Apologies for another Titanic-related post this week, but this one has Mythbusters in it. James Cameron did an interview with IGN in which he talked about the conversion to 3D, yada yada yada... And then a minute before the end of the video, the interviewer asks Cameron if he's aware of the Reddit thread trying to debunk the whole "door couldn't hold both Jack and Rose" thing. Cameron argues that while sheer surface area may have allowed two people to lay on top, physics would not. It flipped when Jack tried to get on, you see. And the filmmaker says that Discovery Channel's Mythbusters will be tackling this mystery of buoyancy on an upcoming episode, and he would like to help them prove that he was right.
I feel like Cameron has actually run this experiment in his own personal laboratory numerous times, and that's why he's so sure of this. (Plus, science totally backs him up.) Though I still think that if Jeremy Sisto played Jack, he not only would have found a way for both him and Kate Winslet to get on that thing, he would have saved both of their lives with sex warmth.
James Cameron: No, There Was Not Room for Two on the ‘Titanic’ Raft [Flavorwire] Read the rest
James Cameron was not kidding when he said he was just going to make Avatar movies for the rest of his life. In an interview with MTV, he discussed plans for a fourth Avatar movie, an idea he'd been throwing around for a while until he realized that he might have a few more years of being alive on the Earth to make more movies, and he might get bored. So, he might as well. Apparently, the plan is to make the fourth movie a prequel to the other three movies, which sounds like something we've seen before that went, well, not that great for the fans. But don't worry -- Battle Angel is still going to happen. Probably. Five years from now. Maybe. Read the rest
James Cameron. Steve Zissou. What is with submarine explorers and little knit caps? Slate investigates. (Via Miriam Goldstein) Read the rest
Movie director, global explorer, and noted badass James Cameron today dove to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, earth's deepest point, using a specially designed submarine. He is the first person to attempt such a dive since 1960. More on the project, and what they hope to accomplish, at the Deep Sea Challenge website.
From National Geographic:
At noon, local time (10 p.m. ET), James Cameron's "vertical torpedo" sub broke the surface of the western Pacific, carrying the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker back from the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep—Earth's deepest, and perhaps most alien, realm.
The first human to reach the 6.8-mile-deep (11-kilometer-deep) undersea valley solo, Cameron arrived at the bottom with the tech to collect scientific data, specimens, and visions unthinkable in 1960, when the only other manned Challenger Deep dive took place, according to members of the National Geographic expedition.
After a faster-than-expected, roughly 70-minute ascent, Cameron's sub, bobbing in the open ocean, was spotted by helicopter and would soon be plucked from the Pacific by a research ship's crane. Earlier, the descent to Challenger Deep had taken 2 hours and 36 minutes.
(Photo: Mark Thiessen, National Geographic) Read the rest
Meet the Deepsea Challenger, a one-man submersible craft capable of withstanding pressures at the deepest point in the ocean—Challenger Deep in the Pacific's Mariana Trench. Sometime in the next few weeks, this sub will carry filmmaker James Cameron into the Challenger Deep. He'll become the third human to visit that place, and the first since a two-man Navy sub made the dive in 1960.
As you see it in this photo, Deepsea Challenger is actually sideways. The sub will fall into and rise out of Challenger Deep in a vertical configuration, with Cameron at the bottom in a spherical steel pod. You can't see the spherical part in this image, but the pod is attached. It's in the end of the craft that's still slightly out of the water—the left-hand side of the photo.
Cameron's descent will be very different from the 1960 expedition, which wasn't able to see much because their craft stirred up so much debris in the bottom of the trench. Deepsea Challenger is designed to avoid this problem and Cameron will also spend a much longer amount of time at the bottom—several hours instead of just 20 minutes. He'll also film 3D footage of the trench, and collect animal and rock specimens.
You can see more pictures of the Deepsea Challenger at National Geographic News.
That site also has a longer story explaining, in more depth (harhar), how the sub will work and how Cameron's expedition contributes to science.
Finally, I'd like to take a minute to apologize to everyone who saw Titanic multiple times in the theater. Read the rest
