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The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."





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Monday, January 25, 2010

AVATAR

Well, Susie and I went off yesterday afternoon to the fanciest multiplex around and saw Avatar in 3-D [even for seniors it was $8.50 a ticker]. It was an extraordinary experience. The special effects, 3-D and 2-D, are over the top, spectacular, a whole new level of technical achievement. But James Cameron spent so much on them [two hundred million, apparently] that he had no money left to hire a writer. So instead, he recycled every tired old film cliche imaginable. The movie is a mish-mash of Dances With Wolves, Star Wars [the Ewoks against the mechanical walking machines], King Solomon's Mines, Tarzan of the Apes, and even Alien. [Cameron also skimped on star power to save money, so the only recognizable face was Sigourney Weaver, doing a great turn as a cigarette smoking scientist]. After a while, I took to whispering in Susie's ear what was going to come next, and when I had to make a quick trip to the Men's Room, I knew I would not miss anything. It is not nearly as gorgeous a film as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or the other films of that genre whose names I cannot recall, but which are the most sensually beautiful films I have ever seen. There is a lively debate in the blogosphere about whether the film is a progressive environmentalist tract or a reactionary White Settler putdown of native peoples, but that gives it way too much credit for having a brain.

Oh yes, the best bit of technical shtick was that when you leave the theater, if you forget to put your glasses in a bin, an alarm beeps, like at the library. I kind of liked that.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

You forgot Pocahontas. It is the same history.