Tag: James Cameron

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Cinéma

Avatar and The Hurt Locker are Oscar favourites

Avatar by James Cameron and The Hurt Locker by Kathryn Bigelow are the favourites to win big at this year’s Academy Awards with nine nominations each. Cameron and Bigelow were once married.

The two films will duke it out in the Best Picture category as well as Best Director. Inglourious Basterds follows with eight nominations, including Best Film and Best Director for Quentin Tarantino.

Besides these three films, nominees for Best Picture include District 9, Up, The Blind Side, Up in the Air, A Serious Man, An Education and Precious.

Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart), George Clooney (Up in the Air), Colin Firth (A Single Man), Morgan Freeman (Invictus) and Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) will vy for the Best Actor prize.

Best Actress nominees include Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side), Helen Mirren (The Last Station), Carey Mulligan (An Education), Gabourey Sidibe (Precious) and Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia).

Actors and actresses nominated in supporting roles are Matt Damon (Invictus), Woody Harrelson (The Messenger), Christopher Plummer (The Last Station), Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones), Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds), Penélope Cruz (Nine), Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart), Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air) and Mo’Nique (Precious).

Coraline, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Princess and the Frog, The Secret of Kells and Up round off nominees in the Best Animated Film category.

The 82nd Oscars air on March 7 and will be hosted by Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.

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Potins

Avatar on the verge of dethroning Titanic

Starpulse reports that the film Avatar is still dominating the box office, earning $36 million American this past weekend.

Today (January 25), the film by director James Cameron should overtake the previous world box office record set by Titanic, a film by the same director.

Since being released in 1997, no-one has been able to beat Titanic‘s $1.843 billion worldwide gross.

James Cameron should do that now with Avatar, which is expected to finish its run at more than $2 billion. Revenue for the film, also presented in 3D, reached $1.84 billion this past weekend, only $2 million short of Titanic.

Avatar was a victim of its own success in China when authorities decided to pull the film off screens to make room for domestic productions.

At the Golden Globe Awards, Avatar won Best Motion Picture – Drama and James Cameron won Best Director.

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Potins

Avatar Pulled from China Cinemas

Released on January 4 in China, Avatar has already collected $76 million in the country, making it the most popular film in the history of China.  For this reason, authorities have decided to remove the film from the country’s 1600 theatres.

Avatar seems to have much of the market share around the world, but officials in China are hoping that pulling the film will give local productions a chance, such as Confucius, with Chow Yun-Fat.

In China, only 20 foreign productions are shown each year.  However, these foreign films are normally only shown for 10 days, and the James Cameron flick has already passed that expiration date.

At last Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards, Avatar was named the best dramatic film of the year, while James Cameron earned the best director trophy.

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Potins

The Vatican Disses Avatar

According to a report from the Globe and Mail, the Vatican doesn’t seem quite as keen on the latest sci-fi flick as other movie critics.
 
Director James Cameron received rather weak reviews from journalists and radio stations of the Vatican. They described the movie has having a simplistic plot and a superficial message, despite its mind-blowing special effects.
 
L’Osservatore Romano newspaper wrote, “So much stupefying, enchanting technology, but few genuine emotions.”
 
Furthermore, the Vatican accused the film of coming too close to glorifying nature-worshiping cults as a substitute for religion.
 
Avatar also fell subject to criticism from American anti-smoking organisations. SceneSmoking.com gave the film a "black lung" for all the scenes featuring Sigourney Weaver smoking a cigarette.
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Cinéma

James Cameron’s Hiroshima Fascination

Variety has learned that the director is interested in covering the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Currently, Cameron is optioning the book The Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back, written by Charles Pelligrino, which will be released on January 19.

The book recounts stories of survivors of the atomic bombings of the two Japanese towns during the Second World War. Apparently, after the Hiroshima bombing, thirty people were sent to Nagasaki, and arrived at the same time that the second atomic bomb went off.

Last December, when he was in Japan promoting Avatar, James Cameron met with Tsutomu Yamaguchi, one of the last survivors, and the only one who lived through the two bombings. The man died on Monday (January 4) at the age of 93.

At the moment, no studio has been tagged with the film project, and Cameron has been enjoying the success of Avatar, which has been named the second most lucrative film in history, just behind Titanic, which was also directed by Cameron.

The first atomic bomb was detonated in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 by the US military, resulting in 75 000 people dead, without counting several others who died in the weeks that followed. The total number of deaths was approximately 250 000. Three days later, on August 9, 1945, the town of Nagasaki suffered a similar fate with an equally grave number of deaths.

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Cinéma

Avatar Tops A Billion Bucks

The film marks the second time that director James Cameron has created a frenzy at the theatres.  Following Titanic, which earned a total of $1.8 billion, Avatar reached the billion-dollar mark in just over two weeks.  This film is also the first in history to collect a billion dollars in such a short time.  Some are even predicting that Avatar is on target to reach $4 billion in ticket sales.

Among the other films that have crossed over into the billion-dollar range are The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, with $1.13 billion, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, with $1.06 billion.

During the first weekend of the New Year, Avatar held steady in first place with $68.3 million in box-office sales.  Sherlock Holmes was in second place with $38.4 million, bringing the film’s total revenue to $140.6 million in 10 days.  The third-place film was Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeekquel, with $35.6 million, followed by It’s Complicated with $18.7 million.

Rounding out the top five films was The Blind Side, which earned $12.7 million over the weekend, followed by Up in the Air, with $12.7 million.

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Cinéma

James Cameron Wants Avatar Trilogy

Although the hit film has just been released in theatres, Cameron says that he has two more films planned for the franchise.

The director is hoping to turn Avatar into a trilogy.  And although he hasn’t started working on the second instalment, he wants to make movie number two much faster than the four years that it took to make Avatar.

"My next goal is to refine the technique, make it easier so it doesn’t take as long. We were doing a lot of pioneering work on ‘Avatar.’ It wouldn’t have taken as long if we already knew exactly how to do it," said Cameron.

Avatar used revolutionary technology, but to create the characters, ten months were spent perfecting their appearance after capturing images with Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana, two of the film’s stars.

So it’s likely that the Avatar story will continue.  Of course, the studio will have to give the project the green light first, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem considering the box office success that Avatar is having.

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Potins

Avatar Sets New Record

The science-ficiton flick is said to be the most expensive film ever made.  Though the movie was made for just over $400 million, including marketing expenses, it rocked at the box office during its opening weekend.

The 3D film, which takes place on the planet Pandora, earned $73 million on its opening day in America.  Worldwide, the film opened in 106 countries, bringing in $232.2 million.  Furthermore, the film is now the record-setting 3D film for first-day revenue.  The record was previously held by last summer’s Up, which earned $68.1 million during its theatre debut.

Fox International Theatrical, the film’s worldwide distributor, confirmed that the James Cameron flick opened at the number 1 spot in all countries.

James Cameron is a veteran of this kind of success.  In 1997, his film Titanic became the biggest hit of all time, amassing $1.25 bilion.  The epic film also earned 11 Oscars, setting another record.

 

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Cinéma

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s New Film

While James Cameron is putting the final touches on his film Avatar, expected to hit theatres in December, actor/comedian Tom Arnold has unveiled future plans for the director.

Tom Arnold told the New York Times that he, Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron will be reunited again in a new film. The three men previously worked together on the film True Lies.

No more information has been given concerning the story of the new film. However, filming is expected to begin in 14 months, the day after Schwarzenegger finishes his term as California governor.

True Lies was released in 1994 and earned $378.9 million at box offices worldwide.

Categories
Cinéma

James Cameron’s Next Project

James Cameron told The Hollywood Reporter that he wants to tackle a smaller project after having worked extensively on Avatar, which comes to theatres on December 18, 2009.

His next film will undoubtedly be The Dive, a true story about a controversial romance between a Cuban scuba diver, Francisco "Pipin" Ferreras and a French woman, Audrey Mestre. Audrey also becomes a diver, and beats several world records before dying during a competition in 2002.

Filming will require footage taken from submarines, possibly in 3-D.

Ferreras was filmed for the 2001 Imax documentary, Ocean Men: Extreme Dive.