Which TV show? ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’

It’s “Avatar Day,” meaning that participating IMAX theaters across the country will be presenting the free, 15-minute preview of James Cameron’s sweeping 3-D sci-fi film Avatar. The trailer for Avatar debuted yesterday and looks kind of like Dances With Wolves on an alien planet, although its admittedly neat-o visuals reminded Movieline a little too much of Delgo.

Avatar is sure to be a huge deal when it opens in December, but I wanted to use Avatar Day to talk about the other pop epic of that name, “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” The three-season animated adventure aired on Nickelodeon from 2005-2008, but may have flew beneath many people’s radar until Paramount Pictures announced that Sixth Sense director M. Night Shyamalan would be directing the big-screen version. A minor kerfluffle blew up over two films with the “Avatar” name, but Shyamalan’s will only be called The Last Airbender when it opens in theaters on July 2, 2010. Here’s the teaser trailer:

There’s no telling how good or bad the Airbender movie will be, but the show is terrific, as my family and I discovered over the summer.