Winos, Junkies, Avatars and Jeff Healey

I have decided. No apologies. No explanations. Nothing. We'll just pick up where we left off. OK?

Just like I haven't been away, stuffing my face on fish, fish and more fish......and squid! Oh, those tentacles feel so good when they go down!

Went to see 'Avatar' yesterday. The station had got their copy earlier in the week. Yes, I know I am a little behind the times but hell, I've been out at sea these past months. No dvds in the ocean! So was it worth the wait? Later! I said later!

First I'd like to examine the nature of comedy. :) It's said that all great comedians have to be actors; and good ones at that. I am inclined to agree with the majority view. Think about it! Telling a gag is one thing. You have to have good timing; there's nothing worse that a punch line without the exact, right amount of pausing between the lines. And it has to be done in just the right tone of voice, timbre, otherwise it just doesn't work. But.

More importantly, you have to believe the character's funny, don't you think. There has to be something intrinsically funny about the comedian. It's not just about the script. Well I watched something I hadn't watched for ages. Richard Pryor - Live and smokin'. Shot in a dingy 'comedy club' by one camera in 1971, before the 'good times', before the freebasing :) (Cut to comedian with a lighted match bobbing up and down - RP after the 'accident'. Or Michael Jackson after the Coke advert! Depends on who's telling it!)

Well. Pryor goes into this 10 minute monologue about the winos who used to hang out where he lived as a kid. The drunken, exaggerated claims, the slurred speech etc. Taking on the 'character of an old wino. Then into the mix, he introduces a black junkie, desperate for his next 'fix', who proceeds to banter with the wino. A lot like Lenny Bruce it's true, the two character 'skit', but a more poignant evocation of the despairing helplessness of addiction you could not hope to see. And not a laugh in sight. Just Pryor 'free-forming' characters. Maybe Richard thought it was funny, holding up a 'wasted nigger' to the white folks. Maybe he didn't. But I sure as hell don't think the 'white folks' expected that during a comedy routine!

So Avatar. The most hyped movie in the history of the planet. The largest grossing film of all time. The only film in which Signoury Weaver DOESN'T get her tits out.

IT'S RUBBISH!

Like all James Cameron's films, a triumph of technology over substance! A movie made for the masses to stream into IMAX theatres and marvel at how wonderful it looks! "Wow! They do that all with computers!" They all say. Hell, the Abyss was only good because Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was in it! (Stop drooling MG). I'm sorry, I don't care how polished the CGI is, it still doesn't look real! It seems to me that somehow the over-reliance on CGI has caused a major component of the appreciation of 'fantasy' to come adrift; the willing suspension of disbelief. You know it's all CGI so you don't bother to suspend the disbelief. How much more 'real' is, say, 'the Dark Knight', however equally preposterous the fantasy, because, by and large, it IS real. A real 'Tumbler', a real 'Bat-Bike', a real Batman!

Even the mildly subversive nature of Avatar, humans waging war on indigenous populations for profit, couldn't disguise its inherently 'twee' nature. After all, these are mercenaries, not US troops, tho' they might as well have been. The 'renegade' was not chosen, but a poor substitute. And there isn't a 'foreigner' amongst the mercenaries. Not an Arab, not a Russian, not a South American. No, they're all American! What are we supposed to read into this? A 'thinly veiled' attack on American expansionism? No! Just you can't be seen to criticise another ethnic group in mainstream American cinema, that's all. Ergo, no ethnic groups! And where were the Pandoran Penguins?

And to cap it all, the film goes against all the tenets of the 'fairy story'. You see, a major component of stories in which a human character is thrust into 'faerie' is their eventual departure and the aftermath. The dislocation on arrival and the dislocation on departure. Avatar fail on both counts. It's not subversive, it's TWEE!

It's a pity, because this could have appealed to the mainstream (ignorant American) cinema audiences and still been intelligent and thoughtful. Ah well, you can't win 'em all!

I came across this last night. One man's homage to the late and great Jimi Hendrix. 'All along the watchtower'. The late Jeff Healey. No rebooting, no reinterpretation of either Hendrix or Dylan, just an out and out steal! Still bloody awesome whichever way you look at it!





I sent the link to MG last night thinking it might amuse. Of course, he saw him in the late eighties! Just after 'See the light' was released! Typical!

Oh, by the way I forgot to mention, he lost his eyes to retinoblastoma before he was a year old!