Blu-Ray Avatar

[wyntrout]

We finally watched Avatar tonight, my wife and I. She was kind of disappointed that it was more fantasy than Sci Fi to her.
It was awesome, especially on the new 58" plasma with the Blu-Ray version in full 1080P HD and 24P, with surround sound and a few subwoofers. And, yes, the new recliners.
I kind of watched the highlights again after Wifey went to bed.
It seemed like the blue aliens had a thumb and three fingers some times and four other times, and they had 5 toes and the females had two b00bies.:D
I haven't read the background and was disappointed that there was no extra stuff -- commentaries, documentaries, or deleted scenes on a 50GB disc.:confused:
I gather from the movie that Pandora is one of many moons circling a LARGE gas giant that filled most of the sky.
The length of the movie was listed as 183 minutes but the movie ends at 2:35 and about 2:41 after the credits.
I couldn't wait for the 3-D HDTVs to come out and get perfected, so we missed out on that... the 3-D version comes out later.
I need to buy another set of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy... the Blu-Ray set. I bought the regular discs and then the extended and then the Extended Extended Set. You can see the stretching or lower resolution as the regular DVD is up-converted to widescreen.
This was the first movie we've seen in Blu-Ray and I wanted my own, rather than a rental.
Wynn:D

[johnh]

Sounds like fun! I bought a plasma around black Friday and we have really enjoyed it. Need to get a Blu-ray player one of these days. Might notebook has it and I have yet to try it out.

Amazing graphics in that film. Makes me wonder what the upcoming John Carter movies will look like. They claim to be drawing heavily on the technique and style of Avatar.

John

[wyntrout]

John Carter of Mars (2012)... Dang! I hadn't even heard of that in the works. I just Googled that and IMDb had the cast and everything listed. I hadn't even thought about John Carter in ages. It's been so long ago that I read those books, that I've forgotten nearly everything about them. I still have glimpses of stuff... scenes seen though his eyes on Barsoom, and so forth.
I started reading Sci Fi about the age of 8 (1954/55) after I got through the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and Tom Terrific(?). My earliest Sci Fi was by Asimov, Heinlein, and Norton. If the movie industry ever tires of making remakes of remakes every FEW years, there's a lot of material out there... David Weber, Frank Herbert, John Ringo, Eric Flint, C. J. Cherryh, David Drake, William R. Forstchen(the famed Lost Regiment series) and many others. Most people have been exposed to Edgar Rice Burroughs by Tarzan, and have seen the real "oldies" by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells... their books have been made into movies and remakes... almost countless.
Wynn:)

[johnh]

One site you might like is LibriVox:

LibriVox (http://librivox.org/)

They do audio book recordings of a lot of public domain texts. Some of the Sci Fi classics can be found there, such as the first few John Carter books. I have little time to read so rely heaviy on audio books for that. Also a good way to get some enjoyment out of household chores.

:D

John

[wyntrout]

Thanks. I've never tried audio books. I got some text and maybe audio... i remember listening to a bit... when I bought a hard cover copy of David Weber's War of Honor(Honor Harrington Series. Weber is my favorite author -- I have all of his books) and included was a CDROM with at least the text of ALL of his books up to that point, plus images and other stuff... blueprint-type drawings of shops and weapons, charts, and so forth... neat! I have all the books and have read them all, so I wasn't tempted to try to read them off the computer monitor screen. All of these things bother my eyes, including fluorescent lights.
I have a real vivid imagination and savor the passages sometimes a bit, and I don't think that an audio format at someone else's pace would be as good.
I'm in there with the characters. People who only watch movies or the visual stuff are missing out on realism only limited by your imagination.
Since I learned to read in the first grade, I've been an avid reader. I think that's a big problem with people who never got enthused with reading.
When reading, you can become the person, seeing things through his/her eyes and feel their emotions and experiences. You experience empathy and feelings for other people... they are not just targets or shells of people to shoot at. Video games don't give you a complete experience like that and kids grow up feeling like the world revolves around them (hyper-self-esteem) and people are just targets without feelings to blow away or exploit. That's a big reason for so many cold-blooded young killers and gangsters or wannabes.
Wynn:D