/Film has written about conlangs -- or constructed languages -- several times in the past. Hardcore "Avatar" fans may recall that language Professor Paul Frommer helped construct the Na'vi language for James Cameron's franchise. (Frommer was also behind the Barsoomian language heard in "John Carter.") Additionally, any good Trekkie will definitely be able to name Marc Okrand, the author of the extensive Klingon language, perhaps the most widely spoken of all conlangs. And, of course, readers of "Lord of the Rings" likely know that J.R.R. Tolkien based Quenya, his fictional Elf language, on the structure and syntax of Finnish. Space aliens and fantasy cultures have long allowed linguists to play around.
Although it may not be as celebrated or slavishly structured as Klingon or Dothraki (authored by David J. Peterson), Star Wars has its own conlang: Ewok. In 1982, during the production of the soon-to-be-hit film "Return of the Jedi,...
Although it may not be as celebrated or slavishly structured as Klingon or Dothraki (authored by David J. Peterson), Star Wars has its own conlang: Ewok. In 1982, during the production of the soon-to-be-hit film "Return of the Jedi,...
- 5/2/2023
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
Zack Snyder's 2013 film "Man of Steel" is a retelling of the Superman origin story. As with the 1978 Richard Donner film "Superman," "Man of Steel" begins on the distant planet of Krypton which is nearly due for its apocalyptic destruction. The scientist and scholar Jor-El (Russell Crowe) pleas with his planet's government to do something about it, warning that the end is nigh. They refuse him. At the same time, a military coup is underway at the hands of the violent General Zod (Michael Shannon). Things are not looking good for the planet. Jor-El, wanting to save his infant son from the planet's destruction, loads the baby Kal-El into a rocket and launches him toward an unknown planet called Earth. It's a pretty well-known piece of trivia that Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster loosely modeled their character's story after Moses in the book of Exodus. Instead of being sent down a river,...
- 1/13/2023
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
After 13 years, the blockbuster sequel Avatar: The Way of Water has finally been unleashed into the world, earning 441.6 million worldwide in its opening weekend. It is the first of four planned sequels from filmmaker James Cameron and came at a cost of 350 million, making it the most expensive motion picture ever.
The first Avatar film is set in the year 2154. With Earth dying, the Rda corporation has been mining the valuable mineral unobtanium on Pandora, a far-off moon filled with lush forests inhabited by the Na’vi, a race of...
The first Avatar film is set in the year 2154. With Earth dying, the Rda corporation has been mining the valuable mineral unobtanium on Pandora, a far-off moon filled with lush forests inhabited by the Na’vi, a race of...
- 12/19/2022
- by Sabrina Torres and Jennifer Jiang
- Rollingstone.com
Anytime an actor like Willem Dafoe signs on to play the villain in a superhero movie or lend his voice to a fish for Pixar, my knee-jerk reaction is that he's doing it for the paycheck. I mean, how could these roles possibly challenge a man who's played Jesus and countless other memorable characters from movies like Platoon, American Psycho and Antichrist? I didn't feel much different when I heard he'd be providing performance capture for a Martian warrior in Disney's John Carter. Let's face it, aliens aren't always depicted as the most complex creatures in film. But Dafoe's character, Tars Tarkas, is an entirely different breed, he's a character audiences will identify with just as much as any of the film's human characters, perhaps more so in some cases. "It's pretty clear that because of how he looks and how he functions at the beginning, you think he's going to be a bad guy.
- 3/5/2012
- by Kevin Blumeyer
- Rope of Silicon
Andrew Stanton's Introduction to Edgar Rice Burrough's original text:
Andrew Stanton: I must have been ten or twelve when I first read it. If I’m giving full disclosure, I first read the adaptation that Marvel Comics did in the 70’s. I was fascinated by those and that lead me to wonder what the origin was. I went to the books and I had a friend with many older brothers. They were always drawing these nine-foot tall, four-armed, green-tusked creatures. I said, “What the heck are those?” They said, “Those are Tharks!” and they’d tell me about them. So it was always a series of books that I loved from a very young age. I just always, as a fan of going to the movies, wanted someone to put it up on the screen. Pretty much my entire life between ten and maybe about six years ago was,...
Andrew Stanton: I must have been ten or twelve when I first read it. If I’m giving full disclosure, I first read the adaptation that Marvel Comics did in the 70’s. I was fascinated by those and that lead me to wonder what the origin was. I went to the books and I had a friend with many older brothers. They were always drawing these nine-foot tall, four-armed, green-tusked creatures. I said, “What the heck are those?” They said, “Those are Tharks!” and they’d tell me about them. So it was always a series of books that I loved from a very young age. I just always, as a fan of going to the movies, wanted someone to put it up on the screen. Pretty much my entire life between ten and maybe about six years ago was,...
- 2/9/2012
- UGO Movies
The "The Jazz Singer" launched the age of the "talkie" for film in 1927, and ever since then spoken language has been a part of watching movies, no matter how goofy or totally made up it may be. Today, we salute the filmmakers and actors out there who have gone to the next level and brought entirely new rules for speech and grammar to the big screen.
William Shatner gets an honorable shout-out for his work learning Esperanto for "Incubus" in 1966, but our ten favorite fictional film languages of all time get even crazier. They are funny, occasionally creepy and almost always put more pressure on their subtitles, but all of these foreign tongues defined their movies and breathed life into their elaborately imagined cultures.
[#10-6] [#5-1] [Index]
10. Martian, "Mars Attacks!" (1996)
The aliens in this Tim Burton cameo-orgy spoke with a vocabulary just slightly bigger than that of the teacher in the "Peanuts" cartoons,...
William Shatner gets an honorable shout-out for his work learning Esperanto for "Incubus" in 1966, but our ten favorite fictional film languages of all time get even crazier. They are funny, occasionally creepy and almost always put more pressure on their subtitles, but all of these foreign tongues defined their movies and breathed life into their elaborately imagined cultures.
[#10-6] [#5-1] [Index]
10. Martian, "Mars Attacks!" (1996)
The aliens in this Tim Burton cameo-orgy spoke with a vocabulary just slightly bigger than that of the teacher in the "Peanuts" cartoons,...
- 9/19/2011
- by IFC
- ifc.com
Today sees the release of the biggest and best selling movie of all time in the form of the Avatar Extended Collector’s Edition. This edition is seen to be the definitive and after you see everything that’s included on the three Blu-rays (scroll to the bottom of this post), you’ll see why! 6 weeks ago, I was invited by the very nice people at Twentieth Century Fox to go along to a ‘press’ day (that’s right people, I am now press!) hosted by Avatar Director, James Cameron and Producer, John Landau to find out everything there is to know about Avatar, the way it was made and to meet the people behind each part of the movie.
During the event, there were 10 different presentations which ranged from how the 3d worked to how the Na’vi language was created. This all happened after an introduction from James Cameron...
During the event, there were 10 different presentations which ranged from how the 3d worked to how the Na’vi language was created. This all happened after an introduction from James Cameron...
- 11/15/2010
- by David Sztypuljak
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Melbourne, Oct 19 – Avatar’s Na’vi language is gradually becoming a rage, with online communities springing up to teach it and a recent Us invitation-only convention garnering avid fans from as far as Europe.
The language’s creator Professor Paul Frommer said he did not underestimate the power of the Internet in fuelling people’s desire to learn the language spoken by the fictional Na’vi people who inhabit the planet Pandora in the 2009 James Cameron film.
It has even been picked up by television-musical phenomenon Glee, with new student Sam Evans uttering a phrase that sparked pages of Na’vi.
The language’s creator Professor Paul Frommer said he did not underestimate the power of the Internet in fuelling people’s desire to learn the language spoken by the fictional Na’vi people who inhabit the planet Pandora in the 2009 James Cameron film.
It has even been picked up by television-musical phenomenon Glee, with new student Sam Evans uttering a phrase that sparked pages of Na’vi.
- 10/19/2010
- by realbollywood
- RealBollywood.com
James Cameron's sci-fi epic sells 6.7m copies on DVD and Blu-ray in four days, becoming the fastest-selling home entertainment release of all time in the Us
Avatar has beaten The Dark Knight to become the fastest-selling home entertainment release of all time in the Us. It sold 6.7m copies in four days – 4m on DVD and 2.7m on Blu-ray – racking up $130m (£84.1m) for studio 20th Century Fox.
It was released in the Us and Canada on Earth Day, 22 April, to chime with Avatar's environmental theme. In the UK, Avatar made its debut on DVD today, with some stores – including flagship HMVs and Tescos – opening at midnight to serve queueing fans.
Meanwhile, a UK fan has been named as the man behind a pioneering online Na'vi-English dictionary. Richard Littauer, a 21-year-old linguistics student from Edinburgh, told the Sun that he published the dictionary after being contacted by Paul Frommer,...
Avatar has beaten The Dark Knight to become the fastest-selling home entertainment release of all time in the Us. It sold 6.7m copies in four days – 4m on DVD and 2.7m on Blu-ray – racking up $130m (£84.1m) for studio 20th Century Fox.
It was released in the Us and Canada on Earth Day, 22 April, to chime with Avatar's environmental theme. In the UK, Avatar made its debut on DVD today, with some stores – including flagship HMVs and Tescos – opening at midnight to serve queueing fans.
Meanwhile, a UK fan has been named as the man behind a pioneering online Na'vi-English dictionary. Richard Littauer, a 21-year-old linguistics student from Edinburgh, told the Sun that he published the dictionary after being contacted by Paul Frommer,...
- 4/26/2010
- by Catherine Shoard
- The Guardian - Film News
What actor almost played Jake Sully? Who did Sigourney Weaver channel to play her character? How much did the highest-grossing film of all time really make?
In honor of the Blu-ray and DVD releases of "Avatar" on Earth Day, here are some fun facts about the movie that forever changed filmmaking!
"Avatar" Fun FactsLots of Dough
James Cameron originally planned to have the film completed for release in 1999. At the time, the special effects he...
In honor of the Blu-ray and DVD releases of "Avatar" on Earth Day, here are some fun facts about the movie that forever changed filmmaking!
"Avatar" Fun FactsLots of Dough
James Cameron originally planned to have the film completed for release in 1999. At the time, the special effects he...
- 4/22/2010
- Extra
It is said that some Native American cultures had no word for “time.” Also, that many Asian languages have no simple word for “brother.” And up until about two years ago, the Na’vi people had no word for “ass,” which was ruining a scene for what would become the biggest movie of all time. Nobody knew that the Na’vi lacked that word until James Cameron decided that Sam Worthington’s character — in avatar mode — should tell a story about how one of Pandora’s bloodthirsty predators nearly bit...
- 4/18/2010
- by By LARRY GETLEN
- NYPost.com
"It was sort of a three-tiered job for me, in that I was brought on initially to develop a dialect," says dialect coach Carla Meyer on the telephone from Albuquerque, N.M., where she's working with Australian actor Sullivan Stapleton on a television pilot in which he plays a Las Vegas policeman. But what's this about "a three-tiered job" and developing a dialect? It's Meyer explaining how she taught the Na'vi of Pandora to speak.Meyer's the one James Cameron hired in 2006 to fill an extremely particular assignment on what's now the biggest-grossing movie of all time, "Avatar." As she puts it about the 2006 start for a 2009 release, "For a dialect coach, that's extremely early." On the other hand, the task was enormous—preparing to instruct actors in a language that had already been created by University of Southern California linguist Paul Frommer from a few words that director-writer Cameron slotted in his "Avatar" script.
- 4/9/2010
- backstage.com
This modern era of moviemaking has plenty of peculiar challenges for actors -- on green-screen sets, for instance, they have to watch a ping-pong ball hanging from a string and convince the camera that they actually staring down some magical beastie -- but for the actors auditioning for "Avatar" the biggest challenge may have been reading a sheet of paper with words invented by a USC professor named Paul R. Frommer. Frommer, a linguistics specialist, was brought in by "Avatar" writer-director James Cameron to create an entire functioning language for the tribe of 10-foot-tall blue aliens who inhabit Pandora, the setting for the film's conflict. Frommer tackled the project with glee -- "How often do you get an opportunity like this?" -- but the actors who had bend their tongues around the invented vocabulary and syntax were slightly less charmed by...
- 11/26/2009
- by Los Angeles Times
- Huffington Post
James Cameron is a seriously detail-oriented guy. Every major profile of the filmmaker written since Avatar has hit the promo trail has pointed that out, whether via anecdotes about making minor tweaks to technology designs, foliage coloration or the physics of CGI breasts. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that Cameron hired a linguist to create an actual alien language for the giant blue Na'vi. The result is as close to a real working language as any newly-minted fake sound system is likely to get. And the guy behind it all hopes that his creation will live on after the film. The La Times reports that USC professor Paul R. Frommer is the man behind the 1000-word vocabulary and grammar structure of the Na'vi language. Cameron came to him with a few dozen words, and Frommer worked out from there. There were a few core concerns. One was the...
- 11/23/2009
- by Russ Fischer
- Slash Film
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