I finally got to watch the Blu-Ray disc of James Cameron's Avatar. I had splurged on the special package available in the UK with steelbook (rather than plastic) packaging, four lenticular 3D cards with scenes from the film, and a book, Avatar: An Activist Survival Guide, and a Region 2 (PAL format) DVD. The Blu-Ray disc was encoded Region A-B, so it would play on two of my players.
My Region B player (a Momitsu BDP-799 set for Region B play and NTSC output) handled the Blu-Ray disc with no problems, but the my Region A player (a Pioneer BDP-121) had some problems. The Pioneer did not play the on-screen translations (subtitles) when the Na'vi language is spoken, and it also puts a progress time line on screen (a Blu-Ray feature) randomly without my asking for it. Odd. I have yet to play this BD in another Region A player made by LG. I have yet to play the DVD in any player.
So how does Avatar look in Blu-Ray? Great! Perfect! At first the colors looked washed out. Since the disc is "THX certified" I went to the monitor color controls and raised the color intensity. Americans have been shown to like color levels set very high. I had reduced the level to 26 to make skin look like skin and grass like grass. But I had to boost it back for Avatar (about 50).
I'm noticing more details while viewing in 2D than I did in the theater in 3D. Turns out the avatar bodies have five fingers and five toes whereas the native Na'vi have four fingers and four toes. The Na'vi hand looks narrower than the avatar hand. The Na'vi foot looks like an avatar foot in width but with the toe next to the big toe removed.
The lentincular, 3D cards depict (1) Neytiti (the woman) flying on the back of a banshee with small examples of the floating Hallelujah Mountains visible in the sky behind, (2) Neytiti in close-up (head and neck) with her (4-fingered) hand on the neck of a banshee, (3) Jake's avatar and Neytiti at night with a glowing, spinning "fan lizard" twirling in the foreground, and (4), my favorite, Jake's avatar at night surrounded by the glowing seeds, dancing in the air like jellyfish, with Neytiri in the background.
The Avatar: An Activist Survival Guide provides all the scientific data, flora, fauna, customs, etc., that you could even want to know about Pandora and the Na'vi. Unobtainium is described in great detail as is the poisonous Pandoran atmosphere. The steelbook-book-cards package sold by Amazon.co.uk was expensive at £25, but worth it to me.
Farewell concert by the Norwegian group a-ha at the Nokia Theater tonight
a-ha (as they prefer to spell it) gave their first of three farewell, "Ending on a High Note" New York City concerts at the Nokia Theater tonight. The group has been together since 1985 (but maybe a bit before) so this night was "25 years in the making" (the title of the second visual montage). In 1985 these boys, who could hardly speak English, released Take On Me and it went to Number One in the U.S. and just about everywhere else. They are not boys anymore. The lead vocalist, Morton Harket, the oldest, is 51. Paul Waaktaar-Savoy (originally Pål Waaktaar until his marriage), the guitarist, is now 48, and Magne "Mags" Furuholmen, their keyboard player, is 47.
The concert was opened by Norwegian artist Sondre Lerche, 27, on solo guitar. He grew up with a-ha as his heros, and was performing at 14. He nows lives in New York and he speaks English without a trace of an accent. His song lyrics are a bit strange and may be a translation of his thoughts in Norwegian. He looked ten years younger than his age. One of his set was an obscure a-ha 7" B-side and he sang it well.
a-ha started with a swirling, stream-of-consciousness visual montage on a digital screen that formed the stage backdrop. There was a drumkit at the rear stage right and a multi-keyboard rack with computer screen at the rear stage left. When a-ha took to the stage, Paul was stage right, Mags stage left, and Morton at center. They began with the title track from their latest (2009) album, Foot of the Mountain and did some more recent songs before announcing they were going to do some earlier stuff. Morton's amazing falsetto -- he is estimated to have a five-octave range, compared to Pavarotti's four -- is still quite amazing. (Mags has a great falsetto, too.) Although he may the oldest, Morton has found some sort of fountain of youth. It seemed that all of the women (and some of the men) gasped in unison when he took his coat off to reveal a trim torso and tailored shirt. And his high cheekbones have not drooped over the years, either.
At one point the three guys took to a darkened stage with Mags on a small xylophone and Paul on an acoustic guitar as they sang three ballads in tight harmony. They involved the audience in sing-alongs on the James Bond theme The Living Daylights and several others. But the biggest songs were saved for the encores. The first encore set included The Sun Always Shines on TV with Morton hitting pitch-perfect high notes every time. The second encore consisted of just the one number that would prove the title of the concert, "Ending on a High Note," correct. Take On Me proved that Morton, at 51, can still hit the impossible high note over and over. He did not play with the note, working up to it, as he did in the Royal Albert Hall concert video on YouTube, and they did not reprise the final chorus, but they did the job, and then some.
Enjoy retirement, guys! In my mind you have earned it. (Their final three concerts in Oslo in December of 2010 sold out in two hours.)
