Discover Top Posts Tagged with #2009 films

One Dress a Day Challenge

June: Brown Redux

The Young Victoria / Emily Blunt as Queen Victoria

Sandy Powell did something rather fascinating with the costumes in this movie. This scene takes place just a few months before Victoria's coronation, and she wears an extremely similar gown in a scene set just after the coronation. In fact, the two dresses are so similar that at first I thought it was the same one, just made over in a slightly updated style. But when I look at them side by side, it's clear that they're actually made of different material. This one is a paler shade of brown, and the red stripes are both narrower and more frequent. Even the belt is different: the belt for this dress is narrower, and the buckle is more uniformly rectangular than the other one.

I don't know if I've ever seen a costumer do something similar, with two costumes that are so very similar and yet so subtly different. This dress is more girlish, while the other one is more grown-up and sophisticated. It's a great way of showing how Victoria is coming into herself within a very short space of time.

#the young victoria #emily blunt #brown dresses #one dress a day challenge #one dress a week challenge #movie costumes #period film #1830s fashion #1830s style #sandy powell #2009 movies #2009 films #queen victoria #brown dress #brown redux #19th century costumes #19th century fashion #technically not victorian era yet

Avatar (2009)

As soon as Avatar became the highest-grossing film of all time, it became cool to trash it. While the movie may use familiar elements, you’ve never seen anything quite like it. Visually stunning and filled with rousing scenes, this is a groundbreaking achievement in special effects that's surprisingly memorable.

In 2154, humanity has reached Pandora, a moon in the Alpha Centauri star system. Unfortunately, the largest deposit of its valuable unobtainium is beneath the home of the Na’vi, the planet's 3m tall blue-skinned humanoids natives. After attempting to negotiate mining rights with them for years, the RDA (Resources Development Administration) has developed “avatars”, Na’vi-human hybrids that can be operated by their genetically-matched scientists. When his twin brother suddenly dies, Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is sent to Pandora to take his place. Head researcher Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) doesn’t trust Jake to integrate with the native population. She’s right not to, as he's agreed to feed Colonel Miles Quaritch (Steven Lang) specific intel to take the Na’vi down if no agreement can be reached.

Even at the time, the story by writer-director James Cameron felt both familiar and on the nose. It couldn’t be food or a cure for some deadly disease that humans need from Pandora, it's “unobtainium”, which might as well be space gold. Of course, the Na’vi live in perfect harmony with nature and display no barbaric behavior of their own. That’s reserved for humans - more specifically, the military forces and their boss, Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), a weiner introduced when he shoots a golf ball into a coffee cup. The moment Jake meets the beautiful Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), you know he’s going to abandon his original goals and fall in love with the Na’vi and their ways - how could he not?

It's easy to find ways the themes and plot points could’ve been handled with more finesse or originality but in the film’s defense, all of that doesn’t really matter. The fact is, you fall in love with Pandora as quickly as Jake does. When Colonel Quaritch shows how ruthless he is and how little he cares about the Na’vi, you hate him with a burning intensity. When the natives fight back, you cheer loudly. Maybe the film is manipulative in that Pandora is a beautiful place filled with beautiful creatures that are easy to fall in love with and the villain is made so evil his hatred allows him to survive the planet’s poisonous atmosphere far longer than it should. These also make the film easy to follow and memorable. I hadn’t seen Avatar since 2009 but I remembered nearly every beat of the story. Unconcerned with the plot, I was able to bask in the lush jungles of Pandora the way I was meant to. Well, not quite. Unfortunately, the film isn’t quite the same when viewed at home, and in 2D, but you can catch a glimpse of what it was like on the big screen at the time. You understand why it was a game-changer, why people looked at what was on-screen as a true escape from their mundane realities.

The topic of escape brings me to my other quasi-criticism. If Avatar is the highest-grossing movie of all time, why isn’t it part of the collective conversation? Why don’t we see people dressing up as the Na’vi on Halloween? Where are the toys? Where are the memes and gifs alongside the ones of Thanos snapping his fingers? The thing is, as much as the film is memorable, it’s also so removed from reality it almost doesn’t belong in normal conversations. Ultimately, the story is about a white soldier who can do things better than all of the aboriginal people he originally came to conquer. The story is a power fantasy on a scale we’ve largely moved away from in the last 10+ years. Watching Avatar doesn’t really teach you anything about the world or about yourself. Is that a bad thing? No, not if you want a true escape. In fact, it's exactly what you want if you're looking for the ultimate getaway, something that reminds you of nothing from the real world.

At one point, I think I’d like to dig into the character designs, the cutting-edge special effects used to bring the film to life, the performances (Steven Lang is particularly great), the worldbuilding, and other technical aspects that make Avatar a good film but I’ve talked a lot already and ultimately, what matters about a movie is how it makes you feel and how entertaining it is. At both of these, Avatar excels. Watching it, you feel exactly as the protagonist does. You hiss at the villain as he does, you cheer when he cheers and you’re as awestruck by the colors as he is. The film generates a strong emotional reaction from its audience and that’s the mark of a movie worth seeing. (On Blu-ray, December 11, 2022)