James Cameron is not known for being modest. Upon winning Best Director at the Academy Awards, he recited a Titanic quote and announced: I'm the king of the world!

Therefore, it came as no surprise this week when, at Microsoft Advance '08, the director hyped up his highly-anticipated Avatar, which opens on December 18, 2009.

"Avatar will make people truly experience something," said Cameron. "One more layer of the suspension of disbelief will be removed. All the syn-thespians are photo-realistic. Now that we've achieved it, we discovered CG characters in 3D look more real than in 2D. Your brain is cued, it's a real thing not a picture, and discounting part of [the] image that makes it look fake."

Cameron continued with his high praise for, well, himself and his upcoming movie:

"Avatar is the single most complex piece of filmmaking ever made. We have 1,600 shots for a 2.5 hour movie. It's not with a single CGI character, like King Kong or Gollum. We have hundreds of photo-realistic CG characters. We were Microsoft's sandbox for filmmaking beyond the cutting edge."