Like you'd expect, the Na'vi mate by joining those ultra-magical weaves of theirs together. The extended scene was hinted at both by Cameron and actress Zoe Saldana, and Cameron implied that the longer cut might well end up in the special-edition DVD (and, assumedly, Blu-Ray) release. So, you know, get ready for that. [Wired via Twitter]

The deal with Starz that gives Netflix (and us) streaming access to newer movies apparently arched a lot of eyebrows, and even Netflix admitted it's gonna have to start getting permission directly for studios—probably paying more for the movies. It's also gotta fight the entrenched window system, the strange path a movie follows from theatrical release to DVD to HBO to cable, which is how movie studios continue to pull profits out of a movie long after it leaves the big screen.

BusinessWeek makes it clear it's not gonna be easy. But that just means I'll be watching fewer movies. [BW]

Even after arriving 40 minutes early and waiting in line, the only undefended territory left was right up in front. You may say you'd have stormed out and demanded a refund, but due to work and parenthood, I get a chance to see about three movies per year in the theater, and those have to be slated well in advance. If I didn't see Avatar at that time and place, I'd have had to wait for it to show up on Blu-ray—or at least wait till after CES. And hey, at least the seats reclined way back, to avoid the stiff neck.

I have endured movies in the front row before, and yes, it's annoying. You can't take it all in, you have to look around. But when you add 3D glasses into the mix, it's not just "annoying." It's "cerebrally disruptive." Any shift of your eyes has to reorient your brain, and since you're constantly shifting your eyes, you get a series of fleeting illusions combined with a lot of image jolts and jerks. Taking off my 3D glasses, I realized that the typical crappy front-row experience would have been peaceful and easy by comparison. Get this straight: Front row for 3D is 10X worse than front row for other movies.

There was another problem. I was wearing 3D glasses on top of my own glasses, which I need to see. I am not the only person in the world who chooses to wear eyeglasses instead of getting contacts or Lasik surgery. You'd think the 3D industry would plan for this sizable segment of the population. But the light playing between my glasses and the Dolby 3D glasses created weird holograms, floating text and images. I thought at first it was Cameron pulling a JJ Abrams and throwing a bunch of lens flare streaks into the mix, but no, if I adjusted the relative position of the two glasses, they images would move or disappear, at least momentarily. It was reflections of the movie projection bouncing off of my glasses and back onto the inside of the 3D glasses.

An LA Times story mentioned that Dolby 3D glasses were particularly ill-suited for people who are already wearing eyeglasses—hopefully other 3D providers are smarter when it comes to their four-eyed little friends.

As you can tell, I was encumbered with a lot to worry about besides the film, for which I had paid $15. I managed to sit through it all, and am glad I did, for the sake of having seen Avatar. It was great, and what I got was worth, say, $10 of the money I spent, a testament to Cameron's abilities as a filmmaker, no doubt.

So I don't blame Jim for deliberately making me suffer. All the reports from people who got good seats—including our own Mark Wilson—say that the experience is the best use of 3D ever, and I admire Cameron for pushing the limits. (And also for releasing a 2D version at the same time.) I will say that, like good music producers who listen to a near-final mix from the crappiest boombox they can find, Cameron should be aware of how miserable the 3D experience can be. But he's a busy man, and probably didn't get a chance to sit through two-and-a-half hours of blue people, from the shittiest seat in the theater.

The theater management, a financially challenged group if there ever was one, are probably most to blame. They need to sell as many tickets as possible, and they're not about to tape off the front section. But they should, and there's a precedent for this. To get IMAX certification, theaters rip out some of their seats, reducing the capacity but enhancing the experience. Even though people have criticized IMAX certification as BS marketing, they got results. (I recall something similar a few years back with George Lucas, who used his influence to make sure only the best theaters could show his movies via digital projection.) You would think that Cameron, Fox and Dolby could combined their might to ensure theater-goers a uniformly baseline enjoyable experience—especially in light of the more strenuous technical and physical requirements of watching a film in 3D. Alas, they simply couldn't.

Or didn't. When your goal is to rake in over $200 million in two weeks, you can't be bothered with little things like the asshole who got stuck sitting in the front row.

Yeah, I said it, and you're thinking it. I'm to blame for not marching out, voting with my wallet so to speak. This is America, and corporations have the right to con us, because we have the right to complain. If all the theater, and Fox, and Cameron, and Dolby, and Hollywood as a whole wanted out of me was $15, they got it. (Don't spend it all in one place.) I don't complain in restaurants, I just don't go back. If something cheap breaks on me, I may not call the 800 number on the back of the box, but I sure as hell don't buy another—or anything from that brand. Next time there's an event movie like this, I may skip 3D altogether. Me and every other poor bastard with a pair of eyeglasses and somewhere to be other than the theater two hours before showtime.

Do all you can to guarantee me an experience, and I will gladly pay for it. But leave me to understand that there's only a 50/50 chance I'm even going to like it, and you can play at-home proctologist with those 3D glasses, cuz I won't be needing them.

Update: Apparently at least one theater chain is willing to take a fiscal hit in order to serve a better experience to moviegoers. A Giz reader named Garth just sent me this hopeful note:

I went to go see Avatar IMAX 3D on Saturday at the Regal 16 in Escondido, CA and they had blocked off the first three rows in front and the three seats on the extreme left and right of the front section with specially made seat covers that read "Not for 3D viewing."

Good for Regal! And thanks again, Garth.

Note: The top image is an artistic rendering intended to represent the author's general frustration, not of the specific technical problems he experienced during the viewing, which can't be reproduced in a still shot.

I've actually seen Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (it's available at Netflix) and loved it, and John Herrman branded them "film heroes," so it's interesting to see Wired's bio of the organization. They're not just making weird parodies in their basement; these are relatively successful little movies that sometimes play in theaters and can often be found in rental stores.

And though the majority of its films are sci-fi or horror, the company has lately expanded into biblical-disaster movies (The Apocalypse), teen-sex romps (18-Year-Old Virgin), and even family fare (Sunday School Musical). It's a new kind of B movie: low risk and made to order. "I said, ‘Make me a T&A movie in 3-D,' and they did that with Sex Pot," says Keith Leopard, director of content acquisitions at Blockbuster. "They're constantly delivering good little filler products for our customers."

And, I mean, in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, a giant shark eats a plane out of the sky. How much better can it get? [Wired]

The New York Times has an excellent piece on the topic that I highly encourage you to read. It looks like a company named RealD has one up on the competition, as they've supplied the simple, polarized glasses distributed for Avatar (which cost about 65 cents each, btw).

Competitors include Masterimage, who uses a similar polarization technology, Dolby, who uses an RBG technology, XpanD, who uses a LCD-based shutter. The catch? Projectors can only be configured to support one of these systems at a time.

It's hard to imagine either Dolby or XpanD succeeding in the market—be they better or not—as both make glasses that are reusable but extremely cost prohibitive, running $28 and $50, respectively. Then again, until I saw Avatar, I didn't imagine 3D succeeding in the first place. [NYT]

Those two updates were coded in response to user requests for actually using RunPee's break moments during, you know, the actual movie. Pick a movie, set an alert and time buffer (1-5 minutes before the break), and RunPee will buzz you with a notification that, say, the scientist is explaining, so now's your chance for relief. With the offline storage, RunPee also becomes a much more useful iPod touch app. Of course, there's a joke in there somewhere about an app that vibrates when you really need a bathroom break, but we're far too mature to make it.

The RunPee.com web site has also added support for more languages, and a non-Flash mobile site for scoping out key non-action points right before a flick. Finally, there's a $1 Android app in the market, and other mobile apps are expected to come along soon. RunPee's iPhone app costs 99 cents, requires an iPhone or iPod touch.

Torrentfreak has named Star Trek as the most torrented movie of the year with nearly 11 million downloads - four million more than last year's "winner," The Dark Knight. Of those 11 million, Paramount claims to have the IP addresses of just over 5 million of them, and they want the FCC to do something about it... Namely, crack down on torrent sites and those who support them, including search engines leading people to them and companies whose advertisements may appear on tracking sites, such as TiVo and Ann Taylor.

With the source of this summer's X-Men Origins: Wolverine bootleg arrested last week and Fox preparing to press charges, it'll be interesting to see whether 2010 sees the studios declare outright war on torrenting and bootlegs, and if so, what form that war will take: Legal action or, in the case of Avatar, movies that demand to be seen in theaters.

[Via TrekMovie]

"If I did Titanic today, I'd do it very differently. There wouldn't be a 750-foot-long set. There would be small set pieces integrated into a large CGI set. I wouldn't have to wait seven days to get the perfect sunset for the kiss scene. We'd shoot it in front of a green screen, and we'd choose our sunset."

At this point in his career, Cameron has pretty much of proven himself as a technician beyond all reasonable criticism. But I must admit, a little part of me dies when reading that, today, the world's most powerful filmmaker—one who operates with complete freedom under near-unlimited budgets—would sooner digitize one of nature's daily miracles than capture the real thing. [Slate]

What? Woody over Buzz? But — Buzz has wings and a voice box! Bad choice, Andy. But no doubt this isn't the final word on everyone's favorite playthings. Toy Story 3 comes out June 18 2010.

[via Coming Soon]

$73m of that was from the US and Canada, and the remaining $159.2m from around the world was bulked up mostly by Russia, France and the UK. In case you're wondering, it didn't break the previous record held by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, nor Modern Warfare 2's $310m opening weekend sales. Still—that's a major breakthrough for a 3D film, with Avatar limited by compatible cinemas and inflated ticket prices. [Reuters]

According to the countless tweets on the subject, what may be the second most hated font of all time (because nothing is worse than Comic Sans) spends some considerable time up on the screen. According to this post, it's been the font used in all of the promotional materials up until this point.

So, is it actually Papyrus, or a custom-built font that just happens to look exactly like Papyrus? Here's a sample:

You decide. [Twitter, Thanks Michael]

Sometimes the journeys we take through this life begin and end in the most unexpected ways. My encounter with Welles in the last days of his life centered on a common interest: Sony's new one-piece camcorder, the Betacam. It had just come to market and Welles, always the genius filmmaker, had big ideas for what he could do with one. With Welles there were no limits. "You can't do that" wasn't in his vocabulary. This was a short, but very passionate story.

At the time I was running Television Matrix, a small video production facility in the Sunset-Gower Studios in Hollywood. I had been in California only a short time, having moved from Miami the previous summer. I had started in video production in 1975 and had been shooting mostly news for the networks throughout Latin America. Business was good because the networks were switching from film to tape in this period and they were short of video crews. In late 1982, I purchased something totally new—one of the first Sony Betacams delivered in the United States.

Beta Goes To Hollywood

One of our clients in Miami had been Entertainment Tonight. During a lull in a location shoot with Robin Leach, then an ET correspondent, I'd shown him the new Betacam. Leach had been offered a chance to do his own television show, but could find no one in the mid-1980s who could bring in a one-hour episode for his very low budget of $100,000. The Betacam, Leach thought, might be the answer.

"Could this work?" he asked me at the time. "Maybe," I responded. Only the Sony Betacam camcorder—the first one-piece camera and recorder ever made—and a standalone player existed. To edit, one would need to connect the player to another format to finish the work. That would mean integration with a one-inch Type C format system.

Leach made me an offer. If I could figure out how to make all the technology work, he would move me and my crews to LA to do the production on his new reality show. That motivated me to call Charles Felder, then the president of the tiny Sony Broadcast office in New York. My timing couldn't have been better. It turns out that Sony had the same thoughts about how to extend the Betacam and I had brought them the right project at the right moment. In a flash, we made a deal. In exchange for a small financial investment on my part, Sony would build an experimental facility in LA. They would make it a "first" that they'd advertise and show to others in Hollywood.

The Hottest Video Editing Suite in Town

The prospects were exciting for everyone. An elated Robin Leach began to plan for the new show, and I, along with several freelance crew members that I had worked with, moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 1984. One of the reasons we picked the Sunset-Gower lot (the old Columbia Pictures Studios) was it housed the broadcast center for the 1984 Olympics in LA that summer. When the Olympics ended, the networks would have a huge fire sale of their used broadcast equipment on the same lot. I had targeted the pieces we needed in advance, bought the gear, and moved it to our new edit bay days after the games ended.

We were lucky enough to hire Jim Fancher, now chief science officer at Technicolor in Hollywood, to build the facility. He was far more than a brilliant engineer. As a hands-on "can do" guy, he was also a natural-born negotiator who could coordinate the different technical approaches of companies whose gear would not work together. I will always picture Jim lying on his back under a rack of gear talking with tech support at some company about why their product wouldn't work.

Somehow, thanks to Jim, it all came together on time and on budget. By fall, we were ready. The show, now called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, went on the air. To be honest, I thought it was dumb idea that would last for one season if we were lucky. All I really cared about was that we had moved to Los Angeles and that Leach had paid for everything. I was ready for whatever came next. I can honestly say it was one of the great shocks of my life when the show became a major hit. I was totally unready for it.

We had built the first interformat edit bay in the nation (Betacam to one-inch), and Lifestyles was the first major magazine show to be shot using the new format. We had made history. The cost of television production had come down—way down. At least by half. Word spread fast and we were running facility tours in no time. Sony even hired Milton Berle to do a two-page ad for the facility and the technology concept behind it.

Enter Orson

A freelance editor for our show, Paul Hunt, also did some sound work for the legendary actor/director/producer/genius Orson Welles. He told Welles about our Betacam facility, now running almost around the clock, and from that moment on the great man's insatiable curiosity about every new sound and imaging technology took over. Welles wanted to meet me, and thus came a lunch invitation many film buffs would have died for.

To be honest, I knew very little about Welles. I had majored in television and radio at the University of South Carolina in the 1960s and it was hard to escape the many contributions Welles made to the broadcast and film industries. From audio special effects to remarkable moving dolly shots, Welles was a genius of the first order. But outside of having seen Citizen Kane, I didn't know the details of his career nor did I pretend to.

Our first lunch at Welles' favorite haunt, Ma Maison, was a roaring success. For reasons I still don't fully understand, we hit it off. Welles was curious about all things video, especially the Betacam, a device he envisioned to be an Arriflex camera that didn't need film. As our first meeting continued, Welles' small dog, who was seated at the table next to me, kept nipping at my leg. It was annoying, but I didn't dare take a swat at Orson Welles' beloved dog!

That lunch led to many others throughout 1985. In the earlier days of our relationship, he tested me in strange ways. One night, after midnight, Orson (he insisted that everyone call him Orson) called to ask for help in solving a sound problem he claimed to be having. He was recording and editing some narration on his Nagra tape recorder in his bedroom in the hills above Hollywood Blvd.

"Frank, after I do a splice with a razor blade, I get a bump in the sound when I play back the tape. What should I do?" he asked. This was a very strange question from the man who had practically invented modern sound recording. He had scared the nation with War of the Worlds and was asking me such a basic question about audio editing. Though half asleep, I knew he had to know the answer and instantly recognized it as some sort of test.

"Orson, your razor blade is magnetized. Get another one," I answered. "Oh, OK," he responded, apologizing for waking me and then promptly said goodbye. I went back to sleep and never heard of the issue again.

"Call Sony. Make It Work!"

As he learned more about video camcorders and nonlinear editing, Orson became determined to do a video project of his own. We visited New England Digital for a demo of nonlinear sound editing on the Synclavier. As for video, Orson wasn't content with just renting a Montage, one of the first non-linear video editors. He wanted his own, and he wanted it to sit next to his flatbed film editor at home.

As the talk turned to money (it always did in Orson's case), I offered to contribute video facilities and help him raise money for a one-man show to be called Orson Welles Solo. The production would be a retrospective of Orson's favorite theatrical material along with a big dose of magic—both new tricks and archival footage from Orson's glory days as a working magician. Our facility was already booked around the clock, but it didn't stop me from promising Orson anything he wanted.

Through a long and convoluted series of events (and with the help of the late Paul Rothchild, producer of The Doors, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Janis Joplin), the money was raised and the production was set to begin. Now Orson focused on how he'd use the two Betacams we'd secured to shoot the show.

Just as he had accepted no conventional technical limitations when he made Citizen Kane in 1940, Orson approached video in the same unrelenting way. In 1985, Betacams had Saticon tubes—not CCD sensors—and their ability to sync to one another via time code was, to put it mildly, a bit crude. Orson didn't care. He demanded that the handheld Betacams float around the set wirelessly and always be in perfect sync. He also directed that we shoot directly into bright lights and he didn't want to hear about any problems with lag.

"Call Sony and tell them to make it work," Orson demanded, slamming his fist on a table at one point. "Don't ever tell me 'No.'" I called Sony, and Sony responded by sending two expert engineers to help Orson push the video envelope on the project.

The day before the shoot was to begin in November, 1985, the Betacams were tweaked to the max. The jury-rigs—and there were a lot of them—were tested and re-tested. Every engineer and crew member that was to be in Orson's field of view was told that the words "you can't do that" were to be stricken from their vocabulary. With this project, I demanded, we will find a way to do any and everything Orson wants to do. All the old excuses about the limits of video will be left at the front door.

On the Evening Before the Big Shoot

As technical preparations for the shoot continued, Orson taped an appearance in the late afternoon on Merv Griffin's syndicated talk show. Normally, Orson disdained conversations about his past. He'd always say he wanted to talk about the future, not "go down memory lane." But, uncharacteristically, he did go down memory lane that afternoon with his old friend, Merv. Orson charmed the audience, both with stories and card tricks.

After the show, Orson had dinner at Ma Maison and then headed home to finish writing the script for our first taping, now only hours away. Our first day of shooting was to be in auditorium on the UCLA campus. Orson would call when he was ready for us to go to the location.

The next morning, as I awaited those instructions from Orson in my office, the phone rang. It was Paul Rothchild.

"Did you hear the news," he asked gently.

"What news?" I replied.

"Orson Welles is dead."

Orson had died of a heart attack during the night. He was found slumped over his typewriter, working on our script. Minutes later, a Welles assistant called and said bluntly: "Frank, the project has been canceled."

Welles' Legacy and Love of New Technology

I drove home—numb and unable to function. After the initial days of despair, my incredible year working with Orson Welles took on a new dimension. A new journey would begin. Those same Betacams were used to record Orson's memorial service a few weeks later and that event, in turn, introduced me to the remarkable men and women who had been associated with Welles from his days with the Mercury Theater. The film critic Leonard Maltin and I did a documentary with these fascinating people, and I later produced, with Mercury Theater actor Richard Wilson, a retrospective of Orson's best radio work from his personal tape collection.

A couple of weeks after Orson's death, his cinematographer, the late Gary Graver, came by my office for a visit. Gary said something I will never forget.

"I've been driving around for two weeks with Orson's ashes in the truck of my car," he said, matter of factly.

"What?" I responded, quickly envisioning a fender bender with the Hollywood legend's ashes being scattered across an LA freeway.

"I'm not going to take them into my house," Graver said, almost fearing the prospect. "What should I do?"

I thought for a minute, looked a Graver, and said, "I don't know." Some months later, Welles' ashes were buried in Ronda, Spain, on the property of a longtime friend, retired bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez.

The demise of our video project left me yearning to do some kind of major Welles project to fill the void. As I reviewed our time together, I recalled an extraordinary story that Welles had taken nearly two hours to tell me on a leisurely Saturday afternoon a few months earlier. It was about the events surrounding his production of Marc Blitzstein's musical, The Cradle Will Rock, in 1937. It was, Welles told me, the only time in U.S. history that the military was sent out to shut down a Broadway play. He wanted to make a movie about it, but had failed to raise the money.

That was it. I would try to get the film made. It took the support of many of Welles' original Mercury colleagues—including the late actor/producer John Houseman—and a lot of crazy investors to keep the project alive over the years. Most importantly, it took Tim Robbins, who recognized the power of the story early on and spent most of 1990s writing and directing the film that eventually came to the screen.

Houseman once said that it's rare in this life to be touched by real genius. Welles, said Houseman, was the real thing—perhaps the only real genius he'd ever known. Now, I understand what he meant. Welles, long before most filmmakers, saw the powerful potential of small format video. Yet, he was perhaps 20 years too early to enjoy the real fruits of the video revolution in his own work.

Whenever I see a tiny new camcorder introduced, or see Apple upgrade a revolutionary application like iMovie, I think of Orson. Oh, how excited he'd be. The pure magic of it all! If he were alive today, he'd be making his movies without regard to raising huge amounts of money. That, for both Orson and his audience, would be an achievement that we'll never be able to enjoy.

Frank Beacham is a New York City-based independent writer at www.beachamjournal.com. Beacham was executive producer of the 1999 Touchstone Films release of Tim Robbins film, Cradle Will Rock. He and George Demas have written Maverick, a new play based on the events described in this story.

Top CC image from Scary Cow/Flickr; shot of Orson with camera from MovieMail, which sells the brilliant latter-day Welles documentary F for Fake.

Seriously, just start watching the first one if you don't believe me. And really, are you going to argue with Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof, who discovered this and said "Your life is about to change. This is astounding film making. Watch ALL of it."? I didn't think so. [YouTube via Damon Lindelof]

With Avatar in theaters, the stakes are simply too high to risk losing a film to some pudgy frat boy film school drop out who is convinced his personal commentary is just as important as the countless hours of work that have gone into the filmmaking process.

The following are a list of rules and responses that I feel, as a society, we need to deem socially acceptable to assimilate into our communal fabric.

6-Inch Voices, Or Group Humiliation
I know I'm coming off rude already. The occasional quiet comment to the person beside you, that's totally fine by me. But If I can hear you from over two seats away, chances are, you need to shut the fuck up (throughout life, possibly, but definitely in the theater). If a person makes loud comments that a single "shhh" doesn't thwart, everyone around them should stand, point and loudly ask them to leave (with liberal use of expletives). It'll be a painful, distracting experience, but chances are, it won't be needed again.

Really, It's OK To Tell People to Shut Up
I know I just made this point, but I want to make it abundantly clear: telling talkers to shut up is OK. You are doing all of the shy, weak and first daters who want to enjoy a movie but not lose out on a potential post-film grope a huge favor. Let's just make an oath, right now, to support one another against the talkers, be they intimidatingly muscley or not. Let's acknowledge a silent brotherhood, poised to attack at the slightest breach of conduct.

If You Pull Out a Cellphone During a Movie, You Relinquish All Rights to It
I don't care if you have it's on vibrate or turned to silent. Any cellphone pulled from a pocket during a movie—most probably a Sidekick—that's glowing in the corner of the entire audience's eye is now communal property. It can and should be yanked from the offender's hand and chucked across the room to break against the nearest hard surface. The offender's head is one such potential surface.

Bathroom Exits, OK, Refills, Not OK
We've all overestimated the endurance of our bladders. And as you grow older, you realize that uncontrollable bodily functions are something we all just need to be adults about. If someone walks out during a pivotal scene because they NEED to go, well, that's alright. But if they take their empty popcorn bucket with them, proceed with skepticism. Do they look like they needed to use the bathroom while they were up? No? Then tripping them on the way back is totally Kosher.

Honor Those Who Watch Credits
In the theater, credits are part of the film. It's your option to watch them, but should you elect not to, do not disturb those around you who enjoy finishing a film by celebrating all those who made it possible. That means, no standing in front of someone seated to finish the credits (a quick, polite pass is OK). And maybe save that thing you NEED to say for the hallway or the parking lot, rather than voice it right as the film fades to black. Offenses in this realm will not elicit punishment, but you may be deemed "tacky."

Oh, But None Of This Applies to Kids Movies on a Tuesday Afternoon
Once again, I'm not an evil or malicious person (by nature). If you're watching some Shrek sequel, especially during a matinee, pretty much anything goes—for children. Adults who are offending any of the above rules in ways not directly resulting from or related to a child's actions are fair game for fair punishment.

And if you have any points or suggestions that I may have missed, please, please, please list them in the comments. Two people can easily drop $40 and and a free evening to see a movie. And the first time you watch something truly special can never be rekindled.

Let's band together and see to it that movie talkers STFU for good.

Several theaters in Germany received 3D versions of Avatar with borked encryption for preview screenings. After trying for several hours to get the 150GB of blue kitties and Sam Worthington scowling in 3D decrypted so they could play it, at least one theater gave up and went 2D.

I think I would've walked out, since I like, have to see it in 3D now. (And if it doesn't change everything, I'm going to hot-glue 3D glasses to Mark's head.) [Heise.de via TorrentFreak]

I'm not going to talk about plot (or that I thought to myself, Dances with Wolves in space more than once). I'm not going to talk about dialog or pacing (or that the limited narration was totally unnecessary). There are other reviews, more reviewy type reviews, that have all that covered. I'm not going to spoil anything, either. Heck, I'm not even going to talk about Avatar...not just yet.

I want to talk about Jurassic Park.

Jurassic Park was the first movie I remember being excited to an unhealthily obsessive level. My dad, a huge Michael Crichton fan, did his best to tempt my young self into reading the full-out book. So he told me a sort of good parts version, filling my head with tales of dinosaur resurrection from amber dug up deep in the Earth, all while I would do my best to get more and more out of him without actually having to crack open a book.

So when I heard Jurassic Park was becoming a movie, not only did that dash any chance of me reading the story, but I literally could not fathom a world in which I'd be patient enough to wait to see it (not that I had any other option). I mean, dinosaurs, theme parks, and terror? Jurassic Park was biologically engineered for young boys.

All of this is nice background, but my point is simpler. When I saw those dinosaurs on screen, knowing that, in many cases, they'd been modeled purely by computers—computers!—I felt like anything was possible. Yes, it's a cliche feeling. That's actually why I'm sharing it. Because ultimately, we all have that movie—be it Star Wars or Terminator or whatever—that movie we actually felt a bit humbled, even challenged, watching because it was was an amuse-bouche of the future, even if a bit cheesy at heart.

Avatar is that movie for the new generation.

I don't expect you to believe me if you haven't seen the film yet. I, myself, was a huge skeptic until a few hours ago. Blue people? Papyrus font?? What the fuck happened to dinosaurs and light sabers and killer robots from the future? Did we use all the cool stuff up?

But about 30 minutes in to the film, you realize that the marketing has undersold the movie. In an era when every great moment of a film makes its way to a trailer, Avatar surprised me with an endless amount of unparalleled optical overload. Every single shot is just so full of detail that you literally open your eyes wider to take as much in as you can before each cut.

Gizmodo readers will love the tech, especially as that about 50% of the film's budget apparently went to rendering badass 3D curved displays and absurdly awesome cockpits. But sequences from Pandora's woods at night...let's just say they're the first luminescent visual effects I've seen that made 1982's Tron look like a 27-year-old movie.

Also, while shots of the Na'vi (the blue dudes) clearly deviate from a 50/50 balance between real footage and CGI depending on the scene, their body animation, even for motion capture, is unparalleled. While their faces and eyes especially can appear a tad cartoony at times, the overall effect is not done justice by YouTube trailers or that shot pasted above. Call the effect hyperreal or even unreal, but it's certainly doesn't look "fake." I don't know that I've ever witnessed complete humanoid models move so realistically, especially given their exposure (in both screen time and skin).

Of course, Avatar's 3D is the basis of my obnoxious zeal for the aesthetics. I viewed the film in a full-sized IMAX theater. And while I knew that a fair share of missiles would fly off the screen (and ZOMG the mechs look amazing), I couldn't have expected the sheer tangibility that 3D—what I once supposed a gimmick—added to the experience. I mean, I saw textures in this film that I've never seen in a movie before, like wet, rubbery skin on the wildcats of Pandora that made people around me gasp more than once. There's a more understated moment, too, when Sam Worthington shaves and you realize, wow, stubble is pretty remarkable in 3D. The jagged hairs bring a level of humanity to his character, adding something unexpectedly corporeal to what's really a 30-foot-tall head in closeup.

So yes, 3D is more than a gimmick. The glasses are still a pain, but 3D is here to stay.

Avatar doesn't handle this new technology perfectly, however, and I hope that other filmmakers learn from its mistakes. Especially early in the film during shots in close quarters, the direction allowed many objects to break frame (think of a person walking from one end of the screen to the other). For my untrained eyes, seeing a figure go from 2D to 3D to 2D was not only distracting, it was tiring. And the same can be said for a constantly shifting depth of field—based upon where the camera is focusing, you'll need to figure out whether to look deep into the screen or right in front of you.

An out of focus shoulder breaking the corner of the frame is pretty much the worst implementation of 3D I could imagine. Luckily, the forest sequences that make up the majority of the film seemed to have been planned with a wider depth of field—more of the shot is in focus.

After 2 1/2 hours in the theater, I am exhausted far more than the same amount of time playing an FPS would make me, but Avatar was so remarkable that it was well-worth the work of watching it.

I still can't imagine popping on a pair of glasses to watch the evening news after a long day of work, and I sympathized for the guy sitting beside me as he started rubbing his eyes about halfway through. As someone with a slight uncorrected astigmatism, my left eye was ready to fall out of its socket by the final climactic sequence.

But as viewers, we'll adapt to the new tech. And as technicians, Hollywood will learn the rules of 3D as it writes them.

So for now, I'm not quite ready to see every piece of the world's media in 3D. But Avatar? Yeah, I'll be seeing it again...and maybe again...just in hopes of absorbing a bit more of the visual splendor.

The official name for the Empire Strikes back spoof is Something Something Something Dark Side, and it'll be on DVD & Blu-ray 12/22.

Uh oh, Pepper looks pissed. And Tony looks alone. What happened to all his friends?

Garry Shandling makes his big debut as Senator Stern, so Tony mocks him, naturally.

See Tony is alone. Empty chairs. Empty soul. It's lonely at the top.

But wait, it's Rhodey, he's back...and he looks pissed. And who's that to Rhodey's left? It's Sam Rockwell, as Justin Hammer. Did they walk in together? And where did Pepper go? Where's Happy?

Same sexual chemistry between Pepper and Tony, check. But then again I think RDJ is so charming he could have chemistry with a lamp post... lucky lamp post.

Iron Man is America, and a rock star. And look in the background — it's the Iron Man dancers, thus proving the slutty Halloween rule to be true: any outfit can be made whorish.

These gloves could very well be the best little party favors ever. Please hand these out at Comic Con!

Whiplash is obsessed. See? See? He has newspaper clippings. And newspaper clipping are to stalkers what glasses are to shy mousy girls with a hot girl dying to get out inside: stereotypical. But let's assume that since he's spent so much time cataloguing the family story, that this grudge may go way, way back. Since he's had time to make a scrap book.

Who hit Tony?

The garage is all cleaned up and stocked with new rich guy toys. Bruce Wayne who?

What is happening to Tony's neck?

Yikes it's spreading. Tony is literally turning into an Iron Man. Also, he could be turning into a human computer, which has happened in the Iron Man comics before.

More Justin Hammer, and in perfect timing with Whiplash's "shark" comment.

Nick Fury just wants to get motherfucking Tony onto the motherfucking team.

More Iron Man-ettes. I suspect this may be a banner year for the cosplay fans.

Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff in her Black Widow "business casual" attire.

War Machine prototype!

Is the Black Widow working for Rhodey? Is that her in the background?

Black Widow in her ass kicking attire, is she beating up Happy? I bet Jon Favreau just loved that.

Whiplash finally shows us what his lightsaber whips can do — which is break Tony's car.

Which he does.

I'm still not sold on the Whiplash outfit, but it does look pretty bad ass from behind.

Uh oh — will Tony be Whiplashed in half, or will the bad guy just show off some more? Answer: Show off.

Whiplash has nasty metal mouth.

What is this flying contraption? It looks like it's shooting at Iron Man? Multiple Mecha suits?

A first look at War Machine, and Tony's new suit, with a triangle chest plate. Is this due to the metal veins? Also the background is filled with power suits, almost like an Armor War...

War Machine and Tony fight other mechas and you get a faceful of War Machines shoulder gun, and Tony's fully reconstructed suit, Mark VI. Very nice. So who thinks they are filming the Armor Wars story?

Hit up the link for the trailer in all its HD glory and tell me that you didn't drool a little bit too. [Apple —Thanks, Marco!]

With DVD sales lagging, Paramount is testing out this new service, first with business clients and later with consumers, that allows you to search for a line of dialogue, scene, genre, location or actor and get the specific clip you want. That clip comes with a variable fee, depending on the value of the movie in question (so, The Godfather would be pretty expensive) as well as the length of the clip. It's really designed more for companies who want to use a quick clip in, say, an ad campaign—good, because it doesn't really make sense for the consumer. The service should launch Tuesday, and prices are as yet undisclosed. [New York Times]

Take a look at your Blu-ray library for a minute. See anything missing? If not, you're not looking hard enough. Because for every high-def release of The Proposal that Hollywood shoves out the door, a Raiders of the Lost Ark stays on the shelf. Right now, whether it's a rights issue or a matter of strategic timing, a team of highly qualified artists and technicians are putting the finishing touches on Cheaper By the Dozen 2's Blu-ray release instead of dreaming up interactive features for Alien.

That's just scratching the surface. Right now on Amazon you can buy a 20th Century Fox Blu-ray bundle of three genuinely funny comedies—Napoleon Dynamite, Office Space and Young Frankenstein—that have nothing in common other than being completely unnecessary to watch in high-def. You know what three movies Fox hasn't put on Blu-ray at all? A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

This shouldn't be so hard, Hollywood. Whatever problems you're working through right now, get it figured out. You've only got like 2.5 more years before broadband puts the whole Blu-ray concept completely out of business. To help get you started, here's a list of 20 movies we need right now, and 10 that you should pass on altogether, before you waste any more time.

20 Movies That Should Be on Blu-ray

And 10 That Really Shouldn't

11:50: Ten minutes left until the star (Daniel Radcliffe) and the director (David Yates) pop up and start talking about the movie while watching the movie.

11:51: If you're using the PlayStation 3, you should make sure you've got the correct audio output to hear the audio stream. Otherwise, like myself last time, you'll hear nothing.

11:53: If you miss this, it'll be on BD-Live in a few weeks, says the British announcer.

11:53: I just figured out that they're doing this livecast at 12 noon instead of 6PM Pacific because kids in the UK need to watch this too. Otherwise, it'd be 2 in the morning.

11:55: There's a weird bug right now with two audio streams being overlayed simultaneously. One announcement and one...announcement.

11:56: Oh and if you need to get in, here's the invite.

12:00: Two voices talking simultaneously is more annoying than you'd imagine.

12:02: It's about to start in a minute.

12:02: Before we start, I gotta say this was probably in the top half of the Harry Potter movies, for me. The only problems I had with it was the fact that it looked like the whole movie had a power outage. And, that it didn't follow the book as closely as other movies.

12:03: It's starting.

12:04: I'm having audio difficulties and had to restart the movie.

12:05: It would be nice to go through one of these screenings without technical problems. You'd think the PS3 would be the most stable platform, but I guess not. And now it's having trouble loading the BD-Live.

12:06: Millions of kids around the world are logging into BD-Live right now apparently. Hey kids, get off my (virtual) lawn.

12:06: I'm back in! Daniel is talking about Harry Potter and how he differs from the character.

12:07: To answer a person who asked a question about if Dan learned anything from Harry Potter, he says yes.

12:10: His favorite movie is #5. He likes shooting and watching that one.

12:10: The director says he doesn't have a favorite.

12:12: Oh wait, the director couldn't make it—this is someone else.

12:12: Harry Potter is there though.

12:13: Daniel is saying the director is great, and can see the whole film while shooting an individual scene.

12:13: Here's a little hint of how Dumbledore is gay: he was treasuring a knitting magazine (with JK, the author, on the cover).

12:15: Someone asked what other movies he wants to try and get into, and Dan says he wants to concentrate on finishing the last two movies, and then maybe go back to the stage in London or NY.

12:17: Now a question about Alan Rickman. How did Dan feel about hearing Alan Rickman speak, in the first movie? Answer: probably terrified.

12:19: It's too bad the director isn't here, because I would very much ask him why the movie is shot during a power outage...in a black hole. Seriously, I couldn't see anything.

12:20: Q: Is Helena Bonham Carter as cool as she looks?

12:20: A: Yes. Also she is mad. And she pulls off that wig well, and she is hilarious.

12:23: Someone just asked him about what bands he likes. It'd be better if they focused on, you know, what's going on in the movie, but I guess that's the kind of question we're going to get today.

12:24: Q: Is Emma Watson as beautiful in person as she is in the movies?

12:24: A: "Yes!!" That Dan.

12:25: And now they're singing the praises of Blu-ray, and saying the interactive experience of Blu-ray is "mindblowing."

12:25: This is the first time they've actually seen one of the Harry Potter movies on Blu-ray, apparently.

12:27: What Blu-rays would you want directors' Q&A of? Post in the comments.

12:27: Q: "What's your favorite special effects sequence in this film?"

12:27: A: The island near the end of the movie, with the cabin and all the monsters in the water.

12:28: A: Dan's favorite is the dragon chase in #4.

12:30: Q: "If you had the ability to use an invisibility cloak, what would you do?"

12:30: A: Dan says robbing banks. He did not say sneaking a peek of Emma Watson.

12:32: Q: "Are you or the others going to be Twittering soon?"

12:32: A: Dan says no. He says he likes Twitter, but he feels he'd be inundated.

12:35: Dan's talking about sports.

12:36: For the most part, the audio stream is a lot more stable than it was during the Terminator live event.

12:38: What's the next step in these? Video streaming of them in a corner? That might be pretty fun.

12:39: Dan says he was in the right place at the right time to get the part of Harry.

12:43: Unfortunately the two people answering questions, Dan and the other guy, don't know any technical stuff. It's too bad the director couldn't show up.

12:44: Q: Has anyone ever challenged you to a Harry Potter trivia match?

12:44: A: Yes, and I've lost every time.

12:48: I'm leaving out the questions about him playing Quidditch and other silly dialogue, btw.

12:54: To answer my own question, I would really love to hear Michael Bay give a commentary on Transformers 2. I'd like to hear his thoughts behind why he wanted to do the CG a certain way, or if he left that all up to the CG folks.

12:57: Q: Besides acting, do you want to get into another part of the film business?

12:57: A: I'd love to direct, but it's a long way off.

12:59: And now, a peepee break.

1:06: We're back.

1:06: They're talking about how an actor on screen now playing Marcus Belby was killed, stabbed, while protecting his brother.

1:10: It would be nicer if you could submit questions directly from your Blu-ray player as well. That would make it more of an all-in-one experience, without having to have a phone or a computer in front of you.

1:15: On another note, BD-Live kind of forms the basis of community watching, in a sense. Right now you can watch with directors and hear them talk, but if you can go in the direction of the Netflix community watch on Xbox Live, you can get communal viewings with your friends as well. That would be pretty interesting, being able to watch the same movie, synced, with a buddy across the country.

1:21: Someone asked if they could get Ricky Gervais into the movies.

1:34: Slight spoiler for #7: They'll be playing themselves in that one scene.

1:41: They're talking about the acting process, and the audition process and so forth. Nothing that interesting.

1:43: Q: Do you find it hard working around green screens and CG?

1:44: A: Not really. I don't have to spend a lot of time in front of a green screen. I only have to do about three days in front of a green screen at a time. In the first film I did a month in front of a screen for Quidditch and that was mind numbing.

1:52: Looks like the audio stream just cut out.

1:53: It's back.

2:00: I'd also like to hear JJ Abrams talk about Star Trek too. That would be one interesting live commentary.

2:01: I think they're doing another peepee break now.

2:10: Now the audio is just cutting in and out like mad.

2:29: Oh wow has it been 20 minutes since I typed something. How long is this movie?

2:34: The audio is finicky again, and the movie's about to end.

2:42: Movie's over, and they're saying their thanks for watching.

2:42: Thanks for reading! (Maybe we should stick with Sci Fi movies from now on.)

Site-specific browser apps are prone to shittiness, because at heart, they're really just websites. The key is to offer something more, or, if you're offering more or less the same thing you get on the regular website, to present it in a markedly better way. This app take the latter approach. You're not going to find any information in the IMDB app that isn't available on the full IMDB website—that would be kind of odd—but you will find a neatly-designed, easily navigable reference for just about every film or show, ever, as well as local showtimes, trailers, an TV listings.

It's just about everything you could ask for in an IMDB app, except that it doesn't support accounts, which means that regular users can't rate or review movies, and that Pro users (I assume) can't access all those agents' phone numbers, that raw box office data, those movie stars' secret Twitter handles or whatever else they're shelling out for.

Alas, she is excused of this grave offense, for she is free. [iTunes]

And here's the official synopsis:

TRON: LEGACY is a 3D high-tech adventure set in a digital world that's unlike anything ever captured on the big screen. Sam Flynn (GARRETT HEDLUND), the tech-savvy 27-year-old son of Kevin Flynn (JEFF BRIDGES), looks into his father's disappearance and finds himself pulled into the digital world of Tron where his father has been living for 25 years. Along with Kevin's loyal confidant Quorra (OLIVIA WILDE), father and son embark on a life-and-death journey of escape across a visually-stunning cyber universe that has become far more advanced and exceedingly dangerous.

This comes out on December 17th, 2010. Yes, over a year away. Plenty of time to harden the shell of cynicism as to stop being excited about this. [HeyUGuy via The Daily What]

The comic is called Paranormal Activity: The Search For Katie, A Case Study by Dr. Johann Averys DMN. And if you remember the end of the film, Katie has vanished and Micah is... well, gone as well, sadly. Apple paired up with IDW to continue the story. The comic app picks up right after that, with the demon expert Dr. Averys finally showing up to their home, and searching for Katie, and some answers. It was written by Scott Lobdell and drawn by Mark Badger. Here are the first set of exclusive stills from the beginning.

We emailed Lobdell asking why he thought the story must go on, since the ending seemed so definite, we didn't think there could be a sequel even in a comic book series. To which he responded:

I have to disagree! Even before I left the movie theater my mind was racing though a hundred different questions! Where did Katie go? How long had she been in thrall to the demon? Why did he do what he did to Micah... or have Katie do it? What about the mysterious Dr. Johann Averys — often mentioned but never seen? Could the case he was working on in Europe have anything to do with the case in San Diego? What would the investigation into the murder be like? One part cop forensics, one part study in demonology? The demon seemed like it had much larger fish to fry to scaring young women... could it have followers? A lot of this is set up in the first installment of the online comic book, and I can't wait for the opportunity to further explore the world of Paranormal Activity.

The application is available now at itunes, For 99 cents.

They got The Starfighters, Secret Agent Super Dragon, Monster A-Go-Go, The Rebel Set, and The Giant Gila Monster (which is great). None of those are my favorites, but I'd watch them again. In case you don't know what Mystery Science Theater is, watch this:

They do the same with cheesy movies—the worst they can find, la-la-lah—mostly science fiction. If you have never seen them, go check it out. If you are a fan, you are welcome. [Hulu—Thanks Bonnie]

With Transformers, Michael Bay elevated the franchise, fattening geek hearts as one could a calf before slaughter—proving, maybe for the first time in the history of man, that it was not better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

And as the bad reviews poured in, Bay laughed upon his throne of burning diesel.

To top the prank of Transformers 2, however, Transformers 3 would not do. Fans had already written off the franchise, and to some extent, the Michael Bay brand altogether. For his next stunt, Bay would need to infiltrate even deeper cultural tomes invisibly, destroying culture from the inside.

So Michael Bay directed this Victoria's Secret ad, thereby spoiling the singular fragment of the world untainted by his confused action-sexual outlook—a perspective comprised of such distilled adolescence that it shames even the lowest brow among us...well, hopefully. [Gawker]

Designing a fake dashboard for an imagined supercomputer or a hovering control panel for a worldwide surveillance system is a different process than creating a genuinely usable UI. Your goal is to imply things: that a machine is powerful; that a villain is formidable; that the software is intuitive, but that the breadth of its powers borders on unknowable. At no point does real-world usability factor in, and nor should it—this is pure fantasy, for an audience raised on Start Buttons, desktop icons and tree menus. Here's a gallery of some of the most famous interfaces; see how many you recognize.

Coleran's UIs are a mix of proudly retro and boldly new, mingling compact pixel art, wireframes and the solid, militaristic reds, blues and blacks of software from the 80s with touch-free gesture systems and overelaborate visualizations. It's the kind of stuff you take for granted in action and sci-fi films, but rounded up in one place, it's a strangely impressive, almost cohesive view of the future of software, as designed by someone with no constraints. [Mark Coleran via Metafilter]

UPDATE: Mark Coleran weighs in. His main point is a good one: These interfaces are the result of the work of many people, not just one man.

This is the exact opposite of Netflix discs, which are actually quite clean, comparatively speaking.

You see, those red sleeves and the delectable range of DVDs they contain are relatively free of any funky viruses or deadly bacteria, this according to an interesting slow news day report out of KLTV 7 East Texas.

As part of the report, six Netflix discs and sleeves were sent to an infectious disease expert at the University of Texas for a good swabbing. After some time in the incubator, the petri dishes were removed, and the samples—thankfully for this Netflix user—were no more covered with bacteria than a sample would have been had the good doctor touched them with his bare hand:

"They were fairly clean," said [Dr. Richard] Wallace [in an interview with KLTV]. "If I took my fingers and laid them on the top of the plates, this is what you'd grow." As for the disks themselves, Wallace said he found nothing that could potentially cause disease.

So keep on using that copy of Benjamin Button as a coaster. You'll be relatively safe in doing so—just don't eat off of it. [KLTV East Texas via Hacking Netflix]