While discussing his new film Promised Land and how boring he is, Matt Damon told Playboy (don’t click if you dislike looking at a lot of butts) about the experience of filming in a massive trash dump for Elysium and got humble about the roles he missed out on. “Having to say no to Avatar was tough because I particularly wanted to work with James Cameron, and still do, because he’s fantastic,” Damon said. “He knew he was the star of that movie and that everyone was going to go see it anyway. When he said, ‘Look, I’m offering it to you, but if you say no, the movie doesn’t need you,’ I remember thinking, Oh God, not only do I have to say no because of scheduling, but he’s going to make a star out of some guy who’s going to start taking jobs from me later.” Damon also talked about missing out on Milk and Brokeback Mountain, but ultimately concluding that Josh Brolin and Heath Ledger were the right actors for the parts because of how stellar they portrayed their respective characters.

The Ingredients is a column devoted to breaking down the components of a new film release with some focus on influential movies that came before. As always, these posts look at the entire plots of films and so include SPOILERS.  Even the most visionary and original films can seem derivative, especially to those of us who watch tons of movies on a regular basis. Occasionally it’s intended for the audience to spot certain allusions and apply them to our experience with this new work, as in the case of Holy Motors. Other times it’s not so deliberate, and the fact that new movies trigger memories of older movies (and vice versa depending on when they’re seen) is all on us, yet not totally without reason given how there are really only a few base plots and themes in existence and also given that our comprehension of things, particularly imaginative things, has to be relatable to other things we’ve comprehended previously. That’s why a movie like Avatar can be “like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” but only to an extent. For it to be accessible to a wide audience — let alone be one of the biggest worldwide hits of all time — it has to “unfortunately” resemble other movies. And now Life of Pi can be likened by critics to Avatar for similarly giving us spectacle like nothing we’ve ever seen before. It sounds ironic but it’s not. Even if the magical island in Pi may even further remind us of

First of all, thank goodness. Second of all, duh. Back in May, James Cameron basically informed the world that if a film wasn’t set in the world of his Avatar, he wasn’t interested in making it. At the time, the filmmaker said: “I’m not interested in developing anything. I’m in the Avatar business. Period. That’s it. I’m making Avatar 2, Avatar 3, maybe Avatar 4, and I’m not going to produce other people’s movies for them. I’m not interested in taking scripts…I think within the Avatar landscape I can say everything I need to say that I think needs to be said, in terms of the state of the world and what I think we need to be doing about it. And doing it in an entertaining way. And anything I can’t say in that area, I want to say through documentaries, which I’m continuing.” Turns out, Cameron found something else that he wanted to say, something that will (thankfully) get us the hell off of Pandora. THR reports that the director has snapped up the rights to Taylor Stevens‘ novel “The Informationist,” a feature film version of which Cameron will both produce and direct after he finishes up both Avatar 2 and Avatar 3. So who is said Informationist? Well, she’s a strong lady, one who sounds as if she’ll fit right in to Cameron’s canon.

Rian Johnson’s new film, Looper, is a pretty awesome time travel flick, one with as many elements that are clever and original as there are purposefully derivative and influenced. It’s the kind of smart and stylish sci-fi cinema we expect every once in a while on the festival circuit, like Sound of My Voice (which hits DVD and Blu-ray this Tuesday), rather than from a major Hollywood studio. Looper does fit the indie model, though, since Sony/Tristar picked it up for distribution only after it was done shooting, yet as Brian’s review of the film attests, we can still consider it a good sign for mainstream movies of this genre, and we can hope that Hollywood will see Johnson as the sort of directorial talent they need. But is it the best science fiction film since The Matrix? That’s a question posed in a headline from Time magazine yesterday, though its respective post doesn’t address such a discussion let alone attempt to answer the inquiry. Well, if we exclude superhero movies, animated features (Pixar, Miyazaki and The Iron Giant among them) and the Star Trek reboot, Looper is currently one of only two original studio films of its order to be battling for the status of best reviewed since the Wachowskis’ groundbreaking modern classic. The other is Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men.

The upcoming election might make the air feel a bit more politicized than it usually does, but there’s one arena that is investigated and interrogated for its supposedly partisan leanings far more often than every four years: the mainstream entertainment industry. Hollywood and prime-time television are continually called into question for supposedly left-leaning tendencies. Hell, there are even entire websites that profit off the flimsy thesis that Hollywood is an evil institution devoted to the full-scale indoctrination of feeble young minds into sullying the name of Ayn Rand and buying Priuses (Priusi?). However, the latest accusation made toward Hollywood as a liberal indoctrination machine came from an unlikely source: Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine. While it’s interesting to hear these points articulated from a self-defined liberal rather than a conservative culture warrior (yes, I’m well aware of the irony of my column name when I write stories like this) who stands to benefit more from the critique, Chait makes several of the same stumbles that conservatives encounter when voicing this familiar argument, like failing to provide a stable definition of what institutions the term “Hollywood” describes or an adequate explanation for the process by which an institution made up of mostly liberal people actually translates into liberal products.

It’s fair to say Jake Sully isn’t all that fascinating of an accent dropping character. He’s all stock, but the world of Avatar certainly was not. James Cameron apparently gets that, since he already plans on losing Sully for Avatar 4. That’s right, Cameron is already thinking of Avatar 4. After he completes his “thematic” trilogy, he’ll return to Pandora to give us a prequel.

We’ve known from the very beginning that James Cameron intended on making a sequel to his wildly successful foray into 3D filmmaking, Avatar. We’ve had indication that he might even have plans for several sequels for Avatar, stretching the thing out to encompass an entire trilogy. Word was that the upcoming journeys into the world of Pandora were going to deal heavily with exploring its underwater locations, a prospect that sounded promising, given all of the development of underwater technologies Cameron has done over the years. But when the director started talking about how he might even make three more Avatar sequels, and how he didn’t plan on making movies that weren’t Avatar related ever again…the guy started to sound a little crazy. Well, crazy or not, it indeed looks like that’s going to be the plan. Showbiz 411 has quotes from Avatar actress Sigourney Weaver confirming that Cameron has plans for three more sequels, and that they’re all going to be shot at the same time. This all but confirms that we’ll have to sit through an entire block of films about blue-skinned eco-warriors. Weaver’s comments come with the addendum that she has no idea how long the filming is going to take, how any of it is going to work, and that her job is to “just show up.”

What is Movie News After Dark? Tonight it’s all about learning. We’ll show you the world, pretty babes. Things like destination posters for the whole of Westeros, what can be learned from Batman, Veronica Mars, Morgan Spurlock’s mustache, The Hunger Games, the Marvel Cinematic Timeline, Felicia Day dancing in an elevator, Damon Lindelof, Kickstarter, James Cameron’s obsession with blue people and of course, the world of men’s grooming. It’s going to be a wet and wild ride for a Monday, friends. We begin this evening with something Game of Thrones related. Because Game of Thrones – be it books or show — is slowly taking over the life of yours truly. And that’s just fine with me. Artist Nicholas Hyde has begun selling very cool Game of Thrones destination posters, found via The Mary Sue. At one time there was one for The Wall, Winterfell and King’s Landing alongside the currently listed posters for The Eyrie and Pyke. It’s hard to say whether or not the others have sold out (and even harder to say whether or not I had anything to do with that. Above, you will see Winterfell. Below the jump, I’ve got The Wall and King’s Landing rounded up. Hopefully Mr. Hyde will print more soon.

With a dormant development arm, James Cameron has fully committed himself to holding his breath underwater and exploring the depths of narrative that he can mine from Pandora and the world of Avatar. A sequal and a threequel were already in the mix, but The Playlist is noting that Cameron seems more than open about an Avatar 4. It was 14 years from first draft to finished film, and its been almost 3 years since that sci-fi epic was released, so if the prospect of 3 more seems like it would take up the rest of Cameron’s sane days, it’s because they just might. The director looks to be quitting the original story game. “I’ve divided my time over the last 16 years over deep ocean exploration and filmmaking. I’ve made two movies in 16 years, and I’ve done eight expeditions. Last year I basically completely disbanded my production company’s development arm. So I’m not interested in developing anything. I’m in the Avatar business. Period. That’s it. I’m making Avatar 2, Avatar 3, maybe Avatar 4, and I’m not going to produce other people’s movies for them. I’m not interested in taking scripts,” said Cameron.

Way back in the summer of 2004, on the heels of the great success of I Love the 80s and (later) I Love the 70s, VH1 tested the bounds and justifications of the nostalgia market by releasing the initial ten-part I Love the 90s. Instead of simply reflecting upon the most memorable and oft-canonized popular culture products and national news events of the 1970s and 1980s (two decades whose iconography had become ever more apparent, stylized, and parodied during its reappropriation in late 90s/early 00s pop culture), VH1 instead attempted (perhaps unsuccessfully) to create a trend rather than merely follow the typical, perhaps “natural” cycle of nostalgia. Because I Love the 90s aired only a few years after the actual 90s ended, VH1 situated the early 21st century – a time that ostensibly marked a major temporal shift but (save for 9/11) had yet to be self-defined – as a time that uniquely necessitated an immediate reflection on how to understand the 20th century, even the years of that century that were not so long ago. The experiment was both engaging and bizarre. By 2004, the early 90s had come into stark, VH1-friendly self-definition. Yes, we could all collectively make fun of Joey Lawrence, Pogs, oversize flannel, and Kevin Costner’s accent in Robin Hood, and share in the memories and irony-light criticisms therein with Michael Ian Black and Wendy the Snapple Lady. However, by the time the show reached 1997-99, I Love the 90s seemed less like a program banking

In 1989, James Cameron explored the fictional deep in The Abyss, and when he dove nearly 7 miles into the Mariana Trench, he unfortunately didn’t meet any gooey alien-like beings, but he did beat a solo dive record and figuratively witnessed a different world inside our own. But hasn’t that always been the job of a good storyteller? To witness and share other worlds within our own? Cameron is a visionary storyteller, and we have a lot to learn from him even as we enjoy his movies. Here is his TED Talk from 2010 where he discusses his unreal worlds and his limitless curiosity – something that seems incredibly relevant right now.

I’ve got a bit of an obsessive compulsive issue when it comes to DVDs and Blu-rays. I’m one of those suckers who will get caught every so often in a double-dip if I’m not paying attention. If I am being observant, I’m the guy who waits four extra months to get a disc with some special features attached. I really dug Transformers 3 and wanted to watch it again, but I’ll be damned if I was going to buy a disc with no extras on it! The issue that has my panties all aflame this week is all about special features and the lack thereof. Oh, most discs today come with some special features on them, but the “featurette” has become the bane of my existence. It used to just be what they called small extras on the disc, but now they’ve really emphasized the -ette, meaning mini, small, or useless.

Hollywood is a business. A big business. A ten billion dollar box office per year kind of business. While that is an impressive number, you also have to remember that I said “box office,” which is ignoring the home video market. If you include direct sales only, that’s another $5 billion. I swore that I would never do math again after college, so I’m not going to bother with rentals and licenses and all that shit. Suffice it to say, Hollywood is a big business. And they want to be bigger, like all businesses. Enter the shady world of rehashing. The repeated raping of your wallet. There was a time when it was as simple as releasing a Special Edition or Collector’s Edition of a movie. Now, films have two theatrical releases, get remastered in 3D and sent to theaters, and are then released on three to four separate DVD releases. As a super-fan, I’m excited to get Collector’s Editions – I’ll even double dip now and then, but the process has gone too far and offers too little.

The film world has recently experienced a bit of a backlash against 3D movies. Not only have film writers of all sorts repeatedly harped on what a needless gimmick adding a third dimension to an already perfectly fine two-dimensional image is, but regular moviegoers have been using their dollars to vote against the format as well, with more and more 3D pictures seeing less income coming from their 3D screenings and more from their standard two-dimensional screenings. Whether that means audiences are tired of the 3D gimmick itself, or if they’re just tired of paying the premium to see a movie in 3D over 2D is up for debate, but the end result is the same: it looks like the latest 3D fad is on its way out. There are a couple of very vocal and very influential supporters of 3D technology in the movie world, however, and they’re not going to go down without a fight. Perhaps most famously, Avatar director James Cameron is a huge proponent of filming things in 3D, so much so that he’s developed a lot of the technology that makes new techniques possible. He’s even gone so far as to predict that everything we watch in the future will be filmed in 3D, all the time, and that any needed 2D versions will just be extracted from the original 3D copy. That’s a pretty bold stance, but he’s not alone. Director of the upcoming 3D family film Hugo, and Hollywood legend, Martin Scorsese, has

The Bechdel Test, if you’re not familiar with it, is a benchmark for movies developed by Alison Bechdel in 1985. For a movie to pass The Bechdel Test, it must contain just one thing - a scene in which two or more named female characters have a conversation (that is, back and forth dialogue) about anything at all besides men. Anything, even if it’s something stereotypically feminine, like shopping or shoes. It could be about dog poo. It doesn’t matter. Sounds simple, right? Then it might be kinda shocking to find out that out of 2,500 movies, only about half pass the test. And to be clear, passing doesn’t mean the movie’s good or bad. Failing the test doesn’t mean the movie’s evil or anti-woman, or that passing makes it some sort of strongly feminist movie. It’s just to get people thinking about gender and how it’s presented in film. In fact, the example Bechdel gave as a film that passed the test was Alien, simply because Ripley and Lambert have a brief conversation about the alien. (Let’s ignore the fact that the alien was a walking penis-monster, as this was before the Xenomorphs had established sexes - the Queens weren’t introduced until 1986′s Aliens.) But it’s still surprising to find out that some of the most popular films of all time fail the test, and often for reasons you may have never considered.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s not messing about. Just doin’ the news. We begin tonight with one of many new images from The Adventures of Tintin. For one of those motion capture, lost in the shadow of the uncanny valley movies, this looks pretty slick. Finally we get to see Andy Serkis act in a movie. Or not.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Source Code…and, for that matter, Avatar. Recently in Hollywood, the physiological capabilities of our heroic protagonists have owed a great deal to modern medicine and technology, specifically from the military. Whether it be the unique opportunity provided for the paraplegic Jake Sully in Avatar, the incredible and unwanted responsibility of the nearly-dead Colter Stevens in Source Code, or the intravenous hyper-bulking of Steve Rogers in Captain America: The First Avenger, Hollywood has given us a spate of unlikely protagonists connected specifically by the fact that their initial disabilities provide for them a unique opportunity to become exceptionally enabled.

Recently Fox News had a chat with director James Cameron about his upcoming sequels to his biggest-blockbuster-ever, blue-aliens-in-the-rainforest movie Avatar. Strangely enough, they framed the interview around the idea of economic growth for America (which is especially weird given the anti-industry, anti-imperialist message of the first film), but they also managed to get some quotes about his filming plans and how he’s approaching the writing process for the next two films.

As we all know, making stale jokes that have already been made by everyone else is the key to comedy. That’s why Carlos Mencia was so popular. Spinning that same theory into box office cash (albeit not huge piles of it) Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer plan on hitting audiences again with a spoof on Avatar called The Biggest Movie of All Time 3D. Cutting. Edge. Instead of taking the easy, cynical view, perhaps it would be more advantageous to hope for the best here. After all, Friedberg and Seltzer have produced their fair share of movies by now, and even though they’ve fallen into a formula that works for them, maybe they’ve learned enough along the way to craft something that works for a broader comedy audience. Perhaps they’ll populate the movie with long-form humor as well as cultural references and easy jokes. Mayhaps they’ll use their expertise to go in a startling direction just as audiences thought they had them pegged. Peradventure this movie would be their coming out party as two of the most adventurous filmmakers of our modern time. See? That’s how it’s done. Feel free to leave your best Avatar jokes in the comment section. [Coming Soon]

News came over the last couple of days that former visionary director/current enviro-geek James Cameron was going to, instead of directing a new film (wouldn’t want to accidentally make two in a decade), spend millions of dollars and millions of seconds painstakingly bringing 1997s short film Titanic back to the screens, this time in three dimensions. In case you weren’t alive between 1997 and 1999, where Titanic stayed in theaters for a full year, the story has something to do with a boat, a gem, and freezing to death. I’m sure that if you’re reading this site you’ve either seen Titanic or know enough about it to know that you didn’t want to watch it. I have seen it and have no desire to see it again. It’s not a bad film, but it is long as hell and a bit on the melodramatic side. Aside from being responsible for turning Leonardo DiCaprio into a household name and making all my ex-girlfriends put posters of him on their walls, what could be wrong with Titanic coming back to the big screen? Simply put, Titanic 3D is everything wrong with Hollywood in a tight 194 minute package.