Avatar and Sherlock Holmes
I just saw Avatar.
OH. MY. GOD.
It was fucking amazing! I don't care what anybody says, go watch it. Now. IMAX or 3D if you can wing it (it was spectacular enough in regular, think what IMAX would be, and I've heard that the 3D is 'legit')
It was a surprisingly complete world, was Pandora. And more than that, the Na'vi were a surprisingly complete culture and people. Not to mention the creatures! The dragon-bird was awesome beyond awesome, and the giant panther-cat, and the horses were cool too. EVERYTHING about it rocked. The whole forest lit up at night. It was beautiful. And I won't say you can hardly tell the Na'vi were CGI, but damn. Take Gollum, and double the realism of his form and movement, and you have the Na'vi. CGI and motion capture has come a long way in the few years since LotR. They may not have been actually live-action, but it was so easy to forget that.
Plus the little things. The language barrier. The fact that humans can't breathe the air. The fact that everything actually is connected, a fact so alien that you had to experience it to believe it. The fact that everything had six legs and four eyes. Well, the dragon-birds had four legs/wings.
The black hound-things reminded me first of greyhounds, but then it occurred to me that they look just like I imagined wyrsa to look. From Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books. (The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy, "Magic's Pawn"; The Mage Wars trilogy, "Silver Gryphon") And the rhinoceros-triceratops-hammerhead shark creatures were pretty cool too.
It was just...wow.
I also saw Sherlock Holmes last Saturday--Sunday? Sometime. That was pretty spectacular. Just the right mix of Action Hero and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes. I mean, I'm not really a Holmes person, I've only read The Hound of the Baskervilles. But from what little I know of Holmes, it was a pretty decent bastardization. Plus, you know, Robert Downy Jr and Jude Law. How can you go wrong?
OH. MY. GOD.
It was fucking amazing! I don't care what anybody says, go watch it. Now. IMAX or 3D if you can wing it (it was spectacular enough in regular, think what IMAX would be, and I've heard that the 3D is 'legit')
It was a surprisingly complete world, was Pandora. And more than that, the Na'vi were a surprisingly complete culture and people. Not to mention the creatures! The dragon-bird was awesome beyond awesome, and the giant panther-cat, and the horses were cool too. EVERYTHING about it rocked. The whole forest lit up at night. It was beautiful. And I won't say you can hardly tell the Na'vi were CGI, but damn. Take Gollum, and double the realism of his form and movement, and you have the Na'vi. CGI and motion capture has come a long way in the few years since LotR. They may not have been actually live-action, but it was so easy to forget that.
Plus the little things. The language barrier. The fact that humans can't breathe the air. The fact that everything actually is connected, a fact so alien that you had to experience it to believe it. The fact that everything had six legs and four eyes. Well, the dragon-birds had four legs/wings.
The black hound-things reminded me first of greyhounds, but then it occurred to me that they look just like I imagined wyrsa to look. From Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books. (The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy, "Magic's Pawn"; The Mage Wars trilogy, "Silver Gryphon") And the rhinoceros-triceratops-hammerhead shark creatures were pretty cool too.
It was just...wow.
I also saw Sherlock Holmes last Saturday--Sunday? Sometime. That was pretty spectacular. Just the right mix of Action Hero and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes. I mean, I'm not really a Holmes person, I've only read The Hound of the Baskervilles. But from what little I know of Holmes, it was a pretty decent bastardization. Plus, you know, Robert Downy Jr and Jude Law. How can you go wrong?