That is a defunct way of looking at it, it looks at income without taking into account enflation, if they really want to know the highest grossing film they should do it by the number of tickets sold and i recon it would be titanic or star wars - a new hope that top the chart, avatar wont be anywhere near as tickets for avatar are between 3 and 4 times the cost that tickets were to see titanic. And about 10-15 times more expensive than they were to see Star Wars.
Make up and special effects made that movie, and the only way that would impress people is if they used an A-lister, someone who people know how he looked when he was young. And pretty impressive it was, I must admit, Brad Pitt looked exactly like his younger self.
The Golden Compass was on TV a few days ago. Already saw it in Cinema and still can't believe how they killed the book for me. I so love the trilogy from Philip Pullman and they absolutely raped the first book with this movie. Such a shame.