Reviewing Avatar is like opining on sunshine. At a certain point, sheer global approval makes a critique willful, redundant and even silly. Actually, Eyewear saw the 3D spectacle with his six eyes (doubled specs) and enjoyed the retro feel. The future is 3D we are told because it foils pirates. It also makes cinema feel like an event again. The Leicester Square audience applauded after the screening. Of the plot, it is the nothing new. A bit of Pocahontas, Dances with Wolves, Braveheart and The New World, The Mission, along with Aliens and Matrix. Still, it is great to see Giovanni Ribisi put to good use finally after Boiler Room. The animation and effects are state of the art. One felt one was in the 70s poster art world. I found it a thrilling if predictable ride and was moved by the attempt to redress the evils of Western imperialism and anti-Gaiaism through this fantasy. If only film changed the past! James Cameron has begun to look more visionary than Spielberg. With the two top-grossing films in the world under his belt all he needs is a third act hat-trick to be truly monumental - Avatar 2? Ribisi will be back!
When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
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