_Avatar_, directed by James Cameron

so this has nothing to do with airbending right

http://i40.tinypic.com/rubuah.gif

I wasn't carping about the font inasmuch as it seems to punctuate the awful look of this movie's design and overall aesthetics--as far as looking at it from the POV of an 11 year old... I was 11 when Terminator came out--that shit looked scary and cool.

could see this being a movie where a surprisingly wide range of non nerds are all that was cool

all that was cool in an effed up world.

... in 3D!!!

x-post It's totally a great profile. My point was that all the audacity on display in the piece perhaps needed a bit more counterbalance than the single graf related to the negative reaction to the teaser.

I mean, Cameron=jerk is not news.

he lets him hang himself with his own rope dude... what did you want, an anti-james-cameron expert to give the opposing view?

won't be as good as 2012 fuiud

someone needs to take cameron's $$$ away and force him to work with a small budget again, like with Aliens and the Terminator.

also bring back michael biehn and lance henrikson.

I really think lower budgets force people like Cameron or George Lucas to be more inventive.

hard to say, cuz the only time they had them was so long ago...

I'm not sure Aliens counts as low budget. $20 mil in 1986? That's about twice as much as "RoboCop" the next year.

x-post If Avatar is a huge hit and every bit as technologically successful as he's promised, then we're all the dupes. He's arrogant, that's for sure, but it's only hang-yourself hubris if he's wrong. It would have been nice had the author been privy to a bit more and been able to come to some conclusions, but my guess is at the time of the piece's filing the movie wasn't anywhere close to done, at least not enough to really show off.

Personally, I would have rather read a balanced Michael Bay profile in the New Yorker a la the Michael Savage piece. At least we know what Bay's been up to. Cameron, on the other hand, has been more or less off the grid for a decade, so the piece doesn't advance his particular story very well; there's simply too much of his reputation riding on "Avatar" for them to have given the author the access he needed to transform the profile into more than a on-the-go with James Cameron behind the scenes piece. Brody's Wes Anderson profile (and the Haneke piece - lots of directors in the New Yorker these days!) parallels the Cameron one, but took a firmer critical stance and made room for more analysis.

Invention isn't the goal. Making the most money you can is the goal. Telling a story is merely the means to that end.

Except that Cameron himself has called "Avatar" a game-changer, so unless he means he expects it to make more money than "Titanic," surely he has a different goal in mind.

"If we make money, I guarantee there will be more," Cameron said. "If we don't, we'll pretend it never happened."

x-post If Avatar is a huge hit and every bit as technologically successful as he's promised, then we're all the dupes. He's arrogant, that's for sure, but it's only hang-yourself hubris if he's wrong. It would have been nice had the author been privy to a bit more and been able to come to some conclusions, but my guess is at the time of the piece's filing the movie wasn't anywhere close to done, at least not enough to really show off.

Personally, I would have rather read a balanced Michael Bay profile in the New Yorker a la the Michael Savage piece. At least we know what Bay's been up to. Cameron, on the other hand, has been more or less off the grid for a decade, so the piece doesn't advance his particular story very well; there's simply too much of his reputation riding on "Avatar" for them to have given the author the access he needed to transform the profile into more than a on-the-go with James Cameron behind the scenes piece. Brody's Wes Anderson profile (and the Haneke piece - lots of directors in the New Yorker these days!) parallels the Cameron one, but took a firmer critical stance and made room for more analysis.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, October 31, 2009 2:28 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

having the author weigh in on the movie itself would have made it a very different KIND of story... this was a process piece and i found it pretty fascinating. it will of course be easy to draw conclusions once we all see the movie.

i mean if the movie sucks it would be a LOL james cameron piece and if it's great it would be james cameron is a genius piece... not sure who really needs that.

i actually think it's a lot like the michael savage story... an interested and slightly detached look at a huge and contradictory personality.

Invention isn't the goal. Making the most money you can is the goal. Telling a story is merely the means to that end.

― Aimless, Saturday, October 31, 2009 2:32 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

do you really think, after reading that piece, that james cameron thinks of himself purely as a businessman?

i mean congratulations on realizing that HOLLYWOOD LIKES MONEY but there's more to it than that which is why we're still talking about this dude

Cameron is playing with other people's money. He is not in sole charge of the project. However he may think of himself, he is a businessman among businessmen. He will always sell his project on the basis of anticipated profits, and his backers will view his inventiveness or lack of it, and not coincidentally set the size of his budget, in terms of anticipated profits.

That is why Cameron's personal goals are only tangentially related to the goal of the movie. An inventive artist who makes money is a Hollywood success story. One who loses money is a loser, pure and simple.

yes and?

dont u see the system maaaan

and so... "Invention isn't the goal. Making the most money you can is the goal. Telling a story is merely the means to that end"... still stands as correct.

and so the statement stands, another ilx story told in the service of cynical reductionism. THE END

so you're saying hollywood designs its products to make money? hmm, never thought of it that way before

As a theory for explaining what appears on 99% of movie screens worldwide, it has powerful elucidary qualities which the auteur theory lacks. However, when a simplifying theory comes along which undermines the importance of what critics, fanboys and other groupies all love to chatter about, it meets brutal resistance.

it true, i just brutally suggest bannd u

**bows cynically to the right and left, exits stage**

"technologically successful"?

sweet fx bra

oh right if the efx are really cool then we are the dupes. the efx will have duped us into liking a shitty film

"bows cynically" ?

yes if the effects are well executed and convincing you are an asshole

my entire profession was just undermined brutally and i do not know what to do

all critical discourse around movies has been debunked for all time :(

http://4.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kse65vii2Z1qzdv8uo1_400.jpg

Starring The Guy Who Didn't Get To Be James Bond!

x-post Um, Cameron has stated specifically that the effects will be groundbreaking, "a game changer." He has not called the script a game changer, or the amount of money the movie will make a game changer. Pretty obvious that if he delivers on the FX front, then the former's deficiencies will be negated and the $$$ will be massive enough to justify the bravado. Whether people will be dressed as these blue things next Halloween is another matter.

uhh just saw trailer (thx world series!) and this looks like a trailer for halo and the font for the movie's name looks like papyrus.

seeing the trailer for this on tv while not paying much attention makes it look just like some dippy video game. digital effects very much included. tho obviously my tv is not 3-d.

xpost! haha

Pretty obvious that if he delivers on the FX front, then the former's deficiencies will be negated and the $$$ will be massive enough to justify the bravado

If anything, it'll scrub the memory of Transformers 2 out of our brains.

Ugh, I still hate that fucking Papyrus font.

real talk

True fax.

nothing will scrub t2

Saw the trailer at the cinema, blimey, it looks a bit ropey.

PLAYBOY: We seem to need fantasy icons like Lara Croft and Wonder Woman, despite knowing they mess with our heads.
CAMERON: Most of men's problems with women probably have to do with realizing women are real and most of them don't look or act like Vampirella. A big recalibration happens when we're forced to deal with real women, and there's a certain geek population that would much rather deal with fantasy women than real women. Let's face it: Real women are complicated. You can try your whole life and not understand them.

PLAYBOY: How much did you get into calibrating your movie heroine's hotness?
CAMERON: Right from the beginning I said, "She's got to have tits," even though that makes no sense because her race, the Na'vi, aren't placental mammals. I designed her costumes based on a taparrabo, a loincloth thing worn by Mayan Indians. We go to another planet in this movie, so it would be stupid if she ran around in a Brazilian thong or a fur bikini like Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.

PLAYBOY: Are her breasts on view?
CAMERON: I came up with this free-floating, lion's-mane-like array of feathers, and we strategically lit and angled shots to not draw attention to her breasts, but they're right there. The animation uses a physics-based sim that takes into consideration gravity, air movement and the momentum of her hair, her top. We had a shot in which Neytiri falls into a specific position, and because she is lit by orange firelight, it lights up the nipples. That was good, except we're going for a PG-13 rating, so we wound up having to fix it. We'll have to put it on the special edition DVD; it will be a collector's item. A Neytiri Playboy Centerfold would have been a good idea.

PLAYBOY: So you're okay with arousing PG-13 chubbies?
CAMERON: If such a thing should ­happen—and I'm not saying it will—that would be fine.

okay so that is just wrong

When did this thread have sex with the Idolator one?