I will give my full comment on the absolute epic-ness that is Avatar soon... watched it in 3D on Friday.

No word can sum what Avatar has achieved.

I am dying to watch it again... but it will be in 2D this time.

I really, really wish there was a Digital 2D version of this movie.

After the late summer 20-minute preview of Avatar, there was some unease about the look of the Na'vi. Such concerns are baseless. They can appear opposite humans without the special effects being called into question; we never view them as anything less than three-dimensional. Like Gollum, they transcend their pixel-based conception. We believe them. We accept them. We care about them. That's the key to Avatar being more than a hollow spectacle. In Transformers 2, everything (including the humans) is soulless. Here, there's heart and soul to spare.

Any criticisms I have of Avatar are in the nature of nit-picks, but I will mention them for completeness' sake. At worst, they are ephemeral distractions, easily dismissed. At best, they will not be noticed at all. Sam Worthington's performance is solid but his American accent is not. As was evident in Terminator: Salvation, Worthington's "American" sometimes comes with an Aussie twang. Visually, Avatar is almost flawless, but there are some instances when the camera moves so fast that the 3D effect doesn't track well, resulting in a brief moment of disorientation. Finally, although James Horner's score is predominantly effective, there are instances in which he again engages in self-cannibalization. Material sounding a lot like it originated in his often-used Star Trek II and Aliens scores pops up from time-to-time.

Avatar is the most engaging and enthralling motion picture I have experienced this year - and "experience" is the appropriate word. There's a rush associated with coming to Pandora; this feels more like an interactive endeavor than a passive one. In addition to being emotionally satisfying and one hell of a wild ride, Avatar boasts a smart script, reminding us that would-be blockbusters don't have to be defined by the imbecility of a Transformers 2 or a 2012. James Cameron has been entertaining movie-goers for more than a quarter century and he is in an elite category of filmmakers who has yet to spawn a dog. For quality like this, I'm willing to wait, although hopefully his next movie will come a little more quickly than the 12 years of Avatar's gestation.

What we see onscreen, however, isn’t the pristine plastic universe of Pixar or the crowded creaturescapes of George Lucas and Peter Jackson. Here, each Na’vi has the unique personality, expressions and physicality of a live actor, and the landscape they move through is as tactile and present as John Ford’s Monument Valley.

There were hints of something like this in the better moments of Jackson’s 2005 King Kong, where it was possible to feel an emotional connection to the huge forlorn ape. But too often in that movie, the true 800-pound gorilla seemed to be in the director’s chair, beating his CGI chest at the expense of an involving narrative. Cameron, by contrast, is a fundamentally compact storyteller who, even when he makes a three-hour movie, keeps things moving in rapid-fire bursts worthy of his former mentor, low-budget impresario Roger Corman.

Given all the attention that has been and will continue to be paid to his movies’ innovations, it should also be said that he is a very good director of actors, and that a filmmaker more skilled at staging, shooting and editing screen action can scarcely be imagined.

http://www.laweekly.com/2009-12-17/film-tv...distant-world/2