The Cast of Avatar 3

We’ve been scratching our heads about the cast of Avatar 3 (ok, ok, the cast of Avatar 3: Fire and Ash) and we bet you are too. What’s happening with this historic yet puzzling franchise? What’s going on? What’s to come? Let’s discuss.

The Avatar 3 Cast

Let’s discuss this growing gaggle of humans, aliens, hybrids, and yes, talking whales. For non-human characters, we’ll try to track down images of both the human actor and their animated character so you can try to make sense of the madness.

Why It’s Hard to Tell the Avatar 3 Cast Apart

We’ll also talk about why it’s so dang hard to recognize these non-human characters in this movie. Coming from a videogame angle, this is an interesting conundrum and one that has more than one resonance with the gaming world.

The Top Cast of Fire and Ash

What is the “top cast” of Avatar 3? Are we following Hollywood billing order? Heck no! We’re identifying all the characters who have major roles and aren’t just human baggage or cuteness diversions (aka Sully’s daughter Tuk).

  • Jake Sully, aka “Toruk Makto,” played by Sam Worthington. Former soldier who “went native” and permanently gave up his human body to live in a much taller, stronger, and bluer hybrid “avatar” body as a resident of the alien planet Pandora and husband to Neytiri, a Na’vi (native) alien biped. If you’ve only seen the first movie, brace yourself: Sully, who was shacking up with Neytiri at the end of Avatar 1, is now father or foster father to four and half (son Lo’ak, daughter Tuktirey or “Tuk,” adopted daughter Kiri, human orphan Spider, and late son Neteyam, who shows up in visions).
avatar 3 cast member Sam Worthington - real and imagined
Worthington in real life, in motion capture gear, and (R) in Avatar 2 as Sully. Which of these looks more emotional?
  • Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). Jake’s better half and a true Na’vi, not an engineered hybrid. Unlike Jake, she was born in her blue, disturbingly thin body (think Ozempic Xtreme). Warrior and mother. True Na’vis have six fingers on each hand, and hybrids have five. Good luck spotting that when these stretched-out Smurfs are moving around.
avatar 3 cast member Zoe Saldana, real and animated
Saldana in mocap and (R) in Avatar 2. The lighting doesn’t help the animated version, but we think it fails to capture critical emotional cues like the heavy eyes and compressed lips. You could even call the right image “disinterested.”
  • Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). Former commander of the RDA forces on Pandora, and our ostensible villain. Despite how it sounds, the RDA isn’t the government agency that tells Americans to eat their veggies; it’s the hawkish megacorporation that hopes to plunder the planet for its most valuable resources. Died in the first movie, only to be resurrected as a hybrid. Which means that pretty much any human or hybrid character is immortal in this franchise. Talk about a sequel alert! More about that later.
quaritch-avatar3-cast

Curious about the Avatar 2 plot? Confused about how we got here? Check out our irreverent summary

  • Varang (Oona Chaplin, granddaughter of Charlie). Leader of the wildcard Mangkwan clan of Na’vi. We applaud the creators’ idea of adding in a faction that breaks up the boring RDA/Na’vi binary, but Varang is not exactly a multi-dimensional character.
avatar-fire-and-ash-cast-varang
  • Lo’ak (Britain Daulton). Son of Jake and Neytiri, whose older brother Neteyam was slain by the RDA in Avatar 2. The relationship between Lo’ak and Jake is a theme in Avatar 3. Sorry, we switched the human and Na’vi sides in this image. This is how we prove that this blog wasn’t created by AI.
avatar-fire-and-ash-cast-lo'ak
  • Miles “Spider” Socorro (Jack Champion). The abandoned child of Quaritch, Spider is a human teen who’s been adopted by the Sullys. Humans can’t breath the air on Pandora, so not only is Spider about three feet shorter than his Na’vi friends, but he’s also weaker, pinker, and always wearing a respirator. Is that weird? Yes. Is it also weird that, unless you read the Avatar comics, he just suddenly pops into existence, with no real explanation, in Avatar 2? Hell to the yes.
  • Kiri (Sigourney Weaver). Yet another weird comic-book-born castoff with uncertain parentage adopted by the Sullys, Kiri is the biological child of Dr. Grace Augustine’s… avatar. Confused yet? Augustine was a scientist in the first Avatar, and Kiri was somehow (?) born from that scientist’s braindead Na’vi-styled bioclone after Augustine was shot and the good guys failed to transfer her mind into her avatar. The idea is that Kiri is a parthenogenetically-born (no father) clone of Augustine, created mystically during her last connection to the Na’vi’s sacred Tree of Souls.

And… that’s it for the top cast of Avatar 3! At least according to us. There are a lot more talented actors muddying the plot of this three-hour behemoth, of course, but these are the major characters. We think you could make a strong case that certain others should be the true powers, like the powerless General Frances Ardmore, who should be Quaritch’s commanding officer, and ineffectual moneyman Parker Selfridge. But for no good reason, Quaritch is the primary villain/anti-villain, and he gets a lot more screentime.

Why Is the Avatar 3 Cast So Confusing?

Take a good look at the human vs. inhuman comparisons above. You can see some features carry over, but good luck guessing any of those identities without knowing a short list of possible human actors.

There were some design decisions about the Na’vi dating back more than a decade that the modern production is still burdened with, and we think some of these choices really hurt the ability of the team to tell an impactful story. Here are a few:

  1. Blue. Shiny, speckled, dark, vibrant blue, to be specific. It’s striking, but it’s both dark and a color saturation wipeout. Dark blue characters in firelight or underwater are a cinematographer’s nightmare. Same for clear watery tears and sweat on shiny blue skin. Just impossible.
  2. Tall. I mean, ridiculously tall. Some sources peg Sully as 5′ 9″ in human form but eight foot eleven inches in avatar form, more than three feet taller. This might be imposing in an action scene, but makes for a framing nightmare whenever humans and non-humans need to talk. Notice that there’s not a lot of talking in this movie? This also means that traditional shots (waist-up, full-figure) require that the camera be pushed back much further, making faces and expressions harder to read.
  3. Na’vi physiology. When you change nose shape, face shape, and the distance between the eyes, the markers we rely on for recognition are all tossed to the wind. But that’s what’s required by the design of the Na’vi species. So when human actors get mapped into Na’vi bodies, they look more like generic Na’vi than their human puppetmasters.

What’s to Come After Avatar 3

To be honest, Avatar 3 deserves a lot of credit. The original movie was really more of a CG tech demo than the launch of a generational story arc. Compare the scope of, say, The Matrix with Avatar 1 and you’ll have to agree that the first Avatar movie started out lacking some heft in the world-building and storyline-establishing departments. And Avatar 2 did us no favors, adding in a gaggle of Sully children and wards with not so much as by-your-leave. Avatar 3 isn’t a paragon of storytelling, but the team is clearly trying to redeem itself and tell a more varied and nuanced story.

So… Avatar 3 was the third-highest grossing film of 2025 and there are two more sequels announced – Avatar 4 in 2029 and Avatar 5 in 2031. Honestly, it boggles the mind that these movies are already on the way. But, to be honest, Cameron’s strongest franchises, Alien and Terminator, both reached this kind of finale, with greatly diminished entries in the canons dragging the fan bases into the theater again and again.

Still, it’s sad to see how poorly this franchise has dealt with turning the conflicts and goals of its characters into compelling drama, especially the younger characters. Lo’ak is effectively Luke Skywalker, but his storyline lacks weight. Even Jake’s arc feels like it has less gravitas and human urgency than Skywalker’s. This is doubtlessly going to hurt the series as it pushes further and further with additional sequels starring characters we find annoying, trivial, and to be honest, inhuman and inconsequential.

Still, we wish Cameron and the rest of the team all the best. Avatar 3, for all its risible moments, is in our opinion more substantial than either of its predecessors, and a yeomanlike attempt to turn a rather laughable and lightweight tale into something resembling an epic story.

“One Battle After Another” Box Office Tells a Story

The One Battle After Another box office is in itself a narrative that reflects the work. The movie came out September 26, 2025 and as of mid-April 2026, it’s pulled in $72.9M in North America and a worldwide take of $212.9 million. Despite being director Paul Thomas Anderson’s (PTA) biggest cash winner, One Battle After Another is seen as a box office letdown for failing to hit the estimates of a stratospheric $300 million. It topped box office takes on its opening weekend, but by weekend two, it dropped behind the opening of Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl.

Still, it’s a financial and critical win, as its budget was estimated by Variety as $175 million, and of course, it obliterated at the awards podium, winning Best Picture and five other Oscars. Collider gushed, calling it the best film of 2025, and listing it as #9 in their article “10 Greatest Movie Masterpieces of the Last 10 Years.”

So… why was the One Battle After Another box office underwhelming?

And why do we feel kind of unenthused? Let’s take a look.

It’s clear that One Battle After Another is meant to be a free-wheeling, spirited, madcap adventure with real moral stakes that are definitely relevant to our weird times. It’s based on the Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland. Two clear analogues are the Kubrick classic Dr. Strangelove and the famous John Kennedy Toole picaresque Confederacy of Dunces. Sadly, I feel One Battle After Another falls well short of the brilliance of the other two works.

One Battle After Another plot summary

Time for a quick summary of the movie, for those of you who are rusty on the deets.

  • We meet Pat “Ghetto” Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills, members of the militant French 75, who bust out immigrant detainees from a detention center. The timeframe here is approximately 2010, but the vibe is modern and of course the ICE analogue is clear. Perhaps confusingly so.
  • Perfidia encounters the detention center commander, Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), whom she taunts sexually, which he enjoys.
  • Later, Lockjaw catches Perfidia in the act of planting a bomb. He lets her go, but only when she agrees to meet him in private. This leads to another sexual encounter, and she becomes pregnant.
  • Pat tries to get Perfidia to adapt to a family life on behalf of their new daughter Charlene, but she leaves to champion the French 75 cause.
  • Perfidia is arrested for slaying a security guard during a French 75 bank robbery. She gives Lockjaw information on her fellow revolutionaries, which he uses to murder them. Pat, Charlene, and Perfidia all flee.
  • Sixteen years pass, and now Pat has become stoned loser Bob Ferguson, helicopter dad to his daughter, who now goes by Willa. They live in Baktan Cross, CA. He’s told Willa that her mother died a heroic death when she was little.
  • Lockjaw, meanwhile, has become a colonel and receives a coveted invitation to join the Christmas Adventurers Club, an elite secret society of powerful racist reactionaries. To hide his past connection to Perfidia, he hires an assassin, Avanti Q, to start tracking down the French 75 members.
  • Former French 75 member Deandra scoops up Willa before her school dance is raided by Lockjaw’s men and taken to a convent run by the awkwardly named “Sisters of the Brave Beaver.” Bob comes under attack by Lockjaw, too, but he escapes with the help of Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro), who’s a local pro-immigrant activist and Willa’s karate teacher. Bob flees the Lockjaw surge with Sergio and his immigrant wards, but falls and gets detained by troops. He manages to keep his identity secret.
  • The Christmas Adventurers get wind of the Lockjaw-Perfidia situation and send Tim Smith, one of their members, to “clean up.”
  • Lockjaw locates Willa, ties her up, and tests her DNA, confirming that he’s her father.
  • Sergio frees Bob and brings him to the convent, where Bob tries and fails to shoot Lockjaw with a sniper rifle. Lockjaw, unwilling to do the deed himself, hires a heavy named Avanti to kill Willa. Avanti refuses because of her age, but consents to take her to a group of desert right-wing militants.
  • Tim finds Lockjaw in the desert and plugs him in the head. Bob, racing through the desert in a stolen car, encounters the wreck of Lockjaw’s car.
  • Avanti, angered by the militants’ racism, frees Willa and dies fighting the militants. Willa takes his car, but Tim spots her and PTA subjects us to a surreal montage of Bob chasing Tim chasing Willa in the desert, although sadly the action isn’t necessarily as clear as we put it here.
  • Willa pulls a smart maneuver to cause Tim to crash, and shoots him when he crawls out of the wreck. Bob and Willa are reunited after a strange moment when Willa demands he say the French 75 counter-password despite seeing him in broad daylight.
  • A disfigured Lockjaw gets accepted to the Christmas Club, but while waiting in “his” new office, they spray poison gas into the room and he is killed. Willa and Bob receive a letter from Perfidia, apologizing for her deeds and promising to return someday. Willa leaves their house to participate in a protest, of which Bob approves.

One Battle After Another‘s sad shortcomings

Let’s kick this off with a list, shall we?

  • Not reuniting Perfidia, Pat/Bob, and Charlene/Willa in the second half of the movie. Talk about lost of dramatic energy here. I really don’t care what Thomas Pynchon wrote in his novel; Perfidia is the most dynamic force in the first half, so leaving her out of the conclusion, and failing to tie her back in with Willa, is a cinematic sin. PTA, are you listening?
  • There’s a certain Monkeywrench Gang/Hunter S. Thompson vibe to the movie that gets left strangely hanging, like PTA did his best to shoehorn them into 2025 but didn’t finish connecting the dots. The attack on Otay Mesa feels strangely modern, and the action in Baktan Cross seems strangely ancient. For example, Pat berates a low-level shlub, struggling to prove his identity to the French 75 hotline, but the mere continued existence of a French 75 hotline is a headscratcher and a missed opportunity. How could this line possibly still be staffed by multiple people, 24×7? PTA, what if the French 75 hotline has become a sex chatline with an outrageous hourly rate, and Pat has to convince a bored phone hooker that he really gets access to the hidden help line? “Oh, you’d like to play naughty militant Pat Calhoun? I bet you’re good with explosives, baby.” That, my friend, is a missed opportunity. When you add up these missed opportunities, you get a dumb movie that seems oddly stuck in between eras rather than a smart movie that has brought modern elements into older source material.
  • Similarly, the movie totally fails to make a moment of Willa’s decision not to divulge her parentage to Bob. This is a big emotional moment, but it goes unheralded.
  • The car chase with Bob, Willa, and Tim goes on interminably and is accompanied by a fairly grating ascending-pitch soundtrack. Wasn’t this cliche in 1975? Why are we doing this in 2025? If it’s a homage, it should be a better one.
  • The vibe between Bob and Willa is good but rushed for a film that’s at its core a paen to parental connections.
  • After Willa kills Tim, Bob arrives and fails to give the countersign. Willa holds him at gunpoint for a long moment, which makes no sense to me. It’s clearly Bob, Willa’s dad, and they are not estranged, nor are there any visibility issues. We know Bob has been teaching Willa all her life that the password is important, but we also know that Willa has been unreceptive to his seeming paranoia. The moment, played much larger than it should be, is glaring and puzzling.
  • Avanti’s decision to go rogue on the racist militia could’ve easily been clarified. A slight argument, or a tense moment, but instead Avanti’s decision is buried and minimized in a movie that is already getting heat for minimizing decisions by people of color.
  • Bob’s opportunity to shoot Lockjaw is awkwardly set up. Why does Sergio want Bob to have the rifle? Is this supposed to be a lucky opportunity that Bob muffs, and why does Bob drive to the overlook instead of straight to the convent?
  • The name of the monastery is a clunker. Tonally, this would be out of place in a cartoonish caper, and it grates in the context of a movie that, I’m sure, would rather be empowering than devaluing women.
  • ICE is doing much worse things than Lockjaw is. Sure, Lockjaw is murdering people, but so is ICE. When real life is clearly more oppressive than your movie, the action in your movie feels dumbed down and soft.
  • Leo’s not quite convincing as a burnout. This would’ve been a fun angle, but didn’t quite pay off like it should’ve.
  • Why does young Lockjaw look just as ancient as old Lockjaw? Does Sean Penn have some kind of horrific allergy to latex?
  • What was Sergio’s deal? He’s the raffish sidekick, but he doesn’t really do much other than move Bob to where the plot needs Bob to go.
  • It’s a tad tricky to balance farcical elements with violence, realistic action, and dramatic tension, but there are some much better films that have done so successfully. I’d argue that the best of the Wes Anderson (no relation) ouvre manages it well. And of course there’s the Coen masterpiece Fargo, which has some things in common with One Battle After Another but sadly many more things in contrast.

What works in One Battle After Another

  • The vibe between Willa’s friends and Bob is tangible and real. Bob’s dinosaurish paranoia jumps into vivid light in the few moments we see them together. I would’ve enjoyed seeing them all trapped in a bus or elevator, with of course some frantic action and amusing panic thrown in. “They/them – it’s not that hard!” Classic stuff.
  • Similarly, the vibe between Willa and Bob is a strength. The characters have some charisma together. If this had been made a tentpole of the film, perhaps I’d be giving it a different review. I really didn’t care about much of the action. That time would’ve been better spent hearing Bob explaining his French 75 past to Willa while running from the law and trying to sabotage Lockjaw with vintage and updated tricks. Doesn’t that sound like a better film?

One Conclusion After Another

In sum, One Battle After Another alludes to greatness, buddy films, blaxsploitation classics, and ’70s rebel films without cutting new cloth. Filmmakers love to make allusions to greatness in cinema. On the other hand, someone who alludes to greatness in our society is known as a cool chaser or influencer. In ’70s parlance, such persons would be shamed as sluts, wannabes, or groupies. PTA, you’ve made a wannabe movie. Let’s try harder next time.

A Samurai in Time Mini-Review

This is a fun and endearing time-travel drama that features some solid performances and thoughtful angles. I wouldn’t say it merits five stars, but it’s definitely worth a watch especially for viewers familiar with and fond of the samurai TV serial genre. It takes a bit of an extreme turn at the end, in my opinion, and I do wish the hero had more to say about modern society. Instead, the focus tends to be on humor and character foibles, which often pays off but sometimes seems a bit twee for the story of a man lost in time.

A User Experience Design Case Study

Today’s user experience design case study, kids, is this painful screen from leading Windows utility Hard Disk Sentinel version 6.30. This is how NOT to design an interface in your app or application when you could’ve made your tool easy and intuitive, people. Danger danger.

Now we all love looking at SMART data need to check out our hard drives periodically to make sure they’re not about to freak out and spray our precious data into oblivion. SMART is a useful standard to show you how close your dodgy hard drive is to spinning off to that great recycle bin in the sky (cloud?). In Hard Disk Sentinel, this is the user experience when you click to see SMART data for your drive.

What’s the User Experience Design Fail?

In this case, I’m most interested in the “off-line uncorrectable sector count,” aka spots where the drive is physically unreadable. Here, the app is showing me that data. Kinda. Can you find the count of bad sectors?

Is it 198? Is it the threshold? Value seems like a good guess, but it’s an even 100, so… unlikely? How about Worst? (How about Worst User Experience Design Case Study Fail? Is there a Best? Guess not.) Surely it’s not DATA, aka 0000000000079, right?

Design Case Study Spoiler: It’s Data

Yep. The user experience “design” pros who built this app know their tech, but they obviously have never met a user. Because the key piece of info on this line is presented by default in hexadecimal, which may be the lingua franca for programmers and savants, but is gibberish to normal users. The real number of bad sectors is… 121, which is what 00000000000000000079 means in normal base-10 notation, which you and I call “numbers.” When I found this out I had to laugh at the sheer audacity. Literally decades of hard work developing and maintaining this product (since 2005) and they have never thought to put this info in NUMBERS.

Are They User Experience Design Pros?

Is it fair of us to slam these guys for this user experience gaffe? I mean, it might be just one guy. And as we found, they’re in Hungary. I mean, in Hungary, street signs and accounting are all done in hexadecimal base-10 numerals. And this product has only been in production for a little while 20+ years!

But yeah, sarcasm aside, this product ain’t exactly Adobe Photoshop.

User Experience Design Caveats

To be fair, the 121 is presented in the line graph at the bottom of the screen. You saw that, right? I mean, why would you look at any of that other information… all those columns… when you could look at the graph? And of course you knew that 121 was the base-10 translation of the number in hex, right? I mean, obvio.

And of course, there is a way to change the presentation of the “Data” column to base-10. You merely have to right-click on that column (but NOT on the column header, nooo, that would be too intuitive) and choose the option “Decimal data fields”.

But that’s obviously NOT the default, because why would you want your data in numbers when you could have them in machine-ready hexadecimal?

How to Trim Cat Nails

how to trim cat nails with love

Want to trim cat nails like a pro? Is your cat clawing your furniture into shreds and drawing blood daily? Every good cat owner must know how to trim cat claws. Not doing so is bad for your health and theirs.

In the wild, felines can do their own nail trimming by clawing objects like tree trunks. In your home, your cat doesn’t have easy access to trees. And overly-sharp claws can get caught and tear the entire claw off, which is like someone tearing off your fingernails with a pair of pliers. Painful and an expensive vet visit. Sure, you’re providing a cat tree or a scratching post, but unsurprisingly, your cat’s nails are still sharp as needles, and your cat is cutting your skin without even trying. A responsible owner needs to know how trim cat nails.

If you find yourself bleeding every time you interact with your cat, it’s not your cat’s fault. It’s yours. Your cat should be able to touch you without cutting you. If they can’t, it’s probably because you haven’t been using your cat’s nail clipper.

How to Trim 1: Integrate with Affection

It’s a slow process, but get your cat used to paw touches. Start with the back of the paw, and carefully advance to the pad. If your cat gets wary as soon as you touch a paw, you’ll need to work up to doing trims. Wear gloves and long sleeves if you have to.

Once your cat can tolerate paw touches as part of your natural closeness, you’re ready for trimming.

How to Trim 2: Be Patient

I have a good friend who was surprised to see how I trimmed my cat’s nails. He told the story of how he’d really bonded with a cat he was petsitting, but when he tried to trim those sharp claws, it hurt the rapport they’d built together. The cat looked at him resentfully because he’d used his superior strength and forced a complete cut on those nails.

Why was he surprised by my technique? My cat doesn’t love the nail trimming, so I exercise patience. He saw me grab my trimmer, clip a few nails, and then… I put it down when the cat started to get fussy and annoyed. My secret is just to take whatever my cat gives me and no more. She’ll usually fight and pull away, but I try to be quick and decisive and clip what I can get, and when she starts to squirm with her whole body or act anxious, I leave it be. At first, just one or two claws are a big success and all you can expect from an attempt.

Your cat may be shy and averse to being held. Work up to it and integrate your best petting and brushing techniques with your nail trimming. My cat used to hate being held, but now she can tolerate quite a bit of physical attention before she starts to show displeasure. When I hold and pet her, I often stroke her paws and check the claws for sharpness. If you can get your cat to this stage without drama, you’re 90% home free.

Want to feed your pet the best cheap cat food? We’ve dived deep in on this one and here are the winners.

Does your cat refuse to drink water? Maybe it’s your bowl.

How to Trim 3: Don’t Overpower Your Cat

You can cause a lot of pain if you overpower your cat. Be aware that, when your cat’s panicked, they can do harm to themselves, or even try to leap away while you’re firmly gripping a delicate paw. You want to be firm but flexible. It’s not a deathgrip; it’s a tender parental hold. Don’t put your whole body weight on the cat or try to immobilize them.

Think of cat nail trimming as an extension of cuddle time, not a painful chore or a confrontation. Trim when your cat is relaxed and drowsy, not when they’re chasing butterflies or feeling anxious. It’s best to work with plenty of space in a stable environment, too. A firm paw hold is not that different from a tight embrace.

Focus on one paw at a time, and ideally just hold the paw, not the entire cat. If the cat is very protective and wary, try having the cat’s favorite human hold and stroke the cat while another human holds a paw and does the clipping. Use treats to reward your cat after successes.

How to Trim 4: Where and How to Cut

Uhh… yeah those cat nails definitely need trimming.

Don’t clip too much of the nail. To be safe, just clip the sharpest 25% of the nail until you get a feel for how your cat’s claws are built. The sharpest part of the nail is very thin, transluscent white, and easy to clip; the sensitive part of the claw is much thicker and often darker. It’s tricky when they’re struggling but like a cat, work fast, wait for moments when the claw isn’t moving, and be decisive

Most cats have four claws on each back paw and five on the front paws (four plus a “dewclaw,” which is offset like a thumb). Older cats may have thicker nails, which means you’ll want a stronger nail clipper that won’t wrench the claw around when you try to trim. If your cat is facing you, you want to keep the blades of the clippers horizontal and point the nail clippers at their tail (or the opposite direction, which is fine too).

Some people swear by scissors; we use standard cat clippers, which are nimble and strong. There are a variety of interesting tools for this purpose too. We like the idea of a clipper that has a depth guard to prevent cutting too much nail. Similarly, a quiet motorized clipper may make the clipping faster and less frightening to an already sensitive feline. Dull blades, by the way, will cause more pain to the soft tissue around the nail.

If you clip too much, of course, your cat will experience pain and bleed a little on your carpets. Try to comfort them with treats and cuddles. Toilet paper will both absorb blood and enhance the clotting process. If it is slow to stop bleeding, don’t panic. Get some clotting powder, put it in a little tray or bowl, and get your cat to step in the powder. It’s magic and will save you a trip to the vet. But if the cat is limping or in pain, take them to get help.

Cat Nail Trimming Tips

  • Integrate the nail trimming with cuddles. Touch your cat’s paws when you pet them. Just a little at first, until it becomes part of the affection. Ideally your cat will enjoy having their paw pads rubbed. Mine doesn’t, but she tolerates it, and that’s enough for me to get complete nail trims all the time. I usually can’t get a whole paw in a session, though.
  • Don’t use scissors or other tools. Cat clippers are inexpensive and worth it for the control and safety.
  • Remember which claws are still sharp so you can get them next time.
  • Get them when they’re sleeping. Usually they’ll take a few minutes to get their reflexes going.
  • Stay calm and move slowly. They’ll do the same.
  • If your cat is really combative and likes to bite, a cone of shame may be the answer to do this safely.
  • Integrate a treat if you need to.
  • Don’t forget the dewclaws. Those can easily turn ingrown if ignored.
  • If you’re struggling, just have your vet or Petsmart/Petco groomer take care of it. Watch their technique carefully and pick their brains for all the tips!

Luc Besson’s “Lucy”: Laughably Awful

Today we’ve got a three-sentence micro review of Luc Besson’s Scarlett Johansson starrer “Lucy.” Besson is known as the director of blockbusters like “Nikita,” “Taken,” and “The Fifth Element.”

Just awful. The setup is not bad, and then it just turns into a double-whammy of the worst pseudoscience and the most gawdawful CGI, creating an unpleasant wankfest of ego and wannabe revelation that ends in a rank muddle. You can sense how bad Besson wants to blow our small minds with his cosmic wisdom, but the effort is so transparent and juvenile that you want to point and laugh. Not sure how Scarlett Johansson got roped into this, but she should fire her agent.

MLB Realignment: Manfred Strikes Again

So… Rob Manfred wants to expand the baseball universe, add some new teams for Charlotte and Portland, and… switch a bunch of teams between divisions? Here’s a possible, heavily geographically-weighted configuration from Fox Sports:

Mets, Phillies, Nationals, Pirates, Guardians, Brewers, Braves, Marlins to the AL. White Sox, Astros, Rockies, Royals, Angels to the NL. The Astros get moved twice in the last two shuffles. I agree that the league must evolve; if you’re not growing, you’re dying. And as much as I loathe the mealy-mouthed Manfred, I also agree that travel schedules in the current scheme are nonsensical.

Note that the remap leaves these logical omissions!

  • AL Mideast (to match the NL Midwest)
  • AL Central (to match the NL Central)
  • NL Mid-Pacific (to match the AL Mid-Atlantic)
  • NL Puny Ponds (to match the AL Great Lakes)

…where my Puny Ponds teams at?

Baseball has to evolve. A configuration like this will freak out the traditionalists, but the traditionalists are preventing the game from moving forward and competing for eyeballs. Meanwhile, casual fans will barely notice the difference. Bring on the change.

Strange Days

We saw Strange Days for the first time last week at the historic Paramount. Interesting flick, especially with the introductory context provided by our curator: this was the director Kathryn Bigelow’s “statement” project (her reward for the commercial success of the Keanu Reeves vehicle “Point Break”) which she filmed from a script co-written by James Cameron in the aftermath of the tumultuous Rodney King riots. A moment not unlike the one we’re in today with Gestapo-style ICE raids and a totalitarian U.S. administration. Spoilers ahead… c’mon, this movie’s THREE decades old.

This movie was buoyed by strong lead performances, a whiff of that immersive near-future Blade Runner vibe, Fiennes’ convincing hangdog portrayal of a man who’s lost his greatest love, and some vivid, energetic cinematography, but burdened by (as happens more often than not with statement films, and Hollywood in general tbh) a script with some great ideas and headscratching decisions. Chief among them was the choice to bifurcate the movie’s villainy between Max, the hero’s sidekick and (bonus!) a sadistic snuff-filming serial killer, and two racist cops who get top-notch casting (William Fichtner and the inimitable Vincent D’Onofrio) but very little screen time. With a 2 hour 25 minute running time and some difficult scenes of abusive violence, this movie cries out for streamlining, plus our hero Nero struggles Hamlet-style with deciding what to do with his damning evidence (he’s an ex-cop, for God’s sake) and the whole Max sideline requires a lengthy “I’ve been the serial killer all along and I’ve been schtupping your ex” dialog. To add insult to injury, that dialog is followed by the puzzling choice to have Nero’s ex Faith (who’s been loyal to a third character for two hours) betray Max (surprise lover and serial killer) during his long-winded confession, all in order to save Nero, which is supported by very little before the event and absolutely nothing after – a character arc off the edge of the earth, or perhaps to the cutting room floor, and a waste of some good work by Juliette Lewis as Faith.

In my humble opinion, this should’ve simply pitted the heartsore hero and his friends against two serial killer cops (a two-headed serial killer partnership would be novel, and the sender-receiver setup of the movie’s telepresence tech would fit that nicely) and whatever corrupt accompanying police corruption they find in the LAPD. Props to Michael Wincott, who does a terrific job as the red herring, a slimy criminal music promoter who’s got claws into Nero’s confused ex Faith… a subplot that is interesting and features its own rich hierarchy of henchmen, all for naught.

The Hit Man Movie Review Ecology Is Broken

Seen the Hit Man movie reviews lately? This 2023 Richard Linklater movie, credited with launching Glen Powell’s career, somehow got a giant “Get Out of Jail Free” pass for some mysterious reason, and no one seems to be paying attention. This amusing but flawed and ethically challenged movie is rated 95% on Rotten Tomatoes (89% user reviews) when I fully expected it to get carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey.

I actually saw Hit Man in a sneak preview and it stuck in my craw then, too. The producers were there gathering feedback and most of it was the usual “glad I got to see a free movie” comments, complimenting the cast, drooling over Powell’s good looks, or praising the comic sequences.

Oh wait, time for the Hit Man movie review summary: Powell plays Gary, an unassuming professor and part-time schlub who runs tech for New Orleans Police sting investigations. He ends up showing a flair for playing wide variety of hit men in stings, suckering would-be clients into incriminating themselves for murder, affecting a passel of different accents and costuming up to meet client expectations and wow them with his “authenticity.” This section of the movie was good retro fun, filmed in bright saturated colors with an amiable aw-shucks charm. Then it takes a turn. Gary meets an unhappy wife, Madison, who wants to kill her abusive hubby; he starts a sexual relationship with her under these pretenses; and then Madison kills the husband, who was unconscious at the time.

Okay? Okay! The Hit Man movie just got real. Or did it?

Gary admits he isn’t really a hit man. Cue the typical rom-com breakup… you’ve been lying to me all along… well, you shot your husband in the heart and are on the run from the cops… didn’t Meg Ryan blast an unconscious ex’s face off with a shotgun in When Harry Met Sally? Or was that Bridget Jones?

Then the cops start to pressure Gary to close the trap on Madison, who they suspect in the murder. He goes to her house with a wire and manages to de-incriminate her while proving his love for her. Cute rom-com, right? No, we’re not done yet.

One of the other cops shows up at Madison’s to blackmail her for the murder. Cue the typical rom-com reunion: Madison drugs the cop and Gary suffocates the sleeping man with a plastic bag and stages it like a suicide, just like Billy Crystal did to Sally’s ex in… wait, maybe that was Love Actually? Cue credits! Kids and happily ever after!

Note the skeevy nature of both murders. One, a sleeping spouse, trusting his loved one. The other, a drugged coworker, strangled in a black plastic shroud. Both victims healthy, non-threatening, inactive, mute… helpless.

In short, the Hit Man movie is one of the weirdest review oddities in modern cinema, imho. Raves online; bought by Netflix; a top pick in streaming for a bit. And tonally jarring, ethically challenged, and disturbing. Should it bother me that reviewers are so eager to embrace a light-hearted meet-cute movie about two disloyal people who kill unarmed victims without the slightest remorse or hesitancy? They killed “bad people,” but who made them judge jury executioner? Sure, the cop was actively trying to grift them, but Madison shot her husband when he was asleep. This is first-degree murder and the crime she was planning from the beginning, albeit more dire and direct. What’s the justification? He was mean and threatening during his 30 seconds on screen? He was in the way of two cute people rubbing their bits together? Are cute people allowed to murder freely in our society?

I’d love to see a sequel staged as a dark psychological thriller in which these two murderers, who knew their victims well, engage in a vicious battle of wills, scrying for clues about the other’s fidelity, guilt-ridden and haunted by ghosts. They know that loyalty and trust are by definition foreign concepts in their relationship, so they strive to determine if the other is planning to betray them to the police or open yet another grave. At the same time they’re both killing other “bad people” they come across in their lives: the grandmother who’s making her run for school board difficult, or the tween who has been bullying their daughter at softball practice. With some hilarious dress-up sessions with would-be murderers and other assorted felons.

Just like in Crazy Stupid Love!

Moana 2, The Substance, and Pearl Compared, in Brief

Your game writer has a few holiday movie viewings to dissect: THE SUBSTANCE, PEARL, and MOANA 2.

Of these, Coralie Fargeat’s THE SUBSTANCE is the most buzzy and the least worth your time. This by-the-numbers overlong feature rails against Hollywood’s beauty and youth vampirism, but offers nothing as an alternative, and despite Demi Moore’s best efforts, our protagonist ultimately comes off as generic as any other selfish star. Moore’s just not given very much to work with.

If we’re talking about this movie in five years, color me impressed. We see via some slick CGI an unlikely and unpleasant biotechnological innovation, but never do we learn anything about the mechanisms or personalities who made it possible or who sell it to a privileged few. We see a few victims, but not a thought nor an askew glance is thrown at the victimizers. The moment when Elizabeth’s (Moore) personality bifurcates is completely lost in the shuffle; we are external observers excluded from her struggle.

Ultimately THE SUBSTANCE is as shallow as the superficiality it tries to parody. The body horror and abundant gore are novel, at least to mainstream audiences, and it’s flashy in some good ways. Our stars turn in some workmanlike performances. But yeah… the final 30 minutes are an almost total waste of time, and style over SUBSTANCE for sure.

MOANA is a big-name Disney piece and a new, hardy take on the “princess” theme that they’ve milked so effectively. Moana is a hero, but she’s a wayfinder hero, an explorer who solves puzzles and uses her mind to work positive change, rather than a warrior (like the princess from BRAVE) or an object of sexual interest who never aspires to more (SUBSTANCE).

This sequel may pale a little compared to the excellent buddy-pic dynamic of the original. We don’t get the same fresh wonder at meeting all the characters, seeing Moana interact with the animate ocean, watching her spar for the first time with the demigod Maui, or thrilling to see her stop the lava monster Te Ka with the power of song.

Like the first movie, Maui is trapped by another powerful creature and needs Moana’s help to escape – but this creature doesn’t have zingers and a showstopper tune like Tamatoa’s “Shiny.” Like the first movie, the heroes need to figure out how to pass some tricky supernatural obstacles and summon their best selves to persevere.

However, unlike the first movie, there’s no final battle between the villain and the heroes. Moana puts herself on the line and sees the way forward, but we don’t even get a song or appearance from the distant nemesis they oppose. Some of our fellow moviegoers were disappointed by this, but I don’t mind. Moana’s not a combat hero; she’s a pathfinder and scout. Her triumph in the sequel is emotionally satisfying because of how it involves a multitude of unexpected characters. That said, it wouldn’t have hurt if there’d been a bit more of a journey involved in that triumph.

Devil’s advocate: The coda in MOANA 2 brings many distant cultures and sea voyagers together in harmony. Appropriate to this era, it would’ve been funny to see the concord break apart into fractious war parties.

PEARL (on Netflix), like THE SUBSTANCE, is a horror feature with a fair amount of blood. That’s about where the similarity ends. Even though PEARL doesn’t feature voiceover or a lot of dialog, the character Pearl is fully three-dimensional, especially in comparison to THE SUBSTANCE’s Elizabeth. Although she has a vicious streak, she has normal aspirations and charm, even if her repressive mother has convinced her that she’s a freak. She finds herself drawn deeper and deeper into evil, but the audience can see that she is struggling with it and is desperate to build to a simple, positive life even when hope is lost.

PEARL is a straightforward story, akin to the classic “country death song” trope, but told with earnest conviction and constant emotional connection to the protagonist. That delicate connection sustains the film and gives it longevity to linger in the subconscious.

PEARL, interestingly enough, was shot during the COVID-19 pandemic using sets from the sister film X and the Avatar: The Way of Water crew. And MOANA 2 made me think of AVATAR 2 several times, mostly because Moana does such a better job of enchanting moments of connection with nature and the ocean.