I've noted this a few times now, but of all the jokes that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler told during their killer Golden Globes performance, the one that resonated most with me was their jab at Avatar director James Cameron: "I haven't been following the controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty," Poehler said name-checking director Kathryn Bigelow. "But when it comes to torture, I trust the woman who spent three years married to James Cameron." more »
James Cameron will return to Pandora next year. The Avatar director, who attended the premiere of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in Wellington, New Zealand on Wednesday, told the West Australian (via Total Film) that he hoped to have the scripts to Avatar 2 and 3 completed by February, and to begin shooting by the end of 2013. more »
James Cameron said last Spring he disbanded his production company's development wing, noting that, aside from his deep-sea submarine dives, he's exclusively in the "Avatar business - meaning Avatar 2, Avatar 3, and possibly Avatar 4. Well, that was then and this is now… But Cameron's production company has picked up rights to Taylor Stevens' thriller novel, The Informationist, which he'll likely direct and produce.
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"James Cameron is who James Cameron is because James Cameron does what James Cameron does." At least I think that's what James Cameron's doppelganger said on Wednesday night's new episode of South Park after diving into the depths to "raise the bar" and save the world from Honey Boo Boo and fat people who terrorize the world on motorized scooters. more »
Also in Wednesday morning's round-up of news briefs, the Directors Guild of America set up dates for its awards. France has chosen its submission for foreign-language Oscar consideration. And, the producer of 2016: Obama's America denies racism charge.
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Also in Tuesday morning's round-up of news briefs, Charlie Kaufman has turned to crowd funding (seemingly quite successfully) for a stop motion animation project. Richard Gere's Arbitrage is set to open a Middle Eastern film festival. And Park Chan-wook is set to direct a Corsican mafia story.
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Also in Monday afternoon's round-up of news briefs, a Dexter actress boards the Robocop bandwagon. Toronto's Patience Stone heads to U.S. theaters. Despite a recession, the U.K. film industry is growing "significantly." And the San Francisco Film Society Names a winner in its Hearst Screenwriting competition.
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Also in Wednesday morning's round-up of news briefs, Sacha Baron Cohen plans his next project. Jonathan Rhys Meyers in talks to take on a new role and a coming-of-age documentary is headed to theaters.
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Also in Monday morning's round-up of news briefs, Daniel Radcliffe is set to return to fantasy playing a rape suspect. A trio of titles lead the specialty box office's newcomers over the weekend. And Roger Ebert breaks down the stats on upcoming dueling The Hobbit and Avatar blockbusters and theaters' ability to show them.
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James Cameron recently said he is Avatar-bound and Sigourney Weaver said she will appear in what will be Avatar 2, 3, 4, confirming that the Titanic director is still on track with the franchise, which made over $2 billion worldwide in its first mammoth installment, which debuted back in December, 2009.
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The extended Q&A transcript from James Cameron's China-focused chat with the New York Times and The Economist reveals the extent of Cameron's Avatar-tunnel vision. "I’ve divided my time over the last 16 years over deep ocean exploration and filmmaking. I’ve made two movies in 16 years, and I’ve done eight expeditions. Last year I basically completely disbanded my production company’s development arm. So I’m not interested in developing anything. I’m in the Avatar business. Period. That’s it. I’m making Avatar 2, Avatar 3, maybe Avatar 4, and I’m not going to produce other people’s movies for them." Looks like it'll be all Avatar, all the time from here on out, which is... good news? [NYT]
"The movie has a big, babbling, stupid, awesome heart, and its hokiness and dopiness is central to its charm. All the great universal entertainers, the ones who moved the world rather than a select group of cultish admirers, have had a certain crazy tunnel vision to them, a total inability to see shades of gray, or understand jaundiced views of the world. (Think Michael Jackson, or Charlie Chaplin, or Steven Spielberg.) Titanic went huge — dominated the movie world, even still to this day—because it touched on basic, universally held human concepts of love and fate and time and loss. It did this in an extremely obvious way, but that's a reason to admire it and to mock it." [Deadspin]
Honestly, I can't tell which way is up with some of the news coming out of the April Fool's Day weekend. Does James Cameron want in on a Prometheus sequel? Is the Queen collaborating with 007 for the Olympics? Surely Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels aren't seriously going to shoot the long-gestating sequel to 1994's Dumb & Dumber this fall once the Farrelly brothers are done promoting April 13's The Three Stooges, right?
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Say what you will about James Cameron’s epic 1997 romance Titanic, but everyone in the universe has seen it, sniffled at it, or at least has had its iconic moments indelibly seared into their brains. (Don’t even get me started on the soul-piercing power of “My Heart Will Go On.”) When it comes to Titanic fandom, 15 years of romantic obsession plus the internet have yielded quite the bounty of fan-made Titanic creations. Naturally, with Titanic 3-D steering towards theaters this week, Movieline searched near, far, and all across YouTube in search of the best of them.
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Browsing through the photo record of Tuesday's Titanic 3D premiere in London, one notices immediately the absence of Leonardo DiCaprio. What gives? I mean, if Billy Zane can make time, then lord knows Leo should be able to drop in for at least a few snapshots with James Cameron and co-star Kate Winslet. At the very least, he'd better have a good excuse — which, according to Cameron, he did.
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