Last night in Austin at Fantastic Fest producer Jon Landau screened footage from Jim Cameron’s upcoming major motion picture Avatar. Having not managed to see the footage at Comic-Con in San Diego and having not made it to Avatar day either, I was obviously curious to see what all the fuss was about. So, with a packed house of over 200, I watched several scenes from the film. Some already screened and some never before shown.

Don’t worry, I won’t be doing a review of the film based on this footage — I’ll save that until I see the entire film. However, I will render a few opinions on the footage, characters, action and the 3-D process I did see. My opinion can be summed up in one word: interesting. I know that probably doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement but if you’ve followed my opinion on 3-D on The Flickcast podcast or here at the site, you know I’m not really a fan of this 3-D resurgence.

That said, I can tell you that the 3-D of Avatar is probably the best I’ve ever seen. The effect is pretty seamless and Cameron obviously knows his way around the process. Some of the scenes on the planet Pandora, in particular one where Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) as his Avatar has to tame a flying beast and bend its will so he can fly it, was outstanding. The sweeping vistas of Pandora, which would probably have looked great in 2-D, were made even more spectacular with the added third dimension.

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Around The Flickcast offices, we’re pretty excited to see James Cameron’s upcoming film Avatar and you probably are also. The innovative technology alone will make it worth the trip and if the rest of the film’s elements like story, characters and performances hold up, it could be a most interesting and enjoyable time at the movies. But apparently, we’re not excited enough because we’re not getting our tickets for the film’s December 18th opening right now.

Yes, that’s right, tickets for midnight showing of Avatar are now on sale at online ticket brokers MovieTickets.com and Fandango for performances at more than 75 AMC locations, most of them Imax 3D venues. According to MovieTickets’ Joel Cohen, this is pretty unusual.

“Tickets being put on sale for a film four months in advance is unheard of,” said Cohen. “The fact that tickets have already been sold really speaks to the tremendous buzz the film has already created and the power of James Cameron at the box office.”

Of course, without knowing the final running time of the movie its pretty much impossible to sell tickets for anything but a midnight show. Still, sales of the midnight tickets were said to be “healthy.” I wonder if this is a start of a new trend? Will we be able to start ordering tickets for other upcoming releases this way? If so, I would like to get a couple tickets to Tron Legacy, Iron Man 2 and Batman 3 please. That way I can be sure they won’t be sold out.

This past Friday was a pretty new and exciting day for the cinema, as most dubbed it “Avatar Day” because 20th Century Fox ran free screenings of select clips from James Cameron’s highly anticipated film in 3D IMAX theaters across the country. There were roughly six clips totaling about 15 minutes. Cameron made an appearance at the beginning of the clips (in 3D, of course) and introduced the scenes.

Not much was known about the film, let alone the premise, leading up to “Avatar Day,” so it was nice to get an idea of the story. From what was gathered, the film takes place in the 21st century, when mankind is at war with the alien race known as the Na’vi. They enlist people to fight on the warring planet, but before they are dropped off, they go through a process which places them in an alien body, or their “avatar”.

From there, the main character Jake Sully (played by Terminator: Salvation‘s Sam Worthington) embarks on a journey of this new and beautiful world, and discovers that he may be fighting for the wrong side. The story is pretty old-hat, which most people could remember as the main plot from 2003′s The Last Samurai.

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Zoe Saldana, who played Uhura in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, announced at Comic-Con that she believes the script for the sequel is already halfway done. Although screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, and director Abrams, have been evasive about details of the sequel, SciFiWire reports that Saldana is providing fans with a much needed progress report.

“I do know that they are germinating a script,” Saldana said during a group interview to promote Avatar. “That’s what they told us a month and a half ago, which actually means—in that kind of talk it means that they’re probably halfway done with a script. They just can’t present it to anybody. But they’re very excited, and there is a lot of pressure, because now it’s like, ‘Oh, do you do The Wrath of Khan or do you do this or whatever?’”

When Star Trek reset the canon with a time-travel story device, the opportunity to revisit classic Trek missions from a fresh perspective. However, Saldana encouraged the filmmakers to avoid succumbing to any outside influence.

“I honestly told Robert, Alex and J.J. to just do what they did first, which is just to trust themselves,” Saldana continued. “By not listening to anyone, not putting any pressures on themselves, they were able to create something very beautiful and free that we still grew attached to. If that formula worked for Star Trek, then it can certainly work for this next one.”

Saldana is also confident that the romance that was beginning to develop between Uhura and Spock (Zachary Quinto) in the first movie will continue in the sequel. “I am excited to see what they’re going to do with their relationship in relation to what happened to Vulcan and what kind of responsibilities Spock is going to have in this next journey,” she said. “Not only in his personal side but in terms of he’s a race in extinction now.”

Saldana believes work will begin on Star Trek 2 next year.

The first full day at San Diego’s Comic-Con featured revelations and first looks at Tron Legacy, New Moon, Alice in Wonderland and a little film called Avatar. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? James Cameron offered fans an impressive 24 minute 3-D screening of his forthcoming, highly-anticipated film, and by all accounts, especially SciFiWire’s, the material more than lives up to heavy expectations.

The footage clearly impressed the crowd, who made no secret of their appreciation of what they saw. Cameron seemed quite pleased by this and told the crowd, “Everybody always asks: So where’ve you been? Well, that’s where I’ve been. Pandora.”

Avatar’s preview centered around Jake (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic grunt who enlists for the military’s avatar program, which allows the personality of humans to be projected into clones of the Na’vi people, an indigenous race of alien creatures. Once on the surface of Pandora, Jake gets into trouble with native creatures, is reluctantly befriended by a female Na’vi native named Natiri (Zoe Saldana) and learns how to mindmeld and control a pterodactyl-like monster.

Cameron also revealed that 15 minutes of material will available for free at IMAX 3D and regular 3-D theaters across the globe on August 21.

Avatar stars Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Zoe Saldana and Giovanni Ribisi and will be released on December 18, 2009.

Oh to be in Amsterdam this week. No, not just for the friendly people, the Heineken beer brewery tour or the many other exotic attractions. There’s another reason Amsterdam was the place to be this week: James Cameron screened 24 minutes of his upcoming film Avatar at the Cinema Expo there. The Audiences reaction to the footage? The words “jaw-dropping”, for example, were used several times in the description over at Coming Soon.

Flanked by the films stars Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana and Stephen Lang, Cameron himself introduced the footage declaring that the 3D renaissance had arrived. Also according to the tipster at Coming Soon, the footage “utilized the RealD XL Cinema System. The 3D presentation was on a 55-foot screen with nearly 10-foot Lamberts of light, delivering the largest and brightest 3D presentation at Cinema Expo.” Nice.

Cameron also released two more images from the film to help build the hype. Obviously, we’re eager to see the movie, which rumor says will be featured in a panel and possible screening of some of the footage at Comic-Con next month. We’ve also heard that Cameron is trying to get Hall H at the San Diego Convention Center rigged for 3-D projection to screen the footage. If so, I think you better start lining up now if you want to see it.

Avatar hits theaters in December. Check out the bigger images after the jump.

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