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You skipped UP?! That's the best film I've seen in eons!

It's funny you use that example actually. I was watching Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW the other day, and in the final tense sequence where we hear Raymond Burr approaching Jimmy Stewart's apartment, the sound design there is something you couldn't really do in the current surround framework. You could approximate the idea, but there's a simplicity and directness to the way what they chose in a mono framework that simply wouldn't work the same way anymore.

And you're right, it's a two-sided coin. I'm not bemoaning the technology, but if it makes it less possible to tell a certain sort of story, it's worth measuring the cost.

My answer to Ralph: It's not about nostalgia. If the representational abstraction thing doesn't make any sense to you, think of it from a more practical perspective. It's more about wanting there to be real choices when you approach this artform. And there aren't. If you want to make a black and white film on film now, the cost structures approach prohibitive, and you can't get daillies in my country. (You have to send the footage via New York, basically.) So I can only use the 'improvement' that is colour. But not every story I can tell benefits from that choice. My resistance to 3D comes from the fact that I can see the structures that need to support it thoroughly supplanting existing industry structures. The need to rationalise supply businesses and keep them profitable has tended to work against having too many creative options available to filmmakers, so it's likely in 20 years if 3D takes off then it will the standard, and only those with the countless millions will be able to wield it. (Which sounds very good to a Warner Brothers board room, but not so much to the independent filmmaker.)

What it partly is about is skepticism. There is a history of trying to get people back to the cinemas with greater spectacle. I'm not sure how many classics (with the exception of APOCALYPSE NOW and its 5.1 sound) this kind of thinking has ever produced, usually because the technology is favoured over the heart of the matter. I'll always be skeptical of James Cameron in this respect, because the last time he made a dramatic feature, the story at the centre had all the strength of TWILIGHT mixed with THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE.

A third TV Spot.

NOW! THAT IS WHAT THEY HAVE TO DO! THIS KIND OF MARKETING CAMPAIGN: VISIT PANDORA.EXPERIENCE A NEW WORLD IN 3D.

In this trailer they put more images from the planet, so you can imagine how amazing it could be in 3d. Anyway, the music is a little out of place, even if they have tried to do a little bit more familiar oriented trailer.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=60734

PS:Are they scared? because maybe it's too earli for so much tv spots? I dont know...

You can listen to an interview with Lisbeth Scott on www.filmmusicsite.com.
She comments on her work with James Horner on the Avatar score.

Can someone sum up what she says in the interview?

So you don't have 35 minutes to spare mate?

Basically she said people that have no time to listen to interviews will burn in hell. That about sums it up!

You can also skip the music at certain points, another 10 minutes off.

For Lisbeth? Why should I? She's good don't get me wrong, but i think the whole Lisbeth scott thing is overrated and i certainly wouldn't sit down to listen to 35 minutes of her talking, esp. since i gather from everybody said that she doesn't really say much...

Yep, I've not heard of her since Titanic. Well she had a dance hit once in the late 90s, what was it called, it had classical music as the melody?

I don't know. I haven't seen any. But I love her version too. Saw her perform it live in the LOTR concert in Oslo in 2005 or thereabouts.

She´s done lots of albums in the meantime (albs? albae?), some classical, some modern-oriented. Extremely beautiful stuff.

I remember seeing her the first time during a "Christmas in Vienna" concert with Placido Domingo and Charles Aznavour. After that concert, we had to check our pulses. If you have any feelings at all for christmas songs AND/OR Sissel, do yourself a favour and check youtube. Some songs from the concert made it there.

I can never tell how good an 'Into the West' performer is. While I love the melody, the lyrics have always felt like they walked out of a James Horner end title song. It's a pity they didn't translate them to a Tolkienesque language so that I wouldn't have to understand them.

It may just have been her performance on the day (I think it was the first time it had been performed by her) - but probably I'm just too used to the Lennox version, which I think is fabulous.

I can sympathise with Franz's point - many a fine song has been spoiled by me being able to understand the lyrics! (Though I think in this case they're rather further along the evolutionary scale than most of those which accompany James Horner songs.)

I will charm you with a sentimental gesture when next I see you, Thor. Not having a sweet and weary head myself (just a weary head), this sort of thing goes in one ear and out the other with me. There is one line I like about 'silver glass' though, which begins to approximate the great unknowns the song tries to put into words.

With the benefit of hindsight, my respect for the whole LOTR project is tempered quite a bit by its embrace of the charms of New Age music. It greases the rails for a lot of people to fall under the spell, but I do wonder what gravitas the approach of a Goldenthal, Corigliano or Adams might have had.

Enya... Celtic chic... Elizabeth Fraser... Annie Lennox at her dreamiest... the Sissel/Liv Tyler songs.. the often hymnal diatonic emphasis ... it probably only accounts for 20% of the score, but it's a big clue that a pack of Wellington-based artists made the film.