Unless you’ve been living under a diamond the size of Manhattan recently, you’ve no doubt noticed the release of the much-hyped movie Avatar, James Cameron‘s latest bulldozer-full of eye candy. It’s got noble savages, heavy-handed environmentalism, and more stunning CGI visuals than anything George Lucas could ever hope to conjure forth. Shortly after BF newcomer and certified geek Kristin DeGroot watched the film, we sat down with Kevin Saunders over Skype to banter and bash on it. Aside from a huge recording fail on my part, we had a darn good episode. Have a listen!
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This weeks post-show song pimpage: “DotA” by Basshunter
28/12/2009 at 10:35 pm Permalink
I don’t know what I want to say. I loved this so very much.
Oh…first.
29/12/2009 at 8:26 pm Permalink
Shame on you, Stephen, for being so culturally aware and forgetting to mention the obvious Pantheistic storyline…well at least not by name…
Seriously though, the movie wasn’t that bad or that good for that matter, so I suppose I agree with most of the opinions voiced, albeit, I would have said it a bit different, but I am different person now aren’t I?
Oh, I came here from youtube. Your ASL music videos are very entertaining, keep em coming.
06/01/2010 at 4:07 am Permalink
This isn’t at all about the Eywa Ex Machina episode, but I figured my comment would be more likely to be read if it was at the top.
I had an idea for a future Bad Philosophy episode. It’s actually more of a Psychological topic than a Philosophical one, but . . . My friend and I were listening to Jonathan Coulton’s Skullcrusher Mountain and we started trying to see what psychological disorders we could and could not diagnose about the narrator, strictly by the song lyrics. For instance, he’s clearly schitzophrenic, due to the line in the chorus about “the voices that control me from inside my head say I shouldn’t kill you yet”. However, he also believes that he’s capable of making mistakes, unlike many supervillains who believe they’re infallible, and you can tell this from the line, “Maybe I used too many monkeys.” Anyway, I thought it would be funny to see you guys psychoanalyze the various narrators from JoCo’s music.
06/01/2010 at 12:21 pm Permalink
One of you said something like, “It was just one tree.” or something when talking about the removal of the Na’vi. Do you guys not believe in property rights or what?
06/01/2010 at 4:54 pm Permalink
I think that comment was sarcastic, if I’m not mistaken. That or the point was that if the whole planet was part of this network, the destruction of one tree shouldn’t harm it much. Granted, Home Tree was pretty dang huge, and there’s no telling whether certain parts of the network had more significance, just as parts of the human brain do.
06/01/2010 at 9:41 pm Permalink
Right, but then you said (paraphrasing), “When you see it that way then… our scientific minds go ‘Obviously we shouldn’t kill that.’ But it’s much more of a question when that (The Eywa) doesn’t exist.”
It’s not anymore of a question because we’re talking about people’s homes. Whether you consider yourself an “environmentalist” or not, it’s still not okay to kick people out of where they live. It wasn’t okay during the Trail of Tears and it’s not okay in Central and South America today.
06/01/2010 at 10:16 pm Permalink
Totally. I don’t think you’ll get any argument from us about that. And if we came off as somehow *for* the displacement of peoples, that’s unintentional. Our beef is mainly with the heavy-handedness of the screenplay, even though the message was a sound one.
07/01/2010 at 1:30 am Permalink
Oh, okay. Cool.
20/01/2010 at 9:30 pm Permalink
I just want to post in what has become the most commented-on post in the history of Bad Philosophy.
Sodawater Rhubarb.
Play on, Maestro!
22/01/2010 at 2:09 am Permalink
I very much enjoyed listening to this even though I really loved the movie. It was interesting to hear views that contrast with mine (believing in the connectedness of everything in the environment, etc.) but I respect your opinions because of the valid points made. 🙂