The Week In A Bad Education Towers #19

Two in a row; part of this year is trying to establish good new habits so here we are writing again in a Sunday morning.

So pretty much after hitting 'send' last week I was out of the house on my way to the cinema to watch Avatar Way of The Water.

Now, watching the first Avatar felt like much more of an event; me and my friends Ryan and Meat went on a train to Cardiff, then got a bus to Cardiff Bay and then strode across ice fields:

All to get to the Odeon IMAX cinema so we could see the film in the biggest possible 3D, whereas this one...we'll just see it normally thanks. 3D in cinemas came with Avatar and pretty went several years before its much delayed sequel was released. Not sure what the last film was that I saw in 3D but I don't miss it at all.

Was that what propelled Avatar to the top of the top grossing film lists? That spectacle? I mean, possibly; James Cameron's films have felt like events ever since Terminator 2, big pop culture bending releases that drag everyone towards them. Same with Avatar 2 despite it hanging about for like 10 years or however long it has been. Was it worth the wait?

Meh, maybe. You can't help but admire the sheer artistry in the film, you can see every bit of money up on the screen. But its all a bit...familiar? And also long, like really long. There was a tweet that floated up in the last week or so about a similar topic, about Cameron being asked to cut stuff by studio people:

And I get that, its an admirable stance, not being beholden to what studios want. But at the same time, this was a really long film and could have said and done the same thing in a much shorter running time. Oh it looks glorious; all the swimming sequences, the military stuff, Cameron really is one of the greatest visual storytellers alive. But, much like Tarantino, he needs a producer to look at the script and hand it back saying "make it 90 minutes".

Which goes totally against that video from earlier, creators should be allowed to be self indulgent and put up on the screen what they want. But also, sometimes creators do work best when they have restrictions, when they need to think their way around stuff. Cameron is so far from that, he can literally throw money at inventing filming techiniques to get what he wants on screen. And thats brilliant, but does it need to be this long?

So, in conclusion, I enjoyed it but its not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination. See you in 2 years for the next one.

I did plan on getting the photo booth out this week but forgot to (call back to those good habits!) so you'll need to make do with this quick photo:

If Avatar was long, then this lad is BIG. I never had ths Stunticons growing up, I think had a few combiners but never all of them so getting this fella together is pretty cool. He was fun to put together as well, his trailer comes apart then forms the body that everyone else gets attached to. He feels dense and weighty and with one swing I could probably put a dent in a small family car.

Recommended, if you have more money than sense.

So at the end of the week it looked like Twitter shut off access to their API for various third party apps including Tweetbot.

This sucks, as I only use Twitter through Tweebot because it gives me two things; no adverts and a chronologial timeline. Its ace, and I've been using it over a decade according to my purchase history:

And now it doesn't work so now I either have to use the app or the website both of which are a dumpster fire of algorithms and adverts. Which is to say, if you're there then find me on Mastodon or Hive. I haven't really started using either yet, and neither yet has the kind of free wheeling nonsense that makes me like Twitter in the first place. We'll see, maybe the switch will be turned back on, maybe we will all nip over to somewhere else.

Change is rubbish.

See you next week? I'll certainly try.

Anyways, bye!

Phil Doyle