Found! The stunning mountain that inspired Avatar's 'floating peaks'

Hi all...

This is it. It was finally found. Remember the stunning floating mountains in the blockbuster and highest grossing ever sci-fi James Cameron movie - AVATAR??

The real life "floating mountains" are found in China.

Read the rest of the story here.


Remote: The South Hunan region is home to the 'Avatar' mountains

The film took more than five years to make and was reportedly one of the most expensive films, with a budget of at least $300 million.

It has wowed both critics and fans, winning a Golden Globe last week.

Avatar won 3 oscars in the 82nd Academy Awards including best cinematography and best visual effects.

The action-adventure movie, starring Sigourney Weaver, is set in 2154 and tells the tale of a disabled ex-Marine sent to Earth to infiltrate a race of 10-foot (3-metre) blue aliens and persuade them to let his employer mine their homeland for natural resources.




'Avatar' surpassed 'Titanic' to become the highest-grossing movie worldwide, distributor 20th Century Fox said.

Titanic was also directed by James Cameron.

The worldwide total for the James Cameron movie stands at more than £1.15billion, beating the £1.14 billion haul racked up by 'Titanic' in 1997-1998.

'Avatar' broke the seemingly insurmountable record set by 'Titanic' in little over six weeks, handing Cameron the remarkable feat of directing the world's two biggest movies of all time.

It has reigned at the top of North American box office for six weeks. It has also led the field in France, China, Germany and Russia.

However the real life floating mountains as seen in AVATAR, really exist in China, albeit not floating.

Its soaring steeple of rock topped by a small oasis of trees looks straight out of AVATAR.

But this is no special effects illusion, it's a real-life tower of quartz-sandstone deep in the rugged mountain terrain of southern Hunan in China.

The 3,544ft Southern Sky Column is one of 3,000 in the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park and became the inspiration for the magical 'floating peaks' in AVATAR after a Hollywood photographer spent time shooting there in 2008.



The mountain previously known as the 'Southern Sky Column' in China, which has now been named the 'Avatar Hallelujah Mountain'


Another views of the mountains




The Hollywood rendering of the mountains in James Cameron's blockbuster film 'Avatar'

Is the world going to end on 21 December 2012???

Well come November, Roland Emmerich latest movie "2012" is hitting the cinemas.

Emmerich has directed other biblical scale mega disasters apocalypse movies such as Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow.

His latest movie 2012 is based on the best-selling 1966 book "The Maya" by Harvard archeologist Michael D. Coe. Coe noted that the Mayan culture's famously complex "Long Count" calendar simply ends on 12/21/12, speculating that civilization might come crashing down on that date.

Other scholars argue, however, that the Mayan calendar would merely flip over like an odometer that reached 100,000 miles.

Astrologers have also pointed out that during the winter solstice of 2012, the orbital planes of the solar system and the twelve Zodiacal constellations will intersect with the "Dark Rift" -- a black bit of the Milky Way located next to Sagittarius.

Some argue this intersection is precisely why the Mayans -- who were brilliant astronomers -- ended their calendar when they did. But other astrologers believe that this conjunction will usher in a great shift in consciousness.

And then there's ounterculture thinker Terence McKenna whose Timewave Zero theory -- drawing off of elements from the "I-Ching," the teachings of philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, and modern fractal mathematics -- which determined that 12/21/12 is, you guessed it, the exact date of a profound change in world.

Roughly speaking, the Mayans, astrologers and McKenna are all predicting global doom or the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

So if the apocalypse is set just in time for holiday shopping season three years from now, how exactly will the world end? One theory that actually has some traction in the scientific community is that a solar flare will cause a sudden shift in the magnetic orientation of the Earth's poles, causing all kinds of planetary problems like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. NASA is predicting strong solar activity around 2012 and there's evidence that the magnetic poles are slowly weakening, something that reportedly presages a reversal. Of course, most scientists think that this reversal will take centuries, not days, to occur.

So how does Roland Emmerich end the world in his upcoming epic "2012"? "Pole reversal," he said in an interview this week. "All kinds of stuff going on. But it's basically major earthquakes and volcano eruptions which kind of cause this global flood."

"We found this obscure theory of 'Earth crust displacement,' written in the '50s by someone called Professor Hapgood. Albert Einstein wrote the foreword to his book. It pretty much [says] every X number of years the whole Earth's crust shifts, all together. We thought that that was a great underlining theory that can explain why there can be a flood."

And what is the director going to do in preparation for that fated date? When asked he said, "I'm a pretty down to earth guy. Even [though] I made movies about aliens, I don't believe in aliens. And I don't believe that the world will come to an end in 2012, but it's a great scenario."

To get a peek at the devastation Emmerich is bringing to the screen in "2012," which he says has more visual effects than any of his previous films, watch the exclusive trailer below.


2012 Trailer