Us Weekend Guide: Animated Avatar Exceeds the Pre-Release Hype
Credit: Courtesy Twentieth Century Fox
Already watched this week's episode of Jersey Shore more times than you'd like to admit? We've rounded up a few other must-see alternatives for the weekend's best movie releases and TV shows.
This Friday, writer-director James Cameron's animated Avatar hits theaters 12 years after Titanic. Does the effects-heavy epic about a paraplegic veteran (Sam Worthington) who inhabits an alien body meet the hype? It exceeds it, says Us' David Guggenheim. Moviegoers should definitely keep an eye out for the impassioned performance of Zoe Saldana, who appears as an alien native in the flick.
Another film worth the price of admission is Crazy Heart, the country ballad-like movie in theaters now.
Us' Thelma Adams praises Jeff Bridges' performance as a downward-spiraling musician who finds redemption in rehab, but cautions his hokey May-December romance with costar Maggie Gyllenhaal appears inauthentic on-screen.
Check out Hollywood's other leading ladies steaming up theaters this season.
Reality TV fans can get their fill this weekend as CBS' Survivor crowns its 19th champion on Sunday. While it remains to be seen if devilish big guy Russell Hantz walk away with the cool $1 million prize, one thing is for certain: the show's live reunion show, airing after the two-hour finale at 10 p.m./ET, is sure to get heated.
Remember these fan favorite reality TV moments?
Kyra Sedgwick's The Closer caps its fifth season this Monday with a gripping finale that investigates a case of domestic abuse involving an LAPD detective. Making things tougher: marital friction between Sedgwick's Brenda and Fritz (Jon Tenney) and having to work alongside her nemesis, Captain Raydor (Mary McDonnell).
For more must-see weekend moments, check out Us' Movies, TV and Music channel now!
Tell Us What You Think
4Avatar is a classic scenario you've seen in Hollywood epics from Dances With Wolves, Dune, District 9 and The Last Samurai, where a white guy manages to get himself accepted into a closed society of people of color and eventually becomes its most awesome member. If we think of Avatar and its ilk as white fantasies about race, what kinds of patterns do we see emerging in these fantasies? A white man who was one of the oppressors switches sides at the last minute, assimilating into the alien culture and becoming its savior. These are movies about white guilt. Our main white characters realize that they are complicit in a system which is destroying aliens, AKA people of color - their cultures, their habitats, and their populations. The whites realize this when they begin to assimilate into the "alien" cultures and see things from a new perspective. To purge their overwhelming sense of guilt, they switch sides, become "race traitors," and fight against their old comrades. But then they go beyond assimilation and become leaders of the people they once oppressed. This is the essence of the white guilt fantasy, laid bare. It's not just a wish to be absolved of the crimes whites have committed against people of color; it's not just a wish to join the side of moral justice in battle. It's a wish to lead people of color from the inside rather than from the (oppressive, white) outside.
The movie was great...its a must see movie... Yeah it does goes back to africa as being the motherland and the beginning of the native people.. but its just the base of the movie ... it has nothing to do with being racist...so what the hell is steve real talking about? shut up.
I saw Avatar yesterday and I can't help to notice the rascists aspects to the movie, especially in the language and music. It reminded me of the Heart of Darkness were the "White man" brings civilization to the "Black Africans" and you can hear this in Africaner style in the music and lanquage. It's a rascist movie no doubt about it, but I liked it anyways. The "White man" reigned superior to the "Black man" in the end. Check it out and tell me if I'm wrong...