Avatar Profits: A brief look at the numbers What You See Isn’t Always What You Get

Weekly Update (27/12/09) – The Piracy Effect, Avatar Protest, Racist Computers, Most Pirated Movies, etc.

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Posted by Mobius on Dec 27, 2009 in Weekly Update | 0 comments | 119 views

This week’s edition will be slightly shorter than usual, mostly because I’m enjoying my holidays and not spending too much time finding material to write about, so without further ado

The next time someone tries to make you feel guilty about downloading a movie off the internet, point them to this article. Despite claims that piracy is bringing about the eventual downfall of the movie industry, Hollywood’s revenues are through the roof. This year, leading Hollywood studios made more movies and generated more revenue than ever before, reaching a record high of over $10 billion. If anything, I think movie piracy helps spread the word to a wider audience. Many movies don’t make it to certain countries due to censorship reasons, for example. The grey market provides an alternative method to watch those movies. In the end, you might be compelled to buy the DVD. In any case, there’s still no substituting the cinematic experience of watching a movie in an actual cinema hall instead of on your laptop or home theater system.

This has got to be a joke, but if it’s not, I don’t know what to say except WTF. There are apparently a group of people protesting against James Cameron’s Avatar due to the fact that Jack Sully’s relationship with the Pandorian native was not gay. Might as well have a protest against Twilight for being too gay then ey? Seriously though, it’s gotta be a joke.

In other news, this BBC article reports that a HP Computers webcam software with face detection technology apparently cannot detect black faces. The article mentioned a YouTube video showcasing the supposed racist webcam, but the video was not actually attached or linked to. So I went onto YouTube and found said video. I’m not racist or anything but there’s no denying that the video is quite amusing.

We're #1 Spock

Did you think JJ Abrams’ Star Trek was one of the best movies of the year? Well, 11 million pirates did as it is the most pirated movie of 2009. Star Trek was indeed a very good movie. Following closely at #2 is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which was pirated 10.6 million times. At third place we have Guy Ritchie’s RockNRolla, which I thought was pretty underrated. Other movies on the list include Neil Blomkamp’s District 9 and Alex Proyas’ Knowing.

Facebook can be the source of many laughs. The next time one of your friends puts something ridiculously stupid or funny as their status update, don’t forget to take a screenshot of it.

And in other Facebook related news, screenshots of its new redesign have surfaced. I personally dislike how Facebook keeps changing their home layout, but the new style doesn’t look all that bad.

That wraps up the last edition of the Weekly Update for this year. Happy Holidays and enjoy some trance.