Whoa:

The Oscars are looming. So we thought it might be great to produce some amazing, hand-curated data on Hollywood films.

Our ultra-comprehensive dataset lifts the lid on opening weekends, worldwide gross, budgets, storylines, review scores – everything – for every Hollywood film released in the last five years.

…

Our challenge to you is, as ever, VISUALIZE.

The fine geeks at Information is Beautiful have culled data on every film released since 2007 from The Numbers, Box Office Mojo, Wikipedia and IMDb. They’ve placed it all nice and neat into a Google Docs spreadsheet. Entrants have until February 6th to take the data and either create a static graphical representation of it or build a webapp.

If my 2011 Box Office in Review didn’t tip you off, I love playing with data. When I was parsing out the numbers myself, I created a spreadsheet on my own and it took forever. This dataset is nice to have even if you don’t want to make a neat infographic out of it. But you do; obviously you do.

They extended the contest deadline to widen the pool of entrants:

We’ve had loads of great entries already. And some amazingly creative ideas are popping up.

Like, [Jermone Cukier](http://www.jeromecukier.net/blog/2012/01/23/hollywood-data/)‘s explorations of the dollar value of individual features of a plot. He cross-referenced keywords for each movie on IMDb with box office return. The result? A price tag for each plot element.

Having an explosion in your film could earn you $150m, he finds. A love triangle $37m. And a psychopath – just $32m.

I cannot begin to explain how excited I am to see what people come up with. I may have to enter myself.

Matt Drance, commenting on the new Warner Brothers deal with Netflix that not only delays rental availability by 56 days but also restricts adding their films to your queue until 28 days after release:

Also under this new deal, pirated movies remain free of charge, free of non-skippable ads, free of five-minute load times, and are now nearly three months ahead of the competition.

Hollywood is making it harder and harder to support their work.

(via Ben Brooks.)

Great article on the digital music business over at The Verge:

Spotify is doing similar work on “radio” playback. “Radio contributes to the overall music discovery experience,” a Spotify representative told me, “which is why Spotify Radio has recently undergone a top-to-bottom overhaul making it a bigger, smarter and an altogether cooler music discovery experience.”

Rdio’s on board as well: “Passive listening is something that’s critical in the overall experience,” says Drew Larner, the service’s CEO.

Despite Pandora’s big head start, the huge libraries and lack of radio-style licensing restrictions on for-pay streaming services means there’s a ton of opportunity here to offer something people have never heard before — namely, everything. And the seamless operation is a big leg up on ad hoc music piracy: “Even if 14 million songs were free, people would still gravitate to radio services,” says David. “I hate to say it, but my mom listens to the music stations that come with her cable TV.”

I think “passive watching” might be the missing piece of the streaming video pie. Americans may watch 4-5 hours of cable a day, but how much of it is actually “active.” I like to keep reruns of Law & Order on while I’m doing dishes, for example.

Champions of on-demand streaming services cite the ability only watch what you want and nothing else, but even choosing what to watch is an active process. I think the game-changing set-top-box will be the one that starts playing video the moment you turn it on. That’s the comfort that keeps so many people tied to cable.

“What we’re building is more like an in-house laboratory where authors and editors and marketers can test new ideas,” says Jeff Belle, vice-president of Amazon Publishing and Kirshbaum’s boss. “Success to us means working with authors who want to find new ways to connect with more readers.”

Talk like that hasn’t mollified publishers, and it’s easy to see why. They’re trying to protect a century-old business model—and their role as nurturers of literary culture—from encroachment by a company that consistently reimagines how industries can be run more efficiently.

Gosh, that sounds a lot like the movie industry, doesn’t it? This whole artlicle is a great read, highlighting the challenges that come with trying to move a stubborn 100+ year-old industry into the future. So many memorable lines in it, like this one from author Tim Ferriss of 4-Hour Workweek fame:

Amazon will publish his new book, The 4-Hour Chef, in September. “For me it was a choice between publishers embracing technology and a world-class technology company embracing publishing,” Ferris says. “The latter will give me more of a chance to improvise and experiment.”

As much as Netflix frustrates me sometimes, it is still a company I love to follow. Their quarterly shareholders’ letters are notable for their breadth and honesty. If you are even remotely interested in streaming video, this is must read material.

Every time one of these comes out, we learn a few interesting tidbits about Netflix and the video industry as a whole. For the first time in a while, this letter wasn’t utterly depressing. The company and CEO Reed Hastings seem to have stopped the exodus of users after last summer’s Qwikster blunder, and in fact are gaining users again. They are still company to beat in this space.

So, what’s so interesting in the Q4 2011 shareholders letter (PDF)?

Over the last few days, this conversation has grown on Twitter:

Dear Brad Bird: Next time you direct a $145 million film, let me know & I’ll send you a font for your on-screen subtitles that’s not Verdana

— Matthew Butterick (@typogforlawyers) January 20, 2012

dear @typogforlawyers, if you direct a big film on a tight budget & schedule, chances are fonts won’t ever be your most pressing problem.

— Brad Bird (@BradBirdA113) January 23, 2012

@BradBirdA113 @typogforlawyers Which is too bad, because choosing the right font costs nearly nothing, unlike wardrobe/cars/sets/etc

— Hoefler+Frere-Jones (@H_FJ) January 24, 2012

It costs TIME, @H_FJ, time! I’m not defending my #%¥! font! I was shown a few sans serif fonts and I picked the 1st that didn’t bother me!

— Brad Bird (@BradBirdA113) January 24, 2012

Matthew Butterick, remember, is the typographer who wrote the letter to Brad Bird about his use of Verdana in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. Hoefler & Frere-Jones is one of the top type foundries in the world, so it’s nice to see them add their perspective on the issue of on-screen fonts.

There’s a lot of sniping here, but I think it’s a good thing that these respective heavyweights are having a public discussion about film typography. I’m a fan of Bird’s work and of Ghost Protocol, but I think he’s in the wrong here. His dismissal of fonts seems boorish. Not only will he not defend his work, but he shrugs off the question of his choice: “I was shown a few sans serif fonts and I picked the 1st that didn’t bother me!”

If it’s in the frame then the onus is on the director to make a deliberate and defensible choice. Bird is asking for a free pass.

The devil really is in the details.

(h/t commenter “tejas” on Baradwaj Rangan’s Web site.)

The view from the gutter, that is from those tortured souls for whom an integral part of the cinema experience is watching a film screened from a print (and, perhaps more importantly, have no interest in Avatar), is that the industry invariably views serious cinephiles as cranks, dilettantes and dreamers with no real concept of the fiscal realities of contemporary distribution. Yet one puckish tweet cuts straight to the heart of the matter: “Hey guys, it’s cool, we’ve got paper. No more need for canvas.”

It feels like other industries have done very well by “cranks, dilettantes and dreamers.” Music, publishing and gaming come to mind. That you can buy new albums on vinyl but won’t be able to see a 35mm print soon is beyond me.

Yesterday, Nilay Patel over at The Verge posted a piece on the return of Digital Rights Management (DRM). He speaks with Mark Teitell from UltraViolet about Hollywood’s newest attempt to impose restrictions on the files they sell.

Why did the movie industry spend several years and millions of dollars building a system no more effective at stopping theft and less flexible for consumers than no system at all? Teitell told us that without DRM, “the business of producing compelling video content couldn’t pay for itself over time,” and said that the “big guiding belief” behind UltraViolet is not stopping piracy, but rather presenting “a truly compelling legitimate alternative for those consumers that weren’t fixated on stealing — they want freedom and flexibility, and we’re giving that to them.”

Bullshit.

Without DRM video couldn’t pay for itself? Patel points to the fact that the music industry is on the mend even though it has done away with DRM, but this used car salesman just spouts more nonsense. “The R is for rights — people like rights. We have the Bill of Rights.” Uh huh.

Video can absolutely “pay for itself over time,” but it can’t pay the salaries of the uncreative paranoid millionaires who run the studios. No one wants restrictions on their files, not even these fantasy “consumers that weren’t fixated on stealing” he mentions. People want to own the things they buy. DRM subjugates video ownership to the studios, removing the consumer’s rights. Perhaps Teitell should read the Bill of Rights one more time before whipping that line out again.

The company that gets this right and does away with DRM will make a whole lot of money. Enough, I’ll bet you, to finance a lot of great, original work.

Know what happens when IMDb breaks?

Movie quote! Great find by Factorio.us and Little Big Details. I’ve never gotten a 500 Error on IMDb, so I didn’t know there was this little surprise hiding there.

I wonder if it cycles through different quotes. Here are a few I can think of off-hand. Feel free to supplement in the comments.

You’re gonna need a bigger error message.

Say hello to my little error message!

It rubs the error message on its skin or else it gets the hose again.

Love means never having to have an error message.

I see error messages.

Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty error message.

A ringing endorsement for a Sundance film that sounds like something I wish I could watch right now:

Okay, so here’s the pitch: Frank Langella and a robot crack safes. You’d be forgiven for offering a great big “meh.” So please believe me when I say that *Robot and Frank* not only nails all the heartwarming family scenes expected of a Sundance dramedy, but also has great insight into the ethical implications of artificial intelligence and the fractured lucidity of memory.

No trailers online yet, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for this one. Jordan (who deserves extra credit for using the phrase “Kuleshov Effect” in a review) went so far as to say it’ll be tough to beat out for his top 10 of 2012. See you in December.