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James Cameron

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Kinda odd that I never came across a Cameron fan (on internet or in real life) that had True Lies as one of his/her top Cameron works like I do. For a guy that enjoys comedy and action so much, that movie is the pure definition of golden entertainment for me. T2 is my fav Cameron movie but True Lies is always the most entertaining one. I said in another thread that I know I can never be a filmmaker, but I could, I wish I could make movies like True Lies.

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Avatar and James Cameron...a comment-Ron Price, Australia

------------------------------

AVATAR

 

Part 1:

 

The film Avatar has been out for more than 6 years(12/09 to 1/15) after being in development since 1994.   I have read many reviews, listened to many comments and discussed it’s style and content with many both in cyberspace and in our wide-wide-world.  This prose-poem tries to encapsulate some of my initial thoughts on this blockbuster, its initial reception and some of its meaning drawing as I do on several sources of comment during these last six years.

 

James Cameron, who wrote, produced and directed the film, stated in an interview that an avatar is an incarnation of one of the Hindu gods who takes on flesh-form.   In this film, though, avatar has more to do with human technology in the future being capable of injecting a human's intelligence into a remotely located body, a biological body.  "It's not an avatar in the sense of just existing as ones and zeroes in cyberspace,” said Cameron; “it's actually a physical body." The great student of myth, Joseph Campbell(1), should have been at the film’s premier in London on 10 December 2009.  I wonder what he would have said.

 

Part 2:

 

Composer James Horner scored the film, his third collaboration with Cameron after Aliens and Titanic.  A field guide of 224 pages for the film's fictional setting of the planet of Pandora was released by Harper Entertainment in late November 2009.  The guide was entitled Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora. With an estimated $310 million to produce the film and $150 million for marketing, the film has generated a myriad positive reviews from film critics as well as its share of criticism especially over what many reviewers refer to as the film’s simplistic content.

 

Roger Ebert, one of the more prestigious of film critics, wrote: “An extraordinary film: Avatar is not simply sensational entertainment, although it is that.  It's a technical breakthrough." Avatar has had overwhelming success as a work of cinematic-art. Its enormous visual power,  its thrilling imaginative originality, its excitingly effective use of the 3-D technology seems bound to change permanently the nature of cinematic experience henceforth.--Ron Price with thanks to Wikipedia, 5 April 2010.

 

Part 3:

 

Like viewing Star Wars back in ’77

some said/an obvious script with an

earnestness & corniness/part of what

makes it absorbing/said another/Gives

you a world, a place/worth visiting/eh?

 

Alive with action and a soundtrack that

pops with robust sci-fi shoot-'em-ups...

A mild critique of American militarism

and industrialism.....yes the military are

pure evil........the Pandoran tribespeople

are nature-loving, eco-harmonious, wise

Braveheart smurf warriors…….Received

nominations for the Critics' Choice Awards

of the Broadcast Film Critics Association &

on and on go the recommendations for the

best this and that and everything else. What

do you think of all this Joseph Campbell???

 

You said we all have to work our own myth(1)

in our pentapolar, multicultural-dimensional

world with endless phantoms of our wrongly

informed imagination, with our tangled fears,

our pundits of error, ill-equipped to interpret

the social commotion tearing our world apart

and at play on planetizing-globalizing Earth.(2)

 

Part 4:

 

(1) If readers google Joseph Campbell they can find some contemporary insights in his many volumes of analysis and his comments on the individualized myth that Campbell says we all have to work out in our postmodern world.

 

(2)The Prophet-Founder of the Bahá'í Faith, Bahá'u'lláh, has been presented as an avatar in India beginning, arguably, in the 1960s. There were only 1000 Baha’is in India in 1960 and now 2 million(circa). Baha’u’llah has been associated in the Bahá'í teaching initiatives with the Kalki avatar who, according to a major Hindu holy text, will appear at the end of the kali yuga, one of the four main stages of history, for the purpose of reestablishing an era of righteousness.

 

There are many examples of what one might call a cross-cultural messianism at the core of the Bahá'í teachings. This applies in India and in/to many other countries and religious communities. This approach has included: (a) emphasizing the figures of Buddha and Krishna as past Manifestations of God or avatars; (B) making references to Hindu scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita, © the substitution of Sanskrit-based terminology for Arabic and Persian terms where possible; for example, Bhagavan Baha for Bahá'u'lláh, (d) the incorporation in both Bahá'í song and literature of Hindu holy spots, hero-figures and poetic images and (e) using heavily Sanskritized-Hindi translations of Baha'i scriptures and prayers.

 

Part 5:

 

Footnote: For an excellent analysis of James Cameron’s films and especially Avatar go to the following link and my quotes below:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/mar/25/the-wizard/

 

Cameron’s real attraction, as a writer and a director, has always been for the technologies that turn humans into super-humans. However “primitive” they have seemed to some critics, the Na’vi—with their uniformly superb, sleekly blue-gleaming physiques, their weirdly infallible surefootedness, their organic connector cables, their ability to upload and download consciousness itself—are the ultimate expression of his career-long striving to make flesh mechanical.

 

The problem here is not a patronizingly clichéd representation of an ostensibly primitive people; the problem is the movie’s intellectually incoherent portrayal of its fictional heroes as both admirably pre-civilized and admirably hyper-civilized, as a-technological and highly technologized. Avatar ‘s desire to have its anthropological cake and eat it too suggests something deeply un-self-aware and disturbingly unresolved within Cameron himself.

 

Cameron’s films depend for their effects—none more than Avatar—on the most sophisticated technologies available. Cameron tells himself that the technology that is the sine qua non of his technique isn’t as important as people think. In fact what makes Avatar special is the “human interest” story particularly the love story. But there is a large flaw in Avatar—one that’s connected to Cameron’s ambivalence about the relationship between technology and humanity.

 

The message of what is now James Cameron’s most popular movie thus far, and the biggest-grossing movie in history—like the message of so much else in mass culture just now—is, by contrast, that “reality” is dispensable altogether; or, at the very least, whatever you care to make of it, provided you have the right gadgets. In this fantasy of a lusciously colourful trip over the rainbow, you don’t have to wake up. There’s no need to go back home to the grey world. If you are really lucky you can stay immersed in the wonders of modern technology with the end of effort and the triumph of sensation. Whatever its futuristic setting, and whatever its debt to the past, Avatar is very much a movie for our time.

 

Ron Price

5/4/'10 to 24/1/'15. 

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Terminator 2: Judgement Day B+

True Lies B

Avatar C+

The Terminator D

Titanic D-

 

I still haven't seen his original Piranha II, or Aliens, and it's been so long since I saw The Abyss that I can't fairly judge it.

Edited by treeroy
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I do not give a 10 often. Checking my lists, I seem to give it ~ 5 times for each decade of film making with exceptions in the earliest decades. So out of thousands I rated I gave it 37 times yet.

Cameron is on my probably too short favorite directors list.

 

I'm using full numbers as I'm glancing into my lists elsewhere, means sometimes it got rounded up or down, with till .5 rounded down...

Abyss 7/10

Aliens 9/10

Terminator 1 9/10 (extra percentages for the creation creativity...)

Terminator 2 8/10

Titanic 5/10

True Lies 8/10

 

Avatar is the only exception (no matter the director) as it is the only movie I have two different ratings for:

the movie = 8/10

the movie in a good 3D cinema = 9/10

add extra percetnages for the creation and it's a good 9/10 as a final rating

I will be forever gratefull for having finally a ~ clue how you normal 3D-sighted people see the world in RL. For that experience... it is also my personal record-times-watching movie in a cinema

 

Not sure if I've seen his docus, I plan to do so but I think I've only seen Bismark something yet, that was a 7 or so out of 10 I think.

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terrestrial how can you call yourself a cameron fan if you've never seen PIRANHA II

 

I do not watch all, no matter if I like / favour someone or not.

The story has to interest me too. Or the genre.... or whatever.

 

Same counts for music, I have some favourite... but never found an artist I liked the complete body of work.

 

Beside that:

I do have 'favourite' lists, but no one is on a (as such not-existing) 'fan' list.

 

I had to look up why I didn't watch it, definitivly several reasons for not watching it. incl. not my genre and...

 

But via said looking up I realised he did Dark Angel too (producer and director of finale). Season 1 I liked, season 2 a bit less, something had changed in the vibe... that I didn't like the same. I think.

At that time I was often 'dead-tired' whilst watching based on too long hours at work, building a house, having a kid, working a 2nd job,....

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On 19/01/2015 at 5:28 AM, luna said:

no james cameron thread yet! goodness.

 

5.3 titanic (memory)

5.0 avatar (memory)

4.3 terminator 2

4.0 terminator

2.3 aliens

2.0 xenogenesis

 

yet to see: true lies; the abyss; piranha part two

 

and a bunch of his documentaries, which i don't care about.

 

is this a scale out of 5?

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PERFECT 10:

Aliens

 

TOTAL MASTERPIECES 9.5:

Terminator

T2

Titanic

 

AMAZING BY ANY OTHER STANDARD 9:

Avatar

The Abyss

True Lies

 

As irritating as I can find some of the Cameron loonies on here (not naming names), I do have to admit that the man has a pretty unblemished record. Aliens is my personal all time favourite film ever, so I am a little biased, but regardless of the sometimes cheesy dialogue or too-on-the-nose metaphors, the man can craft a thrill ride like no one else. Spielberg is still the master of the individual set piece, but Cameron is like a rollercoaster architect - crafting a perfect ride that leaves you breathless for the duration of the running time. One can pick the aforementioned flaws in the detail after, but it doesn't matter - the ride is so good you just don't care. I can remember watching Aliens for the first time and being genuinely exhilarated. I cant think if any other film maker who does this as well as Cameron.

 

I must admit, I wish he was more prolific, and i'd rather his next film be something outside of the Avatar-verse. But regardless, I'll still watch and probably devour/cherish anything the man does.

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14 minutes ago, Elessar said:

 

I know, right? Wish he would go back to his old ways, doing one movie at least every 3 years. :(

 

Well he will be doing 1 movie every year for 3 years. It's a shame he loves the ocean and enviroment so much, could have blessed us with 20 films.

 

Also I'm still annoyed about Mexican Alita, I've got a feeling it will be bad.

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I thought we could create a thread dedicated to the director of the two highest grossing films of all time... the one and only James Cameron

 

I'll try and keep the thread updated with the latest news about Jim and his projects around the world. 

 

So welcome one and all! 

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