A cottage shaped like a tortoise walked by. People who thought golems had to be humanoid lacked imagination.

He watched the burning monster run away. The matches were his, but, “Why’d you have a spray bottle full with pure alcohol?” “For art.”

“Wow! Did you see that?” “I saw a giant flying lizard with giant claws and giant teeth, now come down here before it sees us!”

“I can’t believe you did that. He was aiming a gun at you!” “And now I have the gun.” “You’re crazy.” “Occasionally. It works.”

“You OK?” “I think. Maybe bruised my elbow.” “I think you broke that guy’s nose.” Nico sounded enthusiastic. “Good tradeoff, then.”

While dozens of chimaerologists failed taking over the world with monsters, Hael combined pig, sheep, and cow and made a fortune.

A truck got stuck in a too-narrow street, on the way to a ferry only for cars. It was the third this week, on Tuesday. Stupid GPS maps.

Gregor could deal with drinking blood and avoiding sunlight. Not so progress. Biometric identification to buy tobacco? Stake, please.

“Look! Listen! It’s marvelous! It’s thunder given a heartbeat! It’s-” “…lots of animals running in one direction.”

He wished for a partner who did not need to be told things like, “No, getting the lay of the land is NOT the same as getting laid.”

Anne watched the falling leaves and stomped any that didn’t turn over in the air. Those were airships of ant-sized pirate raiders.

It wasn’t the fact that she’d seen the cathedral 500 years ago already that made her queasy, but that she had forgotten until just now.

Daaren dreaded the coming evening. It couldn’t be good if preparations included a knife close to his neck, even if it was for shaving.

Nico saw he was impressed, what with him accidentally bumping into people. Inner ear damage seemed unlikely. Not that kind of concert.

“You’re standing under a mistletoe,” he said, trying to embrace her. The reaction? A shove, and, “That’s holly, you idiot.”

People approved of Gladys’ “show children consequences” stance, until she demonstrated “it’s fun until someone loses an eye”.

At age 5, he’d wanted to be a hydraulic shovel when he grew up. It took decades to save up for the cyborgification.

The hype seems weird, but over all it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be, after some things I’d heard.

Some spoilers following, in case you’re even more slow finding your way to the cinema.

The whole “blue cat Native Americans” was kinda painful, yes. And the story was obviously stock material, so it’s not interesting, but an excuse to hang visuals and the occasional nice line of dialogue on.

There was a weird opinion an article about Avatar in yesterday’s paper, saying it was sexist (against women) because the men looked better than the women. Just putting that out there, I neither agree with the opinion about aesthetics nor understand the reasoning behind the conclusion.
Regarding the general topic: What stood out to me was that they killed off half of the female cast (not counting extras), and, particularly, that the two that survived were the hero’s love interest and “mother-in-law” (who also was needed for a ceremony with the hero at the centre at the end). Looking at the movie alone, no problem, but it touches a raw nerve caused by way too stories showing a “women are only important because of their relation to men” attitude.

On the plus side, we got four female characters who were not just decoration or something. (Still not passing the Bechdel test, unless I missed something, but a step in the right direction.)

What’s more, there were women in the background as marines, or working in the avatar lab. That’s a huge step up from The Fifth Element, another colourful scifi film, which I need to rant about some time.

One aspect of the story that leaves a bad taste in my mouth is how Jake Sully’s development, particularly the whole Toruk-rider thing. Him playing a key role in the defense of Pandora due to his knowledge about how humans and their equipment operate would make perfect sense, but the whole “(white american male) newcomer is a better Noble Savage than those born to it after only three months of practise” seems nonsensical to me.

You get made-up critters and plants, as can be expected from a made-up world, and, yes, the visuals were pretty and impressive. Despite the aforementioned grating bits, over all the movie was entertaining; it certainly didn’t feel almost three hours long. I also had some fun picking out details, like a dragon painted on the side of an aircraft (funny when the people you’re fighting against are riding what looks like flying lizards).

Your average Hollywood movie.