This is obviously a petty observation, but I couldn’t help thinking as I watched James Cameron up on the Comic-Con stage a couple of days ago that his nose has gotten larger since the Titanic days. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I mentioned this to a couple of journalist pals a few minutes after the Cameron-Jackson discussion ended on Friday night and they both went “yeah, yeah.” The aging process is nothing to look forward to. Robert Evans once explained it as follows: “Your nose gets bigger, your ears get longer and your teeth get smaller.”

This N.Y. Times examination chart of films about the lives and temperaments of comedians, compiled/written by Peter Keepnews, reminds me that no film has really gotten it right. Until, I would add, Judd Apatow‘s Funny People. Not that I’m on any sort of intimate terms with this profession/mentality/lifestyle, but it sure as hell feels believable. I never felt I was being played or sold a bill of atmospheric/emotional goods.

Almost two years ago Apple Insider‘s Kasper Jade reported about a forthcoming larger-than-iPhone Apple device that he described in a headline as “a return to the Newton.” Now he’s describing Steve Jobs’ latest brainchild as “a 10-inch, 3G-enabled tablet, akin to a jumbo iPod touch.” It’s going to cost maybe $450 or $550 — “somewhere between the cost of a high-end iPhone and Apple’s most affordable Mac notebook” — and will most likely turn up any time between January and March 2010.

An idea bulb went on when Jim Cameron yesterday mentioned a current project to dimensionalize Titanic — i.e., create a 3D version of it. Which he said would take about 12 to 14 months to complete. Peter Jackson, sitting right next to Cameron, was a bit more circumspect. He said he’d love to dimensionalize the Rings trilogy but that Warner Bros. is currently fearful of a shortage of 3-D equipped theatres. But Cameron was having none of it.

The Avatar director basically said “pshaw!” and explained that if major want-to-see 3D titles are in the pipeline, exhibitors will step up to the plate and audiences will follow. It’s basically a matter of the people in charge needing to grow a pair and roll the dice.

If Cameron can dimensionalize Titanic then obviously any film can undergo the same conversion. So why don’t distributors man up and start dimensionalizing all of the major big-format, big-spectacle movies made over the past 40 or 50 years? The first Star Wars trilogy, naturally. And Braveheart, of course. Ridley Scott‘s Alien and Cameron’s Aliens. 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ben-Hur. Gladiator. Spartacus. The Harry Potter films. Black Hawk Down. Platoon. Full Metal Jacket.

And of course, Lawrence of Arabia. Can you imagine how exquisite that film could look in 3-D if it’s done right? With those striking desert vistas? All right, that’s it — get to work on it now and have the 3-D Lawrence ready for the film’s 50th aniversary in 2012.

An hour ago I wrote Robert Harris, the blue-ribbon restoration master who worked with director David Lean on restoring Lawrence in the late ’80s. “Cameron is re-doing Titanic in 3D and made a case that this could be a new growth industry — the Next Big Thing,” I wrote. “I’d love to see Lawrence in 3D some day….y’know? And The Alamo? All the great large-format films.

“So would I,” he answered, “but it comes down to artists’ rights. Without the filmmakers, we really don’t have the moral right to make changes. Great idea however.”

And I wrote back, “Moral rights? Are you kidding? Are you telling me that David’s family and whomever else holds the rights wouldn’t be interested in making this happen if the price was right and if you were on board to 3-D it the way David would have wanted?

“You wouldn’t be messing with David’s film — you’d just be creating a dimensional version for commercial (and spiritual and aesthetic) purposes. Where would be the harm? Who would object as long as the original materials are intact and the flat version is as safe as it’s always been since the restoration? No one.

“I would do backflips if a 3D Lawrence could be created. Are you kidding? They need to do this for the 50th annniversary.

“And you’re the guy to do it, Bob. You’re the Lean link who worked with him, knew him, knew how he thought, what his aesthetic criteria was all about, etc. Lawrence would be breathtaking in 3D. And you must know David would be delighted if it was done right. He was no stuffy drawing-room elitist — he was an elegant showman who wanted to reach people in their theatre seats and make them swoon over their popcorn.

“Cameron said yesterday he’s very happy with the 3D Titanic test footage so far. Obviously with a will the same process could be applied to Lawrence. As O’Toole/Lawrence said, “Aqaba is over there. It’s only a matter of going.”

The bespectacled, red-shirt, water-sipping guy who jumped on-stage during yesterday’s Peter Jackson-James Cameron discussion can be seen in this HE video starting around the 3:19 mark.

Here‘s a clip of same from Entertainment Weekly, as provided by In Contention.

I spent about four hours today driving back and forth between an AT&T store and an Apple store and getting sick from the overstuffed scenery. The area was just above Route 8, an east-west freeway in northern San Diego, and it has to be one of the ugliest areas I’ve ever driven through in any area of the globe. Seriously — I was actually feeling nausea.

I saw the lamest minds of my generation driven mad by overdeveloped, freeway-clogged hills and valleys, filthy with condos and malls and fast-food joints and corporate chain stores and looking for an angry cappuccino. Everyone cruising around in their late-model cars and talking/texting on their smart phones and driving in a sort of mad-impulse way, accelerating and then hitting the brakes whenever and doing sudden U-turns between slurps and sips. It’s psychotic — tens of thousands of Louis the Sixteenths driving over/under/sideways/down through grandiose remnants of the over-leveraged Clinton-Bush economic boom. It’s all less than zero.

James Cameron‘s statement, delivered during yesterday’s Jackson-Cameron Comic-Con sitdown, comes around the 1:45 mark. I got this off Kris Tapley‘s In Contention because my own video file (which includes footage of that wackjob guy who came up behind Jackson/Cameron and started jabbering) won’t upload to YouTube for some reason. Probably because I’m trying to upload it via McDonald’s wifi in lovely Hawthorne, California. What a hell-hole.

I have a special provision written into my AT&T iPhone contract that stipulates I will lose my iPhone 3GS no more than than 2.5 times every twelve months. Seriously, I lost the damn thing last night — don’t ask — and spent two hours looking for it. Then I spent three hours this morning and part of the early afternoon trying to buy a new one without being Cossack-raped by AT&T.

They stuck it to me regardless, charging me $451 including tax for a 16 gig replacement phone despite my having paid $200 two and a half weeks ago for the original. Fuckers wanted to charge me $600 but I finagled them down. I nonetheless feel as if I’ve been anally ravaged by an AT&T telephone pole.

I can’t remember if there was an theft/loss insurance clause offered when I bought the original, but if there was I obviously should have taken it. I know I don’t want to hear any polite 28 year-old AT&T rep with a dweeby haircut tell me about contracts. It’s just a lot of AT&T mumbo-jumbo cooked up so they can fuck people out of a greater share of their hard-earned income. Who would be so bloodthirsty and mercenary? Oh, you lost your phone? So sorry, sir. So let’s see, uhhm…that’ll be triple what you paid two and a half weeks ago if you want another one.

I bought MobileMe when I got the original, and if I’d remembered to install the MobileMe software on the phone itself (instead of on the computer and trusting that MobileMe would be transferred during a synch) I could’ve found the lost phone through the search function. I’ve now installed MobileMe on the new one, of course. Life is pain.

Jottings from the recently concluded James Cameron-Peter Jackson discussion are on my Twitter (wellshwood) account, but no column postings for now. I’m at a Focus Features party, for one thing, and on my second brew. “I can let it all go,” as Robert Mitchum once said.

Turn on the laptop inside the Starbucks under the Bayfront Hilton and activate the AT&T Wifi air card connection. Three bars, good air, fine…except when you activate a browser this Hilton Hotel “pay us or you don’t get online” page comes up. So you try and activate your Starbucks/AT&T account (which I pay $20 bucks monthly for) and that won’t kick in either. So you have to shell out $13 and change to the Hilton goombahs or you can’t work.