the avatar behemoth

Just links today after a couple days of singular thoughts:

no, james cameron. i won't see your new movie. not yet.

The Avatar Express keeps rolling, and we’re all powerless to stop it. Went to see Up int he Air yesterday, and the parking lot was as filled as I’ve ever seen it. When we got in to the theater, there was no line at the ticket counter, no line at the food counter, no one milling about anywhere. It looked like a Tuesday afternoon. I checked the schedule, and the two Avatar 3D shows were already playing. When we got out, the line at the ticket window was 200 people long, easy, about 45 minutes before the next Avatar showing. And everyone in the line was under 25. Seriously doubt they were there to see the 5 p.m. showing of Tooth Fairy. The lesson that Avatar is a complete and total cultural phenomenon the likes of which we may have never seen before. And I’m still waiting for it to come to DVD. Honestly, I’m being broken down to see it, but now it’s become some kind of personal quest not to see it in spite of the mounting pressure.

At least there’s still justice at the SAG Awards, where Inglourious Basterds took home the Best Ensemble Cast award, the equivalent of its best picture. It’s still my number one movie for the year, though I’ve had Hurt Locker sitting on my TV for about two weeks now and haven’t gotten the chance to watch it because it’s been such a hectic TV schedule lately. Inglourious Basterds is the one movie I’ve seen this year that I cam away from saying, “I’m really glad I saw this.” Good to see too that two of the three best shows on TV, Mad Men and Glee, took home the TV prizes.

a new standard for tv violence and nudity

Ah yes, the busy TV schedule that even produced a busy Friday for the first time in about … when was the Family Matters series finale? The Caprica (Syfy) premiere, the last Conan Tonight Show (NBC), the premiere of Spartacus: Blood and Sand (Starz and Encore, for now) and the Haiti concert (everywhere — no really, everywhere). I blew off the Caprica premiere (again), even though I made it through the first 15 minutes this time to watch Spartacus. There’s good news about Spartacus – it’s premiere sets the bar for reckless, wanton nudity and violence in a TV show. If it was released as a movie, it would have to make cuts to avoid an NC-17 rating. It’s that crazy. The two movies I always refer back to when I think of ridiculously bloody and gratuitous violence are South Park and the John Woo Hong Kong import Hard Boiled. South Park was doing it on purpose as satire to make a point, and Woo was doing it because … well, that’s what Hong Kong action movies do. But Spartacus blows them both out of the water. Maybe that was just in the pilot to get eyeballs, but it’s nuts. Beside that, I think it’s just a mishmash of other movies — the plot of Gladiator, the film tech of 300, the sex of Caligula and the language of Camelot if Arthur told Lancelot to eff off. If that’s your kind of thing, then you’re in the right place. But if it follows the same map as the Starz show Crash, only one more episode will be on Encore, then you’ll have to pay up to get Starz. So if you get hooked, don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Then there’s Conan. When normal people know they’re about to get fired, they come up with dream scenarios of how they can go out. Personally flip off everyone in the office, throw their hard drive out the window and set it on fire, whatever. Conan had other plans, amassing a who’s who of his best friends — Tom Hanks (who blew through the show then dashed to the Haiti telethon), Neil Young and an all-star band lead by Will Ferrell on lead vocals of Free Bird. I knew four of the five celebrity band members — I couldn’t figure who the guy sitting down was, now I know it’s Ben Harper. If you wanna watch the Free Bird performance, you have to FF to about the 36:10 mark:

Conan played his last show masterfully, the same way he played the entire wrestling match since the beginning of the month. Most importantly, he was extremely gracious to NBC for completely making his career as an SNL writer and taking one of the riskiest chances in TV history of giving someone with no on-air experience the chance to take over for David freakin’ Letterman. He should be gracious, he’s led a completely charmed life that never should have happened in a logical world. How he’s gone through this whole thing smelling like a bouquet of a thousand roses is almost impossible to fathom, but to his credit, he’s done it. Leno? Not so much. Comparing him to Hitler? Ouch.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Kimmel keeps chugging along, not making waves, just hanging out at ABC doing his nightly show without much fanfare. Has it really been seven years since he almost didn’t make it past his first episode after George Clooney got an audience member so drunk he puked?

Loyal readers of PopRox know we predicted The Hobbit would be getting pushed back a year about two months ago — now we’re starting to see confirmation that it’s true. Not that it was a very hard prediction. For as crowded as 2011 is going to be, 2012 is starting to get pretty crowded too with the new Spider-Man, The Avengers and The Hobbit. Those are three pretty big franchises to churn out in one year.

Oops! Sundance is starting and I’ve barely even mentioned it. But as usual, there’s plenty to see in Park City, Colorado, even though you may never see any of it in theaters. Of the 2009 winners, I’ve only heard of about four of the winners, and only seen two, Precious and Sin Nombre. Although I fell asleep, ironically, about 15 minutes into Five Minutes of Heaven.