'Avatar' Theme Land Headed to Disney Parks

by Alex Ben Block

from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/

Courtesy of Twentieth Century-Fox

The first themed "land" will be built at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, with construction expected to start by 2013.

The blue people are coming to Disney.

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Worldwide has sealed a deal with filmmaker James Cameron and producer Jon Landau, Fox and Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment to create themed attractions at Disney parks based on the 2009 movie.

The first themed "land" will be built at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, with construction expected to start by 2013.

The first Avatar attraction will be inside the Animal Kingdom park. Disney said this was chosen because "with its emphasis on living in harmony with nature, Animal Kingdom is a natural fit for the Avatar stories, which share the same philosophy."

Cameron and Landau, through Lightstorm, will be creative consultants and partner with Walt Disney Imagineering in the design and development of the Avatar attractions, which eventually will be at other Disney parks worldwide as well.

The deal is exclusive to Disney, which plans to roll out other Avatar attractions over time. Some of that will depend on discussions with joint venture partners on parks outside the U.S.

The parks will not only play off the huge hit movie which dominated the box office for months in 2010, but also benefit from the release to two more movies now in pre-production. Cameron has announced plans to release those movies at Christmas 2014 followed by the second at Christmas 2015.

Avatar was a movie that broke new ground in terms of presentation and technology, especially in the use of 3D. It is expected that the theme park attractions will also use that technology and new innovations to engage park visitors.

“James Cameron is a groundbreaking filmmaker and gifted storyteller who shares our passion for creativity, technological innovation and delivering the best experience possible,” said Robert A. Iger, President and CEO of The Walt Disney Company. “With this agreement, we have the extraordinary opportunity to combine James’ talent and vision with the imagination and expertise of Disney.”

“Avatar created a world which audiences can discover again and again and now, through this incredible partnership with Disney, we'll be able to bring Pandora to life like never before. With two new Avatar films currently in development, we'll have even more locations, characters and stories to explore,” said James Cameron. “I'm chomping at the bit to start work with Disney's legendary Imagineers to bring our Avatar universe to life. Our goal is to go beyond current boundaries of technical innovation and experiential storytelling, and give park goers the chance to see, hear, and touch the world of Avatar with an unprecedented sense of reality."

"This exciting new venture combines the world of Avatar with the enormous reach of Disney and the incomparable talent of Jim Cameron,” said Fox Filmed Entertainment chairmen Jim Gianopulos and Tom Rothman. “While Jim is bringing audiences further into Pandora with the next two chapters in the Avatar motion picture saga, the theme park attraction will likewise bring a new dimension to the amazing universe he created."

"Avatar is a uniquely powerful franchise that has global appeal with audiences of all ages. Its spectacular settings, intriguing characters, imaginative creatures, and strong themes of family and loyalty make it a perfect fit for Disney,” said Thomas O. Staggs, Chairman, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. “We can’t wait to give our guests the ability to journey to Pandora and explore the incredible immersive world of Avatar in person.”

James Cameron: 'Avatar' sequels coming Christmas 2014 and 2015

by Darren Franich

from http://insidemovies.ew.com/

 
Image Credit: WETA

James Cameron has spoken frequently about his intention to turn his mega-hit Avatar into a trilogy. Now, according to the director himself speaking at the PGA Awards on Saturday, those two sequels have release dates. Cameron tells EW, “I am in the process of writing the next two Avatar films now. We are planning to shoot them together and post them together, and we will probably release them not quite back to back, but about a year apart. Christmas ’14 and ’15 is the current plan.” Of course, it’s probably best to take those release dates with a grain of salt, since the first Avatar had several release dates before its December 2009 release. Still, now fans know that they’ll have to wait at least three more years for a return to Pandora.

Cameron also notes that we’ll see some familiar faces return. “Basically, if you survived the first film, you get to be in the second film, at least in some form,” say the director. One thing’s for sure: some percentage of the presumably-massive Avatar sequel gross will go to charity. “Fox has partnered with me to donate a chunk of the profits to environmental causes that are at the heart of the Avatar world,” says the director. “I didn’t want to make more Avatar movies without a grander plan in place.”

(Reporting by Carrie Bell)

James Cameron Announces New Technology for 'Avatar' Sequels

From: http://fora.tv/


fora.tv — "We are going to be seeing the oceans of Pandora, and the ecosystems there. The only sweeping change between now, and when we release the second Avatar film. I want to author the film at a higher framerate... Movies are way behind, they are a century out of date!"

A Gallery of Good and Bad Avatar Na’vi Costumes

Published by Paul Tassi

From: http://unrealitymag.com/

Halloween is fast approaching, and there are going to be two pop culture costumes of choice this year for the trend followers. A) Snooki and B) Na’vi.

If you thought I was going to make a gallery of potential Snooki costumes for you to look at, think again.

So yes, what you see below are either prime examples, or cautionary tales of how you should or shouldn’t design your own Na’vi costume. And trust me, a store bought Avatar-getup is the worst thing you could do.

Check them all out below:

In case you want to rob a bank on the way to your party

You got a little troll in my Na’vi

A worthy adversary always helps

Your paint is cracking, but good effort

For those who just can’t choose between vampire and Na’vi

“Yo dude, let’s ride some dragons!”

This tribe is clearly starving

Trannytar

Derpatar

Massive amounts of photoshop works too

…because sometimes actual makeup looks creepy

Nice flip flops

Underwear? CHEATING! And that dude has some wicked varicose veins

Minimal effort award

Very nice!

“Yeah I got some candy for you little boy.”

I hear jumping around in trees is a good workout.

We have a winner…

Researchers Find Electrical Current Stemming From Plants

From: http://techvert.com/

In an electrifying first, Stanford scientists have plugged in to algae cells and harnessed a tiny electric current. They found it at the very source of energy production – photosynthesis, a plant’s method of converting sunlight to chemical energy. It may be a first step toward generating “high efficiency” bioelectricity that doesn’t give off carbon dioxide as a byproduct, the researchers say.

“We believe we are the first to extract electrons out of living plant cells,” said WonHyoung Ryu, the lead author of the paper published in the March issue of Nano Letters. Ryu conducted the experiments while he was a research associate for mechanical engineering professor Fritz Prinz.

[photo via InfraNet Lab]

The Stanford research team developed a unique, ultra-sharp nanoelectrode made of gold, specially designed for probing inside cells. They gently pushed it through the algal cell membranes, which sealed around it, and the cell stayed alive. From the photosynthesizing cells, the electrode collected electrons that had been energized by light and the researchers generated a tiny electric current.

“We’re still in the scientific stages of the research,” said Ryu. “We were dealing with single cells to prove we can harvest the electrons.”

Plants use photosynthesis to convert light energy to chemical energy, which is stored in the bonds of sugars they use for food. The process takes place in chloroplasts, the cellular powerhouses that make sugars and give leaves and algae their green color. In the chloroplasts, water is split into oxygen, protons and electrons. Sunlight penetrates the chloroplast and zaps the electrons to a high energy level, and a protein promptly grabs them. The electrons are passed down a series of proteins, which successively capture more and more of the electrons’ energy to synthesize sugars until all the electron’s energy is spent.

[photo via Ohio State Lima]

In this experiment, the researchers intercepted the electrons just after they had been excited by light and were at their highest energy levels. They placed the gold electrodes in the chloroplasts of algae cells, and siphoned off the electrons to generate the tiny electrical current.

The result, the researchers say, is electricity production that doesn’t release carbon into the atmosphere. The only byproducts of photosynthesis are protons and oxygen.

“This is potentially one of the cleanest energy sources for energy generation,” Ryu said. “But the question is, is it economically feasible?”

Ryu said they were able to draw from each cell just one picoampere, an amount of electricity so tiny that they would need a trillion cells photosynthesizing for one hour just to equal the amount of energy stored in a AA battery. In addition, the cells die after an hour. Ryu said tiny leaks in the membrane around the electrode could be killing the cells, or they may be dying because they’re losing out on energy they would normally use for their own life processes. One of the next steps would be to tweak the design of the electrode to extend the life of the cell, Ryu said.

Harvesting electrons this way would be more efficient than burning biofuels, as most plants that are burned for fuel ultimately store only about 3 to 6 percent of available solar energy, Ryu said. His process bypasses the need for combustion, which only harnesses a portion of a plant’s stored energy. Electron harvesting in this study was about 20 percent efficient. Ryu said it could theoretically reach 100 percent efficiency one day. (Photovoltaic solar cells are currently about 20-40-percent efficient.)

Possible next steps would be to use a plant with larger chloroplasts for a larger collecting area, and a bigger electrode that could capture more electrons. With a longer-lived plant and better collecting ability, they could scale up the process, Ryu said. Ryu is now a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.

###

Other authors of the paper are Prinz, the senior author,; Seoung-Jai Bai, Tibor Fabian, Rainer J. Fasching, Joong Sun Park, and Zubin Huang, all researchers in the Rapid Protoyping Laboratory at Stanford University; and Jeffrey Moseley and Arthur Grossman, both researchers in the Department of Plant Biology at the Carnegie Institution and Department of Biological Sciences.

Source: Stanford University

Ben Stiller Presents Oscar As A Na’vi

This was fantastic!!!

Adam Best

Ben Stiller usually does something zany at the Oscars every year, but this year is probably his craziest stunt yet. Stiller presented the Achievement in Makeup award as a Na’vi from James Cameron’s Avatar. He heckled James Cameron a bit (which Borat wasn’t allowed to be involved in because of Jimmy’s thin blue skin) and made a funny Spock quip. Definitely one of the highlights of the night.

Tiny Flying Lizard Discovered in Indonesia

A Reddit.com user by the name of Biophilia_curiosus posted a few photos that he took in Indonesia. They show an amazing species of gliding lizard which basically looks like a miniature dragon. Fans of the film Avatar will no doubt be reminded of the flying Toruks...

Photo: Biophilia_curiosus on Reddit

By Michael Graham Richard, Ottawa, Canada
on February 16, 2010

Biophilia_curiosus wrote: "The crazy part is that those lines you see running through the wings like veins are actually its ribs! Evolution did a number on these guys. They can expand and contract their chests at will to glide great distances. We were only able to catch females as they were laying their eggs. All we could do is watch as the males soared overhead."

Photo: Biophilia_curiosus on Reddit

By Michael Graham Richard

The photos were taken in Buton, Indonesia, in the Lambusango Forest reserve.

Photo: Biophilia_curiosus on Reddit

By Michael Graham Richard

As far as I can tell, nobody has identified the exact species of this lizard (yet). Biology geeks who recognize this specimen, please let us know what it is in the comments of this post.

Photo: Biophilia_curiosus on Reddit
By Michael Graham Richard

Original Post here: http://www.treehugger.com/

Have you seen Avatar?

News Corp. in early talks for 'Avatar' sequel

Rupert Murdoch said company is 'pushing' for followup pic

By Georg Szalai

From: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com

"Avatar"

NEW YORK -- News Corp. is in very early talks with James Cameron about a possible "Avatar" sequel.

Asked about potential "Avatar" sequels, chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said on his quarterly earnings call Tuesday that the conglomerate is in "very early talks about it." Director James Cameron "has ideas" for a sequel, he said, adding: "We will be pushing for one."

But he cautioned analysts not to "hold your breath for an early one" in a possible reference to Cameron projects often taking a long time to come to fruition.

News Corp. deputy chairman, president and COO Chase Carey interjected that both sides want to make another movie. "We certainly both intend to have one," he said.

The executives said financing of a sequel like of any movies these days would be key as News Corp. likes to lay off risk, especially since Cameron films tend to go over budget. But given the success of "Avatar," financing details could come together.

Management also said 60% or more of the profit from "Avatar" will come in over the next two quarters, adding the firm will continue its theater run as the boxoffice goes well, with a DVD release also planned soon after the theatrical run. A DVD release date hasn't been announced so far.

Pushed further on details about the DVD plans for "Avatar," Murdoch said it will be released during his company's current fiscal year, which ends June 30. But he also highlighted that it won't be a 3D DVD release as that technology isn't developed enough yet. But Carey added there could be a 3D "Avatar" DVD release further "down the road" when the technology is ready.

[Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly quoted Murdoch in the previous as saying to analysts not to "hold your breath for ANOTHER one." A review of his recorded comments reveal he said "early one."]

Cameron Answers Critics Re: Smoking in ‘Avatar’

By Edmund Mullins

From: http://www.blackbookmag.com/

Avatar is taking on very special distinction for me. Of all the films I’ve never seen, it has, in a very short time, become the one that I seem to know the most about. There’ve been so many blogs, so many conversations and so many appurtenant behind-the-scenes stories, exposés and think-pieces that I almost feel like an expert. Now, two-plus weeks after its release, Avatar is still punishingly ubiquitous and the news keeps coming. The latest item concerns cigarette smoking. It seems that Sigourney Weaver’s character, an environmental scientist, is seen during the pic taking some loving drags on a cancer stick. No big deal, right? Well, it is if you’re part of anti-smoking watchdog group. The New York Times reported today that Stanton A. Glantz of the Smoke Free Movies Initiative announced he’d soon be mounting an informational campaign to counter what he perceives as the film’s pro-smoking message. Still worse, Scenesmoking.org, another group that monitors cigarette use in films, awarded the film its “black lung” rating. What does James Cameron think of all this? He very nicely and patiently calls bullshit.



In a statement given to the Times, Cameron defends himself as follows:
“I wanted Grace to be a character who is initially off-putting and even unpleasant. She’s rude, she swears, she drinks, she smokes. She is not meant to be an aspirational role model to teenagers, in fact our young protagonist, Jake, through whom we experience this story, finds her to be obnoxious at first. Also, from a character perspective, we were showing that Grace doesn’t care about her human body, only her avatar body, which again is a negative comment about people in our real world living too much in their avatars, meaning on-line and in videogames. In addition, speaking as an artist, I don’t believe in the dogmatic idea that no one in a movie should smoke. Movies should reflect reality. If it’s okay for people to lie, cheat, steal and kill in PG 13 movies, why impose an inconsistent morality when it comes to smoking?

I do agree that young role-model characters should not smoke in movies, especially in a way which suggests that it makes them cooler or more accepted by their peers. In the same way that I would never show lying, cheating, stealing, or killing as cool, or aspirational, I would never portray smoking that way. We need to embrace a more complex set of criteria than simply the knee jerk reaction “smoking is bad, therefore cannot be shown.” It should be a matter of character, context, and the nature of the portrayal. I think the people who are earnestly trying to do some good in this area would be more supported by the artistic community if they were less black and white in their thinking. Smoking is a filthy habit which I don’t support, and neither, I believe, does Avatar.”

Cameron’s argument is perfectly reasonable and sound, but I’m certain it won’t deter any of the afore-mentioned anti-smoking campaigners. Mr. Glantz likened the smoking scenes in Avatar to someone putting “a bunch of plutonium in the water supply.” This is an aggressively ridiculous assertion which neatly underscores the extremity of his views.  I’m almost sorry that Cameron felt obliged to answer back at all, as it suggests a willingness to be part of this trivial and trivializing conversation. He doesn’t owe the art police a thing, but now they’ll know he’s listening. That’s usually their cue to get louder.

Is blue the new black? Why some people think Avatar is racist

By: Mark Mardell |

From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/

****Spoilers Alert****

 

I am back after the holidays. Christmas day was bracketed by breaking news on health care on Christmas Eve and the underpants bomber on Boxing Day, but for the last few days I have been enjoying some time with the family.

One of the best things we did was see Avatar. Stupendous. Exhilarating. Extraordinary. I never thought 3D could work. The technology is stunning. I admit I am something of a science fiction buff, but I think most people are going to be blown away by this film. Predictably, columnists who live to attack whatever is successful and put the counter-intuitive point of view are having a field day.

But the criticism that has intrigued me is the charge that the film is racist.

I have tried in writing this not to blow the plot, but inevitably there are some spoilers. For those who don't know already, the story centres on a conflict between greedy corporate human invaders and the planet's inhabitants, 10-foot tall, blue-skinned people with rather feline features and tails. One of many such blogs argues that "Avatar is a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people, but never losing white privilege."

With a certain accuracy critics have pointed out that all the "human" characters are played by white actors and all the blue, cat-like Na'vi are played by non-whites. With a degree of American insularity they also say that because they use bows and arrows and wear feathers they are "really" native Americans. This ignores tribal indigenous people from New Guinea to Brazil, so deliberately misses a wider point.

The debate in the US is conditioned by the long-running argument among sci-fi writers and fans about the "magical negro". It is a term coined by black critics who noted white authors often featured non-white characters possessed of a certain sort of natural wisdom, mystic powers, who play sidekick to the white hero and often sacrifice themselves for the central character. They are a variant on the much-older ideal of the "noble savage".

If I have understood correctly, the critics say this is demeaning because the character, who need not actually be black, but native American or some other ethnic group, acts only to help the whites central to the story, and isn't part of a racial group, doesn't have a back story, or a fully developed character but is essentially a plot device. I'd note that American fiction has quite often featured a "magic janitor" and I think the key is what the author perceives on a very basic level as otherness as much as race.

The term surfaced in the political arena during the last presidential elections when in the LA times David Ehrenstein suggested Barack Obama was a magical negro: "Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes."

It is a thoughtful article, disturbing for its unspoken assumption that Obama is a self-constructed stereotype, not a real person and that "authentic" black people behave in a certain way.

In any case the term was gleefully taken up by Obama's opponents and set to the tune of Puff the Magic Dragon. You might guess their purpose was not to advance post-structuralist criticism but to earn the licence to repeat the naughty word "negro" and make fun of the candidate.

Thank the powers, of whatever race, that no-one has suggested that any character in Avatar is "really" the president. Although I thought I spotted Donald Rumsfeld on the big screen. The criticism of Avatar is an extension of the "magical Negro" idea. Indeed at one level it is an inversion of it: "the magical Caucasian" who turns out to be an even nobler savage than the common and garden, bred-to-it variety. Tarzan, Lord of Greystokes, Lord of the Jungle has to be top of the tree in this game. The central complaint is that in Avatar it takes a white hero to lead the natives.

This seems to miss two points. The first is simply about the way narrative works. The critics' version of the film would be very dull. Bad people land on planet. Good people defeat them - virtuous but not much of a story arc. An emotional journey, learning and changing are better narrative. Raising age-old questions about whether it is better to be true to your values and your friends rather than your country (species) is more thought-provoking than most Hollywood blockbusters manage.

My second objection is more profound. I strongly believe the racial divide has been the driving force in American history, and continues to play a huge, and often under-discussed role in its politics. I am not one to underestimate its power.

But that doesn't mean everything is about that debate. One of the reasons I like sci-fi, apart from the escapism, is the way it explores political ideas, old and new. The film is actually a rather old-fashioned, liberal, morality tale. As in many futures imagined by authors over the last several decades the company has replaced the state as the agent of colonialism and greedy conquest. Then there is the mainstay of Hollywood morality, the underdog mounting a ferocious fight-back. Added to the mix is a healthy dose of new age Gaia-ism (Pandoraism?). The idea of weaker opponents fighting back against a military force with an apparently overwhelming technological superiority, aided by the enemy within, surely echoes not only Vietnam but conflicts much closer to us in time and space. Perhaps it is easier for American critics to think it is about race.

Oddly enough I read a rather subtler take on the idea of technology versus nature just a few days after seeing the film. My wife bought me Peter F Hamilton's Fallen Dragon for Christmas. It is much more compact and better written than his past sprawling space operas but equally packed with ideas. One chapter sees the company's military defeated in a way very familiar to viewers of Avatar. The twist is, the planetary defenders of Santa Chico are not aboriginal but come from elsewhere, post-humans genetically mutated into a state of harmony with the local flora and fauna, which are themselves itself genetically uplifted into a state of scientifically ennobled post savagery. The natives are originally from California. I always thought the West Coast was magic.

Five Reasons Avatar Still Won’t Win Best Picture

I hate to post this article, after seeing the movie last night in IMAX 3D. Which i have to say deserves best picture. I agree if Lane Brown.

• By: Lane Brown
• From: http://nymag.com/

Photo: Courtesy of Fox

We go on vacation for a few measly days, and look what happens: James Cameron's ecstatically reviewed, box-office-conquering Avatar is suddenly, improbably, the front-runner in this year's Best Picture race. Far be it from us to tell the HMFIC what he can and can't do, but we still don't see the King of the World reigning on another Oscar night. After the jump, we count down the five biggest reasons why Avatar can't win the Academy's top award (or at least the five reasons we'll be surprised when Cameron swaggers up to the Oscar podium, spikes his award, and tells his haters to suck it in Na'vi).

1. The Special Effects.
When it was released in 1997, Titanic, too, had CGI impressive enough to distract from Cameron's tin-eared dialogue — but the film's clear focus was its sweeping, tragic, human-based love story (not that this helped Cameron get a nomination for his screenplay, of course). Avatar's script is serviceable, we guess, but have you heard a single person raving about anything but the movie's special effects? We have not.

2. The Academy: still snobby.
While it may be true that only whiny snobs are still complaining about Avatar's extravisual shortcomings, it's worth noting that the Academy's current membership is comprised primarily of whiny snobs. Remember last year, when they snubbed The Dark Knight in favor of The Reader? Or the year before that, in which the cumulative gross of the five Best Picture nominees was approximately half of what it costs to see Avatar in IMAX? Not since 2003's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King have popcorn-allergic Oscar voters rewarded anything crowd-pleasing and blockbusting in the top category.

3. Screeners.
Another thing Academy members are snobby about is sharing recirculated movie-theater air with mouth-breathing non-Oscar-voting plebeians. Studios interested in winning awards generally have to furnish agoraphobic, non-theater-visiting voters with DVD copies of their movies — standard-definition, 2-D DVDs obviously incapable of showcasing the three-dimensional, IMAX-def glory that is Avatar.

4. Oscar still hates science fiction.
Like comedy, animation, and movies featuring brown people, science fiction has historically been ignored by the Academy Awards. No space-based movie has ever won Best Picture, and none have been nominated since E.T. in 1982 (it lost to Gandhi, which featured not a single alien).

5. Actors.
One argument for Avatar's Best Picture chances is that 3-D movies (and higher ticket prices) are the film industry's current best hope for longevity, and that the Academy might cast a vote for its own survival. Fat chance, we say: The organization's biggest contingent, by far, is actors, the very same people replaced by blue pixels on James Cameron's computer-generated, thespian-free Pandora. Sure, one could correctly argue that Avatar features the motion-captured performances of real human beings, but just try explaining that to technophobic ballot-wielding elderlies like Mickey Rooney and Dame Judi Dench.

How 3-D Movie Projection Works

Wired Explains:

• By Brian X. Chen
• From http://www.wired.com/
  

Every few years you’ve probably watched a mainstream movie through a pair of glasses that make creatures, people and explosions pop out of the screen. And if you’ve bought into the massive hype, you were probably lining up this past weekend for James Cameron’s Avatar, which is screening in 3-D.

You might wonder, why can’t more movies be shown in 3-D? It would just take some post-production video rendering and a pair of stereoscopic glasses, right?

Actually, 3-D projection is a lot more complicated — and expensive — than one would think. In anticipation of Avatar, Wired.com paid a visit to Dolby Laboratories in San Francisco to learn about the history of 3-D movie technology leading up to its current state.

Remember those junky glasses, with a blue lens for one eye and a red one for the other? They were tied to a 3-D-imaging method called anaglyph that dates back to the 1950s. With this system, the images on the screen were projected with two color layers superimposed onto one another. When you put on the glasses, each eye sees a separate visual, the red-tinted image through one eye and the blue-tinted one through the other. Your visual cortex combines the views to create the representation of 3-D objects.

Though it may have been impressive at the time, early anaglyph imaging suffered from many issues. The color separation on film was very limited, and thus it was difficult to perceive details in 3-D scenes. Another frequent problem was ghosting, which happened when the image that should be appearing in your left eye would creep over to the right.

And then there’s the screen. Theaters projecting 3-D movies with the anaglyph method had to install silver screens for an ideal viewing experience. That’s because the more reflective screen helped keep the two different light signals separated.

3-D movie technology has come a long way. Anaglyph imaging has improved: Glasses now are typically red and cyan, which, when combined, can make use of all three primary colors, resulting in more realistic color perception.

RealD cinema, currently the most widely used 3-D movie system in theaters, uses circular polarization — produced by a filter in front of the projector — to beam the film onto a silver screen. The filter converts linearly polarized light into circularly polarized light by slowing down one component of the electric field. When the vertical and horizontal parts of the picture are projected onto the silver screen, the filter slows down the vertical component. This effectively makes the light appear to rotate, and it allows you to more naturally move your head without losing perception of the 3-D image. Circular polarization also eliminates the need for two projectors shooting out images in separate colors. The silver screen, in this case, helps preserve the polarization of the image.

Dolby’s 3-D system, used for some Avatar screenings, is a little different. It makes use of an exclusive filtration wheel (above) installed inside the projector in front of a 6.5-kilowatt bulb. The wheel is divided into two parts, each one filtering the projector light into different wavelengths for red, green and blue. The wheel spins rapidly — about three times per frame — so it doesn’t produce a seizure-inducing effect. The glasses that you wear contain passive lenses that only allow light waves aligned in a certain direction to pass through, separating the red, green and blue wavelengths for each eye.

The advantages of Dolby’s 3-D system? There’s no need for a silver screen, thanks to the built-in color-separation wheel and the powerful bulb right next to it, ensuring a bright picture necessary for 3-D viewing. Also, a mechanism can be adjusted inside the projector to change the projection method from reflection to refraction — meaning theaters can switch between projecting regular movies and 3-D movies.

The cons? The glasses are pricey: $27 apiece, so they’re designed to be washed and reused (as opposed to recycled). (Although, this would be considered a pro for the environment.) Altogether, a Dolby 3-D projection system costs theaters about $26,500, not including the eyewear.

Updated 9 a.m. PDT with more details explaining circular polarization.

See Also:

• April 8, 1953: Hollywood Finally Catches 3-D Fever

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com, Brian X. Chen/Wired.com

Spielberg on 'Avatar': the most evocative sci-fi movie since 'Star Wars'

James Cameron (pictured left) held a private screening of "Avatar" on Dec. 4 for a few friends of his. Among the attendees were Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steven Spielberg (pictured right), a filmmaker who is also experimenting with motion-capture technology. (Spielberg and Peter Jackson are in the middle of mo-cap pic "Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.")

At the premiere last night, I heard that Spielberg's reaction was overwhelmingly positive.

Today I was able to confirm through his reps that after the screening, Spielberg called "Avatar" "the most evocative and amazing science-fiction movie since 'Star Wars.'"

Not too shabby of an endorsement, eh?

Total Recall: James Cameron Movies

We take a look at the career of the visionary director of Avatar.

by Jeff Giles
from: http://www.rottentomatoes.com

He got his start as a miniature model maker at Roger Corman Studios, and promptly went on to establish himself as one of the biggest directors in Hollywood -- both in terms of his staggering box office grosses ($3.5 billion worldwide and counting) and his seemingly limitless appetite for epic storytelling. Like a lot of filmmakers, James Cameron's imagination has often outpaced the available technology -- but unlike most of his peers, when confronted with those limits, he simply spurs the invention of new technology to get around them. Cameron's latest effort, Avatar, required the development of a whole new 3-D camera, and rode the bleeding edge of CGI's outer limits. After years of buildup, Avatar is finally here -- but before we witness what's being hyped as the future of filmmaking, why don't we look back at James Cameron's past?

---

8%

Rotten

9. Piranha II: The Spawning

Say what you will about low-budget horror movies, but they've proven themselves to be a strangely fertile breeding ground for future stars -- from Jennifer Aniston in Leprechaun to Kevin Bacon in Friday the 13th and Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street, countless young Hollywood professionals have paid their rent by toughing it out in a low-budget slasher. Few success stories have had humbler beginnings than James Cameron's, however -- the Roger Corman graduate was promoted from special effects on Piranha II after the original director took a hike. To Cameron's chagrin, the promotion was largely ceremonial; he ultimately wasn't even allowed to see his own footage, and according to legend, he broke into the studio's editing facility to try and create his own cut of the film. Though it's tempting to wonder what a Piranha II director's cut would look like, it's hard to imagine any amount of editing making an appreciable difference in the overwhelmingly negative critical reaction; Empire's Kim Newman offered one of the kindest reviews, gently dismissing it after the fact as "for curious completists only." To his credit, Cameron has shown a sense of humor about the whole thing, referring to Piranha II as "the finest flying killer fish horror/comedy ever made."

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68%

Fresh

8. True Lies

Cameron closed out a decade as one of America's preeminent action directors with True Lies, a reunion with Arnold Schwarzenegger (who starred as double life-leading secret agent Harry Tasker) and Brad Fiedel (who provided the score, as he had for the Terminator films). The death knell had sounded for the big, dumb 1980s action movie with 1992's prophetically titled The Last Action Hero -- which, fittingly, also starred Schwarzenegger -- but Cameron helped revitalize the genre with a light, funny, fast-moving thrill ride that boasted likable performances from not only its well-muscled star, but a crackerjack supporting cast that included Jamie Lee Curtis, Bill Paxton, and Tom Arnold at his funniest. (Yeah, yeah, we know -- insert your favorite Tom Arnold insult here.) Though it was heavily criticized for being misogynist and racist, True Lies combined with Speed to make the summer of 1994 feel a little like the 1980s never ended, and took Cameron's reign as a Hollywood action king to its logical conclusion. Three years later, he'd resurface with the ultimate chick flick of the decade -- but in the meantime, he was still earning the begrudging praise of critics like the Globe and Mail's Rick Groen, who wrote, "However high your ranking on the culture scale, I defy you to watch this and leave the theatre without a whistled 'Wow' followed by a grudging 'That's entertainment.'"

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81%

Fresh

7. Ghosts of the Abyss

What originally drew James Cameron to Titanic wasn't the chance to tell the story of the most famous shipwreck in American history -- it was the opportunity to take a diving tour of the real-life wreckage. And since Cameron never does anything small, the end result was not just another movie, but a 3-D documentary -- Disney's first! -- filmed with specially created cameras and beefed up with nifty CGI that let the audience see what the ship might have looked like during its seafaring days. Presented in IMAX 3-D, Ghosts of the Abyss functioned as a sort of delayed footnote to Titanic, albeit one with plenty of the sort of gee-whiz special effects Cameron would eventually use to create Avatar -- and for some critics, that footnote was even more compelling than the main article. As Jeff Vice of Salt Lake City's Deseret News wrote, "When James Cameron got a second chance to make a Titanic movie, he actually managed to make a better one."

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82%

Fresh

6. Titanic

Yes, it's over three hours long, and yes, royalties from its soundtrack will keep future generations of Celine Dion's family comfortably ensconced in gated communities for centuries to come -- but don't believe the post-backlash conventional wisdom that says James Cameron's Titanic is a watery, overlong mess that only sentimental saps ever really liked. That's just the backlash talking, and for proof, just look at the staggering $1.8 billion it grossed -- Titanic was one of the last truly unifying pop culture phenomena, the Thriller of 1990s films. (Which sort of makes Billy Zane the filmic equivalent of "The Girl Is Mine," but we digress.) Such great rewards didn't come without equally impressive risks; at the time, Titanic was the most expensive movie ever made, and its astronomical $200 million budget, coupled with post-production delays that bumped the film's release date back by almost six months, had many people predicting a Heaven's Gate-style disaster. The rest, as they say, was history; commercial kudos aside, Titanic won 11 Academy Awards (including Best Picture) and made Cameron enough money to keep him from working another day in his life. It was so unavoidably huge that it's easy to understand why it became hip to dismiss the (first) movie that gave us Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio as young lovers on the brink of certain doom, but its 82 percent Tomatometer doesn't lie -- and neither did Andrew L. Urban of Urban Cinefile when he wrote, "You will walk out of Titanic not talking about budget or running time, but of its enormous emotive power, big as the engines of the ship itself, determined as its giant propellers to gouge into your heart, and as lasting as the love story that propels it."

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83%

Fresh

5. Aliens of the Deep

Two years after taking audiences on a deep sea expedition with Ghosts of the Abyss, Cameron dove even further for Aliens of the Deep. As with Ghosts, he used 3-D technology to take audiences on his journey -- but this time, instead of exploring a sunken ship, he ventured to the hydrothermal vents of the Mid-Ocean Range, where an otherworldly ecosystem (hence the film's title) supports a variety of unusual organisms. Part of a three-dimensional holding pattern between madly hyped tentpole features? Perhaps. But as David Hiltbrand of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, "The experience is so immediate and immersive that you actually feel as if you are swimming with the krill."

85%

Fresh

4. The Abyss

Cameron had to spearhead the invention of a new type of 3-D camera before he could get Avatar off the ground, but he was no stranger to breaking the limits of technology to bring his vision to life: 1989's underwater epic The Abyss required the construction of the world's biggest tank of filtered fresh water, as well as newly designed watertight cameras and bleeding-edge special effects work from Industrial Light & Magic. It also required a lot of patience on the part of its cast (including Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Ed Harris, both of whom suffered emotional breakdowns during the grueling six-month shoot) and crew (including Cameron himself, who spent hours at a time under 50 feet of water) -- and the studio had its own cross to bear, enduring millions of dollars in cost overruns and weeks of delays. In the end, The Abyss wasn't as profitable as Cameron's other epics, only bringing in around $90 million against a $70 million budget, but critics were generally kind, particularly to the longer version that eventually surfaced on home video (Widgett Walls of Needcoffee.com called the theatrical release "an abomination" and wrote, "For God's sake, make sure you have the director's cut"). And perhaps more importantly, all that mucking around with wet stuff helped prepare Cameron for a certain movie about an ocean liner hitting an iceberg.

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97%

Fresh

3. Terminator 2: Judgment Day

More often than not, if it takes seven years to put together the sequel to a hit movie, disappointment is just around the corner. In the case of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, however, the prolonged delay worked to everyone's advantage: James Cameron, a relative newcomer when The Terminator was filmed, had spent the intervening years turning himself into one of Hollywood's biggest directors, and one of the few filmmakers with enough clout to secure the $102 million budget necessary to pay for both Arnold Schwarzenegger and the super-cool special effects that turned Robert Patrick into a puddle of molten metal. It was money well spent, as T2's eventual $519 million worldwide gross proved; in fact, despite its slightly lower Tomatometer rating, many fans believe the second Terminator is superior to the original. If you enjoy movies and shows like ABC's Lost, in which white-knuckle action and impossibly trippy sci-fi storylines somehow manage to coexist, thank James Cameron for Terminator 2, because this is one of the best examples of how to do it right. In the words of Newsweek's David Ansen, "For all its state-of-the-art pyrotechnics and breathtaking thrills, this bruisingly exciting movie never loses sight of its humanity. That's its point, and its pride."

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100%

Fresh

2. The Terminator

Talk about your abrupt turnarounds: just a few years after suffering through Piranha II, Cameron convinced Orion Pictures to take a chance on his idea for a sci-fi action film about a time-traveling cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger) on a mission to kill the mother (Linda Hamilton) of a 21st century freedom fighter before she can get it on with her predestined baby daddy (Michael Biehn). Unlike its ever-expanding pack of sequels and spinoffs, 1984's The Terminator was a low-budget affair, going from set to screen for a paltry $6.5 million -- and it promptly turned around and grossed more than $75 million, launching a franchise that has gone on to outlast Cameron's involvement (much to the chagrin of many fans). Even though The Terminator's budgetary constraints occasionally show up onscreen, it's still easy to see why it was so successful -- not only is it one of the most purely entertaining popcorn flicks of the decade, this was the role Schwarzenegger was born to play. "I remain perpetually amazed by how magnificently Cameron keeps the tension up," wrote Antagony & Ecstasy's Tim Brayton, adding, "there is not a single moment that isn't operating at 100 percent."

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100%

Fresh

1. Aliens

More than a decade before he stood in front of an international audience and proclaimed himself the king of the world, James Cameron demonstrated his healthy reserves of chutzpah by approaching Fox about taking the reins on a sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien. Unlike Piranha II, Cameron's proposed Aliens would be following up a certified classic -- and one that many viewers would have been happy to leave sequel-free. Fox wasn't particularly eager to revisit Alien either, at least initially; first, the studio expressed doubt as to whether there was really an audience for another installment, and then a pay dispute with Sigourney Weaver threatened to derail the whole thing. Even when Aliens started to roll, the obstacles kept coming -- Cameron's difficulties with his uncooperative crew are the stuff of legend -- but by the time the sequel reached audiences and returned more than $130 million on the studio's $18.5 million investment, not to mention seven Academy Award nominations, it was pretty clear Cameron had known what he was doing all along. At 100 percent on the Tomatometer, Aliens has earned plenty of praise from top critics like Walter Goodman of the New York Times, who called it "A flaming, flashing, crashing, crackling blow-'em-up show that keeps you popping from your seat despite your better instincts and the basically conventional scare tactics."

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