According to Colwell

Movies with as much hype and expectation as Avatar do not come along every year. The movie has been assigned the duty of revolutionizing cinema and doing for 3D movies what The Wizard of Oz did for color 70 years ago. With such expectations, it is hard not to use superlatives in describing the movie. I made an effort to keep my expectations modest prior to seeing Avatar, a job made more difficult by a daughter who could barely contain her praise after seeing a midnight showing on opening day. Not only did it exceed my expectations on a technical level, it certainly deserves the mantle of a landmark movie as a work of art.

This was the first “RealD” 3D movie I have seen, and it was also the first time I’ve seen a movie in 3D without the annoying ghost double images that have plagued every other 3D technology. The 3D effect is not used to dangle objects over the audience or shoot things toward the camera to make us jump. I did not see a single shot that seemed designed to capitalize on the 3D effect, and for that I thank James Cameron. Instead, for the most part, it worked the way 3D should work and just made the actors and action on the screen look like it was actually there. The effect was subtle, but convincing. Avatar may very well end up being the landmark movie that makes 3D the new standard. While it by no means ruined conventional 2D movies for me, it achieved the technical feat of making 3D really work, without any sacrifices to the quality of the picture or the telling of the story. Maybe soon we will all have our own RealD glasses that are nicer and more comfortable than the loaners from the theater.

Avatar takes place on a moon called Pandora orbiting a gas giant planet around some unidentified star. Our own gas giant Saturn has a moon named Pandora, but it is a puny rubble pile of rock and ice, while Avatar’s Pandora is resplendent with life and color. To the misfortune of its inhabitants, Pandora has a large deposit of - I hesitate to write the name - “unobtainium.” Its whimsical name reveals that what it is and why people need it is irrelevant to the purposes of the movie. It is the classic McGuffin. Humans have invaded Pandora with a sizable military installation and a tiny scientific contingent consisting of Sigourney Weaver’s botanist, Grace, and a handful of assistants. Enter Jake Sully, the identical twin of one of Grace’s crew who died just before he was about to make use of a new avatar - bottle-bred bodies made by mixing the DNA of the native Na’vi people of Pandora with the DNA of the future human user of the body. Jake, a paraplegic Marine, is brought in to take the place of his dead brother.

He, and Grace and another scientist, Norm, enter their avatars by climbing into chambers and having their consciousnesses transported through unspecified means into the minds of the otherwise unconscious avatar bodies. Wisely, Cameron wastes little time on establishing Jake’s past, Earth’s problems, or the mechanics of avatars. He gets us quickly into the avatar and into the discovery of Pandora. Plant and animal life literally glow with a rich palette of blues, greens, and fiery reds that make the paintings of Maxfield Parrish look practically monochrome in comparison. To describe the creatures and the scenery of Pandora in words would be to make them trite, kind of like saying the Mona Lisa is a painting of a woman with an enigmatic smile, or Michelangelo’s David is a sculpture of a muscular man.

The story itself is both simple and familiar, even as the movie’s technology and setting are complex and completely novel and alien. The Na’vi are noble primitives that live in harmony with their ecosystem. They are the embodiment of the most romantic image of Native Americans fighting the noble struggle to keep their peaceful and harmonious existence safe from the invading hordes of Europeans. Jake is granted three months by the military industrial complex, personified by the militarily evil Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang - bulging muscles, scars, and an obvious desire to kick some native ass) and the corporately evil Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi - practicing his putting on the control center floor, twiddling samples of unobtainium, and counting the days until the next quarterly report is due) to earn the trust of the Na’vi and convince them to move off their prime piece of real estate and avoid a bloody relocation.

Jake is first rescued by, and then trained by, none other than the chief’s beautiful daughter, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). You can imagine the rest if you have not yet seen it. Yes, it is a complete cliche, but I found I didn’t care. Creatures on Pandora have neurological ports as part of their biology - a tangle of nerve endings at the end of a tentacle (concealed by a braid of hair for the Na’vi) - that enables two individuals of different species to communicate telepathically. It is at the heart of why the Na’vi are so connected to their home, and has a lot of interesting story potential on its own that is not really explored in this movie. The idea is a staple of science fiction (think of the ports on the back of the neck in the Matrix movies), but here it is given an entirely new twist. It is just one example of the imagination that is on display on the screen. Not only is the movie a visual work of art, but I found myself totally drawn in, cheering for the overpowered Na’vi, hoping to see Quaritch get his due, and rooting for Jake to succeed in his transformation. I’ll see it again, on the big screen, in 3D.

Set in 1937, when all colors were apparently brown and orange-ish brown, Me and Orson Welles offers a portrait of the future auteur of Citizen Kane as he approaches the peak of his artistic and egotistic expression. Zac Efron plays “Me,” a high school student who talks his way into a small part in Welles’ production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar just days before the premiere on Broadway in a refurbished Mercury Theater. Actually, it is John Houseman who is the producer, but it is Welles (Christian McKay, in a strong performance) who maddeningly calls all the shots. Welles plays Brutus in his adaptation of Caesar, and not only does he make last minute changes in the casting, like hiring Richard (Efron) to play Lucius, and show up late for his own rehearsals, he has a hard time committing to an opening date less than a week away.

Welles is full of bluster and bombast, interrupted by the occasional speech to inspire his beleaguered cast. Claire Danes plays Houseman’s assistant, Sonja, who puts up with it all because she views her stint with the great Welles as a stepping stone to a real job. As such, she is willing to put up with a lot, always with a smile. Richard is seduced not only by Sonja, but by the drama and allure of the theater. And there is so much drama, mostly supplied by Welles. In one of the movie’s funnier scenes, he dashes off from rehearsal at the Mercury to record a radio drama where, midway through, he launches into a long and complex improvised aside to the bemusement and confusion of his fellow voice actors. He is good, and boy does he know it.

Efron plays Richard with a youthful charm. He is not afraid to go toe to toe with either Welles or the womanizing actors in the play. Caesar serves to let Richard get a glimpse of his own potential and also of the realities of life in the theater and the personalities behind the personas of famous actors. And the movie gives us a glimpse of a time before World War II had gripped the world and the country was emerging from the Great Depression with a hopeful and infectious optimism.