JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

From the moment the project was announced Avatar has raised expectations that are impossible to meet. And it is fashionable to hate the extremely successful, especially if they are not undeserving of their fame AND they do not bother to hide the fact that they are raving megalomaniacs.

Avatar is huge, overblown, and hokey in parts. It is full of new agey tree-hugger stuff. It is spectacular and absorbing; shock and awe for the jaded viewer. It makes most action movies look stationary. It is the fastest two and a half hours I’ve spent at the movies this year. Though it is primarily a showcase of technology, it never loses its emotional center.

Yes, the elements are familiar: here are the corporations who value profit over life, the very strong women, the strange aliens and the hero’s romance. The environmental message is hardly new, and the indigenous Navi tribe look like tikbalang. But one of James Cameron’s strengths as a filmmaker is that even at his corniest he is always compelling. And who will forge the way if not the self-proclaimed “king of the world”?

So screw the modest and timid. Viva hubris. See Avatar.

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Could someone please design or obtain more ergonomic 3D glasses? I’m talking to you SM IMax North and MOA, and Ayala Digital Cinema. At least the glasses should stay on your face and not fall off every two minutes. Whose head was measured for these things, Mount Rushmore? They’re huge and unwieldy, and do not make for optimal 3D viewing.

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If you’re one of those Academy Award statisticians, could you tell me if a woman has ever been nominated for Best Director? All I remember is the flap when Barbra Streisand wasn’t nominated, for Prince of Tides, I think. The Hurt Locker has just taken the New York, Los Angeles, and Boston Film Critics’ prizes, making Kathryn Bigelow a likely Best Director nominee.

(The answers to my question are Lina Wertmuller, Jane Campion, and Sofia Coppola. But no woman has won yet.)

Bigelow’s nomination would be particularly satisfying because she works in a genre traditionally regarded as a male domain: the Action picture. Wow.

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Why Inglorious Basterds was was pulled out of movie theatres: No, it wasn’t the title, it was a disagreement between the distributor and the theatre owners. The amusement tax was lowered, meaning more income for the movies, but the distributor and the theatres could not agree on how to split the added income.

Apparently only Robinson’s struck a deal with the distributor, so you can only watch it there.

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Awards season is in full swing. Meryl Streep fans, commence annual novena: she’s in the running (for Julie and Julia). In her new movie It’s Complicated, Meryl is in a love triangle with Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. What a fabulous idea. The revenge of the serious actress: Meryl in date movies!