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Cutting costs for Avatar films

Actress Judi Dench says sight loss ‘crusher’ OSCAR-WINNER and James Bond star Judi Dench has said sight loss due to macular degeneration means she can no longer see faces clearly, calling the condition a “crusher” as she marked her 91st birthday last week. The veteran star of stage and screen, whose role as “M” in eight Bond films shot her to global fame, has suffered from the degenerative eye condition for over a decade. Last year, she disclosed it had reached the point where she had effectively been forced to retire. Since then, a further deterioration means she can now only see faces – even at close quarters – “in a fog”. She still puts the television on but just to listen to, she added in the interview with the Radio Times listings magazine to mark her birthday. Dench, nominated seven times for an Academy Award, won for best supporting actress in 1998 for her eight-minute turn as Queen Elizabeth I in the romantic period piece Shakespeare in Love . Also an acclaimed stage actress, she said she can still remember reams of Shakespeare but “can’t remember what I’m doing tomorrow” and admits to worrying about cognitive decline. Asked about Hollywood star Kevin Spacey, a longstanding friend with whom she acted in the 2001 film The Shipping News , Dench was quick to give him her backing. Spacey is currently facing a civil battle in the UK over sexual assault allegations after being acquitted of similar accusations in criminal proceedings in 2023. “Kevin has been exonerated and I hear from Kevin, we text,” she said. She was more reticent about disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, whose predatory sexual behaviour she has in the past condemned. Weinstein was the producer of Shakespeare in Love and became a friend. “I imagine he’s done his time. “I don’t know, to me, it’s personal – forgiveness. I just think..,” she said, her voice trailing off. – AFP

he said. Avatar: Fire and Ash , distributed by Disney, is scheduled to debut in cinemas on Friday, continuing the saga of the blue Na’vi people. Sam Worthington plays Jake Sully, and Zoe Saldana portrays his wife Neytiri. All three of the Avatar films that have been completed

F OR James Cameron, following the release of the 2025 movie Avatar: Fire and Ash , it is it is o Future of franchise depends on making production cheaper

utilise advanced motion capture technology, requiring large scale budgets. C a m e r o n worries that with the popularisation of streaming platforms, less people will see films in the cinemas, including his Avatar mot t e c req sca wo wit po pl pe fil th i h p projects. However, he r e m a i n s optimistic. “I still think people want to go have that deeper, more H r p

imperative to cut costs for future Avatar franchise films. If the Canadian and New Zealand filmmaker cannot find a way to make the cost of production “cheaper”, he may be “doing something else” before getting to the fourth and fifth Avatar films that he has previously announced plans for. “There are g h r e y

Director Cameron (left) and Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman attend the premiere for the film. – REUTERSPIC

“I plastered burn victims all over my trailer, which was horrific,” said Oona Chaplin, who portrays the new antagonist named Varang, the Na’vi leader of the volcano-dwelling clan. While she said she does not think she would do that again, it did help her channel some of her character’s anger and grief. Similarly, Saldana, who reprises her role as Neytiri, said that being a real-life mother helped her channel Neytiri’s grief after losing a child. Cameron applauded each actors’ authentic performance, noting that Avatar does not use any generative artificial intelligence to develop films. – Reuters

Avatar: Fire and Ash movie poster. – PICS FROM INSTAGRAM @AVATAR

profound experience that you have when you can’t pause it (a movie). The second you can pause it, you lose that,” the Oscar-winner said. For the cast members, it was meaningful to find emotional connections to their characters to keep themselves immersed in the fictional world.

many, many variables ahead of us before we can talk about four and five and beyond. “It’s a universe, like the (George) Lucas universe, for example, it’s open-ended. I’ve only imagined a few more stories. Maybe it continues. Maybe it doesn’t,”

Saldana reprises her role as Neytiri in the new instalment.

Hollywood meets world in upcoming Sundance line-up HOLLYWOOD A-listers Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde and Russell Crowe will rub shoulders with some of cinema’s best and brightest new talent at the Sundance film festival next month, organisers said. signs of optimism at a time when we are looking at some real challenges in the sector, that notable actors continue to want to be involved in these projects,” he said.

Sundance received more than 16,000 submissions, whittling them down to 90 feature-length films, with 40% of them from first-time feature directors. All but a handful of the titles that will be screened in the festival’s snow-capped Rocky Mountain base will be world premieres, selected from 164 countries and territories around the globe. The strong international line-up includes films from traditional cinematic powerhouses such as Britain, in the form of the debut feature Extra Geography from director Molly Manners, and queer genre film Leviticus from Australia. But it also includes offerings from places the audience might be less familiar with, such as Hanging by a Wire , a nail-biting race to save schoolboys dangling from a stranded cable car in the Himalayan foothills. Hold On to Me from Cyprus tells the story of an 11-year-old tracking down her estranged father, while documentary Kikuyu Land from Kenya examines how powerful outside forces use local corruption to dispossess a people. Sundance, which runs from Jan 22 to Feb 1, 2026, is being held in Utah for the final time before a move to Boulder, Colorado in 2027. – AFP

The first edition of the festival since the death in September of founder Robert Redford will see a firmament of stars descend on Park City, Utah for one of the most important gatherings in the global movie calendar. “I think that this is going to be such a celebratory year and a very special one. “Any time you can bring together such an eclectic group of artists and storytellers... I think about Charli XCX and Billie Jean King, Salman Rushdie, Rinko Kikuchi together... it’s such a special (group) of people that we can have on the mountain,” Sundance director of programming Kim Yutani said. A rich vein of comedy runs through this year’s programme, said Yutani. “There are films that are looking at things in a kind of more quirky and unique way, such as The History of Concrete by John Wilson, which is going to have its own enthusiastic audience,” she said. The documentary traces Wilson’s efforts to sell a film about building materials after attending a workshop on how to write and sell a Hallmark movie. The laughs continue with Seth Rogen and Edward Norton in The

Some of Hollywood’s brightest talents are headed to the Sundance film festival next month. – AFPPIC

desperate curator tries to sell a dead body at Art Basel Miami. International With the movie industry still struggling to find its feet after successive blows from the streaming revolution, the Covid pandemic and Hollywood strikes that crippled Tinseltown in 2023, the involvement of such famous faces is a vote of confidence in independent filmmaking, said festival programmer John Nein. “When you see Chris Pine and Jenny Slate in Carousel , or when you see Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan in Josephine ... that’s one of the

Invite , opposite Olivia Wilde, who also directs. The script, co-written by Rashida Jones ( Parks and Recreation ), deals with a couple whose mysterious neighbours come over for dinner. Meanwhile, Mad Men stars Hamm and John Slattery reunite in Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass , where a Midwestern bride-to-be rampages through Hollywood in an effort to even the score after her fiance uses the couple’s “free celebrity pass” on his famous crush. In The Gallerist , starring Oscar winners Natalie Portman and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, along with Jenna Ortega and Sterling K. Brown, a

Dench holding an Oscar. – AFPPIC