So Deb and I don’t go to theaters any more, we wait for the Bluray. Today was the big day that Avatar arrived, and instead of chess night, we had a movie night (usual suspects.) Brian, Evan, Deb and myself settled in after a nice dinner to see what all the fuss was about.
If anything, I think the movie was under-rated. What a feast for the eyes, and what fun, too. I was able to ignore the silly native-American and global-warming themes and just dig on the whole sci-fi-ness of it; the only thing that sorta bugged me was the musical portion of the sound track, which I can only describe as the Lion King on crack. But the rest was so good that mostly, I just ignored the silly drumming and the crazed new-age sing-a-longs. Which, thankfully, didn’t make up a large part of the movie.
There was quite a bit of other eye candy of numerous kinds — the biota of the world, the corporate headquarters virtual mapping system, the blue folk themselves… really a tour de force. I am so glad we bought the hi-def Blueray; it looks bleeding awesome on our 1080p home theater.
I really loved the ‘Mechs, larger-than-human armed and armored exoskeletons that remind me of baby MechWarrior or MechAssault ‘Mechs from the video and table games. I have a pretty good collection of Mechs (about 2…3 inches high, from the table game) and it tickled me to see things like them handled so well in a movie — definitely for the first time.
There have been some rumblings about DRM incompatibility with el-cheapo and/or poorly supported Bluray players out there; I’ll repeat the advice I give everyone about Bluray players: You want a Sony PS3. You don’t want anything else. Period. There is no doubt, no decent competition, no comparable bang-for-the-buck. The PS3 is it. And the PS3 will play the Avatar Blueray without any problems whatsoever.
Anyway, just thought I’d throw this out there. Great movie. On the (very) off chance you haven’t seen it, you should. This one goes to eleven.
![fyngyrz posted a photo: The map location here shows where I was when I took the photo, rather than the photo itself. I was looking west (obviously) from the north end of the church parking lot which itself is north of Bonnie Street, and south of Airport Road. I jockeyed around until I had the sun completely behind the radar housing, and then shot a few shots at different exposures, hoping that the 50D's dynamic range would catch the gradation in the sky; it did ok, but I still wish we had another couple of high quality bits of dynamic range. Maybe the next camera generation will go there. Canon EOS 50D [modified IR response in Hα range], hooded Sigma EF-S 30mm ƒ/1.4 EX DC HSM prime [ø62mm] w/B&W 62mm IR/UV cut filter #65-014691; RAW to JPEG conversion and editing in Aperture 3.](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4078/4912161604_6cd46bace2_m.jpg "fyngyrz posted a photo: The map location here shows where I was when I took the photo, rather than the photo itself. I was looking west (obviously) from the north end of the church parking lot which itself is north of Bonnie Street, and south of Airport Road. I jockeyed around until I had the sun completely behind the radar housing, and then shot a few shots at different exposures, hoping that the 50D's dynamic range would catch the gradation in the sky; it did ok, but I still wish we had another couple of high quality bits of dynamic range. Maybe the next camera generation will go there. Canon EOS 50D [modified IR response in Hα range], hooded Sigma EF-S 30mm ƒ/1.4 EX DC HSM prime [ø62mm] w/B&W 62mm IR/UV cut filter #65-014691; RAW to JPEG conversion and editing in Aperture 3.")
