Advice

In 1995, Billy Corgan sang: 'The world is a vampire, sent to drain.'

But of course he's wrong. The world is not a vampire. The vampire is us. Every day another part of the human race takes a huge bite out of the earth, turns around, pulls off their slacks and curls down a colossal turd onto the surface of the planet. Then another. Until the steaming mud monkeys peak and we all spiral into our inevitable fate. It's not a cheery thought. Yknow what else isn't cheery? The clap. In fact the world's full of things which make you want to just fall on the floor of the supermarket and smash your head against it until something gives, and then pass out amidst thousands of startled shoppers and a pool of red and grey matter. And sometimes this does happen, but more often you decide to just feel your despair. And eventually it goes away and is replaced with another emotion, and then you're happy, or bored, or just...numb.

But despair is often a very hard thing to shake off, like that last bit of urine still clinging to the walls of your _______(insert genitalia here.) (no seriously, actually insert it.).

And if you're troubled by despair there's a cure! (besides death)

Here's my method of ridding one's self of despair.

1. Music

As Shakespeare once said: Music is the source of all record labels

That's not the exact quote, but that doesn't matter. The main thing is, there are two musical paths out of despair.

NUMERO UNO: Happy music! Yay! Acoustic guitars and the glockenspiel to rouse you out of your depressive state. For this I reccomend 5 year's time by Noah and the Whale or Happiness by Kasabian. Or whatever fits the bill from your playlist. Make sure that you don't get too happy and begin believing you can jump out of windows and survive without permanently crippling yourself. Hang on, I've got to fill my IV (CRIPPLE JOKE)

Nummer Zwei: Heavy metal! Goth! Emo! You know what I mean. Tell the world to go shove itself up it's own lower back! I reccomend: My Iron Lung by Radiohead or Smashing Pumpkins by Bullet with Butterfly Wings. But don't listen to me! DOn't CoNfOrM WiTh ThE SYSTEM!

2. Do Something Mental

Don't take this too seriously. I mean if you were to run up to a coffee shop window, press your arse against the glass, pull your cheeks apart, and I mean really pull them apart, so all the customers inside can see straight up your anus, and then began to slowly defecate before a group of writhing cafe-goers, then you may be taking it a little too far. What I mean is that you need to break the routine. Do something a little bit off the hook, but don't get unhinged. Am I getting through to anyone? Maybe change your breakfast cereal, or colour shirt. Don't capture your neighbour's dog and feed it cornflakes and weedkiller until it goes pale and dry and limp and smelly.

3. Find yourself a goal.

This is one of those cheesy advice bits. The best thing to do is to make a list. A person you want. A thing you want, and...another thing you want. Then boast to everyone about your list. Then do nothing about it. You'll feel better with a list there. Maybe even pin it up, make sure you see your list every day. That will give you purpose. And everyone needs a purpose, or we'd all just be doing what we wanted all the time. And then where would we be? Watching daytime TV and masturbating? It's not a good way to go. Goal oriented people get places. And if you're getting places, then you know where you are, don't you?

4. The Final Thing

Dim the lights. Pour a cold glass of anything near to hand. Pull a packet of Baked crisps from the back of the cupboard. Huddle up in the corner of a chez longue with only a remote as your partner. Give your partner a kiss, maybe. Then switch on and turn off. Let the soft rays of coloured light wash over your tear-stained eyes and pock-marked face. Feel your body melt and wash away into the deep folds of your couch, and your nose tingle as the crisps miss your lips. Flick from channel to channel, catching canned laughter, explosions, dialogue, and then...what you want. This is now. This is here. This... is TV.

What?

Just imagine for a minute that maybe I have no topic to write upon. And on finding this out I decide to call a vote. Say maybe that happens, although it obviously wouldn't, because I'm always doing stuff I could write about, which of the following would my reader(s?) prefer I did?

A. Write about a personal life experience, and reflect on how this shows up the human race.

B. Write about a film. (I'll have to go watch a film first.)

C. Write about a television series

D. Blag an article about a government policy I know nothing about

E. Other

Avatarrr (Pirate joke)

Judging from the incredible box office results the Major Motion Picture Avatar has been a raging hit, so I should assume you've seen it, but I'm not going to. No. I'm going to write about it as though you've heard about it, maybe seen a trailer, but haven't been able to see it yet. I don't know why this is. Maybe your car won't start on the morning of it's showing, maybe you're a DVD person, or maybe whilst in an elevator on your way to see the movie the man next to you draws out a flick-knife and begins slashing wildly with a frighteningly blank expression on his face. Whatever the reason, I hope you will honour me for choosing this style of writing, rather than making bold assumptions about your connection with the film, as you may have none at all.

If that's the case then let me fill you in on what you'd know from the hype, not the film:

It's got blue people in it

It's popular!

...

...

So really, you don't need to do any preparation at all for this post. Aren't I kind?

You may have got the general gist of that first paragraph and just skipped it, and high five if you did, bro because it's pure prattle. Even now I'm just wasting space without giving any of my usual heavily opinionated and cynical writing about the film. You're probably bored stiff. And hold onto that word, stiff, because I'm going to use it later and if you spot it, you could win a prize.

Let's get down to it. Avatar. The name, as well as some of the in-film names, is a slap-in-the-face hint as to what the film's about, or, at least, what the particular sci fi what-if is that it pivots upon. That might seem a bit opaque. It's about avatars. The science lingo went a little bit over my head, as I imagine it did with most, but the technology that drives the film, as it were, enables the Jarhead Dude (Played to synthetic perfection by Sam Worthington) to control an alien they've grown. Now, for you non-associates, who may have been forming an image in their heads while reading the words "alien" and "grown" of an alien like in the film Alien, or perhaps War of the worlds, or maybe even Planet of the Apes, THINK AGAIN, ok? These blue aliens are not your average gross and slimy, toothed and scary, or even short and hairy extra-terrestrials. If you're thinking AvP, think more like WoW. They're elongated, elven humanoids, who's hairstyles are permanently set to "Biker" (more on that later).

Here's the-- oh, hang on... SPOILER ALERT!

Ok, Here's the plot:

Some company, for some reason, accompanied by the military, wants to obtain this rare mineral, unobtainium. Because, due to it's ridiculous name, people will pay literally millions of US dollars to obtain some (it's a great story for parties and the like). So this ruthless business tycoon, played incredibly rubbishly by Parker Selfridge, has manned a mission to this planet somewhere (look, where I'm vague, it's not important). But now, and I bet even he has to laugh at this one, he's found the unobtainium, but as it turns out, it's unobtainable! Doh! The reason for the Unobtainium's unobtainability is that it's buried under 600 square feet of alien life. And for some reason there's this moral obligation about blasting the fear of Christ into the little buggers.

Did I say little? Because I am seriously wrong, buddy! These guys are as big and dangerous as a molested Albatross on a hot day...with its trousers down.

So due to the fact that they can't morally unleash a serious can of whup-bottom on the bipedal beasts, they send some scientist in first. But in order to survive out there, they're going to have to be big and blue, like the aliens, aren't they? Well that's where the Jarhead Dude comes in. They've created these avatars, yeah? Which are like real bodies, but which are aliens. And they can be controlled by falling asleep in this tube. Now three of these aliens were designed for the scientists, but one of these scientists was on earth for a while and got mugged and shot (It doesn't specify where he was shot, but just to give everyone a really low opinion of the mugger, I'm going to post that it was his back, because shooting a guy in the back is almost as bad as shooting him in the phallus, but I'm not going to write the word phallus on a serious blog because people might begin to doubt whether I'm actually a serious reviewer at all or just talking about phalluses, which may lose me fans and cause a huge relapse in my self-esteem, so then my posts become even more scathing and opinionated as a result and then I lose my other fan and so on in a never ending cycle of emotions, cyber-bullying and the word "phallus" (teehee)) in his back. So now they've got an avatar for this guy but he's gone and got himself shot in back maybe. What's the solution? Wait, doesn't anonymous scientist 1 have a twin brother? Jarhead Dude?

You get the point from there. Then they go into the forest as blue guys, and blue Jarhead Dude gets lost because he starts having this exciting chase scene while they're doing they're boring science stuff, and then he becomes part of the group of real blue people, and even meets a foxy blue chick to later make cold blue love at. He gets nice and friendly with all of them and has a right good time, whilst at the same time, in his human life, he makes plans with stereotype general with southern voice and scratches on face 1 to move all the aliens to another place so they can dig up all that lovely juicy unobtainium where they're currently living.

Jarhead Dude is the protaganist so he remains pretty goody-goody all two and a half hours, and when he finds out that moving the blue guys might separate them from where they live (and this trippy bush thing which makes you hear stuff) well, let me tell you, he is at his most pointedly confused. He confides that they're not going to move, no matter what. So then the army come in, screaming blue murder and also committing it. Jarhead Dude has to choose. Betray his own kind, or not do that?

He betrays them. And with his awesome PONYTAIL he is able to skyjack this dragon and fly around destroying helicopters. Much to the annoyance of stereotype general with southern voice and scratches on face 1. By this point the whole thing's dissolved into war. Aided by this helicopter pilot who doesn't particularly like killing because she's a WOMAN, and a constantly pissed-off scientist who smokes a lot, probably pissed off internally about the fact she's got a VAGINA, and another scientist who is a MAN WHO IS SCARED A LOT AND DIES, they round up all the blue people and beat back the government! Woo! Go Blue people!

You may notice that in the above paragraph I've chosen to put in caps any words which suggest this film is feminist. Go on, read the caps. Sounds feminist doesn't it? All that talk of vaginas and dead blokes? Well guess what? That's not the only underlying message here. In fact there's so many moral issues being resolved here it would put Gandhi to shame. You can place any mssive issue in the world above the plot and this becomes obvious.

Local Politics:

The millions of Blues beat back the insurgence of both nasty Red corruption and Green militarism to their beautiful country.

Global warming

It didn't take long for Blue to overrun Green. They just came Flooding from every direction to join the Heated battle.

Racism

At no point during the movie did you see a blue person vote. Is this right? Can't blues have opinions too? If there were inter-planetary buses in the film, which there weren't, the blue people would have probably been at the back maybe. Also, the doors on them would've been much too small for one of these colossal blue buggers to fit inside. What is that if not prejudice?

So as you can see, the film has plot potential, but the characters are STIFF and a tad stereotypical. The events string together pretty predictably, and although the special effects caused a few quiet erections in the theatre, the script has an amateurish feel.

Shall we say...6 outa10 ? Not very clever, pretty to look at, like Paris Hilton or...fish.