Avatar Movie News

Studio Nouveau Creates Cinematics for Capcom's Resident Evil 5

2009-04-29T07:54:00.000-07:00

Press Release from Studio Nouveau

Wednesday, April 22, 2009 -- Culver City, CA -- Studio Nouveau, a cinematic and 3D animation production studio, is pleased to announce their recent completion of the game cinematics for the highly-acclaimed video game RESIDENT EVIL 5 for Capcom, a leading game industry publisher.

Studio Nouveau is an L.A.-based visual effects and animation studio providing 3D animation for film, games and broadcast with access to the most talented Hollywood VFX artists and animators. Studio Nouveau has earned a reputation for exceptional development of motion capture technologies and methods that helps directors become quickly acclimated to working with virtual actors and sets.

Studio Nouveau founder and CEO Frank Bonniwell has worked on blockbuster Hollywood films such as POLAR EXPRESS, MONSTER HOUSE, LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, and working in the role of Technical Director directly with James Cameron on his film project, AVATAR.

Capcom's RESIDENT EVIL 5 represents the latest installment of the series and boasts the stunning visual quality and engaging gameplay now possible on next-gen video game consoles. The RESIDENT EVIL series has generated global sales of 24 million. RESIDENT EVIL 5 released on March 13, 2009 in Japan, and March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 game consoles.

Studio Nouveau's proprietary motion capture and animation production methodology and pipeline allowed live action director Jim Sonzero (Pulse) to bring traditional directing techniques to the Resident Evil 5 production. Based on Sonzero's needs, Studio Nouveau's technical team developed a pipeline for a virtual camera allowing a digital DP (Director of Photography) to use traditional cinematography methods on the RESIDENT EVIL 5 cinematics.

Bonniwell adds, "It was a great honor and privilege to work with a company of Capcom's stature and history on one of the premiere video game franchises of all time. Here at Studio Nouveau we're all playing Resident Evil 5 and are thrilled to see our work come alive in the game."

Studio Nouveau works on long and short-term projects creating full CG motion capture and hand-key framed film production for live action and animated films, game trailers and cinematics, commercial and broadcast clients and more.

About Capcom Entertainment
www.capcom.com
An industry leader in the video game industry for 25 years, Capcom's legacy of historic franchises in home and arcade gaming are testaments to an unparalleled commitment to excellence. Blockbuster franchises like RESIDENT EVIL, STREET FIGHTER, LOST PLANET, BREATH OF FIRE and the ever-popular MEGA MAN series set the standard in creative innovation, character development and unsurpassed gameplay. Capcom is involved in all areas of the video game industry and has offices in Tokyo, Osaka, California, England, Germany and Hong Kong.

About Studio Nouveau
www.studionouveau.biz
Studio Nouveau is a visual effects and 3D animation production studio created to bring a higher level of Hollywood production experience and expertise to companies inside and outside the traditional Hollywood Studio system. With the democratization of digital technology, Studio Nouveau is excited by the possibilities offered in games, new media and independent film production.

IAB BLOG: Is 3D hype or is it here to stay?

2009-04-28T07:51:00.000-07:00

Kieron Matthews, marketing director at the IAB delves into the world of 3D advertising.

Friday, 24 April 2009

Sam Mendes was recently asked whether he would be using 3D anytime soon. He replied by saying, “I’ve been doing it for years – it’s called theatre.” Aside from loving the quote and hating him for being married to Kate Winslet it appears that 3D is the way forward.

Bolt, Monsters vs Aliens and soon to be released Avatar the eagerly awaited return to film of Lord Cameron’s 3D versions is going through a renaissance.

Having seen Jaws 3D first time around I’m not surprised it’s taken so long to come back, but it appears that brands are leaping on the bandwagon. Quickly following 3D ads shown during Superbowl is Crest’s “Kiss Me in 3D” which executionally is a massive let down, and very ambitious considering you have to have the glasses to view it online.

More cooler is the new campaign from Dare for BMW Z4 which although isn’t 3D viewing per se (like Bolt) it does allow you to use your webcam to drive the car in 3D.

Similar technology is being used in the launch of Ford Ka that uses your mobile to view a 3D model of the vehicle from a hidden symbol.

So is 3D hype or is it here to stay?

TMR: Zombie's 'H2' trailer premieres, McKean talks 'Tap,' and 'Avatar' details emerge

2009-04-27T07:50:00.000-07:00

Welcome to The Morning Read.

I'm going to be merging the "On The Screen" column into the Morning Read on Fridays from now on. It just seemed to make more sense to us, and while today's may be a little weird while I figure out the format, I think in the long run, it'll make for a better Friday read for you guys.

Let's see what's going on out there first, before we get into this weekend's movies. Traditionally speaking, this is the weekend where the studios just plain give up, dumping whatever they don't mind seeing crushed by the arrival of summer's first big movies next week. So it's good we're trying the new format on an off week, so we can be ready for the onslaught of May.

Great interview with Bret Easton Ellis about his feelings on watching his work get adapted into films. Guy sounds ridiculously well-adjusted about it, even when the end result takes the sort of critical pounding that "The Informers" is.

Also thanks to the fine folks at the A/V Club, there's a new Michael McKean interview that's worth a look. I can't believe how many years its been since "Spinal Tap," and yet I'm still fascinated, and these stories about how the songs were written are absolute gold.

Call me crazy, but a TV series based on "Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown" isn't the worst idea I've ever heard. If it manages to capture any of the flavor of what Almodovar does on film, it could be a really welcome antidote to 99.9% of what my wife watches on TV right now, but in a way that would actually keep her watching.

[more after the jump]

Trust me... Spock saying he's open to more "Star Trek" appearances? This is a very good thing.

Turns out I do want what I haven't got. I'm not sure when this latest trend of high-value reissues of older CDs caught fire, but lately, it seems like everyone's putting out old albums with new bonus material included. And I know it's a cash grab, of course, but in some cases, I'll shell out, and based on Pitchfork's write-up of the live version of "Troy" that's included in this new edition of "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got," Sinead O'Connor's biggest album, I think it's going to have to be the next thing I pick up. And if you don't know "Troy" at all, here's a live version that was linked from that article that I hadn't seen before. Pretty great.

I wish I were going to France for Cannes this year, but not just for the festival. I also wish I could go check out all the weird and wonderful tributes to Jacques Tati that appear to be going up all over the city right now. This one in particular just slays me:

If you don't know Tati's work, he's a sublime silent comedy filmmaker who just didn't happen to work in the silent era. His humor is gentle and silly, and even when it is socially pointed, it does it with a sly smile. He didn't leave a giant body of work, but every single one of his films is ripe for rediscovery by new audiences.

I'm sorry I hadn't mentioned this yet, but cinematographer Jack Cardiff passed away earlier this week. Cardiff was, simply put, one of the greats. His work on movies like "A Matter Of Life And Death" or "The Red Shoes" or "The African Queen" or even "Rambo: First Blood Part II" marked him as a remarkable visual artist, painting in bright primary colors in some cases, capable of sculpting with shadow in other cases, but always working to help sell not only the look of a film but the feel of a film. He was one of the great emotional cinematographers, and I can only hope that his work continues to influence young photographers coming up in the business.

The guys over at MarketSaw are completely insane about 3D in general and "Avatar" specifically, so how many copies of the new Empire do you think they've stuck together so far? Specifically, there's a layout of new photos from the production of the film and some interview material that has him geeking out.

I didn't hate the trailer for Rob Zombie's "H2," the sequel to his remake of "Halloween," and that shocks me. I thought his remake was terrible, but I'm actually sort of intrigued by the idea that he's playing with some radical reinventions this time. That's the only way the idea has any value, if you ask me, and this seems like Zombie's figured out that the closer he stays to what Carpenter did, the less scary it's going to be, and the less interesting it is. I may end up hating this movie, too, but at least he's bringing something new to the table.

Yay.

So it just occurred to me... once the "Ghostbusters" video game comes out and I drop off the map completely, who will post this column? Oh, you think I'm kidding? Well, then, you haven't seen this opening animation from the game, which sets off every nostalgic nerve ending in my body.

It makes me realize that even if "Ghostbusters II" wasn't great, I still wanted them to continue the series. I think it's hard to overstate my love for the entire "Ghostbusters" vibe, and this game looks like they nailed it. And I love that there's a written by credit at the start of the game. Very cool.

I found the woman that my son, Toshiro Lucas, is going to marry. Hope she likes younger dudes.

Does it remotely surprise me to learn that Kim Morgan is a big fan of Cronenberg's "Crash," and that revisiting it is her way of saying goodbye to the great J.G. Ballard? No. No it does not. This girl loves her cars.

Finally, to kick you into the weekend, let's look at what's playing out there right now.

Paramount and Dreamworks have decided to finally release "The Soloist," which was set to be one of the big fall Oscar-contender releases until... you know... they saw it. I'll give them this much... the reaction has been better than I think they expected. There have been some harsh reviews, but our own Greg Ellwood actually enjoyed it and thought it was a solid effort. Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx star in a story based on a truel-life situation where a reporter for the LA Times met, befriended, and wrote about a schizophrenic street musician. Joe Wright, so heavily hyped after "Atonement" and "Pride and Prejudice," directs.

Disney's doing everything they can to launch their new Disney Nature label, an extension of what they used to do with the True-Life Adventures, which my kid adores on DVD. The first release from the new imprint, "earth," is largely made up of footage from the BBC series "Planet Earth," which is a great BluRay. I'm not sure why they're building the launch of this new film series around material that's basically just repurposed from TV, but I'll bet it looks amazing on the bigscreen.

Gee, I wonder what "Fighting" is about. And more than anything, I wish there was some way for me to find out if there's any fighting in it. I was talking to Devin Faraci about this one the other day, and I think the truth is that Dito Montiel (the writer/director) just annoys me. There's this mannered, swaggering, faux-tough guy thing that certain young filmmakers love to indulge that just plain drives me up a tree. It feels thoroughly inauthentic to me. And Montiel's first film, "A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints," absolutely felt like that to me. As a result, I backed out of my "Fighting" screening at the last moment. It may be someone else's cup of tea, and if you want to see a shirtless Channing Tatum make his way through 86 different fights, then you're probably going to love this movie. And you're also probably my friend Jeff.

Is it just me, or does "Obsessed" look like seventeen different flavors of awesome? It looks terrible, mind you, but awesome-terrible. Ali Larter is the crazy white temp who decides she's going to come between married man Idris Elba and his wife Beyonce Knowles. It may be apocryphal, but I've heard the original title of the film was "No She Didn't," and if they had kept that title, I would be at the theater right now, openly worshipping the trashy genius.

I'm still laughing about how bad the reaction to "The Informers" was at Sundance this year. It sounds like a crazy mess of a film, indulgent and creepy, which is always a possibility when adapting Bret Easton Ellis. With a cast that includes Mickey Rourke, Kim Basinger, Amber Heard, and Billy Bob Thornton, it's going to take an IMAX screen to hold all the goddamn crazy.

James Toback's "Tyson" documentary also screened at Sundance this year, and I've managed to miss it over and over now. I'm fascinated by Mike Tyson, though, and Toback strikes me as a cautionary tale for how to squander the goodwill of the industry, so I'm dying to see what happens when you stick these two strong personalities together. Love him or hate him, Tyson was a major figure in the world of boxing for much of the '80s and '90s, and I'm curious to hear what he has to say for himself these days.

Also hitting screens this weekend, the long-delayed (for good reason) "The Mutant Chronicles," a low-budge SF film that manages to waste both Thomas Jane and Ron Perlman, "Il Divo," an Italian biopic about political corruption, "The Garden," a documentary about the battle over a community garden in South Central Los Angeles, and "Is Anybody There?," the Michael Caine film I mentioned last week, goes wider this weekend so even more people have a chance to see it.

That's it for this week for The Morning Read. I've got to run shoot an interview now for an upcoming BluRay release of a movie I've loved for a loooooooooong time, and then tonight, it's off to boldly go where no one (except for the gazillions of people who have already seen and reviewed it) has gone before.

See you guys here this weekend with some catch-up columns for the Motion/Captured Must-See Project and more.

Trailer Watch: Avatar

2009-04-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

Warner Bros. put out a teaser to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone about a year before its release. Columbia did the same with Godzilla. One film was a hit, and the other doesn't even warrant further mention. The point is: big movies get promoted. There's no real rhyme or reason to it—if the movie is supposed to be an event, it gets promoted.

So where's the teaser to Avatar?

In the 12 years since Titanic, James Cameron has created a short-lived and forgettable TV show, produced a handful of documentaries, and even supported one archeologist's assertion that he'd found Jesus' grave. Before Titanic, Cameron had directed five feature films within the same span of time, crowning his achievement with the highest grossing film to date. He's been hard at work over the last two-and-a-half years with what writer Paula Parisi said in 1998 would be the coolest movie ever made.

You'd think Twentieth Century Fox would want to promote the hell out of this thing. The film premieres December 18th.

Supposedly, this IMAX 3D release will utilize the same technology that brought U2-3D to vivid life last year. And if so, this would be a groundbreaking release. A game changer. A James Cameron film. Would this not make great fodder for a 90-second teaser, glimpsing the film’s scope and whetting the appetites of nerds and movie-lovers everywhere?

And yet, eight months out: nothing. Not even a poster.

I recall similar frustration expressed throughout the internets regarding another semi-recent Fox release—The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Creator/director Chris Carter kept a tight lid on the film's production. Fox put out a modest trailer a few months before its July 2008 release. The entire tone of the promotion was eerily reserved. And there's a better than even chance Fox kept it that way because the movie just wasn't all that good.

On the feature front, even the weakest entry in the Cameron library (excluding his Piranha sequel) is still a pretty good flick. You'd think after mowing down the box office with his last film, there'd be a degree of fueled anticipation, but someone somewhere apparently feels otherwise. Which means Avatar may not be all that good either.

Cameron has always faced criticism for putting flair over substance, but his work occasions surprising depth of theme (I'm thinking primarily of The Abyss and Terminator 2). I imagine Avatar would aspire to the same quality. Anyone who had a chance to read the film's treatment before it was pulled off the internet knows the film has big ideas at the helm. The treatment, however, has already received criticism for pushing a heavy environmental message, a topic that’s played a big hand to a number of recent sci-fi films, and to varying results.

This is assuming, of course, the director sticks to his early treatment. Cameron wrote the outline more than a decade ago, and details inevitably get tweaked given that much time to simmer.

Besides, this is all just speculation anyway. Titanic's trailer played at ShoWest about eight months before its December 1997 premiere, if I remember right. Before then, many thought that film would earn a fate worse than its namesake. $601 million later, and the word “titanic” reclaimed its mojo.

The role a trailer plays in the success of a film can vary. Some excellent trailers build buzz for mediocre films; others can thrive with little promotion on the strength of the film alone. The absence of an Avatar trailer affords few clues as to the quality of the actual product. But a glimpse, even a small one, at a film that industry insiders claim will change the face of going to the movies, could only bode well.

Audiences like to get stoked, and getting stoked can only help the film. They say even bad publicity is good publicity, you know. No publicity, however, never worked for anyone.

source

Cover your eyes! 3D is exploding

2009-03-31T04:13:00.000-07:00

It's stupendous! It's electrifying! It's amazing! It's a 3D movie (and magazine and TV) epidemic! Yes, the weirdly geeky movie gimmick from the '50s is enjoying a renaissance moment in the 21st century with its new incarnation, Digital 3D! We take a look at the past, present and future for the phenomenon.

Way back when: The jungle movie Bwana Devil (1952) enjoys the distinction of being the first full-length movie filmed in 3D, and it set up a cascade of other films using the technique, including Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder and Hondo, starring John Wayne. In a nutshell, it allowed moviemakers to take flat two-dimensional scenes and create the illusion of depth. Often, though, the 3D was more for marketing than for moviemaking. Still, it worked to great effect for Creature from the Black Lagoon, which was filmed in Wakulla Springs. The movie was considered by many to be the most memorable 3D movie from this so-called golden era of 3D. The whole craze faded out in the '60s because of the viewing complexity: awkward paper glasses (subject of a memorable Life magazine photo), double synchronized film projectors and silver screens. It just made your head hurt to view a movie that way.

Just when you thought it was safe: 3D reared its double-edged projection again in the early '70s and into the '80s with cheesetastic classics such as Jaws 3D and Friday the 13th — Part 3. Again, the clunky viewing experience proved its demise and it disappeared again.

A dreamer steps in: Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of Dreamworks, began a big hard pitch to theater and movie industry heavyweights in the past few years to move them toward digitizing more screens because he intended to shoot all of his company's animated features in 3D beginning in 2009. His spiel: 3D can increase the industry's box office take, because theaters could charge as much as $5 more per ticket for 3D films; the technology keeps viewers away from DVDs (3D films can't be seen on disc, yet); and it discourages piracy because 3D movies are harder to record. He had reason to celebrate in early October last year, when five film studios agreed to help cover costs (up to $75,000 per screen) for converting roughly 14,000 screens to digital projection in the next three years.

3D to the max: Now that the technology for showing 3D has caught up with the technology for shooting the entire movie that way, expect an explosion of 3D events headed your way that tout the effect. Among them:

• Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience opened over the first weekend of March at No. 2 with $12.7 million in box office. (But it couldn't match the Hannah Montana 3D concert movie of last year, which had an opening of $31.1 million.)

• Tiger Beat, the iconic teen idol magazine, produced its first 3D issue that hit newsstands this week to celebrate the bros' new movie. Other teen superstars who participated in the 3D photo sessions include singer/actress Demi Lovato, iCarly stars Jennette McCurdy and Nathan Kress, Wizards of Waverly Place star Jake T. Austin and Nickelodeon's musical movie Spectacular! stars Nolan Gerard Funk and Victoria Justice. The issue includes free 3D glasses, and the mag's Web site promises bonus 3D photos online.

• The movie Monsters Vs. Aliens is headed our way March 27, just one of several Digital 3D movies released this year. Also scheduled are James Cameron's Avatar (May 22) Pixar's Up (May 29) and Robert Zemeckis' Christmas Carol (Nov. 6).

Home 3D home: While today's 3D is confined to the movies and to a few special TV episodes (NBC's Chuck last month), technology is gearing up to respond to demand for it for home entertainment. In fact, a study by the Consumer Electronics Association found that 16 percent of consumers are interested in watching 3D movies or TV shows in their home, and 14 percent are interested in playing 3D video games. And those geeky glasses that come with the experience? More than half of U.S. adults said having to wear special glasses or hold their heads still while watching a 3D TV would have no impact on them purchasing a 3D set for their home.

Information from BusinessWeek, the Los Angeles Times, Sensio.com and the Miami Herald was used in this report.

source

The Morning Take: Tues., March 10

2009-03-30T04:13:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder what it was like at the meeting when a classic film was being born? If so, check out the Mystery Man on Film blog, which has posted what is says it a link to the 125-page transcript of the story conference for “Raiders of the Los Ark” that included producer George Lucas, director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan.

Our sister blog, ArtsBeat, has a report about a Los Angeles Superior Court judge who has ruled that author Clive Cussler must pay $13.9 million in legal fees to Crusader Entertainment, which made his “Sahara” into a box-office disaster starring Matthew McConaughey. Mr. Cussler had sued the company, Crusader Entertainment, in 2004, saying it had reneged on a deal to give him script approval, but a jury ruled against the author in 2007, the Associated Press reports.

The Hollywood Reporter has a story asking whether the $55.7 million opening weekend for “Watchmen” should be considered a success or a failure, considering the high expectations for the film. Reuters takes the position that it was a disappointment.

Cinematical.com wonders about the famous names who were not present at the recent Academy Awards - including Jack Nicholson and Javier Bardem - and tells why.

Drew Barrymore confirms that she’s being considered to direct “Eclipse,” the third installment in the “Twilight” series about teenaged vampires. The second installment, “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” is due in November, directed by CHris Weitz.

And the usual casting and acquisitions news…

Variety says documentarian Asger Leth is to make his feature-film directing debut with “Cartel,” a thriller about a man trying to protect his son from Mexican drug cartels, with Sean Penn up for the lead role… DreamWorks Animation has signed a deal to make a computer-animated film out of an upcoming children’s book called “Dinotrux,” about a prehistoric world ruled by creatures that are half truck, half dinosaur… David Ayers, who wrote the film “Training Day,” will write and direct “Last Man,” about soldiers fighting aliens on a distant planet… Columbia has purchased the film rights to the upcoming Robert Goolrick novel, “The Reliable Wife,” about a Wisconsin farmer in 1908 who places a newspaper ad for a mate.

source

Yogurtistan Brings Easy 3D And Stock Options To The Browser

2009-03-29T04:12:00.000-07:00

At the Engage! Expo, Yogurt is showing off the engine for its upcoming virtual world, Yogurtistan, with three interesting hooks that may help to set it apart in the increasingly crowded market: Yogurtistan runs in Flash 10 with no other plugins required, but in full 3D with good looking cartoonish characters and customization options; it is partnering with real-world vendors to allow users to spend their virtual currency on physical products; and every time a user spends a virtual Kayme, they gain stock in the company.

"We essentially do the IPO on the first day and sell our company on day one," explained CEO Cemil Türün. "The way to sell our company is to let people buy and spend our currency. If you just keep it, you don’t get anything, so there’s an incentive to spend. That’s a difference from the current economy where there’s an incentive to put it in the bank."

Türün put Yogurtistan's approach in contrast to social services like Twitter or Facebook, where heavy users add value to the service, but, as has been much bemoaned, don't necessarily receive any extra reward.

"It's very Internet," Türün said of the company's plans.

Yogurt is currently working with the SEC of Turkey, where it plans to launch a private beta in early April, but Türün is confident that the ability will come through. The company is aiming for a full launch in December, around the same time as James Cameron's "Avatar," and to take Yogurtistan international once its concept and technology are proven at home.

Alongside the stock options, users may be persuaded to spend their Kaymes simply because of the options available. Yogurtistan is also negotiating deals with banks to let users deposit their money and cash out more easily, something Türün says will come when the world gains traction, but at first it's simply partnering with vendors to accept virtual payments for at least certain items.

So far "10 key vendors" have signed on for Turkey, including its top bank, Gap of Turkey, Diesel of Turkey, and AMC of Turkey.

"If you go and earn free popcorn in the virtual world, you can go to the movie theatre and claim it. You can actually eat your virtual popcorn. And if you watch the movie you’re supposed to, you get 2 tickets for 1," explained Türün.

The company is also negotiating with other partners, like clubs, to offer special access or discounts to Kayme users or Yogurtistan members. For smaller vendors than Gap, the platform includes an API for adding a shop to Yogurtistan or adding its trading system. One perk, says Türün, is that you don't have to walk to every shop across one large virtual world, but each will be included in an easily searchable directory.

For now, though, Yogurt is most excited about its engine. The company has been working on 3D in the browser for some time. It previously was using Flash 9 in combination with Papervision, but wasn't satisified with the results.

Now it runs on Flash 10 and is compatible with OpenGL, which Türün says means it could also eventual work with the iPhone via OpenGL ES. Until then, it also maes it easier for developers to translate their OpenGL games via Yogurt's engine to Flash and for the company to include services like P2P voice and media in its world.

For a browser-based world, it looks like Yogurtistan will also offer a fair amount of customization options. Users will be able to purchase virtual currency, but also earn it by trading or selling with other users. The platform could support anything from a tip jar for VirtualWorldsNews.com, said Türün, to importing animations and virtual good designs from traditional development tools and selling them in-world.

Yogurt is targeting a slightly older demographic than has really been pulled into most worlds (15 or 16 and up), but the lack of a download, appeal of real-world purchases, and custom development options may bring them in. Also, as Türün points out, launching in Turkey may be especially helpful.

"Social spaces are very popular in Turkey. They’re very high in usage, but we don’t have our local examples like this," he said. "I expect to have a lot of use in Turkey first, and once we’re done with the proof of concept and technology, we’ll come to Russia, the U.S., and so on."

Yogurt previously worked as an agency for clients like Coca Cola, but took "more than a million" in funding in 2007 to develop its world. Türün says the company will likely look for more before it finishes development, but that it's on the right track with the original concept still well in place.

source

Jim Cameron's 'Avatar': Still no trailer?

2009-03-28T04:11:00.000-07:00

According to a post from the AceShowbiz blog, James Cameron -- whose face surely appears in the dictionary, right next to the definition of "prickly perfectionist" -- has now refused to approve eight different trailers for "Avatar," his much-anticipated sci-fi epic that's due out this December from 20th Century Fox. The post says Cameron is now at work on his own trailer, and the tireless wonderers, who run the online rumor mills, are wondering about it surfacing in some form at ShoWest later this month.

My sources at Fox aren't so hot right now. And marketing chief Tony Sella never returns any of my calls. But it would hardly be a shock if Cameron is being especially prickly about how to best present the images from "Avatar." If the response to "Watchmen" over the past year is any indicator, the blogosphere tends to wildly overreact to every action -- or perceived action -- involving any hotly anticipated fanboy film.

As it turns out, the original post about Cameron's trailer displeasure, which came from the 3D blog MarketSaw, isn't exactly the kind of story you'd take to the bank. It's essentially a rumor-mill item, concluding with the disclaimer: "Strength of rumor: 8 out of 10 (trusted source)." (A disclaimer other bloggers somehow forget to pass along.) Rival studio marketers say its a little early to be worried about a trailer delay, since Cameron could easily wait until a big early-summer film, like Fox's own "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," to premiere the "Avatar" trailer.

Anyway, is rejecting eight different trailers really such a big deal? I doubt that the studios keep statistics on this sort of thing, but I'm guessing that if there's a record for most rejected trailers, David Fincher still has Cameron beat by a mile.

Photo of James Cameron by Kevork Djansezian / Associated Press

source

IMAX Corporation reports fourth quarter 2008 financial results

2009-03-27T04:10:00.000-07:00

    HIGHLIGHTS
   ----------
   -   Company reports fourth quarter 2008 net loss per share of $0.21, or
       loss per share of $0.11 excluding charges related to the Company's
       introduction of digital and launch of its joint revenue sharing
       initiative

   -   Company installed a total of 60 systems in 2008, including 46
       digital; 64 digital systems currently in operation

   -   IMAX total network grows by 17% in 2008 to 351 theatres; commercial
       network increases 29% to 231 theatres

   -   Watchmen: The IMAX Experience officially kicks off highly anticipated
       2009 movie slate, delivering approximately $8.0 million in gross box
       office through first six days

TORONTO, March 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - IMAX Corporation (NASDAQ: IMAX; TSX: IMX) today reported a net loss per share of $0.21 for the quarter ended December 31, 2008, compared to a net loss per share of $0.25 for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007. During the fourth quarter of 2008, the Company incurred certain charges related to the introduction of its digital projection system and the launch of new joint revenue sharing arrangement theatres. Excluding these items from the fourth quarters of 2008 and 2007, the Company's loss per share was $0.11 and a loss per share of $0.21, respectively. The charges in the fourth quarter of 2008 include: a $1.6 million asset impairment charge reflecting the write down of film-based projector inventories; $1.5 million in launch costs reflecting the opening of new joint revenue sharing arrangement theatres; and $1.3 million in accelerated depreciation on existing film-based joint revenue sharing arrangement theatres due to the earlier than anticipated digital upgrade of those theatres. Included in the fourth quarter of 2007 was a $4.0 million asset impairment charge reflecting the write-down of film-based projector inventories, partially offset by a one-time benefit from discontinued operations of $2.4 million.

IMAX Co-Chairmen and Co-CEOs Richard L. Gelfond and Bradley J. Wechsler commented, "As we have said previously, in 2008 we laid the groundwork that is significantly transforming the Company from one that was entirely film-based to one that is increasingly digital, and our business model from one of one- time sales to one of more significant recurring revenues. While our financial results reflect the costs associated with this transformation, our revenue did not yet reflect the benefits, as many customers elected to wait for our digital product. With the introduction of IMAX's digital technology now well underway, we continue to believe that the key drivers of our business - our digital technology, our growing base of joint revenue sharing theatres and our robust movie slate - should deliver strong revenue growth and return us to profitability in 2009."

The Company achieved several important strategic milestones in fiscal 2008 that it believes positions it for significant growth in 2009 and beyond:

    -   Successfully launched its IMAX digital product, with 46 digital
       systems deployed in the second half of 2008.
   -   Installed a total of 60 IMAX projection systems (including two
       digital upgrades), the most installations in any given year in the
       history of the Company. Eighteen were under sales/sales type lease
       agreements (15 of which were recognized as revenue), 41 were under
       joint revenue sharing arrangements, and one was an operating lease.
       The Company ended 2008 with a total of 351 IMAX systems in operation,
       a 17% increase over 2007, and its commercial network grew to 231
       theatres, up 29% over last year.
   -   Secured $18.0 million in funding in May 2008 through a private
       placement of common stock to its largest shareholder at market prices
       of $6.60 per share and re-negotiated its $30.0 million credit
       facility such that it is no longer subject to any EBITDA maintenance
       covenants provided the Company is in compliance with certain minimum
       liquidity requirements.
   -   Broadened its studio relationships, including signing a multi-picture
       deal with Walt Disney Pictures.
   -   Signed deals for 90 new systems: 42 under joint revenue sharing
       arrangements and 48 under sales/sales type lease/operating lease
       arrangements.

Messrs. Gelfond and Wechsler continued, "We believe that the combination of these very significant initiatives creates a more compelling business proposition for ourselves and for our constituencies. Given the rate at which we are capable of installing new systems, the proven reliability of the systems to date, the positive feedback we are getting from our studio and exhibitor partners, and, perhaps most importantly, the response from the consumer, we feel very pleased and confident about our digital roll-out thus far."

For the three months ended December 31, 2008, total revenues were $28.1 million, as compared to $32.3 million reported for the prior year period. In September, the Company released DreamWorks Pictures/Paramount's Eagle Eye: The IMAX Experience, which grossed a total of $7.0 million in IMAX(R) theatres worldwide, the vast majority of which was captured during the fourth quarter. In November, the Company released DreamWorks Animation's Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa: The IMAX Experience, which grossed $11.7 million in IMAX theatres worldwide as of quarter end and $12.2 million over the course of its run. On December 12th, the Company released Twentieth Century Fox's The Day the Earth Stood Still: The IMAX Experience, which grossed $10.3 million worldwide in IMAX theatres in the fourth quarter and $13.8 million over the course of its run.

"Our fourth quarter revenue results primarily reflect the near-term impact of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince moving out of the fourth quarter of 2008 and into the third quarter of 2009, coupled with difficult year-over-year film revenue comparisons to last year's Beowulf: An IMAX Experience and I am Legend: The IMAX Experience. That said, we are very encouraged that in these challenging economic times, consumers are continuing to embrace The IMAX Experience(R). Our percentage of gross box office continues to outpace our percentage of screens, demonstrating consumers' enthusiasm for our brand."

The Company installed and recognized revenue on six theatre systems that qualified as either sales or sales-type leases in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared to five in 2007, and installed 26 new systems under joint revenue sharing arrangements in the fourth quarter, compared to two in the year ago period.

Fourth quarter gross margin of $6.4 million includes the previously mentioned transitional charges incurred in the period. Excluding those items, gross margin in the fourth quarter of 2008 was $10.8 million. A description of how these items impacted gross margin on a segment basis is included with the segment table at the end of this press release.

Selling, general and administrative expenses decreased to $9.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2008 compared to $13.0 million in the same period a year ago, including a decrease in legal and professional fees of $1.9 million. Research and development costs decreased to $1.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared to $1.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2007.

At the end of 2008, the Company's backlog consisted of 213 theatre systems compared to 186 theatre systems in backlog at the end of 2007. Included in the 2008 and 2007 system backlog totals were 106 and 104 theatres under joint revenue sharing arrangements, respectively.

As of December 31, 2008, the Company's cash position was $27.0 million, compared to cash of $37.7 million at the end of the third quarter and $16.9 million as of December 31, 2007. The Company's cash position reflects investments related to its joint revenue sharing digital projection systems, which amounted to approximately $8.9 million in the fourth quarter and $18.5 million for the year. The Company commented that its costs per system remain on plan and reiterated that it remains confident that the combination of its cash position, available credit of $10.5 million under its credit facility, and operating cash flows will provide the necessary funding for its continued roll-out of joint revenue sharing digital projection systems.

The Company believes that its joint revenue sharing business model makes it significantly more affordable and less capital intensive for exhibitors to be in the IMAX business while at the same time driving greater recurring revenue for the Company. Following its 100-theater deal with AMC signed in December 2007, the Company signed strategic joint revenue sharing arrangements in 2008 with top exhibitors such as Regal Cinemas in the U.S., Hoyts Cinemas in Australia, Tokyu Cinemas in Japan, and Cineplexx in Austria (fourth quarter). The Company also signed a two-theatre systems sales deal with Odeon in the UK in the fourth quarter, as the Company works to increase its penetration in Europe.

During the fourth quarter, the Company continued its roll out of IMAX digital projection systems with the successful delivery and installation of 32 digital projection systems (including two digital upgrades), and ended 2008 with 46 digital systems in operation. To date, 64 IMAX digital systems are in operation.

Messrs. Gelfond and Wechsler continued, "Our joint revenue sharing model, coupled with our digital technology, are the catalysts behind our record network growth, record year-end systems backlog and record number of Hollywood titles for 2009, all of which should drive revenue and earnings growth as well as significant cash flows beginning this year. At the end of the fourth quarter, 52 IMAX theatres were operating under our joint revenue sharing model, up from 11 last year and double the 26 we had in operation at the end of the third quarter. Importantly, joint revenue sharing systems that have been open for over a year are averaging initial rates of return of approximately 40% before taking film revenue into consideration, which is in line with our expectations."

The Company's 2009 movie slate currently includes 11 titles (one IMAX original production and 10 DMR titles), compared to eight movies (all DMR titles) in 2008. The Company believe these titles include some of the most highly anticipated films of the year, such as Watchmen: The IMAX Experience (WB, March 6, 2009); Monsters vs. Aliens: An IMAX 3D Experience (DreamWorks Animation SKG, March 27, 2009); Star Trek: The IMAX Experience (Paramount Pictures, May 2009); Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian: The IMAX Experience (Twentieth Century Fox, May 2009); Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: The IMAX Experience (Paramount Pictures, June 2009); Harry Potter and the Half- Blood Prince: An IMAX 3D Experience (WB, July 2009); Disney's A Christmas Carol: An IMAX 3D Experience (Walt Disney Pictures and ImageMovers Digital, November 2009); and James Cameron's Avatar: An IMAX 3D Experience (Twentieth Century Fox, December 2009).

The year officially kicked into gear last weekend with WB's Watchmen: The IMAX Experience. The IMAX release contributed $5.4 million, or approximately 10%, of the $55.0 million that the film grossed at the domestic box office, on a total of 124 North American IMAX screens, for a domestic IMAX per screen average of $43,863. Internationally, the picture generated an estimated $727,000 from 29 IMAX screens. The film's worldwide IMAX opening total was $6.2 million and the film has generated a total of approximately $8.0 million in IMAX worldwide through yesterday.

Messrs. Gelfond and Wechsler commented, "Our film slate is the fuel that drives our go-forward business model, and we are very pleased with how the slate for 2009 has come together. We are on track to show a record 11 titles in the IMAX network this year, which is only possible because of our introduction of digital, and we likely have room for one more title in the fall. Our ability to show 10 to 12 titles a year, versus the six to seven we have been able to show historically, gives us greater ability to capture more box office revenue, especially in our joint revenue sharing theatres. Our 2009 slate also includes some of the most highly anticipated 3D titles of the year, starting with DreamWorks Animation's Monsters vs. Aliens on March 27th, which we anticipate will show on close to 200 IMAX screens worldwide, our biggest IMAX release ever."

Messrs. Gelfond and Wechsler concluded, "Given our film slate, anticipated network growth and the strength we are seeing in the movie industry overall, we believe there is good reason to be optimistic about our business performance in 2009. Our number of contracted theatre systems planned for 2009 coupled with the quality of our movie slate is providing increased visibility into our business. Similar to 2008, our goal for 2009 is to have the bulk of our 2010 movie slate finalized this year. To that end, we are speaking to every major Hollywood studio about multiple titles for 12 different slots next year, and we look forward to announcing those titles as the year unfolds."

Conference Call Information

The Company will host a conference call this morning at 8:30 AM ET to discuss its fourth quarter financial results and outlook for 2009. To access the call via phone, interested parties should dial (866) 322-8032 approximately 10 minutes before it begins. International callers should dial (416) 640-3406. A recording of the call will be available by dialing (888) 203- 1112 or (647) 436-0148. The code for both the live call and the replay is 7756431. The Company will also host a webcast of the conference call, which can be accessed on www.imax.com by clicking on 'Investor Relations.'

About IMAX Corporation

IMAX Corporation is one of the world's leading entertainment technology companies, specializing in immersive motion picture technologies. The worldwide IMAX network is among the most important and successful theatrical distribution platforms for major event Hollywood films around the globe, with IMAX theatres delivering the world's best cinematic presentations using proprietary IMAX, IMAX(R) 3D, and IMAX DMR(R) technology. IMAX DMR is the Company's groundbreaking digital re-mastering technology that allows it to digitally transform virtually any conventional motion picture into the unparalleled image and sound quality of The IMAX Experience(R). IMAX's renowned projectors display crystal-clear images on the world's biggest screens, and the IMAX brand is recognized throughout the world for extraordinary and immersive entertainment experiences for consumers. As of December 31, 2008, there were 351 IMAX theatres (231 commercial, 120 institutional) operating in 42 countries.

IMAX(R), IMAX(R) Dome, IMAX(R) 3D, IMAX(R) 3D Dome, Experience It In IMAX(R), The IMAX Experience(R), An IMAX Experience(R), IMAX DMR(R), DMR(R), IMAX MPX(R), IMAX think big(R) and think big(R) are trademarks and trade names of the Company. More information about the Company can be found at www.imax.com.

This press release contains forward looking statements that are based on management's assumptions and existing information and involve certain risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from future results expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. Important factors that could affect these statements include ongoing discussions with the SEC and OSC relating to their ongoing inquiries and the Company's accounting, the performance of films, the signing of theatre system agreements, the viability of new technologies, businesses and products, the timing of theatre system deliveries, the mix of theatre systems shipped, the timing of the recognition of revenues and expenses on film production and distribution agreements, risks arising from potential material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting and fluctuations in foreign currency and in the large format, general commercial exhibition and out-of-home entertainment markets. These factors and other risks and uncertainties are discussed in the Company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and most recent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q.

                              IMAX CORPORATION
                   CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS
      In accordance with United States Generally Accepted Accounting
                                Principles
         (In thousands of U.S. dollars, except per share amounts)


                                    Three Months            Year Ended
                                 Ended December 31,         December 31,
                            ------------------------ -----------------------
                                 2008        2007        2008        2007
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
   Revenues
   Equipment and product
    sales................... $    9,764  $   10,773  $   27,853  $   32,500
   Services.................     14,470      18,171      64,985      69,149
   Rentals..................      2,495       2,147       8,207       7,107
   Finance income...........      1,065       1,074       4,300       4,649
   Other....................        270         138         881       2,427
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
                                 28,064      32,303     106,226     115,832
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------

   Costs and expenses
    applicable to revenues
   Equipment and product
    sales...................      7,154       8,433      17,182      21,546
   Services.................     10,753      15,331      44,372      50,090
   Rentals..................      3,654       1,083       7,043       2,987
   Other....................         71           -         169          50
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
                                 21,632      24,847      68,766      74,673
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
   Gross margin.............      6,432       7,456      37,460      41,159
   Selling, general and
    administrative expenses       9,503      12,982      43,652      44,705
   Research and development       1,306       1,609       7,461       5,789
   Amortization of
    intangibles.............        137         141         526         547
   Receivable provisions net
    of recoveries...........        863       1,102       1,977       1,795
   Asset impairments........         28         562          28         562
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
   Loss from operations.....     (5,405)     (8,940)    (16,184)    (12,239)
   Interest income..........         99         215         381         862
   Interest expense.........     (4,400)     (4,128)    (17,707)    (17,093)
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
   Loss from continuing
    operations before
    income taxes............     (9,706)    (12,853)    (33,510)    (28,470)
   Recovery of (provision
    for) income taxes.......        663         338         (92)       (472)
   Loss from continuing
    operations..............     (9,043)    (12,515)    (33,602)    (28,942)
   Earnings from
    discontinued operations           -       2,370           -       2,002
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
   Net loss................. $   (9,043) $  (10,145) $  (33,602) $  (26,940)
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------

   Loss per share
   Loss per share -
    basic & diluted:
     Net loss from
      continuing operations  $    (0.21) $    (0.31) $    (0.79) $    (0.72)
     Net loss from
      discontinued
      operations............          -        0.06           -        0.05
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
     Net loss............... $    (0.21) $    (0.25) $    (0.79) $    (0.67)
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------

   Weighted average number
    of shares outstanding
    (000's):
     Weighted average number
      of shares used in
      computing basic loss
      per share.............     43,421      40,444      42,393      40,309
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
     Weighted average number
      of shares used in
      computing diluted loss
      per share.............     43,421      40,444      42,393      40,309
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------

   Additional disclosure:

   Depreciation and
    amortization (1)         $    5,272  $    4,944  $   18,071  $   17,738

   (1) Includes $0.3 million and $1.4 million of amortization of deferred
       financing costs charged to interest expense for the three months and
       year ended December 31, 2008, respectively (December 31, 2007 - $0.3
       million and $1.3 million, respectively)



                             IMAX CORPORATION
                        CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS
      In accordance with United States Generally Accepted Accounting
                                Principles
                      (In thousands of U.S. dollars)

                                                  December 31,  December 31,
                                                        2008        2007
                                                  ------------  ------------
   Assets
   Cash and cash equivalents...................... $   27,017    $   16,901
   Accounts receivable, net of allowance for
    doubtful accounts of $2,901 (2007 - $3,045)...     22,982        25,505
   Financing receivables..........................     56,138        59,092
   Inventories....................................     19,822        22,050
   Prepaid expenses...............................      1,998         2,187
   Film assets....................................      3,923         2,042
   Property, plant and equipment..................     39,405        23,708
   Other assets...................................     16,074        15,093
   Goodwill.......................................     39,027        39,027
   Other intangible assets........................      2,281         2,377
                                                  ------------  ------------
     Total assets................................. $  228,667    $  207,982
                                                  ------------  ------------
                                                  ------------  ------------

   Liabilities
   Bank indebtedness.............................. $   20,000    $        -
   Accounts payable...............................     15,790        12,300
   Accrued liabilities............................     58,199        61,967
   Deferred revenue...............................     71,452        59,085
   Senior Notes due 2010..........................    160,000       160,000
                                                  ------------  ------------
     Total liabilities............................    325,441       293,352
                                                  ------------  ------------

   Commitments and contingencies

   Shareholders' deficiency
   Capital stock common shares - no par value.
    Authorized - unlimited number.
     Issued and outstanding - 43,490,631 (2007
      - 40,423,074)...............................    141,584       122,455
   Other equity...................................      5,183         4,088
   Deficit........................................   (247,009)     (213,407)
   Accumulated other comprehensive income.........      3,468         1,494
                                                  ------------  ------------
     Total shareholders' deficiency...............    (96,774)      (85,370)
                                                  ------------  ------------
     Total liabilities and shareholders'
      deficiency.................................. $  228,667    $  207,982
                                                  ------------  ------------
                                                  ------------  ------------



                             IMAX CORPORATION
                          SELECTED FINANCIAL DATA
      In accordance with United States Generally Accepted Accounting
                                Principles
                      (in thousands of U.S. dollars)

   The Company has eight reportable segments identified by category of
product sold or service provided: IMAX systems; theater system maintenance;
joint revenue sharing arrangements; film production and IMAX DMR; film
distribution; film post-production; theater operations; and other. The IMAX
systems segment designs, manufactures, sells or leases IMAX theater projection
system equipment. The theater system maintenance maintains IMAX theater
projection system equipment in the IMAX theater network. The joint revenue
sharing arrangements segment provides IMAX theater projection system equipment
to an exhibitor in exchange for a share of the profits. The film production
and IMAX DMR segment produces films and performs film re-mastering services.
The film distribution segment distributes films for which the Company has
distribution rights. The film post-production segment provides film post-
production and film print services. The theater operations segment owns and
operates certain IMAX theaters. The other segment includes camera rentals and
other miscellaneous items.

                                  Three Months             Year Ended
                                Ended December 31,         December 31,
                            ------------------------ -----------------------
                                 2008        2007        2008        2007
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
   Revenue
   IMAX systems............. $   11,611  $   12,314  $   34,783  $   40,782
   Theater system
    maintenance.............      4,342       4,035      16,331      15,991
   Joint revenue sharing
    arrangements............      1,408         726       3,435       2,343
   Films
     Production and IMAX
      DMR...................      3,364       5,224      17,944      19,863
     Distribution...........      2,087       2,369       9,559      11,018
     Post-production........      1,974       2,402       6,929       5,693
   Theater operations.......      2,520       4,141      14,040      16,584
   Other....................        758       1,092       3,205       3,558
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
   Total.................... $   28,064  $   32,303  $  106,226  $  115,832
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------

   Gross margins
   IMAX systems(1).......... $    4,512  $    4,074  $   18,374  $   20,239
   Theater system
    maintenance(2)..........      1,938       1,303       7,117       6,970
   Joint revenue sharing
    arrangements(3).........     (1,872)        287      (1,865)      1,362
   Films
     Production and IMAX
      DMR...................        980         697       6,992       4,915
     Distribution...........        462         (37)      3,120       3,484
     Post-production........        711       1,023       3,451       2,552
   Theater operations.......       (439)       (146)       (132)      1,137
   Other....................        140         255         403         500
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
   Total.................... $    6,432  $    7,456  $   37,460  $   41,159
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------
                            ------------ ----------- ----------- -----------

   (1) Includes a charge of $1.5 million and $2.4 million for the three
       months and year ended December 31, 2008, respectively, (December 31,
       2007 - $3.2 million and $3.3 million, respectively), in costs and
       expenses applicable to revenues, primarily for the write-down of
       film-based projector inventories.
   (2) Includes a charge of $0.1 million and $0.1 million for the three
       months and year ended December 31, 2008, respectively, (December 31,
       2007 - $0.6 million and $0.6 million, respectively), in costs and
       expenses applicable to revenues, primarily for the write-down of
       film-based service inventories.
   (3) In 2008, the Company adjusted the estimated useful life of its film-
       based IMAX MPX projection systems in use by existing JRSA theaters,
       on a prospective basis, to reflect the Company's accelerated
       transition to a digital projection system for these theatres,
       resulting in increased depreciation expense of $1.3 million and $1.5
       million for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2008. Also
       includes launch expenses associated with the opening of new joint
       revenue sharing arrangement theatres of $1.5 million and $1.8 million
       for the three months and year-ended December 31, 2008, respectively.

SOURCE IMAX Corporation

James Cameron: Go Easy on the AVATAR Rumors, I’m an Astronaut.

2009-03-26T04:09:00.000-07:00

Lately a lot of speculation has arisen regarding James Cameron’s AVATAR, that imminent, shadowy monolith of 3D cinematic game-changers due Fall 2009. There were rumors that a precedent-setting chase scene in the first-person was facing problems, and an even more random and recent rumor that Cameron had rejected at least eight different variations of a debut trailer. C’mon, we expect no less than double digits. For myriad reasons—most involving technology and theatrical presentation—this $200 million film is the Area 51 of the blogosphere. It’s strange that so many of the rumors have a twist of negativity to them akin to “Johnny’s volcano science experiment is going to fail.” Fear of the unknown? Cameron took the time to chime in today at AICN to reiterate that his film is next levs so STFU

“As usual the rumor mill is grinding out mostly spurious stuff. …I have no idea where that [rumor] came from but I haven’t rejected any trailers (yet) since I haven’t seen any yet. They’re still working on them for presentation, which presumably will be soon. …Every once in a while, as we are absorbed in some intensely detailed discussion about sub-surface scattering or the way a tail is moving in the animation, I’ll just stop and have this moment of clarity, as if seeing it for the first time. And I realize that’s what the lunar astronauts must have felt like.”

Does that analogy to walking on the moon sound like damage control? Not at all, right? Rastafarian babe Thundercats or not, AVATAR is the event movie to beat in 2009. Michael Bay and McG’s “my robot is bigger and more realistic” debate is not on Cameron’s radar screen.

Discuss: Let us know what you think about Cameron’s statement in the comments. And if there is a film you’re looking forward to more this year, explain.

source

Why Avatar is my most looked forward to film of the year

2009-03-25T04:09:00.001-07:00

We're looking forward to lots of films this year. But James Cameron’s Avatar is at the top of Simon Brew's list...

As the trailers for the assorted summer blockbusters start jostling for position, and now that Watchmen has finally made its theatrical bow, a friend caught me cold a few days back and asked me a simple question: what's the film I'm most looking forward to seeing this year.

I said, almost instinctively, Avatar. Never mind that I can't wait for Coraline. Nor the fact that I can't wait for Armando Ianucci's film debut, In The Loop. Heck, there's Michael Mann's Public Enemies which is making me sweat up just at the thought of how cool that could be. Throw in Star Trek, The Surrogates, Up and a good number more I could list, and there's plenty to look forward to.

But none of them are Avatar. And to paraphrase Scream 2, this isn't from someone who's got a "hard on for Cameron". I loved Aliens, never went mad for - but greatly admired - the Terminator movies, was impressed by The Abyss, could take or leave True Lies, and Titanic could only be consumed by excising the entire first half.

Yet Avatar represents a bona fide gamble, and a major one, in the science fiction genre. That simply doesn't happen anymore. Science fiction, outside of a few key franchises, is a big gamble, especially so on a non-franchise production. And you strongly suspect that if the green light for Avatar had been needed in the last six to twelve months, it simply wouldn't have happened.

For it's believed that Fox has pumped somewhere in the region of $US200m into the film (and you can add $US100m to that if you believe some sources), which doesn't - at least from where I'm sitting - look like it's got a $US200m audience to aim for. There aren't big movie star names here, much though we love seeing Sigourney Weaver getting a juicy role again. But along with Sam Worthington, Zoe Saklana, Michelle Rodriguez and Stephen Lang, she's going to struggle to open a movie to Tom Cruise levels. Cameron in the past has delivered the biggest grossing film of all time, but Avatar would do well to get a quarter of Titanic's $US600m US box office take.

And yet no matter how the end product turns out, the sheer experience of Avatar has got to be worth the gamble of a ticket price.

Firstly, there's the fact that this is the film that will tell us once and for all if 3D is the future of cinema. Sure, various animated films are going 3D this year, and the tantalising delight of Final Destination 4 in 3D is one that I'm struggling to resist. But this is James Cameron we're talking about. Whereas some will approach 3D by looking at what's available and making the best of it, he's going to push the technical potential of this so hard that it'll be, technologically, the most advanced 3D movie to date.

Factor in too that, no matter what you may make of Cameron the screenwriter (and I can take him or leave him, depending on the film in question), as a director there are few who do spectacle or scale quite on his level. Titanic was a messy film, but from the moment the boat hit the iceberg, it was hard to find any kind of big screen spectacle that could match it. Over a decade on, few directors comprehend the potential of a really big screen in quite the way that James Cameron does, and given that he has new 3D toys to play with as well, it's quite mouthwatering what the man could do with it all.

Finally, this is the film that the man has been working on, on and off, for a good decade now, and is only making it now because the technology for him to realise his vision has become even vaguely accessible. He's sat on this one for some time, and I can't wait to see why.

I'm not blind to the problems here. There's a real potential that this could become a technical circus at the expense of a good film, and what I've read of the story and plot - and I'm deliberately keeping myself away from too many details - makes it look interesting, but not yet compelling.

But for me, nothing quite beats a night out at the cinema when there's someone behind the camera pulling out all the stops to give me something really special. I love small dramas, I love indie movies and I've got several creaking shelves packed with world cinema DVDs. Yet does anything quite beat going to see a really big film in a really big cinema with a really big bucket of popcorn on your lap? Life has few pleasures quite like it, and whether it wilts or soars, Avatar is nonetheless the biggest film, in a couple of senses, of the year. The sheer scale and ambition of it marks it, for me, as an absolute must-see.

December 18th 2009 is firmly inked in my diary. And I really hope I'm not disappointed.

source

Michelle Rodriguez Interview, AVATAR

2009-03-25T04:06:00.000-07:00

Michelle Rodriguez describes AVATAR Footage to us and talks about her role in the SciFi epic! MoviesOnline caught up with actress Michelle Rodriguez at the Los Angeles press day where she was promoting her new film, “Fast & Furious” and we asked her what it was like working with James Cameron on his upcoming sci-fi action/adventure “Avatar.”

More than ten years in the making, Avatar marks Cameron's return to feature directing since helming 1997's Titanic, the highest grossing film of all time and winner of eleven Oscars including Best Picture. WETA Digital, renowned for its work in “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy and “King Kong,” incorporates new intuitive CGI technologies to transform the environments and characters into photorealistic 3D imagery and create an alien world rich with imaginative vistas, creatures and characters.

Michelle Rodriguez is a fabulous person and we really appreciated her time. Here’s what she had to tell us:

Q: How did James Cameron find you?

Michelle Rodriguez: James saw me in “Girlfight.” It's that movie. It's the only movie I was ever a lead in, and I guess I did a good job because people watched it and liked it.

Q: Can you talk about your character in Avatar?

Michelle Rodriguez: I'm basically a pilot, a pilot in another planet.

Q: How was it being directed by Cameron?

Michelle Rodriguez: Are you fucking kidding me? That guy is so amazing. He thinks in 12 dimensions at all times. That’s what I love about him. You could sit there and you could talk for hours about the advancements in molecular science or you could sit there and you can talk about mythology and story building, character building. You could talk about cameras, the history of film, the history of Russia. You could talk about flying to another planet. You could talk about space research. You could talk about underwater adventures. You could talk about how he constructed special technology for underwater adventures. Or you could sit there and talk to him about how he developed his own fricking cameras with his brother. I mean, like, this guy is a genius.

Q: Have you seen the footage and how does it look?

Michelle Rodriguez: This is the beauty of working with that technology. You know, the majority of the time when you work on something that’s greenscreened, from my experience from watching behind the scenes or having my little touch of greenscreen in “S.W.A.T.” or something, you get to see what you’ve done immediately and have something to work off of. The majority of time when people work in a movie with greenscreen you don’t have that. You don’t have the ability to go and see what you just did. So, you’re working with a golf ball or you’re working with an “X” on a green wall and you’re just hoping that you’ve really hit your mark interacting with this. You’re just kind of trying to remember as much of your make-believe time at the age of 5 as you possibly could to get you through it. But, with this technology that he’s got, you just go there and you see what you’re interacting with right there because it’s a mixture of live 3D footage, the props on the set, and the virtual world that he spent God knows how long creating. It's fucking amazing. It's hardcore. I can't even imagine anything bigger.

Q: Are you looking forward to being in one of the most anticipated films of the year and can you talk a little bit about the expectations that go with that?

Michelle Rodriguez: Me? You know what? I’d serve James Cameron coffee every day for four years and I would consider that college. I don't give a rat's ass how people receive whatever we did. I am just incredibly honored to have been seen by him and for him to like keep me in mind for a project that he's had for the last, what, eight years? To call me up and say, "Hey, I want you to be a part of this," no matter what anybody says, because everybody was talking so much schmack about me, and it's so hard to get a job when all these people are talking shit about you in the press, just because you're growing up. You know, I used to poop in my pants too, and I learned how to use the bathroom eventually. People were so hard on me, so it's really important for me to have individuals that get it, that know, that can see in my eyes or see me on screen and know what I'm capable of and not be scared to hire me because of some commercial hoopla that people are saying. That was very important.

Q: In light of that, how would you assess your career and your life from your point of view?

Michelle Rodriguez: I’m very happy. I wouldn’t take back anything.

“Avatar” opens in theaters on December 18th. Look for our upcoming interview with Michelle for “Fast and Furious” which opens in theaters on April 3rd.

source

3D films back in cinema, but porn will lead

2009-02-27T01:00:00.000-08:00

Horror, animation and concert movies are out or on the way, but adult entertainment will push boundaries with the new technology

This is the year Hollywood’s billion-dollar 3D movie gamble will be played out on the big screen, with dozens of 3D films, across all genres, set for release in the coming months. You can already watch the horror movie My Bloody Valentine in 3D; and Coraline, a stop-action 3D animated feature based on a story by Neil Gaiman, opens in May. Even the Jonas Brothers, a boyband, are jumping on the bandwagon with a 3D concert movie. More than 30 3D films are in production, including Avatar, the first feature directed by James Cameron since Titanic, due at the end of the year.

Betting that the format will offer something consumers can’t get on their new HDTV screens at home, Hollywood is quickly converting cinemas and heavily promoting forthcoming 3D films such as the blockbuster Monsters vs Aliens. Its producer, DreamWorks, handed out 150m sets of special glasses so American viewers could get a taste of the experience by watching a 3D trailer at half-time during the recent Super Bowl.

As heavily as Hollywood is boosting the theatrical experience, however, it is at home that most people will experience the coming revolution. Companies such as Mitsubishi, Panasonic and Samsung are busily developing 3D TV systems. The market is expected to be worth $16 billion in the next decade. Most of the new Hollywood 3D films, though, won’t be available for home viewing until next year at the earliest. And there aren’t enough of them to fill more than a couple of days’ viewing. So where will the product come from for this new kind of television-watching?

Within the industry, the dirty secret is that 3D will be carried into the homes of consumers not by mainstream Hollywood, nor even by satellite providers such as Sky, but on the back of the apparently insatiable desire for new ways of watching pornography.

“3D TV will be taken to the next level as the adult entertainment industry once again pushes the boundaries with new tech,” says the online technology site T3.com. “The porn industry is going nuts for it now, and that’s traditionally where all the innovation is — multiangle DVDs came about thanks to porn, after all.”

That should not be a surprise. Pornography has been the driving force behind every significant new entertainment delivery system in the past few decades — the VHS home-video revolution of the 1980s, the satellite TV boom of the 1990s, the internet today. Right now, porn distributors are at the forefront of developing the technology to stream and download video on the internet, and to find ways to make people pay for it.

The porn industry is actually banking on the revolution even more than mainstream Hollywood, because it’s flagging. Thanks to the ease with which porn can be accessed for free on the internet, legally and illegally, the industry’s DVD sales have gone decidedly limp, dropping by as much as 50%, according to some estimates. So, at the recent Adult Entertainment Expo, producers were almost ecstatic at the opportunities offered by 3D systems, whose booths attracted bigger crowds than the nude porn stars nearby.

“Once film-makers get the hang of it, feet will be hanging out of the screen and you’ll be dodging the money shot,” said Tony Ross, president of Glacier Media Systems, which makes the new IceBerg entertainment system and is happy to promote the porno possibilities of its technology. The Iceberg can convert standard DVDs to 3D, which can then be watched with special glasses, made by Nvidia.

Although the Iceberg currently costs just under $2,000, the price is expected to drop fast, and less sophisticated 3D TV systems are already available, costing just a few hundred dollars. “With the glasses on, things just pop out at you... sometimes in pairs,” said Charlie Demerjian, writing about the porn experience for a technology magazine. “You almost have to duck to avoid getting hit with large silicone objects.”

What’s funny is that 3D porn is nothing new, for all the media brouhaha recently when a Hong Kong producer announced that he was going to be making the “first” 3D porn film, 3D Sex and Zen, a $4m remake of an erotic classic, Sex and Zen. “Just imagine you’ll be watching it as if you were sitting beside the bed,” said Stephen Shiu Jr. “There will be many close-ups. It will look as if the actresses are only a few centimetres from the audience.”

That was all marketing hype. A number of striptease shorts were made in 3D in the early 1950s and shown in cinemas. In 1954, the movie French Line was released, starring the Hollywood siren Jane Russell. It wasn’t porn, but the ad copy hyped up the sexual excitement of seeing the busty Ms Russell in the new format: “JR in 3D! It’ll knock both your eyes out!”

The first known hardcore 3D porn film was The Starlets, made in 1976. In fact, the film was marketed as a “4D” film, the fourth dimension being the ability to arouse the viewer. The Stewardesses, made in 1971, showed the potential of 3D pornography by taking an astonishing $27m, making it the most successful 3D film of all time. The distributor had 10 technicians flying to cities all over America to set up the projection systems and screens needed to show the film. To modern eyes, The Stewardesses is unbelievably cheesy and inadvertently hilarious, but in the era before hardcore porn became widely available, it delivered a real thrill.

“Think of it as the Titanic of 3D boobie movies,” said the 3D movie buff Dion Conflict in an essay titled Why They Call It the Cockpit. The Stewardesses is being remade and should be released next year, just in time for your new 3D TV.

If the past is anything to go by, as well as mainstream Hollywood movies and cheesy porn in three dimensions, we can, thankfully, expect the new technology to attract a highly esoteric range of film-makers and artists keen to experiment with its possibilities. Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein (also known as Flesh for Frankenstein) — actually directed by Paul Morrissey and filmed at the Cinecitta studios, in Rome — was originally released in what was known as Space-Vision 3D. Frankenstein remains an innovative and unique 3D pleasure, if perhaps overindulging in gore, as disembowelled viscera fly towards the viewer. Then again, sex and violence have always been big sellers, in 2D, 3D or 4D.

source

3-D films growing in popularity on area IMAX, cineplex screens

2009-02-26T00:59:00.000-08:00

Like many in a preview audience for the movie “Under the Sea 3D” at the Putnam Museum’s IMAX Theatre last week, Caelei Kurylo dodged sharks, sidestepped water snakes and was showered by a sea full of shrimp.

The 8-year-old Davenport girl was among the first audience members for the three-dimensional movie, which opened nationally on Friday.

Caelei is already a fan of 3-D movies, having seen “Hannah Montana in Concert: Best of Both Worlds Tour” last year in theaters.

“It’s kind of cool that it pops out,” she said of the three-dimensional effects.

Movies in 3-D have been a staple at the Putnam since the Davenport museum’s IMAX theater opened almost seven years ago. Putnam President and CEO Kim Findlay said the theater is the only 3-D facility from St. Paul, Minn., to St. Louis and Chicago to Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Dean Fick, the Putnam’s director of theater operations, said 3-D movies consistently outsell their two-dimensional counterparts, most of which are documentaries at the museum.

Several years ago, though, mainstream theaters began getting in on the 3-D bandwagon. The animated children’s tale “Coraline” and the horror movie “My Bloody Valentine” are current 3-D offerings, with at least a dozen more scheduled before the end of the year, including a 3-D concert by pop stars The Jonas Brothers that opens later this month.

Fick said the rush to three dimensions mirrors the first 3-D boom in the 1950s, when the advent of television was seen as a threat to the movies.

Now, the competition comes from computers and state-of-the-art home entertainment systems.

“It’s a threat from people staying home and not coming out anymore that’s leading the charge in the industry at this time,” Fick said.

Both Showcase Cinemas 53 in Davenport and Great Escape Theatres in Moline have 3-D capability, including the digital projection equipment needed for the effect.

Patrick Corcoran, the director of media and research for the National Association of Theatre Owners, said about 1,700 of 38,000 movie screens nationwide have 3D capability.

That number is expected to reach 2,000 by the time “Monsters vs. Aliens,” a 3-D animated movie that was previewed during the Super Bowl, opens late next month. More screens — almost 3,000 — originally were planned for that opening, he said, but the economy is forcing some theaters nationwide to cut back.

Showcase, which showed its first 3-D movie, Disney’s “Chicken Little,” in 2005, now has 3-D capability on three of its 18 screens. Great Escape has 3-D for one of its 14 screens.

Wanda Whitson, the director of corporate communications for National Amusements, which operates Showcase, reports that box office receipts for the 3-D “Coraline” and “My Bloody Valentine” are about six times more than the same titles in 2-D.

Those who recall the original incarnation of 3-D movies, in which audience members viewed the screen through oversized cardboard glasses with one red lens and one blue one, are finding major changes as well.

“This is not your mother’s 3-D,” Whitson said. “It has changed drastically and is a completely new technology from that of the early films of the ’50s like ‘House of Wax’ with Vincent Price. The technology was more complicated, and the glasses and film image on the screen often caused headaches. Today’s technology simplifies the process — and no more headaches.”

The appearance is different as well.

“They kind of look like Ray-Bans,” Corcoran said of the glasses.

Some theaters have a surcharge for 3-D movies and let their patrons keep the glasses. The Putnam, Fick said, has sturdier, reusable glasses that are cleaned between performances. The IMAX glasses have a vertical and horizontal polarization, he said, while some other theaters have a circular polarization in their lenses.

The movie industry is embracing 3-D as well, everyone interviewed for this article said. The Walt Disney Co. has said all of its future animated releases will be in 3-D — including re-releasing “Toy Story” in that format during October. Oscar-winning filmmaker James Cameron (“Titanic”), who has created two 3-D IMAX documentaries, is preparing a 3-D feature film, “Avatar,” to be released in December.

“He didn’t want to put it in theaters until he felt he could do it right,” Corcoran said.

Jessie Jimenez of Davenport, who brought 8-year-old niece Caelei to see the “Under the Sea 3D” preview at the Putnam, said she was impressed upon seeing her first 3-D movie — and also was impressed by the depth shown on the 3-D screen.

“We wish we had a lot more,” she said. “It’s like you’re living it, like it’s real.”

COMING SOON

There are plenty more 3-D movies coming before the end of the year, according to 3DMovieList.com, a Web site that also provides tentative release dates:

“Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience,” Feb. 27

“Monsters vs. Aliens,” March 27

“Battle For Terra,” May 1

“Up,” May 29

“Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” July 4

“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” July 17

“G-Force,” July 24

“Final Destination: Death Trip 3D,” Aug. 21

“Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” Sept. 18

“Toy Story in 3D,” Oct. 2

“Disney’s A Christmas Carol,” Nov. 6

“Avatar,” Dec. 18.

source

High-tech 3-D system debuts at Movieplex in Oneida

2009-02-25T05:14:00.000-08:00

ONEIDA —Several new pieces of state-of-the-art technology are making their debut at the Movieplex Cinema in Glenwood Plaza this weekend.

In one auditorium, a new system will allow for digital and 3-D films to be shown at the Zurich Cinemas-owned theater. Being able to show digital films means a new level of quality and adding 3-D capabilities is a necessary step to take in order to prepare for the future of movies and other entertainment, said Zurich Cinemas Director of Operations Jamison Mills.

Already, there is a list of 3-D movies that Movieplex will now be able to show with a projector add-on from a company called RealD. On Friday, the PG-rated 3-D feature “Coraline” began its run.

There’s something special about being able to have 3-D at the theater, Mills said.

“The 3-D, as it stands right now, is something that people can’t get at home at this point and to see it on the big screen is incredible,” he said.

The effect is similar to what one would see at Disney World, said Mills, and there is a buzz in the industry about 3-D becoming the next big thing at the movies.

“There are some people out there who have some extremely high hopes for it,” he said, as some predict that in coming years, a majority of the movies released will be in 3-D.

It also seems evident that live concerts and sporting events will be coming to movie theaters on a regular basis in the future. Having this kind of system is a good way to get ready for that, Mills said.

When it comes to the digital component, there are a number of new benefits and many serve the movie goer. For one, sound quality goes up, as does the visual part of the experience.

“The quality stands up to time,” Mills said. “Running the film over and over and over again, you don’t have any deterioration of the picture on the screen with digital. It’s just a far superior format.”

There are benefits for people who work at the theater too. Oneida Movieplex Cinema General Manager Melinda Keil said that there are a few things that make dealing with digital much easier, especially the setup.

“It’s a matter of going over to a computer and pressing play on a screen,” she said.

With a Dolby-made server and Christie projector, the new digital movie system looks very different than all of the theater’s other projectors, which still use the 35 millimeter film reels. Mills said that film stock will become obsolete in the future as more theaters switch to the digital systems. Zurich company heads plan to put digital systems into all auditoriums in their six theaters in the future.

Using a computer server system, Keil is able to download a movie and related components from a disk drive that is sent to the theater. Once it’s in the system, she uses a rather simple interface to program the presentation. This will make life easier for projectionists, as with the older systems, they have to deal with about 5 to 7 reels per movie. Now all they’ll have to work with is a disk drive and computer.

“It’s just so much simpler,” she said.

It is also anticipated that there will be fewer chances for technology to fail using this system, Keil said.

To set up for the system, a new 15-foot by 36-foot screen was added to the second-largest auditorium in the Oneida theater, Mills said. An appropriate sound system was already in place, though when current projection systems are replaced with digital systems, there will need to be some speaker work done in other auditoriums.

The cost to see a movie in the auditorium that uses the digital system will be the same as seeing it in any other auditorium should it be a non-3-D feature. When 3-D features come to the theater, patrons will have to pay $2 extra to see these films.

Mills said that this covers several additional costs that the company incurs in showing the films and the glasses cost.

Instead of the mostly cardboard red and blue plastic lensed glasses that used to be associated with 3-D films, now the glasses are more similar to a plastic pair of sunglasses. They’re a novelty that is also produced by RealD and something that movie goers are welcome to keep after a movie.

But Mills suspects that not everyone will want to every single time and in those cases, there will be an alternative.

“If they aren’t going to do anything with them and would probably just throw them away, they can put them in a recycling bin and we’ll take care of them,” Mills said.

This way, the glasses can be sanitized and used for future showings.

Mills said that he’d rather not say how much was paid for the digital system and the 3-D component, but did say that it was “a significant investment per screen,” as one system has been added to one auditorium per Zurich Cinemas-owned theater.

Beyond “Coraline,” there are plenty of other 3-D releases that will be screened at Oneida Movieplex Cinema this year. These films include Disney’s “Jonas Brothers: 3D Concert Experience” starting on Feb. 27, Dreamworks Animation’s “Monsters vs. Aliens” starting on March 27, Disney-Pixar’s “Up” on May 29 and Fox’s “Avatar” by James Cameron on Dec. 18.

source

Mattel To Make Toys For James Cameron's "Avatar"

2009-02-24T00:58:00.000-08:00

Anne Lu - Celebrity News Service News Writer

Los Angeles, CA (CNS) - Mattel, the makers of the iconic Barbie dolls, has been tasked to create a toy line for James Cameron's upcoming 3-D sci-fi flick, "Avatar," 20th Century Fox announces.

The toy company giant will develop a toy line inspired by the film, including action figures and vehicles. Each toy will come with a 3D web tag, which will allow interactivity to the line.

Using a computer's webcam, consumers can "scan" the 3D web tag to unlock special content unique to the product. The toys will hit shelves in October.

Fox Licensing and Merchandising executive VP, Elie Dekel said in a statement, "Avatar is one of the biggest and most anticipated films of 2009. The new universe created in the film is everything one would expect coming from the mind of James Cameron, one of the most accomplished creators and filmmakers of our time."

"In bringing this fantastic new universe to life in toys, it was essential that we partner with the world's biggest and best, Mattel. Mattel's abilities to continually innovate and strategically grow a toy brand over many years will be core to our long-term strategies."

"Avatar" tells the story of ex-marine Jake Sully, who finds himself caught in a battle between Earth's most powerful star-faring consortium and an exotic, noble alien race whose entire world is threatened by human invaders.

The film stars Sam Worthington as Jake, with Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver. It is scheduled to premiere on December 18.

source

Back to the future

2009-02-23T00:56:00.000-08:00

2009 movie lineup offers sequels, remakes, 3D and more

The film industry is about to honor its best movies of 2008, but we're ready to turn attention to some of the flicks that will make their way to Pueblo screens this year.

There's no dearth of budget-busting exhibitions: "Star Trek," "Harry Potter" and the "Transformers" sequel, among them. Summer will be big.

An interesting - and overdue - development is the slate of kid/family movies due to come out this year - many of which look like they might even be worth the rising admission prices. (Get used to that supersized 3D ticket price, mom and dad; it's quickly becoming the norm for animated features.)

Among the actors who could have big years are Dwayne "no longer The Rock" Johnson, who has two live action movies coming out, as well as an animated one. Robert Downey Jr. will start the year with "The Soloist" and end it with "Sherlock Holmes." Christian Bale has two high-profile gigs, aside from his recent f-bomb spectacle: "Public Enemies" with Johnny Depp and "Terminator: Salvation." Hollywood still can't lay off the remakes. For 2009, we'll be treated - we hope - to "The Taking of Pelham 123," "Disney's A Christmas Carol" and "Fame," to name several.

Here we've included many of the big films scheduled for the year. Release dates are subject to change, however, as those awaiting "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" know all too well. That movie was bumped from last November to July 17.

If a trailer was available to view, I watched, and include my impressions here. You can check out the trailers at www.apple.com/trailers and www.comingsoon.net .

FEBRUARY-APRIL

"Duplicity" (March 20): Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, intrigue and sexy banter. Trailer: Interesting, although it's not really clear what the plot is. It might not matter with these two.

"Hannah Montana: The Movie" (April 10): Her TV domination complete, Miley Cyrus turns to the giant screen.

"Monsters vs. Aliens" (March 27): DreamWorks has the first big animated movie of the year, featuring the voices of Reese Witherspoon, Hugh Laurie, Seth Rogen, Kiefer Sutherland, Jimmy Kimmel and others. The title tells the story: Monsters must save Earth from invading aliens. Trailer: Great animation, excellent voices, fun story.

"Race to Witch Mountain" (March 13): In this remake of "Escape to Witch Mountain," Dwayne Johnson plays a cabbie helping two kids - aliens - return to their spaceship. Trailer: Lots of action, but little else.

“17 Again" (April 17): Matthew Perry wishes he could go back in time to his successful high school years. Be careful what you wish for. Trailer: Entertaining, despite the worn-out plot. Zac Efron, as the 17-year-old Perry, is particularly good, and Leslie Mann ("The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "Knocked Up”) is funny as always.

"The Soloist" (April 24): Based on a true story, Robert Downey Jr. plays a journalist who befriends a homeless musician (Jamie Foxx). Trailer: Bring tissues. You probably won't escape this one without tears.

"State of Play" (April 17): An impressive cast - Russell Crowe, Helen Mirren, Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams - in a thriller about a political murder. Trailer: Intense, but it's difficult to see how the film will improve on the excellent BBC miniseries on which it's based.

"Watchmen" (March 6): The world's not looking too good, especially for ex-superheroes. Trailer: Dark. Vivid. Menacing.

MAY-AUGUST

"Angels & Demons" (May 15): Tom Hanks is back as Robert Langdon, this time trying to prevent terrorism against the Vatican. Trailer: Tells viewers next to nothing, except that there's a lot of action.

"Bruno" (July 10): Sacha Baron Cohen in his first starring role since "Borat." Bruno is an Austrian fashion fiend.

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" (July 17): The penultimate chapter in the Potter series gets a lot more serious as Harry and his friends get closer to a confrontation with evil Voldemort. Trailer: The darker the books get, the better the movies. "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" (July 1): Diego, Manny, Sid and Scrat (with his acorn) return for more prehistoric adventure.

"Inglourious Basterds" (Aug. 21): It's the Quentin Tarantino version of World War II. A group of Jewish-American soldiers is chosen to go behind enemy lines and kill as many Nazis as possible, in as brutal a manner as possible. Trailer: So this is why Brad Pitt has been sporting that disconcerting moustache. This is unquestionably a Tarantino film, with plenty of gore, banter and imaginative camera work.

MAY-AUGUST

"Julie & Julia" (Aug. 7): Amy Adams portrays Julie Powell, a woman who decided that in a one-year span, she would make every recipe in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Meryl Streep plays Child.

"Land of the Lost" (June 5): Complete with sleestaks and Chaka, it's a big-screen version of the old Saturday-morning series, starring Will Ferrell. Trailer: OK - doesn't give away much but doesn't bring much excitement, either.

"Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" (May 22): Ben Stiller returns; now he's guarding the country's biggest museum with his old friends in tow. Trailer: Lots of museum characters combined with the big exhibits, plus a talking Lincoln. Fluffy fun.

"The Proposal" (June 12): Sandra Bullock is a beast of a boss; Ryan Reynolds is her assistant. To keep her from being deported, they pretend to be engaged. Trailer: The only one that made me laugh out loud. Good chemistry between Reynolds and Bullock, and Betty White as grandma!

"Public Enemies" (July 1): Johnny Depp plays bank robber John Dillinger. Christian Bale is the agent trying to capture him.

"Star Trek" (May 8): Nothing else really needs to be said. Trailer: The gang's all here, even though many of the actors portraying them aren't well known. Loads of action and lots of details on Capt. Kirk's early years.

"The Taking of Pelham 123” (June 12): John Travolta and Denzel Washington star in this remake of a man who takes hostages in a New York subway train. Trailer: Decent - Travolta is reliably good when playing bad guys. "Terminator: Salvation" (May 21): Bale as grown-up John Connor, trying to save the world. Trailer: Sketchy, but ominous.

"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" (June 24): More children's toys back to wreak havoc. Trailer: Loud and busy.

"Up" (May 29): Pixar's newest, about a cranky old man who takes to the sky - in his house, aided by hundreds of balloons. Trailer: Literally uplifting, and funny. No one beats Pixar when it comes to trailers.

"X-Men Origins: Wolverine" (May 1): The history of Hugh Jackman's hairy superhero. Trailer: What a summer movie should look like - action-packed, but with a brain.

"Year One" (June 19): Jack Black and Michael Cera as cavemen. Trailer: Boring and not funny.

FALL/HOLIDAYS

“9” (Sept. 9): In this Tim Burton-produced animated movie, a group of bizarre dolls must save the future, because the present is toast. Trailer: Mystifying and gorgeous.

"Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel" (Dec. 25): More singing chipmunks.

"Avatar" (Dec. 18): A new James Cameron-directed sci-fi blockbuster about a distant planet, its people and the Earthlings who defend them.

"Disney's A Christmas Carol" (Nov. 6): Jim Carrey stars as most of the characters in this animated version of Scrooge's story.

"Fame" (Sept. 25): Love and dreams at a performing arts high school.

"The Lovely Bones" (Dec. 11): An adaptation of Alice Sebold's heartbreaking novel, starring Rachel Weisz and Mark Wahlberg. Peter Jackson (“Lord of the Rings”) directs.

"New Moon" (Nov. 20): Part two of the "Twilight" series.

"Sherlock Holmes" (Nov. 13): Robert Downey Jr. again, this time as the legendary detective.

"Tooth Fairy" (Nov. 13): Dwayne Johnson as a hockey player who has to be the tooth fairy for a week.

"Where the Wild Things Are" (Oct. 16): A live-action adaptation of the children's book.

"The Wolfman" (Nov. 6): Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins star in this version of the classic tale.

source

3-D’s popping off the screens again

2009-02-22T05:13:00.000-08:00

On TV and in movie theaters, the film technique is back and looking better than ever. But is its return to popularity a fad?

Are 3-D movies here to stay this time, or is the latest revival doomed to the same fate as the brief ’80s resurgence that brought us such timeless classics as Comin’ at Ya! and Friday the 13th Part 3-D?

There’s no question that 3-D is hot right now. Arriving in theaters Friday is Coraline, the first-ever stop-motion animated feature to be photographed in 3-D, even as My Bloody Valentine 3D is still riding high at the box office. This is coming within the same week as a 3-D version of an episode of the NBC series Chuck and a couple of 3-D commercials.

The coming year will see more than a dozen more feature films projected in either the RealD or IMAX 3D format (or in some cases both), including DreamWorks Animation’s Monsters vs. Aliens, James Cameron’s highly anticipated Avatar and the self-explanatory Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience.

"Three-D films look better than they ever did before," says Ray Zone, author of the book Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film, 1838-1952.

Back to the ’50s

Although stereoscopic cinematography — in which two synchronized cameras film the same material from different angles in order to create the illusion of depth — is nearly as old as motion pictures themselves, the golden age of 3-D dates to the 1952 release of the otherwise undistinguished potboiler Bwana Devil. Although poorly reviewed, Bwana Devil was a smash hit on the strength of its primitive 3-D effects.

In the early ’50s, Hollywood executives were always on the lookout for gimmicks that would lure audiences away from their new TV sets, and the next two years were a boom time for 3-D, spawning such hits as House of Wax, Kiss Me Kate and Creature From the Black Lagoon.

The ’80s revival

The boom went bust in early 1954, and it seemed 3-D was just another ’50s fad like the coonskin cap or the Hula-Hoop. In 1981, however, a terrible low-budget Western called Comin’ at Ya! was released in 3-D, just as the home video revolution was getting under way.

Once again facing a threat from television, as consumer-priced VCRs and neighborhood video stores made it possible for movie fans to watch recent releases and old favorites at their convenience, studios seized on the surprise success of Comin’ at Ya! and the 3-D craze was born again. It was equally short-lived this time around — no surprise given that movies like Jaws 3-D and Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn weren’t much better than BwanaDevil.

New technology

A generation later, with Hollywood facing ever greater challenges in home entertainment, from widescreen hi-def televisions to video games to the Internet, 3-D is back — but is it better than ever? "Digital 3-D cinema is a considerable improvement over 1950s 3-D movies," Zone says. "The 3-D films of the ’50s used synchronized projectors. Today’s digital 3-D movies are shown with a single projector, which eliminates many of the problems of the two-projector system."

For now, at least, audiences are eating it up. "The 3-D version of a movie does nearly three times the box office of the 2-D version when a movie is released in both 2-D and 3-D," says Zone.

In the case of My Bloody Valentine, the 3-D version accounted for 71 percent of the movie’s first-week box-office take. For all the technological advances, however, you still need to wear the special polarized glasses; Zone predicts that glasses-free 3-D is still a decade away.

Even if today’s plastic Blues Brothers-style eyewear is snazzier than the cardboard glasses of yesteryear, reports that they no longer cause headaches or nausea are somewhat exaggerated in my experience. (The oversize IMAX 3-D glasses don’t even have the advantage of being fashionable, unless ski goggles are in style this year.)

Still a gimmick?

Is it worth the trouble? Three-D is perfectly suited to the IMAX format, which is all about spectacle anyway, but let’s be honest: the history of great 3-D movies is basically nonexistent. What classic scene in cinema history would have been improved by 3-D? The shower scene in Psycho? The horse’s head in The Godfather? The first appearance of the shark in the original Jaws? These moments are so visceral, our own imaginations supply the third dimension. They would only be diminished by the artificial depth of 3-D, because the whole process acts to distance us from what we’re seeing on the screen rather than allowing us to immerse ourselves in the story.

That doesn’t matter much when you’re dealing with a film like My Bloody Valentine 3D — you just want to see if the ol’ flying eyeball trick has improved since Friday the 13th Part 3-D (it has) — but does anyone really think SlumdogMillionaire 3D would have scored even more Oscar nominations, or that The Dark Knight Comin’ at Ya! would have raked in another $100 million at the box office?

There’s no denying the superiority of today’s digital 3-D effects, but as always, it’s the quality of the movies that will determine whether this latest revival is more than just a passing fad.

source

Movies and more

2009-02-22T00:54:00.000-08:00

Theaters are offering a diversified experience to help convince consumers it's worth leaving home to see a flick

FOXBORO - Oscar night is upon us, and that means stars, move clips, teary eyed actresses, and lame jokes. But as predictable as those Academy Awards show staples are, the movie industry itself has become anything but predictable.

It used to be that going to the movies was a fairly straightforward proposition. You went to the local theater, plopped down a few dollars, got your popcorn and soda, and settled in for an afternoon or evening of entertainment.

Now, of course, everything has changed. Movies tend to spend only a few weeks at the cineplex, if that, and the mantra of a large percentage of movie fans has become "I'll wait for the DVD." Or, possibly, the Blu-ray. Or maybe they'll stream it onto their computer or iPod.

It's all a lot cheaper than going to the movies, and in the dead of winter you can argue there's also a comfort factor involved.

So what's a movie theater owner to do? In a word, diversify. And they're already doing it.

"Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience" reflects the resurgent popularity of 3D movies. The film is due out Feb. 27.

In this area, movie theaters are offering patrons table dining and cocktails while they watch their flick.

They've opened separate restaurant/bars and comedy clubs on the premises.

And they've turned themselves into "destinations" with quirky, audience participation spectacles, sporting events, and even celebrity celebrations.

"Like every industry today, the film and exhibition industry is changing because of a variety of influences including technology and peoples interests," said Wanda Whitson, director of corporate communications at National Amusements, which runs Showcase Cinema de Lux at Patriot Place in Foxboro. "Today, consumers have more entertainment options than ever. We are competing for their time and attention."

"People are looking to be interactive," said Bill Cunningham, executive director of the Orpheum Theatre in Foxboro, which recently premiered the colorfully quirky, audience participation film "Repo! The Genetic Opera." "Why just go to the movies when you can be part of an experience like this?"

The Lux Level in Showcase Cinema at Patriot Place offers dining service inside the theater. Set back from the regular patrons, it has enormous seats (no bumping elbows) with push buttons that summon waiters and waitresses who deliver your food and drinks. There are also lounge areas and a full service bar. Additionally, Showcase at Patriot Place has a full service restaurant and bar in the lobby.

"We are offering more than just a movie," Whitson said.

Shari Redstone, president of National Amusements, began transforming the movie-going experience after concluding it "had been commoditized, with theaters trying to get people in out and out quickly," Whitson said.

The idea was to bring back the luxury and comfort of movie palaces from the 1920s and '30s, but with more modern offerings and the unique amenities.

This past year Showcase Cinema at Patriot Place screened the new DVD by the band Boys Like Girls, a hot national rock group whose drummer is from Mansfield and bassist from Wrentham.

Showcase Cinemas has converted a theater auditorium in Warwick, R.I. into a live venue for music and comedy.

Earlier this month it hosted Ladies Night Out, which celebrated the release of the movie "Confessions of a Shopaholic" with a preview screening and a mini-fashion show featuring Patriot Place merchants.

Last month, Curt and Shonda Schilling were among the celebs who attended a sneak peek-showing of the chick flick "Bride Wars," in which Shonda had a small role.

The cinema is also reaching out to sports fans, only natural given its location in the shadow of Gillette Stadium. Recently it was selected as one of the first locations to screen a live 3-D sports event, a Dec. 4 NFL Network game between the San Diego Chargers and the Oakland Raiders.

Showcase was also the first theater company to feature live, high-def, in-theater broadcasts of Red Sox games, and worked with the Boston Celtics this spring to produce several games at its theaters, Whitson said.

In Warwick, R.I., Showcase has converted one of its auditoriums into Center Stage, a live entertainment venue that features comedy and music.

Redstone's focus, Whitson said, is to make Showcase Cinema a "community entertainment destination."

The historic Orpheum Theatre on Foxboro Common is decidedly less high-tech than the modern Showcase Cinema on Route 1, but has still answered the call to innovate.

A few times a year it shows "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," and people from all over dress up as their favorite characters and act out the movie on stage.

"Repo! The Genetic opera" launched its national run at the Orpheum in mid-January. Despite bitter cold, more than 350 fans - many in costume - turned out, some traveling from as far away as Pennsylvania.

"We are taking the movies to the kids," Cunningham said. "We are trying to change it to make it more than just a sit-in-the-dark experience. And it will continue to change."

Cunningham pointed out that other theaters are showing musical sing-a-longs as a way to get the movie goer involved. "Mamma Mia" and "Sound of Music" have both been shown with the lyrics displayed on the bottom of the screen.

"These movies are more fun, more interactive," he said. "It gives you an opportunity to express yourself; it's like Halloween 365 days. Whether you wear all black, have facial hair, have tattoos or not, 'Rocky' and 'Repo' give you the chance to express yourself and be part of a special atmosphere."

Whitson said that another recent wrinkle in the movie industry has been the resurrection in popularity of 3D films.

"This year's new 3D releases like James Cameron's 'Avatar' along with DreamWorks 'Monsters vs. Aliens,' a Jonas brothers concert film, 'Up,' 'G-Force' and 'A Christmas Carol' are just the beginning of where this technology can go," she said.

"The industry is just learning and exploring the exciting possibilities that both 2D and 3D will bring to us with the advent of digital projection, and we are finding that this is also an education process for our audience members," Whitson said. "We are getting audiences to our theaters that may not have previously visited stadium-style theaters before."

As for what the more distant future might hold for moviegoers, Whitson said "we can't even begin to imagine how the combination of cutting-edge technology, for example holograms, and creative developers and unique new content will transform the entertainment and moviegoing experience."

But whatever the future may be, movie theater owners believe there will be a place for them, as long as they hustle to keep up with the times.

"(Redstone) believes that the movie-going experience will never go away," Whitson said. "There is nothing like enjoying a great film, on the big screen, with a group of people laughing, crying, or applauding together. There is no other experience like it."

source

Odeon prepares itself for 3D movie onslaught

2009-02-18T05:12:00.000-08:00

Odeon, Europe's largest cinema chain, has announced it is to equip the majority of its screens with 3D projectors.

The news comes after a deal was inked with NEC Display Solutions. The company's digital projectors have been extensively trialled for the last two years in Odeon's cinema in Hatfield, Hertfordshire.

"3D digital provides the total cinematic experience – you feel the drama literally unfolding all around you," said Drew Kaza, executive vice president of digital development at Odeon, about the news.

"We wanted the best for our 3D digital projection and so over the last two years we have vigorously put NEC's technology through its paces. It definitely hit the mark with superb image quality and unsurpassed reliability. NEC has equipped Odeon with a ground-breaking digital cinema projection system and we anticipate a resultant jump in per seat revenues."

2009: the year of 3D

The projectors that are being installed are the NEC NC1600C. This is an integrated DLP projector that offers 17,000 Lumens and 2K (2048x1080) resolution.

Simon Jackson, vice president Northern Europe for NEC Display Solutions said about the deal: "This major European deployment with Odeon underpins our core principles of high reliability, performance and outstanding build quality."

2009 will be a busy year for 3D, with movies such as Disney's Bolt, Monsters Vs Aliens and, of course, James Cameron's Avatar due before the year is out.

source

Kilmarnock film fans can see movies in 3D

2009-02-15T05:10:00.002-08:00

KILMARNOCK film fans could have characters flying right at them if they head down to the Odeon.

The cinema is one of only 19 Odeons in the UK to be given a 3D projector and is set to show a host of top movies using the technology throughout 2009.

The first film to be screened in 3D at Kilmarnock was horror flick My Bloody Valentine before new Disney offering Bolt was released on Friday.

Cinema manager Lucy Liddell is thankful that Kilmarnock is one of the cinemas chosen to use this technology.

She says: “There are 19 cinemas in the whole of the Odeon chain getting 3D projectors and we were lucky to get one of them.

“Hopefully it should enhance the experience of guests coming in and watching films.

“Throughout the year we have about 15 3D films being released, one of which is Toy Story which is being re-released in 3D and we also have Avatar which is the new James Cameron film.”

Lucy explained how 3D has evolved since disposable, coloured specs were used in the 90s.

She continued: “It’s not the 3D glasses that everyone is used to. It is proper up to date glasses which look a bit like sunglasses and everyone will be wearing them.

“I have seen Bolt in 3D and I can put my personal guarantee on it. It’s absolutely brilliant.

“There are chase scenes in it and people are falling down and you see them falling towards you. It looks really cool.”

The extra cost for the 3D glasses is included in a supplement on the ticket price.

To watch a video report of this story, log onto www.kilmarnockstandard.co.uk

source

Twentieth Century Fox Licensing & Merchandising Taps Mattel as Master Toy Licensee for James Cameron’s “Avatar”

2009-02-15T05:10:00.001-08:00

CENTURY CITY, Calif. - (Business Wire) Twentieth Century Fox Licensing & Merchandising (Fox L&M) has selected Mattel, Inc., the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of toys and family products, to develop a toy line inspired by one of the most anticipated films of the year -- James Cameron’s “Avatar.” Tapped as master toy licensee for the epic sci-fi film property, Mattel will create a line of action figures and vehicles scheduled to hit retail nationwide in October 2009, months in advance of the film’s release in December 2009. The announcement was made today by Elie Dekel, Executive Vice President of Fox Licensing and Merchandising.

Mattel’s “Avatar” toy line will feature heroes, creatures and vehicles straight from the blockbuster film. Each action figure or vehicle will come with a 3D web tag, bringing a new level of interactivity to Mattel’s newest action play line. Utilizing a computer’s webcam, consumers can “scan” the web tag, unlocking special content unique to the product, like bio information on action figures and creatures, virtually on a home computer.

"Avatar is one of the biggest and most anticipated films of 2009", said Dekel. "The new universe created in the film is everything one would expect coming from the mind of James Cameron, one of the most accomplished creators and filmmakers of our time. In bringing this fantastic new universe to life in toys, it was essential that we partner with the world's biggest and best, Mattel. Mattel's abilities to continually innovate and strategically grow a toy brand over many years will be core to our long-term strategies."

“Mattel has a long history of teaming up with some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters, and it continues with our partnership with ‘Avatar,’” said Tim Kilpin, GM for Boys, Girls & Games, Mattel, Inc. “Developing toys for a movie as anticipated and innovative as ‘Avatar’ allows us to push the envelope with our own innovation and design to produce an exciting, engaging lineup of products.”

Jon Landau, producer of Avatar added, “I’m a firm believer that a great toy program, done right and with the right creative collaboration can extend the movie experience. Jim and I have been working intimately with both Fox L&M and Mattel to ensure that this will be a top-notch innovative toy line-up. We have seen the products and can’t wait for their release.”

More than 10 years in the making, “Avatar” marks Cameron's return to feature directing since helming 1997's “Titanic,” the highest grossing film of all time and winner of eleven Oscars® including Best Picture. “Avatar” is an epic adventure film where ex-marine Jake Sully is torn between duty and honor when he finds himself caught in a battle between the heavily armed forces of Earth’s most powerful star-faring consortium and an exotic, noble alien race whose entire world is threatened by the human invaders.

The “Avatar” cast includes Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, and Sigourney Weaver. Academy Award-winning visual effects house, WETA Digital, renowned for its work in “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy and “King Kong,” will incorporate new intuitive CGI technologies to transform the environments and characters into photorealistic 3D imagery that will transport the audience into the alien world rich with imaginative vistas, creatures and characters.

ABOUT TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX LICENSING & MERCHANDISING

A recognized industry leader, Twentieth Century Fox Licensing and Merchandising licenses and markets properties worldwide on behalf of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Twentieth Television and Fox Broadcasting Company, as well as third party lines. The division is aligned with Twentieth Century Fox Television, one of the top suppliers of primetime entertainment programming to the broadcast networks.

source

First Image From Cameron's Avatar

2009-01-22T05:34:00.000-08:00

If you tied us to a chair, stripped us naked and dripped hot wax onto our most sensitive of areas while demanding we pick one single film that was going to define 2009 then, between stifled screams, we'd have to gasp the word Avatar.

James Cameron's return to the big screen after a 10 year absence is reason enough to get excited but if you'd read the script and visited the New Zealand set of his latest opus (which Empire can rather smugly say we have) then you'd know that Avatar is going change the face of cinema. Yes, it's partly due to the cutting edge 3D technology Cameron is using to bring the film to life but moreover this is a return to Cameron at his best. This is the spiritual successor to Aliens, a passion project more than a decade in the making and quite possible the cure for HIV, Cancer and the common cold. It is Avatar!

Oh and there's a picture of Cameron and star Sam Worthington on set below.

Click the image above for more information on LATimes.com

James Dyer

source

Super-thin and 3-D TVs light up Consumer Electronics Show

2009-01-21T05:33:00.000-08:00

LAS VEGAS -- Television as you've never known it -- super-thin sets, Internet programs streamed to your big screen and 3-D viewing -- dominates the new wave of entertainment technology at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show here.

The four-day extravaganza, which opened Thursday and is expected to draw some 130,000 members of the electronics trade, put television at center stage as companies like Panasonic, Sony and LG introduced sets an inch thick or less, and Samsung unveiled a back-lit LCD model just 7mm thin, or a bit more than a quarter of an inch. Its slim profile is achieved by using tiny diodes to illuminate the screen.

The top television makers also signaled what could be historic change in the way we get our TV programming. In recent months, add-on boxes such as Wii, Playstation 3 and Netflix players have made it possible to stream movies and TV episodes from the Internet to standard television sets. But this year, television manufacturers are showing sets with built-in Internet "bridges."

These new sets will let you purchase HD movies and TV episodes from sources such as Amazon or Netflix for instant viewing. And Yahoo has developed interactive software "widgets" to display across the bottom of the TV screen -- like the football stats and news tickers you currently see, but for personalized shopping, weather and looking at your Facebook and Flickr pages. It's not hard to envision the Internet becoming a serious rival to cable and satellite providers.

Prices for many new products will be set later.

The next step for television isn't up, as Panasonic put it, but in -- into the action with that old novelty of the cinema, 3-D.

3-D for HDTV is "not a gimmick. It's ready for prime-time," film director James Cameron said in a taped pitch from the set of his forthcoming movie, "Avatar." The fantasy film is coming to cinemas in December, and it's being shot in 3DHD for eventual home viewing with special glasses. Panasonic is setting up a Hollywood facility to spread its 3-D know-how.

Among other hot buttons at this year's exposition:

• Palm, the honored granddaddy in handheld devices, unveiled its answer to iPhone with a smart new phone of its own, the Palm Pre. It has a touchscreen, a curvy QWERTY keyboard that slides out, and a new operating system called Palm Web OS for elegant switching among calendar, e-mail and video.

• Netbooks, the basic notebook computers for people who mostly just need Web access, are going stylish. Sony's knockout Vaio P, narrow and lightweight, fits in purse or jacket pocket. Coming in February, in black, red, green or white, at $900.

• The "cute" winner: Minoru's cherry-red 3D Webcam , which looks like a cousin of Wall-E sitting atop your computer. Five pairs of 3-D glasses are included to hand out to friends viewing the images you send. Expected to be available shortly at $90.

Nvidia GeForce 3D Vision and The History of 3D

2009-01-20T05:32:00.000-08:00

Genuinely three dimensional films and games are something of a technological holy grail – the possibility of taking traditional forms of entertainment beyond the confines of a two dimensional screen in a way that everyone can easily use and enjoy is certainly tantalising enough to have drawn heavy investment from major electronics manufacturers and Hollywood studios alike.

3D Displays, no matter how niche and expensive, are currently on show at this week’s CES show in Las Vegas and James Cameron’s in production film, Avatar, has been shot entirely in Stereoscopic 3D.

While the technology and concept has always shown promise though, it’s only recently that 3D has started to mature into something fit for purpose. Memories of 1930s creature features presented in “terrifying 3D” relied on red and green cardboard glasses to create a painfully unconvincing effect.

The resurgent interest in 3D films in the 1950s and 1980s saw only a mild improvement with the switch to polarising lenses and dual strip film or dual projectors to generate a 3D effect over certain elements.

source

NVIDIA Takes Video Games Into 3D

2009-01-19T05:30:00.000-08:00

Its new system, GeForce 3D Vision, beats previous attempts to simulate dimensionality and may soon work for movies and business tasks, too

In recent years several companies have developed 3D computer displays, with results ranging from disappointing to, literally, nauseating. Graphics specialist Nvidia (NVDA) has a new approach that promises to take computing into the third dimension. Video games will be the first to benefit, followed by movies and certain business tasks.

Nvidia's GeForce 3D Vision system ($199) consists of software and special glasses that connect wirelessly to your PC. This approach is called stereoscopic because the computer sends separate images to each eye. Objects in the two images are slightly offset from each other—a gap the brain interprets as depth, resulting in a compelling 3D illusion.

Sharp, LG, and others have fielded a variety of displays that don't require glasses, but they don't work very well. Typically they succeed only if you are planted squarely in front of the screen at a precise distance. And even then, only a small part of the field is in focus.

Nvidia's 3D glasses are a far cry from the vintage red-and-blue specs once used to watch The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Each lens is a liquid-crystal shutter that opens and closes 60 times per second, so that at any time you are seeing through only one eye. The shutters are synchronized to the display, which switches between the left and right images so fast that you can't detect any flicker. The glasses, which can be worn over regular eyeglasses, also seem to dim ambient light, focusing attention on the screen.

One beauty of the Nvidia system is that it can create 3D images from any software that was produced using depth information. Most existing games were created with some level of depth, so they become 3D without any modification. The same is true for 3D computer-assisted design drawings.

Games, of course, long have been at the leading edge of computer technology. Movies are also going 3D, so films on DVD eventually will be viewable with Nvidia gear. I also expect to see more business applications tailored to 3D, such as scientific modeling of complex molecules in the pharmaceutical sector or geologic visualizations used for oil exploration.

One caveat for consumers: You need a fairly high-end desktop to run Nvidia's system, starting with a $300-plus display that refreshes the screen 120 times per second instead of the standard 60. Possibilities include 22-inch monitors from Samsung and ViewSonic and an assortment of projection TVs that use Texas Instruments' DLP technology. You also need a Windows Vista PC with a high-end Nvidia graphics adapter, along with the whole 3D Vision kit, which includes a wireless transmitter used to synchronize the screen with the glasses.

I should add that the picture Nvidia makes possible isn't truly natural 3D. Objects seem to be arranged in several planes at various depths, almost as if you were looking at pictures with a View-Master—if you can remember that far back. But game developers can improve the illusion with better encoding of the depth information. When they create the games specifically for 3D, objects appear to pop out of the screen, as opposed to disintegrating when they hit the front of the display.

Today's 3D films weren't produced with Nvidia in mind. But down the road, programs like GeForce 3D Vision could really bring DVDs of these films to life. Your kids won't want to watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix the old way. And you'll probably feel the same when James Cameron releases Avatar, his much heralded 3D movie and game, later this year.

source

Panasonic announces 3D Full HD tech standard, more

2009-01-18T05:29:00.000-08:00

At its CES press conference on Wednesday and a day ahead of the show's official opening day, Panasonic North America's CEO Yoshi Yamada announced the company will work on integrating a 3D HD 1080p standard for TVs, kicking off with a 3D Blu-ray disc by 2010. To reach the goal, the company is working with Hollywood film producer James Cameron who is using Panasonic's specialized gear to film his upcoming blockbuster, Avatar, using the 3D HD tech. The company announced it will also launch its Panasonic Hollywood Advanced Authoring Center (PHL-AC) on February 1st. Demonstrations of the system, comprised of a plasma 3D Full HD home theater system, a 3D-ready digital cinema projector displaying images on a 380-inch screen theater and a 3-D ready MPEG-4 AVC High Profile encoder collectively called 3D Full HD (3D FHD) will be held throughout CES' duration.

The company also showed a prototype plasma display panel (PDP), the Z1, sized at 54 inches that is just 1-inch thick and uses a wireless connection to communicate with a satellite set-top that includes all cable connections. No pricing information or expected launch dates were discussed.

A partnership with Comcast will have the cable provider's digital set-top boxes compatible with Panasonic's VIERA link to allow the use of one remote to control the operation of all compatible home theater devices. The company showed a pair of home theater Blu-ray disc systems that integrate both features, with the SA-BT300 and SA-BT200.

Amazon will bring its Video On Demand service to Panasonic products via the VIERA Cast feature integrated into upcoming products. VIERA Cast will bring with it Internet features such as access to YouTube videos, weather information, Picasa photos and Bloomberg financial information.

Three new Blu-ray disc players have also been unveiled, including the BD60, touted as the world's thinnest, the BD80, and the BD70V, which will bring the VIERA Cast feature in addition to supporting online Blu-ray disc content such as BD Live and BonusView. A world-first portable Blu-ray player, the DMP-B15, was also introduced, allowing users to play back 1080p resolution content outside the home.

The product roll-out continued with an HD camcorder, the C-TM300, which sports the highest resolution sensor in the world, at 9,150,000 pixels. Another world-first in camcorders was the 70x optical zoom feature found in both the soon-to-be-released H-80 and H-90 camcorders, which sport onboard hard disk drives, the former with a 60GB capacity, the latter with 80GBs and an SD card slot.

At the same time, Panasonic deepened its commitment to recycling electronics, promising to progressively open up more collection sites, topping out at a total of 800 locations nationwide by the end of 2011.

Cameron's Avatar, expected to be released on the new Blu-ray 3D HD format in 2010, will make its theatrical release in December.

source

3D cinema comes to Llandudno Junction

2009-01-17T05:28:00.000-08:00

CINEMA bosses have installed the first 3D cinema screen in North Wales at Llandudno Junction’s Cineworld complex.

And the first film will be acclaimed new Disney films BOLT 3D! in its Delux auditorium on Friday, February 6.

Cinemagoers will be given advanced technology 3D glasses to watch the film.

The Delux room will also offer customers a bar and luxury seats to relax in.

Other films available on the 3D screen at Cineworld in Llandudno Junction will include Monsters vs Aliens, Toy Story, Ice Age and the eagerly awaited new James Cameron film, Avatar, which is released at the end of 2009.

Cineworld Llandudno general manager Paul Williams said: “We are very excited to bring such new and innovative cinema to North Wales. It offers our customers the chance to see some brilliant films in 3D quality.”

source

From video games to movies, 3D is on the march

2009-01-16T05:24:00.000-08:00

LAS VEGAS (AFP) — Two-dimensional television is so last year. Viewing in three dimensions is everywhere at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) -- from webcams to video games to home theater systems -- and some TV manufacturers are betting it could be the biggest thing since high-definition and flat screens.

This year's edition of CES, the world's largest consumer technology showcase, even featured the first national 3D broadcast of a major sporting event, the US college football championship game between Oklahoma and Florida.

Some products -- such as the Minoru 3D Webcam -- may end up being little more than a novelty item, a description which pretty much sums up Hollywood's decades-long flirtation with 3D.

Heavy-hitters led by Japanese electronics giant Panasonic and Oscar-winning director James Cameron, are seeking to change that.

"Make no mistake about it, 3D is not a gimmick any longer," the Titanic director said in a taped message during a presentation at CES of Panasonic's 3D Full High-Definition (HD) home theater system.

"3D is ready for prime-time," said Cameron, who is putting the finishing touches to a 3D movie, Avatar, scheduled for release later this year.

More movie theaters in the United States are equipped to show 3D films in which action threatens to spill out of screens but bringing 3D into the home may still be some ways off.

One of things holding 3D back is the absence of a common standard for 3D content, which in turn is holding back the movie studios which will provide that content.

With its 103-inch plasma display and breathtaking visual effects, Panasonic's 3D Full HD home theater system received rave reviews but a spokesman said there is no firm date for bringing it to the US market.

"It depends on whether or not we can get a format established," said Dan Tarwater. "Panasonic is interested in being able to come to the marketplace with a standard in place rather than venturing out on their own.

"That will involve the cooperation of not only the hardware manufacturers but also the software side of things," he said.

Then there's the little problem of those glasses.

"I don't think it will be a mass market technology until content improves and manufacturers can come up with a way to do 3D without the glasses," said Paul Gagnon, a television market analyst at research firm DisplaySearch.

"There are some demos without glasses, but they have lots of room for improvement," Gagnon said.

The CES coincided this year with a major 3D initiative on another front, the broadcast of the Oklahoma-Florida football game in 3D to some 80 movie theaters in 35 US states.

"It's taken eight years," said Bud Mayo, chief executive of Cinedigm Digital Cinema Corp., a company seeking to turn movie theaters into 3D entertainment centers which would show sports, concerts and other events in three dimensions.

"We've invested hundreds of millions of dollars converting theaters all around the nation and built the satellite network that enabled this to happen," he said.

The 80 theaters showing the football game sold out but the jury's still out on whether the venture will be a success.

The future is less uncertain for 3D video games.

"This is the year 3D goes mainstream," said Ujesh Desai, vice president of GeForce desktop business at computer graphics chip specialty firm NVIDIA, whose demonstrations of 3D video games were a CES highlight.

"I think 3D has a great opportunity as a niche technology at first, for gaming mostly," agreed Gagnon.

John Jacobs, a notebook PC analyst at DisplaySearch, said the 3D video game displays were "off the charts impressive."

"But the challege to me becomes how big are those markets and how many resources do you want to invest?" he said. "The challenge is to go mainstream. But then Ferrari's not mainstream and they make a boatload of money."

source

3D movie screens coming online slower than the movie industry projected

2009-01-15T05:22:00.000-08:00

While there have been a few prominent examples of blockbuster movies being shown in 3D movie theaters, the trickle is about to become a flood, the New York Times reports.

But even if the 3D movies are on the way, the number of theaters capable of displaying 3D films is lagging:

"It's starting to look like there will be a lot of disappointed producers unable to realize the upside of these 3-D investments," said Harold L. Vogel, a media analyst and the author of "Entertainment Industry Economics." Filming in 3-D adds about $15 million to production costs, he said, but can send profit soaring because of premium ticket pricing.
Only about 1,300 of North America's 40,000 or so movie screens support digital 3-D. (Imax adds 250.) Overseas, where films now generate up to 70 percent of their theatrical revenue, only a few hundred theaters can support the technology. It costs about $100,000 for each full upgrade.

Studios require about 3,000 screens in North America for most new releases. Popcorn movies like "Avatar" or "Monsters vs. Aliens," a 3-D entry from DreamWorks Animation, typically open on more than 4,000 screens.

"The crunch has everybody scrambling," said Chuck Viane, president for domestic distribution for Walt Disney Studios. "We had expected many more screens to be available by now, no doubt about it."

One barrier in the near term for 3D theaters is the cost, both to upgrade the screens and to buy a ticket to go see the films (the NYT story says tickets to 3D movies will go for as much as $25 each).

While the studios and theater chains are apparently hashing out agreements to split the upgrade costs, I think $25 movie tickets are going to be about as popular as bird flu.

Even in the best of economic times, $25 for a movie ticket borders on the larcenous unless the purchase includes free hot dog, popcorn and beverage, and all teenagers are automatically immobilized via tazer if they so much as whisper during the movie.

But cost aside, the 3D movie theater trend might be derailed before it even gets rolling, thanks to 3D television.

And, unlike 3D theaters, some of these 3D TVs won't require bulky glasses.

source

Avatar pegged as 'game changer'

2009-01-14T05:36:00.000-08:00

James Cameron's last film, "Titanic," swept the Oscars and became the highest-grossing film in history. If that wasn't pressure enough, there is the belief among many in Hollywood Cameron's "Avatar," which opens in December 2009, represents a "game changer" for the industry.

For one thing, it is a bleeding-edge mixture of live-action, performance-capture and digital animation. It is also being produced and released in 3D. Yet while expectations are stratospheric, none but a few insiders have seen footage from the film, which remains

source

At the tenplex, the year for 3D movies

2009-01-14T05:25:00.000-08:00

They first arrived in the '50s, accompanied by funny cardboard glasses, and they were a novelty the way hula hoops were a novelty, all the big talk one day and all but forgotten the next, the glasses, blue on one side, red on the other, tossed with the trash.

Deeply threatened by the arrival of television, Hollywood had bet big on 3D, and lost. Folks remembered the glasses. They forgot the movies.

Now, some 50 years later, 3D is back, this time with more solid expectations, and 2009 is the year they will be borne out. More than 15 major 3D movies will be released this year, including James Cameron’s much anticipated “Avatar,” after several years that saw a handful of releases.

“Starting from 2009, but stronger from 2010, 3-D will make a significant difference at the box office,” says David Hancock, head of film and cinema at Screen Digest, a London firm of media analysts.

Though movies have held up well this far into the recession, Hollywood needs a boost to keep growing its share of the entertainment dollar against rising competition. This time around, TV is but one of a slew of distractions.

Box office revenues finished out 2008 at near-record levels, down just 0.06 percent, to $9.616 billion compared to 2007’s record of $9.622 billion. But ticket sales were down 3.84 percent, according to box office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

The big Hollywood studios are looking to 3D to bring Americans back to the tenplex. The technology's big advantage is that is cannot be replicated by home entertainment systems.

“They are really banking on that to rally the industry over the next few years. They are hoping to throw in something that audiences haven’t seen before and can’t do with home entertainment,” says Jeff Bock, analyst at Exhibitor Relations.

So far, this second wave of 3D films has done well, with people paying a premium of $3 to $5 to at the box office. The big question is whether Americans will accept those higher ticket costs as the recession deepens. And will they support not one or two films a year but a whole slew of them?

Conventional wisdom says that people still go to the movies when things get tough but the fear is that they will cut back on the number they see.

One thing in the industry’s favor this year is a strong lineup of movies, and that promises another buoyant year for the box office. One forecaster sees revenue up 5 percent or 6 percent and ticket sales up marginally.

The big-name movies really kick off in March when “The Watchmen,” based on a classic graphic novel of the same name, hits the screens. While directed by Zack Snyder, who did “300,” the movie is considered risky for Warner Bros. because it's R-rated, which is unusual for a comic book adaptation.

“Monsters vs. Aliens,” a CGI movie with a cast including Seth Rogen and Reese Witherspoon, is also due out in March in a 3D version. It will air a 3D commercial during the Super Bowl.

In May, when the summer blockbusters really start coming out, there’s the comedy and action flick “Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian” and J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek,” which tells the story leading up to the events portrayed in the TV series. There’s also Ron Howard’s “Angels and Demons,” based on a book by Dan Brown of “The Da Vinci Code,” and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.”

Then later in the summer “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” arrives on screens in 3D. A sequel to the 2007 blockbuster “Transformers” also comes out that month, this one called “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” Also out is the long-awaited “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” which is expected to have some segments in 3-D.

And, of course, at the tail end of the year there’s Cameron’s 3D film “Avatar,” as well as another 3D movie, “A Christmas Carol,” directed by Robert Zemeckis.

“If you look at the slate of films, it is very strong. That is one positive thing,” says Bock. "They definitely have the material. Now it’s just will they have the audience."

***

Meanwhile, elsewhere in popcult, “Marley & Me” was at No. 1 at the box office over the weekend, bringing in $24.1 million. “Bedtime Stories” remained at No. 2 with $20.3 million in ticket sales.

In DVD rentals for the week ended Dec. 28, according to IMDb.com, “Burn After Reading” jumped from No. 11 to No. 1, followed by “Death Race.”

On iTunes this morning, Lady GaGa’s “Just Dance” was No. 1, followed by Beyonce’s “Single Ladies.”

And in books, Patricia Cornwell’s “Scarpetta” moved to No. 1 on The New York Times’ hardcover fiction best-sellers list for the week ended Dec. 27, although it fell out of the top 10 on USA Today’s book chart for the week ended Dec. 28.

source

How Not to Make a 3D movie

2009-01-14T05:23:00.000-08:00

Since it debuted half a century ago, 3D cinema has mainly been a gimmick. To date, perhaps my favorite of the all these movies is a short horror film farce by the Three Stooges, because it fully embraces the silliness of 3D, using every gag imaginable, with no pretensions of it being an art form.

But 3D can be taken seriously if it’s done right, says Jon Landau, producer of the (admittedly somewhat hokey) blockbuster Titanic, who is now working with his director partner Jim Cameron on the live action 3D flick Avatar. He extolled the virtues of 3D at the Consumer Electronics Show during a press event in which Panasonic announced plans to bring 3D capabilities to its plasma TVs and Blu-ray players.

The trick to making a 3D film that isn't gimmicky, says Landau, is not to think too much about the 3D. "You have to be careful not to fall into the trap that the imagery would suggest to you, which is 'stay on me longer, look how real I am, stay on that shot,'" he explained. "It's like transferring from black-and-whit to color. Just because it's in color doesn’t mean I want to hang on the shot of the flower longer while the lead actor is talking."

In fact, all the editing for Avatar is being done on a 2D version of the film, which takes the perspective from the "left-eye" of the two-camera setup. Afterwards, the same edits are carried over to the right-eye video. "We fought to hold to the standard cinematic techniques," he said, following the same rules that make a good-looking 2D film rather than getting caught up in the 3D effects.

source

New Photo: On The Set of James Cameron’s Avatar

2009-01-14T05:20:00.001-08:00

We’ve seen a few production photos from James Cameron’s Avatar thus far, but most of them consisted of Cameron and crew huddled behind monitors looking off into the distance at something we can only assume is cool. We can only assume, because we never see what exactly they’re looking at.

Well the New York Times has an interesting set photo which actually shows a bit more than the usual. Cameron is standing in a set which appears to be some kind of alien space craft (I could be totally wrong, and I’m sure someone who has actually read Cameron’s scriptment will correct me in the comments). Full photo after the jump.

source

Analyst: Imax more essential to movie studio plans

2009-01-10T06:47:00.000-08:00

Associated Press, 11.19.08, 10:29 AM EST

Imax Corp.'s new five-movie deal with Walt Disney Co. indicates the large-screen format is becoming more essential to film studios' plans, an analyst said Wednesday.

Disney (nyse: DIS - news - people ) announced earlier Wednesday it will deliver five movies via Imax theaters beginning in November 2009 with the 3-D movie "A Christmas Carol," starring Jim Carrey.

Marla Backer of Soleil Securities Group Inc. said the Disney agreement, which follows a deal Imax signed with DreamWorks Animation SKG (nyse: DWA - news - people ) Inc., shows the studios understand they need to secure their spots with Imax before others do.

"With Disney, all of the major studios have recently released films or have upcoming titles on the Imax platform," she wrote in a client note.

A rise in popularity of 3-D movies is also helping Imax, Backer added, with two highly anticipated films, "Monsters vs. Aliens" and "Avatar," set to run on Imax screens next year.

Shares of Imax gained 19 cents, or 5.9 percent, to $3.40 in morning trading. Over the past year, the stock has traded between $2.70 and $8.28.

Virtual Guantanamo Bay creator speaks at UCSC

2009-01-03T06:46:00.000-08:00

Documentary filmmaker and self-described transmedia producer Nonny de la Pena spoke at UC Santa Cruz Wednesday about "Gone Gitmo," a virtual reality film project about Guantanamo Bay.

"Gone Gitmo" is a representation of Guantanamo Bay inside an online virtual world called Second Life. De la Pena, who also made a documentary film about Guantanamo Bay called "Unconstitutional" in 2004, worked with Peggy Weil, a visiting associate professor of cinematic arts at the University of Southern California, to build the virtual space in 2007.

"The real prison is completely inaccessible to all but a very few lawyers and NGOs," de la Pena said. "We wanted to build an accessible space, to increase the conversation."

Every Second Life user has an avatar, a 3-D graphic to represent him or herself. Ordinarily, a user has complete control over the avatar's movements. But as soon as your avatar dons its orange jumpsuit and enters the "Gone Gitmo" installation, de la Pena explained, that control is taken away.

The screen goes blank as a prison guard drops a black hood over your head, and you hear sounds taken from real Guantanamo Bay footage as you are taken to the prison in a military transport plane. When the hood is removed, your avatar finds itself kneeling in a small cage, which was based on photographs of Camp X-Ray where detainees were held.

"People find it disturbing," de la Pena said. "People have true physiological responses to their avatar."

At this point, de la Pena said, you regain control of your avatar, and can explore the facility. But you are constantly confronted on all sides, including the floor, with videos of real prisoners being led around the camp. The videos were released by the Department of Defense.

There is no torture chamber in "Gone Gitmo."

"We didn't want to trivialize that," de la Pena said.

Instead, there is a "contemplation chamber," where you can read and hear quotes from public figures who advocate closing Guantanamo Bay, poems written by detainees, and transcripts of interrogations.

Since only people who are signed up for Second Life can experience "Gone Gitmo," de la Pena worked with blogger Berhnard Drax to make a "machinima," a fusion of machines and cinema, report depicting the experience. Drax was recently given the "Every Human Has Rights" media award for the report, and will go to Paris in December for a ceremony celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "Gone Gitmo" has also been featured in publications like Vanity Fair, NewScientist and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The talk was part of the Art, Technology, and Culture colloquium at UC Santa Cruz. The small audience consisted mainly of students and faculty from the university's digital arts and new media department, said department chair Sharon Daniel.

source

Katzenberg: 3-D vision goes beyond animation

2008-12-27T06:45:00.000-08:00

DWA chief gives keynote at Singapore festival

By Janine Stein

Nov 19, 2008, 02:29 PM ET

SINGAPORE -- It's a 3-D world, and Jeffrey Katzenberg thinks it's time to reflect that on the big screen -- and not just in animated films.

"In five to seven years, all films, regardless of budgets or type, will be made in 3-D," the DreamWorks Animation boss said here Wednesday during his keynote at the inaugural 3DX Film and Entertainment Technology Festival.

"3-D is how we see, how we take things in. It's natural," Katzenberg said. "This is not a gimmick, it's an opportunity to immerse the audience, to heighten the experience."

He added that the migration to 3-D will happen on all screens, including mobile phones and laptops.

Katzenberg was joined by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Group president Mark Zoradi and others in stressing the industry's commitment to 3-D as the future of film.

Moviegoers' early response is clear, Zoradi said, citing the success of such 3-D titles as "Chicken Little" and "Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert."

"Consumers clearly prefer 3-D if they have a choice," he said, adding that 3-D films could bring in two to three times the business of a 2-D release.

Zoradi touted his studio's new five-picture deal with Imax, which will kick off with Robert Zemeckis' "A Christmas Carol" in November 2009, adding that the slate could involve projects from Tim Burton and Jerry Bruckheimer, though no details were disclosed.

Producer John Landau, now working with James Cameron on "Avatar," said that 3-D would "do for cinema what stereo did for the audio industry."

All the film industry has to do is "demystify" 3-D for consumers, whose perception of 3-D may be of "gimmicks on B films" and "theme parks that forced things off the screen," Landau said.

Zoradi's presentation Wednesday included the first public screening of 3-D footage from "Beauty and the Beast" (originally released in 1991), which Disney is re-rendering for a 2010 release, as well as Disney's "Tron 2," set for 2011 or 2012.

The addition of "Beauty and the Beast" brings Disney's number of digital 3-D releases for 2009-10 to 11, with another six to come in 2011. This would give Disney more than 50% of all 3-D releases during the next three years; 11 of those would be animated.

"The biggest barrier (to 3-D) is not product, it's the installed base of digital cinemas," Zoradi said.

Katzenberg predicted that 35%-40% of admissions for March DWA release "Monsters vs Aliens" will be for 3-D. For a film coming out 15 months later, he envisions 80%-85% of admissions for the company's next "Shrek" installment to be for 3-D.

Stressing the technical advances that made the latest incarnation of 3-D different from past efforts, Katzenberg said 3-D "will bring people back to the movies who have stopped going."

"This is not my father's 3-D," he said. "There's no ghosting, no eye strain and best of all, you don't throw up. Throwing up is not good for anyone's business."

All agreed that 3-D's ability to immerse audiences in the film is the key.

"There is nothing more immersive than 3-D," Landau said. "On 'Titanic,' our goal was to use visual effects to make people feel part of the film. With 'Avatar,' we're using technology to transport people to another world."

Katzenberg said that theatrical digital 3-D represents a "unique opportunity for cinemas" to create an experience that consumers could not get at home, "and it will be many years before they can."

Among the reasons cited was the fact that light diminishes the quality of the image.

"The only place in the home to replicate this is in the coat closet ... and I would not want to spend two hours there watching a movie," he said.

Katzenberg: 3-D vision goes beyond animation

DWA chief gives keynote at Singapore festival

By Janine Stein

Nov 19, 2008, 02:29 PM ET

Source

Avatar Movie Production: Music

2008-12-20T07:14:00.000-08:00

Composer James Horner will score the film, which will be his third collaboration with Cameron after Aliens and Titanic. Horner recorded parts of the score with a small chorus singing in the alien language Na'vi in March 2008. He is also working with Wanda Bryant, an ethnomusicologist, to create a music culture for the alien race.^Source

Avatar Movie Production: Filiming and Effects

2008-12-13T07:09:00.000-08:00

In December 2006, Cameron explained that the delay in producing the film since the 1990s had been to wait until the technology necessary to create his project was advanced enough. The director planned to create photo-realistic computer-generated characters by using motion capture animation technology, on which he had been doing work for the past 14 months. Unlike previous performance capture systems, where the digital environment is added after the actors' motions have been captured, Cameron's new virtual camera allows him to directly observe on a monitor how the actors' virtual counterparts interacts with the movie's digital world in real time and adjust and direct the scenes just as if shooting live action; "It’s like a big, powerful game engine. If I want to fly through space, or change my perspective, I can. I can turn the whole scene into a living miniature and go through it on a 50 to 1 scale." Cameron planned to continue developing the special effects for Avatar, which he hoped would be released in summer 2009. He also gave directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson a chance to test the new technology. Spielberg and George Lucas were also able to visit the set to watch Cameron direct with the equipment.

Other technological innovations includes a performance-capture stage, called The Volume, which is six times larger than previously used and an improved method of capturing facial expressions. The tool is a small individually made skull cap with a tiny camera attached to it, located in front of the actors' face which collects information about their facial expressions and eyes, which is then transmitted to the computers. Besides a real time virtual world, the team is also experimenting with a way of letting computer generated characters interact with real actors on a real, live-action set while shooting live action.

In January 2007, Paramount Pictures announced a live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender under M. Night Shyamalan and said that the project's name had been registered to the Motion Picture Association of America for movie title ownership, though a 20th Century Fox representative for James Cameron's Avatar indicated that the studio owned the movie title. Paramount eventually retitled its film as merely The Last Airbender. In the same month, Fox announced that the studio's Avatar would be filmed in 3D. Cameron described the film as a hybrid with a full live-action shoot in combination with computer-generated characters and live environments. "Ideally at the end of the day the audience has no idea which they’re looking at," Cameron said. The director indicated that he had already worked four months on nonprincipal scenes for the film. Principal photography began in April, and was done around parts of Los Angeles as well as New Zealand. The live action is shot with the proprietary Fusion digital 3-D camera system developed by Cameron and Vince Pace. According to Cameron, the film will be composed of 60% computer-generated elements and 40% live action, as well as traditional miniatures. The performance-capture photography would last 31 days on a high-tech soundstage in Playa Vista. In October, Cameron was scheduled to shoot live-action in New Zealand^[14] for another 31 days.

To create the human mining colony on Pandora, production designers visited the Noble Clyde Boudreaux drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico during June 2007. They photographed, measured and filmed every aspect of the rig, which will be replicated on-screen with photorealistic CGI.

source

Shyamalan assembles 'Airbender' cast

2008-12-12T08:02:00.000-08:00

Rex Features

M. Night Shyamalan has assembled a cast of unknown actors for his next movie The Last Airbender.

Texan Noah Ringer has secured the role of the film's hero Aang, a 12-year-old boy with superpowers who is pitted against the Fire Nation. Ringer, a karate champion, answered an open casting call for the movie.

Joining him are Twilight actor Jackson Rathbone as Aang's friend Sokka and Nicola Peltz as his sister Katara.

Singer Jesse McCartney is in talks for the role of the Fire Nation's evil prince Zuko, according to Entertainment Weekly.

The Last Airbender is based on the anime-style Nickelodeon series Avatar. It will open in cinemas in July 2010.

source

Cast Selected For Shyamalan’s ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’

2008-12-12T08:01:00.000-08:00

Cast Selected For Shyamalan’s ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’

Entertainment Weekly is reporting that M. Night Shyamalan has picked some of the cast for his upcoming film, The Last Airbender.

The movie is based on Avatar: The Last Airbender, the popular animated series that ran from early 2005 up until this summer. The story was organized into 3 books (seasons) with each episode called a chapter. There are 20 chapters in each book with one extra in the final book making for a 61-episode run to tell the story and end it properly.

And that they did.

On top of winning an Emmy award and being one of Nickelodeon’s highest rated shows ever; the series spawned all sorts of merchandise including several video games – and now a potential feature film franchise.

Here is the cast thus far:

Noah Ringer, a karate star chosen from an open casting call in Texas will play Aang, the central character (the Avatar) of the story. Aang is the last of his tribe and the story follows him as he and his companions travel the world in search of trainers to teach him to master the four elements.
Nicola Peltz will play Katara of the Southern water tribe.
Jackson Rathbone of recent Twilight fame will play Katara’s brother, Sokka.
Jesse McCartney, the young singer, is currently in negotiations to play Zuko, the exiled prince of the Fire Nation.

I watched the entire series earlier this year and really loved it. It took a bit to get used to and there was a lot of corny stuff in the earlier episodes, but overall it was pretty incredible and it is on my list of greatest cartoons ever.

That being said, similar to my thoughts on the new Dragonball Evolution trailer, this will be very difficult to translate into live-action. Shyamalan’s recent track record hasn’t exactly been stellar, so I am eager to see if he can pull this off.

The first installment of The Last Airbender is due out on the big screen July 2, 2010.

Source: Entertainment Weekly

source

Racism Hits Hollywood Kid's Movie

2008-12-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

I thought we had just arrived at a milestone by electing the first black/Muslim President of the United States. However, Hollywood director, M. Night Shyamalan thinks otherwise.
Popular children's show, Avatar the Last Airbender has been signed to air as a live action film in late 2010. Like a normal fan, I scrambled to the internet to find out who was cast to play my favorite characters. To my profound horror, I found this http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=51217
I couldn't fathom what Shyamalan was thinking...Casting white people to play Inuit, Asian, and, dare I say it... clearly not-white characters...? I confirmed the blog post as the truth after checking IMDB and I was completely and utterly enraged.
Isn't this considered Racism? Look, I may be jumping the gun but isn't it strange that, despite the actors' cartoon counterparts being of various Asian decent... not a single Asian, black, or Inuit actor/actress has been chosen to fill the roles? A friend of mine commented after hearing the news, "I think what's going to be hilarious is that they are going to need to tan or spray paint their skin to match the look. And you know, THAT'S not insulting at all." Furthermore, I wonder how blond teen pop-sensation idol, Jesse McCartney is going to pull off the role of Prince Zuko (not pictured)
Have we regressed back to the days where white actors painted their faces to play a character of a different race, such as Othello? And this is a kid's film, what is the underlying moral here?

source

Avatar Last Airbender Casting News

2008-12-12T07:59:00.000-08:00

I already knew about the Avatar movie, knew that it was going to be directed by M.Night Shyamalan, had my reservations about it (the anime was great, why need a movie? especially so soon after the series ended, and directed by the same person who did "the Happening"?)

Looking around my favorite sites, found the reported casting. Aang will be played by an unseen karate star, Noah Ringer apparently from the Texas casting call.

Sokka may be played by Twilight's Jackson Rathborne.

Katara will be played by Deck the Halls' Nicola Peltz.

And the punchline? Jesse McCartney may be playing Zuko.

The movie is slated to be released in July 2010. Somehow I see Dragonball Evolution happening all over again.

source

3D films: the next film revolution?

2008-12-09T19:26:00.000-08:00

They've been the next big thing for the past 50 years, but 3D films have finally come of age. Just the thing to get bums on seats, says Chris Evans

Cinema has already been through two major revolutions in its relatively short life. First there was the transition from silent to talkie, then from black and white to colour. Now Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation, believes "3D is the next revolution in the cinema-going experience".

A bold statement, and one tinged with a distinct bias as DreamWorks is one of several Hollywood studios set to release their forthcoming animation projects in the new, digitised 3D format. Titles set to hit our screens include Monsters vs Aliens (2009), A Christmas Carol (2009), Toy Story 3 (2010), Shrek Goes Fourth (2010), and Avatar, due for release in December next year, which is hotly tipped to be the turning point in the 3D revolution.

It is important to point out that 3D is, of course, nothing new. It was first experimented with back in the 1950s and Imax cinemas have been showing films in 3D for the past 30 years. But now, with the advent of digital 3D technology being installed in cinemas worldwide, and the fact that the choice of films in 3D is not only broader but much better, audiences need only head to a multiplex and put on the glasses to immerse themselves in what is proving to be a wholly new way to enjoy the latest studio blockbuster.

"This is digital stereoscopic 3D. It is a far cry from the 3D experience of the 1950s. There is no ghosting and no headaches. It is pin-sharp, laser-sharp, crystal-clear 3D imagery," says Mark Batey, chief executive of the Film Distributors' Association. It's a view supported by Phil Clapp, chief executive of the Cinema Exhibitors' Association. "I have seen excerpts from the upcoming Monsters vs Aliens film and it is incredible. You actually feel immersed in the film, like the action is taking place around you, rather than in front of you, as it is in 2D."

There are currently 65 digital 3D screens in the UK, and more than 2,000 worldwide. Industry experts predict there will be at least 10,000 by 2012. This rapid expansion and advancement in 3D technology is seen by some as a response to the decline in cinema attendance and the rise in alternative viewing platforms such as the internet, PlayStation and cable television.

"Just as it was in the 1950s when the advent of television shook the cinema world to its bones, so in today's world of rapid digital communication, 3D is the cinemas' response to say we are bigger, brighter, bolder and better than anything you will experience at home," Batey says. Unlike the cumbersome, labour-intensive 3D systems of the 1950s, which required two cameras projecting on to the same screen, making synchronisation difficult, the new digital projectors, of which there are three different models – RealD, Dolby Digital Cinema and Imax 3D – require just the one projector run through a computer.

"The projection element is the same in terms of the lens and the lamp, but you have a server into which you plug hard drives with the film on, and that is then unscrambled and played through to the computer on the back of the projection unit," explains Clapp.

By simultaneously selecting two viewpoints, or a left eye and right eye, the technologies enable the brain to converge or fuse the images. By wearing the special glasses, the watcher prevents the image from bleeding over from the left to the right, or vice versa. "These projectors provide a much higher refresh rate between the two complementary eye images because it is stereo so the film producers are recording one version to the right eye and one to the left eye, and the projectors are then able to convert these into a high frame rate. So it is a really seamless effect," says Charlotte Jones, senior analyst of film and cinema at Screen Digest.

Also, unlike the heavy 35mm film reels, 3D digital films are stored on a hard disk, which means it is much easier to transport them from one cinema to the next. "These digital disks are essentially the right-eye and left-eye versions of the film together, and can be taken by bike or van to another site and inserted into a server and played through the digital projector, which is normally positioned alongside a 35mm projector," Batey says.

But the reason so many exhibitors are still holding back from installing the projectors is the expense. One digital projector alone for a single screen costs £40,000 to £50,000, and then to add a 3D upgrade would cost another £10,000 or even £20,000 on top of that.

"In the US, the studios are helping to finance the transition to digital and 3D by subsidising the projectors through the savings they are making as a result of using the cheaper digital prints as opposed to the expensive 35mm reels," Jones says. But outside of America, production companies working on 3D films are less inclined to contribute to the enormous costs, and take-up by the cinemas of the 3D projectors has so far been slow.

However, the potential revenue benefits of 3D are already being proven. The 3D release of films such as Journey to the Center of the Earth, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, Fly Me to the Moon and Chicken Little have taken at least two times, and in some cases three times, as much as their 2D releases.

This is partly due to the higher ticket costs of seeing the films in 3D. "To produce an animation film in 3D, you are probably looking at adding another 15 per cent on to the film budget, for a live action you are looking at another 30 per cent, which is why the studios are having to hike up the prices by as much as $5 in the US to recoup costs," Jones says.

Global revenue from 3D ticket sales in 2008 amounted to $240m, approximately 70 per cent of which, or $166m, came from North America. That figure of $166m accounted for roughly 1.8 per cent of total projected North American box-office takings for 2008, and Jones expects the share to climb to approximately 15% in 2009.

The realms of possibility and potential revenue with the new 3D technology are also not just limited to film. Some cinemas are experimenting with beaming live events via satellite into cinemas in 3D. Last week, RealD and 3ality Digital staged the world's first live 3D broadcast of an American football game, at the Mann Chinese 6 theatre in Hollywood.

"That could be really significant. In Europe, for example, they could show the Fifa World Cup live in 3D. That would be incredible," says Jones, adding that "in the near future it will potentially be possible to beam 3D images to mobile phones and into the home. The only problem would be wearing those 3D glasses at home, where you could be playing video games for four or five hours, or watching a few films over the course of an evening." So, in actual fact, while the cinemas are hoping the new 3D experience will draw the young crowd back to their screens, it looks like it could keep them at home even longer.

Big-screen action: The power of Imax

* 'The Dark Knight' director Christopher Nolan filmed six of the film's major action sequences using Imax cameras. As a result, Imax box offices were inundated for weeks with filmgoers intent on seeing Batman and the Joker on the even bigger screen. The film made £360,000 with a single print on a single Imax screen in Manchester – with the aid, it should be noted, of Imax's inflated ticket prices.

* The Imax system was first developed in Canada in the 1970s. Imax can screen films in a much larger format, and with much greater resolution, than a conventional cinema screen. Modern Imax theatres are also equipped with super-sophisticated sound systems.

* Until now, there have been only a handful of Imax screens in the UK, and only one in London – at the BFI in Waterloo. All that will soon change, however, with the introduction of the Imax digital projection system to Europe. Far cheaper to instal and run than its predecessor, digital will allow Imax to roll out across the continent.

As well as screening live sports events and concerts, theatres have a full slate of Imax Hollywood blockbusters lined up for 2009, including 'Watchmen', 'Transformers 2', 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince', and 'Avatar'.

source

James Cameron Talks about Avatar and 3D

2008-12-09T19:25:00.000-08:00

At a two day summit devoted to all things 3D, conference founder Robert Dowling sat down with director James Cameron and 3D cinematographer Vincent Pace to talk about their perspectives on the stereoscopic movie-making. “If I could have shot Titanic in 3D I would have,” declared Cameron. “Any spectacle would benefit from it.”

Pace, who supplies 3D camera systems and post production, noted that there’s a knee-jerk reaction that only big players in Hollywood will attempt 3D movie-making. “The proof of concept and visionary aspect happened eight years ago with the documentary on the Titanic,” he said, “Not big budget films but people committed to changing entertainment. There’s nothing in the entertainment palette that can’t be considered in 3D, whether it’s nature, documentaries, sports…it’s been proofed out and we’ve seen successes across the board.”

Camera systems are now mature, said Cameron and Pace. Cameron mentioned that the first day of shooting Avatar, Hannah Montana was also shooting, on a different continent. “The question came up, were there enough cameras and crews?” he says. “We put a stake in the heart of that argument. Anyone contemplating a feature shouldn’t be concerned about availability of cameras or crews. They’re all operational at this point.”
With regard to how creativity is impacted by working stereoscopically, Cameron emphasized that “you have to make a good movie first.” Stereo is tertiary, he says, behind story, cast, design. “It has to be value added so the 2D experience is a good movie and the 3D movie is its own experience for those who want to seek it out.”

Dowling pointed out that many viewers are leery of 3D, remembering the red/green glasses of the 1950s. “There’s still misconceptions in peoples’ minds,” he says. But Cameron’s rejoinder was that 3D is “more mature by miles from the 1950s.” And he scolded 3D producers who might create a production that reinforces the negative experiences of yesteryear. “All it takes is one bad experience and people are turned off by 3D,” he said. “Anyone contemplating a long-term strategy has to think about any dumb short-term experience. Anyone using anaglyph glasses is not going to have a good time unless they’re a 5 year old on Ritalin. You’re creating a marketing challenge you have to dig yourself out of. We have to hunt those people down and take them out back because they’re hurting it for the rest of us.”

Dowling asked if exhibitors are excited about 3D movies. Pace replied that they can’t ignore the numbers for some of the recent 3D movies. “People are beginning to embrace it,” he said. “But exhibitors have to see really good 3D movies out there. Cameron’s point of view is that, since the “stereo renaissance,” all the films from Chicken Little onward have looked great, even when they were converted from 2D.

With Avatar gaining in buzz as it nears its release date (Dec. 18, 2009), Dowling asked Cameron, does he feel “an added sense of pressure”? “Yes, it can’t possibly meet expectations,” said Cameron. “I went out, got drunk and got over that. But it’s what we set out to do with Avatar that’s exciting. Look, here’s a big studio picture being shot in 3D. We’re taking the gamble.”

“It’s groundbreaking even without the 3D, he continued. “We’ve got digital performances in realtime. The movie might suck. I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid and I think it runs pretty well. As with any 3D film, there’s no stinkin’ screen. For the audience, it becomes a window into a reality, unfettered by what the director wants to put into that window. The stereoscopic illusion fires more neurons in the brain. Peoples’ brains are more active and it becomes a visceral experience.”

Cameron noted that he’s challenging Fox to be creative about how they market Avatar. Trailers will play at IMAX 3D shows, he added, saying that “the studio marketing machine will kick into gear and figure out how to make it work.” But he also noted that, although people will seek out the 3D experience, Avatar will be sold in every other manner. “It has to live and die on its merits,” he said.

For filmmakers contemplating making a 3D film, Cameron urged that they first talk with Pace. “Do your homework if you want to shoot in 3D,” he cautioned. “It’s not daunting. You can be demystified quickly. But there’s a lot of conflicting information out there.” Pace agreed, adding that a filmmaker contemplating 3D should ask all the questions and evaluate the answers. “We have real world examples whether it’s a feature film, sports or a concert to give him or her the confidence level needed to move forward.”

As to how much 3D would add to a film budget, Cameron noted that “as a producer you have to deal with everything and 99 percent of them don’t have to do with 3D. The 3D is a small specialized area.”The bigger the movie, the more the 3D’s incremental costs hide in the budget, says Cameron. Except when visual effects are involved. “They get more expensive in 3D,” he said. But it isn’t double the work: after roto, paint and whatever else is done to one eye, the changes are applied to the second eye and rendered. “If you want to number-crunch, y9ou can show that the additional cost is always off-set by the additional revenue, which has been the case for the last three years,” he said. “And I think it’ll get even better. It’ll get to the point where 3D is just another line item.”

Last word…”If you’re serious about exploring the idea of making your movie in 3D, get the camera for a day and play around. Every director will treat stereoscopy slightly differently. Develop your aesthetic with it.”

source

Avatar Movie Production: Development

2008-12-06T07:06:00.000-08:00

Development

In 1995, director James Cameron wrote an 80-page scriptment for Avatar. Cameron said his inspiration was "every single science fiction book I read as a kid", particularly striving to update the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter series. Cameron saw his story as being about how Western civilizations supplant indigenous cultures, in either active genocidal or passive ways. In Avatar, humanity extends that to other planets. In August 1996, Cameron announced that after completing Titanic, he would film Avatar, which would make use of "synthetic", or computer-generated, actors. The project would cost $100 million and involve at least six actors in leading roles "who appear to be real but do not exist in the physical world". Special effects house Digital Domain, with whom Cameron has a partnership, joined the project, which would begin production in the summer of 1997.

In June 2005, director Cameron was announced to be working on a project tentatively titled "Project 880" parallel to another project, Battle Angel. By December, Cameron said that he planned to film Battle Angel first for a summer 2007 release, and to film "Project 880" for a 2009 release. In February 2006, Cameron said he had switched goals for the two film projects – "Project 880" for 2007 and Battle Angel for 2009. He indicated that the release of "Project 880" would possibly be delayed until 2008. Later that February, James Cameron revealed that "Project 880" was "a retooled version of Avatar", a film that he had tried to make years earlier, citing the technological advances in the creation of computer-generated characters Gollum, King Kong and Davy Jones. Cameron had chosen Avatar over Battle Angel after completing a five-day camera test in the previous year. Cameron's early scriptment for Avatar circulated the Internet for years. When the project was re-announced, copies were subsequently removed from websites. In June 2006, Cameron said that if Avatar was successful, he hoped to make two sequels to the film.

From January to April 2006, Cameron wrote the script. Working with Paul Frommer, linguist and Director of the Center for Management Communication at USC, he developed a whole language and culture for the Na'vi, the indigenous race on Pandora. In July, Cameron announced that he would film Avatar for a summer 2008 release and planned to begin principal photography with an established cast by February 2007. The following August, the visual effects studio Weta Digital signed on to help Cameron produce Avatar. Stan Winston, who had collaborated with Cameron in the past, joined Cameron's Avatar to help with the film's designs. In September, Cameron was announced to use his own Reality Camera System to film in 3-D. The system would use two high-definition cameras in a single camera body to create depth perception.

source

Avatar Movie Cast And Characters

2008-11-29T07:03:00.000-08:00

Sam Worthington as Jake Sully, "a paralyzed former marine who undergoes an experiment to exist as an avatar, another version of himself... an alien – 10 feet (three meters) tall and blue." Sully is able to be part of the alien world in his avatar, a genetically engineered biological body that can be remotely operated by a human consciousness. Director James Cameron cast the Australian actor after searching the world for promising young actors, preferring relative unknowns to keep the budget down. Worthington auditioned twice early in development, and he has signed on for possible sequels.
Zoë Saldaña as an alien Jake initially betrays, but they both fall in love. The character will be entirely computer generated. Saldaña has also signed on for sequels.
Sigourney Weaver as Grace, a botanist who mentors Jake Sully. Weaver dyed her hair red for the part.^[11] Her character was named Shipley at one point. The character reminded Weaver of Cameron himself, being "very driven and very idealistic".
Michelle Rodriguez as an ex-marine pilot. Cameron had desired to work with Rodriguez since he had seen her in Girlfight (2000).
Giovanni Ribisi as Selfridge, a passive-aggressive character.
Stephen Lang as a Marine Corps colonel. Lang had auditioned for a role in Cameron's Aliens (1986) that he did not get, but the director remembered Lang and cast him into Avatar.
Joel David Moore as an anthropologist who studies plant and nature life like Weaver's character.
Matt Gerald as the main villain.

Actors Wes Studi, C.C.H. Pounder, Laz Alonso, and Peter Mensah are also in the film. Actor Michael Biehn entered talks with Cameron in March 2007 for a possible role in the film, but his involvement is not confirmed.

source

Avatar Movie Plot

2008-11-22T07:01:00.000-08:00

In the future, Jake, a paraplegic war veteran, is brought to another planet, Pandora, which is inhabited by the Na'vi, a humanoid race with their own language and culture. Those from Earth find themselves at odds with each other and the local culture.

Avatar Entertainment Features

2008-11-21T06:48:00.000-08:00

SINGAPORE : Get ready for a slew of 3D movies from Hollywood next year.

More than 20 such films will be released, up from just one about five years ago. And that's because 3D is poised to improve cinema attendance and ticket sales.

3D action movie "Journey to the Center of the Earth" which hits cinemas across Singapore this Christmas season, has grossed more than US$212 million worldwide since its release in July, while yet-to-be-released science-fiction blockbuster "Avatar" is already generating intense interest.

"Journey to the Center of the Earth" is the first live-action movie to be shot entirely in 3D digital format. Brendan Fraser, star and co-executive producer of the film, decided to go 3D because it is "nothing that people have seen before".

"I've come of age in a period of film making when I've learnt my trade with CGI and visual effects treatments, and a whole generation has also come of age at the same time having seen that type of imagery and it seems almost par for the course, the norm. So I ask myself where do you go from here... what would really grab an audience and immerse them in the experience of film, and the answer is simply 3D," said Fraser, who is in Singapore for the world's first international 3D Film Festival, 3DX.

Today's 3D is different from the 3D of the past. For starters, audiences wear polarised glasses which are "comfortable and kind of geeky-cool", instead of the traditional red and blue eyed paper glasses.

"You will feel like you are a member of the cast, if not a character, or a part of the action itself," Fraser said.

"It has the experience of taking the audience right out of their seat and immersing them into it (the film)."

No longer do you watch a movie, you "experience" it, said Jon Landau, producer of upcoming 3D blockbuster "Avatar".

"Digital technology allows us to present up on the screen an experience that people have never gotten before. What happens is the screen plane disappears and they are looking through a window into a world."

Contrary to popular belief, 3D is not just for sci-fi films but all movie genres, and Landau strongly believes 3D is here to stay.

He likens it to the transition of films from black and white to colour, "Once you've gone to colour, you go back to a specific creative reasoning to do black and white, other than that, everything is made in colour."

"And I think you’ll find it coming into your home... into your personal devices. We’ve seen 3D, nature created us that way, and I think we will continue to see it that way in entertainment," he added.

- CNA/km/il

source

Avatar Movie

2008-11-15T06:56:00.000-08:00

Avatar is an upcoming 3-D science fiction film directed by James Cameron, due to be released on December 18, 2009.

In director James Cameron's original script treatment of Avatar, a man tries to make his way as a miner by combining with an alien during an interplanetary war in which aliens can manifest themselves by possessing human bodies – avatars.

When Avatar was titled "Project 880", a casting call was put out in June 2006 with a plot description provided, saying, "In the future, Jake, a paraplegic war veteran is brought to another planet, Pandora, which is inhabited by the Na'vi, a humanoid race with their own language and culture. Those from Earth find themselves at odds with each other and the local culture."

In December 2006, Cameron described Avatar as "a futuristic tale set on a planet 200 years hence [...] an old-fashioned jungle adventure with an environmental conscience [that] aspires to a mythic level of storytelling." The January 2007 press release described the film: "Avatar is also an emotional journey of redemption and revolution. It is the story of a wounded ex-marine, thrust unwillingly into an effort to settle and exploit an exotic planet rich in bio-diversity, who eventually crosses over to lead the indigenous race in a battle for survival," and "We're creating an entire world, a complete ecosystem of phantasmagorical plants and creatures, and a native people with a rich culture and language.

source