In between rounds of patting themselves on the back, becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time, getting sucked off by critics, and driving nerds to suicide, James Cameron and the producers of Avatar apparently found time to whine that none of their actors got nominated for Academy Awards.

“People confuse what we have done with animation,” director James Cameron said at the recent Producers Guild Awards.  “It’s nothing like animation. The creator here is the actor, not the unseen hand of an animator.”

The Oscars snub is “a disappointment,” said producer Jon Landau, “but I blame ourselves for not educating people in the right way.” Landau explained that they needed to make clear that the system they used represents a new way to use “motion capture” photography, or as Landau puts it, “emotion capture.” [*facepaw*] “We made a commitment to our actors that what they would see up on the screen were their performances,” Landau said, “not somebody else’s interpretation of what their performance might be.”

The issue of what makes an actor an actor first surfaced when Andy Serkis did Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings,” but skepticism remains over whether it is the same as live-action acting.
“What an actor is doing when acting is not just looking like something but expressing something going on inside,” says James Lipton, host of Bravo’s “Inside the Actor’s Studio.” “I’m not sure that motion capture, while it captures the flicker of an eyebrow, the twist of a mouth, a gesture of a hand, equally captures emotion.”

Film professor Richard Brown [hehe, "dick brown"] doesn’t agree. “This is very much the first film of the 21st century,” Brown said. “What we need to do is expand our concept of what the word actor means. It’s unfair to take performances as good as these and not designate them as actors.” [THR]

I’d love to weigh in on this, but seeing as how I just awarded my Japanese sex robot a coffee mug that says “World’s Greatest Sexbot,” I might be a little biased.  I also think a guy playing an American who still has an Australian accent maybe doesn’t deserve consideration for acting’s highest honor.  But what do I know, I’m just a guy who loves sexbots.

Check it out, everyone, it’s the trailer for The Losers.  No no, please, save the roses, I’m only the messenger. It’s about the members of an elite special forces unit going on a suicide mission. It’s kind of like The A-Team meets The Expendables meets other things that are the same.  It stars Chris Evans, and if it’s good it would be his first.  Godspeed, buddy.

(I love these retards)

As you already know, Avatar took home the best picture drama award at the Golden Globes last night.  Which makes this “Abridged Avatar Script” so much more timely.  Excerpt:

STEPHEN LANG
I’m the film’s bullheaded tough guy.  Welcome to Pandora.  There’s not enough oxygen here to breathe, though it’s worth mentioning there is enough oxygen for totally awesome explosions.

SAM WORTHINGTON
Is the gravity at least the same?

STEPHEN LANG
Actually, we’ll be constantly mentioning the lower gravity here, but it will somehow have absolutely no effect on anyone.

[...]

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
Oh f-ck, I think I wandered into a Joel Schumacher movie.  Someone, get me out of here!

BLUE ZOE SALDANA
(subtitled) You should not be here.  Jesus, am I subtitled with the Papyrus font?  F-ck it, I’ll speak English.

BLUE SAM WORTHINGTON
Take me to your tribe leader.  I need to become a member of your people.

BLUE ZOE SALDANA
Absolutely not.
(pause)
Alright.

Yeah, it’s good stuff.  Check out the rest of it over at The Editing Room (thanks for the tip, JordeeVee).  Here’s something else you may not know about Avatar; Zoe Saldana is actually 12 feet tall.

James Cameron is totally daydreaming about some blue titties right now.  [source]

Good news, folks, I’ve got two new Avatar clips to share.  In this one, Zoe Saldana’s character teaches Sam Worthington (Jake Sully) the proper way to break your pterodactyl thingie so you can ride it around while you chuck spears at space helicopters.  Do it wrong and they’ll just poop on the carpet and chew up all your feather necklaces, and no one wants that.  I like to imagine that when they were shooting this scene, at first Zoe Saldana just did her lines in her regular voice.

JAMES CAMERON: “Whoa, whoa, whoa, what the f-ck are you doing?

ZOE SALDANA: “Huh?  What?  Did I flub a line?”

JAMES CAMERON: “No, I mean you’re playing a space alien from a planet light years away, and yet you’re talking like a Valley girl down at the mall.  What are you, a f-cking retard?  Everyone knows aliens don’t sound like that.”

ZOE SALDANA: “My bad.  Should I try it in a dracula voice?”

JAMES CAMERON: “Duh.”

The other new clip is over at MSN, and in that one Giovanni Ribisi tells Sigourney Weaver about unobtanium.  “Unobtanium?”  “That’s right.  It’s the most expensive substance in the galaxy, because the only way to mine it is with a doohickey.”

After the tranny picture from earlier I can see how a person might’ve read this headline and thought I meant testicles, but I was actually just trying to combine the words “CGI” and “eyeballs.”  Haha, good story, Vince.  Anyway, this is the new poster for James Cameron’s Avatar, featuring Zoe Saldana and her CGI-embiggened eyeballs as Neytiri, a member of the Na’vi race of blue aliens.  See, the blue aliens catch the red aliens invading their turf, so they’re all like, “Hey, what do ju putos theenk you’re doin, ése?  Thees ees our planet, homes,” and then they have a big dance/knife fight.  I mean, I think that’s what happens.  I don’t really know, I didn’t go to Comic Con.  

Avatar opens December 18th and features a mix of 3D live-action and CGI that’s either “universe shattering” or “meh, it’s okay I guess” depending on whom you ask.

[via FilmSchoolRejects]