A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Avatar (2009) Written and directed by James Cameron Starring: Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Zoe Saldana Although writer-director James Cameron didn't exactly vanish into thin air after his 1997 boffo hit  Titanic  earned a roomful of Oscars and a small bank's worth of box office "take," it seemed that the guy had gone off into a Howard Hughes-like state of reclusion, at least artistically speaking. Of course, Cameron did  not  retire to some Pacific Ocean island to sip mai-tais and bask on a sun-soaked beach; he has been quite active making documentaries, producing TV series ( Dark Angel ) and prepping quite a few movie projects, including two sequels to Avatar. His 2009 science-fiction movie,  Avatar, was Cameron's first feature film in 12 years.  Like Titanic , it was very expensive to make ($230 million), partly because Cameron had to develop new computer graphic techniques, and partly because of the ambitious s...

Star Trek Beyond (2016) Written by Simon Pegg & Doug Jung Directed by Justin Lin Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban,  Simon Pegg, John Cho, Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin, Sofia Boutella, and Idris Elba Star Trek is perhaps one of the most successful franchises of all time, and maybe even one of the luckiest, at that. Considering that it got its start as a science fiction television series which only aired for three seasons on NBC, Gene Roddenberry's creation went on to spin off five television series (including Star Trek: The Animated Series ) and 13 feature films. Not including Paramount/CBS Studios' income from the various TV shows, Star Trek - the franchise's film element, anyway, - has earned $2,266, 473, 168 at the global box office. ($1,400,952,879 of that comes from the North American domestic market.) Thus it's not surprising that Paramount asked producer J.J. Abrams to give fans a new Star Trek film set in the alternate (or Kelvin) timel...