For me if I had to pick a good contender it would be the UK version of The Office.

I know many tend to debate how Ricky Gervais really fell off and how he repugnantly acts like a whiny centrist edgelord but me personally IMO I actually don’t think he was ever funny not even a little.

His big break through television was just so painful to sit through it’s so charismatically boring the characters are completely generic at best (notably Tim) or straight up insufferably unlikable at worst (especially the protagonist David FUCKING Brent) and most importantly the humour is just embarrassing.

Always seemed like The Thick Of It but without the nuisance tongue in cheek and charming satire.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    10·
    3 days ago

    When did you watch it? When it came out, it was technically impressive for the computer-generated graphics, which included a lot of highly-detailed and expansive “organic” stuff like forests.

    Here’s some quotes from the Roger Ebert review from the time:

    https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/avatar-2009

    Like “Star Wars” and “LOTR,” “Avatar” employs a new generation of special effects. Cameron said it would, and many doubted him. It does. Pandora is very largely CGI. The Na’vi are embodied through motion capture techniques, convincingly. They look like specific, persuasive individuals, yet sidestep the eerie Uncanny Valley effect. And Cameron and his artists succeed at the difficult challenge of making Neytiri a blue-skinned giantess with golden eyes and a long, supple tail, and yet–I’ll be damned. Sexy.

    Cameron promised he’d unveil the next generation of 3-D in “Avatar.” I’m a notorious skeptic about this process, a needless distraction from the perfect realism of movies in 2-D. Cameron’s iteration is the best I’ve seen — and more importantly, one of the most carefully-employed. The film never uses 3-D simply because it has it, and doesn’t promiscuously violate the fourth wall.

    I mean, I remember being underwhelmed after I went to watch Avatar with a friend who was deeply impressed, but it did show off a lot of render capability for the time. I’d call it more impressive as a tech demo.

    • novibe@lemmy.mlEnglish
      61·
      2 days ago

      It’s way beyond a tech demo. Each Avatar movie invented dozens of new techniques. They actually film using cameras. They do a CGI movie with cameras, filming real actors acting. And they become huge blue aliens, while being filmed on a camera. It’s truly insane. I don’t like the movies themselves, but the BTS for them is crazy.

      • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
        2·
        1 day ago

        And that sort of thing totally DOES permeate throughout the industry. Whenever Pixar or Weta(RIP?) or Cameron or DreamWorks or whoever invent something REALLY COOL. . .

        . . .At some point we eventually get it in Blender, and I think that’s neat.