_Avatar_, directed by James Cameron

• Something James Cameron actually shouted to Arnold Schwarzenegger on the set of True Lies: "Do you want Paul Verhoeven to finish this motherfucker?"

god, true lies would have been an awesome verhoeven.

yeah totally

Paul Verhoeven's Titanic

Rocks and Hair, coming this holiday season.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, October 19, 2009 12:52 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol.

The NY article makes you admire Cameron, and really, really wish he had decided to make something other than Avatar.

thats it exactly isnt it

its like you're dedicating decades and millions of dollars and your genius to...

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/409/555656-furry2_super.jpg

THIS??

That New Yorker article is amazing. I've only read the first paragraph!

“Watching him light is like watching two monkeys fuck a football.”

in their pursuit of a precious superconductor called Unobtanium, are beginning to do the same to Pandora.

wait is James Cameron aiming to make a serious movie involving a material called Unobtanium?

that is Lucas-level bullshit right there

"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

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.

i like that he apparently went over to kubrick's house with a 16mm or even 35mm print of his own movie.

Kubrick was thinking "Man, I wish we were watching the new Verhoeven instead."

“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

Right, screw Avatar, I want to read his memoirs!

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.

Sam Worthington: not a cartoon (he says)

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.”

saw the preview for this before paranormal activity and some guy a few rows back said "that looks terrible"

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.)

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1_JBMrrYw8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAPyipuT-Jg

trailer i saw had a lot more (awful) dialogue

john why did that article make you interested? this seems like the exact opposite of the types of movies you usually like

welcome to pandora!

http://winnipeg.cityguide.ca/images/cats.jpg

I didn't know someone made a stage version of Thundercats!

john why did that article make you interested? this seems like the exact opposite of the types of movies you usually like

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.

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.

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

"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!'"

http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/images/avatar-header2.jpg

“the mother of all movie battles.”"

CGI-driven gigantic battle scenes are usually pretty boring IMHO.

Exactly.

New trailer

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?"

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.

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.

CGI-driven gigantic battle scenes are usually pretty boring IMHO

xxp Well it was always there. See the The Abyss.

at least i think i got tired of it after 2003 xp

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.

"Should I talk about the bit where they -- "

"Shut up, you."

"Sorry."

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?

Titanic, Hindenburg and Lusitania were also under consideration.

Also, Last.fm.

(ba dum bump)

"we're headin' to the planet warsaw ghetto..."