Returning from a two week stint in Kibale National Park in Uganda, after two weeks being cut off from the internet, I came back to find loads of semi-nude pictures of me on facebook from my recent two month stint in India….

A few days ago I was chatting with my mum on the phone. She enthusiastically tells me she is now on facebook… Sometime I think she has an intuition that purportly picks the worse time to take a snoop on me. She always calls when I am in a bout of stress trying to clear up the backlog of responsibilities and homeworks and have barely time to spare to chat with her. No wonder she often finds me in a sour mood. Now she decides to be initiated into Facebook when the most recent pictures of me are that with least clothes on. I love her.

Anyway, I just came back from IMAX. Just watched District 9.

It was an utterly amazing movie. An original and ingenious story driven by an interesting lead, highly empathizable insectoid aliens, innovative cinematography and its stark and brutal commentary on the dark and murkish side of the human condition makes it a wonderful 2 hour. The movie’s ability to bring to surface our emotions and empathy and put them through a roller coaster ride as its characters are put through shockingly monstrous terrors and an emotional joyride themselves, all in a science fiction setting secures it a place on the pedestal of sci-fi masterpieces. One of the movie’s forte is its ability to constantly keep its audience in suspense as in the dark realism of the movie, a close shave might just be that character’s last and I was held at the edge of my seat watching the characters I grew to love put through dangers and hoping the director does not have a sadistic moment and decides to kill them in a moment of utter irony.

It seems that 2009 produced quite a number of solid science fiction movies. Sci-fi films that rely on great story and characters and literary-like insights. Moon was one. There was Star Trek too. There were marvelous CGIs, but you can’t deny the solid story behind.

Now there is only one more sci-fi movie left to look forward to this year. It is a movie that promises to change the landscape of cinema. What other than James Cameron’s Avatar.

Update

I have been out watching the BBC proms and movies but not revising for my retakes which are in less than a week's time as I am supposed to...

Three days ago...

Watched Michael Nyman in the Royal Albert Hall at the late night BBC prom. Got the tickets last minute and still managed to land a superb seat. The performance was sui generis. Nyman's minimalist motifs made for a very different experience compared with other classical performance I watched... it sort of made me miss the complexity in those performances. He is best at the diminuendos rather than crescendos as when the blaring trumpets and trombones tok a rest (so did my ears), and powerful emotional motifs to surface, and that is what I like most about Nyman and his minimalism - the ability to accentuate the emotional impact of a certain motif with its simplicity. An opera singer came in during the last 20 minutes. The finale piece was a bit overdone with the repetition and the wind instruments (someone out to shotgun them down aftr a while...), but his encore piano solo made up for it with its silent and soft beauty.

Two days ago...

Shopped for the first time in Primark. Got the cheapest jacket I ever bought - a £20 'leather' jacket from their Cedarwood Estate range. Its actually one of their more expensive stuff...Looks pretty good on me actually.

Today...

Watched Terry Gilliam's Tidelands at BFI Southbank. It was surreal, fantastic and highly imaginative. It is a celebration and homage to the power of imagination, the same theme that gave Tim Burton's Big Fish and Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth a special little niche in my heart. Terry Gilliams created the kind of atmosphere I call the Tim Burton touch. I adored Tidelands for that. On the other hand, the lack of a proper or cohesive plot structure makes the almost 2 hour long movie a bore sometimes. Alas, it was a fertile ground for a good, emotional plot.

Countdown to retakes:4 days.

Avatar

21st August

At 10am this morning I was seated in the spaceship-like auditorium of the BFI IMAX in Waterloo. I was one of the lucky few in Britain to have the first 15 minute glimpse into James Cameron’s upcoming sci-fi epic, Avatar. It is the most hyped film of 2009 and perhaps maybe even in the history of the m

ovie industry – which other film in history have had a day dedicated to itself? Today is dubbed ‘Avatar Day’, where the trailer for the movie was released and more importantly, a 15-minute footage will be shown to lucky moviegoers like me.

What do I think of the film?

Technically, it is a hallmark in filmmaking. Now I understand why the directors who saw the 20-minute footage in comic-con hailed it as ‘the future’. The CGI is vividly detailed and ultra fine, the rendering and lighting reproduction utterly gorgeous, and best of all, the motions: it is the ne plus ultra of CGI humanoid motion. But that’s not the point. That is not why it an awed fan claimed it gave him ‘a brain erection’. Nor why Cameron incubated the idea in his brain for 14 years waiting for the herald of a technology superior enough to give birth to it (indeed he created the technology himself).

It was shot in 3D. I know most of you must have known this by now, but look: supreme visuals + 3D.

Now you get an equation that produces a ‘brain erection’.

But alas, perhaps I should not have read all the hype surrounding Avatar before I watched it. With all the reverent description of the movie from critics and fans who were lucky enough to view it not too long ago in comic-con, I had an extremely high expectation of how the 3D effect would immerse me into the film. I imagined it to literally transport me into Pandora, the alien world of Avatar. I anticipated myself being swept away by the 3D that would jut out of the screen and grab me into the movie, while I cling onto the edge of my seat.

Well, it was 3D. Lets just say that. The pictures invaded the forefront of the screen. Nice. But it did not enveloped me like I dreamed it would do… Nevertheless, it was still mesmerizing. I watched lifelike renderings of Pandora with all its bravado, dangers, curious creatures and the Na’vi pop out of the screen. There are a few scenes where the 3D effect really stands out. The first is the scene where Jake’s consciousness is transferred to the Avatar. The doctors were using futuristic glass screens that they could transfer images from one another and that looked amazing on 3D. Then there is the scene where Jake as an Avatar is attempting to tame a petradoctyl-like flying beast. Plunging down a cliff on the back of a flying monster do feel much more exhilarating with 3D. It was goose bumping.

Now after the avid description of the visualfest, comes another important aspect of Avatar: the story.

The story, based on what was shown in the 15 minute montage of scenes, seemed to me to be a modern day Pocahontas. Or to be more precise, a sci-fi Pocahontas – human invader joins the natives and falls in love with one of them. I have to admit that I felt slightly disappointed with it. I mean, look, its Jim Cameron. A colossal with a string of iconic films under his belt. I would have expected something more, say, original from him (not to mention all the hype too.). But maybe I am wrong to judge from the short footages. Perhaps the story will unravel into something new and innovative.

There are also the cheesy cliché character stereotypes in a couple of scenes, notably the introduction where the security officer expounds on the hazards of Pandora (what happened to show not tell in that scene…) and the final clip where Jake in Avatar is wrangling with an angry flying beast, with the male Na’vi mocking him (think man joins group, group mistrusts him initially, then with perseverance and strength he gradually gains their approval…).

Nevertheless, the backdrop of the story has huge potentials and I can’t wait to see how it unfolds.

I have to say, watching such lush visuals in 3D is something untried. Cameron mentioned that the movie is not going to be as long as titanic because a 3D film like this has not been attempted before and it was uncertain of how much the audience could handle before it resembles watching Cloverfield. As I walked amongst the throng of people exiting the cinema, I heard the two guys seated beside me talking about too much information for the human brain to process and being unsure if its possible to sit through a visual assault on the brain for 2 hours.