Avatar (2009) - James Cameron

Just when you had enough of mythological heroes of the Joseph Campbell type from the Hollywood churn, here comes another one that is apparently breaking all records not just with its faux-pacifist message, but also with its revolutionary visuals. Trivia about the film reveals that the crew spent some time in Hawaai living according to (their idea of) tribals during the day, spending the night at a posh hotel. I found this more revealing about the quality of this film than any amount of crap about CGI.

Of course, when Roger Dean is your model, it should not surprise anyone that the visuals are so kitschy. Wishing that someone in Hollywood would take Douanier Rousseau, or Klimt landscapes as their model can qualify only as wishful thinking. When it comes to Kitsch, though, I prefer the intentional, ironic campy art of Andy Warhol or Jasper Johns to this unintentional crap that people actually seem to find beautiful! Considering that it was mostly Americans who gave us pop art in the first place, one can't help lamenting that period as some sort of a golden age in American art. When I further consider that  Hollywood's B grade movies and American pop art inspired directors like Godard to make films like Pierrot le Fou, the mind just boggles at how Hollywood has devolved since then.

Just in protest, this post will have no images from Avatar, but a few pop art images...

Jasper Johns, Map, 1961. Museum of Modern Art New York City.

 

Robert Rauschenberg, Riding Bikes, Berlin, Germany, 1998.

  

Roy Lichtenstein, The Head (1992), Barcelona.

 

Jim Dine, 'Study for This Sovereign Life', 1985

And a few images from cinema's use of kitsch...

 Jean Paul Belmondo in Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le Fou (1965).

'Kika' - Pedro Almodóvar (1993) poster

 

The Criterion DVD cover for Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love (2000)

The Danube waves (1959) - Liviu Ciulei

IMDB Link - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053404/

A typical war film, but well-executed in an old fashioned way. Romania is under Nazi occupation. A ship is carrying German ammunition through a mined Danube. A communist is on board as the captain's mate. The newly married captain's wife is also there. Knife in the Water? No, this film was made in communist Romania , probably as a propaganda film. Wages of fear? Heavy influence of. With a big difference, though - finally, the communist defeat of the Nazis must come through.

Green Water (2009) - Mariano De Rosa

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1353785/

Mid-life crisis becomes inevitable as a man cannot handle a stranger's attraction to his daughter. A psychologist wife who takes it in her stride and a son who may grow up to be gay make the problem even more acute. Not just another mid-life crisis film, but an extremely well-made one.

Ishqiya (2009) - Abhishek Chaubey

An interesting idea gone kaput in the implementation. The basic premise is nothing new - that people end up doing crazy things when bitten by the love bug. As a James Hadley Chase novel, this could still have been great stuff. Two thieves, having stolen a lot of money from a third thief, are running away; they seek shelter with a fourth thief. The thief is missing, but his wife gives them shelter. Then the money goes missing ; then the wife comes up with a foolproof scheme to earn some fast money. The two thieves fall for the girl, and hence for the scheme. However, the golden rules of James Hadley Chase say: there is never any fast money, no scheme is foolproof, and women are dangerous. This is classic stuff. The only thing you need to manage well is to make the characters and the milieu colourful, funny and crazy enough; and yet there has to be an internal logic to who they are and why they behave the way they do (which is supposed to be love in this case).  The film fails to deliver on these very premises. Some jokes are good, but the character development just isn't there. What a waste of an interesting idea!