Avatar Again

I saw the Avatar teaser-trailer yesterday. Couldn’t help it! It was shown before Final Destination 3D, and while I closed my eyes for some of it (not wanting to spoil the film for myself) the sounds drew my eyelids back open and I resigned myself to staring, rapt, at the events unfolding on-screen. There was so much going on it was incredible, and the 3D was utterly involving; there was a bit where an avatar is sitting on a lab table, wiggling its toes, and just the whole thing looked amazing… ahhh I can’t wait ’til January, when I’ll finally get to see it (due to going to Thailand over Christmas). Final Destination 3D was decent enough fun, but what I saw of the Avatar trailer was probably better than the entire feature film…

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Mega Shark VS Giant Octopus

“There’s poetry here,” says the protagonist of Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus as she potters about beneath Arctic waves in her poorly rendered cgi submarine.

The titular titans of the prehistoric seas were engaged in a battle to the death millions of years ago when they were encased in ice (those ice ages certainly do jump up on you), only to be released – rather dubiously – into our time by an unexplained sonar device and some pissed off whales, an event the monsters deal with by going on a global ocean killing spree while people in tactical emergency rooms utter subtle, nuanced lines like “There’s something big out there; something really big.”

Wordsworth, eat your heart out. (Or a Megalodon shark will do it for you.)

Meet mankind’s intrepid eco-warrior saviours. Looking at the above picture, you might think that lead character Emma looks less than excited/distraught/insert-dynamic-emotion-here to be caught up in this clash of monsters. She’s certainly pretty nonnchalant about it all in the film, going in the space of about twenty-five minutes from “We have to make every attempt to capture these creatures alive. For science.” to a half-hearted “It’s going to be a bloodbath :)”.

Not that I blame her, mind you. If I was surrounded by a cast of such horrific stereotypes, I think I’d be gunning for a bloodbath too. I wouldn’t get one though; not with this kind of budget. There are entire scenes where a boat or something will be destroyed without a single shot of whichever beast it is performing the attack, leaving the viewer wondering if the crew had perhaps succumbed to realisation of where their careers had taken them, and sunk themselves.

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The film is, of course, still a blast to watch 😉

(Not even the clouds are safe from GIANT OCTOPUS!)

Anticipating Avatar…

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So, Avatar, a brief introduction:

Fourteen years since its original conception, and four years in the making, it’s the latest film from the director of Terminator 1+2, Aliens, The Abyss, True Lies and Titanic. A sci-fi, the plot is set around a war between humans and the Na’vi, the native inhabitants of a planet called Pandora. Who happen to be blue, and ten feet tall.

In order to better their chances in the conflict, the humans come up with a way of transferring the mind of a human into a Na’vi ‘vessel’ body (thus creating the avatars the title refers to). The main character undergoes this process and is sent down to the planet, where he becomes entangled with the Na’vi people and their culture. That’s about all I know, as I’m intentionally staying away from further details from now on.

As I’ve mentioned before, what’s really got people excited is the supposedly mind-blowing 3D technology and CGI, that makes you feel as if you’re actually in the fictional world itself. A few people have described watching the film as similar to tripping, in that it’s impossible to tell what’s real and what isn’t.

And daaamn, the first ever footage is being shown over at the Comic-Con right now.

Waiting for updates on the IMDB forums…

Yep, I really am a bit too excited about this 😀

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Edit 1 : Been following a live update from Stephen Johnson, one of the people in the crowd:

3:28	Stephen Johnson:  They’re going to show nearly a half hour of footage, here, people! Amazing!

3:28	Stephen Johnson:  But sadly, there won’t be live blogging. Screen must be closed. Sorry. be back soon.

3:54	Stephen Johnson:  Back… Wow.

3:55	Stephen Johnson:  Okay. I just became one of the first 6000 or so people on earth to have seen part of Avatar. I’m still sort of soaking it in, but I’ll give you my fresh-off-the-dome impressions:

3:56	Stephen Johnson:  First off: This is like no other movie you have ever seen. It’s ambitious, and entirely original, full of digital effects, flawless executed, in an entirely imaginative world.

😮

😀

Alex Billington from FirstShowing.net:

“Just finished watching a full 25 minutes and holy shit it was phenomenal, just amazing. It does indeed look like nothing you’ve ever seen, it is groundbreaking, it looks incredible. Every single second in this looked real. And most of it was a completely CGI created universe that does not at all look CGI. It is truly amazing!”

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It’s a kind of special awesome that amongst all the copycat comedies, sequels and book/film adaptations these days, an original vision can still come along and just have everyone all over the world buzzing 😀

Edit 2 : Woah there… From the Q&A session with director James Cameron:

Q: Do you have any projects in mind for Arnold [Schwarzenegger] when he’s out of office?

A: Well Arnold and I have discussed the possibility of him returning to action, I wouldn’t rule that out.” But he’ll let him do the announcing.

My face, once again = 😮

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Fanboy mode disengaged.  The next thing I find out (intentionally, at any rate 😉 ) about Avatar will be when I’m sitting in an Imax cinema and the film is starting, on the 18th of December!

Official Avatar Website

Comic-Conned

Added my mock-analysis of the first page of the sci-fi ‘epic’ Moon People (oh, you’ve never heard of it?) into the Imaginarium, which you might enjoy if you’re in need of a chuckle, a writer, a sci-fi reader, or anyone who appreciates a bit of satire on their cornflakes:

Linky

Also, just read that Sam Raimi will be directing a World of Warcraft film after he finishes Spider-Man 4… crikey! Something to keep an eye on, that. [/geekout]

In the here and now, the 2009 Comic-Con festival is about to begin over in San Diego! While comics don’t do much for me, it spans into all sorts of things; film, TV, games, arty stuff, etc, and the main thing I’m looking forward to this year is the first footage of James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’, which, after a lot of exciting-sounding feedback from industry insiders and directors,  I’m hoping is going to be something absolutely incredible. He’s using some supposedly ‘revolutionary’ filming technique that could ‘change cinema’. Skepticism goggles firmly on, of course, but if anyone can pull something like that off, it might well be Cameron.

What won’t be blowing minds any time soon, by the way, (because I know everyone’s interested) is the new Universal Soldier film, with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren back in their cloned boots as a couple of reanimated army experiments. I saw some footage today, and oh. Oh dear… don’t think it could even be redeemed if they chucked someone in a combine harvester again. Which is saying something.

I’ll be keeping up to date with the various things going on at Comic-Con, so I’ll make a few posts over the next few days on the interesting stuff going on over there in an attempt to curb my bitterness at being on the wrong continent.

Edit: The trailer for Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland has been released:

Click Me

I see Johnny Depp’s branching out his acting technique… Hard to sum up much from rest of the brief snatches of scenes but it has promise. Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee look great!

Time Flies Like The Swine Flu Virus

Blimey; has it been that long since the last entry? It’s been a busy week, but a good one, spent with my cousin Indi and aunt Den dodging swine flu, although now I’m back in Leicester for how much longer that will continue I’m not sure, seeing as I live next to a hospital and two universities… Although when you look at the statistics that normal flu actually kills more people a year than swine flu has, it kinda lessens the impact of catching it. Apart from for those who have died from it, of course, who would no doubt tell me to shove those statistics somewhere unpleasant.

Moving on from the viral outbreak of the year, yesterday the Farndale household was merry with all the excitement that comes from getting a new games console; my housemate (the infamous capnscar) got an Xbox 360 and I bought the game Left 4 Dead for it, so the day was spent doing some wholesome zombie shootin’ and completely and utterly failing at the driving challenges in Burnout. Great stuff!

Oh, went to see The Half-Blood Prince this week as well. In a word: brilliant.

In more than a word: while people who haven’t read the book would probably find the plot development choppy and slightly lacking, the cinematography was stunning. I’ve not enjoyed just ‘watching’ a film as much in ages, there’s so much going on in each shot. The humour and heart of the film is fantastic too, warming up a gloomy and foreboding film that the director has clearly structured as a ‘set-up’ for the grand two-film finale of The Deathly Hallows. The removal of a large fight scene at the end suggests that he’s gearing up for a massive one in those films, which is something to look forward to. And to be honest, a battle scene would have been out of place in this film; it’s a lot more of a low-key, character focussed film. Not to say that there aren’t epic and exciting scenes in it, but the overall mood is one of the gloomy calm before a storm

There was also a fair bit in the film that was not in the book at all, which personally I enjoyed. In an adaption from a source that I know very well, it was nice to be surprised and given something new. The whole ‘Half-Blood Prince’ aspect of the story was barely focussed on, which made it a bit strained when a certain ‘announcement’ is made from one of the characters at the end.

Looking forward to seeing it again on Wednesday and catching more of the ace little details going on in the background.

Dragged To Hell

And enjoyed every second of it!

Just got back from seeing Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell and gotta say, I haven’t had as much fun watching a film at the cinema in a long while 😀 We  were sitting right at the front, so it was wham-bam-shocks-and-gristle-in-your-face close, and Hell take me, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film where quite so many things were spewed. Maggots, blood, slime, eyeballs, flies; you name it, this film spews it.

But it does so with a Raimi grin on its face – there’s some brilliantly sick humour poking its charred fingers through the cracks in the floor (though more subtle shades are also present), and everyone in the cinema was shrieking, cringing and laughing. It was, as Tom Cruise would say, a blast – one of the few kinds of movies where audience ‘participation’ is actually bearable, as it’s usually a real pet peeve of mine – and there was applause at the climax which is always heartening.

And every single one of us came out of the film having learned two extremely valuable life lessons: Never piss off a gypsy. And keep track of your envelopes…