Friends

So one of the things that weirded me out the most about Avatar was that the avatars *really did* look like their actors. This was most apparent to me in Sigourney Weaver because she's got a fairly unusual face and I'm pretty familiar with it. Also, another nifty thing about the movie: more of the cast was an ethnic minority than not.

( Many images behind the cut... )

Yesterday was kind of nuts.... in a good way. Katy, her boyfriend Zack, and Tassa's friends Mikke, Mika, and Hikaru all came over. We watched a bunch of Christmas specials with Katy, since she was the first to arrive, then we played Apples to Apples and watched silly youtube videos, then we all went to see Avatar. We also served everyone tons of fruit.

As for Avatar, it was kind of as we expected, the movie was gorgeous, but the story kind of meh, since it was mostly a pretty standard omg save the trees movie. I guess for what it was the story was okay, but it bothered me when I realized that there are literally ZERO meaningful conversations between anyone. All conversations were for exposition purposes. I think there could and should have been interesting conversations between the main character and the chief's daughter, and I feel like what a potentially cool conversation was lost. Oh well, at least it was pretty? Oh, and they are right in that the 3-D effects, should you choose to see it in 3-D, for the first time don't feel like a gimmick since they do use the 3-D but never put stuff right in your face.

Even if you don't watch The Guild, this one is funny due to the intentional bad acting. The Guild is a series of shorts about a fictional guild playing a fictional RPG that's really obviously WoW (with some slight differences.) The main character is played by Felicia Day, who is actually a real life actress who's appeared in TV shows (mostly Joss Whedon shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog). Oh she's also an awesome violinist too. The show is mostly silly and cute, and it's super popular among WoW players. Oh, and third season features Evil Wil Wheaton (you know, Wesley Crusher, professional nerd?), which is to die for (omigawsh he's so funny.) Anyways, here's the Guild Christmas Special:

I have just read an article talking about how divers have discovered octopi off the coast of Indonesia carrying around coconut shells as portable camouflage and protection. A new example of tool use in animals, and this particular animal doesn't even have a backbone!

Man, I've been playing WoW since fall 2006... how crazy is that? Lately the interest was waning, since quite frankly, content patch 3.2 sucked. There was hardly anything for us raiders to do. But, at last! Patch 3.3 has been released, and I'm getting excited about WoW again! First raid week, we downed the first 25 boss of the new raid instance, and all 4 of the 10 man version. Go team! Will WoW ever get old? Time to go pug another 12 times and get my cute new pet durnit!

On a spur of the moment thing, the house all went to see The Princess and the Frog. It was actually pretty enjoyable, despite Disney's more recent track record with recent animated movies. There's not much to say about it besides the obvious (that it's still a Disney movie, but mostly in the good sense) without spoiling however, heh. Oh except that Keith David plays the bad guy.

Along the line of movies, I guess we'll have to see Avatar because it's already been getting good reviews, and Ebert gave an absolute rave review... although his reviews have been sort of lacking of late, seeing as he panned Star Trek, which was completely off base by just about anyone else's judgement. I've been sort of withholding judgment on the trailers. The early teasers (and the later trailers) make the movie look gorgeous, but as more trailers came out, it became clear that the movie is also super tree-huggy.... with blue cat people. I'm sure this idea has been done before. By 12 year old girls. We might have to see it in 3-D since people are also saying that the 3-D is really well done for it as well.