The Iron Sky

Is there a better way to celebrate the biggest full moon of the year than by talking about the "Iron Sky" movie?

The moon will become full Saturday, May 5, at 11:35 p.m. EDT. This month the full moon coincides with the moon's perigee or its closest distance from Earth. The moon will swing in 221,802 miles (356,955 kilometers) from the Earth, offering sky gazers a spectacular view. It will be the biggest and the brightest moon of the year. 

And while you are gazing at this mesmerizing heavenly body, consider that there might be something going on up there. Something only the science fiction lovers or conspiracy theory aficionados could imagine. 

"Iron Sky" is a dark science fiction comedy directed by the Finnish director Timo Vuorensola. This low budget movie had its world premiere at the 62nd International Film Festival in Berlin, Germany. It was met with mixed feelings. While some viewers and very few critics found it hilarious, most decided that the movie was flat and stupid.  

I love science fiction and I find the story line quite interesting. In the year 2018 NASA resumes its lunar program and sends two astronauts to the moon. Upon a successful landing, the astronauts stumble upon the darkest secret imaginable. They discover a swastika-shaped mining colony and realize that the Führer lives on! On the moon! 

Who would have thought of it? Most conspiracy theory proponents believe that the Nazis actually went to Antarctica. The "Iron Sky" explores a quite different possibility. This in itself is hilarious.

We learn that the Nazis were able to salvage their secret space and weapons program and made it safely to the Dark Side of the moon sometime at the end of the World War II. During more than seventy years of utter secrecy, the Nazis managed to construct a gigantic space fortress with an impressive armada of flying saucers. They are led by a new Führer who plans another blitzkrieg. Their Wagnerian battleship "Götterdämmerung" is almost ready to embark on its mission to take over the Earth and re-establish The Thousand Year Reich.

But before the mission can even begin, two Nazi officers - the ruthless hard-core Nazi Klaus Adler (Götz Otto) and  the idealistic Nazi visionary Renate Richter (Julia Dietze) - travel to Earth to prepare the invasion. 

Meanwhile on Earth, the President of the United States (who looks very much like Sara Palin) is facing some problems with her presidential campaign. She desperately needs a miracle to ensure her re-election. The Nazis come as a gift from heaven.

The two Nazi officers work together to help her transform the re-election campaign using Goebbels-style propaganda. The success is apparent. But the Nazis have their own agenda and everyone on earth is kept in the dark. The penny drops when the Nazi UFO armada darkens the skies, ready to strike at the unprepared Earth. One should actually be able to hear the apocalyptic "Ride of the Valkyries" here...

The US President is thrilled to finally have a war which, without a doubt, will secure her re-election. She appoints her aid, Ms. Wagner, a commander of the space battleship "George W. Bush." The craft orbits the Earth and is equipped with nuclear weapons. 

  Meanwhile, the UN Security Council meets to discuss the imminent Nazi threat. It becomes apparent that most nations have secretly developed nuclear armed spacecraft - breaking the international agreements - but at this point there is no time to quarrel about this. They have to unite if they want to defeat the invading Nazi armada.

The story line should make for a good science fiction comedy, but some critics suggested that the good idea has been wasted here by Timo Vuorensola. The critics who laughed watching Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" or Mel Brooks' "The Producers" were rather disappointed with this cheap production. The Finnish director has a rather boring "hand writing" and probably should have left the directing job to Woody Allen.

The "Iron Sky" has yet to open in the United States.

By Dominique Allmon ©2012

To learn more please visit the official website

Also of interest: Fighting Nazis with Laughter

Director Sidney Lumet Dies at 86

Sidney Lumet, June 25, 1924 - April 9, 2011

Sidney Lumet, probably the greatest director of the American crime drama, has died Saturday night at the age of 86 in his home in Manhattan.

Lumet, who was nominated for the best director Oscar on four separate occasions between the late 50s and early 80s and who received an honorary Academy Award in 2005, suffered from lymphoma.

Born in Philadelphia to two Yiddish stage performers, Lumet served as a radar repair man in the second world war before directing theater productions in New York. This apprenticeship would form the basis for his later screen career. Lumet typically corralled his actors through a lengthy rehearsal period and then shot the film at speed. He made his feature debut with the acclaimed 12 Angry Men, a claustrophobic courtroom drama that starred Henry Fonda as a rogue juror.

Lumet's preferred location was the cauldron of inner-city New York and his favored subject matter tended to be the porous line between order and criminality. Many of his most famous movies - The Pawnbroker, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Verdict - stand as tense, earthy morality plays. But the director also took the occasional detour along the way, as evidenced by his plush version of Murder on the Orient Express, his Oscar-winning media satire Network, or 1978's The Wiz, a Motown musical update of The Wizard of Oz, starring Michael Jackson and Diana Ross.

Lumet, whose career spanned six decades and more than 50 films, never won ans Oscar, although he was nominated four times as best director. 

"All I want is to get better and quantity can help me solve my problems," he once admitted. "I'm thrilled by the idea that I'm not even sure how many films I've done. If I don't have a script I adore, I do the one I like. If I don't have one I like, I do one that has an actor I like or that presents some technical challenge." 

Along the way, he worked with the likes of Marlon Brando, Katharine Hepburn, Paul Newman, Sean Connery, Albert Finney, Ingrid Bergman and Al Pacino.

Lumet took a memorable final bow with "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" - an acclaimed crime saga that proved its creator was still a force to be reckoned with. "The veteran director Sidney Lumet may be 84 years old," wrote Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw in January 2008. "But in this superb heist thriller, he breaks out the shocks - and the twists - with the ferocity of a hungry youngster."

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Mourning the Loss of Elisabeth Taylor

 Elizabeth Taylor February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011

Dame Elizabeth Taylor, actress and legend of the silver screen, passed away the morning of March 23, 2011 at age 79. She suffered from chronic health problems and died at Cedars Sinai Hospital from congestive heart failure, a condition she was initially diagnosed with in 2004.

Born in London, Taylor began acting at the age of 12 scoring her breakthrough role of Velvet Brown in the 1944 film National Velvet, where she played an aspiring equestrian who illicitly competes in the Grand National Steeplechase. She became a major child star at MGM; and was one of a few of young actors who were able to make that difficult transition to adult roles. Maturing into a dazzling beauty with raven hair and violet eyes, Taylor was at her zenith during the 1950s and 60s, appearing in films such as Father of the Bride, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer and Cleopatra, where she met her future husband Richard Burton. She took home Oscar gold for her performance as a call girl in Butterfield 8 and for playing the disillusioned and acidic Martha in a cinematic treatment of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 

In 1956, she appeared opposite James Dean in a screen adaptation of the Edna Ferber novel Giant. During filming, photographer Sid Avery captured a behind-the-scenes shot of the actress, currently on view at the National Portrait Gallery. “It is in the unscripted, candid moment captured in this image that Taylor’s extraordinary beauty is most striking,” says Ann Shumard, the Portrait Gallery’s curator of photographs. “Blissfully unaware of the camera, the 23-year-old actress raises her face to the Texas sun as she enjoys a break in the filming of Giant. Even in an unguarded moment, she is every bit the star whose beauty made her such a mesmerizing presence on the screen.” 

Taylor also had a longstanding love affair with jewelry and wrote a book about her collection and the stories behind her pieces. Currently on display at the Cooper Hewitt Museum’s exhibition Set in Style: The Jewelry of Van Cleef and Arpels is a lamartine bracelet that dates from 1970.

“Elizabeth Taylor had extraordinary taste in jewelry and a very fine collection,” says Sarah Coffee, a curator at Cooper-Hewitt. “The bracelet and earrings that go with them were both a present from Richard Burton that he bought her in Geneva in 1971.  He liked them because the cabochon amethysts went with her violet eyes.”

Her film career waned in the 1970s and in the 1980 she was a recurring figure on the daytime soap operas “General Hospital” and “All My Children.” It was also during this period that she poured her time and resources into AIDS charities at an era when it was still a taboo subject. She created the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991 to assist people living with the disease. And though she was absent from acting and made few public appearances in her later years, she kept in touch with her legions of devoted fans via Twitter, sending out messages until just days before she was admitted to Cedars Sinai Hospital on February 11, 2011. 

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Hereafter - Clint Eastwood's New Movie

The Eternally Boring Hereafter

By Michael Shermer

After a string of highly successful and critically acclaimed films by Clint Eastwood (Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino, Invictus, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima), I fully expected his latest, Hereafter, to be so well written (screenplay by Peter Morgan) and so compelling that stories about near-death experiences would skyrocket and that I would be preoccupied for months dealing with media inquiries about “true stories” of the hereafter. Alas, and with some relief, this will not happen as Hereafter is possibly the worst film Eastwood has ever directed. 

If the hereafter is anything like its filmic namesake, then it will turn out to be glacially slow, eternally boring, and pointless, with seemingly random plot lines aimlessly wandering about the ethereal landscape. I wanted to like this film, despite my skepticism on its subject, because I like Clint Eastwood productions and I’m a sucker for a well-produced story, able and willing to suspend disbelief long enough to get emotionally involved. I tried but failed to do so with this film. It’s a bomb. Don’t bother to see it in the theaters, and don’t even waste a couple of bucks on a Netflix rental.  

The only redeeming part of the film was the striking opening scene of the tsunami in Southeast Asia that sets the background for the first plot line. An attractive French reporter leaves her lover in their hotel room to go shopping for his kids among the street vendors below. When he hears a disturbing sound and looks out the window he sees the ocean receding, followed by a massive body of water rushing back in to the shore and slamming into buildings and leveling everything in its path. From the woman’s street level view tucked in among buildings she can only see trees felling and chaos approaching with only enough time to realize that there is no time to do anything about it. She is swept up in the tsunami’s leading edge and slammed about cars, building debris, trees, and the like, until she is whacked on the head unconscious. Cut to minutes later when she is being given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by rescuers, to no avail. They give up and move on to the next victim, whereupon she comes to life, after a brief encounter with the hereafter, which Eastwood portrays as a fuzzy, nebulous place with people walking about aimlessly. It’s a portent of things to come.

The second plot line is Matt Damon’s psychic character George, a former psychic who gave up fame and riches because his “gift” is also a curse. A cross between James Van Praagh and John Edward, George concedes to a reading for a client of his sleazy brother (Jay Mohr) and scores several hits. The brother encourages George to quit his job at a San Francisco dock and return to the psychic world, but he will have none of it as it’s just too emotionally traumatic to read people’s inner thoughts (that much I suspect is true, if any of it were true, which it isn’t). Matt Damon’s love interest is the beautiful Bryce Dallas Howard, whom he meets at a cooking class, but after nearly an hour’s worth of romantic buildup to some sort of coming together, she departs the film for good after George reads her and conveys the message that her deceased father is sorry for the naughty things he did to her as a young girl. 

The third plot line develops around 12-year old twins named Marcus and Jason, who live with their drug-addicted mother in London, England. Jason is hit by a car and killed, leaving Marcus to wander about the city in search of a psychic who can connect him to his brother. Here at least Eastwood had the good sense to depict what most psychics are like - scammers and flimflam artists conning their marks out of a few bucks by talking twaddle with the dead through standard cold-reading techniques. Marcus is dismayed by the idiocy of these pretenders and finally returns to the foster home where he struggles to keep his sanity.

For an hour and forty-five minutes all three of these plot lines run parallel, leaving audience members to wonder when - oh please when?! - will they finally be brought together. Finally, after what feels like an interminable marathon of tedium, George quits his job and takes a vacation in London to visit the home of his favorite author, Charles Dickens. While there he notices a flyer for a lecture about Dickens at a book fair in London, where, per chance, the French reporter is doing a signing for her new book on life after death, which she was inspired to write after an hour and a half of futzing around with her mundane reporter’s job distracted by her experience with the hereafter in the tsunami. By chance, little Marcus finds himself drawn to the book fair where he recognizes George from his web page photos, and begs him for a reading, which he finally gets. Naturally, George is better than those phony psychics, and Marcus encourages George to seek out the French woman so that they may all connect to the dead. George and Marie find a love connection as well and the story ends happily ever after.

Never have I been so relieved for a movie to end. There was one memorable moment, however, and that was the opening line of the opening trailer before Hereafter even started. The trailer was for a January 2011 release called The Rite, staring Anthony Hopkins as an American priest who travels to Italy to study at an exorcism school. (You can watch the trailer here). The line that rather caught my attention as I was settling into my seat, was, “You know the interesting thing about skeptics?” To which I blurted out “No, what?” The answer: “It’s that we’re always looking for proof. The question is, What on earth would we do with it if we found it?” I know what I do with proof when I find it. I publish it! Another character in the trailer then says “I believe people prefer to lie to themselves than face the truth.” 

Here, then, in this trailer is the message for belief in the hereafter. If there were proof of it, we would publish it to the high heavens. But, since there isn’t, most people prefer to lie to themselves about it rather than face the truth that it is what we do in this life that counts.

Article source here 

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Claude Chabrol Dies at the Age 80

 Claude Chabrol June 24, 1930 - September 12, 2010

“Stupidity is infinitely more fascinating than intelligence. Intelligence has its limits while stupidity has none. To observe a profoundly stupid individual can be very enriching, and that’s why we should never feel contempt for them.” - Claude Chabrol

Au revoir, maître! Tu nous manques déjà...

The fabulous French film director Claude Chabrol died in Paris on September 12. He was 80 years old. In a filmmaking career which spanned more than fifty years and around seventy films for cinema and television, Claude Chabrol was one of the most highly regarded and prolific of French film directors.

Widely credited as the founding father of the French Nouvelle Vague movement, Claude Chabrol (June 24, 1930 - September 12, 2010) is responsible for a body of work that is as prolific as it is boldly defined. 

A master of the suspense thriller, Chabrol approached his subjects with a cold, distanced objectivity that has led at least one critic to liken him to a compassionate but unsentimental god viewing the foibles and follies of his creations. Inherent in all of Chabrol's thrillers is the observation of the clash between bourgeois value and barely-contained, oftentimes violent passion. This clash gives the director's work a melodramatic quality that has allowed him to drift between the realm of the art film and that of popular entertainment. 

One of the founders of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) movement, Chabrol began his filmmaking career in 1958 as the director, writer, and producer of Le Beau Serge. Modeled after Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, the film charted the visit of an ailing city-dweller (Jean-Claude Brialy) to his hometown, where he is reunited with his childhood friend (Gérard Blain), who is now a self-pitying alcoholic. Their transference of personal guilt, and then, in the words of Chabrol scholar Charles Derry, "exchange of redemption," gave audiences an initial taste of the deeply-psychological situations Chabrol would continue to examine with chilly objectivity throughout his career, and established him as an important new talent.

Towards the end of his career, Claude Chabrol showed a late flourishing, returning to themes that are characteristic of his oeuvre: the insidious venality of the bourgeois milieu and the perversity of human nature.  His best films from this era include the trilogy that comprised La Cérémonie (1995), Merci pour le chocolat (2000) and La Fleur du mal (2003).  His last film was Bellamy (2009), a thriller featuring Gérard Depardieu.  During this period, Chabrol continued working for French television, his last work being episodes in the anthology series Au siècle de Maupassant. 

His legacy is an impressive body of work that has justly earned him the reputation of one of France’s finest and best-known filmmakers. Although Chabrol never received a César or a Palm d'Or, he was highly celebrated at various film festivals all over the world.

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The Real McQueen Features

 By James Wolcott

"Steve McQueen bonded with metal, making steel an extension of himself. Sports cars, guns, motorcycles - he handled them as if they were wedded to his fingertips, his sure control infused with charisma through a daredevil zeal for speed, tight corners, and sudden catapults. Other movie stars have imitated McQueen’s risky nerve behind the wheel and trigger, but none has matched his fine-tuned attention between action bursts. Cleaning his weapon in Don Siegel’s war drama, Hell Is for Heroes, playing chess in The Thomas Crown Affair, he did small things with an X-Acto knife of concentration, segmenting spare time into tiny rituals and maintenance routines. The movies recognized the lean discipline and tight springs that formed the spinal column of his rebel persona."

To continue reading click the link below:

The Real McQueen Features: vanityfair.com

Behind the Scenes: Technology in Avatar Movie

 James Cameron - The man who dances with the computers

James Cameron began writing the script for the "Avatar" movie in 1994, but knew that he could not realize his project at that time without a completely new technology. The director who is well known for his technological innovations which he introduced in films such as "The Abyss" or "Terminator 2", had to wait for many years for the adequate technology to be developed. The viewers who saw "Avatar" in 3D suspected that there was something very different about this movie. The visual effects were just breathtaking and the viewers had a sensation of being completely immersed in the world of the Na'vi. 

“This film integrates my life’s achievements,” Cameron told Dana Goodyear of the New Yorker Magazine. “It’s the most complicated stuff anyone’s ever done.”

What makes "Avatar" so special is the innovative use of the 3D technology and the use of spectroscopic cameras that were specially designed for this movie's production.

To create depth perception, Cameron used 3D Fusion Camera System. To achieve the desired effect, two cameras were "fused" into one camera body. The line of sight of the lenses could be adjusted so that the director was able to angle them closer together to focus on close objects, or farther apart for those in a distance, just the way our eyes do when we look at objects.The camera allowed Cameron to control the aesthetics of the steroescopic space. 

The set itself was wired with technology. There were more than 90 cameras hanging around the perimeter of the sound stage where the movie was shot. Later on computer-generated landscapes and structures replaced the studio walls. The amazingly beautiful landscape of Pandora came to view.

The visual effects were created by a New Zealand company called Weta Digital. The company used Linux system and Linux based advanced software to create the wonderful fauna and flora on Pandora moon. The creating of visual effects required more than one petabite of storage. (1 petabit = 1015 bits = 1,000,000,000,000,000 bits) In comparison, movies such as "Transformers" required only about 140 terabits. (1 terabit = 1012 bits = 1,000,000,000,000 bits). The final footage of Avatar occupied 17.28 gigabits per minute. A company called Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) joined in to help create the battle sequences together with the Weta Digital so that the movie could be made on time.

Cameron also used his own virtual camera system. In Cameron's own words: "It's like a big, powerful game engine. The system displays an augmented reality on a monitor, placing the actor's virtual counterparts into their digital surroundings in real time, allowing the director to adjust and direct scenes just as if shooting live action."

An innovative motion capture technology was used to shoot the movie. It was more advanced than any technology previously used. Facial expressions and eyes movements of the actors who wore specially designed head gear, were transmitted to a dozen computers which translated the data into the facial expressions of the digital characters. The new technology made it possible to transfer the entire physical performance of the actors into computers. The Na'vi fascinated viewers with their mimicry. They looked almost "humane" on the screen.

Independently from its "ideological" content and the quality of the script, Avatar is a technologically unique movie. Its technology set a new milestone in cinematography and opened new vistas for movie directors in the science fiction genre. It definitely deserves its Oscar for the visual effects.

By Dominique Allmon

Behind the Scenes: Technology in Avatar Movie by Dominique Allmon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Pandora's Box

 James Cameron

Or How James Cameron Managed To Stir A Controversy Over The Pandora Moon

I’ve heard people say this film is un-American, while part of being an American is having the freedom to have dissenting ideas - James Cameron
 

James Cameron envisioned his Avatar movie some ten years ago and waited patiently for the technology to be developed. Our sensitivities did not changed much over the last ten years, with the exception that the climate change and the devastation of our environment became more apparent and that the American military is currently being engaged in two conflicts abroad with the third dangerously appearing on the horizon.

It is an irony of sorts that a story about a fictional civilization on Pandora moon opened a Pandora's box here on Earth. Independently of Cameron's intentions, the movie stirred controversy on both ends of the political spectrum in the USA. The movie is accused of being racist. Interestingly, it is not just the biased, one-dimensional view of the people of color that brings the cries of outrage, but the view of the white man and his corporate structure. Some people feel that the status and ethics of a white, corporate male is being questioned here. Other critics see not only the racial controversy but also the gender models in the movie as completely prejudiced and outdated. For the viewers on the Right this movie is a thinly disguised, simplistic, liberal agenda. Yet others see absolutely nothing behind "nice" images and embarrassingly oversimplified plot that isn't original in any possible way. They accuse Cameron of theft.

While the environmentalist movement praises Cameron for so overtly voicing their concerns, the Vatican joined the discussion only to warn audiences about the dangers of turning the Earth into a new divinity and criticized the movie for sparkling a new neo-pagan movement. Who would think that the concern for our planet could be potentially dangerous to the souls of the Catholics or anyone else for that matter. And while some critics are praising the technology used to create Avatar, others are accusing him of being anti-technology and anti-progress. I even came across an attempt to see Avatar as a movie with a satanist agenda - a disguised propaganda for the "New World Order". The critic accused Cameron of being anti-human and pushing the alien agenda.

James Cameron is not very shy about the Avatar's political message and admits that he wanted to say something about the US foreign policy and the environmental politics in America. He asserts that his work is not intended to be anti-American. As any director, he produced a movie that is opened to interpretation. Avatar touches different sensitivities. A thorough reading of the many reviews that were published since the first screening of the movie, clearly shows not only how divided the minds of the critics are, but also how diverse the viewer spectrum is in the context of their political tendencies and the intellectual, spiritual, or emotional development. Some people simply went to see and enjoy the science-fiction fantasy and its spectacular three-dimensional images.

A question comes to mind: "Why, in a country with a long tradition of free speech, was James Cameron expected to employ self-censorship of any kind?" A sequel to the movie will probably clear some of the issues that Avatar is facing right now, but its director has all the right to present his vision no matter how flowed it seems to be.

By Dominique Allmon

Pandora's Box Or How James Cameron Managed To Stir A Controversy Over The Pandora Moon by Dominique Allmon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Spiritual Message in Avatar Movie

Genre: Science Fiction, Action, Adventure, Thriller

Directorr: James Cameron

Screenplay: James Cameron

Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Peter Mensah, Laz Alonso, Wes Studi, Stephen Lang

Soundtrack: James Horner

Length: 162 minutes

Budget: estimated $425 Million 

Plot: Jake Sully, a former US marine confined to a wheel chair, arrives on the moon Pandora on a unique mission as a replacement for his diseased twin brother. Soon, he becomes torn between his duty to follow orders and the need to protect and save the the civilization he was introduced to. 

Avatar - a long anticipated movie by James Cameron opened nationwide on the December 18th after four years of actual production process. Although the plot is not very original and rather predictable and the characters somewhat one-dimensional, the new technology especially developed for the movie takes the viewer into a new dimension. It is a unique, unforgettable cinematic experience, a visual extravaganza, if the film is watched in 3D. Spectacular images almost literally let one directly participate in the enchanting world of the Na'vi civilization.

Avatar is the epitome of James Cameron's creative work. It is the director's Opus Magnum with a powerful environmental message that everything is interconnected. All beings are connected to nature and must respect its wisdom. Materialistic exploitation of nature brings doom to those ignorant of the fact that we can only survive in symbiotic connection with the environment. This is a timely message in the face of the continuous environmental destruction here on our planet Earth, where the need of technological progress and the urge to maximize profits alienated us from the wisdom of the indigenous cultures and that of our own ancestors.

The scenario is set in the year 2154. Most of the natural resources on Earth have been depleted through excessive and ruthless exploitation. A mission is set to use military force to conquer Pandora - a moon roughly the size of the Earth. Pandora is rich in an unique mineral that is desperately needed on Earth. Pandora is inhabited by a wise, peaceful, and nature-loving blue skinned beings who call themselves the Na'vi. They are warriors and ready to protect their habitat. They understand and respect their connection with nature. They worship a pantheistic deity they called Eywa. Their universe is reminiscent of the Buddhist concept of the Jewel Net of Indra as postulated by the Hwa Yen sect. Everything is interconnected. Everything forms an organic unity. Everything contains the Whole and is, at the same time, an inherent part of it. The Na'vi have the ability to transcend their individuality and see themselves as inherent elements of a bigger structure, a Gaia-like organism - the all encompassing global Consciousness. They possess neural connection fibers that allow them to connect to all other living beings on Pandora and thus become ONE with everything that lives. They are able to communicate with every living being on the planet and to access the collective memory of their race. They trust in the healing power of Nature and believe that all their energy is borrowed and has to be returned once they die.

In the Hindu tradition, avatars are the reincarnations of deities sent to save the mankind in times of great peril. In Cameron's movie, avatars are hybrid beings. They are genetically engineered Na'vi who are powered by the human consciousness that is temporarily transferred into their bodies. They were created by human scientists who intended to investigate the Na'vi culture. The project, however, is high jacked by a greedy corporation whose only intention is the exploitation of the planet's resources. A battle ensues and eventually, Jake Sully in the hybrid avatar body becomes a savior for the Na'vi. If we, however, look at this from a different perspective, Jake Sully is our avatar and here to save us, the viewers. He is here to open our eyes and save us as a race, a species, on the brink of self-destruction.

"I've wanted to make this movie from the time I wrote the treatment 11 years ago. I was just biding my time for when it was going to be technically possible. I'm so invested in the 3-D, and I love the challenge of creating an alien culture. We're creating a world from scratch, so it's really fun." James Cameron

James Cameron speaks on many levels. While depicting a fantastic culture, the film addresses a whole spectrum of contemporary issues:

• Profit seeking corporation ruthlessly destroying both, environment and the indigenous cultures - the destruction of the Amazon jungles comes to mind immediately
• Lack of respect for the habitats of other living creatures - urban and agricultural expansion to satisfy the needs of a senselessly uncontrolled growth of Earth's population
• Controversial military expeditions to secure resources

The movie sends a powerful message to contemporary viewers. The senseless expansion and destruction of our environment has a butterfly effect. It affects all life on Earth. The wisdom that once was inherent to all cultures, was destroyed in the West with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Technological progress has its price as can be seen in the daily news and reports about environmental catastrophes in both, developed and developing countries. We became the invaders destroying our own habitat. Those who accuse Cameron of being anti-technology, anti-progress, and anti-human, missed the point. Our modern technology is a double edged sword. It has enormous potential to create and to destroy. If we as civilization do not collectively reflect on our attitudes and practices, we will have to pay the highest price - self annihilation. And we will not be the first civilization that died out. Cameron does not postulate that we have to give up technology. We have to learn how to use it to "defend" the environment in which we live.

Paradigm change is badly needed and there is a strong tendency to create new awareness. Jake Sully learns about the Na'vi culture and becomes a member of the clan in the body of an avatar - a genetically engineered being in which human DNA is morphed with that of the Na'vi. He undergoes a personal "metamorphose". He has to resolve his own inner conflict and make a choice. His transformation illustrates the evolution of the mind. He returns to the state of innocence integrating at the same time the knowledge and values of a human being. He is the wounded hero who undergoes initiation and emerges as a savior.

There is a lot of optimism in Cameron's message as the good wins the battle against the ignorant. We can only survive as species when we learn to respect nature and the wisdom of our ancestors. And we must remember that we did not only inherit our planet from our ancestors. We borrowed it from our children.

By Dominique Allmon
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James Cameron - Spiritual Message in Avatar Movie by Dominique Allmon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.