_Avatar_, directed by James Cameron

>probably because you only get one shot at animating those scenes...

I don't know about that - unless Cameron works with CGI very differently than other (big budget action film) directors then he's got almost infinite control over the shots before they go through the final rendering process.

(I didn't read the whole of l'bloomer's link so may be missing the point here, though)

I was reading that with the camera/tech/whatever he's got, he could film the actors in the empty space and through the viewfinder see an xbox-quality rendering of the fx of whatever he was pointing at.

boy that wasn't explained well at all.

no, no. made perfect sense and it's true.

i have purchased my ticket for an 11 pm 3d/imax avatarification. big blue people better bring it.

some of the stuff in that article def does seem like it would have made for a better movie. but a lot of it, you can tell why it was changed.

avatar 2: tsu'tey tang

estimated 2nd weekend gross: $75M, down from $77M. usually blockbusters will almost halve their box office in the second week. in comparison titanic made more on its second week than its first (largely because it opened on the same day as a bond movie).

it will definitely make its money back.

i now cannot escape papyrus.

do you think cameron will point at the audience and say "i see you" during his acceptance speech?

followed swiftly by him raising his oscar and ululating

well, that wasn't bad ... but it did ultimately make me feel guilty for spending $13.50 on an imax movie instead of, like, trekking in patagonia or the amazon or something. or hell, even being outside.

i guess i was really feeling the ecomessages maaaaaaan

dud my imax ticket cost $17.50

chew on that 4 a min

Is it only when people are at death's door that the Na'vi all have to sit around the tree and spin and hold each others' shoulders and chant? If you had to do that every time someone got, say, a major injury, that would be a real pain in the ass.

^^ this qn should be part of the health care debate

this was a good time and the story/dialogue is really not worse than hollywood norms. tons of movies have plots at least as ridiculous, and almost none of them ever make me feel like i'm dodging missiles on dragonback. and all the gaia worship stuff is hokey as hell but hokey gaia worship isn't really like a moral flaw imo. plus i liked how the whole planet seemed designed to be seen under a black light. i think cameron is kind of a suburban-basement stoner at heart.

yeah i kinda liked the hippy-dippy roger dean look of a lot of it.

The whole biolumescent look of Pandoran was inspired by the coral sea beds he witnessed during all the scuba dives he took between Titanic and this, wasn't it?

Toys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JWk_JIE3Ow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMAaOxjTKMI

http://www.empireonline.com/images/image_index/hw800/35110.jpg

http://www.collider.com/2009/12/27/weekend-box-office-avatar-edges-out-sherlock-holmes-on-the-biggest-christmas-weekend-ever/

those videos are confusing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knH_rf0UxMU

promising young vlogger

*bookmarks youtube channel*

*buys james cameron directed happy meal*

*records vlog response based on own impressions of happy meal*

http://i45.tinypic.com/wlb1ud.jpg

*creates happy meal action figure of vlogger that lights up when u vlog*

*acquires rights to amon's prototype*

dude sounds like a remix

Did it freak anyone else out how much Na'vi Sigourney Weaver looked like human Sigourney Weaver? The others it was like 'oh yeah I can see how that's an avatar of him' and Sigourney's was like 'oh my fucking god Sigourney what did they do to your face did we learn nothing from ANTZ.'

i lold repeatedly @ blue sigourney

like big hearty barrel laughs whenever she was on screen?

giggling more like - particularly @ her scrunched up smiley face when jake graduated to alien manhood

is barrel laugh a thing or did i mean belly laugh

it freaked me out more that Sam W looked like Ben Affleck at times

xp a belly of laughs

the whole experience was a belly full of monkeys imo

also lold @ her cutoffs n stanford croptop look

blueski the Ben Affleck thing freaked me out too, when his hair was not buzzed & he had a few days of beard on him.

do a barrel lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thsc60UTUIE&feature=player_embedded

i'm gonna chime in to say that i totally agree with deej upthread. no props to jake sully for talking the na'vi into a suicide mission.

tried to see this today at 1PM...shit was sold out!!

Maybe if you did two cam shots using the tripod in the exact same place both times, and shot it through one lense at a time on those 3d glasses they gave you. It's easy to combine two video images in AE to get an anaglyph 3d (red-blue). Would be dark as hell but i bet you could do it!

lo-fi 3D for owls is the next big thing

farts

sorry just testing

its weird but the more distance i get from this the more i like it. saw it in imax 3d on saturday (it owned) (some of the decisions probably make more sense in this format, like the abundance of aerial scenes - the sense of height is dizzying at times), usually the further i get from seeing a movie the more i pick it apart, my initial reaction was 'glad i went but i won't be rushing to see it again' but right now i'd really like to see it again. the quality of the facial animation was probably the most startling thing effects-wise, that was some next level shit imo

my other initial reaction was that one of cameron's bigger gambles (getting people to care about the navi and all the new age hokum about the spirit of the planet) failed, but again in retrospect it kinda works. still i wished there were more moments like the one where the floaty jellyfish seeds are swarming around sully and he swats one away - that got the biggest laugh of the movie.

still wondering how the hell those floating islands had waterfalls

also michelle rodriguez has some fine-ass titties

ribisi & weaver owned tho like jsbhorglb i was str8 gigglin at blue sigourney