6 Responses to “Opinions?”

1. zach Says:
   June 25th, 2009 at 12:37 am

   i think we all know the avatar movie is a turd even if it, from a purely academic perspective, were to totally rule.

   i was thinking about this wrt this penny arcade strip. as tycho half points out, if race and racism were truly no longer an issue in the world, then the substitution of one character’s color for another shouldn’t be an issue. did anyone care when black actors were cast in MTVs “Carmen: a Hip-Hopera,” despite the source material being clearly european? but obviously when the work is viewed in the larger sociopolitical context – even aside from its faithlessness to the source material, the casting decisions become less simply strange and more simply grotesque.

   saying this as a person generally skeptical of most claims of malevolent racism, i hope the avatar movie goes down in flames.

2. mark Says:
   June 25th, 2009 at 1:14 am

   I didn’t know there was a controversy over the casting. Some people talked about it in the youtube comments. but I basically just watched the preview. I think shyamalan is pretty bad though. His movies seem kind of overwrought. But I mean he seems very hollywood, so the casting decisions are sort of what one would expect.

   that would’ve been awesome if they kept jessee mccartney, andrey’s favorite

3. ross Says:
   June 25th, 2009 at 11:33 am

   yeah, zach said it, fuck this movie. totally whitewashed garbage. made even worse by the director not being white himself so you think maybe he’d sympathize and do something about it, but i guess when those studio suits throw money at you…

   i guess a lot of people assumed Aang was white to begin with, same sort of thing where Westerners think Japanese anime/manga characters are/look white, so i can understand why the filmmakers might go that route (not defending it, though), but with characters like Sokka or Katara who are clearly not white and then get white actors, it’s like… yeah it just blows. wouldn’t it have been awesome to give all the asian and native kids out there somebody to identify with in a movie like this, somebody who looks like them for a change? there’s always the original cartoon but it still sucks for the movie which probably has a higher profile.

   when zach comes back we should, if temporarily, resurrect movie night so we can do a shyamalan marathon. maybe catch up on some of the ones we haven’t seen like Lady in the Water (mmm, bryce howard).

4. mark Says:
   June 25th, 2009 at 12:22 pm

   maybe a shyamalan marathon with the 6th sense. probably need a painkiller drip to make it through that one.

5. ross Says:
   June 25th, 2009 at 6:47 pm

   yeah, definitely need sixth sense. so bad. then we can do unbreakable (which i actually own, heh), signs (which my mom owns so we got that covered, too. i think my mom had sixth sense on VHS), the village, and finish that shit up with THE HAPPENING. YES. maybe we can find his first movie ever, too, wide awake. never seen it.

6. rob Says:
   June 25th, 2009 at 8:50 pm

   The Happening, probably the worst movie I’ve ever seen. When nature fights back!