The illegal downloaders' Oscar winners
A vast number of people will be seated Sunday evening, desperate to hear a good joke while the movie industry pats itself on its behind.
I am sure you have your favorites. For myself, I only hope that the divinity that is Sandra Bullock wins an Oscar, as she would then complete the most coveted double of winning an Oscar and a Razzie (which she picked up in person Saturday) in the same year.
The fine folk over at Torrent Freak have their own hopes. However, they have created a wonderful prelude to the big event, far more interesting than any discussion of rented frocks, baubles and faces, by calculating which of the nominated movies has been torrented the most.
Your champagne might go up an inappropriate nostril when I tell you that the most torrented movie among the 10 nominated for an Oscar was "District 9." Yes, the movie that makes you feel prawns have a soul and South Africans with mustaches do not always make for the best dinner companions.
(Credit: CC 666 Is Money/Flickr) Just behind this disturbingly human movie was "Avatar," followed by "The Hurt Locker," "Up" (so many naughty downloading 7-year-olds?), and "Inglourious Basterds." At the very end of the freeloading preference table came Bulllock's "The Blind Side" and "An Education."
Torrent Freak is careful to point out that some of the nominated movies only leaked into the Web's avaricious clutches over the last few weeks. Still, perhaps the information that you might find most indicative of an interesting world is that 12,639,000 people torrented "District 9." (This includes cammed versions.)
You will decide how hard to weep for the producers of this movie when I tell you that on a budget of $30 million, it grossed more than $200 million worldwide.
I have a feeling that "District 9" will not be the choice of the very old, short-sighted people who choose Oscar winners.
However, wouldn't it be fun if a prawn leaped onto the stage, grabbed James Cameron's Oscar from his delighted fingers and declared that director Neill Blomkamp's work was a far more accurate and vivid depiction of the world to come?
Final Cut Pro the Apple of Oscar's eye
Apple may not take the stage at Sunday's Oscars, but the company will be well represented by many filmmakers, directors, producers, and editors who will pick up awards.
(Credit: Food, Inc.) In fact, 9 out of 10 of this year's nominees in the "Documentary Feature" and "Documentary Short" categories used Final Cut Studio to make their films. Final Cut Studio includes Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, Color, Compressor, and DVD Studio Pro, essentially giving filmmakers all of the tools they need to make a movie.
CNET caught up with a few of the people responsible for making some of this year's nominated movies including Matthew O'Neil, director of "China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province;" Kim Roberts, editor of "Food, Inc.;" and Dan Wilken, online editor of "Food, Inc."
"We switched over entirely to Final Cut Pro and forced any holdout editors to switch too, because it made the most sense economically and allowed us to do everything we needed," said O'Neil.
Roberts agreed. "I tend to work on a lot of independent documentaries and Final Cut Pro is affordable and a good application. It's been a natural choice for filmmakers," she said.
One of the big draws about Final Cut Studio for all of the people we spoke with is its ability to do a variety of tasks. Like most jobs, Filmmakers and editors are expected to do more tasks these days before the movie is handed off for post production.
Because Final Cut Studio includes so many tools, filmmakers are able to create very polished rough cuts. That allows the editors to present a great looking film right out of the box.
(Credit: China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province) "You can do it all with Final Cut Studio and we can make it look close to finished all in-house," said O'Neil.
Of course, Final Cut Pro isn't the only product available for filmmakers, but it is the most popular now. According to market research firm SCRI International, Final Cut Pro has almost 50 percent market share in the nonlinear editor space, outperforming competitors like Avid.
Being a professional editor, Roberts said she feels equally comfortable using Final Cut Pro or Avid, but she said, "I prefer Final Cut--it's more intuitive and there are a lot of smart things about it."
Like most things these days, a lot of consideration comes down to price. Wilken said Final Cut Studio gives you almost everything you need.
"Final Cut Pro can do most everything that the million dollar systems can do and it costs you below $15,000 (this includes the cost of a Mac, Final Cut and video cards)," said Wilken. "The truth is, for several projects I've worked on, we can do everything with the same gear you use at home."
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Steve Jobs spotted at the Oscars; iPad ad runs
He wasn't lining up for an interview with Ryan Seacrest about what designer made his suit, but a few eagle-eyed bloggers on location at the 82nd Academy Awards on Sunday evening say that Apple CEO Steve Jobs was in attendance. In a tux, not a black turtleneck.
Blogger and Web video personality Wayne Sutton snapped a far-away shot of someone whom he believed to be Jobs, accompanied with "OMG it's Steve Jobs! I'm the only one yelling at him." Indeed, Sutton's photo shows Jobs' unmistakable profile filing into the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. CNET has placed an inquiry to Apple PR to verify that it is indeed him (Jobs has a famous satire-blog impersonator, after all).
Jobs has reason to be at the Oscars, and it has nothing to do with the fact that he once got played onscreen by actor Noah Wylie in a made-for-TV movie: the Apple CEO acquired animation studio Pixar in 1986 before selling it to Disney two decades later. He's now the largest individual shareholder in Disney; the Pixar film "Up" was nominated for the Best Animated Feature and Best Picture category this year.
But Jobs is also an ambiguous, powerful figure in the entertainment industry. Movie sales and rentals in Apple's iTunes Store required extensive negotiations, something that the public debut of its iPad tablet device next month may render even more complicated. Its Apple TV device has been one of the company's more low-profile products, but with the cable industry in more turmoil than ever (namely the battle between Cablevision and the Disney-owned ABC), it could be Apple's turn to flex a bigger muscle in video and broadcast entertainment.
That could make for some interesting conversation at Oscar afterparties. But at least for now, Jobs' evening is probably focused on "Up."
UPDATE (5:15 p.m. PT): Twitter user John Chu nabbed a picture at the Oscars with Steve Jobs, more or less proving that it actually is Steve Jobs.
UPDATE (5:54 p.m. PT): A commercial for the iPad, making public its April 3 release date, ran during the Oscars, though that's not necessarily correlated with Jobs' attendance. The ad ran in the commercial break following Christoph Waltz's acceptance of the Best Supporting Actor award for "Inglorious Basterds."
UPDATE (5:59 p.m. PT): "Up" has won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.
UPDATE (6:23 p.m. PT): Here's somebody's grainy screen-grab of the video, which is currently the only version of the first-ever iPad TV advertisement that's online:
UPDATE (6:47 p.m. PT): The video of the iPad ad is live, but not embeddable, on Apple's Web site. The song playing in the ad is "There Goes My Love" by a Danish band called The Blue Van, from its 2008 album "Man Up."
UPDATE (7:14 p.m. PT): The iPad commercial has run again.
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iPad ad launches during the Oscars--predictable?
Why would Apple launch its iPad campaign March 15, as was rumored by some, when it could launch during the Oscars? This is Apple, not Snapple.
It seemed so necessary the iPad would receive its official TV push as other glamorous objects of adoration displayed their wares.
What is remarkable about the ad is that there is nothing remarkable about it at all. It is very neat, but very standard communication from Apple.
Yes, there is the music: "There Goes My Love" by Danish band The Blue Van, a tune that will soon be downloaded quite often on iTunes.
But this is, as with the iPhone and so many other Apple launches, a simple product demonstration (apologies for grainy video. It's the only embeddable copy at the time of writing). The content might just as easily have been shot by a camera hovering over Steve Jobs' head when he launched the product January 27.
It really bears all the same characteristics--yes, even some of the same footage--as the video (also embedded) that Apple launched on its own site in January.
Apple's products are far more powerful than any of its ads. Everywhere you see them, your eyes and your interest temporarily lose their stasis. This ad serves simply to tell you that April 3 will be the launch date and you should do exactly what the hands in the ad are doing: get an iPad into them and see how much fun they (and you) will have.
It will be interesting to see whether Apple still might follow this execution with something a little more daring in a week or two.
more : http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10465271-71.html?tag=mncol
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