James Cameron and the case of the Alberta oil sands

James Cameron, the world’s most powerful human, came to visit my home province of Alberta, Canada this week, and indeed, even my sort-of-home-town of Edmonton. The trip was a fact finding mission for the Canadian-born director, who wanted a closer look at the famous oil sands, which he once called Canada’s “black eye.”

Despite what many predicted in anticipation of his trip, Cameron, sadly, did not go “Jake Sully” after meeting with Native leaders. This story would be a lot more fun to write had he intertwined his tentacle with wildlife and ridden it into battle against industry leaders, but that’s not what happened. In fact, Cameron’s eventual conclusion was that the oil sands are an important resource with some environmental issues in need of improvement.

Wild speculation at this point disagrees with the likely scenario of Cameron coming back to do some kind of documentary, and focuses on all of this being research for Avatar 2. If that’s the case, this sequel could conclude with humans and environmental alien hippies coming to a reasonable agreement which balances the environmental and economic interests of mining for space-oil.

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The otaku dream realized: VR turns men into girls

We’ve been told that virtual reality is going to be here any day now for the last couple decades, and it still hasn’t happened. New experiments give hope that it may not be too far off now, and that wheelchair bound military men may soon be crawling virtually into giant blue alien bodies.

The University of Barcelona has been conducting VR experiments in which men in their mid-20s can be fooled into reacting to events occurring digitally to the bodies of young girls.

Volunteers were allowed to look around in virtual reality and see their bodies displayed as those of 10-year-old girls. When the girl’s arm was touched, and the volunteers were stroked at the same time, they came to feel as though what they were seeing was real. Even once the camera moved out into the third person, and the men saw their former girl-bodies being slapped, they reacted as though that body was still theirs.

The experiment gives hope for both the sexually adventurous and the gamers of the world. Seriously guys, sex sims. Think about it.

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82nd annual Academy Awards: Hurt Locker wins, Star Trek gets screwed, Cameron ignored

The best films of 2009 were supposedly honoured last night at the 82nd Academy Awards. The experts rightly guessed that The Hurt Locker would pick up the Best Director and Best Picture awards. Those results come as sweet relief for me, I was convinced the academy wouldn’t be able to help themselves give Cameron a chance to make an ass of himself on stage.

Sadly, the real best picture of the year, Star Trek only picked up one award, although it was the first for the series. That award was for Best Makeup, and perhaps as a small consolation to nerds everywhere, Ben Stiller came out to present it in full Avatar-makeup. District 9, last night’s other sci-fi underdog didn’t pick up a single award, demonstrating once again the horrendous bias against science fiction the academy holds.

All-time coolest dude Jeff Bridges won Best Actor, which I can definitely live with. I was hoping for anyone but Sandra Bullock to win Best Actress, and so, of course, she did.

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Oscars are this Sunday – two days until Avatar love fest

The 82nd annual Academy Awards are airing this Sunday, and you know what that means, it’s two days until James Cameron climbs up on stage and thanks his adoring fans for worshiping the giant blue gods he created and then smashed into the script for Pocahontas.

This year’s best picture race is a peculiar one. The Academy decided the show wasn’t getting enough viewers from the “unwashed masses” demographic, and so they opened up the ultimate category to ten nominations instead of the usual five, with the hope that more mainstream films would get included. Well, their little plan seems to have worked, Avatar, Up, District 9, and even The Blind Side are all best picture contenders this year.

Since I felt compelled to make an Oscar post anyway, I might as well include my predictions as well as personal preferences for some of the major categories.

Best Picture: Avatar will win, Cameron’s acceptance speech will consist of him trying to think of a line from his film to quote, then realizing the dialogue was so poorly written that nothing stands out. My preference: District 9.

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow will win for The Hurt Locker, crowd members will clap politely, not having seen the film themselves. My choice: Jason Reitman for Up in the Air, because he’s the son of Ivan Reitman.

Best Actor: Prediction and preference: Morgan Freeman for playing Nelson Mandela in Invictus. He’s Morgan Freeman.

Best Actress: Prediction: Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side because the world hates me that much. My choice: anyone but Sandra Bullock.

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James Cameron promotes furryism over logic: why Na’vi have breasts

If you think about it, it doesn’t make much sense for Avatar‘s Na’vi to have breasts, does it? After all, they’re not mammals, and although it’s not impossible that they might lactate, it seems unlikely considering their multi-use queues would probably handle a separate but comparable act. Come to think of it, do they even have nipples? Well, James Cameron has decided to address the issue, although not in a fashion that will enlighten inquiring fan artists seeking to accurately represent the functionality of Neytiri’s tits. In an upcoming episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio, Cameron explained it’s:

Because this is a movie for human people.

Well thanks a lot Jim! Can I insert Neytiri into my giant-lactating-blue-women fantasies or not? I guess furries ultimately benefit from the decision fairly massively, breast-less Na’vi would have been a little less arousing and a little more scary I suspect, but it would be nice if Cameron could give the ‘spergers a Star-Warsian explanation.

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