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back to article Avatar attracts nine Oscar nods

James Cameron's sci-fi epic Avatar has been nominated for nine Oscars, and will battle for the best film title with nine other titles, including the The Hurt Locker, directed by the Titanic helmsman's former wife Kathryn Bigelow, and itself up for nine statuettes. The list of potential best movie laureates has been expanded …

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  1. EddieD

    Best Picture?

    That'd be like giving Obama the Nobel Pea..... ah, as you were...

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  2. SuperTim

    best original screenplay....

    goes to pocohontas!

    http://www.buzzfeed.com/reddit/james-camerons-pocohontas-err-avatar

    Ha ha!

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    1. markp 1
      Reply Icon
      Pint

      actually

      there's a whole TON of films this can be easily applied to if you choose the right stuff. not only is it because it's something of a universal truth anyway (there are only 7 or 8 core "stories" in the world, goes the narriative adage, and the devil is in how you put icing on top of their cake), but also because Avatar seems both stylistically and narriatively to be a tasty stew of about 40 years worth of epic sci fi and fantasy films... Cameron having - perhaps subconciously - picked and chosen various neat touches or threads from here and there to throw into his movie. Only somewhere he forgot to stir and add a pinch of salt. But never mind... it's still great eye candy if not very filling.

      Most obviously we have analogues of Alien and Titanic, but also pretty much the entire studio Ghibli back catalogue and a ton of others.

      (on that note, once we're done going off on a tangent to compare Disneys Atlantis with the earlier Nadia Secret of Blue Water for balance, I'd like to see if much of Pocahontas or Avatar is visible in Princess Mononoke... been quite a while since I've seen either of them)

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  3. Peter Kay

    No surprise it's not inline for the screenplay award..

    I'd happily agree it could win for visual effects, art direction and possibily for cinematography. The remainder? You're avin a larf, aintcha?

    As a 3D spectacle it's magnificent, but as an action film entirely predictable and extremely average. The music was so forgettable I can barely remember it. Last of the Mohicans will be remembered for many years beyond Avatar if there's any justice in the world.

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    1. Big-nosed Pengie
      Reply Icon

      Average?

      High praise.

      And what - there was music in it?

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      1. Peter Kay
        Reply Icon

        I was being kind

        Action films aren't exactly known for wonderful plots, although Avatar barely manages to reach even that standard.

        The real pity is that JC has written and directed Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator and (to a slightly lesser extent) Terminator 2, all of which were decent films. Some people are unkind enough to say that he's caught the George Lucas disease, but his standard of output is far in excess of George's.

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  4. Blake St. Claire
    Thumb Down

    That's a relief

    | It's not, we note, in the running for Writing (Original Screenplay) gold.

    Considering it's just a rehash of Aliens -- Cameron's contribution to the Alien franchise.

    And we didn't even get to see Sigourney's breasts this time out.

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    1. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)
      Reply Icon

      Re: That's a relief

      You see a bit of Michelle Rodriguez's though. Kinda.

      The screenplay is lousy, but it's just about forgivable given how extraordinary the rest of it is. I hope Bigelow gets her due, though, and I don't think Avatar really deserves to totally clean up, although it probably will.

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  5. Steve John
    Happy

    Don't recall...

    ... Ms Weaver getting her wabs out in Aliens.

    Michelle Rodriguez's do look good in 3D though.

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    1. rhdunn
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Don't recall...

      Especially in the blue war paint during the final fight sequence :D

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  6. Gavin 2
    FAIL

    Boring

    I can't have been the only one that bored out of mind by the end. Good graphics but the rest was tedious and up its own ar$e

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  7. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    Either way Cameron can't lose...

    Don't get me wrong I've liked all of KBs movies, but you can see JCs influence in all of them, from Point Break, through Strange Days, K19 and now in Hurt Locker.

    She'd still be directing 3 minute music promos if it were not for him.

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    1. Will Leamon
      Reply Icon

      A valid title...

      And you can see Homer's influence in every story ever told. Influences are not a bad thing. I thought Hurt Locker was a bad story but everything else about the writing completely destroys Avatar.

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  8. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: Boring

    Ah, a sensitive soul.

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  9. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: Either way Cameron can't lose...

    It's true what they say - behind every successful woman is a man who is actually in front of her, see, it just looked like the other way around from where you were standing.

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  10. Disco-Legend-Zeke
    Go

    Is there some prize for...

    ...most deaths in audience?

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  11. Richard 120

    Still not seen it

    I guess it's an advantage to having young kids, not having to be completely dissapointed by invariably over hyped rubbish, not that it necessarily is of course.

    I don't get to go to the cinema any more you see, and I don't have time to trawl for torrents (more time looking for content than using the content)

    I'll wait for the DVD/Bluray or sky box office release and THEN I'll be disappointed, but by then the hype will have died down and I wont be as disappointed.

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    1. Cameron Colley
      Reply Icon

      If I "find" it I'll watch it, just to say I have.

      But I'm not buying it on DVD since everyone says "there's no point in watching it on DVD" which, to me, means its a shit film.

      A good film could be watched in black and white with a mono soundtrack and still captivate the viewer.

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    2. markp 1
      Reply Icon
      Unhappy

      awwww

      Seeing it at the IMAX, 100 ft high in 4k-rez 3D, is one of the few reasons to go out of your way to watch it :) I think it'll probably lose something in transfer to the small screen, in a way that, e.g. Mamma Mia almost certainly didn't.

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  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I hope that Avatar doesn't win best picture

    Definitely thought it was simplistic and derivative as far as the quality of the movie goes. I have no problem with the other technical awards.

    The Hurt Locker was the best movie I saw this last year.

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  13. Blake St. Claire

    @Steve John

    | I don't recall Ms Weaver getting her wabs out in Aliens.

    thin, damp, t-shirt -- might as well have been.

    | Michelle Rodriguez's do look good in 3D though.

    I'm not going to sit through it a second time---

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  14. Doug Glass
    Thumb Down

    The Real Winner is ...

    ... Poul Anderson with his 1957 story, "Call Me Joe" which happens to be the source of the whole idea. Too bad Cameron chose to lie and let people think he actually originated it.

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    1. markp 1
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      wow

      Long time since I've heard that name.

      You could also maybe say it's an inside out version of the High Crusade...

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  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    is tarantino jimmy off south park?

    dont worry its up against that appallingly trashy tarantino job so will lose everything apart from best effects and tea making facilities.

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  16. Kimo
    Grenade

    Nice box, no present.

    Every category it is nominated in is about the spectacle, not the content. No writing or acting nods at all. Pretty much fitting for what it is: a big, pretty, but ultimately empty, shell.

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  17. J 3
    Heart

    Not bad...

    I liked Avatar, very entertaining and it did not feel like the 2:30h it actually was. To me.

    But I believe Original Score (was there music in it, really?), Best Picture, and Director should not have been included in the nominations. Unless direction of mostly CGI counts, which it might. To be a "Best Picture", I'd say it has to be well balanced -- and for that, it would need to have a plot that is at least decent, which Avatar did not have. Simplistic, maniquean, heavy on Rousseau's noble savage BS, and exaggerates on the tree hugging references every 5 minutes.

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  18. Neur0mancer
    Happy

    Ahh

    I hope District 9 wins everything. That shit was off the hook.

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    1. SuperTim
      Reply Icon

      Indeed.

      Though your streetslang makes it sound like it is poorly-made, non-bespoke clothing,

      Word to your mother!

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    2. Steve John
      Reply Icon

      D9

      District 9 and Moon were the best sci-fi films I've seen for a long (long) time.

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  19. Dr Patrick J R Harkin

    I can't help feeling...

    ...that it woul dhav ebeen better if they had used real aliens, and CGI'ed the scriptwriters.

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  20. Bill Fresher
    Thumb Up

    Bullock

    Nice to see Sandra Bullock being recognised for her extraordinary skills as an actress.

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  21. Mursu
    Thumb Down

    Ah, the great oscar review.

    We should appreciate the oscars. They let us know what not to watch. I mean, the more oscars, the less value. That's how it seems to have been for a while now. And no, Avatar most certainly does not require the oscars :D the movie's done so well allready that i think JC can smile all the way to the bank you know? But yeah, District 9 and Moon are the scifi flicks that deserve the oscars (if it were a price worth having, but after checking, Phantom Menace received no oscars, only 3 nominations. There is hope?). Not Camerons treehugging suicide inducing diatribe about the greed of the white man. And when it comes to the soundtrack, i thought he had just taken it out of Aliens. Besides, who needs oscars when you have a mountain in China, HALLELUJAH!

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