Avatar - Best Movie in 2009?

Initially, I had no intention to blog about this movie at all .First, because I never anticipated to watch this movie. Secondly, sci-fiction was never my cup of tea after 1993 (the year I suffered a long, hot fever - which totally transformed my liking from everything scientific to everything artistic... ke I baru blossom into a woman huhuhu ) and finally, lately other than Jerry Bruckheimer ... I rarely associate the quality of films based on who's who in Hollywood, not even Mr Spielberg. I prefer to watch the movie first and form my own opinion ... of course, marketing-wise ... James Cameron will still draw audience to the cinema, but will they watch it again?

Well, Guy Next Door got 4 free tickets for the pre-screening of this movie yesterday at GSC Pavillion... u know after spending more than RM 600.00 on dad's platinum CIMB credit card beli barang hantaran. So I told him yesterday ... "make it a habit" hahaha ... We went together with Sam and Mr Energy Saving. Realising that the official release of this movie is tomorrow (17 Dec) in Malaysia I don't want to miss the chance to be one of the first people to blog about it ...

Sam's comment : "I think this movie will easily be the best movie for 2009"
Mr Energy Saving's comment: "I find this movie interesting. Maybe because I seldom watch movie kot." Hehehe

As for me, suffice to say I didn't came out from the cinema "starry-eyed " or neither was I moved by it. I was definitely very impressed with the 3D effects and photorealistic CGI. It was as if viewers were part of the movie... seriously ... there was a scene when the Na'vis (a sentient humanoid race on a lush jungle covered satelite of Polyphemus called Pandora) were riding on an ikran (a pteranodon-like mountain banshee adapted for flight) doing the sky-diving .... I was really, really "gayat" ... That's the wonder of modern technology in movie making, using streoscopic cameras to stimulate human sight!

Like Lord of The Rings, Avatar also introduced new fictional language - the Na'vi language, devised by linguist Prof. Paul Frommer of the University of Southern California. It has a vocabulary of about 1000 words, its phonomes include ejective consonsants (such as the "kx" in "skxawng"- try to pronounce that!) that are found in the Amharic language of Ethiopia and some of the Maori's in New Zealand.

Both Sam and myself agreed that the Elvish language of the Lord of The Ring sounds softer and romantic huhuhu!

And I was wowed by Neytiri facial expression - especially the pained expression when she explained to Jake Sully that in Omatikaya's tradition - when a male Na'vi is a declared a man, he could get himself a woman and start introducing the Na'vi females to him. Cover line lah ...

There was also a part when she was crying hysterically after her Hometree was burned down by human, the part she felt so hurt after finding out who Jake Sully really was and of course, the part when she cried when her father died. I never felt so move by an animated character before hehehe. Should see how Sam mimicked the Na'vi hissing ... if his skin colour is blue (with his cute "fangs"), he'll pass as the Avatar.

What really put me off was the message and dragging storyline. At first, I thought the director might hit home run when he introduced the character Jake Sully, a former US Marine who was wounded and paralysed from the waist down which through a genetically-bred human-Na’vi hybrid body known as Avatar, enable him to walk again . I was hoping that the director would expand the Jake Sully's Avatar character "who appear to be real but do not exist in the physical world".

Somehow, the plot twisted into a love story - the same formula in the movie Titanic which later turned very environmental.

I think the message of Avatar should be that - we shouldn't be afraid to show who we really are, in the real world. U know ... the concept of Avatar itself - a representation of ourself like in the Yahoo Messenger and Sorority Life on Facebook, which actually never exist in the real world. Sometimes I wish I was really Misz Donna - my Avatar in Sorority Life. Sexy, have $3,000,000.00 in bank, have 4 boyfriends (which I bought), got 11 rides including a private jet and a hummer and my wardrobe full with designers brands..

Boy was I really put off by "save the jungle" message! So the anti-climax ... anyway, for the adrenaline junkie ... the movie might save your RM 10,000.00 to buy a SOL parachute for a paraglide hehehe ... gerenti gayat!