ALONG with buckets of money — more than $1.6 billion so far, worldwide — and a couple of Golden Globes, James Cameron’s “Avatar” has collected a smattering of controversy. Some of the hue and cry has involved matters of political allegory and theological implication, as pundits have divined that this globally popular blockbuster may represent a veiled ideological attack on America, capitalism, humanity, monotheism or all of the above.

But the fiercest attack on “Avatar” has focused on what may seem, compared to such lofty matters, like a minor detail. Of all the corny lines and ready-made catchphrases in Mr. Cameron’s script, perhaps none has turned out to be so provocative as one uttered by Grace Augustine, the scientist played by Sigourney Weaver: “Where’s my damn cigarette?”

In the view of anti-smoking activists, the correct answer should be: Nowhere, at least not in any real or imaginary world governed by a PG-13 rating. The logic of the Smoke-Free Movies campaign, which seeks an R rating for almost all instances of on-screen puffing, is straightforward enough. If the Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings board advises parents about sex, violence, language and drug use, why should it not also shield children from exposure to a lethal (if legal) product that hooks, sickens and kills hundreds of thousands of people a year? Since 2007 the M.P.A.A. has considered smoking when it makes its judgments, and one studio, Disney, has since then made all its family films smoke free.

Should that be true of all movies likely to be seen by children? Does it matter that Grace’s smoking, according to Mr. Cameron, is meant to emphasize the less attractive aspects of her temperament, including that she “doesn’t care about the human body”? And if that mitigation seems like a bit of a stretch (in the future, how likely is it that scientific laboratories on distant moons will allow what their earthbound counterparts forbid today?), what about some of the other recent instances tarred, as it were, by the opprobrium of Smoke-Free Movies? The principal smoker in the animated “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is a villain, and if the hero in “Sherlock Holmes” takes a draw or two on a pipe, well, he is Sherlock Holmes.

In the movie-smoking debate, even clear positions — that children must be protected from images that might influence their behavior, or that filmmakers should be immune from censorship and interference — tend quickly to be fogged with questions of context and nuance. That is because underneath the public discussion about smoking (or gun violence, or sexual promiscuity, or whatever social problem has seized the momentary spotlight) is another, much more confused discourse: about movies and about the ways they mirror and occlude reality.

The power of movies is undeniable, but also elusive. Even the children whose fragile psyches grown-ups fret about know that what movies depict is not real, and yet even the most sophisticated or jaded viewers habitually peruse the screen in search of designs for living. The screen is, among other things, a domain of glamour, in which ordinary actions are given a luster, a charisma, far beyond what they possess in the everyday world.

Social scientists doggedly pursue evidence of correlations between on- and off-screen behavior, while some commentators insist that no such connections could possibly exist. The rest of us know perfectly well that we don’t play with anvils and dynamite just because we see Wile E. Coyote do it, though perhaps those Looney Tunes are cautionary tales. But we also can acknowledge that our actions, our fantasies and the pictures we consume are not all that far apart. And it is for precisely this reason — in recognition of the unique and dazzling impact of an art form that is also a mass medium compounded of big pictures and good-looking people — that movies have always attracted the attention of censors. In the United States regulation has been voluntary, a way for private enterprise to forestall the interference of the government. Elsewhere the state weighs in, either with outright prohibitions on certain content or with restrictions on who can see what.

Hollywood’s self-imposed system has tried both approaches. From the mid-1930s to the mid-’60s the Production Code kept a tight rein on what all audiences could see, and promised that “no picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it.” It is easy enough, in retrospect, to laugh at the starchy Victorianism of that language. But at the same time the idea that movies might ennoble their audiences and even improve us as we watch them, affirms a faith in cinema that is almost Utopian.

The code may have withered, but the ideal of movies as a universal and fundamentally benign form of entertainment has hardly gone away, and is indeed what informs many of the efforts to broaden and strengthen the ratings system. That system, devised in 1968 by Jack Valenti, president of the M.P.A.A. for almost 40 years afterward, has undergone some tweaks over the years, replacing X with NC-17 and adding the PG-13 between PG and R. Such changes, and attempts to refine the criteria for any particular rating, represent an earnest attempt to keep abreast of public sensitivities even as they also suggest the quixotic nature of the enterprise. What committee could possibly take account of the often confused and contradictory mores and prejudices of a country of 300 million-plus people? And the M.P.A.A. has become an easy scapegoat for that very confusion. Critics of the association, including many filmmakers interviewed by Kirby Dick in his 2006 documentary, “This Film is Not Yet Rated,” accuse the ratings board of being more tolerant of violence than of sex, less tolerant of homosexuality than heterosexuality, and perversely fixated on shot lengths, camera angles and other technical matters that barely register with ordinary viewers.

Mr. Dick’s film, a critique of the ratings system in the name of artistic freedom, dwells on the commercially fraught boundary between the R and NC-17 ratings, which caused problems for the directors of films like “The Cooler,” “Boys Don’t Cry” and “A Dirty Shame.” But for the public — at least for children and their parents — the more embattled frontier is the one between PG-13 and R.

In actual ticket-buying practice, the difference between them is that a young-looking adolescent must be accompanied either by a full-fledged adult or by an older-looking adolescent. Otherwise it may take a practiced eye and ear to realize that a popular Anglo-Saxon expletive is acceptable in a PG-13 movie as long as it is only heard once and does not refer to a sexual act. Thus “Billy Elliott,” as wholesome and uplifting a film as you could hope for — its story about a kid who dreams of being a dancer is likely to inspire other kids with similar dreams — has an R rating because its proletarian English characters talk more or less as they would in the real world.

It is easy to scoff at that rating only if you have never received angry letters from parents or grandparents appalled by profanity. But of course the rules about specific rules allow a lot of leeway, and no one would claim that by taking your children only to PG-13 comedies, say, you would spare them sustained exposure to coarse sexual humor. Nor would a PG-13-only diet prevent them from seeing violent deaths and grisly images, including the genocidal warfare in “Avatar” itself.

On the other hand, a trip to see “It’s Complicated,” the midlife romantic-triangle comedy starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, will expose viewers to no violence, no nudity (apart from a brief glimpse of Mr. Baldwin’s buttocks) and very little naughty language. That film’s R rating came about because of a sequence in which Ms. Streep and Mr. Martin smoke a joint and suffer no adverse consequences beyond some potentially embarrassing giddiness.

The argument for the rating board’s decision, I suppose, would be that children might conclude that smoking marijuana is an acceptable, risk-free behavior. But what the ratings system, with its quantitative, literal-minded view of movie images, seems unable to imagine is that exposure to the pot in “It’s Complicated” might have the opposite effect. If your grandparents are doing it, how cool can it really be?

And what the supporters of the Smoke-Free Movies position may underestimate is the extent to which a taboo creates temptation. The audience most susceptible to the glamour of the R rating is also the demographic most at risk of starting to smoke. Exiling cigarettes to the ostensibly forbidden but easily accessible land of the R might have the unintended effect of making them seem more alluringly grown up.

More likely, bringing tobacco further into ratings decisions will create new opportunities for ambiguity and confusion, since it seems unlikely that smoking will be any different from any other vice, dubious practice or habit of speech. Smoke-Free Movies has claimed that the R for tobacco is not only right but also inevitable, and such questions, and the quarrels that follow from them, are also inevitable. As are further attempts to expand the purview of the M.P.A.A., to include other products and behaviors. What about guns? What about trans fats? What about beer and Styrofoam and high-fructose corn syrup?

In 2154, when “Avatar” takes place, it is possible that tobacco use will no longer exist. But if movies are still around, there will still be arguments about what they should be showing, and to whom. Such arguments are built into the medium and our complicated bond with it. We want movies to acknowledge what is real, but also to improve on reality, to give us a vision of a perfect world in which everything is permissible — a world that’s sexy, dangerous, scary and smoky and safe for children too.

By A. O. SCOTT, Nytimes
Published: January 22, 2010

In “Avatar,” scientist Sigourney Weaver climbs out of a suspended-animation pod and demands a cigarette – which has enflamed an anti-tobacco faction led by Stan Glantz of the UC San Francisco School of Medicine.

Their problem is the film is rated PG-13, and kids are buying tickets by the millions.

Glantz and others are using “Avatar” to renew their call for movies with smoking to get an automatic “R.”

Now, you might be thinking, “These health fascists: What are they trying to do to our pop culture?” Movies and vices, especially tobacco, have a stellar history.

Bogie and Bacall in “To Have and Have Not”: That’s foreplay!

Bette Davis and Paul Henreid in “Now, Voyager”: Smooth!

A kneejerk “R” for cigarettes would be a threat to artistic freedom, a restraint on capitalism. It would be Puritanism! Censorship!

Right? Well, no. I think it’s a good idea.

Now, let’s be clear from the get-go. There should be one culture for all ages, and one for grown-ups. In an R-rated movie, I don’t care if people do things too vile to say on TV. I don’t care if they eat cigarettes. With kids, it’s a different ballgame.

We know from a Dartmouth Medical School study that there’s a strong association between adolescent smoking and watching smoking in movies.

Tobacco companies have always understood that influence. There was a time when they even made deals to put their products onscreen. It wasn’t disclosed publicly, of course . . . it comes out in court when files get subpoenaed.

In the ’80s, we learned Phillip Morris paid the makers of “Superman 2″ thousands to put its name behind the Man of Steel. Superman is Marlboro Man! Artistic freedom!

In the ’90s, companies agreed to stop paying, but there’s no way of keeping tabs.

Libertarians make the slippery-slope argument: Next you’ll ban alcohol! Car chases!

Well, no. No one’s banning anything, just saying, “Kids shouldn’t be able to see it so easily.”

The MPAA already restricts the language in PG-13 movies and there’s no wiggle room: You can shoot someone, but can’t use a naughty word for having sex with them. Frankly, I’d rather my kids hear bad words than see their favorite actors bleep their bleeping lungs with bleeping cigarettes.

There should be some wiggle room. No retroactive editing: Bogie keeps his smokes. Films about real figures like Edward R. Murrow might be special cases, although I wish there were a title saying Murrow died of cancer. So did Bogie at 57. So did the actor who played that beloved archetype, the Marlboro Man.

There’s no word on Joe Camel, but I heard off the record he’s very sick.

A Joe Camel biopic that ends in the ICU? PG-13.

January 24, 2010

BRAVEHEART star Mel Gibson has given up smoking so he will be around to watch his new baby daughter grow up.
The 54-year old actor and director was already a dad of seven kids he had with first wife Robyn, ranging in age from oldest daughter Hannah, who is 29 and married, to 10-year-old Thomas.

His Russian musician girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, 39, gave birth to baby Lucia in October last year.

She already had a son with former boyfriend ex-Bond star Timothy Dalton.

Now Gibson, who has had some high-profile, well-documented problems with drink in the last few years, is determined to be around when Lucia grows up.

He said: “I want to play tennis with this kid, that’s it. I just want to run around and breathe, you know?

“I don’t want to be in an iron lung somewhere.

“It’s a blessing. My God, a new little life is always like, it’s just astounding to me. There’s nothing more gob-smacking or mysterious, it’s just like you look and you go oh my God, and she’s an angel, she’s innocent, she looks right through you.”

Fatherhood in his 50s is bound to be very different experience for the actor than it was the first time around but Gibson is hoping his experience will make him a better daddy to Lucia.

Mel said: “It is different because I’m different but the thing that isn’t different is that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get over the fact that there is a little life there in front of me staring at you with complete innocence and a total angelic blamelessness.

“It’s phenomenal. It kills me. So we’ll work with that and see if I can do it better this time. You should get better with practice.”

By the time Lucia is 20, Mel will be 73. It was this realisation that helped him make the decision to quit the cigarettes he had enjoyed so much for 45 years.

As he did interviews to publicise his latest film – an update of classic 80s BBC drama Edge Of Darkness – he revealed he has been smoke-free for nine days.

He said: “It was torture. The first three days, I was like an axe murderer. Day four, I’d come at you with a bat. Day five, I was dangerous with a lawn mower. It is a hellish habit to break.”

Smoking has not been Mel’s only vice. He was famously arrested for drink driving in 2006.

The storm was made worse when he made anti-Semitic remarks to the arresting police officers.

He ranted at the Jewish policeman: “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. Are you a Jew?”

Gibson has apologised three times for his outburst but it seems he will suffer the consequences of his actions for a while yet.

He has now been teetotal for three and a half years and when asked about that night, Gibson, fumes: ” I was loaded. I was drunk. Alright?

“Israel walked into Lebanon that day. And it was like, it came out and the guy reported it to the police officer and he ran to the newspaper – and it just turned into this whole big thing.

“Ok, I get sober and I’m like, ‘Oh f***, what did I say? I’m sorry’.

“I apologised profusely – not once but three times.

“So, what’s the problem? It’s four years ago. Do I need to apologise again? Do I? For you? Do I need to apologise again?

“Because I will if you require it. And I always take the opportunity to say: That was a bunch of s**t; that was bulls**t. “And if I scared anyone, or if I offended anyone, I’m sorry.

“It’s the truth. I don’t want to be the monster.”

He may not be a monster but he is certainly still the butt of jokes. Most recently, he was the target of Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais during Sunday night’s ceremony.

The comic, holding a glass of beer, told the audience of Hollywood A-listers: “I like a drink as much as the next man… unless the next man is Mel Gibson.”

He then introduced Gibson, who jokingly slurred his words before handing out the best director gong to James Cameron.

Perhaps acting again, in his first film role since The Singing Detective in 2003, will win back fans who flocked to see his films in the 80s and 90s in films such as the Lethal Weapon and Mad Max franchises.

And, of course, 1995’s Braveheart, for which he won best picture and best director Oscars.

Since 2000, Gibson has remained behind the camera, directing raw and controversial films like The Passion Of The Christ and Apocalypto.

But now he’s back in front of the camera in the Hollywood remake of the 1985 BBC nuclear thriller Edge Of Darkness.

He stars as Craven, the role played by the late Bob Peck in the original, a widower cop who witnesses the murder of his daughter and embarks on a mission to discover her killer.

Gibson admits that the good looks that made him a pin-up in the 80s are now gone. He laughs: “I look like, ‘Eww!’ – all drawn-out and leathered out and I have aged.

“It’s just a natural part of the holy human condition. What am I going to do? Surgery or something? That just looks weird. Besides, that must hurt.”

Mel, who was born in New York but raised in Australia after his family emigrated in 1968, claimed he hasn’t missed acting, describing directing as “a big one. It’s a ball.”

But he added: “Acting is more lucrative. It’s easier and it’s my first love. I took some time away. I felt that I was stale and I came back and I feel like some kind of maturation happened where the choices I make now are quite different from the choices I would have made eight years ago.

“It’s good to get back on the bike and go for it again and it wasn’t necessarily the material that brought me back, it was just time to come back. And it was just the best thing that was there. It was a good vehicle, a good story.”

After Edge of Darkness, which also stars Ray Winstone, we’ll se Gibson in comedy The Beaver and Mexican prison thriller How I Spent My Summer Vacation.

Being back on the big screen may bring Mel renewed fan interest but he refuses to have bodyguards – though he does admits to keeping a gun near his bed.

“In this day and age, you’ve got to be tooled up. If they walk in on you, I’m not going to let them whip me. If your number’s up, its up, you know?

“I’ve had the weird stuff and its like, ‘OK, so what, I’m not dead yet’.

“If I’m lying in bed and somebody comes into my room, I’ll either wake up or I won’t. And I’ll either hit them with my big stick that I’ve got or my gun that I’ve got.”

So now the star of Lethal Weapon has his own lethal weapon? He admits: “It is a bad way to live. But that’s what you’ve gotta do.”

Edge Of Darkness is released on Friday, January 29

IT SEEMS strange to note that the blockbuster movie Avatar, which won two Golden Globe awards last Sunday night and is still on an unabated box-office record run, should be making some enthusiasts depressed and giving others headaches.

Apparently, to America’s legions of feisty conservatives, its tale of money-grabbing Americans who exploit native people – albeit on another planet – is another example of leftwing Hollywood elitism.

Yet, some progressives blast the movie as racist. It also riles the anti-smoking lobby, and if that wasn’t enough, some critics charge that the story was stolen from Russian sci-fi novels.

Despite – or perhaps because of – that heap of controversy, Avatar is within striking distance of becoming the highest-grossing film of all time.

As it continues to reign supreme above the worldwide box office, it is the first movie ever to have a realistic chance of beating the US$1.8 billion (RM6 billion) earned by Titanic, director James Cameron’s previous film in 1997.

Like Avatar, Titanic was also blasted for its bloated budget, wooden dialogue and predictable plot. But it never amassed the broad range of ideological critics that have attacked Cameron’s latest sci-fi blockbuster.

The most recent broadside launched at Avatar came from America’s powerful anti-smoking lobby. Their ire was directed at the character played by Sigourney Weaver, who in the film is still puffing away on her cigarettes some 150 years in the future.

The group, called Smoke Free Movies, took out full page ads in trade papers Variety and The Hollywood Reporter to protest the on-screen smoking.

It argued that for every US$100 million (RM334.3 million) the movie earns at the box office, it will “deliver an estimated 40 million tobacco impressions to theatre audiences”. The organisation estimated that this represented some US$50 million (RM167.1 million) worth of free advertising for the tobacco industry.

Avatar director Cameron said he agreed that role models for young people should not smoke in films, but that “movies should reflect reality”.

But there was no easy answer to complaints from some viewers that the new 3-D viewing system gave them splitting headaches.

According to Dr Michael Rosenberg, an ophthalmology professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, the innovative system exacerbates minor eye problems.

“That translates into greater mental effort, making it easier to get a headache,” he said in an online post.

But dull pain in the brain is not the only health risk being posed by the hit movie.

Diehard fans, now widely known as Avatards, are filling online forums with their complaints about how the film is making them depressed as they realise their own lives can never hope to match the primitive beauty found on the Pandoran planet.

One popular forum about how to deal with the post-Avatar blues has already registered more than 1,000 threads.

Other people are leaving the movie feeling angry. Hollywood has long been regarded as a fifth column by US conservatives, but the tale of US Marines out to ruthlessly exploit the noble savages of Pandora has raised a new level of ire.

“This is the only time I ever sat in a theatre where people were cheering the forest and the blue people, attacking ex-Marines,” said conservative activist Tom Roeser. “That’s the Hollywood view of us. We are the exploiters. We are pre-emptive attackers.”

Meanwhile, some on the left wing are incensed at the movie, charging that its storyline of a white ex-Marine riding to the rescue of a primitive people is inherently racist.

New York Times columnist David Brooks, called it a “racial fantasy par excellence”, arguing that the movie “rests on the assumption that non-whites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades”.

“It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism,” he said. “Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.”

R&B superstar Rihanna seems to have developed a knack for courting controversy and her latest racy cover art for her single has run into trouble for glamorising smoking.

The 21-year-old singer posed naked for the cover of ‘Rude Boy’, wearing nothing but a top hat and boots with a lit cigarette in her mouth, reported Sun online.

The ‘Umbrella’ hitmaker provoked a strong reaction by posing with a cigarette, having previously said that she sees herself as a role model for young girls.

The image has become a hot topic of discussion in Internet forums.

“Just plain stupid move. Cigarettes cause so many people to die from lung cancer, and yet she poses with one, trying to look rebellious to 16 year olds,” wrote a member of the forum ‘Celeblove’.

No stranger to controversy, Rihanna had faced accusations of glamorising violence for getting a tattoo of a gun last year.
The singer who had suffered assault at the hands of her ex-boyfriend Chris Brown last year made the controversial decision to have a handgun tattooed on her body.

The singer, who has often been seen wearing a miniature gun pendant necklace, had the weapon etched across her ribcage.

Looks like Lindsay, 23, better add stopping smoking to her list of new year’s resolutions
Lindsay Tweeted a picture of herself chilling out on a yacht in St Barts with a cigarette dangling from her left hand.

The Long Island native looks great in the photograph but the cigarette makes her look like trailer trash.

Lindsay, who says she was hanging out with little sis Ali, Usher, Beyonce and Jay Z (who she calls H.O.V?), tweeted from the swanky island on New Year’s Eve.

“Wishing everyone a blessed new year in 2010! Everyone get ready for more (but positive-LOHAN MAYHEM!!!!!!!!). Thanks for all of your support!”

Lindsay spelled out her hopes for the future saying: “2010 is about moving forward, not backwards. Leaving the bad (people, habbits, (sic) and negative energy behind) time to make changes-right!?!? ”
Let’s hope she remembers to add smoking to her list of resolutions!

Lindsay’s 2009 of course was marked by very public spats with her father Michael, an even more public break-up with girlfriend Samantha Ronson and her underwhelming debut fashion line with Ungaro.

Some of those who oppose smoking in movies have just seen the future, and they are not happy about it.
James Cameron, the director, says the smoking scientist played by Sigourney Weaver, center, is not meant to be a role model.

Having caught up with James Cameron’s 3-D science fiction thriller, “Avatar,” over the holidays, Stanton A. Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, said his Smoke Free Movies initiative would soon come out swinging with an informational campaign aimed at what he saw as the movie’s pro-smoking message.

“This is like someone just put a bunch of plutonium in the water supply,” Mr. Glantz said in a telephone interview last week. He was referring to scenes in which an environmental scientist played by Sigourney Weaver drags lovingly on a cigarette as she works to save the moon Pandora sometime in the 22nd century.

Scenesmoking.org, which monitors tobacco mentions in films, gave the PG-13 rated “Avatar” a rating of its own: A “black lung.” Still, Mr. Cameron’s movie, distributed by 20th Century Fox, is not the only holiday picture to earn that distinction, which indicates unacceptable depictions of tobacco.

“Sherlock Holmes” and “The Blind Side,” which were distributed by Warner Brothers; “Nine,” from the Weinstein Company; “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” from Sony Pictures; and “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” also from Fox, were similarly rated with a “black lung” for tobacco use, even though they carried a rating of PG-13 or PG from the film industry’s Classification and Rating Administration.

In a statement sent by e-mail over the weekend, Mr. Cameron said he had never intended Ms. Weaver’s character, Grace Augustine, to be “an aspirational role model” for teenagers.

“She’s rude, she swears, she drinks, she smokes,” wrote Mr. Cameron. “Also, from a character perspective, we were showing that Grace doesn’t care about her human body, only her avatar body, which again is a negative comment about people in our real world living too much in their avatars, meaning online and in video games.”

Speaking as an artist, Mr. Cameron said: “I don’t believe in the dogmatic idea that no one in a movie should smoke. Movies should reflect reality. If it’s O.K. for people to lie, cheat, steal and kill in PG-13 movies, why impose an inconsistent morality when it comes to smoking? I do agree that young role-model characters should not smoke in movies, especially in a way which suggests that it makes them cooler or more accepted by their peers.”

Smoking, Mr. Cameron concluded, “is a filthy habit which I don’t support, and neither, I believe, does ‘Avatar.’ ”

For the record, apart from the 3-D tobacco use, Mr. Glantz said he found “Avatar” to be “a great movie.”

By MICHAEL CIEPLY
January 3, 2010

Many in Hollywood are up in arms over the decision by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to give an “R” rating to the romantic comedy It’s Complicated. The decision had nothing to do with scenes of sex or violence in the film starring Meryl Streep, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. Rather, the R rating was applied because of a scene showing two characters smoking marijuana. According to the MPAA, the act of getting stoned without consequences for the characters on screen was too much to give the movie a PG-13 rating.

The ruling has outraged those in the industry who disagree with the MPAA’s habit of awarding violent films, like Terminator: Salvation a PG-13, while branding It’s Complicated with the harsher R rating.

“It’s another outrageous example of the lunatic priorities of the MPAA, which claims to serve the interests of parents but actually dances to its crazy drummer, happily handing out PG-13 ratings to unbelievably violent movies like Terminator: Salvation while whipping out the R rating at the first sign of a few naked breasts or, God forbid, an unsheathed penis,” wrote Patrick Goldstein in the Los Angeles Times.

Examples cited by other critics of the MPAA include Woody Allen’s PG-13 Crimes and Misdemeanors, in which a man has his mistress murdered with no bad consequences, and the PG comedy 9 to 5, which shows Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin getting high without consequences.
-Noel Brinkerhoff

TORONTO — Writer-director Jason Reitman readily admits he can identify with the blithe loner who lives out of a carry-on bag and fires people for a living in the romantic comedy-drama “Up in the Air.”
Multimedia
Photoview all photos

But the 32-year-old filmmaker is also honest enough to admit he knows nothing of what it feels like to lose a job.

It was easy directing George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a guy who flies from city to city, sacking employees for downsizing corporations and reveling in his mobile lifestyle, free of such excess baggage as family, personal commitments or a home mortgage.

“The sad thing about me is that I actually do agree with these characters of mine,” Reitman said during a roundtable interview with reporters in September at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Reitman is no stranger to sympathetic anti-heroes, having found the human side of tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) in 2005’s “Thank You for Smoking.”

“So, that’s the heartbreaker, saddest probably for my wife, who has to be married to me, is that I probably do think like Nick Naylor of ‘Thank You for Smoking,’ and I do think like Ryan Bingham of this movie. And that’s why I like to bring humanity to them. I like to bring humanity to the characters that are vilified in other people’s movies.”

As an example, Reitman said he’s not a fan of Michael Mann’s “The Insider,” a fact-based film about a tobacco industry whistleblower. Beating up on “big tobacco” is too easy for the likes of Reitman. He’d rather find good in a seemingly unscrupulous spinmeister.

Same goes for Clooney’s self-centered, self-indulgent corporate terminator in “Up in the Air,” whose biggest goal in life is to accrue 10 million miles in the air and become a member of the world’s most elite frequent flier club.

“Certainly there’s tons of films about main characters who believe in the idea of family,” Reitman said. “I’d much rather hero-ize the man who says, ‘No, no, life is much better alone; you have it all wrong.’ And often I’m just dealing with a part of me that actually feels those things, or at least is tempted.

“I’m married, I love my wife, my daughter’s incredible, but I would be lying if I didn’t say every once in a while I’ve thought about the idea, when I’m walking through the airport, what if I hopped on that plane to who knows where, and I just landed with nothing and nobody, and just started fresh. And I think just as Ryan Bingham says, I think there is something exhilarating about that concept. I would have to imagine there’s a part of every person that feels that way. It’s easier for me to write that almost as a personal diary.”

An Oscar nominee for directing 2007’s “Juno,” Jason Reitman, son of director Ivan Reitman, confesses he was much more cynical when he first started adapting “Up in the Air” for the screen from a novel by Walter Kirn.

“I started writing this as a 24-year-old who was satirical and libertarian and unmarried when I started writing the first act,” he said. “We were in an economic boom, and I was a satirical writer. I was writing a satire, and the original firing scenes were satirical scenes. They were funny scenes.”

But Jason Reitman’s life has changed since then, and so has the economic climate.

“(The firing scenes) stopped being funny,” he said, “and I realized I needed to make those scenes more dramatic. I just simply knew I did not have the life experience to make these scenes as authentic as possible. And I thought the only way to make this feel real is to use real people.”

To that end, the production company ran newspaper ads in Detroit and St. Louis, two cities hardest hit by the economic downturn, looking for people who had been fired from their jobs and were willing to relive the experience in front of a motion picture camera. So, many of the men and women Clooney’s character fires in the film are real people, re-enacting their real-life reactions when they were handed their pink slips. Some show quiet resignation; others shout angrily or weep or throw tantrums or all of the above.

And their pain is obviously real.

“I don’t know what it’s like to be 53 years old, to have done the same job for half your life, and to suddenly think, ‘OK, I live in a city where half the population does what I do, and we’ve all lost our jobs, so it’s not exactly like I can go find another job (snapping his fingers) like that,’” Reitman said. “I have too much respect for all the people who went through that situation, to sit there and try to come up with bull—- dialogue that just doesn’t pay tribute to how scary that must be.”

Travel and accommodations provided by Paramount Pictures.

It seems movies with humans just aren’t gonna cut it this year with the cinemas filled with hot teen wolves and vampires and, now, ten foot blue Na’vi, so we settle back to enjoy the fantasy sci-fi 3D masterpiece with a predictable plot that is Avatar.

The Auckland screening was packed with media and celebrities made to queue and be electronically scanned for any recording devices; slightly heavy-handed security insisted upon by Fox to eliminate piracy, two days before the film goes public. It would be very hard, however, to capture on a handheld cellphone this movie, given that what makes it great is the 3D and the visual effects.

Coming out afterwards, broadcaster Marcus Lush commented, “It’s the new Star Wars. Unbelievable. Shame they’re all blue.”

There’s no risk of spoiling the ending to say that in a nutshell, it’s a colonialists vs indigeneous people-love-story-turned-war-action film; you got that from the trailers. Yes, going there has opened Pandora’s box. The plot isn’t that deep, but does it need to be? James Cameron’s last film, Titanic, was great and you knew how that was going to turn out and you still went.

The 3D effects in Avatar draw you in, making you feel more connected to the action and to the oft one-dimensional characters. In the forest scenes with 3D animals flying at you, it is like you are there and I admit to jumping quite a bit in my seat. The flying scenes were breathtaking; the visual effects were the best I’ve ever seen. In fact, New Zealander Richard Taylor and Weta workshops got a round of applause at the end when the credits rolled his name, and well-deservedly so.

Jake Sully (Sam Worthington, last seen in Terminator 4 also as sort-of-human) is a marine whose late twin brother was a scientist on Pandora, with an avatar created using his human DNA together with Pandora’s Na’vi peoples’ DNA. Jake shares his brother’s genes and can “step into his brother’s shoes;” a poignant line to one who lost the use of his legs and who desires a new beginning and a fresh start in a faraway land, with the added bonus of getting an expensive operation to restore his legs if he cooperates with the bosses.

It’s not run by the US Military as such; ex-Marines are working on Pandora as hired guns for The Company, who can sell a sparkly coal-like mined ore for $20 million a kilo. And where does the ore lie, but under the Home Tree of the Na’vi people, a race seemingly based upon size zero Native Americans slash African tribespeople who are at one with their world and connect to animals and trees through their nervous system with glowing optic cables in their ponytails.

The Colonel is a stereotypical battle-crazed soldier hell-bent on getting his ore and at odds with biologist Dr Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver, best remembered for fighting Aliens not siding with them) who smokes cigarettes in every scene where she’s not tall, thin and blue.

It’s an action movie, but not played for one-liners like Die Hard. The Colonel gets many of the good lines and his Pres. Bush line, “We’re fighting terror with terror” got a good laugh from the audience. The only groan of cringe came from a Jake-Na’vi Princess tender cuddle.

The flora and fauna were for me the biggest stars in Avatar. You get a delight from watching Jake blunder around on Pandora, touching anenome-esque plants and walking on ground that lights up with every step. The creatures are as good as any fantasy and more imaginative than most, with many-legged horses, dinosaur-like animals, and even dragons. Waiting for the next amazing creature to appear does bring back a sense of wonder that many have said is lost from the going-to-the-movies experience as escapism.

To Cameron’s credit it didn’t go crazy with violence or sex; it has been rated M for mature audiences with battle violence but wasn’t too scary or overly violent; perhaps the same as say Jurassic Park or Terminator, and the only sex scene is a kiss. The battle scenes are incredible and the last one with helicopters vs the Na’vi is a real highlight of the film.

A nice touch is the extent they went to to form an entire language complete with sentence structure and grammar. I’m sure geeks will learn to speak it like they do Klingon. A professor of linguistics spoke on NZ’s National Radio today, saying James Cameron gathered 30 words from various cultures around the world, including the “ng’ sound of NZ Maori, and gave them to him to create a unique language for the Na’vi. Luckily for Jake many of them learned English at a school run by Grace so the whole movie isn’t subtitled.

I’d say whilst not a classic, Avatar is certainly ground-breaking in its visual effects and is a must-see for all sci-fi and fantasy fans and I can’t wait to see it again, as it was so much to take in the first time visually. Knowing what’s going to happen, doesn’t ruin a movie like this. It’s old-fashioned storytelling and romance set on a land far, far away…

London: British singer George Michael has revealed that he sees nothing wrong with smoking crack cocaine.
Michael, 46, who was arrested on London’s Hampstead Heath last year after the police found drugs in his possession, found it amusing that people saw him as tragic, reports The Daily Star.

When The Guardian asked him if he was using the drug at that time, he replied, “Was I? On that occasion, yeah.

“I’ve done many different things that I shouldn’t have done, once or twice. Of course. Nobody wants to regularly smoke crack,” he said.

But he can’t see the harm in his habits, taking a swipe at his pal, Sir Elton John, for trying to help him conquer his demons.

“People want to see me as tragic with all the cottaging and drug-taking. I don’t see them as weaknesses any more. It’s just who I am,” he said.

“Elton [John] will not be happy until I bang on his door in the middle of the night saying, ‘Please, please, help me, Elton. Take me to rehab.’ It’s not going to happen,” he added.

Proposals to give automatic 18 ratings to films shown in Liverpool which feature smoking characters have been rejected by councillors.

Liverpool Primary Care Trust (PCT) had wanted young people banned from seeing onscreen smoking because of research suggesting it influenced children.

But a public consultation found little support for the idea and cinema owners felt it would affect business.

Liverpool council’s Licensing Committee has recommended the idea is rejected.

It means the cabinet are unlikely to back the amendment of the authority’s licensing policy.

More research

An estimated 5,300 under-18s smoke in Liverpool, half of whom were influenced by films, the PCT claimed.

Under its proposals, classic films which feature smoking characters would be unaffected and the policy would only be applied to new releases.

However, films about historical figures and those which show a “clear and unambiguous portrayal of the dangers of smoking” would have been exempt.

The policy would only apply to films shown in Liverpool.

In a public consultation, 73% of young people asked about the policy opposed the idea. Officials found that 65% of adults questioned also opposed the idea.

The licensing committee advised the PCT to consider lobbying at national level, or commission further Liverpool-based research to back the idea.

Film distributors could also be persuaded to place public service announcements before films which contain images of smoking, they added.