avatar:the last airbender is pretty cool for nickleodeon pseudo-anime

Not buying the lynch comparison as a get out of jail free card.

well, lynch shouldn't get a pass either, but people more or less have settled on evaluating him outside of conventional criteria of good/bad, so all's i'm asking is my client get the same benefit.

and as dune was thoroughly savaged, it's still open season on airbender.

Dune is great

It could have been a Star Wars or LOTR-style epic, but it's not.

Nickelodeon just aired a special called "The Last Airbender Revealed" which must have been whipped up over the weekend as damage control. He addresses a few concerns:

1.) the lack of humor is attributed to "the movie just wanted to be more serious."
2.) he changed the pronounciation of the character's names to make them more accurately Asian, which, okay, I'll give him that.
3.) the kyoshi warriors were cut because apparently the scenes with them were too good and would have overshadowed the rest of the film.

Rolling my damn eyes at that last one.

well, lynch shouldn't get a pass either, but people more or less have settled on evaluating him outside of conventional criteria of good/bad,
― Philip Nunez, Friday, July 2, 2010 6:36 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Sugge

no they haven't.

I'm like the only person on earth who liked "Signs"

I really liked it, especially that you don't really see the aliens close-up, and most especially at the beginning where they are just finding out about the invasion through TV footage and stuff. Though yeah why would aliens who can be killed by water would land on the 1 planet that is covered in it?

I liked Signs. It was a refreshingly minimalist, old-fashioned sort of alien invasion flick. The ending was beyond dopey though.

Mr. Shyamalan's fondness for shallow-focus techniques, with a figure in the foreground presented with sharp clarity against a blurred background, is completely out of place in the deep-focus world of modern 3-D.

I've spent a good deal reading up on 3D stereoscopic filmmaking theory and deep-focus is one of the biggest contributing factors leading to the '3d headache' phenomenon because it is not the natural way we perceive the world. When you look at the world daily, you usually focus on one object or area in the field of view at a time.

Signs was the last time Mel Gibson's xenophobia was applied appropriately.

how does he keep getting opportunities? the sixth sense came out over a decade ago.

many google hits for "Airbender and worst movie ever"

x-post

Uh...Signs was a huge blockbuster hit, and his other movies have mostly done respectable business. That's usually reason enough for people to keep working in Hollywood.

xpost: trust me - it's very hyperbolic.

didn't know signs was a blockbuster hit

yeah, did like $200 million in the USA

Just saying, he had a few hits after Sixth Sense which is why he's still around.

This was kind of boring. Most of the acting was terrible, but large chunks of the badness seemed rather clearly to be directorial decisions (Dev Patel's wholly inappropriate emotional outbursts up until the last 3rd of the movie, for example).

The kid who plays Aang is terrible. Like, oh my GAWD terrible. Waterbender girl wasn't much better.

Dude's decline is so steady

http://i46.tinypic.com/2m2c8z5.png

IMDB ratings

shouldve got a white director

the thing that bugs me the most about this guy is when he has to write stuff like comic book dialogue or newscaster announcements or official proclamations and it ends up sounding like something a 7-year-old would write.

does that make sesne / has anyone else noticed this

Yeah, I recall his movies having some really, really embarrassing dialogue but it's been so long since I've seen anything.

the thing that bugs me the most about this guy is when he has to write stuff like comic book dialogue or newscaster announcements or official proclamations and it ends up sounding like something a 7-year-old would write.

"There appears to be an event happening"

these are the first lines of "the happening":

Woman Reading on Bench with Hair Pin: I forgot where I am.
Woman Reading on Bench: You're at the place where the killers meet to decide what to do with the crippled girl.

first of all who the fuck responds to "I forgot where I am" with anything other than a non-committal noise meant to indicate "oh that's too bad, don't know what you want me to do about it though."

second of all how the fuck do you know where someone else is in a book they're reading unless you're doing, like, synchronized reading.

Meanwhile...

Paramount keeps revising newwcomer The Last Airbender's grosses upwards because of its better-than-expected performance at the domestic box office. M Night Shyamalan's 3D epic opened to $16M Thursday from 3,169 theaters, including the $3 million from its midnight shows, and added another $16.6M Friday. But Saturday's take went down to $14.5M. Helped by higher 3D ticket prices, the pic based on the Nickelodeon animated TV series should be on its way to $40.6M for the 3-day weekend, $53.2M for the 4-day holiday and a 5-day cume of $70.5M by end of Monday and definitely 2nd place.

upwardly gross

The inevitable sequel could be even worse, and would keep the losing streak alive.

the twist is HE CAN BEND BOX OFFICES

$$$

So is "The Happening" really really bad? Like Bad Movie bad? Cos Im kinda bored today and wouldnt mind seeing a really bad, silly movie...

horrendous in a profoundly silly way

Oh yes. xp

The Happening is absolutely must see.

its really sort of unbelievable

it's a happening

this movie wasn't nearly as bad as i expected. dropping the kyoshi warriors is going to fuck up some really important plot points in book 2, if it gets made though. slumdog millionaire was good as zuko. shyamalan's best movie by a bazillion miles. he changed the climactic ending and GASP i actually liked it.

still not as good as the worst episode of the tv show though (which was 'the beach' in season 3)

also kinda shocked that a few scenes from the series were recreated exactly in the film ("he was earthbending rocks at us...it really hurt").

Well done there, M. Night:

http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/49028608.html

Inevitable:

http://www.rifftrax.com/rifftrax/last-airbender

LOL @ the foot massage reveal

"Do not worry about the moon's power, General."

^^^I quit watching the the rifftrax of this after Aasif's character said this line. IMO it can't be topped so why keep going? Plus it was making me fall asleep at 6:30 p.m.

The final word on the subject (of the movie):

http://agonybooth.com/movies/The_Last_Airbender_2010.aspx

"I’ll warn everybody right now, this is going to be an angry one."

Trailer for the new series The Legend of Korra, which begins next year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_VkHYtS6MY

Here's a better-looking version of the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gz8pino8lw

I'm really excited about this! AtLA was one of the best TV series I've seen in recent years, it's amazing how much depth they managed to get into what was nominally a kids' show. At first the idea of the new series taking place in a fantasy version of early 20th century Shanghai felt a bit odd to me, but if they can pull it off, it could be really cool. AtLA already did the high fantasy, so why not try some urban fantasy for the sequel?

Anyway, about the trailer, what's that thing Korra is riding? I guess in the tradition of hybrid animals in Avatar it's a polar bear wolf or something?

Korra is riding a dog/polar bear hybrid. The series is set 70/80 years later and the look of the series will be mostly steampunk.

Some info on the series released so far: http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/The_Last_Airbender:_Legend_of_Korra

Descendants of the original series' characters will definitely feature; the Avatar world has changed a lot, but a lot of those changes were defined and built by the A:TLA characters and their influence will be far-reaching. It'll be interesting to see that based on what we've learned so far.

Just finished watching this! At times quite remarkable, and totally impressed with how much moral nuance it brought to its stories.

Question: Do I need to seek out the comic sequels before I get started on Korra? I generally stay clear of these kinds of other-media tie-ins.