Avatar: Cinematic History, 'Matrix for Hippies'

Avatar just set a new standard for blockbuster movies. Before, 3D was a fun frill. Some movies happened to be filmed in 3D. An animated film might throw a ball in your face. But Avatar is a 3D movie, fundamentally. From the numerous flight scenes to the battles to the crowd shots, 3D is built into the way the movie is made. Immersive" is a term I've heard, and it holds.

Moreover, the computer imagery is integrated with the live-action filming in a nearly seamless way. There might have been a couple brief scenes where I noticed the line between the "real" world and computer graphics. And this film creates a new race of humanoids in addition to putting people into all sorts of cool gadgets. Gone is the clunky, awkward, somewhat spooky imagery of movies like Polar Express. Robert Zemeckis looks like he belongs to the previous millennium. Avatar creates a beautiful, stunning world.

If you're going to see Avatar, then, there's no use waiting for the DVD. See it in all its glory, in 3D, preferably on an IMAX screen. Unlike most films, it's actually worth the extra money.

Avatar also brings good news to theaters. With the expansion of large, high-definition televisions and blu-ray movie releases, the big screen needs something extra to keep up. Avatar offers that. (Will movie-disc releases start selling in 3D, and will families start collecting 3D glasses for all?)

Only days ago I swore I would never watch Avatar, after reading a summary of its story. But I started getting mostly-positive feedback from people I trust. Once I decided to see it, I saw it twice in a day.

The great irony of the movie, as others have noted, is that its cinematic technique, which epitomizes the union of humanity and technology, carries an anti-technology theme in its story.

What follows below reveals significant elements of the movie's plot.

The basic story is that a human corporation sends a mission to Pandora to mine the substance unobtanium (or "unobtainiam"). (Corporate bad guy: there's a new one for Hollywood.) The corporation funds a scientific venture to send human-controlled avatars -- alien bodies linked to the minds of humans -- to make-nice with the locals. When the miners, backed by hired military guns, want to relocate the locals, the scientists rebel and join the aliens to send the miners packing.

The movie actually offers three stories: a voyage of personal adventure and discovery, the struggle of the locals to protect their homes, and the environmentalist theme.

To me, the most compelling part of the movie is the personal adventure of the hero, Jake Sully, who had lost the use of his legs while on a military expedition earthside. His twin brother, a scientist for whom an avatar was created, dies, so the corporation funding the venture hires Sully to fill the role. (The avatars are keyed to the biology of a particular person, which is why the twin can step in.) Sully spends several years in a cryogenic state during travel, then wheels out onto an alien world, where he gets a new life (and new legs) in his avatar.

Sully explores this new world, naturally, with the beautiful daughter of the tribe's first couple, and the love story is nicely done. (Zoe Saldana scored huge with the role following her stint aboard the Enterprise.)

James Cameron cleverly created a lower-gravity world inhabited by very-resilient aliens, making possible the amazing aerial scenes. It is a world in which the tall, fit aliens ride dragons and bound around treetops in a way that would make Tarzan envious. Apparently unobtanium keeps a range of gigantic islands floating; they look spectacular on screen.

Also a joy is Sully's budding relationship with the hard-ass leader of the avatar program, Dr. Grace Augustine. The two actors, Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver, create a sparkling relationship that's great fun to watch. (Indeed, the entire cast is great.) The "adventure" story, then, is beautifully done.

The "home defense" story has aptly been compared to the Kelo case. Mean guys come to destroy your home; you kick their ass. Good, basic story, and it offers Sully a chance to play the hero and win back his girl (not to mention ride the baddest dragon in the skies).

I'll need to shift into sarcasm mode to explain the environmentalist aspects of the story, which descend to the frankly ridiculous. It often feels like Cameron hired a starry-eyed, catch-phrasing eighth-grader to help him write the script.

Just by coincidence, this highly valuable substance, unobtanium -- the uses for which are never mentioned in the film but which apparently is a superconductor -- is located only on the only other world in the entire universe known to be inhabited. (Pandora is a moon.) I didn't count the number of other moons and nearby celestial bodies, but apparently unobtanium is not located on any of those, either, just the single moon of Pandora. According to one script treatment, unobtanium is "unique to Pandora." How the evil corporation discovered unobtanium and its uses in the first place, then, escapes me.

By another astounding coincidence, on the entire moon of Pandora, home of some fifteen clans, each of which apparently contains a few thousand members at most -- so we're talking about a miniscule total population -- the highest concentration of unobtanium on the entire moon is found -- you guessed it -- right under the treehouse of our favorite clan.

Nevermind the fact that this clashes with the apparently large quantities of unobtanium found in the floating islands. According to the script treatment, the miners are supposed to be after the floating islands, which are sacred to the locals. Apparently Cameron didn't think it would be dramatic enough to just make off with a floating island; the corporation had to destroy the giant treehouse instead.

So let's recap. According to the movie:
* Unobtanium is found (in mineable quantities) only on Pandora, a single moon in the entire known universe.
* It is cheaper to send hundreds of people across space in cryogenic storage, complete with gigantic space ships and lots of military equipment, and to finance technology for the complete transference of human minds into test-tube-grown aliens, than it is to synthesize the substance.
* Even though we currently know of no moon in the entire universe that hosts life of any kind, this particular moon does.
* Not only does Pandora host life, but it hosts intelligent humanoids (who happen to look fantastic in jungle-wear).
* Even though there is an entire range of gigantic floating islands of unobtanium, in addition to the surface of a large and sparsely-populated moon, far and away the best place to mine the substance is directly under the village of the local clan.

So, in other words, the premise for the entire movie is completely unbelievable. Perhaps "unobtanium" more aptly describes the otherwise-unobtainable plot elements pulled from Cameron's behind.

Let us move on to the the Noble Savage motif. Amazingly, the locals have managed to find a gigantic tree just perfect for housing an entire village. Moreover, despite no evidence of agricultural activity, the tribe has managed to settle in just one place. Unlike settled but primitive tribes of our planet, they have not exhausted the local firewood supply or the game animals. It is a veritable Garden of Eden, Pandora.

Another amazing thing about the tribe is that its youth grow up to be great warriors, even though, apparently, they never actually fight anybody (except the evil humans!), for the Pandorans are a peaceful lot. If there has been warfare among the fifteen (or so) tribes, there is no mention of it in the movie.

Another amazing fact: while initiation rites of tribes on our planet have often involved human sacrifice and bloody beatings, on Pandora when you get all grown up you get to climb up into the floating islands and pick out your very own pet dragon to ride. Granted, this process can be a little tricky, but, hey, pet dragon!

As Sully suggests, the evil humans have absolutely nothing, no form of technology whatsoever, that the locals might have any interest in. Anything beyond the simple life of eating wild fruit, hunting wild game with bows and arrows, and (don't forget!) riding dragons would only detract from the idyllic Pandoran lifestyle. The Pandorans don't want computers, telecommunications, surgical instruments, metal needles or cooking pots or arrowheads, energy production (for the Pandoran climate is always perfectly temperate), and so on.

It would be an interesting exercise to calculate the total amount of gasoline burned, coal burned, and materials mined in the production and distribution of Avatar. Include all the facilities, all the gear, all the trips, all the maintenance of stars and personnel, all the theaters and their heating, all the car trips taken to watch the movie, and so on. Compare that to the similarly-figured costs of an average American lifespan, and that will tell you about how seriously James Cameron takes his own environmentalist dogma.

The Gaia theme is actually more interesting as science-fiction. On our planet, the notion that the earth itself is a living or conscious entity is fanciful, pseudo-religious environmentalism. Avatar asks, what if the earth really were alive? Pandora is alive, or at least its network of interconnected tree roots form a vast organism that functions something like a brain.

Even more interesting: the local people can "jack in" to this super-tree-computer through specialized fibers coming out of their hair. It's like the Matrix for hippies (as I've heard others note). In a real sense this network offers something like immortality, because part of one's essence joins with the trees. (Not explained is how the plains clan taps into treenet.)

At one point Sully notes that Evil Humans have "killed their mother [earth]," and "nothing" on earth is green anymore. Of course that prediction is nonsense. Unlike the science-fiction moon of Pandora, on earth there is no conscious super-organism consisting of tree roots. Moreover, the rise of industry and technology is quite consistent with maintaining lots of greenery and a healthy environment. A space-faring civilization would also be able to bring in resources (including energy) from off-planet and set up production facilities elsewhere in the solar system.

Still, the science-fiction idea of a conscious tree network is interesting, and it poses a special dilemma in terms of developing resources. I imagine the biological barriers to the development of such a life form are insurmountable. If it were possible, such a unique biological entity would require new philosophical thinking. Presumably a mining operation could at least operate on parts of the moon without trees, such as the plains and oceans (or the conveniently floating islands).

The upshot is that Avatar offers some really interesting science-fiction mingled with some pretty silly fantasy-fiction. It's core story is a compelling one, and it is told artfully and with innovative technology. Ultimately, what saves the film is that its method of production rebels against its affectations.

Ben Carson, A Hero of Medicine

We just rented and watched Gifted Hands, the story of neurosurgeon Ben Carson of Johns Hopkins. It's a fantastic film. In today's cinematic world of mindless action, dumb comedy, and grotesque horror, here is a different sort of movie, a movie about a true hero, someone who made medical history with his innovative brain surgeries.

Dr. Carson says in a documentary accompanying the film, "It will show the incredible power of education and what it can do for a person. How it can take a person from a life of virtually nothing to the pinnacle of one of the toughest professions in the world."

Carson grew up in poverty. Though illiterate, his mother drove her sons to educational excellence, requiring them to report on books from the library. Carson overcame struggles in school and racial prejudice to achieve an outstanding education and take the path to medicine.

The film has an obvious religious theme and emphasizes Carson's religious faith. What drives the heroic story, though, is Carson's dedication to learning and to his career goals. Well worth viewing.

Moon

If you like science fiction driven by ideas and characters' psychology, go see Moon. Don't watch the preview first, don't read any reviews, don't even read the rest of this post following this paragraph. Just go see it. You may not like all the ideas in the movie, but then at least there's something to positively dislike, a big step up from today's typical, mindless "action" film. I'll be stunned if Sam Rockwell doesn't get major awards for his fine acting. I only wish I hadn't watched the preview first, as it gives away the central story arch. My comments that follow, then, are mainly directed at those who have already seen the movie and want to evaluate it more deeply.

There's nothing truly original with the story. In its premise it reminds me a lot of Blade Runner (which already gives the game away to those who have seen that film). Isolation in space, cloning -- these are the staples of science fiction. So what I like about the movie is the skill in which these traditional motifs are carried off.

This is a film that, despite its dark and morally troubling subject matter, keeps a bright spirit, at least ultimately. I feared it would descend to psychosis and to the character's detachment from reality.

What I don't like about the film is its anti-industrial bias. Indeed, the entire premise of the story is ridiculous.

So here it goes (again, you shouldn't be reading this if you haven't seen the movie and may wish to do so). The background for the story is that a large corporation that produces energy on the moon clones a guy to service the station. The clone lives for around three years and then is incinerated, at which time a new clone takes his place, oblivious to what's going on.

The back story is just stupid. Here we have a company responsible for generating 70 percent of the Earth's energy, yet it can't afford to send a regular crew up to man the station? Moreover, we're supposed to believe that an intricate system of cloning is less costly to create and maintain than just sending up regular people for reasonable stints, presumably in pairs or teams? As the movie reveals, rocket technology has advanced considerably and must be regularly used to transport physical goods. Beyond that, as the movie makes clear, the cloning system can break down, so the company must also pay a regular crew to visit the station to solve related problems. That's supposed to save costs?

But of course that is only the minor issue. The main issue is that the company creates new people and then systematically violates their rights. They are essentially slaves. The company's behavior is wrong, and it is contrary to the principles of individual rights on which capitalism is based. So the government's legitimate responsibility would be to stop the rights violations.

And we're supposed to believe that a company could keep such a thing hidden for many years? Wouldn't anyone ask any questions about how all that energy is produced? In the end the company is exposed. In the real world, if any remnant of justice remained, everybody involved in the criminal side of the operation would then go to jail for a very long time. While obviously people like Madoff demonstrate that some people engage in criminal behavior for short-term financial gain, such behavior is severely self-destructive and unsustainable.

(A related economic issue is that no company would likely maintain such a large market share over time without political privilege. With property rights protected for homesteaders, and given diseconomies of scale, I'd expect to see a number of production companies. We do not know the political nature of the energy production in the film.)

The irony of the movie is that the new Evil Corporation is the "greenest" corporation ever to exist. It has accomplished what many environmentalists claim to desire. The entire premise driving enviro-socialism is the old Marxist canard that profit-seeking business people are inherently corrupt. As the movie illustrates, this prejudice does not dissipate merely because the business produces politically-correct goods. (Don't get me wrong; I'd love to see cost-effective, off-world energy production within my lifetime, though I don't see that as a feasible alternative to Earth-bound energy into the indefinite future.)

But many writers in their laziness pull out the Marx card any time they need to generate some malignant force. Blame it on the evil businessman. Why let the resulting artistic idiocy get in the way?

Defiance

Defiance is a film new to DVD about a group of Jewish freedom fighters who fight the Nazis and struggle to maintain a camp of survivors. Like all films about Nazi atrocities, Defiance can be tough to watch. Yet in this film the emphasis is on the Jewish resistance, so there's plenty to cheer for.

Edward Zwick, who directed the film, wrote the foreword to a new release to the history book by Nechama Tec on which the film is based. Zwick writes:

[T]o see Jewish men and women standing shoulder to shoulder in the snowy woods, brandishing automatic weapons in their own defense, flies in the face of the most pernicious oversimplification of the Holocaust -- one that minimizes the impulse of its victims to resist. And it is this impulse that Nechama Tec details with such ferocious clarity. Indeed, as contemporary scholarship has now revealed, resistance in fact found its expression in almost every city, town, and shtetl in Eastern Europe over which the shadows of extermination had fallen.

It is this spirit of defiance which animates the cry, "Never again!"

Taken

In Taken, a film released to DVD this week starring Liam Neeson, two teenage girls go to Paris without any mature supervision or hard-headed sense. Predictably, they fall in with a smooth-talking predator. And they are taken.

Fortunately, the father of one of the girls (Neeson) worked many years for the government to prevent "bad things from happening." So he heads to Paris to find his daughter -- and take care of her abductors.

The father shows single-minded, coolly passionate competence in tracking his daughter. He demonstrates that there is no necessary conflict between reason and emotional commitment: he uses his mind to direct his physical prowess in recovering his daughter, his supreme value.

I really liked this movie.

Assuming Jennifer and I have kids as planned, I plan to buy Taken and other films with good sensible messages of self-protection. It really can be a dangerous world out there if you don't pay attention to what you're doing and take sensible precautions. I navigated a few dangerous situations by sheer luck. I want to help my kids do better.

Trekking Boldly

The new Star Trek movie overall is fantastic. If you're a Start Trek fan, go see it. If you like sci-fi, action, good acting, good production, or J. J. Abrams, go see it.

I think there's a reason why Wolverine and Star Trek each earned a huge box office: people still want to live with heroes. Sometimes in our world it's easy to forget that there are heroes out there, that we too can act heroically. People are hungry for that. Thankfully, Star Trek delivers.

Here's the basic minimally-spoily story: a Romulan (Nero, portrayed by Eric Bana) nurses an irrational rage against the elder Spock, who pursues Nero into the past. Nero arrives at a time just before James T. Kirk is born and sticks around long enough to tangle with Kirk as a young man.

I don't like everything about Trek. Indeed, while I enjoyed the movie immensely while watching it, afterward I sulked about the plot inconsistencies and contrivances. Then I decided that, despite the film's weaknesses, it is a heroic story finely made.

That said, I remain frustrated with the film for similar reasons that I've become frustrated with other projects from Abrams. I really enjoyed Alias, but less so after the plot became nearly incomprehensibly complex, and not at all when the Giant Magical Energy Ball appeared. I never have finished watching the series. (While Abrams did not write Trek, he worked with writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman on Alias and other projects.) I loved Lost right until the characters had to repeatedly punch a code into some bizarre machine for some unknown reason. The stories are just too convoluted to be enjoyable.

Likewise, while I enjoyed the action of the Transformers film (which didn't involve Abrams but which Orci and Kurzman wrote), I found the basic story exceedingly tedious and stupid.

Trek is a lot better, but, notably, Spock the Elder has to voice-over substantial background to make the story remotely comprehensible.

From here on out this review includes spoilers!

Star Trek, like Alias, features a Giant Magical Sci-Fi Energy Globule. This is a device, a stand-in for real writing. It's almost as bad as the Giant Magical Energy Ribbon from Generations. It's the sort of nonsense takes the "sci" out of sci-fi.

Here's another example of the occasional idiocy of Star Trek. At one point, Spock the Younger kicks Kirk off the ship; Kirk ends up on a nearby planet, in a random place though somewhat near a Federation outpost. After being chased by not one but two Man-Eating Snow Monsters (because, you know, all ice planets are filled with Man-Eating Snow Monsters), Kirk falls down an embankment and runs into a cave. Low and behold! It is precisely the cave where Spock the Elder has taken up residence after he was sent to the planet by Nero! What amazing luck. But wait, there's more! Kirk meets not only Spock the Elder but Scotty, who just so happens to have been assigned to the ice-planet outpost! It's so coincidental you wouldn't believe it if it were fiction.

Once Leonard Nimoy signed on as Spock the Elder, time travel was a plot necessity (given the undesirability of mere flashbacks). As a rule I hate time travel in stories just because it makes everything so messy and disconnected. I suppose it is poetic, then, that the three greatest Trek films -- The Voyage Home, First Contact, and the new one -- feature time travel as a crucial element of plot.

The writers use time travel to make the new Trek not just an "origins" film, but a complete reboot. Because Nero appears just before Kirk's birth, he literally changes the entire timeline from that point on. The Star Trek universe is literally different from the historical universe of the rest of the franchise. (I believe that Next Generations went off into a parallel universe for a while.)

What's interesting about the film -- and I actually like this -- is that the writers don't "fix" the timeline in the end. This has devastating consequences for an entire world. This adds an element of realism to the movie. The heroes win, but they can't blow on it and make everything better in the end. The bad guy extracts a horrible price, the way bad guys so often do in the real world. While the heroes do not always have to lose something precious to drive a compelling story, in this case it's integral to the story, though it took me considerable time to overcome the anxiety about disrupting the history of the rest of the franchise. (I finally had to ask myself, "Would I like this movie if I knew nothing else about Star Trek?")

After it all, then, I can forgive the eyebrow-raising plot holes, because the story's amazing heroism rings true.

Frost/Nixon, How About You

Jennifer and I recently watched a couple of movies that we quite liked. Frost/Nixon is about a historic interview between David Frost and Richard Nixon, after Nixon had resigned. The film sets up the dramatic tension nicely. However, there's really nobody to love in the film, so it is more of interest for its history (so check out the clips from the real interview in the special features).

In How About You, a young woman (played by Hayley Attwell) goes to work at her sister's struggling retirement home. The strongest part of the movie is the friendship that Attwell's character forms with a terminally ill resident, played by Joan O'Hara.

Unfortunately, much of the movie involves the young lady and four other residents who, at first, make her life difficult. There are some nice moments as these other friendships develop, but these other four aren't especially sympathetic. But O'Hara's limited time on screen, as well as the other solid performances, make the movie worth viewing.

On TV (via Hulu), it was great to see Alan Tudyk team up again with Joss Whedon on Dollhouse. I don't want to say more about what he's up to on the show. This show is very well written, but, as I've mentioned to several friends, there's no central hero to root for, so it's intriguing but not nearly as compelling as Firefly (Whedon's previous show). The performances, though, are top-notch.

Film: The Prize Winner of Defiance

I was pleasantly surprised by the movie, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (reviewed at Rotten Tomatoes), which I'd never heard of till I saw the video on the shelf. Based on a true story, it follows a woman living in the '50s and '60s who keeps her large family ahead of her careless husband by entering -- and winning -- contests that involve writing clever marketing lines. The acting of Julianne Moore as Evelyn Ryan, Woody Harrelson as the husband, and Ellary Porterfield as one of the daughters is absolutely top-notch.

The reason that I'm reviewing the film at this web page (which is after all dedicated to matters of religion) is that that religious themes run through the story. Ryan and her husband are Catholic. The husband has some major problems; in particular, he spends a large chunk of his weekly paycheck on booze, and he is prone to rage when he drinks. For example, at one point he beats on a just-won freezer with a frying pan; later, he throws food from the freezer out into the yard. Early in the movie, Ryan talks with a priest, who advises her to try harder to create a good home for her husband. Ryan doesn't seem happy with this advice, but she follows it, even though her husband deserves nothing but divorce papers.

Moreover, the film encourages viewers to pity and forgive the husband based on three facts. First, he lost the quality of his voice and thus his singing career in a car crash. Second, he feels bad that he's not the sole bread-winner of the household. Third, in his old age he takes real steps to make up for his earlier behavior. The husband is not irredeemably evil; he is merely a lout. And divorce is not easy for a woman with ten children to care for. Nevertheless, Ryan seems to stick with her husband because of Christian charity, not because he deserves the marriage.

Ryan (along with the film) confuses the issue of forgiveness (which properly must be earned) with the issue of holding true to one's values and not falling into bitterness (which may or may not involve forgiveness). Also, Ryan enjoys more good luck (in winning various prizes) than most women in her position would find (even though Ryan's success is based also on her skill with words).

The reason that I basically enjoyed the movie is that Ryan shows a powerful and positive spirit. Despite her setbacks and her husband's behavior, she consistently seeks the joy of life. She maintains a strong, loving, and supportive relationship with her children, which comes out especially in the scenes with her daughter "Tuffy," who later wrote the book on which the film is based.

Broken Trail

Over the Christmas holiday, I watched the film Broken Trail with family members. It's a two-disk, three-hour movie that was made for television. I get the idea that it was filmed mostly or entirely in Canada, and the scenery is spectacular. The movie, starring Robert Duvall and Thomas Haden Church, is surprisingly good. (I was surprised because I'd never heard of it before.)

It's a classic Western. The two cowboys -- Duvall plays the uncle of Church's character -- leverage the family ranch in order to buy a herd of horses. Their purpose is to move the herd from Oregon to Wyoming, where the horses are in demand for military use. (A major buyer works out of Wyoming.) Along the way, the cowboys must overcome obstacles natural and man-made. Early in their travels, they come across a man who is transporting five young Chinese girls, whose families sold them into slavery. They are on their way to a brothel in a mean town. Needless to say, our heroes do not get on well with the slave runner. But what are a couple of cowboys supposed to do with five girls in a vast wilderness while running horses? Unfortunately, the owner of the brothel wants the seize the girls, and she knows some unsavory characters.

Such a movie easily could have been routine. But interesting dialogue and heartfelt, edgy acting from Duvall and Church make it memorable. It is a movie of strong heroes and dastardly villains, and I like that. But the heroes, with all of their financial resources tied up in the horses, have to struggle with their fears, tempers, and difficult pasts to stick together and find the strength to be towering men. Nicely done.

The movie is available at Netflix and Amazon, I noticed. I plan to buy a copy.

Stranger than Fiction

Recently my wife and I put Babel in the DVD player. We were treated to a preview of another movie, I think called Perfume, in which the main character murders women and turns them into perfume. Lovely. So I was already psyched for Babel. In the early scenes of that movie, a young boy in a desolate land masturbates on a cliff, then shoots a bus with his family's new rifle. That was enough for me. We popped out the video. I had already seen the preview, so I got the idea that the next two hours of the film are devoted to the husband of the shooting victim trying to find help for his wife. No thank you, and again I thank you.

Thankfully, we had also rented Stranger than Fiction, which I thoroughly enjoyed even more than I had on a previous viewing. Will Farrell is a genius actor of physical comedy. In this film, Farrell plays an IRS agent who initially leads an entirely routine life devoid of meaningful values. Then, one day, he begins to hear a narrator describing his life. As he anxiously tries to figure out what's going on, he begins to reevaluate his life and do the meaningful things that he truly wants to do. I like the movie because it is bright and positive and caring and funny -- all of the things banned from so many other Hollywood movies these days.

We also watched an old film called Executive Suite. I forget who recommended it. It is another film we truly appreciated. Yes, it's a bit dated; all the executives are white males (and all served by female secretaries) and the title sequence is quite jarring. Yet it is spectacularly acted and well written. It's the story of the struggle to replace the head executive of a furniture company after he dies. Contrary to Oliver Stone's commentary -- and I have no idea why his commentary appears on the video, as he had nothing to do with the film -- the film is not a critique of business profits. (I listened only to a few minutes of his commentary.) Instead, the film is about producing something of quality, something you can believe in and sell with pride, and something that will serve the company's long-term success, not just its short-sighted balance sheet of the month. There are a some problems with the ideas conveyed by the writing. For example, three of the seven executives are quite horrible, which is more than any business could plausibly sustain, and the other four are overly tolerant of their behavior. Nevertheless, the climactic speech is among the most rousing and morally inspiring conclusions to any movie I've seen. Furniture boring? Not in this film.

Notes on the Harry Potter Movies

I just watched the third Harry Potter film again. While the fifth book (The Order of the Phoenix) remains my favorite, the third movie (The Prisoner of Azkaban) is the finest of the series so far. The first two films are enjoyable companions to the books. But the third movie is a stand-alone artwork. The timing in the first two films is awkward and distracting. The third movie is impeccably timed. Moreover, the the use of lighting, camera movement, and transitions, as well as the creative visual interpretations of the book, place the third movie a step above. I was thrilled to find that the fifth movie is also quite good; it takes a close second, in my book.

I see that the sixth film is "in production." The director is David Yates, who also directed Phoenix. So that's encouraging.

I hope that the producers of the films consider splitting the seventh book -- The Deathly Hallows -- into two movies. There is simply too much material in the book to allow for a single movie of reasonable length. Besides, there's a perfect place the split the movie: Chapter 24. Specifically, page 481. I think readers of the book will understand what I mean. Ending the movie there would be a fitting tribute to the character who fills that page. Then the eighth movie could be called, Harry Potter and the Battle of Hogwarts. Obviously, they should film both movies during the same period to save costs and maintain better continuity. Splitting the final book into two movies would make the studio a lot more money as well as please fans.

Claire Danes Shines

At first I resisted seeing the film Stardust because it looked like a fantasy movie geared to kids. Well, it is a fantasy movie, and it is the most delightful film I've seen this year. I'm grateful for my friends' recommendation. I notice that it's still playing on a few movie screens. I expect to see it a third time before it disappears, then wait expectantly for the DVD.

A young man, trying to win the heart of the local beauty, sees a falling star and pledges to fetch it in exchange for the girl's hand. But to retrieve the star, our hero must cross the wall that separates England from the magical world beyond. In that world, a fallen star is not a hunk of metal and ash -- it is a lovely young lady, in this case portrayed by Claire Danes. Our hero must learn to become a man, save the star, and figure out whom he loves.

The entire cast of the film is spectacular, but the real, er, star of the film is Danes. Hers is a joyous performance.

By the way, my wife and I also saw Danes in Evening. I do not love the story, and Danes's character is not consistently drawn (perhaps because a screenwriter worked over the original novel). But the film has its rewarding moments, usually when Danes is on screen.

More Serenity 2 Schemes

Late last night (actually early this morning), I posted an entry about the possibility of a sequel to Joss Whedon's magnificent film Serenity. I offered a few ideas for promoting the sequel.

Today I received the following comment:

Anonymous Universal Executive said...
Duly noted. Thanks for the tips.

October 5, 2007 8:42 AM

Now, I don't know if the author is actually a "Universal Executive" -- hopefully so -- but at least somebody managed to find the blog entry. And the comment renewed my excitement. If a sequel is a dream, at least it is a pleasant one. And it has to be a dream before it can become a movie.

I'd like to lay down a possible line of attack for getting the fan base more involved in marketing the second movie. Let us assume that Universal has approved back-to-back filming of Serenity parts two and three. Let us further assume that Universal has selected cool titles, hired outstanding print-ad designers, and planned the promotion of a slick preview. I think the way to go is to release the original movie to television a couple weeks or so before the second movie pops.

So here's where the fans come in. Universal should schedule major-city screenings of the original film (or maybe even the new film) about two months before the release of the second film. Send out the stars again, just like before. To the extent practical, hand out free tickets to known supporters of Serenity, and sell the rest of the tickets. But here's the big difference: print out something like a million slick, full-color postcards that feature the new film and its release date. Hand these cards out in stacks and encourage fans to mail or give them away to friends. Heck, I'd gladly spend $50 on stamps to mail out the postcard to my friends. It would be a good way to touch base with people as well as to promote the film. Also have available for sale T-shirts that feature the film and its release date. And make it easy for fans to buy (or download) these items.

So, Universal, as good as you've been about Serenity, "I'm asking more of you than I have before."

Serenity 2?

Paul Hsieh of Geek Press e-mailed me a story from Cinema Blend that discusses the possibility of a Serenity sequel.

For those of you who have never heard of Serenity, it's the spectacular sci-fi film by Joss Whedon (now on video) that follows the television show Firefly.

Unfortunately, even though the critics and the fans loved the movie, it performed poorly at the box office (despite my early predictions that it would do well).

Cinema Blend reports, "Serenity was a massive flop in theaters, but could big DVD sales for the box office bombed film be enough to resurrect the franchise? Alan Tudyk thinks so and he's excited about it, even if his character is dead. ... With the film's box office numbers as bad as they were, it might make sense for the studio to push a sequel out the door as a direct-to-DVD sequel."

I think the studio should consider the possibility that a sequel could do far better at the box office. The sequel will build on the success of the first movie. More people will have heard about it. And, if the studio is smart, it will market the sequel far better than it marketed the first movie. (I discussed some of the marketing problems previously.) Here are my recommendations for the studio:

1. Take advantage of the enthusiastic fan base! Sell Serenity shirts, hats, etc. at or near cost so that fans will advertise the movie's release for you. I never was able to find a licensed shirt to purchase. I loved the pre-screenings. But there have got to be more ways to make it easy for fans to advertise for you.

2. Run competent newspaper ads this time. The print ads for the first movie failed to take advantage of the critical success and other selling points of the movie.

3. Pick a more exciting title. When you go to see, say, Star Wars, you pretty much know what you're in for. I think the title Serenity, as cool as it was for existing fans, turned off others because it sounds like a movie in which a bunch of old people take a boat out on the lake.

4. Bring back Wash, because we love him, and because, as the article points out, Tudyk is an increasingly successful actor. I know, Wash is dead. But how about a video that Wash left for Zoe? (Now if I can just figure something out for Ron Glass...)

5. Joss planned a trilogy. So film both sequels back-to-back. The up-front cost will be higher, but the cost per movie will be lower, meaning more yummy profits in the end.

6. Re-release the original a week or two before the sequel? Or on TV?

(And now I I see the problem with blogs; it's 3:00 a.m. But Serenity is worth it!)