Seven films on Oscar’s visual effects shortlist

SHOOT: But the Oscar must go to AVATAR.

clipped from www.eyewitnessnews.co.za The race for the visual effects Oscar just got a little tighter. The Academy’s visual effects branch announced on Wednesday that the shortlist of 15 movies, released in mid-December, has been whittled down to seven films. "Avatar" heads the alphabetic list, followed by "District 9," "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," "Star Trek," "Terminator Salvation," "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" and "2012." The branch’s members will further narrow the list to three films, which will be announced along with all the other Oscar nominees on February 2. The awards ceremony will be held March 7.

AVATAR has made $1 billion

SHOOT: Cameron is the only filmmaker to have made two movies earning more than $1 billion.

"Here's what's happening: I think everybody has to see `Avatar' once. Even people who don't normally go to the movies, they've heard about it and are saying, `I have to see it.' Then there's those people seeing it multiple times."

clipped from movies.yahoo.com LOS ANGELES - James Cameron's science-fiction epic "Avatar" had another stellar weekend with $68.3 million domestically, shooting past $1 billion worldwide, only the fifth movie ever to hit that mark. No. 1 for the third-straight weekend, 20th Century Fox's "Avatar" raised its domestic total to $352.1 million after just 17 days. The film added $133 million overseas to lift its international haul to $670 million, for a worldwide gross of $1.02 billion. "Avatar" opened two weekends earlier with $77 million, a strong start but far below dozens of other blockbusters that debuted as high as $158 million. But business for other blockbusters usually tumbles in following weekends, while "Avatar" revenues barely dropped over the busy Christmas and New Year's weekends. "It's like a runaway freight train. It just keeps doing business," said Fox distribution executive Bert Livingston.