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Tuesday, November 24
It's a whole new kind of trailer and eye-candy overload, more like the palette of special feature options you get on a Blu-ray disc than any conventional preview. Avatar has gone live with an "Interactive Trailer," a stand-alone preview program that links nearly a dozen new featurettes to the trailer through a series of hot spots.
We get video profiles of all the main characters, including interviews and all sorts of new footage, along with features on how some of the creatures and the vehicles in the movie were designed. Also included are feeds to follow Avatar news on various social media like Twitter and Facebook. And there is more to come, with an in-depth "Pandorapedia" scheduled for launch in early December.
Still need more Avatar? Check out this extended clip of the thanator chase scene teased earlier.
Posted 11/24/2009 by Bill
Related: James Cameron | Avatar
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Monday, November 23
James Cameron is prepared to boldly go where only Klingons have gone before.
As part of the effort to make Avatar a completely realized world, down to to the blades of grass, he has commissioned a whole new language for his blue-skinned aliens. The LA Times has posted a interview with Professor Paul Frommer, who has spent the past four years gleefully working out the sound, syntax, and vocabulary of this Na'vi native tongue, constrained only by the limits the human voice, itself.
Perhaps not quite constrained enough, though, suggests Zoe Saldana who plays the alien Neytiri in Avatar. Despite her role as the linguistics expert Uhura in Star Trek — and what Kirk (Chris Pine) salaciously describes as "a talented tongue" — Saldana confesses that she found the experience a real challenge:
Oh, it was so hard and I was really concerned about it. I didn't think I could get through it. I'm not good with languages. All the actors, we worked together. It was the only way.
Nonetheless, the language is far more gentle and more melodious than Klingon, the professor insists, and he has high hopes that it will catch on and develop a life of its own. It's lonely, he says, being the only person really speaking the language. No word yet on any plans to teach it to a baby as a first language, as it was recently reported someone did with Klingon.
Next Showing: Avatar opens Dec. 18, 2009
Posted 11/23/2009 by Bill
Related: Chris Pine | James Cameron | Zoe Saldana | Avatar
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Saturday, November 21
With James Cameron's epic sci-fi adventure Avatar set to hit theaters in less than a month, production crews are still rushing to complete some scenes. Producer Jon Landau told the Wall Street Journal that around 30 minutes of the movie are still not done yet, with crews working around the clock on issues from sound mixing to special effects. In part, Landau says, the 11th-hour changes are being driven by Cameron's own ever-more-exacting standards.
Every shot we get back raises the standard for what follows.
Amid all these hectic, last-minute adjustments though, one key aspect of the final edit has been locked in. Despite widespread rumors that the movie would run more than three hours, the studio is now saying that, in part due to the constraints of Imax technology, the film will clock in at a more modest 150 minutes.
Posted 11/21/2009 by Bill
Related: James Cameron | Avatar | Jon Landau
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Friday, November 20
Avatar promises to clock in at nearly three hours of screen time, so there's a lot of footage for the studio to mine without giving it all away. Still, there have been a remarkable number of featurettes and previews lately. But as long as they keep coming up with interesting new angles on the movie and new glimpses of life on this alien world, as they do here, it's still well worth the look.
The latest offerering highlights the technology and science of the humans who are setting up a mining camp on the alien moon Pandora. It's an insanely hostile environment, so weaponry and vehicles have to be pretty impressive to keep humans alive. As director James Cameron put it earlier, they are facing off with the teeth and claws of the Garden of Eden.
Here he shows us that the humans aren't exactly without teeth and claws either, with their airships and guns — and especially their amp suits. These are the 16-foot-tall human-operated robots capable of hand-to-hand combat with Pandora's powerful fauna. Even with all of this technology, though, not all of the humans are going to survive, as the base's matter-of-fact chief of security (Stephen Lang) informs new recruits.
Posted 11/20/2009 by Bill
Related: James Cameron | Stephen Lang | Avatar
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Tuesday, November 17
With Avatar now just about five weeks from its much anticipated debut, the marketing tsunami has begun in earnest. First up this week is a featurette offering interviews with the cast and crew that continues to try and frame the movie for the widest possible audience. After all, they have to rake in half a billion dollars just to break even.
With this marketing goal in mind, director James Cameron says he wants to avoid having audiences pigeon hole Avatar as science fiction. Instead, he says, it's more of an "action-adventure fantasy." Or as he puts it later, "kind of the Garden of Eden with teeth and claws." Avatar's featurette includes all sorts of new action footage to back up his spin.
Next, we have a new clip showing Jake (Sam Worthington) testing out the powers of his new avatar body against a thanator. Doesn't seem like such a good idea, even if you are blue and nine-feet tall. Cameron earlier described this particular beastie as a creature that could eat an alien for dessert.
If that's not enough, an extended fourth TV spot for the movie is now online, and it too features plenty of new footage, laying out the storyline in considerable detail.
Posted 11/17/2009 by Bill
Related: James Cameron | Sam Worthington | Avatar
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Friday, November 13
Even a month before it comes out James Cameron's Avatar has a big enough profile — and more than enough hype — to become a terribly tempting target for satire. The director, himself, has admitted that the movie is essentially a re-imagining of Dances with Wolves set against the landscape of an alien moon.
In the hands of the profane youngsters at South Park, this is easily translated into "Dances with Smurfs," in which a Glen-Beck-inspired Cartman befriends little blue people threatened by hostile developers anxious to get their hands on some precious, unobtainable smurfberries. Perhaps echoing the controversy over whether Cameron lifted the Avatar story from a vintage sic-fi novel, a version Cartman's own story ends up on the big screen, adapted without permission by none other than James Cameron.
Warning: As you'd expect from the South Park gang, the video includes some "blue" language.
Posted 11/13/2009 by Bill
Related: James Cameron | Dances With Wolves | Avatar
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Monday, November 9
It looks like Avatar is trying really hard to be all things to all people. And with an unprecedented half-billion dollars in the balance (according to a New York Times estimate of the movie's budget), it's no wonder.
Aiming to solidify Avatar's appeal as a straight-up action adventure flick, the studio has released a 30-second TV spot that's all action, with almost none of that messy dialogue and romance stuff — lots of machine-on-alien violence set to a staccato beat. Not quite Transformers, but it gets the job done.
A second TV ad takes a completely different approach, spotlighting the magic of discovery on an alien world overloaded with eye candy. The tagline:
Welcome to a place beyond your imagination. A place where wonder lives and adventure rules.
It's all much more in the style of Jurassic Park, with new footage of Pandora's bio-luminescent flora and fauna. The commercial also downplays that nearly everything there is willing and ready to eat you.
And if, despite all the angles, Avatar doesn't quite deliver the payday expected, 20th Century Fox still has what it's calling a "secret weapon" up its sleeve: also slated for December release is Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel.
Posted 11/9/2009 by Bill
Related: James Cameron | Avatar | Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
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Thursday, November 5
The latest international trailer for Avatar is a bit shorter than the U.S. version that was released earlier and is, for the most part, a remix of footage seen there. However, there are some new scenes — glimpses of some new creatures, a significant exchange of glances between Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and the firebombing of the Na'vi village. All that, plus some very dramatic sounding Japanese narration.
A few more bits of new Avatar footage also pop up in a Coke Zero commercial that seems intent on suggesting that drinking this product will cause hallucinations of Pandora to bleed out of your computer. We saw a similar approach earlier in a weird Avatar-infused Japanese commercial for Panasonic. In any case, this time we get some pretty cool shots of Ney'tiri commandeering a Thanator.
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Posted 11/5/2009 by Bill
Related: James Cameron | Zoe Saldana | Sam Worthington | Avatar
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Thursday, October 29
You may have seen it in theaters already, but today 20th Century Fox released its epic 3-1/2-minute trailer for James Cameron's Avatar online.
Additionally, we've found a 4-minute featurette that takes you "behind the scenes." It makes the movie look absolutely incredible, and shows you a lot more of the movie's story and scale than what was teased in the trailer.
Posted 10/29/2009 by Jim
Related: James Cameron | Avatar
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Tuesday, October 27
Zoe Saldana is certainly getting her fanboy credits in order. There's James Cameron's upcoming Avatar later this year, the comic book adaptation The Losers next year, and a Star Trek sequel likely arriving in 2012. Saldana spoke with E!Online and revealed she has watched some scenes from Cameron's much-anticipated Avatar.
Just last Friday, I went to Fox and Jim was able to show me scenes along with [composer] James Horner's music incorporated in it. O-M-G is all I'm going to say.
Saldana was a little more forthcoming about The Losers, which follows a CIA black ops team seeking revenge after being left for dead, that co-stars Watchmen's Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
I play a toughass broad — sort of like a viper, snaky girl. Guys find it really sexy when they see a girl hanging from wires with guns. They even like it more when there's a girl-on-guy fight and it looks like she's kicking his ass. Jeffrey Dean Morgan was such a gentleman. He was like, "Zoe, you can kick my butt any day."
Saldana is hoping to kick some butt in Star Trek 2 as well, which looks like it may happen sooner than later.
We're working on it. They were calling to see where we were going to be and how my schedule is next year. Just that was worth me doing a cartwheel when I got the phone call, because I cannot wait to put on the suit and go back to theEnterprise, take my shirt off, and be with all those yummy guys.
Next Showing: Avatar opens December 18
Posted 10/27/2009 by Ryan
Related: James Cameron | Zoe Saldana | Avatar | Star Trek | Jeffrey Dean Morgan | Star Trek 2