Archive for the 'JamesCameron' Category

Filed under: Action & Adventure, Animation, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Tech Stuff, Exhibition, Dreamworks, Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Comic/Superhero/Geek

The New York Times is reporting this week on a new wave of 3-D movies that Hollywood thinks will forever change the future of cinema. Christopher and Scott brought you stories about the 3-D “Tintin” trilogy that Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are planning. A U2 concert film called U2 3D premiered footage at Cannes this weekend (I love U2, but I find that thing where Bono shoves his face into the camera obnoxious without 3-D technology). And James Cameron, who made the 2003 3-D IMAX documentary Ghosts of the Abyss, is shooting the highly-anticipated Avatar in 3-D using both computer animation and motion-capture technology. Avatar’s producer, Jon Landau says: “This is a different experience; it’s much more voyeuristic. The screen has always been an emotional barrier for audiences. Good 3-D makes the screen go away. It disappears, and you’re looking at a window into a world.”

3-D technology was fairly big in the 1950’s, but aside from a few sad attempts to revive it (Jaws 3-D, anyone?), it never really hit the mainstream. Recent movies like Monster House, Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, and Spy Kids 3-D have attempted to make that happen, and we’re about to see a whole lot more. Robert Zemeckis’ upcoming adaptation of Beowulf will be screened in 3-D wherever possible. Trouble is, it’s not possible in that many places. Digital projection is only in roughly 2,300 of the 37,000 theaters in America, and 3-D projection is only in 700. Theater owners have been hesitant to install the projectors, because it is unclear whether moviegoers will pay extra to see a 3-D film. Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of DreamWorks Animation, thinks that they will, saying “I believe that this is the single greatest opportunity for the moviegoing experience since the advent of color. It has been more than 60 years since there has been a significant enhancement or innovation to the moviegoing experience.” Katzenberg predicts that starting in 2009, “a significant percentage of the big mainstream films will be made and exhibited in this format.”

Continue reading Times Article Says Hollywood Believes 3-D Is the Future

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Filed under: Horror, Shorts

He’s gone to the dark depths of the sea and the Alien reaches of space. He’s traveled through time, delighted in spies and had cold, sinking romances. Basically, there’s not much that James Cameron hasn’t done. I mean heck, he recently was involved with that whole Jesus tomb thing, so it’s only logical that he also do something on the other end of the spectrum. Since it might be a bit over-the-top to dig into the ground and try to find Hell, Cameron zeroed in on… Marilyn Manson.

Last month, a French music site, Charts in France, reported that the controversial musician was filming a new video called When the Heart Guides the Hand for his upcoming album, Eat Me, Drink Me. The kicker was that James Cameron would be directing the piece, using 3-D special effects that could be viewed without glasses. I’m not sure how all of that works, but Bloody Disgusting found a clip from the video that has Manson and a young woman covered in blood and making out while he runs his hands up and down her body. Now I can’t tell, but is this person Evan Rachel Wood, the actress rumored to have led to Manson’s split from wife, Dita Von Teese? It looks like it could be, and would make sense, since the title of the album reflects his upcoming horror film — Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll, which she co-stars in, and the song’s title has a sense of wandering eye. Personally, I think if Cameron really wanted to spice things up, he should have been the bloody one making out with Manson.

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Filed under: Action & Adventure, Animation, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, 20th Century Fox, Family Films, Dreamworks, Comic/Superhero/Geek

The 2007 summer movie season hasn’t even begun yet, but we’re already receiving news about release date competition for 2009. Yes, 2009. It wasn’t enough that we saw such premature territorial battling over Memorial Day, 2008 (Indiana Jones and the Fourth Installment vs. Speed Racer); the studios had to go and start the claim for that kick-off holiday of a whole two years away. There is something more significantly different about this battle, though. Both of the movies scheduled for release on Memorial day in 2009 will only be exhibited in the new 3-D format. 20th Century Fox has James Cameron’s Avatar duking it out against Dreamworks Animation’s Monsters vs. Aliens, which is being planned as that studio’s first release to play exclusively in 3-D.

The reason that this is such a noteworthy conflict is that in 2009 there may not be enough 3-D-equipped screens to handle simultaneous 3-D releases. The expected amount of screens that will be able to accommodate a 3-D movie at that time is 5,000 (currently there are only 700 screens able to do so), which doesn’t even meet the demands of Dreamworks’ Jeffrey Katzenberg, who claims he needs 6,000 screens for Monsters. And since Cameron’s film is now being said to have a budget close to $200 million, it is assumed that Fox will have a similar demand for its own title. Obviously one of the films will need to move, and it will likely be Monsters. With Avatar being Cameron’s first film since Titanic, it is certainly the more eagerly awaited picture and is therefore the most powerful. Expect an announcement sometime in the next year that states that Monsters will relocate to June.

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Filed under: Action & Adventure, Drama, Thrillers, New Releases, Critical Thought & Trends, New in Theaters, Politics, War

There’s a new interview with Paul Verhoeven over at SuicideGirls, prefaced by the interviewer’s contention that Black Book, Verhoeven’s latest, is one of the best films of the decade. I wouldn’t go that far, but I do think it’s one of Verhoeven’s best works, which is saying a hell of a lot, and I’ll be posting my review of the film on Wednesday morning. In the course of the interview, Verhoeven talks about what attracted him to the project, and about the characters — anti-Nazi conspirators — who face death around every corner. “My scriptwriter and I always felt that people under that kind of pressure are really living an existential life because every decision is extremely important,” Verhoeven says. “The worst and the best come out.”

After some more talk about Black Book, Verhoeven is led into a discussion of Starship Troopers and the unfair criticism it received at the hands of the critical community. “There was an article in The Washington Post when it came out that was not written by a movie critic,” Verhoeven says. “One of the editors wrote it saying that this was a neo-Nazi movie and I was promoting fascism. That same article was published in all the European newspapers. When I went to do the publicity tour in Europe, everybody was already looking through that lens. The Washington Post is not a reliable newspaper anyway, but they said the film was written by a neo-Nazi or a Fascist and directed by one.”

The most fun part of the interview comes at the end, when Verhoeven is quizzed on what he thinks about James Cameron’s supposed Tomb of Jesus. The response is very long-winded and Verhoevian, but here’s a sampling: “Of course, that Jesus was buried in some way and did not walk out of his grave is true. He stayed and he died. According to a very famous theologian Dominic Crossan, he thinks that the body was thrown in a mass grave and eaten by the dogs.”

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Filed under: Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers

Sigourney Weaver will forever be connected to the sexy, strong and head shaven woman in the Alien movies — the series was probably my first introduction to who would become one of my favorite actresses. As Weaver gets older, her film roles have become even richer and now she’s reuniting with James Cameron for the upcoming sci fi thriller Avatar. The film is about the clashing of two cultures — one culture being the human race and the other being an android race with their own ways of life. Weaver describes her role in Avatar — not a leading lady part but an older, secondary character with her own love story — as being “juicy.”

She also attributes much of the success of films involving older characters — especially to the success of her own outstanding roles — to the baby boomer generation “wanting to see interesting films.” Weaver cleverly revealed just enough about her upcoming role to keep us wondering. The character is nothing like Ripley from Alien but doesn’t mean she isn’t as strong. I don’t know how the film’s extravagant photo-realism-motion-capture effects will be done, but Weaver stated that Cameron has invented cameras to capture the world that he wishes to create.

The film will be epic and possibly unlike anything we’ve ever experienced … at least Weaver thinks so. “It is big entertainment, it’s a big, lush, old-fashioned romantic adventure the likes of which no one has ever seen.” And we won’t be seeing it for awhile — the film is due in May of 2009 — but I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait.

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Filed under: Action & Adventure, Drama, Casting, Deals

As I continue to slog through our three — count em’ three — hours of audio tapes from the Grindhouse junket, I’ll be passing along news as I find it. During a rather uneventful roundtable with James Cameron mainstay Michael Biehn, who has a small role in the film, Biehn was asked what his next project was, and he said: “I’m doing a movie called Kids in America, with Topher Grace. Topher is actually executive producing. It’s got Anna Faris and this kid Danny Fogler.” And who does he play? “A cop. No. Yes! A cop. You get one guess, right?” I take that to mean he’s playing a cop.

Apparently, for Cinematical’s purposes, Biehn was sort of like the Michigan J. Frog of press junket interviews, because once he got into the other roundtables, he started talking up a storm about Avatar and how Jim Cameron is thinking of putting him in it and is also planning to not use cameras — is he going to shoot the whole thing with his mind? Even though he gave us the short end of the news stick, here’s hoping Biehn’s next Cameron role lives up to Aliens or The Terminator, which are two of my favorite films. His next non-Cameron films, apart from Kids in America, include Psych: 9, a horror-thriller in which he will play … you guessed it, a cop. He also has a role in a movie called That’s Amore, which, at a glance, appears to be a low-budget attempt at remaking the Ernest Borgnine classic Marty, which doesn’t sound like a good idea.

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