Friday Night

* Breaking news: TPM is reporting right this second that Obama has brokered a climate deal with China.

* Also breaking at this hour: I will never get a job.

* Trinity College entrance exam, 1900-1901. Via Mitch.

* Two more Avatar reviews, here and here.

Yes, on one level it’s a crock: predictable, sentimental, and tin-eared. It’s an attempt to rewrite (and reanimate) American history in the form of a barely disguised parable of Native Americans triumphing against white imperialists who would drive them from their ancestral lands — aided by a white imperialist (a Marine) who has Gone Native. Set in the year 2154 on Pandora, a moon of the vast gas planet Polyphemus in Alpha Centauri, it’s Dances With Thanators (and Banshees and Direhorses and Hexapedes and Hammerhead Titanotheres and Leonopteryxs). The narrative would be ho-hum without the spectacle. But what spectacle! Avatar is dizzying, enveloping, vertiginous … I ran out of adjectives an hour into its 161 minutes.

* Muhammed Ali fought 50 men. Only one disappeared.

* And There Will Be Blood wins movie of the decade on Gawker’s meta-list. Surprised to see Eternal Sunshine and the Lord of the Rings series as such close seconds, and found this observation noteworthy: “If the Pixar movies had been one series, it would have won the decade. Easily.” PS: Quentin, Wes, Alfonso, Chris, and the Coens wuz robbed.