AVATAR

I had the rather doubly unfortunate previlege of seeing Avatar in Hindi at a Rohtak cinema hall the day it released. My gut feeling was that it wouldn't be living upto my expectations. But it being a free day in the ward, and me finally deciding to have some form of socialisation I went out with four colleagues (All male for a night show...some socialisation...). But anyways...to speak about the movie, it predictably did not live upto the hype created.

For one, just about too many sci-fi movies have been made so that watching yet another sci-fi flicm needs something outstanding. But in Avatar, I ended up liking the small things only. Most mentionable was the irises designed by the team. When I had seen the promos, I got the idea that somehow the eyes would look unnatural, but to be honest, they have been made Indian huge eyes and look beautiful on every single Nav'i person. The second was the hovercraft like mid-air stance of the double wheeled choppers and the three tier bombing arsenal of the mothership. And the pigtails were long and strong enough to make substantial contribution to Garnier Long and Strong. I loved Michelle Rodrigues' aviator sunglasses and the head gears of the tribespeople. That was about it.

The plot has nothing new to offer. You cant have this movie belong to an ilk that would have movies like Minority Report, ET or War of the Worlds ( but then all these three were Spielberg...) Sigourney Weaver looks fit enough to weild a machine gun but most of the time she was in a petitional mood. Rodriguez is terribly wasted. The flying job could have been given to any Tom, Dick or Harry and Michelle would have had to just walk through the woods in her Resident Evil like ways and half the job would have been done. I like her voltaged up and in-the face. Zoe makes a good role...especially with her expressive dewy eyes and 4 fingered hands. Sam Worthington has done okay. The rest even do not come to mind.

I was disappointed with the birds and animals. They looked like a curious mixture of game dvds and zoology text of the paleolithic era. So we have horses sucking juice from flowers with snouts like Aadvarks, we have Dragonflies mixed with Pterodactyles so that they become 4 winged creatures...we do have a hammer headed shark doughed with a triceratops...the colour scheme being bizarre to the point of being predictably kindergarten. I liked the metallic black of that half panther, half T-rex thing that was initiallly chasing Jake but seemed like even he wanted some more footage.

The Triceratops incidentally is the animal I liken to the Three of us ( mom, me and sis ) when we are sleeping. In a Layman's terms it is the first animal encountered by Dr Alex Grant ( Sam Neill) and Dr Ellie Sattler ( Laura Dern) when they stop listening to Dr Ian Malcolm's ( The coolest dude in the movie Jeff Goldblum) , " Nature will find a way..." and run out to see the shield-horned Rhinoceros taking his last breath with a very admirable tongue out. It was the animal I most memorized in my school days to show off my knowledge of Dinosaurs owing to my sister's Zoology background after I first saw Jurassic Park in 1993 ( In Cuttack, in ENGLISH in a very ordinary cinema hall...)...More about my film-crazed crush on Sam Neill ( Read Dr Alan Grant...) in what I know will now follow once that I have started writing about films.

In the scenario of the movie raking in more moolah than Titanic did during its time, I am bound to think the major jerker must have been the Hindi script and the lack of 3-D effects which some of my juniors vouched was the best cinematic experience they ever had. It wins two Golden Globes, and is perhaps the safest bet at the Oscars. Which can only be speculated upon at this point of time. In any case, for the time being, for James Cameron, its an Olympic Feat bettered. First he swept the world off its feet with Titanic. It won thirteen nominations as an aside. And he has done it again.

For him, I wish The Na'vi all the best for an Oscar event sequel.