late, great sci-fi author and writer of speculative and mind-bending fiction, Philip K. Dick. In fact, Eternal Sunshine has a better PKD flavor than the films allegedly adapted from Dick’s books and short fiction. All things aside, this is excellent cinema. The time shifts and surrealism in Charlie Kaufman’s screenplays are practical and move the narrative similar to the way Quentin Tarantino does with his films. As of the closing days of September 2004, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the best film of the year.

10 of 10

NOTES:
2005 Academy Awards: 1 win “Best Writing, Original Screenplay” (Charlie Kaufman-screenplay/story, Michel Gondry-story, and Pierre Bismuth-story); 1 nominations: “Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role” (Kate Winslet)

2005 BAFTA Awards: 2 wins: “Best Editing” (Valdís Óskarsdóttir) and “Best Screenplay – Original” (Charlie Kaufman); 4 nominations: “Best Film” (Steve Golin and Anthony Bregman), “Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role” (Jim Carrey), “Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role” (Kate Winslet), and “David Lean Award for Direction” (Michel Gondry)

2005 Golden Globes: 4 nominations: “Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy,” “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy” (Jim Carrey), “Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy” (Kate Winslet), “Best Screenplay - Motion Picture” (Charlie Kaufman)

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Twilight's Edi Gathegi Cast in "X-Men: First Class"

From AOL Black Voices' "BV on Movies" blog:  Kenyan-born actor Edi Gathegi who played the vampire Laurent in Twilight and Twilight Saga: New Moon has signed on to "X-Men: First Class," the upcoming X-Men movie that looks back at the early days of the X-Men.  The 31-year old Gathegi will reportedly play Armando Munoz, the mutant also known as "Darwin."

The film is being directed by Matthew Vaughn and stars James McAvoy as Charles Xavier, Michael Fassbender as Erik Lensherr, Alice Eve as Emma Frost, Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy, also known as Beast, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, Caleb Landry Jones as Banshee, Lucas Till as Havok, and Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw.  20th Century Fox will release the film on June 3, 2011.

Remembering Harvey Pekar

One of my favorite comic book people, comic book writer and one-time publisher Harvey Pekar, died July 12th. Pekar’s best known work is American Splendor, a series of autobiographical comic books that Pekar began publishing in 1976. Dark Horse Comics published American Splendor beginning in 1993 with issue 17. DC Comics, under its Vertigo imprint, published the last 8 issues. There were 39 American Splendor comic book issues published over a 32 year period.

Considered an underground comic book, American Splendor was mostly autobiographical, and Pekar used the comic book to chronicle his everyday life, including his job as a file clerk at a Veteran’s Administration hospital and his relationships with coworkers and patients. Pekar wrote the stories, but could not draw, so, over the years, a number of comic book artists drew the stories. The most famous is legendary Underground Comics artist, Robert Crumb (or R. Crumb), a long time friend of Pekar’s. Among the other American Splendor artists were Gary Dumm, Gregory Budgett, David Collier, and Frank Stack (Our Cancer Year).

Some will remember Pekar for a number of appearances that he made on the old Late Night with David Letterman show in the late 1980s. American Splendor was also adapted into a 2003 Academy Award-nominated film of the same name. Actor Paul Giamatti portrayed Pekar, but Pekar also appeared in the film as himself.

I first discovered Pekar in the mid-1980s, only a couple of years after discovering that there was such a thing as a comic book shop. I still have a weathered copy of the first American Splendor book collection, American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar, which Doubleday published in 1986 under its “Dolphin” imprint.

Harvey Lawrence Pekar was born on October 8, 1939 to Polish immigrant parents. Apparently, Pekar lived his entire life in Cleveland, OH, except for his time in the U.S. Navy. Pekar was 70 years old. Rest in peace.

Pekar's death is noted in this blog entry at Cleveland.com that also talks about his life and work.

There are Wikipedia entries for Pekar and American Splendor.

Smith Magazine has The Pekar Project.

My review of American Splendor is here.