Posts Tagged ‘James Cameron’

In the long and impressive cinematic history of James Cameron, there is one film he refuses to put on his resume but is reminded of every so often: “Piranha 2.”  The young auteur was hired to direct the sequel years before he made the landmark “Terminator” in 1984, but was fired after only a few days of work.  Not enough for a credit in the “Titanic” creator’s mind.  Now, with “Piranha 3-D” in theaters and purposely shot in the immersive medium Cameron has rejuvenated with “Avatar,” the subject of the killer fish and their potential for cinematic mayhem has reached the visionary once more.  Needless to say, he’s hardly a fan.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Cameron bluntly said, “I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus, but that is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3-D. When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3-D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip. And that’s not what’s happening now with 3-D.”

Cameron went on to note the medium is in a “renaissance” right now.  

”[The] biggest and the best films are being made in 3-D,” the Oscar winner told the magazine. “Martin Scorsese is making a film in 3-D. Disney’s biggest film of the year—’Tron: Legacy’ —is coming out in 3-D. So it’s a whole new ballgame.”

The filmmaker has been on something of a media blitz the past few weeks in anticipation of the re-release of “Avatar” this past weekend.  Unfortunately, the demand for the blockbuster’s return wasn’t what either he or 20th Century Fox expected.  In just 881 3-D and IMAX theaters, “Avatar” grossed $4 million which put it outside of the top ten movies at the weekend box office.  With $2.751 billion in worldwide theatrical revenue alone, neither party is crying over the result. For more on Cameron’s thoughts on the “Avatar” re-release, check out his exclusive interview with HitFix’s Drew McWeeny below.

(Reuters) – When “Titanic” director James Cameron released his film “Avatar” last year, there were not as many theaters equipped with 3D equipment to screen the 3D version as he would have liked.

So, on Friday, film studio 20th Century Fox is releasing an “Avatar: Special Edition” version of the biggest blockbuster of all time ($2.7 billion in global ticket sales) exclusively in Imax 3D theaters and venues equipped with digital 3D.

Cameron spoke to Reuters about the nine minutes of new film on the “special edition,” the movie’s success, and whether movies or science is his favored pursuit.

Q: Why a new one? The first was pretty good.

A: “There are a couple of factors. There’s footage I think people would be interested in. I don’t want to completely reinvent the movie and turn it into something it’s not. It’s really more an embellishment; it’s a fuller experience.

“The other factor is I think people want to see ‘Avatar’ in movie theaters. That’s just my instinct. This all came about because when “Alice in Wonderland” came out, they had booked all the Imax 3D screens. We were still doing well, still selling out … but we lost all those screens in one night. So, we knew there was still a market for people seeing the film.”

Q: Many people, me included, thought, ‘they already made $2.7 billion! How much more do they want?’ Money grubbers?’”

A: “Yeah, we are just money grubbing vampires. (smiles) No, I think making money is called good business. At least, in this country it still is. And two, it’s a side-effect of giving people what they want. If we’re correct and this is what people want, then we’ve done a humanitarian service (laughs).”

Q: Right, Hollywood does perform humanitarian services.

A: “Sometimes. (laughs again) Sometimes it can, but it’s usually just liberal guilt…

“No, it’s like an illuminated manuscript, there’s just more to it. I also want to encourage people to remember the movie in 3D on the big screen. And this will be the last hurrah … It’ll disappear from big screens — other than an occasional Imax may want to book it — for 10 years, 20 years, maybe forever.”

Q: So, the new footage, what are people going to see?

A: “We got different kinds of stuff. Some of it little things, 10-, 15-, 30-second pops that just show up here and there where if you’ve seen the movie, you’ll ask yourself, ‘did I see that before, or is that new.’

“Then, there are going to be things like a big action scene where they hunt these herd animals that didn’t even exist in the first movie because we’d cut them out. There are new creatures, a big flight scene, almost like a Buffalo hunt. I think it’s one of the top visual scenes in the film.

“There’s an emotional scene that plays out at the end where Tsu’tey is dying and there’s a very emotional scene with Jake and Neytiri. Everybody thought I was crazy when I took it out. I did it for pace and tempo, but I was playing it pretty conservative. I was concerned about eye fatigue on a 2-hour and 40-minute film. I was concerned about sensory overload…

“We never got much criticism about length. I was expecting a lot. I was expecting at least critics to say, ‘really good film’ or ‘pretty good film, but too long,’ but we didn’t get much of that. It seemed like we had permission to go longer.”

Q: So, you and Fox have the two top grossing films of all time. Can you now get about anything you want from Fox?

A: “Do they listen to me more, now? Probably not, if they weren’t going to listen to me after ‘Titanic,’ they’re not going to listen to me now, any more or any less.”

Q: You’re doing another ‘Avatar’ film. Is there a third?

A: “The next script will be essentially two scripts, and I don’t know if we’ll shoot it together or shoot it separately. We’ll release it separately, obviously.

“If that works, there will probably be another one, but at that point, I probably won’t be directing them. I do want to do the second and probably the third film myself just because it’s so much a part of me and my philosophy and ideas.”

Q: Beyond movies, you’ve become a bona fide expert on deep underwater exploration. When all is said and done, what do you want to be remembered for — big movies or exploration?

A: “What goes on the tombstone?” (laughs)

Q: Well, without having to ask it that way, yes.

A: “I’m satisfied with ‘innovator’ because it requires innovation to do all this deep ocean exploration. We’re building lights, cameras, robotics, submersibles, fiber optic systems, and I love all that stuff. I love imagining something, building it, and making it work in the ocean…

“On the filmmaking side, there’s the innovation of how you make the movie and there’s the innovation of what the movie is, meaning the story, the characters, the creation of a world, the imagination required for that. I love all that stuff. The problem for me is task managing in such a way that I don’t get so focused on one that I forget about doing the other.”

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Most of you know now that Cameron’s Avatar has crowned the filmmaker once again with the Worlds highest grossing movie of all time earning a whopping 3 billion dollars at te box office. While this position has contributed greatly to the traction 3D cinema currently spellbinding entertainment consumers, there is on glaring drawback in Mr. Cameron’s opinion, companies jumping on the 3D bandwagon and putting out horrible conversions.

Movies like Clash of the Titans andThe Last Airbender were shot in traditional 2D and converted into 3D after seeing Avatar’s success.

“I think it’s horrible and absolutely the wrong way to go,” Cameron said before the re-release of Avatar in 3D with added footage.

“I think it’s a quick, knee-jerk reaction to seeing the gold rush happen and the studios just wanted to jump in on it and that’s the only way they could do it. It’s the studio making the decision and then handing it over to some company to process it through a sausage grinder and come up with some kind of faux 3D, or a 2 1/2D mess,” he added.

The interesting footnote is he plans on re-releasing 1997’s Titanic in a 3D redux. Cameron fully admits that the conversion will be a “2.9D”, but goes on to add, “We won’t succeed. It will wind up being 2.9D, but it will still be .9 better than the 2D we released before. These other slapdash conversions, where they are not spending the time and money and not involving the filmmaker, are like 2.2D,” The Herald Sun quoted the 55-year-old filmmaker as saying.

It was announced this week that James Cameron’s box office destructor Avatar will be released again, just over 8 months after its initial run that started in December last year.

It seems as if the film’s $750 million box office success hasn’t satisfied 20th Century Fox, as it could have earned even more if almost every 3D screen had to stop running Avatar and start running Disney’s Alice in Wonderland because of contractual obligations. Read the rest of this entry »

After much speculation, it seems that James Cameron’s blockbuster Titanic will indeed receive 3D treatment and be released in April 2012 on the 100th anniversary of the ship’s tragic sinking, confirmed by an article that ran in the LA Times this week.

But the more interesting question at hand is: Can the post-production conversion process take a flat film and give it more depth as well as more box office legs? Read the rest of this entry »

James Cameron, the man with the 3D Midas touch, has announed he is on board for another film production, this time in the world of non-fiction.

Will.i.am, mr will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, said recently in an interview Cameron would be shooting a tour documentary of the group.

Big-name collaborations such as this one reak of business-world tamperings, but it will be interesting to see what they can come up with together. Read the rest of this entry »