Story: Circa 2154. The US army lands up in Pandora, an earth-sized moon in outer space. Their objective: to extract the much-needed minerals from Pandora’s soil. But before they can do that, they must fight the peace-loving indigenous inhabitants of the alien world, relocate or destroy them with their spies and bombs.

Movie Review: And we thought sinking the Titanic was a titan task! Well, this time round, James Cameron chooses to play god and creates a whole new world with such exquisite finesse, aesthete and eye for detail, he almost takes your breath away. In terms of sheer technology, Avatar marks the coming of age of both CGI and 3-D cinema with its art house special effects and its shock and awe treatment.

On the one hand, it’s the sheer iridescence of the canvas and the never-before contours of the creatures, the flora, the fauna flying across the screen that makes you marvel at how computers can augment creativity; on the other, it is the umpteen times you jump back to avoid the arrows, the guns or slide away from the floating dandelions and fierce raptors that leaves you completely mesmerized with this brand new cinematic experience. Truly, Cameron’s vision of Pandora is pure art, with its tall, wide-eyed, slender, blue Na’vi people, its post-modern creatures and its verdant greens. But more than all this, it is Cameron’s cry against war and violence that makes Avatar an eloquent testimonial to the present. Mercifully, the film isn’t visual extravaganza alone; it has a meaningful story too that could end up making this magnum opus a modern-day parable for pacifists, climatologists, humanists, globalist… For the film-maker openly indicts American for its 9/11 expansionist policies and clearly states: when people are sitting on shit that you want, you make them your enemies. That is the only way you justify taking the stuff away from them!” Stuff? Minerals, here. Oil, in the real world.

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The basic idea behind Tropic Thunder looks something like this: A big budget war movie is being made by a first time director and a tough, heartless producer staring three big name actors. The problem is the film isn’t going so well. The producer is furious, the actors are hindering the process and the director is at his wits end. In a desperate attempt to give the movie gritty realism, the director drops the actors in the middle of the jungle, but unknowingly drops them in the wrong country — and although they think they’re secretly being filmed for the movie, they’re actually in the middle of a fight for their lives.

Tropic Thunder makes you laugh. It’s just that simple. They aren’t the smartest laughs; they aren’t high brow laughs, but they are laughs nonetheless. This is a funny flick.

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About

They watched True Romance and wondered what would happen if Brad Pit’s stoner character was the focus of that film. From that little ‘what if?’ question, the idea for Pineapple Express was born. Two members of Apatow’s pack – Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg – crafted the screenplay, which was very loosely used in the film, and came up with a new stoner comedy (one that doesn’t involve those Harold & Kumar dudes). Pineapple Express is dopey fun with its pot jokes and lowbrow humor, and the film’s target audience should walk away feeling pretty high about this crazy action comedy from the Apatow crew.

The Story

Seth Rogen plays process server Dale Denton, a man of many disguises who loves the gotcha moments when an unsuspecting doctor or husband or whoever finds his or herself on the receiving end of a Dale-delivered subpoena, Dales’ not bad at his job, he’s got a pretty 18 year old high school senior (Amber Heard) as a girlfriend, and his pot dealer, Saul (James Franco), keeps him well supplied with weed.

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