{"id":7879,"date":"2010-10-29T12:00:41","date_gmt":"2010-10-29T19:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/?p=7879"},"modified":"2016-06-30T08:46:37","modified_gmt":"2016-06-30T15:46:37","slug":"roundtable-james-cameron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/roundtable-james-cameron\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Roundtable: What Should I Say to James Cameron?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Tuesday, I’ll be attending the Blu-Con convention<\/a> in Los Angeles to moderate a discussion panel on Blu-ray interactivity. James Cameron will be the keynote speaker at the event. Let me be clear: James Cameron will not<\/strong> be on my panel. There is very little chance that I will speak to him, and basically no chance at all<\/em> that I would use any of your suggestions if I did. But, just for fun, what would you have me say to him? <\/p>\n

<\/h6>\n

Bonus points if your suggestions are horribly rude. To give you some ammunition, I was not a big fan of ‘Avatar<\/a>‘ at all. <\/p>\n

For my part, if I have the opportunity, I think I’ll beg Cameron not to recolor any more of his movies teal and orange<\/a> the way he did to ‘Aliens’ on Blu-ray.<\/p>\n

This week, we’re also joined by Aaron Peck, who many of you will recognize as one of our site’s Blu-ray reviewers. <\/p>\n

Dick Ward<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

“Mr. Cameron, my name is Joshua Zyber, and I’m here on behalf of, well, everyone frankly. I, or rather we, would like you to stop. We note that you haven’t directed a truly great movie since 1989, and you haven’t been involved in anything watchable since ‘Titanic.’ No, documentaries don’t count. You’re drowning in a metaphorical pool of undeserved credibility and could easily drown in a literal pool of your own money. You’ve done everything you can do, and it’s only going to go downhill from here. It’s time to give back to the people you’ve taken so much from. It’s time to go out like a hero, Jimmy. It’s time to stop. Just stop. We’re asking nicely. Please, for the good of cinema, just stop.”<\/em><\/p>\n

I went through a few iterations, but settled thusly. For best effect, you should tackle him to the ground* as he’s on his way out of the men’s room to get him scared, so you can get straight to the man instead of having to talk through the air of smugness. <\/p>\n

* Dick Ward does not endorse the actual tackling of James Cameron and is not responsible for the consequences of any such action.<\/p>\n

Drew Taylor<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Let us first ponder for a moment our friendly neighborhood Zyber. He’s sitting there, at this Blu-ray conference, taking in fascinating panels like “Cute Sound Effects That Accompany Pop Up Menus \u2013 Love Them or Leave Them?” and “Some Movies Deserve To Look Sort of Crummy.” Then the big moment comes: a speech given by James Cameron who will, in the coming years, no doubt be responsible for scrubbing all of his earlier features clean and releasing them on Blu-ray (since, as the recent announcement of ‘Avatar 2’ & ‘3’ confirm, the dude really, really loves money). Josh raises his hand, revealing digits bejeweled in regal gems, and asks a question \u2013 a question supplied by one of us. <\/p>\n

Because I don’t really have anything pressing that the man can answer (besides: “Will Sigourney Weaver really be coming back to ‘Avatar’ via the tree?”<\/em>), and since Cameron’s recent comments about ‘Piranha 3D’ struck me as unnecessarily dickish, I guess I’d lob something fairly innocuous in his direction. So my question (through Josh) would have to be: “Did you find Nimrod Antal and Robert Rodriguez’s ‘Predators’ to be a flattering homage to what you attempted to do with ‘Aliens’? Or, like the rest of the country, did you simply skip it?”<\/em> <\/p>\n

Aaron Peck<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Mr. Cameron, since we’re going to get (for some unexplained reason) a reissue of ‘Titanic’ in 3-D that we never asked for, I want to know exactly how big Kate Winslet’s boobs are going to appear. Are they going to jut forth from the screen with such stunning 3-D clarity that I’ll find myself speechless? Or are they going to look weird and oblong due to a retro-fitting of the 3-D technology? I couldn’t care less about what the boat is going to look like as people fall from it when it sinks. Are the boobs going to get a fair shake?<\/p>\n

Speaking of 3-D, is it possible that we just get re-releases of all of your movies in the format? When ‘Avatar 2’ comes out and breaks all the records you set with ‘Avatar’, it will be the perfect time to sneak in a couple of your old 3-D features to piggy-back on the ‘Avatar 2’ sequel’s success. ‘True Lies’ in 3-D \u2013 now that would be a hoot!<\/p>\n

One last question, Mr. Cameron: How does it feel to have an ex-wife who makes better movies than you do?<\/p>\n

Adam Tyner (DVDTalk<\/a>)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

It didn’t take long to get to the point where I hear people groan whenever the voiceover booms “Coming to theaters in 3-D”<\/em> attached to a movie trailer. Comic-Con audiences repeatedly erupted in applause whenever a director mentioned that his next flick would be in 2-D only. Some of this I’m sure is because of lousy 2-D to 3-D conversions, and some of it may just be the ubiquity. Do you think it could just be a matter of another ‘Avatar’-like success for audiences to fully embrace 3-D once again, or is the damage that’s been done irreparable? Should 3-D be used sparingly so that each release is viewed as a sort of “event,” or should it be an option in a filmmaker’s toolkit like any other?<\/p>\n

Mike Attebery<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

You know, after I spent the better part of a weekend last spring preparing interview questions for a confirmed Q&A with Mr. Cameron that was ultimately scrapped at the very last minute without any apology or explanation, I kind of lost interest in picking the man’s brain. For the sake of the Roundtable, here are three questions: <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Before you spend the next five years plugging away on those ‘Avatar’ sequels, could you just take six months and give us some Blu-rays for ‘True Lies’ and ‘Titanic”<\/li>\n
  2. Any chance the idea for ‘Avatar’ was something you ripped off from Roger Corman at a brainstorming session in the early ’80s?<\/li>\n
  3. Seriously, why did you cancel our interview?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    All right, now it’s your turn. Give it your worst!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This Tuesday, I’ll be attending the Blu-Con convention in Los Angeles to moderate a discussion panel on Blu-ray interactivity. James Cameron will be the keynote speaker at the event. Let me be clear: James Cameron will not be on my panel. There is very little chance that I will speak to him, and basically no…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":7877,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[156,1613,1675,277,1584,1585,551],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7879"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7879"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36482,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7879\/revisions\/36482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}