I’ll be brief. Having viewed James Cameron’s new 3D movie Avatar, I have to admit that it was simply stunning. It has all of the elements of a blockbuster movie: strong emotional appeal, a compelling story line, just enough character development, and fantastic visuals. And with production and marketing costs that some are estimating to approach half a gigabuck, it’ll need all the buzz it can get to give a blockbuster return to the investors.
As we filed out of the theater last night I couldn’t help but think that we had just witnessed a paradigm shift in the business and technology of cinema. Going forward, the bar has just been raised in the expectation level of audiences.
Hmmm. I wonder if Unobtainium occurs as the sulfide or the native element?
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Things have come a LONG way from your time (and mine) behind the projector…
So true. I feel old.
Looked like a broken chunk of polysilicon to Uncle Al. If you look through Polariod sunglasses through the 3-D specs as they rotate normal to your gaze, both lenses darken and lighten simultaneously. Opposite circular polarizations! The 3-D specs’ linear polarizers are oriented exactly perpendicular to those of the sunglasses, making them useless against glare. OTOH, look at yourself in a mirror while wearing 3-D specs, then close one eye at a time. Which eye has the opaque lense, the open one or the closed one?
I though it looked like a chunk of silicon too.
We were not allowed to take the glasses into the head where a mirror was located. They had an alarm gadget at the doorway to keep folks from walking off with the glasses. I’ll bring a Faraday cage next time.
I got yer Faraday cage right here, http://www.emvelope.com Shield any chipped item of value – passport, credit card, smart card – against a remote reader.
http://www.sciplus.com/category.cfm/subsection/17
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Anyone got a link to discussion of the supposed exochemistry / exobiology represented in “Avatar”?
I assume the blue coloring suggests a cellular gas transport mechanism in the blood based on eg cobalt instead of iron (so no pink human coloring from hemoglobin). Since the humans need masks I guess the N’evi’s energy cycle is not based on oxygen? Yet there are green trees, meaning chlorophyll in plants (which suggests oxygen and carbon dioxide cycling, or no?). What are the N’evi breathing, then? We know they are supposed to be a DNA-based lifeform, sufficiently so for mixing DNA with that of humans to manufacture the Avatars. We are told they have “naturally occurring carbon fiber” in their bones making them “extremely hard to kill”. etc etc