Another $48.5 million this weekend at the box office.....

Another $48.5 million this weekend at the box office.....

Domestic: $429,040,000 - 7th all time now

Worldwide: $1,331.1 billion - 2nd all time

Avatar now has the best 2nd, 3rd and 4th weekends. The 5th weekend should be a little tougher - Titanic had $30 million.

ROME -- While "Avatar" is drawing near unanimous praise worldwide, the Vatican is scathingly slamming James Cameron's 3D sci-fi epic as "sentimental hokum."Following the Italo "Avatar" red carpet preem on Saturday in the Auditorium Conciliazione, a stone's throw from St. Peters, official Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano gave it the thumbs down in a review which, among other things, faulted Cameron's storytelling as "bland."

"By concentrating on the creation of Pandora's fantasy world he tells the story without any deeper exploration," the Vatican paper said.

L'Osservatore also lamented that "there is plenty of stupefying, enchanting technology, but few genuine human emotions."

Meanwhile Vatican Radio, which goes out worldwide, has been blasting "Avatar" for "winking at the pseudo-doctrines that have made ecology the religion of the millennium," which may help explain all the animosity.

Vatican media in recent years have increasingly been commenting on pop culture, often to warn the flock against pics such as "The Da Vinci Code," which can be perceived as posing a potential threat to Roman Catholic underpinnings. However, last month L'Osservatore made a splash when it praised "The Simpsons" on its 20th anniversary, crediting the show with bringing cartoons to adult auds thanks to "realistic and intelligent writing."

"Avatar" will open in Italy Friday on 800 screens. Fox is releasing the blockbuster later in Italy than in other territories in order not to clash with local comedies that customarily rule the Italo holiday box office.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118013585.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

Edited January 11, 201015 yr by Sylph

This is now getting ridiculous.

Avatar now driving people into bouts of depression and contemplating suicide.

Edited January 11, 201015 yr by Adam

Meanwhile, Cameron is optioning The Last Train From Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back.

The Transformers are trampled. The Dark Knight is done for.

And within weeks, Avatar will torpedo James Cameron’s own Titanic.

Even better news for the film’s financiers? The Canadian writer-director sounds ready to dive back in for multiple sequels to his science-fiction adventure.

“There’s more to the Alpha Centauri system than just Pandora,” he says. “There are other moons that are boats for life. And there are stories that eventually spread out into other parts of the solar system.”

The suggestion? More fantastical worlds to explore and extraterrestrials to encounter. And while Avatar 2 doesn’t have a release date yet, Cameron insists he won’t be going on an extended hiatus like the decade-long one he took post-Titanic.

For 20th Century Fox, you can be sure a sequel can’t come quickly enough. Consider the math. After only its fourth weekend, the 3D spectacle — about a soldier (Sam Worthington) who travels to a distant moon and bonds with its indigenous blue-skinned humanoids — has become 2009’s highest-grossing release.

Globally, it has amassed $1.34 billion. And with it performing sensationally in foreign markets — notably China — it’s on track to exceed $2 billion, past Titanic’s record $1.84 billion.

In North America, it will overtake The Dark Knight’s $533 million by February. By March, it will challenge Titanic’s haul of $600 million. (It should be noted that when adjusted for inflation, Titanic’s North American total amounts to more than $900 million — a tally Avatar will probably find impossible to match.)

“It’s already one of the biggest successes in recent memory,” says Brandon Gray, president and publisher of online tracker Box Office Mojo.

“It’s much more impressive than Transformers because it had a much greater challenge … It was not a slam dunk. It was about blue people. It was science-fiction/fantasy, which is a troublesome genre when the movie isn’t a sequel. And it’s very tricky to launch a franchise without a literary property or comic book behind it.”

Moreover, having bested its Christmas-time competition — including the hit Sherlock Holmes and the flop Nine — Avatar is now “the only event in town,” Gray notes.

That momentum is certain to propel it to multiple Oscar nominations.

Although Cameron himself has doubted Avatar’s awards chances, it’s now one of the three obvious front-runners — alongside The Hurt Locker and Up in the Air.

Unlike those films, however, Avatar is a technologically groundbreaking but old-fashioned epic that has audiences flocking to theatres. Moreover, its pioneering 3D is drawing comparisons to the introduction of sound and colour in cinema. Oscar voters — who tend to snub science-fiction — may consider Cameron’s opus the exception.

That said, it’s doubtful any gold statue would have much impact — if any — on Avatar’s box office, Gray says.

“The Academy Awards are typically overrated for the effect it has on the box office. Avatar’s already playing to everyone.”

And studios are scrambling to imitate its 3D-enhanced success.

Still, Gray cautions Hollywood’s newfound faith in the format as a cure-all may be misplaced.

“If this was Up in the Air 3D or Nine 3D or A Single Man 3D, it wouldn’t be doing this type of business.”

http://www.torontosun.com/entertainment/movies/2010/01/11/12421151.html

<p><span style="font-size:19.5pt;"><font face="Verdana">Cameron's 3-D epic is so big it's showing up on bottom line of News Corp</font></span>

<span style="font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma">By Ryan Nakashima (CP) </font></b></span>

<span style="font-size:9pt; line-height:10pt"><font face="Verdana">LOS ANGELES — Blue-skinned aliens are helping Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. see green.

The runaway global success of James Cameron's 3-D spectacle, "Avatar" - his first feature film since the record-breaking "Titanic" in 1997 - has prompted analysts to lift earnings estimates for News Corp., the owner of movie studio 20th Century Fox.

It's fairly rare that a media conglomerate's bottom line is affected by a single movie, but with more than US$1.1 billion at box offices worldwide, partly boosted by higher 3-D ticket prices, "Avatar" has the potential to be the biggest film of all time.

"Avatar" is the story of the Na'vi, tall blue creatures who must contend with humans who intend to grab resources from the moon the Na'vi live on. It was shot with special 3-D cameras and layered with breakthrough computer graphics, and cost an estimated $400 million to make and market. In fact, before it came out some analysts feared the otherworldly budget could drag News Corp. down.

As a result, investors are now more focused on the fact that the movie didn't bomb than on how much profit it will make. News Corp.'s stock started climbing since positive reviews came out of sneak peak showings Dec. 10, and it's now up about 12 per cent since then.

What you hear is a sigh of relief, not the triumphant cry of the Toruk Makto, the name bestowed upon hero Jake Sully after he tames a huge flying dragon in "Avatar."

Although profits are accounted for over time, a write-off would have occurred quickly if the movie didn't wow audiences on its first weekend.

"It's more that results won't be impacted negatively as opposed to quantifying the upside right now," said analyst David Bank of RBC Capital Markets. "I think the success of the movie certainly is a catalyst for investors to get into the stock."

News Corp. relies more heavily than its peers on the studio business for profits. Its wide range of other assets, including its Fox broadcast TV network and The Wall Street Journal, are largely dependent on advertising dollars that took a hit in the recession, while its studio has been a solid performer in the downturn with such hits as "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" and "X-Men Origins: Wolverine."

But Fox won't be getting all of the box office proceeds from "Avatar," just as it doesn't from other movies, either. Fox shared some of the risks - and thus the profits - with investors, who bore an estimated 60 per cent of the approximately $250 million production budget for "Avatar." And theatre owners get about half of the ticket sales, even before subtracting Fox's colossal marketing spending of around $150 million.

Fox receives fees for distributing the movie to theatres, and factoring in all that, the studio has probably brought in a profit of more than $80 million already, estimates Cowen&Co. analyst Doug Creutz. To put that figure in perspective, News Corp.'s operating profit in the quarter through September was $1.04 billion.

The home video release is still to come, potentially bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars more in revenue.

"I have to keep pinching myself," said James Clayton, chief executive of London-based Ingenious Media Investments, which put investors' and its own money into the movie and will share in the bounty. "For one director to be responsible for the No. 1 and No. 2 highest-grossing movies of all time is quite something."

Clayton said investors expect to get their financial statement on "Avatar" in about six months.

Movie economics are murky, and Fox and Clayton declined to comment on the specifics of their deals. Factors affecting the ultimate bottom line include profit-sharing deals with the creative talent, including Lightstorm Entertainment, the production company owned by Cameron.

But, combined with the better-than-expected success of "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel," "Avatar" is expected to help News Corp.'s film division make $1.26 billion in operating profit in the fiscal year ending in June - about $160 million more than initially thought, according to Creutz.

That would mean the film division would have about a third of News Corp.'s operating profits for the full year. Generally it produces about one-fourth.

The ride isn't over, either.

"There's still a question of: How long is this thing going to go?" Creutz said.

He noted that "Avatar" has shown even better staying power in theatres than "Titanic," which went on to gross $1.8 billion worldwide, and is still the most successful film ever.

The outsized benefits, however, can be undone by studio missteps down the road.

It's difficult for movie executives to predict a home run, and for every movie that succeeds wildly, there are several that flop, including "Babylon A.D.," a widely panned sci-fi thriller starring Vin Diesel that Fox released last year.

The company still has to contend with the piracy of its movies, the threat of cheap rentals, the high cost of production and the decline of DVD sales. Those challenges are bigger than a whole race of 10-foot-tall Na'vi.

Precisely because hit movies are tough to foresee, Wall Street tends not to rely on them to evaluate media companies, and "Avatar" isn't likely to change that. Movie profits have also been declining industrywide as the parent companies have cut costs and reduced the number of movies released, making the studios a smaller part of their companies' future value.

Investors are now focused more on the companies' steady-earning cable TV channels whose fortunes are hitched partly to reliable and rising cable TV bills.

"Filmmaking remains a hit-or-miss business," Anthony DiClemente, an analyst with Barclays Capital, wrote in a research note.

In fact, the movie's success may have done more for theatre companies than for News Corp. itself. It served as a reminder that theatre chains such as Regal Entertainment Group and Cinemark Holdings Inc. remain relevant, despite the rise in home entertainment, as living rooms still cannot match the theatrical experience in 3-D viewing. Since "Avatar" opened, both companies' shares have risen more than 5 per cent.</font></span>

<span style="font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma">http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jbN5Tnj5wUkxr6e_GidAWp-iErlQ</font></b></span></p>

And yet, as Avatar progresses towards its three-hour climax, the viewer inevitably suffers from spectacle fatigue. The plot steals, too, become conspicuous. A bit of Minority Report here. Some Aliens there. And a tonne of Dances with Wolves over there. Worst of all, the sense that we are actually witnessing the future face of cinema — which seems to be a slightly crass, computer-generated salmagundi that celebrates technique over narrative originality at every juncture — is mildly depressing. Avatar, essentially, is a film we've seen before, boldly made to look like nothing we've seen before. It is truly the Star Wars of our age.

Times

This wonderful shell of beauty can't disguise Avatar's lack of, dare I say it, heart. In the past, Cameron could always mix big spectacle with big emotions. What's missing here is the lump-in-the-throat moment. The love story between Jake and Neytiri doesn't take off the way Jack and Rose's did in Titanic. I have nothing against 10ft blue women with yellow eyes and flat noses — honest — but Neytiri is this really dull, earnest, eco-chick warrior, for ever banging on about the wonderful ways of her people. Still, when all the hype and hullabaloo about Avatar calms down, we will be left with a film that's no masterpiece, but still well worth seeing.

Times

Edited January 12, 201015 yr by Sylph

How come you don't post all the good reviews?

I think I'm gonna skip this year's Oscar season. I can't fathom an Avatar Best Picture Win. No f*cking way.

How come you don't post all the good reviews?

because most of the good reviews break down to this.

What an amazing new way to use CGI. Very Impressed. Oh, and the plot sucked. lol.

How come you don't post all the good reviews?

I posted these two because they illustrated two things with which I'm in total agreement: the lack of any real emotion, it was all pure fabrication and cheap shots at people's "hearts" and two, when I read "we are actually witnessing the future face of cinema", it hit me like a ton of bricks and my jaw touched the floor. But I have to have faith in the industry — although I really shouldn't — that something imaginative, substantial and yes, traditional will still be made.

And also what Jack said.

because most of the good reviews break down to this.

What an amazing new way to use CGI. Very Impressed. Oh, and the plot sucked. lol.

+1

Let's see what The New Yorker says.

Science is good, but technology is bad. Community is great, but corporations are evil. “Avatar” gives off more than a whiff of nineteen-sixties counterculture, by way of environmentalism and current antiwar sentiment. “What have we got to offer them—lite beer and bluejeans?” Jake asks. Well, actually, life among the Na’vi, for all its physical glories, looks a little dull. True, there’s no reality TV or fast food, but there’s no tennis or Raymond Chandler or Ella Fitzgerald, either. But let’s not dwell on the sentimentality of Cameron’s notion of aboriginal life—the movie is striking enough to make it irrelevant. Nor is there much point in lingering over the irony that this anti-technology message is delivered by an example of advanced technology that cost nearly two hundred and fifty million dollars to produce; or that this anti-imperialist spectacle will invade every available theatre in the world. Relish, instead, the pterodactyls, or the flying velociraptors, or whatever they are—large beaky beasts, green with yellow reptile patches—and the bright-red flying monster with jaws that could snap an oak. Jake, like a Western hero breaking a wild horse, has to tame one of these creatures in order to prove his manhood, and the scene has a barbaric splendor. The movie’s story may be a little trite, and the big battle at the end between ugly mechanical force and the gorgeous natural world goes on forever, but what a show Cameron puts on! The continuity of dynamized space that he has achieved with 3-D gloriously supports his trippy belief that all living things are one. Zahelu!

Let's see what The New Yorker says.

The New Yorker is love!