Art visual np2

This was a good year for films, especially if you lived in Trinidad and Tobago where the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival (TTFF) really hit new highs, screening strong international films, and good local stuff like: The Solitary Alchemist , Coolie Pink and Green and Bury Your Mother . I've picked my favorite films for the year and judging from how many of you  LOVED James Cameron's Avatar  (which does not make my list I'm quite afraid to say) I figure I'm in for some serious slack for these choices. First of all, how DARE I declare Tomas Alfredson's  Let the Right One In to be the best film of the year, when most people never even heard of it or missed its screening here in Trinidad at studiofilmclub earlier this year? And why is fellow vampire flick  Twilight: New Moon NOT on my list? Didn't I get the memo about the pale and undead being HOT this year? 1. Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) You're getting beaten up in school everyday. It...

We might as well say it now: the only reason this film got made was probably because of the Hollywood clout of its director James Cameron. As I started to fall asleep next to my sister at the Globe cinema in downtown Port of Spain (not the ideal spot to slumber, many will vouch) I started to think of why anyone would want to make this film, besides for the obvious money-making potential. Avatar follows the coming of age of its protagonist Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington). It's sometime in the future and  Jake's twin brother Tom has just died. Because Jake has the same genome as his dead brother, he can step into Tom's shoes in an ongoing project on a planet called Pandora. Sigh. Apparently, on Pandora, humans are infiltrating an native race called the Na'avi by--get this--plugging themselves (apparently via broadband) into alien-looking flesh suits called avatars. What then follows is one of the most droll science-fiction films of all time, complete with all the ...