Cameron Options 'The Last Train From Hiroshima'
Source: variety.com
January 2010 - As "Avatar" continues to make box office history, James Cameron is eyeing a slice of history for a potential helming gig. The "Avatar" director has optioned Charles Pellegrino's upcoming nonfiction tome "The Last Train From Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back" with his own personal funds.
While in Japan in late December promoting "Avatar," Cameron asked 20th Century Fox for a day off Dec. 22 in order to visit Tsutomu Yamaguchi, one of the last survivors of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII.
Yamaguchi died Monday at the age of 93. Pellegrino's book, published by Henry Holt, is set to hit bookstores Jan. 19. Advance reviews have been glowing for the title, which takes place over two days and weaves together eyewitness accounts of the Japanese civilians and American pilots who experienced the atomic explosions firsthand.
Terminator Rights Sell for $29.5 Million
By Nikki Finke
Excerpt: deadline.com
February 2010 - The auction for the Terminator movie, TV program, and other spin-off rights just ended after a marathon bidding session today that stretched from 3 PM this afternoon until 8 PM tonight.
Both Sony Pictures and Lionsgate separately were bidding for the franchise, and then joined up after the first round was completed. "We're going to fight one hell of a fight," a Lionsgate insider told Deadline Hollywood in advance. Its plans were for "a complete re-boot, back to basics, with real emotional stories, and effects that will be secondary.
James Cameron: Failure's OK, fear isn't
By Richard Galant
Excerpt: cnn.com
February 2010 - A lifelong fascination with science fiction and the ocean has driven "Avatar" director James Cameron's career, he told the TED2010 conference Saturday. "The ocean is so rich with amazing life," he said beginning a session called "Wisdom," the final one of the conference. "Nature's imagination is so boundless compared to our own human imagination."
Cameron said some thought his filming of "Titanic" was about the opportunity to depict "Romeo and Juliet" on the doomed ship. In fact, he said, "Secretly I wanted to dive to the wreck of the Titanic." He did wind up exploring the wreck and said he saw amazing forms of underwater life.
Cameron was struck by the comparison between deep ocean exploration and space travel; in both cases there's a search for alien creatures and no hope of rescue if you can't get back yourself. "I completely closed the loop between being a science fiction fan as a kid and doing this stuff for real."
James Cameron Says Grammys Did 3-D Wrong
Source: mtv.com
February 2010 - The director explains how to do 3-D right.
James Cameron On 'Terminator': 'I Know What You Know'
Source: mtv.com
February 2010 - Cameron has stepped away from the franchise, even with movies 5 and 6 in development.
Avatar Producer Says 'Battle Angel Alita' Has A New Name, Will Follow 'Avatar 2'
By Larry Carroll
Excerpt: mtv.com
February 2010 - “'Avatar' was something Jim had written before, but we were about to embark on a film called ‘Battle Angel: Alita,’ and then we looked at ourselves and said ‘Wait a second, ‘Avatar’ is something that Jim always referred to as his magnum opus, and we can do it now,’” remembered the filmmaker’s producing partner, Jon Landau.
“But [‘Battle Angel’] is something that Jim is very, very passionate about. It was actually brought to our attention by another filmmaker, Guillermo del Toro; Guillermo saw those things in the property that he thought would really relate to Jim, and Jim responded to it immediately.”
Although Landau was quick to point out that Cameron plans to shoot an “Avatar” sequel first, he re-affirmed the filmmaker’s intentions to adapt Yukito Kishiro’s manga classic after that. “We had a wonderful writer who came in and collaborated with Jim, Laeta Kalogridis, who worked on it; Laeta brought to our attention that there was much more to this world of Battle Angel than we ever knew,” explained Landau.
Cameron Directs Bigelow in Bill Paxton’s Music Video…come again?
By Julia Rhodes
Excerpt: calitreview.com
February 2010 - James Cameron’s Avatar and Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker are among the Oscar nominees for Best Picture of 2009. From 1989-1991, Cameron and Bigelow were married. They apparently parted amicably, since they have pleasant things to say about one another onstage at awards shows.
In 1988, Cameron directed this music video for Bill Paxton’s (short-lived) band Martini Ranch, starring Bigelow and Paxton (“Big Love”).
Bigelow was hot on the heels of directing Paxton in Near Dark, which is one of my favorite vampire movies–a dirty, gory, totally off the wall Western with a fantastic AIDS allegory. So: “Reach” features two Oscar-nominated directors and an actor from one of the best shows on TV.
James Cameron tops most powerful in Hollywood list
Excerpt: guardian.co.uk
September 2010 - If there were any doubts that money talks loudest in the movie business, they have been dispelled.
The expert panel behind the Guardian's inaugural Film Power 100, published in today's Film & Music section, have chosen James Cameron, director of the two highest grossing films ever made, as the person wielding the most power over the UK film industry.
Cameron, whose films Avatar and Titanic have taken a total of $4.61bn (£2.94bn) at the box office, took the top spot ahead of fellow director Steven Spielberg and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who has replaced Tom Cruise as the go-to leading man for big-budget movies.
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With his Sci-Fi epic "Avatar," the famously volatile director is trying to change the way movies are made
Source: rollingstone.com
January 2010 - Forty years ago, the kind of kid Jim Cameron was, the jocks in high school just wouldn't leave him alone. This was in Chippawa, Ontario, not far from the roar of Niagara Falls. He was a science geek who once fashioned a diving bell out of a mayo jar and sent a mouse down to the bottom of a local creek. He'd take the bus to museums in Toronto and spend his time sketching Etruscan helmets and dinosaur bones.
He was lanky, and clumsy, and a terrible athlete, probably the worst wrestler in the entire school — "useless," a classmate recalls. So the jocks had it in for him. They'd wait for him at the top of stairs, bop the books out from under his arms, send them scattering. Or else they'd punch him in the gut, pow, just because. He didn't stick up for himself. He stood and took it. He was precisely the kind of shy suburban kid who grows up to take his revenge bloodily, with guns and knives.
Only he didn't go in that direction, not exactly. Instead, he became a major motion-picture director and earned a reputation as "the scariest man in Hollywood." In 1989, during the making of The Abyss, he ran his production in such a way that star Ed Harris burst into tears. On one shoot, crew members wore T-shirts that said "You Either Shoot It My Way Or You Do Another F***ing Movie." And so it's been, ever since his first big movie, The Terminator, in 1984, led him to make some of the most expensive (and most profitable) movies of all time, including Aliens, Terminator 2 and, of course, Titanic.
Now, on the monitor, a helicopter gunship known as the dragon swings into view and begins blasting its cannons. Cameron replays the clip a few times, then circles an area of fire and smoke with a laser pointer and says to his CG crew, "What's nice is the differential rise rate through the convection. The haze looks great. It's also got the right amount of simming, hitting the leaves with the wind effect.
But don't forget to grad it off, have a radial drop away from the dragon. Then we have to have another grad where it's active here, less active there, otherwise we're opening up a can of whoop-ass on ourselves about how we interacted fire with the rotor wash." Everyone seems to know what he's talking about, nodding and taking notes. But even if you don't, it's interesting to listen to him, both for the technical poetry of his words and for their delivery — not angry, not full of frustration, none of what he has been so known for.
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January 2010 - Reasonable people can debate the artistic merits of James Cameron's work. Anyone for whom Arnold Schwarzenegger is a frequent muse is not likely to specialize in observing the human condition, unless it's in the aftermath of an exploding building or a run-in with a mercenary robot from the future. What's indisputable, however, is that the Avatar director's influence extends far beyond his movie credits.
More than George Lucas or Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay or Pixar (DIS), Cameron is the most important commercial force in modern film, and his vision for the future of the movie business is rapidly demolishing anything that gets in its way. There are 1.64 billion reasons that Cameron is Hollywood's director of the moment—that figure being the mid-January worldwide gross of Avatar, the blue-aliened, 3D extravaganza that earned Golden Globes for best director and best dramatic picture.
By the time you read this, Avatar may have passed the $1.84 billion mark set by 1997's Titanic, Cameron's previous feature and current holder of the title Highest-Grossing Film of All Time. The money is impressive, but it only hints at Cameron's impact. It took Titanic several months to reach $1 billion worldwide at the box office. Avatar hit that milestone in 17 days. How? Because cinema operators say they can charge at least 30% more per ticket if a movie is in 3D.
By persuading a huge number of filmgoers to put on the 3D glasses and pay more for the privilege, Cameron has changed the economics of the movie business. "Films can change people's minds, and the aim with Avatar was to introduce the industry to the possibilities of 3D," Cameron told Bloomberg BusinessWeek. "I decided, let's go make a movie that they can't ignore." At 55, the man who declared himself king of the world at the 1998 Oscars has mellowed some. Cameron accepted his 2010 Golden Globes with a mix of humility and amazement.
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The right way forward on space exploration
By James Cameron | Excerpt: washingtonpost.com
February 2010 - What do rockets burn for fuel? Money. Money that is contributed by working families who have mortgages and children who need braces. And why do the American people support our efforts in space? Because they still believe, to some extent or another, in that shining dream of exploring other worlds. So it could be said that rockets really run on dreams.
The exploration of space is the grandest adventure challenging the human race. As a filmmaker I have celebrated this greatest of dreams in my movies and documentaries, and I remain as passionate about the discoveries ahead as I was when I was a kid. So it was with some trepidation that I waited for the NASA budget to be unveiled this week. I was concerned that amid the nation's fiscal crises, space exploration would fall off the priority list. But the NASA budget reveals a pathway to a bright future of exploration.
Last year President Obama instructed the Augustine commission to report on the likely prognosis for NASA's exploration activities. After months of study, the conclusions the panel released in October were gloomy. The Constellation program, designed to put humans back on the moon by 2020, could not possibly succeed within that time frame or budgeted amount, it reported.
In response, the president and NASA have crafted a bold plan that truly makes possible this nation's dreams for space. Their plan calls for the full embrace of commercial solutions for transporting astronauts to low Earth orbit after the space shuttle is retired this year. This frees NASA to do what it does best: deep space exploration, both robotic and human. By selecting commercial solutions for transportation to the international space station, NASA is empowering American free enterprise to do what it does best: develop technology quickly and efficiently in a competitive environment.
As Peter Diamandis, chairman of the nonprofit X Prize Foundation, wrote this week: "The U.S. Government doesn't build your computers, nor do you fly aboard a U.S. Government owned and operated airline. Private industry routinely takes technologies pioneered by the government and turns them into cheap, reliable and robust industries."
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Crowning James Cameron
Director of Avatar, Titanic Named Modern Master by SBIFF
By Barney Brantingham
Excerpt: independent.com
February 2010 - The King: There he was Saturday night, “the king of the world,” all six-feet-two of Jim Cameron, bathed in love and applause from the Arlington audience and getting a hug from his buddy, the king of California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Schwarzenegger, joking in his fractured English that “I’m still struggling saying the word Avatar,” the title of Cameron’s hit sci-fi film, presented the filmmaker with the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s highest honor, the Lucky Brand Modern Master Award. The governor, who was directed by Cameron in earlier films, called the part-time Santa Barbaran “a great talent and great innovator.” Added the governor, “You’re the king!”
During a Q & A session with moderator Leonard Maltin, Cameron offered this advice to would-be moviemakers: “You have to have something to say,” explaining that film school is fine, but you have to learn “from the school of life.” And, he said, “You have to create your own luck. You have to bang on doors,” but also be prepared to deliver when the opportunity comes along. “Good films are personal films,” said Cameron.
Directors talk about choice at panel discussion
Excerpt: variety.com
February 2010 - Variety VP and editorial director Peter Bart asked Kathryn Bigelow if she intended to seek a bigger budget for her forthcoming South America-set drama given the recent awards for "The Hurt Locker." "No," she replied, having learned that "with a more modest budget you get to retain more creative control." But "modest," she insisted, is a relative term; for the ambitious scope of a project like "Avatar," that film's budget might have felt comparatively modest. "That's right," quipped James Cameron. "We could have used a lot more money."
The benefits of parameters came up again when Quentin Tarantino ("Inglourious Basterds") said he had been tempted to direct an animated film until he became daunted by the prospect of the milieu's limitless possibilities. "If you can do anything, then what do you do?" he lamented. Peter Docter ("Up") explained that a Pixar creative pillar is to establish a set of consistent rules within a film that will facilitate an audience's "investment and belief in the characters. You set it up in subtle ways early on," thereby convincing them that, say, a house could be airborne by a bundle of balloons.
Cameron chimed in on Tarantino's dilemma, noting "an infinity of choices is not a luxury" and quoting a popular 1980 tune: "Freedom of choice is what you got; freedom from choice is what you want." Bigelow agreed, quoting, "Art is born of restraint and dies of freedom." That prompted Cameron to note self-mockingly, "Kathryn quotes Andre Gide; here I am quoting Devo."
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James Cameron Lending Director Marc Webb a Hand in Bringing SPIDER-MAN to 3D
By Michael Sullivan | Excerpt: collider.com
February 2010 - It seems as though behemoth auteur James Cameron will get to live his Spider-Man directorial dreams after all, albeit vicariously through (500) Days of Summer’s Marc Webb.
Jon Landau, Cameron’s friend and associate, told MTV that he and Cameron met with Webb last week to help bring the project into the third dimension.
Those who recall the recent frenzy over who would helm the Spider-Man reboot will remember hearing James Cameron’s name; after all, the Academy Award-winning director did write an extensive, story-boarded treatment (dubbed a “scriptment”) back in 1991.
However, in another interview with MTV at the Critics Choice Awards, Cameron called the Spider-Man reboot Sam Raimi’s “sloppy seconds.”
And those sloppiest of seconds now belong to . . . . . Marc Webb, director of 2009’s beloved (500) Days of Summer! It seems Cameron is willing to put aside his disdain for the all-too-soon revived franchise for an upstart director he’s got his eye on. “Jim loved (500) Days of Summer,” according to Landau. “It’s not something that you would think is necessarily in his wheelhouse, but he really enjoyed that.” Apparently James Cameron and Jon Landau are further in favor of Webb’s call to use 3D now, in pre-production, as more and more projects scramble to add 3D in post.
James Cameron, the focus and the fury
By Rachel Abramowitz | Excerpt: latimes.com
February - I first met James Cameron on the set of “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and what I remember most is the screaming. It was a rainy night and Cameron's crew was set up at one of those glass mansions in Malibu, which, for the purposes of the film, was the home of Skynet scientist Miles Dyson, portrayed by Joe Morton.
The script pages for the evening were an ambush scene -- Sarah Connor, played by Linda Hamilton, had invaded the home to assassinate Dyson -- but Hamilton was the one who seemed under attack. My very vivid recollection of the night was watching Cameron berate the actress.
It was only later that I found out that the two were dating; that left me feeling like I had been in Malibu watching a foreign film without the benefit of subtitles.
Cameron is, of course, the T-800 of all directors -- a fierce taskmaster, with almost superhuman drive and very little patience for human fallibility. On the "T2" set, someone had T-shirts printed up with the filmmaker's (supposedly) favorite saying:”If I wanted your opinion, I would have given it to you.” When he’s not working, however, I've found that Cameron can be erudite and charming, and an infectiously enthusiastic evangelist. That’s the Cameron who’s been working the Oscar campaign trail recently.
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Producers Guild of America Honoring James Cameron at 22nd Annual Producers Guild Awards Ceremony
Excerpt: collider.com
September 2010 - The Producers Guild of America has announced James Cameron will be honored with the 2011 Milestone Award at next January’s Producers Guild Awards ceremony at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles.
The Milestone Award is the Guild’s highest honor that recognizes an individual (or team) who has made historic contributions to the entertainment industry. Previous recipients are Clint Eastwood, Alfred Hitchcock, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Ron Howard & Brian Grazer, and Walt Disney, among others.
With how much money Cameron has made at the worldwide box office, and how he’s also developed films about ocean exploration and conservation, it’s no surprise he’s being honored with this award.
