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[Tim the Wiz]

Pft. I've seen the documentary Entourage. Snowstorms will do nothing to affect Avatar's take just as a power failures across America did nothing to affect Aquaman's take.

Ha! I was just thinking the same thing.

 

[syllogism]

Fox is saying $27m now, 70-75m range is looking likely

 

[StuBurns]

Am I the only one who wants to see a purely science fiction film with 3D visuals of this caliber? While Avatar was certainly Science Fiction, the majority of the film takes place on the Navi home planet which I found to be more akin to a Fantasy setting.

Isn't Interstellar going to be with Cameron's 3D system? Might be what you're waiting for. Or which ever sci-fi film Scott is actually going to do, The Forever War, the Alien prequel, the Blade Runner project, etc.

 

[jett]

They're 3K.

EDIT: Umm the second one's not, you're right.

Yeah I just noticed that only one was 4K, edited this one in:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/officialavatarmovie/4054081733/sizes/o/

Amazing quality...that I'm not gonna get ever. :|

 

[rhino4evr]

as long as it beats i am Legend is all good.

my prediction was 75 so it looks like im close. even 80 is a bit of a disappointment when u compare it too certain blOckbusters.

still i think it will have decent legs

 

[Kaako]

You know thinking about it...I really hope she gets a nod for best supporting actress. I doubt it will happen, but she brought that character to life far more than anyone could have imagined.

100% agreed. She did an amazing job with the voice acting.

 

[Solo]

Ok folks BO figures are in;

Midnight: 3.5M (good for a non-sequel, non-franchise)
Friday: 28M
Weekend (expected): 80M

I heard $27M estimate for Friday. Also if $28M is true, for it to hit $80M, its going to have to have a very strong Saturday showing. Like, $35M strong.

I think $80M seems out of reach, but it should hit $70M with ease, which is still pretty great. And the WOM is great, as is critical buzz, so it should have legs.

 

[gdt]

100% agreed. She did an amazing job imo with the voice acting.

Yeah, she did, but it wasn't just VA.

She was motion captured too.

Right?

 

[Solo]

Isn't Interstellar going to be with Cameron's 3D system?

I feel that its my duty whenever this film is mentioned to state that its never actually going to be made, just like Lincoln.

Yeah, she did, but it wasn't just VA.

She was motion captured too.

Right?

Yes. Neytiri may be CG, but her performance can be almost wholly attributed to Saldana.

 

[jett]

Yeah, she did, but it wasn't just VA.

She was motion captured too.

Right?

That's right. What you see on screen is Zoe Saldana's performance.

Zoe isn't getting nods in any critic circles though...movie neither. I think its chances for non-technical Oscar wins are pretty slim.

 

[StuBurns]

Yeah I just noticed that only one was 4K, edited this one in:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/officialavatarmovie/4054081733/sizes/o/

Amazing quality...that I'm not gonna get ever. :|

That is pretty incredible.

Lets pray the Fox gods okay 4K/48fps next time.

I feel that its my duty whenever this film is mentioned to state that its never actually going to be made, just like Lincoln.

Why?

 

[Solo]

That's right. What you see on screen is Zoe Saldana's performance.

Zoe isn't getting nods in any critic circles though...movie neither. I think its chances for non-technical Oscar wins are pretty slim.

Avatar will get a Best Picture nom. Will it or should it win? Of course not, but it will get a nom.

 

[Kaako]

Yeah, she did, but it wasn't just VA.

She was motion captured too.

Right?

It absolutely was. Cameron even said in one of his interviews that it's tragic that the audience doesn't get to see her on screen in person. Seems like he was impressed with her work as well.

I just noticed that I'm in love with this woman. hahaha

 

[harSon]

I feel that its my duty whenever this film is mentioned to state that its never actually going to be made, just like Lincoln.

Probably :lol

At least Science Fiction came back in a big way this year, the genre has been dormant for quite some time.

 

[ollin]

The bad weather isn't going to help Avatar box office wise this weekend either.

 

[gdt]

Zoe was awesome, yes.



And I have to believe Cameron at least will get a Best Director nod. At least.

Spoiler

He should win.

 

[Solo]

Probably :lol

At least Science Fiction came back in a big way this year, the genre has been dormant for quite some time.

Yup. Between Avatar, District 9 and Star Trek, the genre has been completely resurrected in 2009, and I couldnt be more pleased to see sci-fi not only alive and well, but being profitable and kicking ass.

And I still havent even seen Moon.

 

[Kaako]

The bad weather isn't going to help Avatar box office wise this weekend either.

Yup, it freaking sucks here. Already 20" of snow and still falling. I wanted to go rewatch it again last night or today but can't do shit with this weather. For shame.

 

[jett]

Zoe was awesome, yes.



And I have to believe Cameron at least will get a Best Director nod. At least.

Spoiler

He should win.

I think it's Quentin's time...

I really liked Avatar, but I want the Basterds to sweep that shit. I hope all of the oscarbaits end up getting blueballed.

 

[gdt]

Quentin'll get a nod too, but he'll get more attention for the script I think.

 

[BotoxAgent]

just saw it last night, HOLY SHIT!! Brilliant movie!!!

 

[Veidt]

I think it's Quentin's time...

I really liked Avatar, but I want the Basterds to sweep that shit. I hope all of the oscarbaits end up getting blueballed.

It should come down to IB versus Avatar.

I generally can't compare the too.
IB is a Movies film. Celebrating decades of cinema.
Avatar is a leap forward in movie making, I generally felt like i was in the year 2050 while I was in that film ( not watched it, IN it, this was an experience as cliche as it sounds)

The things I saw in Avatar, blew my mind. I'm not seeing it as a film anymore. hot dammit, this was just insane. I'm optimistic as to what this could mean for future projects.

 

[harSon]

I think it's Quentin's time...

I really liked Avatar, but I want the Basterds to sweep that shit. I hope all of the oscarbaits end up getting blueballed.

Inglorious Basterds should definitely win it over Avatar, I think he had more to do with his film being awesome than Cameron did. I have a feeling neither will win though.

 

[Dabookerman]

Quarritch =

?

 

[Veidt]

Yeah, I've noticed that too.

 

[Solo]

IB will win:
- Best Supporting Actor
- Best Original Screenplay

Avatar will win:
- Best Director
- all the technical awards

Neither will win:
- Best Picture

Inglourious Basterds should win BP, but I know the Academy well enough to know they'll fuck this up.

 

[StuBurns]

Zoe should be picking up best actress. It's shameful if she doesn't.

 

[harSon]

Zoe should be picking up best actress. It's shameful if she doesn't.

I've still got to give it to Mo'nique, her performance was ridiculously chilling.

 

[John Dunbar]

IB will win:
- Best Supporting Actor
- Best Original Screenplay

Avatar will win:
- Best Director
- all the technical awards

Neither will win:
- Best Picture

Inglourious Basterds should win BP, but I know the Academy well enough to know they'll fuck this up.

I'm still betting The Hurt Locker will win best Director. Got great reviews and the chance to let the first woman (Cameron's ex-wife, to boot) win Best Director is too much for them to pass by.

 

[Solo]

Why?

Because, like Lincoln, it has been Spielberg's "next" project for about 15 years now.

 

[Deadly Cyclone]

Cameron needs to make Halo. Those were big Hornets...

I am seriously debating going again today, can't decide.

 

[Solo]

I'm still betting The Hurt Locker will win best Director. Got great reviews and the chance to let the first woman (Cameron's ex-wife, to boot) win Best Director is too much for them to pass by.

Theres no doubt that this could happen. Im simply betting on Cameron because despite every reason not to (his pompous 1998 Oscars appearance, his 12 year exodus), Hollywood, critics and fans alike seem to have welcomed him back with open arms. Cameron is hot right now.

 

[StuBurns]

Because, like Lincoln, it has been Spielberg's "next" project for about 15 years now.

You're in an Avatar thread, Cameron's next project for fifteen years.

 

[gdt]

Cameron needs to make Halo. Those were big Hornets...

I am seriously debating going again today, can't decide.

Dear god no.



I also threw up in my mouth when people were begging for Bloomkamp to go back and do Halo too.

 

[CassidyIzABeast]

Cameron already made Halo. It was called Aliens

 

[wRATH2x]

IB will win:
- Best Supporting Actor
- Best Original Screenplay

Avatar will win:
- Best Director
- all the technical awards

Neither will win:
- Best Picture

Inglourious Basterds should win BP, but I know the Academy well enough to know they'll fuck this up.

Pretty much spot on, The jew hunter has to win for supporting actor. I do wish Quint gets best director and IB gets best picture.

But in the end this is the Academy Awards, sure their prestigious but the winner's are rarely the best of the year.

 

[Solo]

You're in an Avatar thread, Cameron's next project for fifteen years.

Hardly the same thing. Avatar is a scriptment Cameron wrote then put aside for a decade, and then made. Lincoln and or Interstellar were supposedly going to pre-production since every movie he has done since Schindlers List.

A much more apt comparison would be Inglourious Basterds, which did finally get made. So who knows, perhaps there is hope for Lincoln or Interstellar.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

For those interested in more details on our facility's contribution, CNet has an article about it posted.

ILM steps in to help finish 'Avatar' visual effects
by Daniel Terdiman

SAN FRANCISCO--About a year ago, with James Cameron's science-fiction epic "Avatar" well under way, it became clear that Weta Digital, the visual effects studio doing much of the computer generated imagery, or CGI, on the project, was a bit in over its head.

At that point, the movie, which opened Friday, was about 40 minutes longer than it ended up being, and what was needed to finish the project was another company that could come in and lend a helping hand--and do so at the same, very high level, that Weta was working at.

And that's where Industrial Light & Magic came in, recalled John Knoll, the Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor tasked with parachuting in to help finish what was, more than on most films, the crucial job of crafting the "Avatar" CGI work.

What followed was months of coordination between ILM, Weta, and Cameron's production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, with a primary goal of ensuring that the two visual effects teams, one in San Francisco and the other in New Zealand, avoided any unnecessary duplication of effort, even as both sometimes found themselves working on effects for the same movie sequences.

For ILM, this wasn't the first time it had been called in to help rescue another effects house, but it may well have been the first time it did so for one as big and as accomplished as Weta. And while ILM's overall contribution to the finished film was minor compared to Weta's, the fact that "Avatar" came out on time and is being seen as a visual tour de force is certainly due, in part, to ILM's ability to come in and, if not save the day, at least contribute mightily to the day turning out well.

For Knoll, the challenge of working alongside Weta was about identifying a body of work that limited the number of assets the ILM team had to develop and which would allow them to be the most helpful. Ultimately, they were handed the keys to creating the visual effects for many of the specialized vehicles in the film, including the Valkyrie, a large shuttle used to move people and equipment, and several different types of helicopters, as well as the landscapes those vehicles lived in.

ILM also did the effects work on the film's final battle scene, taking responsibility for the shots of all the vehicles taking off, as well as the sequence's cockpit interior shots.

Working together on a scene

For the most part, the teams at ILM and Weta worked on different scenes, but Knoll said there were some in which the two companies handles different parts of the same sequence. An example, he said, was a scene in the film where a group of helicopters attack the giant "home tree," where the Navi, the humanoid alien race in the film, live. Knoll said that the effects in the scene were mainly put together by Weta, but ILM handled all the shots in which the camera looks back toward the choppers.

In the scenes where the two effects houses both were charged with creating shots, the challenge was figuring out how to "checkerboard" the shots, Knoll said, especially because in some cases, ILM didn't know what Weta's work looked like.

"You keep cutting back between ILM shots and Weta shots," Knoll said. "They're really intermixed. I was worried, because we had to get going and go pretty far down the line before we had any Weta shots to refer to. We were both doing development in parallel."

This might have been a serious problem on many film projects, but with "Avatar," both ILM and Weta were working from extremely detailed templates given to them by Cameron. Knoll said that the templates gave his team very specific direction on how they should construct their shots, down to rough indications of the lighting in the scenes.

"It did help that the templates were so specific," Knoll said. "They were very detailed and Jim [Cameron] was very insistent: 'I've put a lot of time into making sure these are exactly what I want them to be, so you need to do a good job of matching that.'"

Still, with both houses working in parallel, there was certainly a bit of a race to finish a shot, Knoll said, because the team that was fastest would be able to more or less set the tone for the whole scene. "Whoever gets there first is who drives it," he said.

"For example, in the home tree sequence, we have to fire a bunch of missiles," Knoll recalled. "[There wasn't] anything established for what the missile trails look like. We did our own version of the what [they] would look like and Jim liked it, so that's what Weta had to match."

Of course, in other cases, Weta would finish first, and ILM would have to match what the New Zealanders came up with. And in some cases, it was a bit of "splitting the difference," Knoll said. Ultimately, he added, he hopes that audience members won't be able to tell that two separate visual effects teams shared the work.

All-CGI explosions

One benefit for the entire film industry of having ILM step in to help out on "Avatar" may be that in working on the project, Knoll and his team came up with a new way to completely computer-generate large-scale, close-up explosions.

Until now, big fiery explosions in CGI-heavy films have been shot with live camera and then had visual effects added to them. But Knoll said that because of some of the limitation of matching Cameron's templates for "Avatar," there was no practical way to meet the movie's explosive needs with live-action.

"We've done CG explosions in the past," Knoll said, "but never with this level of realism, and never this close up."

Fortunately, ILM had pioneered the rendering of the visual movement of fluids in films like "Poseidon" and "Pirates of the Caribbean," and Knoll knew that the shape and movement dynamics of an explosion were similar to that of water.

"The same underlying engine is being used on this," Knoll said. "The motion of the underlying gas is similar to the motion of fluids. The medium is relatively uncompressable. So when there's movement of the medium, it can't change volume real dramatically. So if you push on one side, something has to push on the other side."

That meant that ILM could take the graphics engine it had created for fluid shots in the previous films and apply the same basic technology for the explosions in "Avatar." Though there are clearly some major differences between fluid and big fire--notably that as fuel burns, fire expands, and then retracts when the fuel goes away, the technique was similar enough that the technology could be adapted to the needs of "Avatar."

"I think this is going to be an important technique (for the industry) in the future," Knoll said, "to tailor-make an explosion that looks good close up."

 

[Deadly Cyclone]

Dear god no.



I also threw up in my mouth when people were begging for Bloomkamp to go back and do Halo too.

Oh come on, you can't tell me a lot of the Marine parts of Avatar reminded you of Halo. Maybe it's just because WETA helped out, but I think Cameron is one of the few that could pull Halo off if Avatar is the standard.

 

[SpacePirate Ridley]

Fucking incredible experience, thats what it is.

Quarritch =

?

Totally.
My friends and me thouth the same thing when the movie ended, and also that he resembles one of our friend's father. :lol

 

[artist]

Fox is saying $27m now, 70-75m range is looking likely

Yeah, it was almost certainly hitting 80M OW but everybody is slotting it a few notches down because of the storm. Fox had set very low expectations for the OW 50-60M. :lol

IB will win:
- Best Supporting Actor
- Best Original Screenplay

Avatar will win:
- Best Director
- all the technical awards

Neither will win:
- Best Picture

Inglourious Basterds should win BP, but I know the Academy well enough to know they'll fuck this up.

What .. I found IB Quentin's weakest film to date, I hope it gets 0 oscars.

 

[John Dunbar]

But in the end this is the Academy Awards, sure their prestigious but the winner's are rarely the best of the year.

You might not agree with the winners, but who gets to decide which are truly "the best of the year"? The Academy is a bunch of people voting for their favourites, and you have yours. More often than not The Academy at least chooses a respectable film for Best Picture.

 

[wRATH2x]

You might not agree with the winners, but who gets to decide which are truly "the best of the year"? The Academy is a bunch of people voting for their favourites, and you have yours. More often than not The Academy at least chooses a respectable film for Best Picture.

Nothing against the Academy, opinions and different taste and all that. And the Academy does a good job most of the time. But sometimes they ignore movies for their genre and/or theme, some winners win for their message more than the actual film's quality.

But in the end I'm alright with whatever they choose, but I have the right to voice my opinion about who should and shouldn't win.

 

[Dabookerman]

Dear god no.



I also threw up in my mouth when people were begging for Bloomkamp to go back and do Halo too.

Fuck Halo. After ODST, I really don't give a shit about the Halo Lore. So boring.

I would say Cameron should do Warcraft, but I mean with Avatar he sort of did that. Pandora is like a mix between Nagrand, Ashenvale and Hyjal (with the World Tree). And while the Na'vi didn't really look like Night elves (they do have some resemblances I guess (Tall, tribal look etc)) They do share a lot of behaviour. I suppose the geek in me loved all that.

With Weta doing most of the work, bring on the Hobbit I say.

edit: XiaNaphryz, I can't wait to get the opportunity to work on something huge like this, well done man!

 

[tino]

I feel that its my duty whenever this film is mentioned to state that its never actually going to be made, just like Lincoln.



Yes. Neytiri may be CG, but her performance can be almost wholly attributed to Saldana.

I just want to make sure the cat hiss is made by her as well before I stalk her. :lol

 

[StuBurns]

Just heard that Yunjin Kim played Neytiri in the 40 second 'demo' Cameron produced for Fox. I want to see that, I hope they include it on the BluRay. ILM did it, so maybe our very own XiaNaphryz has seen it?

 

[y2dvd]

The most impressive 3D scene was the shot of

Spoiler

those octopus looking creature floating towards you before the love scene

. I noticed audiences around me reaching out to the screen. Hell, it made me reach out and want to touch it too. So immersive.

 

[Justin]

Checking one more time before I head out,

LieMax 3d

or

Digital Real 3d

 

[T Dawg]

I was wrong about this film. I declare it to be 'pretty fucking awesome'. The character design is great, it's not really furry like or creepy at all. The main actor, Worthington, has a kindness to his face that I thought was perfect for this role. He reminded me a little of the 'good' soldiers in Generation Kill.

The 3D effects in the trailer beforehand were AMAZING - it felt like a logo was coming out of the screen and was about 3 metres away from me. During the film, the 3D was really cool and made it all seem more futuristic. It worked best on wide angle shots where things went gradually into the distance, in close up conversation shots it was just a bit of a distraction I guess as it was too weird and didn't really work.

3D gets a thumbs up from me, just because it's cool. A little distracting, but the coolness factor makes up for that.

Spoiler

When Jake comes back on the massive red dragon and walks up to the crowd of na'vi, that was pure badassery right there. I loved that whole scene, from that moment, to his conversation with the people there, making up with that dude who hated him, and giving his big speech, and then onto the montage of them getting all the tribes together. Good stuff.

This is also the first thing I've ever seen Michelle Rodriguez do that I didn't hate her in. It was small, yet arguably the role she was born to play, know what I mean?

I cried a couple times. But I do cry a lot during films.

It reminded me of Lord of the Rings a bit, the big battles and that. Didn't remind me of any of Camerons prior work at all.

The main female na'vi - her first talking scene was really impressive, I was wowed by that performance.

I liked the line when the girls mum was cutting Jake down "If you're truly one of us...then help us." or something like that.

I didn't get what all that 'I see you' stuff was all about.

Reply to all my comments please.

 

[SpacePirate Ridley]

The most impressive 3D scene was the shot of

Spoiler

those octopus looking creature floating towards you before the love scene

. I noticed audiences around me reaching out to the screen. Hell, it made me reach out and want to touch it too. So immersive.

And the mosquitoes. The nature of pandora seemed as it surrounded the movie theater.