Stunning: Sets the Bar to a New Level

I've seen Avatar twice now and each time I was blown away by the sheer creative energy that went into the movie. I think the story line is trite and somewhat predictable, especially the mean nasty techo-soldiers from earth against the noble savages and the rain-forest, super-green eco-nonsense which passes for wisdom these days. But those disadvantages pale into insignificance beside the sheer creative beauty, realism, and vigor of the visuals, the imagined future, and the 3D computer graphics which create a planet so powerfully beautiful and inspiring and a native population entirely computer generated that is convincing and characterizations that seem authentic from the seasoned former recon colonel to the Hispanic helicopter pilot who does what she thinks is right, to the avatars themselves and the natives. Wow! What an accomplishment. This movie is easily the best science fiction movie for a long time and should win a lot of Oscars.

NaNoWriMo Winner: A little late reporting this.

I probably should mention how NaNoWriMo came out ... I won! Of course all that means is that I wrote 50,000 words in November on a novel and reported it to NaNoWriMo and got my name listed as one of the NaNo winner. I also got the image posted here.

I now have about half a novel which was jammed out in 30 days. Since then I've been contemplating my navel instead of working on polishing or continuing the novel. On the other hand I did just finish grading all my student's work for the Fall semester and I'm now languishing in the glorious fact that I can schedule my own work for a while until school starts again.