UPDATED: James Cameron's Avatar - Some footage has been seen

TIME Magazine's Josh Quittner saw brand new footage from James Cameron's highly-anticipated Avatar, which 20th Century Fox plans to release on 18th December. Here are some snippets from the article:

More than a thousand people have worked on it, at a cost in excess of $300 million, and it represents digital filmmaking's bleeding edge. Cameron wrote the treatment for it in 1995 as a way to push his digital-production company to its limits. The movie pioneers two unrelated technologies--e-motion capture, which uses images from tiny cameras rigged to actors' heads to replicate their expressions, and digital 3-D.

The film is set in the future, and most of the action takes place on a mythical planet, Pandora. The actors work in an empty studio; Pandora's lush jungle-aquatic environment is computer-generated in New Zealand by Jackson's special-effects company, Weta Digital, and added later.

I couldn't tell what was real and what was animated--even knowing that the 9-ft.-tall blue, dappled dude couldn't possibly be real. The scenes were so startling and absorbing that the following morning, I had the peculiar sensation of wanting to return there, as if Pandora were real.

Cameron wasn't surprised. One theory, he says, is that 3-D viewing "is so close to a real experience that it actually triggers memory creation in a way that 2-D viewing doesn't." His own theory is that stereoscopic viewing uses more neurons. That's possible. After watching all that 3-D, I was a bit wiped out. I was also totally entertained.

The sci-fi action-adventure stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Peter Mensah, Laz Alonso, Wes Studi, Stephen Lang and Matt Gerald.

UPDATE: Thanks to Pam and AMZ for passing along this info - This morning, the blogosphere was rightfully up in arms over the reported cost of James Cameron's 3-D live-action epic, Avatar, which Time said was north of $300 million. It turns out, the movie's not nearly as expensive: it's currently budgeted at more than $200 million, which puts it in relatively the same ballpark as Cameron's last major film, Titanic, which luckily made all of its money back thanks to being the highest-grossing film of all time. - Business Insider

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Laz Alonso talks about making Avatar - 197 cameras!

Laz Alonso plays Tsu'Tey. He spoke to Blackarazzi about his time working on James Cameron's Avatar. He talks about the liberating feeling of shooting scenes in front of 197 cameras simultaneously, and reveals that he was still filming as of the date of the interview. He also discusses his own background, and offers his advice to those who wish to pursue their dreams in Hollywood.

Thanks to Pam for passing me this.

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