2010-01-29 09:19![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldisciplineFrom about as disparate ends of the public entertainment budget spectrum as it's possible to get without invoking street artists or buskers, anyway.
What the Butler Saw, Jobsite Theater. Yep, pimping for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
critus. This was a last-second, my folks are in town, let's do something interesting this evening, choice. The ultra-concise summary: Keystone Kops meet Benny Hill. There is something to be said about a show where most of the time the female cast members are on stage in their underwear. That something is "Oh HELL yes." :-D
I've tried to figure out who stole the show, but everyone is so over-the-top hysterical that it's a moot point. Let me put it another way: When Mike is the LEAST hammy one on stage in a broad sexual comedy, everyone else has to have brought their A game. The fact that it took most of the audience several minutes to notice him flying around on a rope swing, in his undershirt and a dress... yeah. My folks loved it.
Avatar, James Cameron (and nine squillion dollars). Every criticism you've heard of the lack of originality and weaksauce writing is absolutely true. It's Dances with Smurfs or Smurfahontas, leavened with some very well-worn sci-fi tropes. The villains were easily unlikeable (especially the smarmy company man, who was pretty much the worst possible blend of Paul Riser's character from Alien and Glenn Beck), but completely cardboard. Plot twists were approximately as abrupt as a cruise liner's. Sigourney Weaver is still really fucking kickass.
The visual effects (we saw the regular-screen 3D version) were, as you've probably also heard, absolutely amazing. Avatar is to 3D movie technology what Independence Day was for the DVD format - a huge blockbuster that makes the new tech sexy and popular, and it's the next big thing (a prediction I don't make lightly). It's handled very well, and not in the cheesy "shit flies at your head" school; it's simply a phenomenal depth of field and crispness that enhanced the extremely lushly detailed virtual world.
What the Butler Saw, Jobsite Theater. Yep, pimping for
critus. This was a last-second, my folks are in town, let's do something interesting this evening, choice. The ultra-concise summary: Keystone Kops meet Benny Hill. There is something to be said about a show where most of the time the female cast members are on stage in their underwear. That something is "Oh HELL yes." :-DI've tried to figure out who stole the show, but everyone is so over-the-top hysterical that it's a moot point. Let me put it another way: When Mike is the LEAST hammy one on stage in a broad sexual comedy, everyone else has to have brought their A game. The fact that it took most of the audience several minutes to notice him flying around on a rope swing, in his undershirt and a dress... yeah. My folks loved it.
Avatar, James Cameron (and nine squillion dollars). Every criticism you've heard of the lack of originality and weaksauce writing is absolutely true. It's Dances with Smurfs or Smurfahontas, leavened with some very well-worn sci-fi tropes. The villains were easily unlikeable (especially the smarmy company man, who was pretty much the worst possible blend of Paul Riser's character from Alien and Glenn Beck), but completely cardboard. Plot twists were approximately as abrupt as a cruise liner's. Sigourney Weaver is still really fucking kickass.
The visual effects (we saw the regular-screen 3D version) were, as you've probably also heard, absolutely amazing. Avatar is to 3D movie technology what Independence Day was for the DVD format - a huge blockbuster that makes the new tech sexy and popular, and it's the next big thing (a prediction I don't make lightly). It's handled very well, and not in the cheesy "shit flies at your head" school; it's simply a phenomenal depth of field and crispness that enhanced the extremely lushly detailed virtual world.
