Posts Tagged ‘ Avatar ’

James Cameron vs. Glenn Beck

March 25, 2010
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James Cameron vs. Glenn Beck

“King of the World” director James Cameron is holding a grudge over Glenn Beck making a joke about him when Beck had a show over on the unwatched CNN Headline News network three years ago. Beck said the man who foisted “Titanic” on the world — especially Celine Dion’s awful “My Heart Will Go On” upon the culture — must be at least in the running for election to become the Anti-Christ. It was a joke. Did I mention it was three years ago? But, apparently, a mantle full of Oscars and a few billion dollars worth of box office receipts can’t heal the wounds Beck inflicted in jest. Cameron unleashed a profanity-laced tirade Tuesday against Beck, and even The Hollywood Reporter is too dense, biased, or lazy to correctly place the easily discerned reason for Beck’s “offensive” quote. Hint: It has nothing to do with Cameron’s 2007 documentary, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” which (1) no one has heard of, (2) didn’t air until March of 2007, and (3) aired after Beck’s comments of February 26, 2007. We’ll let the rest of the story be filled in by Beck’s reaction to the flap on his show Wednesday night: Why is

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James Bowman Denies Denying Artistic Standing to Tolkien and Lewis

March 15, 2010
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James Bowman Denies Denying Artistic Standing to Tolkien and Lewis

James Bowman has kindly responded to my comments on his assertion that “fantasy is not Art.” ‘Kindly,’ on second thought, might be stretching things a bit, given that he begins by marginalizing those who disagree with him as nothing more than blog-dwelling trolls*: You can imagine the reaction in the blogosphere— which, as you may or may not know, has way more Lewis and Tolkien fans in it than the population at large. I wonder why that is, by the way? I’ll bet there are far more readers of Mr. Bowman’s latest blog entry in the blogosphere than in the population at large, but I digress. After establishing a suitably dismissive tone with those lines, Mr. Bowman begins his defense with the following: I wonder if it is too late to protest that I did not say what Mr Crandall says I said. What I did say was that fantasy — by which I meant the fantasy actually being produced in our culture today, the fantasy of Avatar or The Dark Knight or that which is, in one way or another, merely derivative from Tolkien or Lewis — represents a break with the Western mimetic tradition to which the fantasies

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C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien Are Not ‘Real’ Artists?

March 10, 2010
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C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien Are Not ‘Real’ Artists?

Not according to James Bowman. They and numerous others create what Bowman dismissively refers to as “fantasy art.” And fantasy art isn’t Art. It always surprises me when I run across them, but I have to acknowledge that some folks just don’t like J.R.R. Tolkien. Shocking, I know. The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit. The Silmarillion’s mythopoeic tales. What’s not to like? Great works of art and creativity, right? Well, they might be creative, but they do not qualify as Art. Mr. Bowman is among that group of curmudgeonly scolds that just can’t seem to abide anything that smacks of fantasy. According Bowman, fantasy is not art, at least not in the sense that the term has been understood within the Western mimetic tradition going back to Homer. … Indeed, Western culture is so intimately bound up with the tradition of imitation in art … that the now more than century-long vogue for fantasy art, beginning with George MacDonald, J.M. Barrie, and Kenneth Grahame and continuing through Lewis and Tolkien to the more unrestrained science-fiction and fantasy cinema of our own time, should be seen as a repudiation, conscious or unconscious, of that Western tradition

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‘Valentine’s Day’ Movie Does Big Business, ‘Percy’, ‘Wolfman’ Also Strong

February 15, 2010
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‘Valentine’s Day’ Movie Does Big Business, ‘Percy’, ‘Wolfman’ Also Strong

Hollywood had a record weekend at the U.S. box office during the past few days, with the comedy Valentine’s Day bringing in a startling $66.9 million over the four-day President’s Day period. Over just the three days of the actual weekend it snagged $56.4 million, all in the film’s first week of release. Directed by Hollywood comedy veteran Garry Marshall and featuring several popular or semi-popular stars, an obvious concept people can relate to, the promise of some laughs and emotional manipulation, and a tsunami of commercials, the film was pretty much guaranteed to be both awful and a hit with audiences who have already seen Couple’s Retreat numerous times on DVD or DVR. Also opening strong were the mythological adventure Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, which finished second with a healthy $33.8 million, and The Wolfman, at $36.5 million. Yesterday alone, Valentine’s Day brought in $23.5 million to become the highest-grossing film ever on Valentine’s Day, which should hardly be much of a surprise. One would expect a film called Arbor Day to be the biggest Arbor Day grosser if it has as many stars as Valentine’s. Action films From Paris with Love (John Travolta) and

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Avatar Review: The Worst Blue Movie I’ve Ever Seen

February 1, 2010
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Avatar Review: The Worst Blue Movie I’ve Ever Seen

Conservatives have been quick to criticize the megahit movie Avatar for the liberal boilerplate it obviously is, but there are criticisms that are much more effective, that show the true horribleness of the movie on so many levels.  One very funny lad from Milwaukee, I gather (ht Big Hollywood), has done it this way: Part 2:

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Denying Hollywood’s Agenda Prohibits a Culture of Liberty

January 7, 2010
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Denying Hollywood’s Agenda Prohibits a Culture of Liberty

The only explanation I can come up with to explain those who deny Hollywood’s left-wing agenda is that they want to remain on the “Above the Line” cocktail party invite list. Either that or they are lying to themselves, and are nothing more than useful idiots to left-wing ideologues. The Washington Post recently reported on Hollywood’s turn toward films promoting spiritual themes. The litany of spiritual themed movies includes Avatar, The Road, The Invention of Lying, The Lovely Bones, The Blind Side, The Book of Eli, Legion, and The Last Station. While many might pause at the “spirituality” the Dream Factory promotes in some of these films, I was struck by this opening quote from Greg Wright, editor at HollywoodJesus.com: “The more paranoid elements of our culture tend to think Hollywood has a proactive agenda, that producers have a grand scheme to use movies to shape the thinking of audiences. I don’t subscribe to that school. I believe that Hollywood gives audiences what audiences want to see. If people don’t want to see movies with certain messages, they won’t buy tickets. So if there’s a trend out there, it’s one reflecting what people are already thinking and feeling.”

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James Cameron Would Hate to Live on Pandora

December 20, 2009
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James Cameron Would Hate to Live on Pandora

James Cameron would have a very hard time making his movie in Pandora. In fact, he’d have a hard time just watching his latest spectacle on that planet. Moreover, there is not a lot of time to just sit and meditate on one’s hatred of Western Civilization while trying to survive as a hunter-gatherer. Avatar is another case of hypocritical, liberal-left, “Do as I say, not as I do” moralizing. So argues Popular Science: Unlike Lucas’ more playful science fiction epic, Cameron reaches for a heavy environmental message. Avatar is every militant global warming supporter’s dream come true as the invading, technology-worshiping, environment-ravaging humans are set upon by an angry planet and its noble inhabitants. But the film’s message suffers mightily under the weight of mind-boggling hypocrisy. Cameron’s story clearly curses the proliferation of human technology. In Avatar, the science and machinery of humankind leads to soulless violence and destruction. It only serves to pollute the primitive but pristine paradise of Pandora. Of course, without centuries of development in science and technology, the film putting forth this simple-minded, self-loathing worldview wouldn’t exist. You’d imagine Cameron himself would be bored to tears on the planet he created. There are no movies

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"Culture is the expression of the guiding philosophy of the day."—Murray Rothbard
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