"It’s a two-fingered inverted draw past the head, like a Samurai,” he said, tracing the shape in the air over his left shoulder. “The archery instructor came and said, ‘Do you want me to teach them archery or do you want me to teach them this? This would never work.’ I said, ‘See that bush?’ It was a hundred and fifty feet away. I nailed it.”
James Cameron = the IT guy from The Office
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geZoES9KQ-Q
― dyao, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 07:08 (fourteen years ago) link
I love this bit:
After he finished making “True Lies,” Cameron called Kubrick, by then a recluse, and invited himself over. They spent a day, in the basement of Kubrick’s house in the English countryside, watching “True Lies” at Kubrick’s flatbed editing station. Cameron went over the shots—Schwarzenegger in a Harrier jet firing a missile, with the villain attached to it, through an office building and into a helicopter: boom!—so that Kubrick could learn how the effects were done.
Sounds like the best friend from hell.
― surfing on hokusine waves (ledge), Tuesday, 20 October 2009 09:06 (fourteen years ago) link
i like that he apparently went over to kubrick's house with a 16mm or even 35mm print of his own movie.
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 09:32 (fourteen years ago) link
Kubrick was thinking "Man, I wish we were watching the new Verhoeven instead."
― Matt Armstrong, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 09:42 (fourteen years ago) link
“We made it in the papers once, for a U.F.O. sighting over a hot-air balloon that we built and launched at night that was powered by candles.”
loooooooooool
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 15:58 (fourteen years ago) link
Right, screw Avatar, I want to read his memoirs!
― Adam Bruneau, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 21:41 (fourteen years ago) link
My friend has funny stories about James Cameron's - such as his band of ex Mossad commandos coming the rescue of his boss' house during some Malibu wildfires. Also has an anecdote about Cameron comparing the budget of Avatar to the budget of the Manhattan Project.
― mayor jingleberries, Tuesday, 20 October 2009 23:33 (fourteen years ago) link
Sam Worthington: not a cartoon (he says)
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 28 October 2009 15:41 (fourteen years ago) link
the new yorker article is so amazing.
this paragraph is incredible:
The meeting ended on a boisterous note. “That fuckin’ rocks!” Cameron called out in response to an image of a snarling maw of thin blue-veined tissue, the mouth of the pterodactyl-like banshee that Jake’s avatar domesticates for his ride. “Look at the gill-like membrane on the side of the mouth, its transmission of light, all the secondary color saturation on the tongue, and that maxilla bone. I love what you did with the translucence on the teeth, and the way the quadrate bone racks the teeth forward. It’s a sharky thing. As wacky as this creature is, it looks completely real. Maybe I’m getting high on my own supply.” He was practically out of breath. “The banshee lives! He’s a fierce-looking sonuvabitch.”
― banned, on the run (s1ocki), Wednesday, 28 October 2009 16:10 (fourteen years ago) link
saw the preview for this before paranormal activity and some guy a few rows back said "that looks terrible"
― am0n, Wednesday, 28 October 2009 16:15 (fourteen years ago) link
If Paranormal Activity ends up being a bigger success than Avatar I am so going to laugh. (In terms of budget vs. return it's already the winner of the decade.)
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 28 October 2009 16:16 (fourteen years ago) link
I basically don't know a single thing about this movie other than what's in that New Yorker profile (hadn't heard of it before), but the article did make me want to see it.
― M. Grissom/DeShields (jaymc), Wednesday, 28 October 2009 16:22 (fourteen years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1_JBMrrYw8
― am0n, Wednesday, 28 October 2009 16:22 (fourteen years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAPyipuT-Jg
― banned, on the run (s1ocki), Wednesday, 28 October 2009 16:23 (fourteen years ago) link
trailer i saw had a lot more (awful) dialogue
― am0n, Wednesday, 28 October 2009 16:24 (fourteen years ago) link
john why did that article make you interested? this seems like the exact opposite of the types of movies you usually like
― congratulations (n/a), Wednesday, 28 October 2009 16:26 (fourteen years ago) link
welcome to pandora!
http://winnipeg.cityguide.ca/images/cats.jpg
― am0n, Wednesday, 28 October 2009 16:26 (fourteen years ago) link
I didn't know someone made a stage version of Thundercats!
― Tuomas, Wednesday, 28 October 2009 16:31 (fourteen years ago) link
Well, I'll admit I was greatly put off by this: "The third act of “Avatar” contains what Jon Landau, the producer, calls “the mother of all movie battles.”" But I think the movie seems like it could be a visual wonderland, especially in 3D. And I like high-concept sci-fi like A.I.
― M. Grissom/DeShields (jaymc), Wednesday, 28 October 2009 16:32 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah I loved that article but did not come away feeling like i would want to be in proximity to james cameron under any circumstances.
― Durian Durian (Jon Lewis), Wednesday, 28 October 2009 16:41 (fourteen years ago) link
Maybe I’m getting high on my own supply.” He was practically out of breath. “The banshee lives! He’s a fierce-looking sonuvabitch.”
― banned, on the run (s1ocki), Wednesday, October 28, 2009 12:10 PM
ahaha fuck lol
― am0n, Wednesday, 28 October 2009 16:42 (fourteen years ago) link
"Maybe I’m getting high on my own supply.” He was practically out of breath. “The banshee lives! I am the reason LARPERS sing 'The goddess wears a thong!'"
― Dynamic Leia Dress (kingkongvsgodzilla), Wednesday, 28 October 2009 16:44 (fourteen years ago) link
http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/images/avatar-header2.jpg
― am0n, Wednesday, 28 October 2009 16:50 (fourteen years ago) link
“the mother of all movie battles.”"
CGI-driven gigantic battle scenes are usually pretty boring IMHO.
― Adam Bruneau, Wednesday, 28 October 2009 18:55 (fourteen years ago) link
Exactly.
― M. Grissom/DeShields (jaymc), Wednesday, 28 October 2009 19:30 (fourteen years ago) link
New trailer
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 30 October 2009 17:51 (fourteen years ago) link
And various reactions to same.
Everything about that just makes me think Cameron woke up one morning and decided "You know I liked the technology in the forest bits in The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith, why didn't George make a full movie out of it?"
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 30 October 2009 17:56 (fourteen years ago) link
it's pretty amazing how a guy who was once, like, the toughest mfer when it came to writing and directing action films has turned into such a weirdo furry.
― jØrdån (omar little), Friday, 30 October 2009 18:03 (fourteen years ago) link
Creatures and "jungle wonders" still look cheezy as hell, and the sawed-off jarhead dialogue sounds worse, but the new trailer does make it look like an entertaining (and perhaps even moving) Aliens/Abyss-style military adventure flick. In, yeah, a weirdo furry kinda way.
― from alcoholism to fleshly concerns (contenderizer), Friday, 30 October 2009 18:09 (fourteen years ago) link
CGI-driven gigantic battle scenes are usually pretty boring IMHO
― modescalator (blueski), Friday, 30 October 2009 18:11 (fourteen years ago) link
xxp Well it was always there. See the The Abyss.
― We call them "meat hemorrhoids" (Alex in SF), Friday, 30 October 2009 18:11 (fourteen years ago) link
at least i think i got tired of it after 2003 xp
― modescalator (blueski), Friday, 30 October 2009 18:12 (fourteen years ago) link
It would be so, so awesome if everything we've seen/heard about "Avatar" was actually restricted to the first 30 minutes of the movie, and the rest was all, like, talk. Sort of like the opposite of "Aliens."
I say with tongue obviously in cheek, because a) this would never happen and b) Cameron is actually a pretty weak writer, classic line-or two and bits of "The Abyss" aside. "Avatar" just seems like such an obviously, well, obvious allegory - and lo and beyond, the primitive other has lessons to teach us all! - that it would take a really clever, perceptive screenwriter to transform it from spectacle to anything substantive. Giant blue Thunder-Ewoks don't help matters.
That author of that b.s. "New Yorker" profile, by the way, clearly had seen little to no more of the film than any of us plebes have. Either that or he was legally obligated to keep it confidential.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 30 October 2009 18:27 (fourteen years ago) link
"Should I talk about the bit where they -- "
"Shut up, you."
"Sorry."
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 30 October 2009 18:28 (fourteen years ago) link
Oh, by the way - what fucking bureaucrat would call the planet Pandora? That's just asking for trouble! What were the runner-ups? Pompeii? Krakatoa? Hades?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 30 October 2009 18:29 (fourteen years ago) link
Titanic, Hindenburg and Lusitania were also under consideration.
― (oh PORRIDGE) (HI DERE), Friday, 30 October 2009 18:31 (fourteen years ago) link
Also, Last.fm.
(ba dum bump)
― Bears Are Alive! (Pancakes Hackman), Friday, 30 October 2009 18:32 (fourteen years ago) link
"we're headin' to the planet warsaw ghetto..."
― jØrdån (omar little), Friday, 30 October 2009 18:32 (fourteen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett, Friday, October 30, 2009 1:51 PM
ha yeah thats the one i saw
― am0n, Friday, 30 October 2009 18:59 (fourteen years ago) link
lol giovanni ribisi
― am0n, Friday, 30 October 2009 19:00 (fourteen years ago) link
That’s a great trailer. Anyone who H8s on this is dead inside and should move on to another career.Comment by Movie Fan — October 29, 2009 @ 12:03 pm Reply to this post
Okay, is it me or does this sound like a James Cameron sock-puppet? Comment by G. Lira — October 29, 2009 @ 2:13 pm Reply to this post
― am0n, Friday, 30 October 2009 19:05 (fourteen years ago) link
i'm the king of the world woo
― da croupier, Friday, 30 October 2009 19:06 (fourteen years ago) link
The design of this whole thing, right down to the title font is just atrocious. It's like his aesthetics just woke up from cryosleep.
― WARS OF ARMAGEDDON (Karaoke Version) (Sparkle Motion), Friday, 30 October 2009 19:21 (fourteen years ago) link
district 9 meets ferngully
― am0n, Friday, 30 October 2009 19:31 (fourteen years ago) link
I read that thing in the New Yorker last week. His hyper-detailed approach to everything (getting special cameras made, special underwater techniques on The Abyss, etc. etc.) EXCEPT the actual writing is quite astonishing. "We can hire an entire division of an aeronautics company to make us a special camera plane but we can't hire ONE. SINGLE. FUCKING. ACTUAL. WRITER. Nor do we think writers actually do their jobs very well or we would have hired one."
Cunt.
― fields of salmon, Friday, 30 October 2009 21:03 (fourteen years ago) link
uhh, that's because he writes.
Would you prefer he hire dozens of script doctors like they did for the first Charlie's Angels movie?
― Matt Armstrong, Friday, 30 October 2009 22:07 (fourteen years ago) link
ANd what's with that Woody Allen not passing along work to some screenwriters anyway?
― Bears Are Alive! (Pancakes Hackman), Friday, 30 October 2009 22:18 (fourteen years ago) link
James Cameron's Interiors
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 30 October 2009 22:30 (fourteen years ago) link
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, October 30, 2009 2:27 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
what's your point?
― banned, on the run (s1ocki), Friday, 30 October 2009 22:32 (fourteen years ago) link