Posts Tagged ‘james cameron’
USA Today got a chance to chat with filmmaker James Cameron who filmed the unannounced Black Eyed Peas concert with 3D cameras in New York’s Times Square on Wednesday night. Cameron dropped a few interesting news tidbits, including information on the 3D release of Titanic, a possible extended cut rerelease of Avatar this Fall, more critical comments on how Hollywood is doing 3D wrong, and his thoughts on authorship of older catelog titles.
- Fox is targeting Spring 2012 release for the 3D version of Titanic, to coincide with the “100 year anniversary of the sailing of the ship.”
- He’s hoping to release Avatar on 3D Blu-ray in Fall 2010 but says that might get pushed as they are considering rereleasing the film in theaters during that time. Exhibitors think they have “left a couple of hundred million dollars on the table” by moving the film out of theaters to make room for Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. “The question is the appetite still going to be there after the summer glut of movies. We’re going to assess that. We’re talking about maybe adding in additional footage and doing something creative.” Cameon has said previously that the planned DVD release will contain five or six minutes of fully finished, theatrical-release-quality deleted scenes and 15 more minutes of footage that was removed early on and thus contains rough computer generated imagery and effects.Of course, if they could get the cash to finish that footage for a rerelease, the film could include up to 21 more minutes of new footage. Sounds like a great idea to me.
- Cameron says to “do it right”, that it should take six months to a year to convert a film to 3D in post production. He mentions the 3D conversion of Clash of the Titans is taking eight weeks. He says that Hollywood is ignoring “the fact that we natively authored the film in 3D, and decide that what we accomplished in several years of production could be done in an eight week (post-production 3D) conversion.” Cameron warns that “if people put bad 3D in the marketplace they’re going to hold back or even threaten the emerging of 3D. People will be confused by differences in quality. … Because the audience doesn’t know the difference — when they put on the glasses on, they don’t know if the problem is in the glasses, the TV or the actual way in which the stereo space is managed by the producers of the film.”
- Cameron says the converted process is “never going to be as good as if you shot it in 3D” and calls the result “sort of 2.8D.” But he isn’t totally against post production 3D of existing film catalog titles as long as it’s “done well” and “driven by the artist.”
“If Star Wars gets converted into 3D I think George (Lucas) should do it. If Terminator gets converted into 3D, I should do it.”
You can read the whole interview with Cameron on USA Today.
via: marketsaw
Last month, after a screening of Avatar at the Writers Guild Theater for WGA members, James Cameron spoke with F. X. Feeney about his writing process throughout his career and in the creation of Avatar. I know a lot of people like to make the easy jokes, and write off Avatar for having an over-simplistic plot, but for anyone who really wants to delve deeper — you should really find time to listen to this one hour and ten minute interview/question & answer session.
link: wga.org
via: deanlines
There was some news recently that James Cameron might be producing or even potentially directing a film about Hiroshima. He’d optioned a book called The Last Train From Hiroshima, by Charles Pellegrino, a friend of the director.
Now publication of the book is being halted, because publisher Henry Holt and Company “was not able to answer” questions about the veracity of some of Pellegrino’s facts. Some of the people mentioned in the purportedly factual book may not exist. Oops! Probably won’t see a movie from Cameron any time soon.
Yahoo reports that the publisher released a statement that says, “It is with deep regret that Henry Holt and Company announces that we will not print, correct or ship copies of Charles Pellegrino’s `The Last Train from Hiroshima.”
A week ago, Pellegrino admitted that one person he interviewed had made false claims about being on one of the planes that flew with the Enola Gay, which dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Now the existence of two other men mentioned in the book, Father Mattias and John MacQuitty, cannot be verified.
In fact, Pellegrino’s own cred is being examined. Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, from which he claims to have earned a PhD, says it has no proof that he earned a degree.
The association between Cameron and Pellegrino goes back a long way. The director wrote the introduction for Pellegrino’s Ghosts of the Titanic, provided a blurb for this book, and hired Pellegrino as an advisor on Avatar. Cameron also wrote the introduction for The Jesus Family Tomb, the embarrassing book co-authored by Pellegrino that purported to document the discovery of a tomb containing the remains of Jesus. I don’t imagine we’ll hear much, if anything from Cameron on this particular development.
(And yes, the image above has the book title as Last Train to Hiroshima — it was changed at some point.)
(Warning: possible spoilers for Avatar contained in this story)
Will Sigourney Weaver reprise her role as Dr. Grace Augustine in an Avatar sequel? The question might sound stupid to anyone who has seen the movie, but remember what happens when you assume…
Sigourney Weaver appeared on the TV show “Le Grand Journal.” The actress is in Paris this week to honor Harrison Ford during the Cesar Awards (the French equivalent of the Oscars). During her interview, Weaver was asked if she would be part of Avatar 2 and she made it clear that she has already talked about it with James Cameron, who is planning to include her in the sequel.
But how is that possible?
Anyone who has seen Avatar knows that Dr. Grace Augustine died from a fatal gun wound, and the attempt to transfer Grace from her dying human body into her unconscious avatar body with unsuccessful. So how can Weaver possibly be in the sequel? Remember, after Grace died, Mo’at declared that “she is with Eywa now”. Weaver explained on the talk show that her character still exists “in the tree”, and while she can’t promise anything, James Cameron has some ideas on how to keep “the family together.” You can watch the appearance below.
Filed under: Animation, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Awards, Tech Stuff, Steven Spielberg
It's the next evolutionary step. We had Fred Astaire trying to sell us vacuums and John Wayne trying to sell us beer after they were dead. Will we soon have computer-generated actors who were never real people in the first place? An article in the L.A. Times shines a light on a recent debate surrounding the performance captured acting used in James Cameron's Avatar. The filmmaker received nine Oscar nominations for his part animation and part live-action film, but none of them include a nod to his cast. There have been no major critic's awards, no guild prize and according to interviews with several of the other Oscar nominees, what appears to be no respect for Cameron's revolutionary technology which combines real actors with computer-generated animation.
Jeff Bridges, who received an Oscar nom for best actor in Crazy Heart, put a bit of a dystopian spin on the subject. "I'm sure they could do it now if they wanted. Actors will kind of be a thing of the past," Bridges told The Times. "We'll be turned into combinations. A director will be able to say, 'I want 60% Clooney; give me 10% Bridges; and throw some Charles Bronson in there.' They'll come up with a new guy who will look like nobody who has ever lived and that person or thing will be huge," he said.
Continue reading Discuss: Is Performance Captured Acting Really Acting?
I always love learning which actors were offered and turned down roles in films. Did you know that Sean Connery was originally offered the role of Morpheus in The Matrix? He supposedly turned down the role saying he couldn’t understand the script.
Years later, he said that he chose to do The League of Extraordinary Gentleman despite not understanding the project, because he regretted turning both The Matrix and Lord of the Rings down. It is fun to wonder — “what if?” and imagine what the movie would have been with the filmmaker’s original choices.There is a whole website dedicated to this trivial information called notstarring.com.
Today the Los Angeles Times has printed information about who turned down a role in James Cameron’s Avatar. Who turns down a lead role in a James Cameron movie, really? Apparently Matt Damon and Jake Gyllenhaal. Both actors were approached about playing the role of Jake Sully in the film and turned down the offer. The most interesting part of the story is that Sam Worthington, an unknown actor at the time, was Cameron’s first choice for the role, but he was forced to offer the role to some bigger marketable stars “to placate the studio chiefs at Fox.” Cameron admits that he doesn’t know why Damon and Gyllenhaal turned down the role, but admits that he really didn’t “go out and try to woo them”.
Discuss: Would Avatar have been better or worse with Gyllenhaal or Damon in the lead role?
If you’ve been reading /Film for a while, then you know how much we love long form interviews. James Cameron appeared on Charlie Rose on Wednesday, February 17th and gave a 30-minute interview. He talks a bunch about Avatar, the future of Avatar (prequels, sequels, novels), addresses the comparison to George Lucas’ Star Wars, reveals the most important thing he knows about storytelling, and about former-wife and Oscar-competitor Kathryn Bigelow. There are so many interesting bits in this interview, for example: Cameron reveals that he screened Avatar for Bigelow five times at various points throughout the post production process to get her opinion. But most interesting is a 19-minute segment where he gives an in-depth response to criticisms of the simple story and environmental/political messages. Watch the interview embedded after the jump.
MTV recently sat down with director James Cameron, and the result is a bunch of interesting, but not necessarily newsworthy, bits. I’ve embedded some of the more interesting video clips after the jump.
Cameron talks about the Avatar Sequel, which he confirms will involve the same characters from the first film, including the humans, who he imagines will probably show with another fight:
Cameron comments of Wisher’s treatment for Terminator 5 & 6, and explains why he has no desire to return to the series:
Cameron gives advice to Marc Webb on shooting the Spider-Man reboot in 3D, which somehow evolves into Cameron’s feelings on the Batman film series.
Cameron talks about how Hollywood is “getting it wrong” with broadcasting 3D with red and blue glasses, and thinking the audiences won’t notice that a film was converted into 3D in post production as an after thought. It is refreshing to hear Cameron say this, as this is something I’ve been saying for over a year now.
Cameron talks about what extra scenes will be featured on the home video release, and how that will be presented. He also reveals that a 3D Blu-ray of Avatar will likely hit store shelves in November. This is a huge surprise as until now Cameron and Fox has said that a 3D blu-ray release would be years off.
And lastly, Cameron talks about his chances come Oscar night, and his response might surprise you:
James Cameron’s Avatar has surpassed $2.35 billion worldwide, and keeps on going. A sequel is almost definite, but won’t be seen on the big screen for a couple of years, at very least. But that doesn’t mean we have to wait until 2012 or 2013 to return to Pandora. Producer Jon Landau revealed to MTV that Cameron plans to write a novel set within the world created in Avatar, a prequel to the story of the film. The plan is to get the book in stores by the end of the year.
Here is what Landau said:
“It would be something that would lead up to telling the story of the movie, but it would go into much more depth about all the stories that we didn’t have time to deal with — like the schoolhouse and Sigourney [Weaver's character] teaching at the schoolhouse; Jake on Earth and his backstory and how he came here; [the death of] Tommy, Jake’s brother; and Colonel Quaritch, how he ended up there and all that.”
The photo above is from one of the deleted scenes from the movie that was actually shot on future earth (read more about it on marketsaw). Cameron’s original 114-page scriptment almost reads like a novel, and contained a lot more information about life in the 22nd century.
According to the treatment, population of Earth has tripled, and the planet is dying due to a combination os “overpopulation, over- development, nuclear terrorism, environmental warfare tactics, radiation leakage from power plants and waste dumps, toxic waste, air pollution, deforestation, pollution and overfishing of the oceans, global warming, ozone depletion, loss of biodiversity through extinction” The scriptment explains that the human race has learned to keep itself alive, but has “lost almost all contact with the natural world, which it has strangled and crushed out of existence.” The United States is covered with cities, crowded and gray, described as “a cross between THX-1138 and a Calcutta train station.” National Parks no longer exist. Jake (named “Josh” in this earlier draft) lives in a “tiny cubicle of an apartment in a vast government housing project” in a small room “reminiscent of a cell at a federal prison”. Paralyzed due to his involvement in “a stupid little war people barely remember,” Jake is described as “a hopeless guy in a hopeless world.” Sully’s brother Thomas died in a Boston subway fire, one of over 100 people asphyxiated in the not-so-unusual accident. Of course, none of this is explained in the theatrical film.
And that is just a bit of the information revealed in the first page or two. I would love to hear more about the world of Pandora, and find out what became of Jake’s brother Tommy, and the future of our home planet, Earth.
This relic from 1988 is something that all involved would likely just assume be left locked away in a vault, deep inside an abandonded missile silo in Nebraska. Too bad for them that the intrepid folks at The Interview broke in and dug it out!
Starring Bill Paxton's '80s band Martini Ranch, "Reach" was helmed by Paxton's buddy James Cameron, and features Cameron's future ex-wife, a neophyte filmmaker with leading lady looks named Kathryn Bigelow, as the leader of an all-girl Amazon posse that would have made Russ Meyer drool all over his fastest pussycat. Judge Reinhold also makes an appearence. Who knew that nearly a quarter century later, Cameron and Bigelow would be facing off in what is arguably the most hotly-contested Best Director race in Academy Awards history?
The hair. The synthesizers. The neon. Ah, the '80s...
