The first Smex of 2010 started with a … fizzle. Five of us met at Champoo, which use to be called “Balsam”. Get it? me neither, until it was brought to my attention that it means Conditioner in Norwegian. After a few beers, it was still unclear and unfunny why Shampoo came after Conditioner. We dutifully took a group picture outside in the freezing cold (thanks Espen!) and headed out to Ringen 6.

Up in the Air stars George Clooney as a Downsizing Expert, which means he’s hired by companies to fire people. While he usually works alone, he is paired up with a up-and-coming employee that is implementing a new system to fire people over internet video. Hilarity ensues, not.

This movie feels like an independent film that is not boring. It has humor in a subtle way (still way funnier than Couples Retreat) and a few expected plot twists. But overall it’s a laid back film that shows a sad side of the “American Life” and some interesting tidbits of modern relationships. One surprising thing was the quality of the cinematography. I think half of the movie would make a great wallpaper.

To sum up, I enjoyed this movie and will gladly watch it again in a few months.

It’s that time of year again, Santa is about to come to town and give out presents to all the boys and girls that have been nice. Being Christmas, this was the 105th SMEx and final for this year. The turn out was very small for such a blockbuster movie, but I guess that is expected because of the timing.

We all gathered at Perrongen Sports Bar, which was voted to have the best staff of any bar on the pub crawl, unfortunately the super friendly barman wasn’t working, but the replacement guy was ok. Inside they had decorated with Christmas decorations over the top of the soccer memorabilia making the atmosphere “kjempekoselig” (“super cosy” in Norwegian but it’s hard to translate without understanding the Norwegian meaning of “koselig”, anyway) an underrated and nice pub with cheap beer, right at Majorstuen station.

So to the movie. In a word it was spectacular. But then if I had to use more words I would start to pull it apart. Overall it just looked amazing and to quote Christian: “Amazed by how far the CGI are being pushed by Mr. Cameron”, but it still lacked something.

It tells the story of the human race exploiting the planet Pandora for a mineral called “unobtainium” (the writers must have been on strike when they came up with that, anyway) and their struggle to deal with the native population, the Na’vi. Sam Worthington plays Jake Sully an ex-marine assigned as security on the biology team and his struggle to do what he feels is right and what he is ordered to do.

Of course this story sounds familiar but the twist is that humans cannot breath the atmosphere on Pandora. So Jake has to use an “Avatar”, which is the body of a native Na’vi whose mind he is linked to with some computer wizardry, while he sits in a pod back at base. Now he is free to roam the planet and blend in the the natives… well sort of.

This movie is a chick movie at heart with a love story running though it showing that James Cameron knows how to pull in a wide ranging audience and get the big bucks. He’s going to need it as I’m sure the budget on this movie was just insane. One last point was this was one of the first 3D movies where I forgot I was watching 3D a lot of the time. Except for a few of the really frantic scenes it just looked awesome.

This movie is well worth the look, especially in 3D and nice end to SMEx 2009.

See you next year, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the President.