Titanic: for those who don't have time to see the film...

James Cameron's film of Titanic (in either its original or 3D versions) is a bladder-challenging 194 minutes.  But for anyone who wants a story about the Titanic and does not have more than three hours to spend there is an alternative: Every Man For Himself.

This is a novel about the Titanic by Beryl Bainbridge that follows the four days of the ship's maiden voyage overe 214 pages (at least it does in my paperback version).  The writing is brilliant and the special effects are superb.

This is the moment of collision:

"...suddenly the room juddered; the lights flickered and Ginsberg's cigarette case, whch sat at his elbow, jolted to the floor.  It was the sound accompanying the juddering that startled us, a long drawn-out tearing, like a vast length of calico slowly ripping apart.  Melchett said, "We're in collision with another ship", and with that we threw down our cards, ran to the doors, sprinted through the Palm Court and out on to the deck.  A voice called "We've bumped an iceberg - there it goes", but though I peered out into the darkness I could see nothing."

Philip Pullman has commented on the close similarity between novelists and film makers in that unlike a stage play you can direct the eyes of your watchers/readers, and reading a passage like this you can how true it is.

The final image in the book is breathtaking:

"Dawn came and as far as the eye could see the ocean was dotted with islands and fields of ice.  Some floated with tapering mast-heads, some sailed with monstrous bows rising sheer to the pink-flushed sky, some in the shapes of ancient vessels.  Between this pale fleet the little lifeboats rocked. ...  Beyond, where the sun was beginng to show its burning rim, smoke blew from a funnel."

The book won the 1996 Whitbread Novel Award, and in case you're interested the title of the book has a usage in the story quite different from what it might suggest given the subject matter.

Avatar

We had our last screening after our AGM earlier this month.  Here are my notes:

Avatar


USA 2009 161 minutes

Director: James Cameron

Starring: Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang and Zoe Saldana

Nominations and Awards

• Won three Oscars (Art Direction, Special Effects and Cinematography)

• A further 41 wins an 63 nominations

“Avatar is not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It’s a technological breakthrough. It has a flat-out Green and anti-war message. It is predestined to launch a cult. It contains such visual detailing that it would reward repeat viewings... It is an Event, one of those films you must see to keep up with the conversation.”

Roger Ebert

When his brother is killed, paraplegic Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) decides to take his place in a mission on the distant world of Pandora where he learns of to drive off the native humanoid Na'vi in order to mine for the precious material scattered throughout their rich woodland. Sully infiltrates the Na'vi people with the use of an "avatar" identity where he bond with the native tribe and falls in love with the beautiful alien Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). When Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) launches his plan to exterminate the Na'vi Sully has to take a stand and fight back in an epic battle for the fate of Pandora.

James Cameron began development of Avatar in 1994 and has planned to start filming after the completion of Titanic in 1997 but the necessary technology was not available for him to achieve his vision. He finally started developing is screenplay in 2006 and the film was released in December 2009. The official budget was $237 million, but other estimated have placed this as high as $310 million, with a further $150 million for promotion.

Avatar is the most expensive film made to date: Cameron deliberately cast relatively unknown actors in leading roles to reduce costs but needed a massive budget for special effects as he had developed new camera systems both to film in 3D and to allow motion-capture film making. The lead company for visual effects was Weta Digital in New Zealand who had been responsible for the special effects in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, but in order to complete the film on schedule Cameron also had to involve a number of other special effects companies, including George Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic. Both Jackson and Lucas visited the set of Avatar to watch Cameron at work with his new technology.

The story includes a familiar mix of myths and archetypes and in essence transposes the themes of the traditional Western, especially those like A Man Called Horse and Dances with Wolves where the white hero takes the side of the locals against the supposedly civilised invaders, into outer space. In Aliens Cameron’s heroes were Marines fighting a war against vicious extra-terrestrials, but in Avatar, with deliberate echoes of both Iraq and Afghanistan, the Marines are the enemy and the aliens are the good guys.

Following the worldwide success of Avatar Cameron has signed with 20th Century Fox to produce two sequels.