News4u-Entertainment Desk-agencies-’Avatar’ has surpassed ‘Titanic’ as the highest-grossing movie worldwide, giving director James Cameron a remarkable double a week before his sci-fi spectacular is expected to rack up a slew of Oscar nominations.

Gregg Brilliant, a spokesman for the News Corp-owned studio 20th Century Fox, said on Tuesday the worldwide box office total for “Avatar” stands at $1.859 billion, beating the $1.843 billion racked up by Cameron’s romantic drama “Titanic” in 1997-1998.

“Avatar” broke the record in a little over six weeks.

The film has enjoyed an unbroken reign in most countries, including the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Russia, Britain and Australia.

The data are not adjusted for inflation.

Ticket sales got an additional boost from premium prices for 3-D screenings. Fox said 72 percent of worldwide sales come from 3-D engagements.

The action-adventure movie, starring Sigourney Weaver, is set in 2154 and tells the tale of a disabled ex-Marine sent to Earth to infiltrate a race of 10-foot (3-metre) blue aliens and persuade them to let his employer mine their homeland for natural resources.

More than five years in the making, it was reportedly one of the most expensive films with a budget of at least $300 million, due partly to its high-tech special effects and the creation of a new language used by the extra-terrestrial Na’vi race.

Despite some industry scepticism last year, the movie was released in December to glowing reviews and went on to win the Golden Globe for best drama earlier this month.

Tom O’Neil, an awards pundit at www.TheEnvelope.com, said “Avatar” was not just a sure bet for a best picture Academy Award nomination on Feb. 2, but a leading contender to win the top Oscar on March 7. It is also expected to dominate the technical categories.

“It is the Oscar front-runner,” O’Neil told Reuters. “It won the Golden Globe, it has conquered the global box office and it has won universal praise.”

“The only cliffhanger is, will the notorious snobs in the Academy finally appreciate sci-fi?,” he said, noting that a science fiction movie has never won a best picture Oscar.

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News4u-Entertainment Desk-Agencies-James Cameron’s 3-D epic ‘Avatar’ has become the second highest grossing film of all time by raking in USD 1.14 billion at the global box office.

Cameron’s next challenge is to beat the records set by his previous film, 1997 disaster romance ‘Titanic’, which continues to rule the No 1 spot with USD 1.8 billion.

Avatar’s domestic earning was USD 374.4 million through Wednesday and the foreign haul collected USD 760.9 million to beat the USD 1.1 billion scored by ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’, the Variety reported online.

The film, which released worldwide on December 18, is expected to continue to make money as it enters into the fourth week.

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News4u-Entertainment Desk-Titanic director James Cameron, who is back with the pathbreaking Avatar, tells our correspondent why his new celluloid expedition is so special

Why the name Avatar? Does it have a cinematic significance?  
Avatar signifies a genetically-created biological body that is remotely controlled by human consciousness. In our film, Jake has been recruited to travel to Pandora, to replace his genetically-identical twin brother, who died before the mission. Jake’s brother’s DNA was combined with that of Pandora’s indigenous Na’vi to create a human-Na’vi hybrid…or avatar. Now only Jake can “drive,” or telepathically operate, what was once his brother’s avatar. Through his avatar body, Jake is given a new purpose, new challenges, and an adventure that will take him to his limits – and beyond.

You waited for 14 years to realise your vision — how did it finally come together in terms of the technology required? 
With Avatar, despite wanting to push the technology, when we really evaluated it way back in 1995, we felt like we were too many steps away. When we pushed the technology for The Abyss we were a step or two away from being able to do that so we pushed and got there but with Avatar it just seemed like we were four or five or six steps away from being able to do it, years away. 
We knew that within a single production we wouldn’t be able to push it that hard or that far, no matter how much money we threw at it. So I said “‘Okay, fine, the timing’s off” and threw the script in the back of a stack of files and that was that. But sometime in 2005, we realised that we were now ready to make Avatar happen with all the Performance Capture technology and the photorealistic characterisation and the other CG required to make a film like Avatar.

After Titanic, would the audience accept a story about alien people?  
We’re telling the story of what happens when a technologically-superior culture comes into a place with a technologically-inferior indigenous culture and there are resources there that they want. It never ends well. It’s also a love story about an awakening of perception through the other person. That person must teach him something and there has to be a greater reason for him to be in love with her other than the fact that she’s a hot, blue alien chick. 
The Na’vi in my mind represent an aspect of ourselves that we want to be. When you see the Na’vi and you see how they live in their world and how kind of fearless and beautifully agile they are, it’s such a celebration of human emotion and human behaviour maybe at a time historically. So maybe the Na’vi are in a sense our better selves, maybe they are something that we know are losing in ourselves that we need to get back to. So to me that’s how this works. And I think that’s how the movie works. When you see the film, you want to be like them. You want to be them.

Will the Na’vi find acceptance on earth?  
They better be ready to go blue, I guess. I mean, we spent a lot of time on the character design and we based them closely on the actors. We found out that in our very early testing, going back almost four years with this, that the closer the architecture of the face was to the actor playing the character the better the performance translated. In other words, we originally had this conceit of, like, “Well, it’s going to be a CG character. It doesn’t have to look like the actor.” But that turned out not to be the case. Take the case of let’s say Zoe (Saldana)] for example; in theory, she doesn’t appear photographically in the film but we wanted the character to be based on her, the way her mouth and face and eyes look and then we just kind of stretched and dilated it. Her eyes are four times the size of a human eyeball by volume. They’re huge. We knew that being driven by the performance that she gave that it’d still have heart and soul which was the critical thing. I think that after the first few minutes you forget that they’re blue.

Where does your story draw from – mythology/ fantasy or sci-fi? Also then what category of films does it fall under?  
I think it’s tricky to pigeonhole Avatar as science fiction. Because you immediately think of robots and time travel and space travel and all that. And even though it takes space travel to get us there to Pandora, once we are on Pandora it is really much more of an action adventure fantasy. And there’s a love story in that too!

How has the process been different for Avatar as compared to other 3D films?  
We’d developed a fusion digital 3D camera system for my 2003 documentary, Ghosts Of The Abyss, and I’ve refined and honed the system on Avatar. We’ve used the very latest digital 3D technology for Avatar and that along with the very latest performance capture effects, something that has never before used in making films. 
Performance capture is where an actor’s movements and expressions are electronically tracked and translated into computer-generated imagery to bring the character to life. Basically, Worthington and Weaver, wearing black leotards, would act out their roles as Avatars and the camera would superimpose the computer-generated creatures on to the images while shooting. 
I think that 3D is a revolution that’s taking place and Avatar will have its part in that revolution. The live action element of it – that’s where Hollywood as a community is lagging behind. The 3D renaissance or 3D revolution is right now pretty much being driven by animation – Pixar, DreamWorks – and there are a few live action films but they are lesser titles. That’s not to throw them under a bus, but they are smaller movies. 
There hasn’t been a main kind of tent-pole movie made in live action 3D yet; it hasn’t happened until now. So Avatar will be the test case.

Why did you choose Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana for this project?  
Sam had all the qualities that I was looking for to play Jake. We had to work on the accent a little bit. But he did it. As Sam does with all things, he conquered the accent, he conquered the physicality, he conquered learning how to work with performance capture suits, stuff that was experimental. 
Zoe as Neytiri captured every aspect of that character that I wanted: her beauty, her lithe grace and athleticism, her vulnerability, her incredible strength, her emotional clarity. And you see all that. 
I think that a lot of actors think performance captures is something off-putting or something that will limit their art. But Zoe and Sam Worthington and the others including Sigourney found out every quickly that it’s very liberating. They embraced it. And had a lot of fun with it.

What goes into creating a new, different world?  
For me, Avatar is the opportunity to do the kind of movie I’ve always dreamed of making, in which you create an environment, plants, landscapes and creatures. I guess I’ve been working towards it for all this time. And I searched for the best possible artistes and technicians to make this a reality. We’ve created everything – right from the characters (Na’Vis), to the creatures, plants, costumes, weapons, vehicles and a whole new culture and language.

Where did you draw the CGI team from?  
We roped in Academy Award-winning visual effects powerhouse Weta Digital for this. Weta has proven itself a leader in visionary effects with their groundbreaking photo-real characters like Gollum (Lord Of The Rings) and King Kong. Along with their world-class capability comes a genuine passion to blaze new trails and we were sure that they could breathe life into the Na’vi characters.

What’s next?  
We’ve got a few projects that we’ve been developing quietly over the years like Battle Angel and The Dive and a couple of others. screen 

Titanic & Avatar director James Cameron

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News4u-Entertainment Desk-Los Angeles, ‘Titanic’ stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet have come forward to help the last survivor of the ill-fated ship that sank in 1912.
The superstars along with the film’s director David Cameroon have contributed USD 30,000 for a fund to help the 98-year-old Millvina Dean, who has been struggling to pay her nursing home fees.

Millvina, who was only nine weeks old at the time of the disaster, was the youngest passenger of the ill-fated ship and is now the last remaining survivor.

She was rescued from the sinking ship along with her mother and brother but she lost her father in the tragedy.

Millivina, a Southampton resident, has been forced to sell some of her possessions and memorablia from the historic ship at an auction to raise money to stay in her private nursing home.

She had sold some clothes given to her family when they arrived in America and compensation letters sent to her mother from Titanic Relief Fund.

However, the items were returned to her after her plight was brought to public notice by Ireland-based Sunday Independent newspaper’s photographer Don Mullan, who published an appeal to the team of the 1997 blockbuster to come forward to help Millivina, reported Sky News.

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News4u-Entertainment Desk-Leonardo DiCaprio talks about reviving his chemistry with Kate Winslet for Revolutionary Road after 12 years.
You must have been very comfortable being cast opposite your Titanic co-star?
It was invaluable to have a dear friend who you have known for over a decade, be a partner in a film like this. To have somebody that talented to work against, and whom you intrinsically trust to give you her forthright honest opinion about what we’re both doing — all that’s something you can’t really buy. I know a lot of the intense moments in this movie were made that much easier and were pushed to even further limits because of that relationship.
Playing Frank Wheeler must have felt like a departure for you.
Yes, in almost every instance I’ve played a character who’s heroic and who defies adversity and the odds in order to fulfill some promise to himself or some other character and is gallant in that regard.
Frank’s not at all like that. He’s charming and dashing, but flawed too.
I very much loved his un-heroic qualities. I felt the sympathy shifts in this movie from character to character. You have compassion for a character one moment and what’s disconcerting is the next moment they do something detestable.
Have you read Richard Yates’ book on which the film is based?
I have read the book many times. But I received the script first and got hold of the novel afterwards. What it did was answer a lot of questions for me.
Those people who know the book love it, but it’s still not widely known.
That’s why it took so long for the film to get made. The book wasn’t a bestseller. Even towards the end of his life, Yates didn’t get the proper credit that he deserved for creating such a masterpiece.
It’s a very interior story. People express their thoughts, but they don’t always correspond to their actions.
At first glance, it’s about two people in the 1950s, people dissatisfied with life in the suburbs and the loss of their own individualism. But then you get the nuances and you discover the conflicts. This is not a nostalgic look at the ‘50s, and it’s not about people who were a product of that specific period. It’s simply about two people who weren’t destined to be together. screen

Titanic Leonardo di Caprio & Kate Winslett

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