11–20 of 71 posts
He showed his commitment by giving up a financial stake? It would have shown more commitment if he'd given up any flat fee in order to get a higher percentage of the profits.
Out-Lucas Lucas is easy, just throw a decent story in there, and don't get high on the effects. Given Hollywoods history in recent years, I'm not to confident that Avatar will be such a good movie.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20...
(BTW, the link is worth visiting for a few other interesting scripts--for instance, a version of "I Am Legend". http://www.horrorlair.com/moviescripts_a_f.html has more)
Maybe it's just me, but these blue dudes are not quite out of the uncanny valley.
Maybe it's just me, but these blue dudes are not quite out of the uncanny valley.
They are as deep down there as possible. Which can be a good thing if you take it as a sign that we're almost at the maximum. Still seeing the trailers I'm not sure how I'm supposed to sympathise with them. Also the story doesn't seem overly interesting either. I guess we will see.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/11/ff_avatar_cameron/all/...
(I always hate clicking through pages 1-4 when you can just view all four pages at once.)
As a sign of his commitment, Cameron agreed to give up his entire directing fee and any profit participation in the movie. He showed his commitment by giving up a financial stake? It would have shown more commitment if he'd given up any flat fee in order to get a higher percentage of the profits.
Maybe it's just me, but these blue dudes are not quite out of the uncanny valley.
Gollum in LOTR looked abhuman because well, he was supposed to.
Humanoid blue aliens are easier to "get right" than actual humans because nobody really knows how they are supposed to look and act.
Throughout this history, film-makers have continually experimented with different camera techniques and different types of cameras.
This item relating to Mr. Cameron appears to be another incremental step in this long process. It looks to be interesting and possibly intriguing.
What is being lost in the modern film innovations, however, is what I would call the essence of film-making, which is a play-acted script featuring real people but presented as human drama/comedy/satire/etc. using the recognized camera techniques that distinguish cinema from a live play - rapid cutting, point-of-view camera angles, etc. As things go increasingly digital, and become more and more subject to manipulation of images bearing less and less connection with our real world experiences, we get more and more a sense of watching a cartoon as opposed to real people. It is no coincidence that, in this context, many of the modern plots are drawn from cartoon sources (Batman, Spider Man, many others). As this emphasis on special effects has increased, what has become increasingly lost is the quality scripts (with their corresponding wit, drama, fantasy) that once could be taken for granted in quality film-making. The result is an increasingly artificial experience to which it becomes harder and harder to relate.
Over the centuries, it is the great stories that have moved us, from epic poems to the great novels and, yes, even to the cinema of old warhorses such as Gone with the Wind. Today, technology has become as much a substitute for story-telling as anything else. Yes, it constitutes progress in a real sense (incremental though it may be) but, insofar as it has detracted from inspiring story-telling by serving as a tin-hat means of attracting audiences without the need to develop a great story, it has brought a net loss. Just watch a silent movie like Sunrise (1927) and tell me that CGI and other gimmicks have brought a net improvement to what truly can be inspiring about film.
It is, of course, possible to combine great new technology with great stories but not when the technology itself is being featured as the primary attraction.
I don't see why this "Could change film forever". This is just an advert for a movie.
It paints him as a sort of Steve Jobs figure, with a really incredible drive to create and succeed, often at the expense of all else.
> She wanted to get married, but Cameron, she says, was not interested in a conventional domestic life: “He used to say to me, ‘Anybody can be a father or a husband. There are only five people in the world who can do what I do, and I’m going for that.’ ”
> [...]
> Before beginning production on “The Abyss” (1989), the most ambitious underwater movie ever attempted, he went to see Leonard Goldberg, then the president of Fox, which was financing the film. “He said, ‘I want you to know one thing—once we embark on this adventure and I start to make this movie, the only way you’ll be able to stop me is to kill me,’ ” Goldberg told me. “You looked into those eyes and you knew he meant it.”