'Avatar' premiere (HWT)

By Nancy Tartaglione

Fittingly, the red carpet was blue at last night's world premiere of James Cameron's "Avatar" in London.

Much of the cast including Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana, Michelle Rodriguez and Giovanni Ribisi was in attendance as were were Simon Pegg, Queen's Brian May, James Blunt and the newly-belted heavyweight boxing champion of the world, David Haye (who sat just a couple of rows ahead of us, appropriately enough, in the nose-bleed section).

Speaking to the press outside the theater, Cameron was asked if he intended to work with his star Sam Worthington again. Jokingly, he replied, "Hopefully this movie won't make any money because then we don't have to do a sequel." Of course, earlier in the day he had alluded to the fact that he may indeed have two more "Avatar" films in him.

Although journalists were asked by Fox not to post any reviews before next week, that embargo flew out the window last night when comments began to fill the blogosphere as the final credits rolled. Fox shouldn't mind too much: The reactions have been overwhelmingly positive.

I don't know if I want to jump on that break-the-ban wagon - and I'm no critic - but I will say that the film is indeed impressive. It's easy to see where all that money was spent as the wonderland that is the alien planet Pandora comes to life in a tangible fairy-tale realism. It's not cartoonish, though, and indeed you've not seen anything like it before. In fact, although the vision of the film, its story, characters - its universe, if you will - were all born inside Cameron's head, there's hardly a notion of it being "un-real" in any way.

There's wonderment and spectacle, sure, but they draw you into Pandora's box rather than wreaking havoc with the mind.

And, indeed as others have pointed out since last night, there's a lot more story and a lot more to pull audiences in than what's been shown in much of the advance footage.

Speaking of footage, Weaver and Saldana may want to rethink the height of their heels for future outings. The two women, who looked stunning in black and white frocks, had a hard time negotiating the stage steps before the screening. This was made even more difficult when the house lights came down before the ladies could be helped from the platform. Still, there were no broken bones to report. Broken records? That's another matter.