TIME Watches Footage From Cameron's Avatar
"I couldn't tell what was real and what was animated"

TIME magazine has published a new article talking about upcoming 3-D movie
projects and the writer of the piece, Josh Quittner, got a chance to
see footage from James Cameron's highly-anticipated Avatar,
which 20th Century Fox will release on December 18. The sci-fi
action-adventure stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver,
Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder,
Peter Mensah, Laz Alonso, Wes Studi, Stephen Lang and Matt Gerald.

Here are a few excerpts from the article:

More than a thousand people have worked on it, at a cost in excess
of $300 million, and it represents digital filmmaking's bleeding edge.
Cameron wrote the treatment for it in 1995 as a way to push his
digital-production company to its limits. The movie pioneers two
unrelated technologies--e-motion capture, which uses images from tiny
cameras rigged to actors' heads to replicate their expressions, and
digital 3-D.

The film is set in the future, and most of the action takes place on a
mythical planet, Pandora. The actors work in an empty studio; Pandora's
lush jungle-aquatic environment is computer-generated in New Zealand by
Jackson's special-effects company, Weta Digital, and added later.

I couldn't tell what was real and what was animated--even knowing that
the 9-ft.-tall blue, dappled dude couldn't possibly be real. The scenes
were so startling and absorbing that the following morning, I had the
peculiar sensation of wanting to return there, as if Pandora were real.

Hopefully we'll get to see some footage from the film soon as well!
You can read the full article here.

what is this Avatar?

Oh lawdy xD

Avatar? More like Avatard for me.

HAHAHAHAHA, but read the first post to know what it is.

it still doesnt make sense to me at all

James Cameron's Avatar will probably the biggest film surprise of 2009 and also the expensive of all time ($300 million), more info you can find here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_880

We still haven't seen any footage of it but people who saw footage couldn't tell what was real and what was animated.

Sigourney Weaver is also in the film:

Sigourney Weaver as Grace, a botanist who mentors Jake Sully.Weaver dyed her hair red for the part.Her character was named "Shipley" at one point.The character reminded Weaver of Cameron himself, being "very driven and very idealistic

oh i think ive heard about this, i think ive been to the site for it almost like 2 yrs ago, the project 880 sound formilar

Soderbergh Gives Avatar High Praise

Earlier today, ComingSoon.net had a rare opportunity for an extended interview with filmmaker Steven Soderbergh for his upcoming film The Girlfriend Experience, a timely film about a high-priced Manhattan escort played by adult video star Sasha Grey.

We had a chance to talk to Soderbergh at length about the film as well as his next two studio projects, The Informant and Moneyball, which reunite him with Matt Damon and Brad Pitt, respectively, but the real surprise came at the end of our conversation.

We were asking why he thought recent films didn't have quite the impact or longevity as the classics, and he gave us a great response about how the volume of movies being made and seen made it hard for anything to have the cultural impact of a movie like The Godfather or be remembered. He was disappointed there weren't those sorts of benchmarks in the movies being made today, but he surprised us by adding that he thought James Cameron's Avatar would be one of those benchmarks:

"I've seen some stuff and holy sh*t. It's the craziest sh*t ever. That could negate everything I just said," he told us.

A lot of people are eagerly anticipating the film, being that it's Cameron's first narrative feature film since Titanic way back in 1997, but nothing has been seen of the movie beyond a poster and a brief report from TIME last month. To have a reputable and discerning filmmaker like Soderbergh give it such high praise certainly makes one optimistic that Cameron's return will be the stuff of cinematic legend.

Looking good:

"Footage from "Avatar" at #cinexpo was stunning, literally jawdropping. Amazing visuals unlike any before seen, with incredible detail."

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/avatarnews.php?id=56535