Word: worldlys
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...other words, has none of the selling points that are supposed to guarantee hit status for a big-budget movie. Yet James Cameron's enviro-epic, with no famous name attached to it but its writer-director's, is not just a blockbuster; it's king of the world. Since premiering on Dec. 18, it has proceeded to shatter most existing box-office records at home and abroad. It has been No. 1 every week, swatting away ambitious newcomers like so many mosquitoes. And like the best ambassador for Hollywood, it has earned most of its revenue - nearly...
...bundle on another no-star epic. (The film's distributor, 20th Century Fox, claims that the budget for Avatar was $237 million, less than that of Spider-Man 3 or the last Harry Potter movie.) This time, instead of re-creating a cruise ship, Cameron created a whole new world, using technologies he waited nearly a decade to see come to fruition. The man who built the Titanic became the God of the Old Testament - or at least J.R.R. Tolkien - summoning previously unseen lands from his majestic imagination. (See the 100 best movies of all time...
Avatar's mantra is "I see you," and its final image is of someone's eyes snapping open. Journeying to the year 2154, moviegoers everywhere have embraced the film - surely the most vivid and persuasive creation of a fantasy world ever seen in moving pictures - as a total sensory, sensuous, sensual experience. The planet Pandora is a wonder world of flora and fauna: a rainforest (where it rarely rains) of gigantic trees and phosphorescent plants, of flying steeds, panther dogs and hammerhead dinosaurs. Audiences are just as beguiled by Pandora's humanish tribe, the Na'vi - the lean...
That also makes Avatar a throwback to ancient movie days, when films about men and women seduced the mass audience. And because it works splendidly as spectacle and love story, Cameron's picture is worthy of comparison to the great old epics. The world beater is also a heartbreaker, if you just open your eyes...
...something of a pariah in Hollywood for what was perceived as the film's blame-the-Jews sentiment. Gibson denied the charge. Two years later, he was stopped for drunk driving; his arrest report states that "Gibson yelled out, 'The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.' Gibson then asked, 'Are you a Jew?'" The officer was Jewish...