Avatar's Sigourney Weaver and James Cameron are in Brazil promoting both the release of the sci-fi blockbuster on DVD and Blu-ray in that country, and the Earth Day Network/Fox Home Entertainment effort to have 1 million trees planted around the world.
In this photo, Weaver and Cameron can be seen planting — or at least posing as if they're planting — a pau-brasil tree in the Ibirapuera Park in the city of Sao Paulo on Sunday, April 11. Some say the tree gave the name to the country; others say the country gave the name to the tree. Take your pick.
Anyhow, it all matches Avatar's pro-nature stance. And it's also worth noting that the pau-brasil is nearly extinct. And that the tree in question is the first of the million trees to be planted globally.
Also in Brazil, Sigourney Weaver told local reporters that Cameron would have won the Academy Award for Best Director earlier this year if not for the fact that "Jim didn't have breasts, and I think that was the reason; he should have taken home that Oscar."
Weaver then added, "In the past, Avatar would have won [the Best Picture Oscar] because they [the Academy] loved to hand out awards to big productions, like Ben-Hur. Today it's fashionable to give the Oscar to a small movie that nobody saw."
(Please note that the above is an English translation from a Portuguese translation of whatever it was that Weaver said in English.)
The "small movie that nobody saw," of course, was the Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker, directed by one of Cameron's former wives, Kathryn Bigelow. Bigelow became the first woman to ever win a Best Director Academy Award.
Photo: Avatar (Mark Fellman / 20th Century Fox)
It's São Paulo, not Sao Paulo!