Image: WENN.com

Actress Gloria Stuart died on Sunday at her home in West Los Angeles at the age of 100. Though the actress starred in a number of films in the 1930s, you probably know Stuart from her Oscar-nominated performance as the 101-year-old version of Kate Winslet’s character Rose in the 1997 film, “Titanic.”

According to her daughter, Stuart had been diagnosed with lung cancer several years ago.

Stuart had pretty much abandoned acting when a casting director contacted her to audition for the part in James Cameron’s “Titanic.” She joked that she got the part because she was one of the few actresses available at that age who was “still viable, not alcoholic, rheumatic or falling down.”

Post from: EveryJoe

It took me awhile to finally get into the theater and enjoy the movie. I went to see it twice and both times it was sold-out in the showing I hoped to view. Continuing to be sold out in a theater where each seat is $15 says quite a bit about the success of a movie. The $500B and awards received also agree.

I had just read an article about the technology that James Cameron had developed to bring his movie to reality. The article discussed the “uncanny valley” in working with CGI human-like forms. If the face doesn’t look right, the reality is lost to the viewer. There was no reality lost from my perspective. In fact, I had to keep reminding myself that the majority of everything I was seeing on the screen didn’t exist anywhere other than the hard drive of computers during development.

I thought the story was believable but the actors could have been developed a little bit more. However, I understand this movie was more about the visuals than the character development. The visuals didn’t disappoint either.

Watching the movie in IMAX and 3-D made the experience almost as completely immersive as you could dream. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, do yourself a favor and go see it. If you have the option of catching the show in IMAX and 3-D, do it! It’s worth it.

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Among Panasonic and Fox’s intentions are plans to bring customized tractor trailers that hold 103-inch Panasonic VIERA Plasma HDTVs (pictured) and Blu-ray Disc Players. Consumers will get a taste of both 3D images from the movie, and Panasonic’s 3D home theater tech.

Avatar is set on the distant moon Pandora, where a reluctant hero embarks on a journey of redemption and discovery as he leads a heroic battle to save a civilization. Panasonic’s team-up with Fox to promote the movie was preceded by support from Panasonic hardware throughout its filming.

Panasonic VIERA 103″ image: Zuma Press. Avatar image: 20th Century Fox.

Post from: EveryJoe

For the true geeks among us, there could be no bigger event at Comic-Con than uber-director James Cameron showing up to promote his shrouded-in-secrecy new project, Avatar. Not a single frame of footage, not one rendering or piece of concept art has been shown from the film. Until today.

Cameron chose Comic-Con 2009 as the venue at which to unveil Avatar to the world, and he did not disappoint, delivering an in-depth preview of the film that stacked up at about 25 minutes of total footage! The film, which details a human war against an alien race set on their homeworld of Pandora, is rich with infinite details and the most photo-realistic CGI work I’ve ever seen. Even the main characters are largely rendered as CGI, but it is impeccably done — and it was shown in the 3D technology that Cameron himself helped to invent and perfect. It’s a staggering achievement, a bold new step into a new frontier for cinema.

I have the full panel for you below, along with a few pictures, but the biggest news came at the very end: Cameron announced that 15 minutes of Avatar will be shown in theaters, IMAX, and select 3D digital screens on August 21st entirely for free. He called it a new “social media” experiment, sort of a big-budget attempt at creating viral word-of-mouth. It’s being named “Avatar Day.” If what they show in those 15 minutes resembles the stuff we saw today, I’d advise you run to the nearest theater on 8/21 and see this for yourselves.

Get all the latest Comic-Con updates as they happen! follow me on Twitter!

Post from: EveryJoe

Monday evening brought the much-anticipated Ubisoft press conference, hosted by The Soup‘s Joel McHale. (I plan on putting together a highlight reel of McHale’s best moments, which I’ll share with you soon.) Take a look at a just few of the highlights.

Red Steel II shows a completely new art style and narrative direction. It’s also made to work with the new Wii Motion Plus. Take a look.

A very special and unexpected treat arrived in the form of legendary film director James Cameron, who was on hand to talk about his anticipated film Avatar, and the game Ubisoft is making to accompany it. Ubisoft is branching out into film effects in addition to game making, and Avatar is the first film to take advantage of the studio’s talents, as Cameron explains. Cameron also gives a detailed synopsis of the until-now top secret Avatar storyline.

Unfortunately, my video ran out of battery power (no jabs, please — this was the third back-to-back press conference of the day!) after the Red Steel demo, and I wasn’t able to capture the Rabbids Go Home demo. But it looked really fun — more of a platformer/Mario kind of gameplay through different levels than the minigames the prior Rabbids games are known for.

For Assassin’s Creed II demo footage, see the Sony press conference.

Post from: EveryJoe