Posts by webweaver
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Heh. Thanks Sacha.
I wasn't sure of the netiquette, so seeing as I was explicitly disagreeing with Geoff's POV I thought I should do it in the same thread as him, even though there's already this thread for discussing the movie :)
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Islander - yay! and phew! Very pleased to hear you will get to see it sometime.
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Oh Islander I wish you could see it on the big screen! It really won't be the same on a little telly, believe me!
Not all screenings are 3D (I think) - there are non-3D ones as well, although having said that, I didn't feel that the visual effects in 3D were too disturbing to one's visual equilibrium (not like old 3D movies were). It was more like... realer than real life. I felt a bit trippy afterwards (for a few minutes) but that may have been as much to do with the sheer scale of the thing as with the 3D-ness.
Could you maybe make a night of it in Oamaru and drive home again the next day? It's worth it I reckon.
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So many multi-millions spent on creating a thing that signifies nothing, other than a core message of kill or be killed.
I disagree.
Well, not about the multi-millions (although it's worth noting that the War on Terra costs as much as that movie every day apparently).
To me, the core message, which I think was very much worth saying, is about the relationship of living things with their environment, and how there are better ways to live than by digging massive holes in the ground to get at the riches beneath (and destroying everything else in the process) or by blowing shit up.
To be fair to the plot (which is derivative, although that didn't bother me), the Na'vi people really didn't have much choice but to kill or be killed in the final Battle Scene To End All Battle Scenes - and the movie doesn't end there. Not all the bad guys get killed, by any means.
IMNSHO I reckon that if even a tiny bit of the environmental message gets through to people who don't care much about the environment but who love watching movies where tons of shit gets blown up (and they will go and see this movie), then that's a good thing.
Do I think the millions could have been better spent elsewhere? Yes, undoubtedly. That's a heck of a lot of money to spend on making a movie. But it's not as if the studios were going to give the money to Greenpeace or Oxfam or the Red Cross and decided to spend it on making Avatar instead.
I loved it.
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Heh. I guess so... :)
I think one response to seeing this movie may be something akin to how people felt when they saw the first-ever "moving pictures". It really is that mind-blowingly astonishing - both in the detail of Cameron's imaginary world (and how lovely that so much of the general flora is based on good old enzed) and also in the sheer scale of it. It is just HUGE.
The 3D-ness is super-cool because it's not in your face ooh let's send something hurtling out of the screen at the audience - it's way more subtle than that. I read a review which described it as the reverse of the "stuff poking out of the screen at you" school of 3D movie-making, in that what it somehow does is give massive depth to each image on the screen - like looking through a window into an entirely real world.
If for no other reason than that the technology is pretty impressive and the world is utterly beautiful, it's worth seeing.
And (of course) I utterly loved the Gaian environmental message and the not-so-subtle digs at American imperialism. Fab!
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oh.my.god!
Just got home from seeing in in 3D at the Reading Cinema in Welli.
I'm completely speechless.
That was some movie! STUNNING, PEOPLE - JUST STUNNING!
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Some of those banners - especially this one remind me of my very favourite Facebook group - An Arbitrary Number of People Demanding That Some Sort Of Action Be Taken.
Heh.
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Russell - their website might look OK - I've certainly seen worse - but functionality-wise it's horrible. I'm viewing it in FF on my Mac and there are tons of oopsies.
For example, the dropdown menus off the main nav are falling out of their orange container divs which means I can only click on the first dropdown in the list - the others are inaccessible because as I go to click on them they disappear. The drop-downs are also written in code that's so old-fashioned I haven't seen an example like it in years. And there's about a mile of JavaScript at the top of each page to control everything.
For some reason the news articles are all scrunched up on the far left of the page, with each line consisting of only two words before it wraps, whereas the content in the Make a Footprint page is too big for the space available and spreads out beyond the edges of the page - and the "footprints" disappear when you hover over them.
Ugh.
I know FF on a Mac is not exactly the most common browser/OS combo, but really - if you're paying someone to build you a brand new website these days, the least you should expect is that it works flawlessly in standards-compliant browsers...
Oh - and good on you for not accepting their advertising money, Russell. I'm quite amazed that they would even think that advertising on PA could in any way be worth it. Do they not have any clue of the general political mindset on PA? Or perhaps they have bought into their own 87.4% of voters spin, and they really do believe that the vast majority of Kiwis agree with their POV.
I agree with George, I think they're a classic example of:
Enough money and enthusiasm to create these platforms, but not enough sophistication to realise how their campaign sounds outside their echo-chamber.
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Earplugs...
Russell, it might be worth you getting custom-made ones as you go to a whole lot of gigs.
Here in Welli there's a place called the Courtenay Hearing Centre and they make custom earplugs for musicians etc. I'm sure Auckers will have equivalent places. I got a pair for when I'm playing Brazilian samba with Batucada - with 50 drummers rehearsing in a small space it's pretty much mandatory. Cuts out the painful sound while still giving you complete access to the rest of it. Well worth it.
I think my earplugs were about a hundred bucks or so - they're the mid-price ones I think - more info here. When they make them for you they stuff this yellow goopy plasticine stuff in each ear to make a pair of custom earhole-shaped moulds, and once it's set they pull it out and then send it off to Oz for the mechanical bits to be placed inside clear plastic earplugs that fit your ear canals exactly. It takes a couple of weeks for them to be made, and they're awesome.
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Count me in - my reading's gone a bit off the boil recently and I'm usually the most voracious reader in my (RL) bookclub. It would be good to talk books in another environment.
philipm - *snort* very funny!