Posts Tagged ‘oscars’

Results For Avatar After the Oscars!

March 10th, 2010

The 82nd Academy Awards took place on Sunday, and Avatar won three of the awards it was nominated for: Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects. Unfortunately, it lost both of the biggest awards, Best Director and Best Picture, to its toughest award competitor The Hurt Locker.

Aside from the award presentations, there was some humour pushed into the show using Avatar. While presenting Best Makeup, Ben Stiller dressed as a Na’vi and spoke the language. To watch the video, look below the break.

» Read more: Results For Avatar After the Oscars!

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Avatar Awards Round-Up

March 2nd, 2010

A quick round-up of recent award news. Enjoy!

  • On February 23, the month-old International 3D Society honoured Avatar with three of its Lumiere Awards for Best Live-Action 3D Feature, Best 3D Character (Neytiri), and for marketing 3D content.
  • Avatar cleaned up at the Visual Effects Society Awards, where it lost only one of its seven nominations. It won the awards for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects Driven Feature Motion Picture, Best Single Visual Effect of the Year (Neytiri drinking), Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Feature Motion Picture (Neytiri), Outstanding Matte Paintings in a Feature Motion Picture (Pandora), Outstanding Models & Miniatures in a Feature Motion Picture, and Outstanding Created Environment in a Feature Motion Picture. It lost the award for Outstanding Compositing in a Feature Motion Picture to District 9.
  • Tied with Inglourious Basterds, Avatar received 5 nominations for this year’s Empire Awards, which are voted on by the readers of Empire magazine. The nominations include Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, and Best Sci-fi/Fantasy.
  • Suzy Amis Cameron, the wife of James Cameron, held a contest to find a beautiful “green” dress to wear at the Oscars, and it seems she’s chosen the winner. Entries were submitted from all over the world, but the winner was Jillian Granz of Michigan State University. Granz will walk to red carpet with Amis and her husband when the host the Global Green Pre-Oscar party. The Academy Awards are this Sunday, March 7, 2010.

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Oscars Snubbed Motion-Capture Actors?

February 4th, 2010

Avatar‘s producers aren’t happy that their two leading actors, Jake Sully and Zoe Saldana, were ignored in the Oscar nominations announced Tuesday. They blame themselves for it because they don’t believe they’ve done enough to educate people about the technology.

The motion-capture used in creating the movie uses a new facial-recognition camera to ensure the actor’s performance is not lost. John Landau says it represents a new ear of the technology, which they call emotion-capture.

Some industry commentaries believe there should be a new category created for motion-capture, but others believe it should still be included in the acting category as the actors are doing the same as their colleagues not using technology.

For a video of the motion-capture used in Avatar, and to read more about the story, look below the cut.

» Read more: Oscars Snubbed Motion-Capture Actors?

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Avatar Won’t Win At Oscars: Cameron

February 2nd, 2010

Since the Oscar nominations were announced this morning, James Cameron weighed in on Avatar‘s chances, and when it comes to the two big awards he doesn’t think they’re very good.

Cameron thinks he won’t be given the award because of his “king of the world” speech when Titanic won, but says some people may be curious about what he’d do this time around. He says he’d be happy if Kathryn Bigelow won for The Hurt Locker, but would be angry if anyone else did.

To see exactly what he said, look below the cut.

» Read more: Avatar Won’t Win At Oscars: Cameron

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Tied for Lead With 9 Oscar Nominations

February 2nd, 2010

The nominations for the 82nd Academy Awards were announced this morning, and Avatar lead the nominations with The Hurt Locker, each film receiving 9 nominations.

It did get the two top nominations, Best Picture and Best Director, as expected, but the competition is tough. It also got nominations for many of the technical awards, and for Original Song.

Many award season veterans believe Avatar will sweep the tech awards, but its wins for Best Picture and Director are uncertain. Kathryn Bigelow is the favourite for Best Director, but Best Picture seems to be between Avatar and The Hurt Locker.

Either way, it won’t top Titanic‘s Academy Awards performance, which got 14 nominations and 11 wins.

The full list of Avatar‘s nominations are below the cut.

» Read more: Tied for Lead With 9 Oscar Nominations

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Weta Poised to Become a Household Name?

February 1st, 2010

With the Oscar nominations tomorrow, CNET is again looking at the technological side of Avatar, but this time instead of its inspiration for virtual worlds, they’re focusing on the main visual effects company involved in creating the movie: Weta Digital.

Daniel Terdiman, a writer for CNET News, believes that with 4 Oscars already under its belt for the three The Lord of the Rings films and for King Kong, this year’s projected Oscar wins for visual effects for Avatar will make Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital a household name like George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic.

Weta has pioneered on all films its worked on, from The Lord of the Rings to District 9, but Terdiman places his main focus on Avatar. In creating Avatar, the visual effects company’s three main innovations have been the virtual production stage, writing a new system for muscle generation on computer-generated characters, and a new way of lighting massive areas like Pandora’s jungle.

Because of its work on large movies, Weta has also been able to attract and hold great talent, cementing its reputation among industry professionals as one of the top visual effects companies in the business. It’s currently working on two big films (Tintin and The Hobbit), but Terdiman expects its wins at this year’s Academy Awards will make it a much more public name.

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Golden Globe Wins Creating False Oscar Hope?

January 25th, 2010

Entertainment Weekly is suggesting that Avatar‘s Best Picture and Best Director wins at the Golden Globe Awards last weekend have created a false hope about its Oscar potential.

This weekend both the Screen Actors Guild and the Producers Guild of America held their awards ceremonies, and Avatar came away with nothing. It had no nominations from the SAG, but was nominated to be the PGA’s Best Picture, which was awarded to The Hurt Locker.

The voters for the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards are completely different groups, with none of the same people in either one. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which presents the Golden Globes, have about 100 journalists that vote on winners, while the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who award the Oscars, is made up of about 6000 industry professionals as their voters.

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Shortlist for Visual Effects Oscar Down to 7

January 6th, 2010

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today that seven movies are still in the run for the Visual Effects award, and Avatar is among them. The other six are District 9, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Star Trek, Termination Salvation, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and 2012, although some media sources don’t believe they have a chance against Avatar.

The final three films will be chosen on January 21 when all members of the Academy’s Visual Effects branch will be invited to watch 15-clips of the 7 films above, and then to vote for their three nominees.

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Avatar Contends for Best Score at the Oscars

January 5th, 2010

Many scores for successful fantasy films in 2009 (such as Where the Wild Things Are and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) have unfortunately not made the cut as contenders for the Best Original Score award at the 2009 Oscars, but we are happy to report that Avatar has been chosen as one of the 81 scores eligible for nomination! To see the full list of contenders (and some that didn’t make the ballot), check out this article at TheWrap.com!

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