Take even a cursory look through some of the less presentable recesses of the Internet and you'll quickly learn one thing — everyone wants to be a Na'vi. When James Cameron dropped Avatar back in 2009, something of a fledgling movement arose, made up of everyday folks who saw the nature-centric, harmonious (and, yes, completely and utterly fictional) world of Pandora, and its Na'vi people, as preferable to our own. See: Will it be possible to create real life Na'vi from Avatar?; What do the Navi people of Avatar (the movie) eat?; and the ever-helpful How to be like a Na'vi, featuring such instructions as "Get in touch with nature," "Find a deep connection with the nature around you," and "If you want to look like one if you're a girl you can use blue eyeshadow." Or how about the classic Avatar Makeup Tutorial ("In order for you to be legit Pandora people you're gonna have to opposite-bleach your skin and dye it blue")? And let us not forget this timeless headline: Avatar: Na'vi-impersonator secession group formed in Florida.
Much like Tom Emanski, James Cameron is going back-to-back-to-back. While the HMFIC hasn't confirmed this himself, his Avatar star Sigourney Weaver now says three return trips to Pandora will all be shooting at the same time. Reports Showbiz411, "[Sigourney Weaver] goes right into a new Christopher Durang play for a short run at Lincoln Center. Then she films Avatar 2, 3, and 4 ... Weaver says she has no idea how long it will take, or how it’s going to work. 'I just show up,' she said." Looks like Cameron is done exploring the depths of space and sea, and is ready to get back to making tons and tons of cash. Hooray!
Contraband, the latest attempt by Mark Wahlberg to prove that he’s still the captain of the Junior Varsity Action Star Team, opens in theaters today. Though Wahlberg’s indisputably the star, toplining another virtuoso showcase of his ability to toggle between charming and enraged, what we’re really intrigued about is Giovanni Ribisi’s turn as the psychopath threatening Wahlberg’s family. There’s been a sleazebag element in just about every role Ribisi has played, whether he’s the lead or a supporting character, a hero or a villain. In Contraband he goes Full Sleazebag: slicked-back hair, scraggly beard to obscure his baby face, neck tattoo, a uniquely irritating voice. He’s like a Mini Me version of Nicolas Cage in Kiss of Death. To see how Ribisi got to this level, here’s a guide to some of his previous sleazebagtastical (yes, now an official word) turns.
This weekend human beings by the tens of thousands will crowd into air-conditioned multiplexes, popcorn and Jujyfruits in hand, to see the surprisingly well-reviewed, Oscar-baitingRise of the Planet of the Apes. There, in the artificially chilled, overpriced darkness, the enraptured masses will fall for the friendly, CGI face of Caesar, a revolutionary monkey, and thrill to his stirring, helicopter-destroying quest for freedom — or at least San Francisco. When the lights come up, some in the audience may be moved to applaud Caesar’s eventual triumph: the complete overthrow and subjugation of our own species. As Peter Debruge put it in his review for Variety, the film provides a “curious chance for humans to revel in their own destruction,” which strikes me as wildly perverse — a ludicrous example of voting-against-our-own-interests that makes Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas? seem as benign as The Wizard of Oz. Last I checked, the majority of moviegoers are human. Why are we suddenly so chuffed to cheer our own extinction?
