Oscar-winning 'Titanic' 3D launched

LONDON: "Titanic" director James Cameron hit the red carpet in London on Tuesday for the launch of the Oscar-winning film's 3D version, as the 100th anniversary of the legendary ship's sinking approaches.

The US filmmaker jetted into the British capital fresh from his seven-mile (11.2 kilometre) submarine dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the ocean's deepest point.

He was joined on the red carpet by the film's British star Kate Winslet and US actor Billy Zane for the premiere at the Royal Albert Hall.

"The 3D enriches all of Titanic's most thrilling moments and its most emotional moments," Cameron said on the red carpet.

"More than ever, you feel you're right there going through all the jeopardy that Jack and Rose go through," he added, referring to the film's two main characters, played by Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Cameron dived the wreck 12 times before filming the original, saying it "had a huge impact" on the end result.

"We shot the real wreck -- we didn't just build models of it," he explained.

He said he had told set-builders: "It's got to be exactly like you went back in a time machine and you were on the deck of the Titanic."

The director of smash-hit sci-fi adventure "Avatar" completed his dive of the Mariana Trench, about 200 miles southwest of the Pacific island of Guam, on Sunday morning local time, and revealed it had given him fresh inspiration.

In "Titanic", Winslet played socialite Rose DeWitt Bukater alongside DiCaprio as male lead Jack Dawson, in a dramatisation of the real-life maritime disaster that claimed more than 1,000 lives.

The biggest, most ambitious ship of the age hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic Ocean from Southampton to New York, sinking on April 15, 1912.

The new release comes 15 years after the original. The film entered into movie history when it picked up 11 Oscars.

"It is a long time ago and it also feels like yesterday," Winslet told. "It completely changed my life and it gave me the opportunity to make creative choices.

"It's really great to celebrate it all over again. It's a very different experience, you really do feel as though you're on the boat, the water rushing round you," she added.

The Oscar-winning actress admitted that viewing her younger self would be "weird".

"It is like being forced to go through a photo album of your former self for three and a half hours solidly.

"I haven't seen the whole film in a very long time, I've seen little pieces of it, but it's a whole different me and we look much younger and our acting was different, hopefully not as good as now."

DiCaprio had been unable to attend the event because of work commitments, Winslet said. (AFP)

'Titanic' director dives to Pacific's deepest point

WASHINGTON: "Titanic" director James Cameron has safely returned to the ocean surface after a solo submarine dive to the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean, expedition organizers said Monday.

"Jim Cameron has surfaced! Congrats to him on his historic solo dive to the ocean's deepest point," said a Twitter message from Deep Sea Challenge, which organized the dive.

Cameron is the first person to make a solo dive to the Pacific Ocean valley known as the Challenger Deep, southwest of Guam. And the last dive of any kind there was a relatively brief two-person team back in 1960.

After a faster-than-expected, roughly 70-minute ascent, Cameron's sub, bobbing in the open ocean, was spotted by helicopter and was expected to soon be plucked from the Pacific by a research ship's crane, organizers said.

Mission partner the National Geographic said Cameron had reached a depth of 35,756 feet (10,898 meters) at 7:52 am Monday (2152 GMT Sunday) in the Mariana Trench in his specially designed submersible.

Because of its extreme depth, the Mariana Trench is cloaked in perpetual darkness and the temperature is just a few degrees above freezing, according to members of the team.

The water pressure at the bottom of the trench is a crushing eight tons per square inch -- or about a thousand times the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level.

Pressure increases with depth.

Cameron spent several hours on the Pacific Ocean sea floor, collecting samples for scientific research and taking still photographs and moving images.

His goal was to bring back data and specimens from the unexplored territory. He is expected to announce the results of the experiment later.

The tools taken by the explorer to the ocean floor included a sediment sampler, a robotic claw, a "slurp gun" for sucking up small sea creatures for study at the surface, and temperature, salinity, and pressure gauges.

Now "the science team is getting ready for the returned samples," expedition astrobiologist Kevin Hand from NASA said in an email.

Upon touchdown, Cameron's first target was a phone booth-like unmanned "lander" dropped into the trench hours before his dive.

The submersible that Cameron designed, a "vertical torpedo" of sorts, had already successfully completed an unpiloted dive on Friday.

In 1960, a two-person crew aboard the US Navy submersible Trieste -- the only humans to have reached Challenger Deep -- spent just 20 minutes on the bottom, but their view was obscured by silt stirred up when they landed.

Retired US Navy Captain Don Walsh, who descended to Challenger Deep in 1960, said he was pleased to hear that Cameron had reached the underwater valley safely.

"That was a grand moment, to welcome him to the club," Walsh said in a statement from the support ship.

Cameron, 57, has been running several miles a day, practicing yoga to increase his flexibility for the dive in the sub's cramped quarters and studying deep-ocean science, expedition physician Joe MacInnis told National Geographic News.

MacInnis is a member of the DeepSea Challenge project, a partnership with the National Geographic Society and Rolex.

Cameron already has 72 dives under his belt, including 12 to film the blockbuster "Titanic."

The Mariana Trench is located in the western Pacific east of the Philippines and some 124 miles (200 kilometers) east of the Mariana Islands.

The crescent-shaped scar in the Earth's crust measures more than 1,500 miles (2,550 kilometers) long and 43 miles (69 kilometers) wide on average. (AFP)

'Titanic' costumes to go on display

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio's costumes, which they wore in the Oscar winning 1997 movie 'Titanic', is all set to be displayed as part of an exhibition about the ill-fated ship.

The exhibition is being organised by bone china company Royal Crown Derby, which supplied items to the Titanic's first-class restaurant, reports the Telegraph.

It will also feature a recreation of the Titanic's first-class a la carte restaurant, with a table laid as it would have been on its 1912 voyage.

The showcase, in Derby, will open on February 26 - almost 100 years to the day that the Titanic's owner, White Star Line, placed an order with Royal Crown Derby.

The order included 600 dinner plates, 150 soup bowls, 150 breakfast plates, 100 salad plates, 150 breakfast cups and saucers, and 100 teacups and saucers.

Royal Crown Derby still has the 1911 pattern book with the design of the crockery, which was to be exclusive for the Titanic and was no longer to be manufactured for general sale.

Apart from one plate, currently at Southampton Museum, none of the original crockery survived the 1912 disaster. But Royal Crown Derby has since put the range back into full production for the first time since 1911.

As well as the Winslet and DiCaprio costumes, the exhibition will feature memorabilia from the Titanic and from her sister ship, The Olympic.