Yet again Avatar
Saturday, February 27, 2010
I guess everyone knows by now that Avatar is controversial (see two posts in Tips, with links). The latest is that depressed and unhappy young people are flooding cyberspace with mournful and even suicidal longings to go and live on Pandora. This is really sad, although I don’t know that we can blame James Cameron for it.
As for me, after I endured Avatar (it does have a few good points) I came home and, as an antidote, watched Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. No racial insinuations (no races!), no political agenda, no escapism, no computer-generated flying monsters or floating clods of dirt (mountains??), no religious mumbo-jumbo, just good actors, a gritty set, honest earthbound camera work, terrific battle scenes, and moral ambiguity to spare.
