Tag: 2009

Avatar (2009)

Pandora’s Box of Vacuosity

I went into Avatar with hopes of it being an intelligent science fiction movie, James Cameron has directed two of my favourite movies of all time, Terminator 2 and Titanic, but I remain convinced all he was interested in this movie was the special effects, and not giving second thought to story or characters despite the film being in production for a decade.

One aspect of Avatar which bothers me which I’ve never heard other reviewers comment upon is the fact that Sam Worthington’s character of Jake Sully is paralyzed, being confined to a wheelchair at the beginning of the movie. However when he becomes an avatar and is not only is he able to walk in this new form, he’s running and jumping through the forests of Pandora, so why is there no sense of liberation? Why is this character confined to a wheelchair if the movie never takes advantage of this as a definable characteristic? Am I only person who looked beyond the movie’s special effects and actually noticed this guy is in a wheelchair, even in the movie’s trailer we can see he’s in a wheelchair, and I thought to myself, “Wow, a protagonist in an action movie who is in a wheelchair , that’s something you don’t see every day”, but no, the wheelchair is there for no reason, if he wasn’t paralyzed it would have made no difference to his character, or should I say “character”, since no one in this movie has a personality.

Even more bothersome for me however is Colonel Milies Quaritch (and yes I had to go to Wikipedia to find out his name as the characters in this movie suck), or as I like to call him, Generic Army General Guy. This is one of the absolute worst, most uninspired villains I have ever seen. This villain alone proves that James Cameron spent a decade working on the technology for this movie’s special effects and didn’t give a monkey’s about the story or characters. I was that shocked at how cliché this villain is that I can’t even enjoy him in an ironic sense, instead, I just sat there in bemusement at a villain who belongs in a spoof movie, heck even 80’s action movies have better villains.

Of course, I’m not going to beat the dead horses’ skeleton regarding the movie’s white guilt plot. I know humanity will always have its flaws and perhaps it just the optimist in me would like to imagine that in the year 2154 we would have learned something by then and won’t be colonizing other inhabited planets because of greed, but if the movie at least made some acknowledgement of the actions in the film being a case of history repeating itself and even act as a cautionary tale, I would have been more forgiving.

I don’t like CGI to begin with, it’s one of biggest complaints about modern filmmaking, but I do acknowledge the technology can be put to good use when put in the right hands. The effects in Avatar are impressive, but to quote George Lucas (I’ll presume he said this before he himself completely lost it), “a special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.”

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Todd’s Pop Song Reviews (2009 – Present)

Review Brilliance

Of the internet reviewers spawned from the satirical reviewing site That Guy With The Glasses, I consider Todd In The Shadows to be one of the very greatest productions the site offers. While other reviewers on TGWTG mostly focused on movies, video games and anime etc, Todd brought the much-needed sector of reviewing popular music to the site.

Todd Nathanson began producing videos on YouTube and eventually was accepted onto TGWTG.com and found new spread popularity on the site and I don’t think this could have happened at a better time, due to this being the period when the likes of Lady Gaga, Keh$a and The Black Eyed Peas where beginning or already had been dominating the top 40 pop charts. Pop music needed criticism and analyses more than ever, and that’s where Todd comes in.

A standard episode of Todd’s Pop Song Reviews involves an analyses of a recent U.S Billboard Top 40 pop song, a bad one of course. Each episode begins with a piano cover of the song which about to be reviewed, followed by an introduction to the song and the artist behind it. The songs themselves are pulled apart, with deep analyses of the lyrics (often pointing out how they don’t make sense) and often comments on the music video itself, followed by a final conclusion of the song. Each episode is filled with jokes, gags, and one-liners mixed in with the review itself but is all perfected flawlessly making Todd’s Pop Song Reviews both a hilarious and insightful look into the world of pop music. The guy is one hell of a comedy machine and you can get quite the music education from his show.

However, I still have yet to mention possibly the most important aspect of the series. Like many other internet reviewers, Todd has a gimmick. The simple genius that we don’t know that he looks like due to wearing a hoodie and being unlit within the shadows he inhabits. I love the mystery of not knowing what his physical appearance is and it’s also quite a romantic idea in itself. Todd has to communicate primarily through his voice and he certainly has a voice which does just that; clear and audible, pleasant to listen too, and strong enough to get his points across. Todd’s Pop Song Reviews is one the finest review shows the internet has to offer. Todd Nathanson isn’t a household name but I can call the guy one of my heroes.