Currently viewing the tag: "james cameron"
James Cameron has writen an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal which addresses the issue of NASA’s future and the recent budget decisions put forward by the Obama Administration regarding NASA in general and the moon program in particular. ,
Top honors at the Director’s Guild Award went to Kathryn Bigelog for “The Hurt Locker” == a win that certainly gives Bigelow the inside track for the Best Directing Oscar and makes The Hurt Locker a strong contender and possibly favorite for the Best Picture Oscar.
When Avatar picked up Best Picture and Best Director at the Golden Globes, it seemed likely that the march to coronate Avatar as Best Picture was one — but last night the Producers Guild gave its top honor to Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” and this, plus the Screen Actor’s Guild also ignoring Avatar (not a surprise) leaves the Oscar race for Best Picture in a state of confusion.
Avatar has re-energized my affection and appreciation for the great adventure novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan and John Carter of Mars and according to James Cameron a principal source of inspiration for Avatar. One thing that Burroughs and Cameron have in common, I think, is a unique and perhaps intuitive ability to grasp the mythic structures that cause their stories to resonate astonishingly across disparate cultures.
UPDATE 12:00PM PST: Fox has just announced that Titanic, with it’s Saturday overseas take, has passed Titanic as the all-time #1 in terms of overseas gross. The James Cameron mega-budget blockbuster rolled up an overseas cume through Sunday of $1.288 billion, exceeding by $46 million “Titanic’s” 13-year international boxoffice record of $1.242 billion.” END UPDATE
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Yesterday being the first Saturday since August with no football games to watch, and the new crop of films being relatively uninspiring, my wife and I decided to take in an Avatar matinee at the nearest IMAX. We arrived an hour early and were the first in line — didn’t expect that — […]
So, as of today, Avatar has unadjusted gross of $512,852,205 in 34 days in release. Titanic had $242,748,914 after 34 days in release. If we apply the inflation adjuster we multiply Titanic’s total of $242,748,914 by 156% (derived by dividing $4.69 into $7.45) and Titanic’s adjusted total becomes$380,427,403 after 34 days in release.
Detailed article on the creative connection between Edgar Rice Burroughs and James Cameron.
Analysis of Avatar’s prospects going into its sixth weekend against three newcomers: Legion, Tooth Fairy, and Extraordinary measures.
8PM PST: Avatar has just won Best Picture and Best Director at the Golden Globes. In accepting, Cameron acknowledge the “great, creative, amazing people” in the room — then said “I think this is the best job in the world. We all have the best job in the world. We make entertainment for the global […]
As Avatar continues its march up the all-time box office charts, the chorus of critics of Cameron’s sci-fi epic seem increasingly anxious to minimize its achievements. This is no surprise. After all, the film sits out there as a giant target to take shots at. In the realm of “ways to minimize Avatar’s achievement” is […]
Fox Studios has made James Cameron’s original screenplay for Avatar available for download. The screenplay contains substantial differences from the final cut of the film.
The weekend Box Office actuals are out and Avatar has again been upgraded, this time from the $48.5M reported yesterday to $50.3M.
Avatar’s weekend performance of $48.5M US Domestic Gross has carried James Cameron’s Sci-fi epic past a variety of new milestones as if flexes its muscles and continues to demonstrate that it will eventually surpass Titanic as the #1 All Time Box Office Hit.
Avatar may be showing the first sign of weakening, with a 4th Friday gross of “only” $13m. It’s still on track to break Titanic’s record $28m for a 4th weekend, but it is unlikely to reach $50m as some (including yours truly) had predicted.
Analysis of Avatar-vs-Titanic box office numbers, day by day, leads to the conclusion that Avatar will surpass Titanic on February 11, 2009.
the predictions in the mid forties are all to some degree premised on the expectation that this weekend, with the holidays finally over, Avatar will finally take the 40% drop that these same predictors were looking for each of the last two weekends. In each case Avatar surprised them, so I’m wondering just a bit why they are so timid at this point given the data that’s available. Avatar has held strong during the week; it is tracking much more like Titanic than ‘normal’ pictures, and Titanic only dropped 16% on it’s fourth weekend, pulling in $28M. Avatar did 68.3m last weekend and a 16% drop would mean $57.4m. I’m projecting $53m, which is a 23% drop.
A day after surging past Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man’s Chest into third place all time global box office, James Cameron’s Avatar has moved up another notch, passing Lord of the Rings: Return of the King at $1.2B en route to landing at $1.12B en route to landing at 1.13B, alone in second place behind Titanic.
How cool is that? This is what, for me, makes Avatar an extraordinary act of creation. Those who focus only on the storyline are really missing the point.
There’s an interesting blog at Huffington Post by Josh Schrei in which the screenplay for Avatar is held up to the harsh light of … um …. reality, with Schrei making a compelling case that James Cameron’s depiction of Colonel Quatrich and the rapacious mining company he protects is not as over the top as […]
James Cameron’s Avatar continues to move up the all-time worldwide box office chart, passing Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and landing in the number 3 position with $1.1B behind Lord of the Rings: Return of the King ($1.19B) and Titanic ($1.8B)
While there is no doubt that on the human side there’s a military force and the colonel leading this force is an American — it is also made clear at the very beginning of the movie that this is a mercenary force, not the US Army.
Avatar continued its rampage through the box office with a Tuesday gross of $7,327,233, off 9.5% from Monday — a day when quite a few schools were still not in session. This means Avatar has reached a domestic gross of $367,536,685. In the “same number of days in release comparison” to Titanic, Avatar picked […]
(AFP)
BEIJING — Science-fiction blockbuster “Avatar” grossed more than 33 million yuan (4.8 million dollars) on its opening day in China this week, setting a new record, state media reported Wednesday.
James Cameron’s ground-breaking 3-D epic surpassed Zhang Yimou’s “A Simple Noodle Story”, a remake of the Coen brothers’ “Blood Simple”, which earned 21 […]
The figures are out for yesterday, Monday, January 4 and Avatar has beaten expectations again with BOG of $8.1M. As I pointed out in my post yesterday, if Avatar had suffered the same Sunday/Monday percentage drop that Titanic did on it’s Monday after New Years (Titanic went from $8m on Sunday to $3m on Monday, […]
Box Office Mojo is reporting the weekend actuals. Brandon Gray reports: “‘Avatar’ beat its estimates again, coming in at $68.5 million domestically and $136.3 million internationally for the weekend. On the other hand, ‘Sherlock Holmes,’ ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’ and others were significantly overestimated…”
Here’s the chart of Avatar’s actuals compared to Titanic’s actuals — […]
Today is a crucial day for Avatar box office watchers. The holidays are over and the reality of a ‘regular’ Monday at the box office is about to set in. How “regular” will it be?
Well, first some perspective.
On the first Monday after the New Years Weekend, Titanic dropped 66% from $8M on Sunday, […]
Today is the last day of the holiday break, and this afternoon I’m going to see Avatar for the third time — seems a fitting way to end the holidays, since Avatar has been much on my mind throughout this period — and tomorrow it will be back to the grind, with little time available […]
I’ve just finished putting up http://avatarvstitanic.wordpress.com — a daily tracking site to watch how Avatar proceeds in the “beat Titanic” derby I’ve been writing about. I’ll be updating it daily in the coming weeks. I’ll look pretty stupid if all my predictions turn out to be wrong. Anyway, it’s just for fun.
Last week as the week was rolling along, I got the feeling that people were not putting Avatar’s Box Office performance into perspective — that people weren’t studying the trend lines which showed it has a very different trajectory than a ‘typical’ 75m opening weekend film would have. So … dipping my toes into the […]
Year of the Spy Book Trailer
Above is the Year of the Spy Book Trailer — for my upcoming non-fiction book about espionage upheavals on the streets of Moscow in 1985.
Below is a “trailer” showcasing the writing and video services I provide to clients.
Michael Sellers — Writing and Video Services
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