Avatar Dec. 18th IMAX 3D Second Trailer

Titanic -- there was little mention of the story in the trailers or in all of the built up documentary specials on Discovery, etc., that tied into the release of the film and dealt with the technical aspects and accuracy to the historical event. I think if you go back and look at the trailers for all of the Cameron films, the special effects are featured over anything about the story. If fact, the complaint here is that he's telegraphed the story which I don't believe he has. It's called a teaser trailer and I would figure Cameron would pull out all the stops on the CGI.

I hope you're right. I'll look forward to seeing it in any case.

Another tidbit ...

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/dor/objects/800318/avatar/videos/avatar_hardware.html

I wonder if that's taken from the 60 Minutes special coverage tonight of the film?

They're acting like they invented the concept of mech-warriors in this film.

Nope -- that actually goes back to the old Astounding and Amazing days in th 40's and 50's.

(You certainly didn't expect them to state, "We borrowed this from an Astounding Science Fiction story").

The 60 Minute interview with Cameron was very good -- he's still in post-production, tweaking special effects and some other details. He gave no more hints about the storyline. Here's a link to the interview with Morly Safer:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5737218n

He sure makes it sound like it's going to be good.

He always does sound like he know exactly where he's coming from and I always end up knowing exactly where he's coming from. Going over-and-over the CGI to buff it up here and there is only going to make the movie shine brighter. It seems to me he has a message in this story he's not letting us know about.

On your first viewing do you think you will go to an IMAX 3D showing, or will you start out with a normal theater first?

I'm thinking I'll travel to one of the IMAX theaters for this movie. I usually don't do that, but I'm hoping this one is special.

I'm planning on going to the Irvine Spectrum IMAX during a weekday matinee and work in some shopping and lunch.

I just finished watching "Children of Earth" and it was very good. This Jack Harkness character is one sonofabitch. I'll have to check out the previous seasons.

Torchwood is returning with it's regular 13 episodes in January. The 1080p hi-def video cameras (not filmed) is what makes the series so realistic, except they really have the work hard on those sets -- even though the underground headquarters is kind of industrial grunge in an extreme contrast with the hi-tech equipment. I think the Watchtower in this season's Smallville is directly borrowed from this look.

James Horner, the composer of the score for "Avatar" in an interview:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2009/12/oscarwinning-composer-james-horner-says-michael-bay-wouldnt-understand-the-soul-of-avatar-.html

No. But they better wipe their chuff expressions off of their face as the Japanese alone have a billion dollar industry based on the subgenre of mech alone. They shouldn't be implying that they're the first to bring large robots to the cinematic medium.

They couldn't claim they were the first to bring large robots to the screen. That would be the original "The Day the Earth Stood Still" which was the film the Japanese are paying homage to. Stories including super-sized robots go back to the 40's in Amazing and Astounding. The Japanese did not come up with the concept of super-sized robots -- they borrowed it.

It's unfortunate that films shot to be 3-D rarely look nearly as great in flat 2-D going back to the first IMAX documentary, "The Living Sea." This is without any special effects or CGI, of course, which would make the difference even more pronounced. It's the shooting perspective which changes and it's like taking a Panavision film and turning it into a 4:3 pan-and-scan. Shrink it down to the size of a computer screen and, forget it, it will not look much like what is going to appear on the IMAX screen, or even flat on a large Super Panavision screen. The one preview of "Avatar" in 1080i I saw on my big screen LCD screen looked 100% better as it has not been compressed as it is for PC viewing. If they were broadcasting in 1080p, it would even be less compressed. When you loose detail, the picture goes into faint "saw-tooth" pixelized hard edges, although sometimes too small for most people to notice, it dramatically effects the overall image. The shading part of the CGI animation also hasn't been finished on the film to be released and having to put together a teaser trailer from the stage the film was in could have been a mistake. That's the trouble with deadlines, but Cameron knew he needed a holiday release and wasn't about to hold the film back another year -- even a worse mistake.

It might motivate me into buying a new Laptop with the new glare proof screen which doesn't scatter pixels and is capable of Blu-Ray playback and 1080p. The standard of 16:9 also effects the resolution as the Panavision letterboxing also looses about 1/3 of the resolution, making the images really 720i.

Link: http://www.impactnottingham.com/2009/12/the-end-of-cinema-as-we-know-it/

Well, now, London audiences seem to have embraced the film:

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=9309917