In keeping with the habit of only writing on Mondays…

…here are a few random thoughts that have percolated over the last week:

–Been listening to the original cast recording of Les Miserables.  If Hollywood can produce big screen versions of Rent, Chicago and Nine, it’s time somebody brought Les Mis to the screen.  So long as they cast Timothy Spall as Thinardier. 

–ABC really ought to release The Path to 9/11 on DVD. 

—Amerika could use a decent DVD package as well.  I’ve never seen it, and I’d like a chance to.

–I really wanted to do a write-up on Avatar (the more I think about it, the more I think conservative film critics have missed something), however, some paying writing gigs have come up, and paying the bills comes first.  For the time being, read this. 

—Lost‘s final season begins tomorrow. 

—The Killer Angles is one helluva novel.

Overstreet posts best review of Avatar I have read so far…

I usually find film critic and author Jeffrey Overstreet’s insights invaluable.  And in regard to Avatar, he does not disappoint.

Most critics either gush over the film or dismiss its contrived plot, but others have managed a more balanced approach.  James Cameron has always delivered a feast for the eyes, and anyone familiar with his work would agree with Steven Greydanus–Cameron is a master manipulator adept as making his themes seem weightier than they really are.

I never suspected Avatar to be any different, but all the talk of its sermonizing has started to make me wonder if it was somehow weaker.  Overstreet’s reaction to the film has at least compelled me to take the time and go see it (maybe), but still manages to cut through the hyperbole.

The masterstroke of the original Star Wars‘ trilogy was its bold third-act subversion of audience hopes and expectations. Lucas made the villain we loved to hate into a redeemable human being, one who could be saved by grace. Avatar has nothing so bold or redeeming as that, nothing to discomfort audiences with the wild truth.

What begins as mythmaking devolves into political pulpit-pounding, a narrow-minded “war-for-oil” critique of recent and present-day American military interventions in the Middle East that sounds oh-so-2004.

[…]

So I’ll join the chorus in singing “I can’t believe my eyes.” But I cannot echo the recurring declaration that the movie is “mind-blowing” unless I mean that the movie short-circuited my intellect as I watched. The waves of toys spilling from Cameron’s toybox momentarily distracted me from the fact that what he’s built from them is flimsy and crude.

As an achievement in technical innovation, Avatar is phenomenal, a ride worth taking more than once, but as adventure movies go, it is impressively new in every way except the way that matters most. Its look will last. But its heart won’t go on.

After waiting 12 years for another Cameron film, I had hoped for better.  Sure, Cameron could never live up to the hype he generated.  Who could? After all, this was the film to which Titanic was a mere detour, right?

Riiight…

John Hughes (1950 – 2009)

So reports Fox News. 

“The key to faking out the parents is the clammy hands. It’s a good non-specific symptom; I’m a big believer in it. A lot of people will tell you that a good phony fever is a dead lock, but, uh… you get a nervous mother, you could wind up in a doctor’s office. That’s worse than school. You fake a stomach cramp, and when you’re bent over, moaning and wailing, you lick your palms. It’s a little childish and stupid, but then, so is high school.”

(Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)