No doubt that’s what Cameron meant when he talked about his movie.  Hopefully he was not talking about the story.  So, will every movie in the blockbuster/space-opera genre be in 3-D with flawless CGI? Will budgets continue to push upwards of $400 million dollars?  Seems likely.  On the other hand, will Avatar go down in our collective memory the way Star Wars did?  I find that very doubtful.  Technical advances may have had a great influence at the time Star Wars came out, but that’s not why we remember it now.  After all, as soon as it was out, everybody else set out surpassing it.  Matrix made a similar leap in visual technique, but little else about the movie has lasted.

Star Wars had something else that was special, something that even George Lucas could never find again.  Though nobody could call the acting great, the relationships between the characters were inspired.  Obi-Wan is still an archetype, and Darth Vader is synonymous with ultimate bad guy.  Princess Leia was the perfect damsel in distress, who could also kick some ass.  But the key was really the hero.  Instead of just focusing on the “chosen one”, Star Wars kept balancing Luke with Han Solo.  Han Solo was fun in a way that Luke could never be.  Neo was never fun, the hero of Avatar could never catch that magic.  Nobody in the sequels had it.  Maybe it was just Harrison Ford, but I also think the character of the co-hero lifted some of the seriousness that oppresses adventure movies when the film-maker starts thinking about making art.  Lucas could be as serious as he wanted about the Force, destiny, and the themes of good and evil and fatherhood, without drowning the old-fashioned serial-movie fun, because Han Solo was always there.

It seems odd that one movie could have given the modern standard examplar of three cultural archetypes, but Star Wars did it.  Darth Vader, Obi-Wan, and Han Solo are always with us.  You can pull out any of those names and describe someone, and you’ve covered that topic.  I can’t imagine any character from Avatar will be that memorable even a year from now.

In Piranha II, you were likely to get killed by a carnivorous flying fish if:

• You are female and naked.
• You have sex unconnected to romance.
• You’re a somewhat ridiculous older woman.
• You are an ethnic side-character.

Also, if you’re ex-military, you’re instinctively evil, even when you try to be good.  if you’re a corporate person, you’re stupidly evil.

Things have gotten a lot better for naked or semi-naked women/aliens in Avatar, and only good people have sex, which is romantic as heck.  On the other hand:

• Military is still evil.
• Corporations are stupidly evil.
• Michelle Rodriguez? Dead.
• Sigourney Weaver? Dead. (well, she does get instantly recycled into a giant tree, so that’s something)

I’ll write this up as it goes.  The first section involves an overdue astronaut, coming back from the moon.  They make it clear that this is the second mission, the first one ended in disaster.  The second one is starting to go the same way.  The sets are minimal, but the film-makers didn’t try and show whole command centers, so it works well enough.  Then there’s a scene where the astronaut makes contact, twenty minutes after they know his oxygen must have run out.  He is pleading with control to kill him, use an auto-destruct button.  He cannot do it himself, because his hands won’t obey him.  The scene is nicely done, nothing low-budget of badly acted here.  You actually do feel the agony of the decision the scientists on the ground have to make.  So far so good.

Also, Alan Hale will be in this one.  I love Alan Hale.  He turned in a pretty great performance in The Giant Spider Invasion.  For those who don’t know, he is the skipper in Gilligan’s Island, the ultimate prototype sit-com.

We get introduced to the small town in a scene set in a cafe.  Some kids are dancing, the owner keeps telling them: “no dancing”.  Meanwhile, two girls, obviously main characters, are chatting.  They also have a cage with rats in it on the table.  One is wondering how the other managed to “snatch” the young med student as a boyfriend.  Apparently a dozen other girls have failed.  Actual dialog:

“I’m not saying you’re not stacked, he’s just not with it.”

That leads to a romantic interlude that, at whatever age I was then, probably went over my head.  Which is for the best.  The characters are weak 60s style teens, and the whole thing gets a little painful until it’s finally relieved by the arrival of the hand.  That section of the movie seems as if it were directed by someone else as well.  A second team director, maybe?  The angles are often wrong, people who are supposed to be conversing are staring off into space, and the presence of the back-screen is clear.

But when the action starts up again, it is kind of tense.  Moreso than with “Shredder,” a 2003 movie I tried watching earlier, but had to bail on as boredom swept in.

Now that Paul is going half-zombie, the quality of the movie starts plunging.  People keep acting strangely.  I think even as a child, I understood that things weren’t making sense.  The arm doesn’t seem very threatening, and the infected Paul seems to be more likely to go Emo than actually kill anyone.  But the movie is still fun.

It’s black and white, cheesy, and full of wooden acting, bad camera angles, and difficult to swallow plot points.  The central danger isn’t that credible, except when people are pretty near wasted.  But there are a few creepy scenes, and the overall cheese factor makes it fun.

I guess being a fan is the price of celebrating a victory as my own, and the price includes failure.  Without the possibility of losing, being a fan would mean no more than enjoying a movie, or some other form of entertainment.  So, because I invested myself and was rewarded during the Joe Gibbs era, I’m paying now.  But the Redskins are being destroyed by the man who makes all the money whenever fans engage.  So how can we still be loyal to anything?

Every season, since 1999, watching the Redskins has been an annual deathwatch.  How many games will it take to pull the plug this year?  Once the season is dead, we can turn our attention to other things.  The worst seasons are the ones with promise.  The ones where the latest crop of overpaid free agents make a little impact early on, before the long-term failure to build solid lines or any depth takes its toll.  But critiquing the Redskins is easy.  The real question is, why do I hang on?

I’m also a “fan” of Dollhouse.  Not like I’m a fan of House or Battlestar Galactica, which are fantastic shows that anyone would love if they were properly exposed.  No, my Dollhouse fanhood is like that I have for the Redskins.  Built on irrational hope and the occasional great performance.  But, where the Redskins have Vinny Cerato, Dollhouse has Eliza Dushku.  Sometimes they do episodes that do not feature her.  Those are often very good.  Still, I’ve oftened hoped the show would get bad enough that I could safely ignore it.  I thought it had, after a slow start to the second season.

But after I had sworn I was done, after I completely skipped an episode, I get the word that it had finally turned good.  I went to Hulu, cued it up, and watched the latest offering (Belonging).  Really, really good.  The show featured one of the more intriguing “Dolls,” her origin story, and a serious evolution of the character of the previously un-interesting Topher.  So now I have to watch the next episode.  Probably the one after that.  I don’t actually think it’s going to be good, Echo is still, nominally the center of the show.  But I’m a fan.  So I’ll sit through the deathwatch.

Me and High Blood Pressure

I don’t manage risk well.  If you give me a bunch of facts and stats and ask me to change my behavior, good luck.  For the past couple years of been treating my high blood pressure by inconsistent attempts at diet, sleeping better, and getting some exercise.  Anything but medication.  It’s a bad decision, and I know it pretty well because my job is health information outreach.  I’ve optimized articles on hypertension for the Web.

What did it take to get me back on medication?  I think my cardiologist actually threatened me.  Also, he woudn’t sign off on something else I needed, (ADD medication).  My sister had a similar experience.  She’s taking her high blood pressure meds because, as she says “I think the doctor said he was actually going to give me a stroke if I didn’t.”

Arguably, since I am only managing my own risk, I’m morally superior to the parents who won’t get their kids vaccinated.  But the moral element isn’t what I’m after today, it’s the thought process and how it might be changed.  My daytime job is basically health outreach.  Getting good information about health into the hands of people that need it.  Often I think we’re too timid.  We don’t want to offend anyone.  This keeps us from telling stories in a way that works.

Kids Dying in Swimming Pools

But first, let’s back up.  Swimming pools kill people.  So do guns.  If you let your kids play at a house a swimming pool you increase their risk.  If you let your kids play at a house where there are guns, you  also increase risk for your child.  Stasticaly, the swimming pool is FAR more dangerous.  But we feel more outraged by the guns.  Why?  We’ve accepted drownings as part of life.  Unfortunate accidents.  We think of them as something that happens passively.  An accidental shooting is active.  Someone DID something.  There is more guilt, some of which will always splash back on the parents.

Just imagine two headlines, without any other facts:

Child Dies in Swimming Pool (add sub-head about tragic unfortunate accident)

Child Killed While Playing With Gun (add sub-head about “could have been prevented” or “poor supervision” maybe “charges pending”)

Both could actually be prevented with about the same level of safeguards and attention, but one we process as passive and one as active.

Now to the vaccines.  Injecting a child with something is active.  Infectious diseases are, like swimming pools, a passive threat.  They are an unfortunate reality.  Tragic, but it happens.  Dying from a vaccination is an active event.  No matter how “correct” the decision may have seemed, that death will feel like the fault of the parent.

But passive and active are constructive, like foreground and background.  It all depends on how the story is told.  Instead of timid recitations of facts, here is how I would do a campaign to encourage parents to vaccinate their children:

Parents Letting Kids Die

Two kids, sitting across the table from each other.  Between them, a gun.  Yes, they are playing Russian Roulette, and Yes, we do show them taking turns and putting the gun to their head, while the parents watch.  Finally, the gun goes off and the kid collapses with the symptoms of swine flu.

Final message? “Take the gun away, get your children vaccinated.”  See? We’ve now converted swine flu into an active risk, and responsibility splashes back on the parents.

If anyone steals this idea, I hope they put it to good use.

But then, because I was in max ADD mode and needed something on in the background while I got some work done, I watched the first episode of Season one.  Then I watched the second episode, and the third.  Before the day was out, I was four episodes in.  As of now, I’ve finished Season 3, and fully intend to finish Season 4 before the last and final season starts live.  I love the show the same way I love peanut M & Ms.  They aren’t really nutritious, and it’s not exactly high-quality chocolate, but the combination can be perfect in the moment.

Broadly, though, my opinion hasn’t changed that much.  I still think:

• The sci-fi in Lost sucks.  There’s no consistent underlying set of rules, just a sort of random interplay between odd tech and pure fantasy
• The constant themes of fate and religion have been done better elsewhere.  The excess string of coincidence is constantly interpreted as having “meaning”.  But the meaning is always obscure.  “We were meant to be here.”  Sure, you were meant to be standing over there, and you, yes you, were meant to be naked.  (Kate, for instance, is constantly struggling with her clothes)
• It’s no BSG.  But then, it really isn’t trying to be BSG.  One is a tightly woven story with gritty, real science fiction elements, the other is a bag of M & Ms.  Peanut.  It doesn’t make the M & Ms less tasty

What drives Lost is character.  The island is obviously the screen-writer’s vision of purgatory, whatever else they call it.  And purgatory is, by definition, filled with tortured souls who are on the edge between redemption and damnation.  Throw a bunch of these characters together, add some solid chemistry, and you get great drama.  Almost every character who gets introduced eventually becomes fascinating.  I love Bernie and Rose as much as I do Sawyer.  Of course Jack is just insufferable, but you always almost like him.

A few months ago, a probable Skank by the name of Rosemary Port created an anonymous blog, in which she gave another probably Skank, Liskula Cohen an award for being the Skankiest Ho in NYC.  Among the some 1,700 viewers of this blog was the targeted maybe-skank, who got all offended.  Some damage had been done, but not very much.  A blog that gets 1,700 visitors is very, very low-impact.  And few of those visitors are likely to remember much.  Fewer still are likely to credit an anonymous source.  But, still, it was a nasty thing to say.  Maybe.  Even if it was true.

The real damage started when Cohen’s lawyer, Steve Wagner, decided to sue this anonymous blogger.  Instead of, say, 1,700 people thinking of this partying model as a “Skank-Ho”, now millions and millions of people are making that association.  As is Google.  Put in Skank, and the first picture you get is Liskula Cohen.  The first persons mentioned are Liskula Cohen and Rosemary Port.  Are they really skanks?  I don’t know, but who am I to argue with Google?  Can Liskula Cohen sue her lawyer?  After all, the damage done to her reputation by his lawsuit far, far exceeds that from the barely known anonymous blog.

And who could Jessica Biel sue?  Over 753 articles have headlined her as the “most dangerous celebrity in cyberspace” claiming that “Jessica Biel could give you a (PC) virus.”  Isn’t that a bit negative?  What did she do to earn this honor?  MacAfee created a list of celebrities who they claim are dangerous when searched for.  Naturally, they are selling something.    Can anyone double check their findings?  Seems to me that it’s just a pure press release play, using celebrity names to raise fear and drive people to buy more MacAfee.  Personally, I’ve never gotten a virus from Jessica Biel, or from any other online celebrity.