Movie Day

To celebrate Chinese Lunar New Year, I should have ventured to Chinatown. Instead I headed to the movie theater. Yes, I can easily see four movies in one day. My record is seven. Yes, I'm a cinemaniac but I'm getting better; I only do this once or twice a year, not for a full month or more like I did back during my SIFF days. I found moving to NYC shifted my dark theater practices to live theater and musicals. I see a lot less film these days.

Here is the day's rundown:

Avatar - saw this in 3D Imax. If you're going to a film you think will suck and is only interesting 'cause of special effects, might as well get surrounded by the stuff. I sort of expected the story to suck 'cause Cameron (Titanic! BLECK!) only cares about LONG films with TONS of production value. OK, this is basically a GIANT fantasy film where people get to become bigger, stronger, sexier (women even get tails to complete Freud's penis envy idiocracy), and more in tune with nature. But nature is one fucked up zone that makes no biologically evolutionary sense, it's just more glowing and focused on one really giant cool tree-house. Oh, and the blue things, just like humans, love to fight which makes this basically one big action film/video game.

Sure, I loved the moral message of being in balance with nature, not exploiting everything for personal gain. But in the same breathe, Cameron exploits CGI, perfect physiques, sex, violence, explosions, and fantasy with no trepidation. Why are all the Na'vi so similar in looks? Why co-op ethnic looks like corn rows and long phallic braids? White guilt? So while I enjoyed the world of glowing jellyfish-like seeds, fern & frond lushness, and other organically thriving environs, all the actions, explosions, sexual references, and chases can't make up for the lack of engaging story and desperate need of editing. At least you can get a good nap in as it clocks at over 2.5 hours. just relax and dream of Star Wars.

Valentine's Day - Why am I in this showing? Oh, to remind myself how love sucks, there's a day out there to remind men to be romantic even if they aren't and women to demand romance mostly through inflated expectations of action and gifts. Ugh. Ashton Kutcher, the posterboy of selling himself with new media (can someone please hack and kill his Twitter account?) is a florist and basically this films is an ad for all the crap like flowers, chocolates, diner out, etc. that goes along with a forced holiday for love. I think the producers were hoping for an American Version of Love Actually (which I hated, too) but they ended up making a insipid, frivolous thing into a commercial - so I guess that was a very American thing to do after all.

Percy Jackson & Olympians: The Lightening Thief - basically a melding of Harry Potter and Clash of the Titans. I like the infusion of Greek mythology into the hero's journey story. I also liked the creatures and use of CGI to bring both the human and god worlds to life. It didn't hurt to have the Empire State Building also serve as a gateway to Mt. Olympus. Still this is simply a good Saturday morning cartoon special just pumped up with better production values and some name-brand actors (Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Rosario Dawson). Uma Thurman was pretty cool as Medusa.

CrazyHeart - Pure Oscar cliché as a drunk country singer/songwriter meets up with a much younger reporter. He sucks the love from her and fails predictably when it comes to being responsible. It is a quiter version of the collapse than most but still the same ground covered. I didn't even like the music (sorry, Mr. T-Bone Burnett). The casting of Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal in the leads was a smart choice as they kept me interested in an otherwise uninteresting story. Colin Farrell was porrly cast as the young protégé who makes it to the famous level - sorry but his ponytail and accent didn't make me believe he was a big country star. But this little film feels indie and sentimental so I'm sure they'll reward it come Oscar time. If Jeff Bridges gets the nod, it's because of his body of work and not this one performance. His roles playing bad guys and The Dude are much more entertaining, but those roles never get Academy recognition even though I think they're much harded to cast and deliver.