Avatar - 3D

Much has been said about this film, good and bad so I'm keeping this short.

3D - hmmm...I struggled at the beginning (a) I already wear glasses so was a little uncomfortable wearing two pairs (b) I was a tad too close to the screen and (c) I was watching jarheads and computer screens.  My eyes watered profusely at first and I felt a little sick, motion sick.  How was I going to survive three hours of this?  I experimented with glasses, without glasses, 3D glasses, without 3D glasses and nothing helped - grrr....until...

...we arrived in Pandora where I entered into a visual feast.  3D suddenly made sense. The foliage within a fingertips reach, the gorgeous and I mean stunningly gorgeous landscape, not to mention the Avatar's themselves.  Rich and beautiful perhaps even sexy? It was mind blowing and all the struggling at the beginning was worth what I was now experiencing.

The graphics and CGI were incredible and while James Cameron could be considered brilliant I think Weta digital are gobsmackingly brilliant!  They are the brain child behind films such as Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Heavenly Creatures, Jumper, I Robot, X-Men - The last stand and more recently The lovely Bones. 
I don't remember Wellington (at least when I lived there) as having world leaders in creativity - who knew?
And lo and behold - the movie was filmed on location in Hawaii and New Zealand - no surprise there!

A great cast with Aussie's own Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez and the hugely talented Giovanni Ribisi.

Yep, the storyline is nothing new - but then what story is...I didn't feel hit over the head with its message.  It did have one even though some critics say there was no sub text!!!   Hell it even made me cry in one scene, Zoe Saldana is brilliant at stirring the emotions.  I think James Cameron took the beauty of our world and mans destruction of it along with totalitarianism, segregation, and genocide and placed it in a landscape so extraordinary that unlike watching a hard hitting doco we still get the message - put simply: It's about opening your eyes and seeing things clearly.  The importance of how we see things. Living as one with nature, its animals and its people and being respectful of all three.  Ah, if only man would stop fucking it up!!

Midnight Rambler gives this gem: *****