Hope and wonder, how it always starts. What’s along the road this go ’round? Some sorta unforeseen joy or terror? More broken lights? More sublime peace? You never know, you hate to predict, and honestly can’t stand when others do either. All you can really do is look at where you are, an’ what led up to this precarious moment.

Kinda all start the same, even this last adventure. There you are, looking down some vast expanse shrouded in black an’ shadow, occasionally glimpsing rifts and sun through bits of imagination. The beginning is always easy, you feel new and it’s so not gonna wear off this time. Or so you tell yourself, and it works a little. Makes the early slogging a bit more tolerable at any rate. It’s a welcome relief after the drama.

You press on, a bit further down. It’s like walkin’ a ridge in the dark at first, you really have no idea where it’s all going, just that it’s this way and you’re really not gonna turn around. Then it throws a chasm at you- somebody leaves, life becomes more than you can bear and all you really wanna do is go home. But you don’t. You don’t because then you’re going backwards and as shitty as forward looks, there’s light ahead and nothing but repetitious fail behind you. You know better- even if it comes in waves, you know better.

Then you catch up with that light that you’ve been starin’ at for months, and fuck if it isn’t glorious. First thing you do is one of most reckless, out of character acts you can, trying once and for all to get out of the goddamn twilight. Maybe you spend a few weeks shittin’ bricks in your head, but you get over it. Hell of a story at any rate. Wasn’t even your tent.

It’s always hard, staying in that light, even when you know it’s better than ever before. You can always see ‘em, off in the distance, these little spots that will damn everything you’re holding onto. Gettin’ caught in one, it goes dark an’ all you want to light the sky back up are the fires of everything burning to the ground. There’s no refuge from it an’ all you can do is hope it passes before you lose your head. Then it does.

Everybody that trips down one of these adventures has a few of these moments in the light. Or maybe I’m just projecting. But sometimes you find yourself, say on an empty mountain highway hauling ass at a sunset with good company and music so appropriate it’d be ridiculous if you weren’t euphoric, and you can’t help but wonder why life can’t be like this all the time. You share that light with so many people, it’s hard to bow out gracefully.

And like that it’s behind you, some distant sunset that really is over when it’s gone. It’s horrible, and the only thing moving your feet for the longest damn time is the hope of getting to the next one faster. But that’s not enough- you can’t move out here in the dark like that, it’s dangerous and this may, in fact, be bat country. Not that you’ll realize that in time.

Then one a’those strikes of light hits. You don’t really notice at first, but everything glows a bit. Like sitting in a black room and slowly finding the walls, the windows. It’s still not light out, but maybe, just maybe, you passed through the real night. You’ve got the hang of traveling like this.

Eventually it’s close enough to the end that you check out early. You stop worryin’ about the earthly stuff ’cause you’ve had your fill and nobody is gonna stop you from quitting at this point.

You’re all in the middle of being done, ready to pack it in and restart at the top, when this thing steps out of the dark. You thought it was dead or gone or somethin’. Useda be here, standin’ here like this all the time. Then it wandered off like some sorta four year old with ADD. And how you yelled after it, in the most biting farewell you could muster. Maybe it left, but the air of it followed you about, dimming everything, however slightly and subconsciously. But here it is again, atoning for that. We’ve all grown up a little it seems, here at the other end.

And that’s really what it comes down to when the path stops. All you can do is look back. Maybe you needa shake it off, tell yourself to do better next time, maybe you can accept how you did this time. But you can’t tell yourself what the future will be, ’cause you’re standing here, looking down some vast expanse shrouded in black an’ shadow, occasionally glimpsing rifts and sun through bits of imagination.

An’ you keep going, into the unknown.

Comments(2)

I’ve spent a solid portion of my existence in particularly large, dark rooms, with a bunch of strangers. Theaters, mind you. And those theaters have contained everything from mind-blowing stories, visual feasts, comedies nearly driving me to tears, and of course, absolute garbage. As a film student, it’s easy to become jaded to what’s out there, what is or definitely is not impressive, etc. So when I first saw a preview of Avatar, I was absolutely unimpressed.

Avatar, at first glance, looked like Fern Gully with space marines. I mean that’s a fantastically amusing idea, but for the last year I’d heard all sorts of whispered hype (growing to a proverbially goddamn roar in the last few months) about how revolutionary it is, how “OMG James Cameron finally decided to make another movie with a budget larger than most third-world countries”, and so on. And then I remember the trailer with these goofy-damned blue people running around. It was an uphill battle. Honestly, if it weren’t for knowing James Cameron’s track record of making solid, huge films, I probably would’ve wrote it off and waited for the DVD.

And maybe I would have if it weren’t for the fevor of a Cameron fan and fellow film student I know, who, when I told I’d probably just see it in 2D, flipped shit and told me my “head would explode”. Curious, and with the advantage of going somewhere for Christmas break near several metropolitan areas, I looked into what was available. Turned out we had an opportunity not only for 3D (fail, Bozeman, fail), but for IMAX; two technologies that by themselves have always struck me as pretty gimmicky (though I find IMAX more enticing) but together, combined with a true Hollywood film, well… Now I was interested, and made the trip with my brother and my father.

When we were walking out, my dad- who’s typically “meh” about movies- made the comment: “That was the coolest damn thing I’ve ever seen.” Which more or less sums up my feelings. I have never, in my life, sat in a theater and gone “holy shit” in my head with awe so many times.

Before I dive into the visuals, I want to make something abundantly clear: This is not a revolutionary or particularly innovative story and anybody expecting otherwise needs to re-watch the rest of Cameron’s films. None of them are. This is not a Coen Bros. film or a Kaufman script- if you want to be challenged by the plot, seek it elsewhere. That said, it’s engaging, extremely well-paced and well-directed (sans Weaver, who strangely wasn’t all there). That kind of solidness is what you should be expecting from a Cameron story, nothing more.

Now, here’s why people are raving: The visuals are jaw-dropping. Full-blown Mechs with live-action people seamlessly inside, all manner of futuristic technology and weaponry rendered believably right in front of you, dense rainforests- lush green in the day, but sporting an amazing neon color palette during the night, people riding goddamn dragons while shooting flaming arrows, mountains cloaked in mist floating near the fucking stratosphere, and that’s just the beginning. This is a behemoth of science fiction, nothing less, and for two hours and forty minutes, you will BELIEVE all of it. Make no mistake, this is the next evolution of computer-generated technology. From a technical standpoint, books could be written about this film: Green-screen compositing that is fucking flawless, motion capturing that is bar-none the best ever done; every facial expression and (very nearly) every movement is utterly real. You WILL forget that nearly half the characters and locations in front of you do not, in reality, exist.

As I said, I witnessed this in IMAX 3D, and that’s what really pushed this into a whole new realm for me. In terms of IMAX, the wow-factor is very simple: It’s a massive screen, unlike anything I’ve ever been in front of (and allegedly, our screen was smaller than standard IMAX).  In terms of 3D, that’s the other revolution here.

This film goes far beyond a few gimmicky shots that make you think “it’s like I can touch you!”. Hallways and rooms inconsequential to the focus of a scene stretch off into the distance, as though the screen were just a window. Characters pop-out, at times uncanny in their detail; I’m not sure if its a combination of the large-format and 3D, or just 3D, but there were moments that my brain understood the physical presence of something in the film the same way it does in reality. That may sound dull, but it’s exactly that sort of subtlety that sells the effect- most of the 3D is supplemental to the content. However, there are some real jaw-dropping moments purely by way of 3D and they are, of course, the environment. As the camera pans down with someone diving off an enormous waterfall, you feel it. It was enough to instill a (wonderful) moment of vertigo in me, and this is repeated ten fold for sequences with Avatars flying on the backs of pteryodactal-like creatures, as they soar over the landscape and, fantastically, dive straight down for it. Some of it is obviously showy, but you really, really won’t care.

It is somewhat hard to describe in words. In a nutshell though, as witnessed in 3D IMAX, Avatar is a visual experience currently unrivaled by any other piece of cinema. Personally, the only other thing in my life that comes close to touching it was the stage show for Tool’s 10000 Days tour.  It is, however, unfortunate knowing that it’ll be rare for most people to experience Avatar this way, particularly in the northwest where IMAX is almost non-existent and 3D is still somewhat hard to come by. But Avatar’s content, even 3D on a standard screen, is still liable to wow. I worry it’ll lose some luster in 2D, but I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve had the pleasure.

I don’t usually write film reviews, the reason being I usually feel like I’m telling people what movies they should or shouldn’t like. Some simply are not for everyone (most of my personal collection, in fact), and I firmly believe if you want to see something you should, regardless of what anyone else tells you. But in the case of Avatar, I think the sheer force of innovation and eye-candy contained within is enough that almost anyone can enjoy it.

Bottom line: Go see Avatar.

Comments(1)