By David Robb

Cameron Lewis Horner at Avatar premiere

“Titanic,” of course, went on to win 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Editing, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design, Sound, Score, Visual Effects, Sound Effects Editing and Original Song. Only one other film before – “Ben Hur” – and movie one since – “Lord of the Rings” – has won as many Oscars. But apparently L.A.-based film critics know better than the Academy – or anyone else. “Titanic” only won one award that year from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association – for Best Production Design.

“Titanic” would go on to become the all-time box office champ, taking in more than $1.8 billion worldwide and selling more than 128 million tickets in the U.S. alone. (Question: Do you know what “Titanic’s” box office take was in Saudi Arabia? Answer: Zero – there aren’t any movie theaters in Saudi Arabia.)

But for some reason, Turan, who somehow still has a job at the Times, was assigned the task of reviewing Cameron’s latest movie – “Avatar” – the writer-director’s first film since “Titanic.” Only this time, Turan says he likes it.

“You’ve never experienced anything like it, and neither has anyone else,” he raves, calling it “an extraordinary act of visual imagination.” “This is something you won’t want to miss.”

But apparently still stinging from the scorn and ridicule that was heaped upon him 12 years ago for being the only film critic in the world who didn’t like “Titanic,” Turan, in his review of “Avatar,” couldn’t help but remind us all that he was right and everybody else was wrong about “Titanic.”

“ Perhaps the most surprising thing about Cameron’s visual accomplishments,” he wrote this week in his “Avatar” review for the Times, “is that they are so powerful we’re barely troubled by the same weakness for flat dialogue and obvious characterization that put such a dent in ‘Titanic.’”

But he doesn’t stop there.  “Avatar’s” non-human “romantic protagonists paradoxically end up feeling like creatures whose fates we care more about than we did Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet’s on the boat.”

I don’t know. Maybe Turan really liked “Avatar,” which opened today. Or perhaps he was just fearful of missing the boat again. Either way, it almost makes me not want to see it.

Authors addition: It was too long, he said, and cost too much to make – “a hackneyed, completely derivative copy of old Hollywood romances” – “a movie that reeks of phoniness and lacks even minimal originality.”