Teaching Jake the Baby

Neytiri Nags

AvaCar: Avatar Decals

Avatar BSlap style

Zoe Saldana and Siblings

Beautiful siblings! They would make good as Neytiri's sisters as well

Jake Sully's Sullen Face

Best way to piss off Neytiri!

Avatar Chicks

Hot Na'vi wearing ice blue flipflops and toenails donned cobalt blue acrylic! 

Avatar Blue Tail

Smurfs on Steroids: The Scientific Shortcomings of Avatar

So what are the anal retenive geeks blabbing about Avatar? Can you blame astronomers and biologists who are unable to suspend their disbelief even for James Cameron's sacre bleu oeuvre.

Ray Villard of Discovery News digresses:

The biosphere of Pandora supports an extraterrestrial Serengeti of diverse creatures. Biological evolution certainly took a different road on Pandora, as expected.  Read more 

Avatar Vs. Ferngully

Steve Pond interview with James Cameron and Zoe Saldana

I luurve any interview with Zoe Saldana in it! Just Awesome! She looks kinda tired here, must be the lighting.

Avatar TV Spot

More ripped jarheads and blue monkeys in action!

Avatar Awards

More Avatar comix from Comixed

Avatar Tribute to Jake & Neytiri

Avatar OST: I See You

Piano Cover (Acoustic)  by Yoonha Hwang 

Avatar in the Amazon

Interesting video. From the perspective of those who live in the Amazon - what do they think of Avatar?

Neytiri and Jake Video Montage

Zoe Saldana on the Jay Leno Show

Avatar Extended Clip: Learning to be Omaticaya

An Avatar Extended Clip on Learning to be Omaticaya. This rocks!

Avatar & Titanic Mash Up

Avatar Fan of the Year

Kathryn Bigelow in a load of Hurt

Go James Cameron go! You could do WWE if you sustain a choke hold!

One Hot Na'Vi: Megan Fox in Avatar

Va-va-voom its luscious Megan Fox turned Na'vi

Art by Veva Veronica Anacleti

Avatar Air Bent

I doubt the Air Bender can break Avatar's box-office record. Poor thing after being robbed of using its original title, its still robbed of its glory.

Avatar Theme Song: I See You Trance Remix

Enjoy this Avatar Movie Theme Song (I see you) in Techno Remix

Avatar Blues on the News

Storytelling Risks in Avatar: The Road Not Taken

With too much money on the line, there's no room for risk, the story stays safe for every ticket-goer. James Cameron's mainstream eye only promises an enjoyable clean ride with Avatar and it delivers box-office gold.

What storytelling risks could Avatar have taken?

Avatar doesn't have a bad story, but its unswerving direction does make it a predictable one. Since the internet's already hashed out the cultural angles of James Cameron's splendid epic, let's take a look at the storytelling mechanics--something he approached with a caution only $400M buys. What risks could Cameron have taken to add some surprise, without spiking the straightforward narrative? Read More at BoingBoing

James Cameron's Avatar at Comic-Con 2009

Before all hell broke loose, Cameron had to 'fess up and face the geeks at Comicon, the loyal hoards that will soon elevate his new found Blue empire into one the great merchandising conquests of all time. Hopefully all merchandise and action figures will peak by 2010 prior to the next sequel.

Zoe Saldana Avatar Interview

That's my Zoe! That's my girl Neytiri! Sharing her Avatar love on her twitter page

Conan O'Brien Avatar: Late Nights on Pandora

Love the cobalt on Coco! See you on TV soon!

Art by Ryan Keiser

Taylor Swift Avatar

Let's see Kanye mess with our girl now! Taylor Swift makes an elegant Na'vi

Artwork by NoMatter (Flickr)

The Na'Vi of Hometree Wisconsin

More love, more avatards!

Avatar: Smurfette & Jake Sully

'Guess she got tired of Papa Smurf!

All Hail the Avatards!

A collection of great avatar art, gorgeous blue transformations of fanboys and girls. All credits belong to the artists. Pandora's Best!

 Artist Pavlin Todorov

 

artist: Jason Stanley

artist: fpsurgeon

Avatar Action on the West Bank

All march to the West Bank Hometree

Eywa loves us!

Protesters from Na'vi take action at Israel's separation barrier.

Source: The Telegraph UK

King of the World, King of Pandora

Avatar unsinkable like the Titanic

artwork by Olivier07

James Cameron will write Pandora's Genesis

“There are things you can do in books that you can’t do with films”

James Cameron

 
Cameron just won't quit being blue. Just like Moses, he's going to write it all down and set it in stone. Will this be in the vein of Frank Herbert's Dune or more like Meyer's Twilight or Rowling's Potter Series? Whatever. Its gonna be a colossal best-selling fiction book raking in as much moolah as the movie.

Cameron Penning "Avatar" Prequel 

Twilight on Pandora: Rob Pattinson Vs. Jake Sully

Rob Pattinson is such a dead ringer for the Navi Avatar of Jake Sully. Hey, they must have gotten some of his DNA in there all mixed up. This was one of the first photos I saw of Avatar on the web before it hit the theaters, before it became the movie phenom that it is.

Seqmag.com: Exclusive 45 minutes on the Making of Avatar

An Avatar special from seqmag.com  40 excellent minutes on the making of James Cameron's Avatar, the best bits from all the available material floating on the web.

http://seqmag.com/2010/01/exclusive-45minute-making-of-avatar/

Avatar at the Awards

Avatar is now the highest-grossing movie ever breaking past the worldwide box-office record holder which was Titanic's. So only the great James Cameron can get beat James Cameron. And that is tops!

Avatar is also now known as the most costly mainstream fare ever made, at more than $300 million US. For a time, Titanic held the unsinkable record at $200 million.

As for the Oscar nods, well its a sci-fi film, not a period piece like Titanic (Yeah, only if the Na'vi can wear corsets ) so expect Avatar to get shut out of this year's acting Oscars. But expect Avatar to rake in all the awards in visual and technical achievement.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Ahvadah!

California Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger Honors James Cameron


Great post on the SBIFF 2010 here

Avatar: A Pocahontas Redux

How similar is Avatar from Pocahontas? Bet James Cameron did enough tweaking on the historical lore of Pocahontas just to jumpstart a whole new franchise. But the result is just kickass anyway!

Funny! Just had to post this, I saw it on Facebook this morning.

Digressions by Extant: The Gaia Hypothesis in Avatar

I am reposting this from http://forum.fanfiction.net/topic/69658/21975116/1/ 
I did not write this and do not claim to. I'm just happy someone wrote this all down in a forum, its one of the most extensive and well-thought of explantions about the symbolisms in Avatar.  And I would like to share it, all thanks should be credited to Extant who wrote it.

The Hidden Debate aka the whole movie in one gulp

Here's a breakdown of the all the major symbols in the movie and the debate they represent, as well as an overview of the significance of the mythological structure of the story, written for a discussion about Avatar between some fellow students and myself. I thought this might be easier to digest than several longer separate entries I was planning on writing, since it outlines the actual relationships between the symbols and puts them all togther for you. I also try to evaluate some political issues about the movie, such as the criticism that indigenous peoples are misrepresented and that they, once again, appear to need to be saved by a white man, and try to weigh these issues in the context of the movie as a whole and the ultimate effect it has (or could have) on the audience.

Enjoy! And feel free to respond to any of the ideas below. The pen is mightier than the sword, and all that...

I think there’s definitely some issues of cultural appropriation in the movie. What other people have already pointed out is definitely right: the Na’Vi do appear to be a mix of various indigenous cultures, and it brings in the ongoing issue of depriving indigenous peoples the world over of having their own voice and telling their perspectives and experiences accurately. There’s also the issue that the hero of the story is a white male (obviously American, or whatever the U.S. exists as 150 years from now – we’re not told) and that this is a retelling of the “going native” myth. I went into the movie expecting to be offended by both, but by the time I’d walked out of the theater, my opinion had changed.

The reason was the symbolism and altered structure of the myth compared to previous retellings.

While there’s still issues of cultural appropriation present, I realized as I was watching that the Na’Vi culture was not simply an amalgamation of images associated (accurately or not) with indigenous cultures, but was actually based on the Gaia Hypothesis and some of the debates within holistic science, using symbolism, sometimes borrowed from indigenous cultures but also (a little more obscurely) from Western traditions, to communicate the ideas.

I think it’s easier if I explain the ideas first, then break down the symbolism: If you’re not familiar with it, Gaia Hypothesis posits that the Earth functions as one organism, with all the systems of the Earth interacting to function much the same as the various organs in our own body interact, creating a self-regulating system that accounts for the stability of temperatures over millennia, as well as the sustaining of conditions favorable to life. Many Gaia Hypothesis and Earth systems scientists have started looking at indigenous stories and beliefs and are coming to the conclusion that they truly may have known far more about the Earth and ecology than Western culture has given them credit for, but just kept the information in a very different way than Western science. Also, Holistic science, especially hand-in-hand with Gaia Hypothesis, suggests that there are four parts to how we think and interact with the world: through reason, senses, emotion, and intuition. Reason and sensing, it says have been the core of Western civilization, especially in science, since the Enlightenment, with emotion and intuition increasingly pushed aside and labeled as unacceptable. Holistic scientists argue that because we evolved living close to nature, emotion and intuition are equally valid sources of information, and even allow us to perceive things that reason and senses alone do not. They propose that using all four forms of perception are necessary to a truly skillful and ethical approach to subjects such as ecology.

For an absolutely fantastic interview explaining Gaia Hypothesis and the paradigm of holistic science, watch this interview with Dr. Stephan Harding:


So, to break down the symbolism in Avatar:

First, there’s the goddess Eywa, who roughly stands in for the goddess from which Gaia theory took it’s name, the Greek goddess of the Earth – not just the personification of the earth, but the creator as well.

Second, there is the Tree of Souls, the glowing willow-like tree that is the heart of the root system that covers Pandora and through which all energy flows. This is from the Celtic/Druidic tradition – or at least the modern interpretation of it – of the Tree of Life, with the roots forming the earth. This root system and energy flows thus represent the Gaia Hypothesis idea of a world where everything is quite literally connected, forming one giant system or organism. (The laying of hands on Jake during his initiation ceremony forms a web from the Na’vi’s bodies as the camera pulls back. This is an extension of that symbolism, showing the interconnection of all the people in the clan.) The branches of the Tree of Life represent the heavens and are supposed to carry down blessings and messages from the gods, which is why the Na’Vi connect to the branches of the Tree of Souls and the Trees of Voices with their queues (braid tendrils) to communicate with Eywa and their ancestors.

Then there are the Na’Vi’s queues (braids) themselves, which are essentially an extension of the Na’Vi’s nervous system, so that what we’re seeing is the Na’Vi connect to Eywa (Gaia) directly, still using the nervous system and brain but without the involvement of senses and reason. This symbolic for the intuitional and emotional perception of nature proposed by Gaia Hypothesis and holistic science. The movie essentially took an idea – emotional and intuitional knowledge - which is normally dismissed as superstition because it can’t be seen or logically proved (perceived by reason or sense), and turned it into a physical connection so that the event and its role could be literally seen by the audience. Further paralleling the debate between traditional Western science and holistic science (as well as some indigenous cultures), this emotional/intuitional knowledge is put in direct opposition to Western science and culture and the knowledge available to the reason and senses, as represented by both Grace and the RDA corporation. Grace, with all her science, is unable to perceive the depth of the global system itself. She knows it’s there and can track bits and pieces of the electrical signals, but the actual knowledge contained in the root system and the Tree of Souls is completely inaccessible to her, and she must rely on what the Na’Vi tell her to have any idea of the system’s significance. (This also brings up the divide between information and knowledge, where Grace, like Western culture, is constantly chasing after information and accumulating vast amounts of it, but still cannot know anything from it, where as the Na'Vi, through a different knowledge system, can.) Similarly, the RDA is literally unable to perceive reality because they perceive the world only through reason and senses, causing them to be blind to the global system and the true nature of Pandora’s existence. This leads them to operate from a very skewed system of ethics in which the world is a dead thing to be manipulated, completely oblivious of the extent of the destruction they cause – an accusation Gaia theory and holistic science has leveled at Western science.

The whole theme of Sight (“I see you,” “No one can teach you to see,” etc.) is an extension of the intuitional/emotional knowledge vs. reason/senses debate. (If you read the script, there was a whole bunch of lines cut from the final version that got even further into this, like “When you see nothing, you See everything; when you hear nothing, you Hear everything” – probably cause it sounds really silly if you aren’t catching the debate. :P )

There was also very strong life vs. death symbolism woven into the movie, with life associated with the Na’Vi culture and death associated with the human culture. The death symbolism is set up in the beginning with Jake’s brother’s funeral in which a box is closed and slid into a furnace. This is paralleled multiple times by the link machines used to connect to the avatars, which resemble a coffin. These are closed like his brother’s coffin was and then (at the main base at least) slide into a tubular recess in the wall. In addition to specifically outlining this symbolism, the movie script also reads that the bays of cryosleep pods on the spaceship are supposed to resembled the cadaver drawers in a moratorium. In comparison, the Na’Vi funeral we’re shown actually symbolizes life: the grave is a round, bowl shaped hole in the ground, with the deceased Na’Vi placed inside in a fetal position, surrounded by flowers. A seed of from the Tree of Souls (symbolically the Tree of Life) is placed inside the womb-like grave with the fetal body. When we attach this life vs. death symbolism to the arguments the humans and Na’Vi respectively represent, we get the very strong narration, “That way, death; this way, life” – also part of the Gaia science vs. Western science debate.

So now that we’ve got the symbolism out of the way, let’s tackle Jake: First off, I’m not happy that the hero of the story was a white, American male. Obviously, we can see the problems with this – the “white savior” and the “guilty white-man’s fantasy” and all that. But during the movie and in talking to some very culture-shocked people afterwards I quickly came to the conclusion that he was necessary. We’re talking about a story which symbolically tackles multiple aspects of Western civilization and tries to point out their faults and limitations – not just the limits of imperialism and the use of the military to represent corporate interests, which was the obvious points of the plot, but the limits of our science and our faith in reason and sense as well (blasphemy!). In this sense, the paradigm in the movie was very alien to most of the audience, and Jake was necessary as a literary device to walk people into it. If we actually look at Jake’s character, he starts out almost as a shell. All we know about him is he’s a former marine, he’s paralyzed, and his brother’s dead. Not much of a character there, just enough for us to identify with and step into. His experiences with the Na’Vi become 90% of his character, and like a boat he carries the audience into the other paradigm, being the vehicle through which they are introduced to these new ideas and different perspective. Whether this worked is up for debate, and I think will be partially dependent on those of us who perceived the symbolic meanings using the movie as a talking point to start more overt discussions with other people who maybe just saw the surface plot.

As for the structure of the myth, it really struck me that this retelling both had a metamorphic structure and ended differently than any other “going native” myths I’m aware of. In every previous retelling I'm familiar with, the white man has an epiphany and then always returns to his own people, but "carrying the message from the indigenous people about how to live in harmony with the world." (And then the indigenous people usually get wiped out as his ship sails off.) End of story.

However, Jake actually goes through a metamorphosis in which he doesn’t just learn to see things from another perspective, but actually looses one identity and gains another. In this journey, Jake goes through four ages/rebirths common in many mythological structures: the first rebirth is when he first gets his avatar; at this stage Neytiri accuses him of being a “child”. The second rebirth is when he gets his ikran (the bird they fly on) in the trials that must be passed by adolescent Na’Vi. The third rebirth is his acceptance to the clan, which Jake tells his commander is the “last stage in becoming a man” and becoming a full member of the clan. The fourth stage is when Jake bonds with the Toruk, fulfilling the position in a legend last held by a clan elder, as told by Neytiri. Thus we see the full cycle – infancy/childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and elder – something I can’t remember seeing in previous retellings, and which gives the story a different purpose than previous stories in which the white man essentially steals the indigenous knowledge then goes back to save his own people. The cycle is completed at the very end when Jake transfers to permanently to his Na’Vi body, his human body literally dying with his soul reborn in a new body, presumably returning to the beginning of the cycle.

And this is where the difference strikes me the most: whereas the myth has always ended before with the white man returning to his world, Jake doesn’t return to humanity (symbolically Western civilization), but abandons it completely, shedding his human body and human identity to take his place among the Na’Vi (Gaia Hypothesis and a more holistic knowledge system). And the story isn’t finished! They’re planning to do two sequels to Avatar, making it a trilogy. The sequels will continue to follow Jake and Neytiri. To me, this is absolutely fascinating, because not only are we continuing a myth where it’s always ended before, but we’re continuing it with the main character now (presumably – it’s sci-fi) permanently in the “alien” or “indigenous” culture – a culture which is symbolic for a real paradigm shift in science and Western culture that’s been slowly gaining momentum over the last 30 years, and which is even beginning to recognize that indigenous cultures might know as much or more than our own scientists. Such huge changes, after so many similar retellings, are like saying, “We've realized there's something to learn here, and that it doesn’t work to just learn it and take it back with us. We have to stay inside it, to become it. …Now what?”

When you take into account the whole symbolic debate between knowledge systems embedded in the movie, I came out with the impression that it wasn’t so much Jake that saved the Na’Vi – it was the Na’Vi that saved him. (Keep in mind, Jake didn’t win the battle, Eywa did when she sent the animals in [as Disney-esque as it was]. ;) )

The sequels could totally flop on their face – I’m really half expecting them to – but the fact that Cameron has changed the myth, given it some real symbolic substance, and is continuing it means that more people will try after him. Maybe, eventually, we’ll end up with a new myth that’s wiser and actually worth telling.

Unobtanium is the Shizz

"This is why we're here. This little grey rock sells for 20 million a kilo, it what pays for the whole party."

Unobtanium is the New Viagra and Colonel Miles Quaritch likes it fresh from under the Hometree!

Avatar Vs Hurtlocker

Kathryn Bigelow will clearly win over James Cameron at the Oscars. A bittersweet kiss from his ex-wife mind ya. This only proves that tough chicks can handle the big guns. Hurtlocker is a sweet, badass film on its own. It would be great to finally see a woman win an Oscar for directing!

Avatard Videoke: I See You by Leona Lewis

One hawt sexy Na'Vi sings out her blue heart with I See You by Leona Lewis

Eywa Help Us!

Who You Calling an Avatard?

Don't you know its a crime to call fanboys Avatards? To be PC about it, only Avatards can call each other Avatards! and I don't mean the air-bending kind!

 Avatards are now taking their first big step in establishing their fandom by firing blue haters from the office.
Click here for the article about the Utah Man who got fired

This is Pandora!

Yah go Tsu'tey!Yah go Tsu'tey! Like what our brethren Jake Sully has said to the Na'vi before battle:
"You ride out as fast as the wind can carry you. You tell the other clans to come. Tell them Toruk Makto calls to them. You fly now, with me."

This is madness! This is Avatar!

Go BlueFace: How to be an Avatard

You can't go Na'vi, if you don't have the "look". Go Pandora chic by working with Blues who cares if its in Cobalt, Aquamarine, Turquoise, Indigo as long as you go shockingly BlueFace. Here's a perfect tutorial in creating your own personal Na'vi look. Read More
Or you can never go wrong with Miss Glowpinkstah's tutorial video of which she divulges her fetish for sexy paraplegics with muscle atrophy.

Avatards Unite!

For the love of James Cameron, let's open the box to Pandora!
Avatardation is an affliction for Big Blue lovin' and an overwhelming appreciation for Eywa's awesomeness!