Filmonic » James Cameron

New Avatar featurette shows us the war machines

Liam — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:56:44 +0000

By this time next month there is a good chance you will have seen James Cameron’s Avatar. You may have even seen it twice. In which case you will have seen every single scene, however until then you may want to avoid featurettes like this. While they are extremely cool and make you want to see the movie immediately, they do reveal a little bit too much.

This one focuses on the weapons, robots, hardware and aircraft the humans use in the film. We also see James Cameron and producer Jon Landau talking about the science and logistics behind it all, for instance, the reason the aircraft land and take-off vertically is due to the lack of actual landing strips on Pandora. It’s good to see some common sense in a big effects-orientated movie.

Leona Lewis to sing Avatar theme song “I See You”

Liam — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:33:48 +0000

Back in 1997 a song called ‘My Heart Will Go On’ by Celine Dion played during the credits of Titanic and went on to become one of the biggest selling singles in history. It won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Original Song and dominated the Grammy Awards in 1999. It was huge. Now, over a decade on James Horner and Simon Franglen are re-teaming to work on the theme song for Avatar, and they’ve got British singer Leona Lewis to provide the vocals.

Lewis is probably best known for ‘Bleeding Love’ which reached No. 1 in over 20 countries worldwide, including the US, and she also represented the UK with her vocals during the closing ceremony at the Beijing Olympics. Being British I’m familiar with Leona and I think she has the voice of an angel, although I’m not sure hardcore movie fanboys/geeks will be that interested in her song. It’ll be one for the females.

I’ve embedded a video of Leona performing below:

New Avatar trailer! This one’s for the kids!

Liam — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:37:08 +0000

From all the promotional material 20th Century Fox have been throwing at us recently I wouldn’t really expect to see kids in the audience when Avatar is finally released next month. The film will be over 2 and a half hour long, will feature a few scary beasts and battles, and it will have an environmental message behind it all. While it hasn’t been rated yet it’ll probably get a PG-13 rating in USA, however that won’t stop Fox marketing to the youngsters. They have toys and merchandise to sell.

The trailer below appeared on Cartoon Network recently, and instead of big aerial battles and missiles the kids get cute creatures, uplifting music, and a voice-over that makes you feel warm inside.

Would James Cameron approve?

New Avatar videos reveal new footage!

Liam — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:27:30 +0000

A few trailers, TV spots and tie-in commercials have appeared online recently for James Cameron’s Avatar and they are embedded for your viewing pleasure below. If you are satisfied with the trailers we have already seen and don’t want to be spoiled further with new footage then click elsewhere, as these videos have quite a lot of stuff we haven’t seen before.

First up is a Japanese trailer which is similar to the main trailer we got last week, although I’d say 30% is new footage:

Next is a short TV spot, which again shows a few new scenes we haven’t seen before.

Finally we have a commercial which advertises Avatar alongside Coke Zero. 20th Century Fox will probably have a new tie-ins with different products and companies considering the $250 million+ budget the movie had. Watch below:

James Cameron’s Avatar vision featurette

Liam — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:38:31 +0000

If the release of the new Avatar trailer yesterday was the highlight of your movie week then you will probably love this new Avatar featurette. It’s 4 minutes long and it contains LOTS of new footage (if you want to stay pure until December I would avoid this), along with interviews and sound-bites from James Cameron, Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver.

The scope and scale of this movie is huge!

The marketing will soon kick in and we will get even more footage, the only problem with that is I don’t want to be too spoiled before it’s release in 2 months. If you watch every trailer and TV spot you will become saturated with the imagery and it won’t be as special when you see it on the big screen. When the marketing blitz arrives I will post some stuff, but not everything.

What are your thoughts on the featurette? Should they show more of these or should they keep their Avatarholes shut for the next few months?

Here’s the second Avatar trailer!

Liam — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:20:05 +0000

Got anything planned for the next 30 minutes? No? Good, because you’ll probably end up watching this new trailer for James Cameron’s Avatar on repeat for the foreseeable future. The only word to describe it would be ‘epic’. Watch below:

Here are the download links if you want to see it in HD!

480p

720p

1080p

What are your thought on the new trailer?

Anyone want a 3 minute and 30 second Avatar trailer?

Liam — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:37:14 +0000

If you read the title above and thought “hell yeah” inside your cranium then that’s good news. Because we’re getting one! ComingSoon have confirmed that 20th Century Fox will unleash a second trailer for James Cameron’s Avatar on the big screen this Friday (October 23rd), and it will make it’s way online in HD the following Thursday (October 29th). The trailer will last 3 minutes and 30 seconds and will most likely be ‘the big one’.

When the teaser was released back in August James Cameron wanted to impress, however he also wanted to tone down the hype that had been building over the previous months. He thought that there was a chance the hype could kill it, and that the film couldn’t meet such high expectations. That’s why they released a great trailer, not an amazing one. This one, however, will explain more of the story and will no doubt contain all the money shots.

There is a good chance bootleg versions of the trailer will pop up over the weekend, however I think it’s better if you wait until the 720p HD comes online if you can’t see it on the big screen. In the meantime, here’s the teaser below:

Truck driver unimpressed with James Cameron’s Avatar

Liam — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:38:57 +0000

A few months ago Sigourney Weaver revealed that the cast of Avatar rehearsed in some Hawaiian rainforests in order to get a better grasp at what it would be like to live on a far away planet. While at the Tokyo International Film Festival last week Sam Worthington told Japan Today about an incident that took place in the rainforest while they were rehearsing. It involved James Cameron, a small camera, and a truck driver.

To get his cast in the mood for Pandora’s jungle, Cameron had them spend some time in the lush rain forests of Hawaii. Worthington recalls one day when he was wearing his avatar costume of ears and a tail and little else. “A truck driver stopped and asked me what I was doing. I said I was making a movie. I pointed to Jim, who was holding a small camera, and told the driver, ‘That’s James Cameron. He made ‘Titanic.’ The driver looked at me and said, ‘Boy, he’s sure gone downhill since then,’ and drove off.”

I can understand what the guy was thinking seeing Worthington wandering around a rainforest in a makeshift alien costume. I wonder if he still thinks Cameron has gone downhill after he sees the finished film in December? That’s assuming he will see the film.

With only 2 months left to go it’s expected 20th Century Fox will release a new trailer in the near future. When Fox revealed the teaser trailer they renamed August 21st to ‘Avatar Day’, so they will probably let us know in advance when the next trailer will hit.

Mike Knobloch on the music of Avatar

Liam — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:47:01 +0000

It wasn’t all that surprising to hear that James Horner would be composing the score for Avatar, as he had worked with James Cameron before on Aliens and Titanic. What was a bit surprising, however, was that Horner started working on the score in March last year. Usually scores are whipped up during post-production, but in this case they starting working on it nearly 2 years in advance. Does this mean our ears will be in for a treat in December?

Executive vice president of Fox Music Mike Knobloch recently spoke to Movie Score Magazine about Horner’s work, and it seems as epic as the movie itself.

“The recording of the score has been an ongoing process for months and it’s still in process. Electronic elements of the score are being recorded at a studio assembled specifically for this project. The orchestral component of the score is being recorded in groups of dates that started in June,” Mike Knobloch explained, adding that the orchestral sessions are being held at the Newman Stage at 20th Century Fox.
Talking about the stats and numbers of the score, Knobloch said that they “are still changing and evolving as James Horner is keeping up with James Cameron and the cutting room, who are still busy fine-tuning the film. The film will run the better part of three hours and there will likely be nearly as much score.” The main orchestra used for the score features over 100 musicians, including eight horns, four trumpets and five trombones. The string section is huge, comprising of 70 players. The music also features vocalists singing in the film’s Na’vi language, as well as a few other acoustic and electronic instrumentalists.
Mike Knobloch explained that there “is a great deal of acoustic and electronic rhythmic elements driving the score and vocalists singing and chanting in the fictional Na’vi dialect. Horner is doing a brilliant job of creating music that transports us to another world, but supports the film using the traditional orchestral conventions to make a sound that’s hugely cinematic.”

A bunch of new Avatar stills online

Liam — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:34:08 +0000

Spoiler TV were sent six super hi-resolution images from James Cameron’s Avatar. I’ve seen a few of the images floating around the net before, but they were scans from magazines and low quality. These, however, are big enough to have as a your desktop wallpaper. The image above shows Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) asking Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) how he likes his eco-friendly space coffee.

Click here to see more images, including a shot of Sigourney Weaver sitting with Joel Moore and Worthington in a lab, while Michelle Rodriguez stands behind them looking all tough.