You. Better cash iiiinnn!

Apologies to Janes Adiction for borrowing from "mountain Song" but it sums up my view after watching a couple of adverts this morning I think it fits in great. Initially I was going to complain at the stupidity of having to rename the Avatar movie to it's subtitle just because there was another Avatar film released last year. Then I realised why this really was, The Last Airbender (AKA Avatar - The Movie) was actually going to be going head to head in cinemas with "the ultra special úber mighty rerelease of Avatar. What kind of donkey testes is this?

Avatar is a popular animé series (i.e badly drawn "stylistic" animation and a bunch of hard arse kids with mystical powers/pets) which is reliant entirely on it's name recognition to get anywhere in the market. We're now in the period where JCAvatar would normally be released on DVD but they've hit a double whammy at their smaller niche audience. Not only are they forbidding them from advertising the film properly but they're re-releasing into the cinemas with approximatly 10 minutes "extra cool" additional footage.

The contempt, not only for other film makers but the paying audience astounds me. I'm not naieve, every business is about making profit and obviously films are no different, but to me the idea of manipulating an audience after overcharging to begin with before getting people to go out and over pay again is just farcical. I'd like to think people will have the balls to sit back and raise a finger at James Cameron and tell him exactly where to go (not a good film since Aliens so I knew where my money was going here!) but this isn't going to happen, droves of people who saw this "incredible special effects" will clamour for more.

What is it that makes people do this? To go and see a film like JCAvatar at Cineworld would cost us £10.40 as standard, no doubt it'll be deluxe screened and get a little high demand premium thrown in. It's cheaper to go out and buy a flipping DVD, yet people won't go out and do this will they? Yes films can look better on a big screen, the thing is, normal households have access to better HD televisions than the cinema screens and won't have irritating brats getting in the way of the screen or making a noise and the over priced drinks/snacks. A day out to the cinema for me and the wench to see either Avatar would cost me a minimum of £20, if either of us wanted a drink of coke or popcorn that can easily rise to £25 which is just ridiculous costs when a DVD would cost us just over a tenner at release. Patience is a virtue and we're not going to be waiting for the years it seemed to be for films like Jurassic Park to get a release, though if people are stupid enough to buy into this fiasco maybe in Avatars case we will do.

You talk to members of staff at the cinema and they will tell you that the biggest obstacle to the industry is piracy. It's an old cliché and we'll hear it time and time again from various executives. Problem isn't that, the problem is (aside from a lack of support for the arts in the UK) that filmmakers overcharge people for a couple of hours unimaginative cliché ridden entertainment to the extent that people don't want to pay that sort of money. There have been some films I've enjoyed in recent years, I'm not that arrogant that all classics were the greatest, but I'll always wait for the DVD release to enjoy them the cost has drove me away from the cinema.

JCAvatar is one of the highest grossing films of all time, problem is, at those costs it's been rendered a nothing statistic same as various transfer records in football. At £9 million I hardly think that makes Kenwyne Jones over 10 times the player Gary Lineker was, it's just modern inflation and pointless expenditure in post 2000 economics. Please tell me I'm not the only person who finds James Camerons' blatant arrogance and contempt for the public to be unacceptable, or am I the last of a dying breed?

Incidentally, from what I've seen AAvatar looks shite as well.