Vancity Slickers

A tame Monday night was necessary in order to wake early in Whistler and drive the rental van back to Vancouver airport on time. The drive was uneventful but also very light on traffic. It took us two hours from the base of Whistler to the airport, which shows the relative proximity that this metropolitan city has to nature's surrounding joys. We returned our van for 11 and hopped on a sky train to head into Vancouver and to meet with Jess, another friend of Amy's who has turned out to be a bit of a lifesaver. She lives in Kitsilano beach, a suburb of the city, and has offered to help us store our snowboard gear and crash at her place when she's out of town. She's got a studio apartment so it would be far too chaotic for us all to try to sleep there at the same time. Jess turned out to be exactly as Amy had described: frank, sarcastic, strong willed, opinionated, and all with a generous spirit. We spoke with her for a while and left all non-essential gear at her place as we headed to our hotel for the night, the YWCA. Our hotel room overlooked the South end of the city peninsula, out of which we could see both BC Place and GM Place (which the local papers call 'the garage'). A quick nap had us recharged and trekking the city by late afternoon.

With no specific plans in mind, we walked aimlessly around the city streets for a few hours until we stumbled across a movie theater. We had made it a point early in our trip to see Avatar in theatres before it ended its run, and in 3D if possible. Unfortunately most of the small towns we have visited have already moved on from the James Cameron blockbuster, so our hopes of seeing it on the silver screen were fading. Luckily this theatre in the city was not only playing it, but showcasing the film in 3D. We had our tickets and plans for the night (it's a 3 hour movie).

Robyn and I are likely very 'open' to the messages that are presented in the movie, but we both walked out of the theatre agreeing that it was one of the best films we'd both ever seen. I will not delve into plot or too much into our reaction, but I do wholeheartedly encourage everyone to go see it in theatres and in 3D if at all possible. The 3D has evolved far past a cheesy gimmick within this movie and really helps develop a sense of space and surroundings. I'd also like to mention that I think the marketing for the movie was quite interesting: although the battle scenes are critical to the story, they were only a brief period within the narrative and were more a 'necessary evil' in playing out the plot than the central focus or theme. The ads that I saw really made it seem like this was going to be a sci-fi battle movie, which it is, it is much more than that. I find the marketing tactics interesting, though, because it's possible that the audience that went to see it early under the guise of an epic fight movie were hit quite squarely with some of the deeper messages within. The second wave of people, I'm theorizing, would likely be drawn to the movie as a result of hearing from their friends that it's not a sci-fi fighting flick. I am passing on to everyone that Avatar definitely has something for everyone and is an enjoyable, thought-provoking story. Maybe I'm preaching to the choir though as box office sales would point out that most of the civilized world has already seen it. We did smirk afterwards at the irony of the Academy's decision to award Hurt Locker, a movie about the Iraq war, the Oscar for best picture. Change, apparently, will take time.