JamesCameron Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Our First Look at 'Avatar: The Game'
Filed under: Fandom », Home Entertainment »
One of the first big information breaks on the secrets of James Cameron's Avatar came back in June when the director himself took the stage at E3 during Ubisoft's press conference to talk about the upcoming video game based on the film. In his now notorious talk, Cameron drained the energy out of the room by going on and on about the plot of the game, which mirrors the movie's, revealing so much information that Joystiq remarked "we no longer feel obligated to see it when it hits theaters." What they were shown of the game, however, was stunning. Ubisoft had been plugging away at it for over two years and it showed in the lush, player-interactive world of Pandora.And now you too can get a first hand look at the Avatar game without having to hear Cameron spoil the movie. That is if you have a PC that meets the minimum system requirements which are, not unsurprisingly, quite beefy. ShackNews picked up on the PC demo for the game, which will be available in full for the 360, PS3 and Wii on December 1st, from the German Coca-Cola Zero site of all places, and now they're hosting it for nerds the world over to try out. Being a worldly nerd, I grabbed the 1.6gig demo and gave it a play through. It was fun, but more surprising was how much context it gave the images we've seen so far from the mega-budget production.
Read the rest of our preview over at SciFi Squad
James Cameron Never Wanted to Make 'Titanic'
Filed under: Fandom », Newsstand »
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Perhaps the most comically brilliant interview of the month will come sandwiched between naked ladies as a lengthy chat with James Cameron will be featured in December's issue of Playboy. While we don't have the actual interview for you to read, Playboy sent over a whole batch of quotes that were just too good to resist. Based on the quotes, it would appear the interview covers everything from Cameron's directorial approach to his inspiration (Star Wars) to his personal life (married five times) to his films to Christian Bale's famous on-set tirade ("Man, I have to take my hat off to this guy. I could not pull a rant like that if I had to.' I mean, I can get on a roll but not like that. I just had to bow down.").
And speaking of his films, Cameron was quite candid when Titanic came up, admitting there was only one reason why he wanted to make that film and it wasn't to get Kate Winslet topless. "I made Titanic because I wanted to dive to a shipwreck, not because I particularly wanted to make the movie...Titanic was about 'f*ck you' money," he said. And on Kate Winslet almost dying while filming: "[On the set of Titanic] we simply let Kate [Winslet] think she was nearly drowning. A little sputtering and coughing does not count in my book, because I have almost drowned several times...Anybody who signs on [with me] is going to be tested." Right on! James Cameron: The director who will let you think you're dying in order to get the best performance!
Check out a few more choice Cameron quotes after the jump (like why you'll never see him on Twitter), and you can read the entire interview in the December issue of Playboy, which hits newstands and online on November 13th.
Is the 'Avatar' Budget Approaching $500 Million?
Filed under: Action », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Fandom », Distribution », Exhibition », 20th Century Fox »
Talking about film budgets is a tricky thing. Talking about the budget for Avatar is an even trickier thing. I recently mused about how Fox's huge gamble had caused four highly-anticipated films in China to flee from its shadow, poising the film on the precipice of a perfect storm of box office success in China that no previous film had been privy to. In doing so I invoked the ire of a good number of commenters, all of whom felt my budget-returning extrapolation from the news that Avatar is set to dominate in 80% of China's screens during its biggest blockbuster season wasn't just a wrong hypothetical, but downright ignorant.
While I still stand by the point of that post - that the hitherto unseen convergence of all the elements behind Avatar's release is going to see unprecedented box office in China - I'll concede that there is no chance that the film makes its budget back from China alone; not with the New York Times now claiming that the film's price tag is breaching the half-billion mark. As with all things budget, however, this number isn't as simple as it looks.
The $500 million is NYT's combination of the estimated $300 million it cost to actually produce the film, the approximately $150 million Fox plans to spend on global marketing alone, with the remaining $50 million being a cushion for the cumulative costs some of the film's partners have already ponied up (such as Avatar Day, whose bill was footed mostly by IMAX). However, even if their newly estimated number is accurate, that doesn't mean that Fox is on the line for the full half-billion.
'Avatar' Could Earn Back Its Budget From China Alone
Filed under: Action », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Distribution », 20th Century Fox »
I don't know how many moons orbit Cameron's fantasy planet Pandora, but I'm just going to assume they're currently all heading for alignment. Screen Daily tells us that Avatar's two-months away release in China has caused no less than four of its own would-be blockbusters to hide from the giant shadow the blue cat-people will inevitably cast when they debut there January 1st. Zhang Yimou's remake of the Coen Brother's 1984 directorial debut Blood Simple has now decided to bow closer towards the beginning of December. Same goes for the road movie Wu Ren Qu, The Pang brother's fantasy/action sequel The Storm Warriors, and the sci-fi western Treasure Hunter (starring Jay Chou, who America will soon know as Kato in The Green Hornet).
Now I understand that few people who read Cinematical are going to be affected by the release date shift of those four films, but what makes this news worth paying attention to is the fact that these changes slot Avatar into a position in which it could conceivably earn its budget back from Chinese cinemas alone. The biggest time of the year for the Chinese box office is the three month window that covers Christmas, New Year, and the Chinese Lunar New Year and now that these four domestic films have made way for an international usurper, it means Avatar will be taking over a whopping 80% of China's screens during its most crucial box office season.
Fan Made: 'Avatar' Halloween Costume Looks Impressive
Filed under: Fandom », Trailers and Clips », Fan Made »
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Usually the Internet has to wait for something to become popular before its denizens start dressing up like it. Alas, further proving that there is little typical about James Cameron's Avatar, it has broken that cycle by inspiring an enthusiastic YouTuber's Halloween costume nearly two months before the movie is set for release.
Attempting to pull off Sam Worthington's character of Jake Sulley, the fan in question explains that it took countless days of planning and roughly five hours of makeup on the final day, which sounds like a lot of a devotion, but if you ask me it was worth it. Baring the necessary facial reconstructive surgery to make it look like he was born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and taking some Skele-Grow to bump his height up another two feet to truly complete the look, I'd say this is a damned impressive bit of cosplay; particularly considering he would only have been able to use promo materials as his sources and not the end product.
His tail could use a bit of work, but the modded Nerf gun he has more than makes up for it. Plus the guy has a good sense of humor, as evidenced by a picture of him in front of a toy display at a store.
Watch the video and see the full costume over at SciFi Squad
Reminder: Cinematical's Fifth Annual Halloween Costume Contest is still accepting entries till this Friday, so keep sending them in.
New 'Avatar' Trailer Washes Away Skepticism
Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy », 20th Century Fox », Trailers and Clips »
It's no secret that James Cameron's Avatar has been fighting an up-hill battle for years. Film geeks, particularly those who spend most of their time online, are a tough crowd to uniformly please, so early buzz on the film was as much an excitement accelerator as it was a dare to dislike. When the first trailer for the film was at long last unveiled back in August, it was met with incredulous, befuddled cries of "Is that it?"
If, like myself, you were disappointed with that first teaser, and if, like myself, you avoided Avatar Day and any subsequent new marketing tactics outside of the normal trailer build up, then maybe this new, full trailer for Cameron's return to science fiction will be the first time you set aside your cynicism and think "Alright, I get what all the fuss is about now." This second trailer is nearly identical to the international trailer that has been making the online rounds lately, except there's one huge difference: this isn't a blurry hint of things to come. Yahoo has the debut, and we all know that means a crystal-clear, HD if-you-want-it look at the alien world of Pandora.
Unlike the first trailer, there's no teasing going on here; this is an exposition-heavy tour of the film's plot, characters, and, most importantly, alien Na'vi. Not only do we have more than one line of dialog now, but we're given context-relevant glimpses at what will, I no longer doubt, be the must-see spectacle film of 2009.
Click on over to Yahoo and check it out. If this expanded foray into jungle battles doesn't get you pumped for December 18th, I don't think anything will.
'Avatar' Behind the Scenes Featurette
Filed under: Action », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Fandom », Movie Marketing », Trailers and Clips »
While we await the next full-length Avatar trailer (a similar international version is up over at SciFi Squad for those interested), a new four-minute behind-the-scenes featurette has found its way online. Basically this takes you through the film's backstory, featuring interviews with James Cameron and the cast mixed with scenes from the film. Yes, it's your basic featurette, but since we're all dying to see as much as we can of this film before it hits theaters on December 18, it's stuff like this that should hold you over. The brand new domestic Avatar trailer will arrive online later today at about 1pm EST (10am PST), and at that time we'll let you know where you can go check it out in HD. After all, if we can't be watching these trailers and featurettes on the big screen, the next best thing is HD (and, in my opinion, we really shouldn't judge the film until then). I still have concerns about the story, though, which just seems full of cliches and stuff we've seen countless times before, but I'm personally more excited for the visual experience than I am for any story. Cameron has been talking up the 3D technology in his film for a long time now, and so that's what we should all be looking forward to -- a kickass, monumental moviegoing experience. Until then, everything else is just a tasty little appetizer.
Watch the featurette after the jump.
Is 'Hardware' Worthy of the Term "Cult Classic?"
Filed under: Horror », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Home Entertainment »
All of which brings us to Hardware, one of the company's latest releases. Though I hadn't seen it since it was first released on home video in the early 1990s, Richard Stanley's science fiction-horror film has been celebrated over the last two-plus decades as a modest masterpiece and a true cult classic, thanks in no small part to its small budget, even smaller distribution and minuscule but fervent fan base. Unfortunately, with mainstream "cult" movies like Paranormal Activity and District 9 occupying the head-space of contemporary genre fans, not to mention a great wealth of superior films throughout movie history that explore the same ideas, Hardware is a worthy film to revisit primarily to see how well it fueled our feverish imaginations before it fell to the wayside.
'Avatar' Controversy: Did James Cameron Steal the Story?
Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy », Fandom », Newsstand »
While geeks the world over are eagerly awaiting Avatar, the return of James Cameron to the original sci-fi territory he's proven a master over with The Abyss and Terminator/Terminator 2, fans of obscure science fiction novellas from 1957 are being struck with deja vu. A reader tipped off genre champions io9 to the story Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson, a story that sounds remarkably like Cameron's supposedly original script that revolves around humans that use the bodies of an alien species via a mental connection as physical avatars, and proceed to use said avatars to exploit the resources of the alien's home world.
From the io9 post, "Like Avatar, Call Me Joe centers on a paraplegic - Ed Anglesey - who telepathically connects with an artificially created life form in order to explore a harsh planet (in this case, Jupiter). Anglesey, like Avatar's Jake Sully, revels in the freedom and strength of his artificial created body, battles predators on the surface of Jupiter, and gradually goes native as he spends more time connected to his artificial body."
Read the rest over at SciFi Squad
Fantastic Fest: 'Avatar' - A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action
Filed under: Action », Drama », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Thrillers », RumorMonger », Fandom », 20th Century Fox », Movie Marketing », Fantastic Fest »
Last night saw attendees of the Real D-sponsored Fantastic Fest greeted with an extended look at footage from James Cameron's forthcoming Avatar, and with it (for me at least) a more defined shift in expectations for the long-awaited film. The footage -- more often than not composed of extended scenes from Avatar Day -- still looks terrifically realized in 3-D, but the bits and pieces of story filled in by producer Jon Landau between scenes and the voice-over of Sam Worthington's character during them suggest something a little less... rapturous.
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