These both --(Devotion (film) and Half American (book) – sound worthwhile:
Yep, the violence, while not especially graphic by today’s mainstream standards, was one thing that stopped me halfway through The English. Great characters, and I appreciate the righteously revisionist history, but the other problem for me was unnecessarily elaborate plotting. After awhile I saw little point in having to figure out who was who and how they all knew each other.
Loved the titles, and I do love me some Blunt, and hey! Ciaran Hinds! but I stopped watching because of the horse mistreatment. Not literal on the set, in the story. I can understand having to shoot the one horse, but come on …. “The difference between what you want and what you need is what can fit on a horse” is a cool line and all, but you LITERALLY JUST LEFT A WHOLE TEAM OF HORSES TO DIE OF THIRST HARNESSED TO TOBY JONE’S FUCKING BATTLE CARRIAGE! Plenty of space for Blunt’s shit in there, man!
As a horse person, I was disappointed.
Team cartoon here.
I am a fool and a great fan of the irish studio Cartoon Saloon. I loved their cartoons and this one, about dragons, coming of age, new starts and admitting sometimes we are afraid and wrong is such a very good animated fable.
I have no plans to watch this anytime soon but it seems to be even more space-whale-centric than I first thought:
I have still yet to meet a single person who has any desire to see this thing. I know I saw the original but I don’t remember a thing about it.
At over 3 hours long it’s pretty much assured that most of the audience won’t remember at least several minutes in the middle of this one either due to running out of the theater for a bathroom break.
James Cameron certainly does seem to be doubling down on the “soldiers in battle-mechs” thing given that the entire premise of the franchise was that VR/remote technology had progressed to the point where it was possible to project one’s consciousness into a distant body via wireless interface.
I mean, we have remotely-piloted drones and combat robots now. Why the heck would the military put so many soldiers’ lives in harm’s way by making them fight in person when they could just as easily pilot the battle mechs from a fortified base or even from an orbital space station?
Are they trying to remake Star Trek 4?
Space whale adventure?
ETA link
She did not state the nature of the medical emergency, I take it.
I finally got around to the last season of Derry Girls…I love that it ended with the referendum vote, and I loved Grandpa Joe’s answer when Erin asked about it. The episode where they have a flashback to 77 was also great, with the moms all being just like their daughters! But I love the entire show the whole way through!
Just started 1899… so far, so weird!
Currently in the middle of 1899, the new Netflix series from the makers of Dark. Very dense and atmospheric, with little things I noticed from the get-go like where the triangle and bar symbol appears, and so on.
Recommended. Just don’t get eaten by fnords if you do watch it.
Well damn. You had me at Dark. I’ll put that on my watchlist.
Maybe this time James Cameron is going for a heavy-handed metaphor for the exploitation of Maori culture instead of a heavy-handed metaphor for the exploitation of Indigenous American culture.
Yeah, probably…
I’m confused by this. The projecting into a body seemed like an attempt to study an alien culture. It failed for a few reasons. It wasn’t the fast workaround to understanding another culture TPTB expected, but the scientists in the group understood that quite well. It’s why many were pissed at working with an untrained newbie. Also, like failed first contacts in Trek, they got caught by the group they were trying to covertly study. Oops. The introduction of a non-scientist into the mix captured their interest and created a new opportunity for study.
The battle-mech bits only took over the story when TPTB threw in the towel on infiltration and negotiating tactics and decided to take what they wanted by force.
Not sure why so many can’t remember the details of Avatar, when there are so many films about colonization with similar themes. It’s those comparisons that keep scenes from that movie in my mind.
The main difference with this one is the tech and world building. I admired a lot of the acting and look forward to seeing the story arc of some characters in the sequel. Hopefully, Giovanni Ribisi gets something similar to Paul Reiser’s comeuppance scene in Aliens. 
ETA
This seems more like Kevin Costner’s thing.
It may not make logical sense but Cameron seems to take that same approach in his real life. These days there’s absolutely no reason to put humans in one of those deep sea submersibles rather than use modern ROVs with high-definition cameras. In person you can barely see anything through the crappy small viewport anyway. But Cameron still did that silly Deepsea Challenger project along with doing other manned submersible dives over the years.
It’s been a while since I saw the movie but I don’t think the humans were ever trying to covertly infiltrate the indigenous society or even pass themselves off as members of the same species. For example, all the human avatars had five-fingered hands instead of the usual four because they were engineered from a combination of human/Na’vi DNA. If they’d actually been attempting to blend in then that would be a pretty big giveaway.
