'Avatar' Is Coming...

After years of waiting, the first footage from James Cameron's "Avatar" was screened to public for the very first time in Amsterdam as part of the Cinema Expo International.

These are some of the thoughts from members of the audience who saw the footage from UCSNord: "Footage from Avatar at #cinexpo was stunning, literally jawdropping. Amazing visuals unlike any before seen, with incredible detail." "CGI was photorealistic, characters look really real. Believe the hype, this movie will be massive!" James Cameron himself was there to present the footage along with his actors Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana and Stephen Lang. "Three years ago, I stood up here and said the 3-D renaissance is coming," Cameron said. "And from what we've seen in the business, we can now say it has arrived."

In introducing the 24-minute assemblage, Cameron said much of it came from the first third of the film but that there were also glimpses from unfinished portions of later battle scenes involving warring sides clashing over control of the fantasy world Pandora.

The filmmaker also said the action gets nonstop in the latter portions of the film, which throughout is populated by strange life-forms in a world of unprecedentedly rich fantasy elements. Worthington plays an avatar -- a remote-controlled character created by melding his crippled human form into a super-human being -- whose fate lies ultimately in doing battle with his own former race.

Fox made media covering the event agree not to report details of the "Avatar" images or to interview audience members for reactions. But from the sustained applause at the conclusion of the presentation, suffice to say Fox didn't hurt itself at the event.

"Avatar" is set to open around the world on Dec. 18, though it's become sport in Hollywood to speculate on whether the famously painstaking filmmaker will wrap the production in time. Cameron's high-profile promo appearance should go a long way toward soothing any anxieties.

Even more news on this event comes from MarketSaw: "What is most important about this movie: Everything lives and breathes. The tree in the scene with the sacred seeds glowed. Not the bast, but the tree underneath glowed like a living thing. Jake encounters plants which look like a kid's slide which shrink when he touches them. Little fireflies and birds fly through the shots without being there. You just take them as the world, like a dove in Central Park. It's not placed there, it lives there and just happens to be in the shot."

How big is the hype for this movie? It is huge.
More news to come! Catch ya' later!
Sources: Latino Review, First Showing