ReelzChannel | James Cameron

Avatar Gets a Talented Tongue

BILL STOUFFER — 23 Nov 2009 13:45:12 CDT

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.

Avatar Still Getting a Final Touch-Up, Run Time Set

BILL STOUFFER — 21 Nov 2009 16:42:57 CDT

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.

Avatar Shows Off Its Human Hardware

BILL STOUFFER — 20 Nov 2009 12:19:23 CDT

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.

New Avatar Featurette, Clip, and TV Spot

BILL STOUFFER — 17 Nov 2009 10:28:58 CDT

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.

South Park Reworks Avatar as "Dances with Smurfs"

BILL STOUFFER — 13 Nov 2009 13:00:55 CDT

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.