PakistanTalk Forum

Lady Macbeth · 01-02-2010, 05:20 PM

Hey guys and girls....

I know, I know its a bit unfair to dedicate a thread to one movie, but since this is the members hub, anything within limits is allowed isnt it?

I dedicate this thread to AVATAR ....the movie I am dying to see and I am sure most of us are as well....

Lady Macbeth · 01-02-2010, 05:38 PM

In the epic action adventure fantasy "Avatar", James Cameron, the director of "Titanic", takes us to a spectacular new world beyond our imagination. On the distant moon Pandora, a reluctant hero embarks on a journey of redemption, discovery and unexpected love - as he leads a heroic battle to save a civilization.

The story’s protagonist, Jake Sully, is an ex-Marine who was wounded and paralyzed from the waist down in combat on Earth. In order to participate in the Avatar program, which will give him a healthy body, Jake agrees to travel to Pandora, a lush rainforest environment filled with incredible life forms – some beautiful, many terrifying. Pandora is also the home to the Na’vi, a humanoid race that lives at what we consider to be a primate level, but they are actually much more evolved than humans. Ten feet tall and blue skinned, the Na’vi live harmoniously within their unspoiled world. But as humans encroach on Pandora in search of valuable minerals, the Na’vi’s very existence is threatened – and their warrior abilities unleashed.

Jake has unwittingly been recruited to become part of this encroachment. Since humans are unable to breathe the air on Pandora, they have created genetically-bred human-Na’vi hybrids known as Avatars. The Avatars are living, breathing bodies in the real world, controlled by a human driver through a technology that links the driver’s mind to the Avatar body. On Pandora, through his Avatar body, Jake can be whole once again. Moreover, he falls in love with a young Na’vi woman, Neytiri, whose beauty is matched by her ferocity in battle.

As Jake slides deeper into becoming one of her clan, he finds himself caught between the military-industrial forces of Earth, and the Na’vi – forcing him to choose sides in an epic battle that will decide the fate of an entire world.

Conceived 14 years ago and over four years in the making, "Avatar" breaks new ground in delivering a fully immersive, emotional story and reinvents the moviegoing experience.

Lady Macbeth · 01-02-2010, 05:48 PM

Avatar is a 2009 American science fiction film written and directed by James Cameron, and starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang. The epic is set in the year 2154 on Pandora, a fictional Earth-like moon in a distant planetary system. Humans are engaged in mining Pandora's reserves of a precious mineral, while the Na'vi — the sapient and sentient race of humanoids indigenous to the moon — resist the colonists' expansion, which threatens the continued existence of the Na'vi and the Pandoran ecosystem. The film's title refers to the remotely controlled, genetically engineered human-Na'vi bodies used by the film's human characters to interact with the natives.
Avatar had been in development since 1994 by Cameron, who wrote an 80-page scriptment for the film. Filming was supposed to take place after the completion of Titanic, and the film would have been released in 1999, but according to Cameron, "technology needed to catch up" with his vision of the film. In early 2006, Cameron developed the script, the language, and the culture of Pandora.He has stated that if Avatar is successful, two sequels to the film are planned.
The film was released in traditional 2-D and 3-D formats, along with an IMAX 3D release in selected theaters. Avatar is officially budgeted at $237 million; other estimates put the cost at $280 – $310 million to produce and an estimated $150 million for marketing. The film is being touted as a breakthrough in terms of filmmaking technology, for its development of 3D viewing and stereoscopic filmmaking with cameras that were specially designed for the film's production.Opening to critical and commercial success, it grossed an estimated $27 million on its opening day and made $77,025,481 in the United States and Canada on its opening weekend. Worldwide, the film grossed an estimated $232,180,000 on its opening weekend, the ninth-largest opening-weekend gross of all time, and the largest for a non-franchise, non-sequel and original film.

Lady Macbeth · 01-02-2010, 06:14 PM

Humans

Sam Worthington as Corporal Jake Sully, a disabled Marine who becomes part of the Avatar Program. Cameron cast the Australian actor after searching the world for promising young actors, preferring relative unknowns to keep the budget down.
Worthington, who was living in his car at the time,auditioned twice early in development, and he has signed on for possible sequels.
Cameron felt that because Worthington had not done a major film, he was "game for anything", giving the character "a quality that is really real. He has that quality of being a guy you'd want to have a beer with, and he ultimately becomes a leader who transforms the world".

Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine, a botanist and head of the Avatar Program. She mentors Jake Sully, and was an advocate of peaceful relations with the Na'vi, setting up a school to teach them English. Weaver dyed her hair red for the part. The character was named "Shipley" at one point, a reference to the character she played in the Alien series of films. Weaver said that Augustine reminded her of Cameron, being "very driven and very idealistic".

Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy Chacón, a Marine fighter pilot assigned to support the Avatar Program. Cameron had wanted to work with Rodriguez since seeing her in Girlfight.

Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge, the corporate administrator for the mining operation and one of the film's primary antagonists.

Joel David Moore as Norm Spellman, a biologist who studies plant and nature life as part of the Avatar Program. He arrives on Pandora at the same time as Jake Sully, and assumes control of an avatar.

Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch, the ruthless head of SecFor, the mining operation's security detail, and another main antagonist. Lang had unsuccessfully auditioned for a role in Cameron's Aliens (1986); the director remembered Lang and cast him in Avatar. Michael Biehn, who was in Aliens, read the script and watched some of the 3D footage with Cameron, but was ultimately not cast in the role.

Dileep Rao as Dr. Max Patel, a scientist who works in the Avatar Program.

Matt Gerald as SecFor Corporal Lyle Wainfleet.

Na'vi

Zoë Saldaña as Neytiri, princess of the Omaticaya, the Na'vi clan central to the story, who is attracted to Jake because of his bravery. The character, like all the Na'vi, was created using performance capture, and is entirely computer generated. Saldaña has also signed on for potential sequels.

C. C. H. Pounder as Mo'at, the Omaticaya's spiritual leader, Neytiri's mother, and consort to clan leader Eytucan.

Laz Alonso as Tsu'Tey, heir to the chieftainship of the tribe, and Neytiri's betrothed, prior to the events of the film.

Wes Studi as Eytucan, the leader of the Omaticaya, the husband of Mo'at and Neytiri's father.

Peter Mensah as Akwey, leader of a plains clan of Na'vi.

Lady Macbeth · 01-02-2010, 06:26 PM

Inventing the plants of 'Avatar'

A plant physiologist from UC Riverside helped create the exotic flora seen in the movie. 'What botanist would not want to "discover" new plants and name them?' she says.

James Cameron's science-fiction blockbuster "Avatar" takes place in 2154 on the lush moon Pandora. To help make the set believable, Jodie Holt, chairwoman of the department of botany and plant sciences at UC Riverside, was approached to consult on the film's plant life, as well as how a botanist would study such flora.

Holt, a plant physiologist, talked about her involvement in the film and the "Pandorapedia," a detailed catalog of the moon's features, including its many plants.

How did you become involved in the film?

I was called by Nicole Pitesa, [producer] Jon Landau's assistant, in early 2007; she asked if I would be interested in advising an A-list actress in "Avatar" on how to be a credible botanist. The movie was in preproduction at that time. I later learned that Nicole had searched local universities for botany departments and found us at UC Riverside.

What type of advice did you lend them?

After being briefed on the plot and being shown early images of the plants on Pandora by Jon Landau, I met with Sigourney Weaver [who plays botanist Grace Augustine] and set designers to talk about how a field botanist would study and sample plants to learn about their physiology and biochemistry. We also talked about the idea of communication among plants, and between plants and the Na'vi, and how that might be explained. Subsequently, I worked with a set designer to ensure that his designs for the field and lab equipment were credible.

Can you give specific examples about the set?

I did not work on all the scientific sets and props by any means. What we talked about was the concept of plant communication, which is integral to the movie, and how this could be studied by Grace.

Since life on Pandora was intended to adhere to our known laws of physics and biology, it was not credible to me to suggest that the plants had any kind of nervous system. Instead, I suggested that communication among the plants could credibly be explained by signal transduction, an area of research that deals with how plants perceive a signal and respond to it. Since this process is still not well understood but is under active investigation, it made sense to use it as an explanation for Grace's more futuristic understanding of plants. Subsequently, the set designer and I exchanged many e-mails about how Grace might sample plants and study this process.

In the actual movie, which I've now seen four times, I studied the equipment and labs -- and everything looks just fine and quite credible. The only real sample one sees Grace take is with a syringe, which is a reasonable thing to do. As far as field equipment goes, we agreed that 150 years in the future the equipment would likely be much smaller and more efficient, hence the small packs the scientists carried.

Overall I thought the science in the movie was fantastic! However, several of my colleagues noted, as I did, that the fact that Grace smoked could be a problem in the lab. The tobacco mosaic virus is common on cigarette tobacco and can easily be transmitted from a smoker's hands to biological samples and contaminate them. I was never consulted about the smoking, as this was a part of Grace's character separate from the science. Only biologists in the audience who work with molecular samples would think of this, however.

Later, in the fall of 2008, Jon Landau called to ask if I would be interested in writing descriptions of the plants, including fabricating Latin names, to be included in the games and book that were planned. The result was a set of Pandorapedia entries, completed in early 2009.

What were some of the names in the Pandorapedia?

In mid-December, a book was published called "Avatar: An Activist Survival Guide." The plant descriptions I wrote are in Chapter 4. These include taxonomy (Latin names I made up using the correct rules of nomenclature), a description of each plant, and information about ecology and ethnobotany. Since some of the plants looked like Earth plants, while others were quite fantastic, and others resembled each other, I started by grouping them by somewhat similar appearance to develop a crude taxonomy.

For plants that resembled Earth plants, I gave them similar names, such as Pseudocycas altissima for a plant that looks like a tall Earth cycad. Others I named for their appearance, such as Obesus rotundus for the puffball tree.

This project was very challenging but also a lot of fun. What botanist would not want to "discover" new plants and name them herself?

I understand that some of these Pandorapedia entries are also contained in the games that were released. However, my husband and I have not yet achieved much proficiency at the video game, so we have not been able to explore Pandora and learn about the plants that way. Hopefully, we can get my young nephew to help us.

Did the film challenge you to think about what plants will look like in the future?

No, the movie is only about 150 years into the future, which is not a lot of time for major evolutionary advances. The real question I dealt with in working on both the movie and the Pandorapedia was how the environment on Pandora would have selected the many unusual, bizarre plants found there, as well as some that look very much like plants currently found on Earth.

I wrote an essay on this, which is also in the "Avatar Survival Guide." The information on the environment of Pandora -- including the atmosphere, soil, gravity, etc. -- was provided by James Cameron, and I had to piece it together to create a credible explanation for how this environment would have selected the many strange plants on Pandora with their unusual adaptations.

For example, the atmosphere is thicker than on Earth, with higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, as well as xenon and hydrogen sulfide. Gravity is weaker. And there is a strong magnetic field. Given the role of the environment in plant evolution, one would therefore expect to see gigantism, less of a gravity response (which makes stems grow up and roots grow down), and possibly a response to magnetic fields, which I named "magnetotropism."

Are there specific plants that you are most familiar with? Did this background aid the film in some way?

At UC Riverside, I study weedy and invasive plants. However, all my degrees are in botany and I have taught general botany for 12 years. In this class, I routinely challenge students to analyze plant morphology and anatomy to explain plant adaptations to the environment. These experiences teaching botany were incredibly useful to me in working on the movie.

Inventing the plants of 'Avatar' - latimes.com)

Interceptor · 01-02-2010, 06:36 PM

I have seen this on its premier day and must say it is very exciting CG movie, I sure recomend this. The only thing you need is to find the best cinema that shows it like IMAX defiantly be worth your while.