Entourage withdrawal

In the last couple of days, I've read quite a few news snippets (most recently this one) about people suffering emotional distress after watching Avatar. If I recall right, there was even one that committed suicide shortly after seeing it.

I can relate to all that as Avatar provides its audience with a dreamy alternate universe. Hmmm, ok, what fantasy movie doesn't, anyway? The Ugly Truth was a gem as far as making us believe that acting like a complete buffoon still gets you the girl. Those Twilight movies, for their part, show us how wit-challenged humourless forever-brooding (literally) pale stiffs (also literally) routinely make nubile teenage girls crazed with lust.

After seeing *Avatar*...

I finally got around to seeing Avatar last Sunday. Nice. It came across to me more as fantasy than science fiction. For me there is a big difference between the two (and using the mashup term "Sci-Fi/Fantasy" is a cop-out) for the purpose of this exercise. Science-fiction as the term implies explores possibilities grounded on reasonably plausible conjecture. Fantasy, on the other hand makes use of, well, fantastic concepts, settings, and characters as literary devices for telling stories or delivering messages. I guess in a sense, science fiction is a fantastic story built upon scientifically or logically plausible conceptual underpinnings.

Going ga-ga over Polaroid

I read recently that Lady Gaga was appointed Creative Director at Polaroid. Actually it is supposed to be a "strategic partnership" between the fashion icon of today and the iconic brand of yesteryears (or maybe even more appropriately, yesterdecades). As if that weren't bizarre enough, according to the Herald,

The partnership is designed to help Polaroid appeal to a younger demographic after its technology was rendered obsolete by digital cameras offering a more effective form of instant photo gratification.

And here I was thinking "I wonder what Polaroid's been doing since the 70's when they did instant film photography...". Turns out that they are still doing instant film photography!

2010: we should have been travelling to Jupiter by now

One of my favourite movies of the 1980's is the film 2010. It is the sequel to the classic Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey which ended with its lead character Dave Bowman uttering the words "My God, it's full of stars". If I recall right, those words were said as he approached that big black alien monolith that he, his crew, and the self-aware computer HAL-9000 were sent to investigate aboard their interplanetary space ship the U.S.S. Discovery. I've seen 2001. The novelty of space travel at the time the film was made is quite obvious in the way the minutiae of such things as the dynamics of moving in zero-g or the architecture of spacecraft and space stations were highlighted and focused on.

How to enjoy *Avatar*...

I haven't seen Avatar yet. But what I have seen thus far is a flurry of great amateur reviews about it, mostly on my Facebook newsfeed, some on the odd blog or two, the rest on various channels of the hype machinery of Big Media.

Then I read Miranda Devine's review on the Herald...

Brittany Murphy and the thing about death...

Just saw this on the news this morning: Brittany Murphy dead at 32. Brittany Murphy is the girl who played the homely sidekick of the character played by Alicia Silverstone in the movie Clueless. She went on to become a star in her own right and I read that she even had a dance track that became a dance club hit.

I can't claim to know Brittany Murphy by any stretch. But the thing about hearing news about someone's death is that it induces an almost reflex-like process in my mind to call up all memories about that person. In the case of Brittany Murphy, it was all the scenes of her in various movies she was in that I've seen. My most extensive store of images of her was from the movie Clueless.