Jason

This got a like only because I wasn't tagged. But aside from that -

So I rented* this on Google Play a few days ago, in large part because of your "shilling". I'm pretty sure it would have escaped my notice otherwise. Finally got around to watching it today, and I loved it - so thanks for bringing it to my attention. It's an absolute crime how limited of a release it had in North America. I have five 2016 films I'm still planning on watching, but right now I think it'd be in third place. Would be surprised if more than one or two of the five films I'm planning on watching surpass it. *Liked it so much, I actually ended up purchasing it afterwards.

Definitely. I just managed to get my hands on data from 2014 and 2015. Turns out that as the Canadian dollar weakened substantially over those two years, the average ticket price in USD held steady because of a high rate of ticket price inflation in CAD. This also shows up in the Canadian share of domestic box office, which did not fall according to the overall trendline from 2000-2013. (The time period over which the Canadian dollar was either rising or falling only slightly.) In other words, it turns out that the substantial weakening of the Canadian dollar over the past two years has had a very small impact overall because of a large increase in the local currency ticket price. I'm guessing the reason why the Canadian box office share did in fact rise when the dollar was strengthening is that theatres had no incentive to reduce local ticket prices. Graph of yearly ticket prices in CAD and USD from 2000-2015, also showing the exchange rate (right axis): Updated graph of Canadian box office share vs. exchange rate, 2000-2015, trendline created from 2000-2013:

@Grand Moff Tele

The Canadian share of domestic box office changes roughly in proportion with changes in the exchange rate. However, because Canada's share of the domestic box office is small though (8%-10% in that data range), a weakening of the Canadian dollar by 10% would only reduce the total domestic box office by about 1%. Added a clarification to the original post.

Here's another way of looking at it. I obtained data for the Canadian gross box office from 2005-2013 (Focus reports, UNESCO) and calculated the percentage of domestic box office for that year, then made a graph of Canadian domestic box office vs. the average nominal CAD/USD exchange rate for that year (Bank of Canada). The trendline was calculated forcing an intercept of zero (negative intercept doesn't make sense here), and extrapolated backwards to include current exchange rate. The R-squared value of 0.82 is statistically significant, and suggests that about 80% of the yearly differences in the Canadian contribution to domestic box office can be explained by changes in the exchange rate. The absolute decrease is small though (edit: to the total domestic box office). Comparing current exchange rate to peak exchange rate from 2011-2012, a difference of about 3%. Comparing current exchange rate to Avatar exchange rate, difference of about 1.5%.

At suggestion of @FantasticBeasts, did an adjustment of overseas gross for Fantastic Beasts using DH2 exchange rates and ticket prices. Adjusting only for exchange rates, current OS gross of $551.4M would be ~$788M. Adjusting also for 2011 ticket prices, using projected average 2016 ticket prices, current OS gross would be ~$715M.

Haven't seen the film yet, but based on a very short clip I found on youtube (looks to be an official release) it's Japanese, not Korean. I don't want to judge having not seen the context, but from that clip it feels very much like a caricature of J-pop played for laughs. Including a part where the J-pop band doesn't understand the Koala's instruction to stop their performance. Keep in mind that aside from that being a stereotype, it's not even true. Members of J-pop/K-pop bands generally do understand English, and I think anyone would have understood the accompanying gestures. I don't know if that's how @yjs's friends interpreted it. Also - for the record, red pandas are from China, not Japan.

My avatar in our chat group (at their request ):

I actually haven't had to explain to anyone I know why I'm suddenly into tracking box office. But my nickname in high school was "Uber-Nerd" (given to me by the other nerds) and the nickname I acquired in an MMO I play is "Captain Spreadsheet". So I think it's the sort of thing people I know expect from me. Honestly, if I'd grown up in a family that was more into movies I think I'd have been into box office tracking years ago.

Same. I know people who pirate films a lot, but they at least have the decency to admit they're just being cheap (sometimes after a bit of pressure) instead of jumping through hoop after hoop trying to justify it morally/legally.

It's also legal in Canada to lend a DVD to a friend. Used to be only implicitly because of common law precedents (that formed the foundation of first-sale doctrine in the United States and would also apply to the United Kingdom), but amendments to the Copyright Act made it explicit that ownership of a tangible object gives the owner rights to sell or otherwise transfer that object. So the statement that it's illegal to lend a DVD is now patently false in at least two countries.

Clarification: does this also imply we should be voting in all categories, or just that in any category we do vote in we should select five nominees? There are a lot of categories where I would decline to vote because I haven't seen enough films or am not knowledgeable enough about what quality in that category means.

Genuinely curious. How were you watching it on your TV? I presumed HDMI cable vs. Chromecast would look the same. Used Chromecast at my parent's place, it was very good. Tried an 8 GB blu-ray rip to see if it would be better (was for a film I owned on blu-ray anyway, but they don't have a blu-ray player). It was about equivalent.

Yes, it is. It takes less than 30 seconds to grab a movie that's available on Google Play, as long as you've already done it once and set up your credit card info. All of this year's major films received a digital release while they were still available in theatres. Actually, there are some films I couldn't even easily see in a theatre near me (The Little Prince, Hunt for the Wilderpeople) that received a digital release within a few months of theatrical release. They look very good on a large TV, very close to blu-ray quality. About as good as blu-ray rips, unless it's uncompressed. Which no one I know actually goes for, because 40 GB.

This is actually a better summary of how I feel about Kubo than I think I could have written. (Aside from the top 25 part, I haven't watched enough to have a top 25.)

It may be that for some of the films people here are pirating are ones that are really hard to get. But for the people I know, they are films that are even easier and faster to get on Google Play or other digital platforms than on torrents, although maybe digital availability might be one or two weeks later. But that's no excuse because digital release is now happening during theatrical release, so if it's something they were really in a hurry to see they could have watched it in theatres. I don't buy for a second that most people are pirating primarily because of convenience. Piracy exists because it's "free".

So I've had this exact argument before. It may be that if it weren't for being able to pirate a specific film (Ghostbusters for example) you wouldn't have paid for it either. But what I've asked is this: is there not a single film/TV show you've ever watched that you would have paid for if you had to? At that point friends of mine have always admitted that there are some, and they didn't because they could get it for free. It helps that it was an honest discussion between friends. If they had told me they wouldn't have paid for a single one I'd have pointed out they had re-watched many of them several times and even bought a bigger hard drive/new enclosure to store all the films they've pirated. I can believe that some there are people pirating films on occasion they otherwise wouldn't have watched (which I still think is wrong). But I absolutely cannot believe that people are never pirating films/TV they would have otherwise paid to see in some form. Which is what some people here seem to be trying to argue, and is completely ridiculous.

Okay, so I can imagine it'd be near-impossible to conclusively demonstrate a causal relationship between piracy and decreased revenue from any source (theatrical release, home video etc.). Not because such a relationship doesn't exist, but because there are multiple possible explanations, and an experiment can't be conducted to separate the effects. But am I really supposed to believe that among the people I know who pirate up to several dozens of films a year (as well as a number of TV shows), they would not have watched ANY of them if there was no "free" option available?

Agree with the gist of what you're saying. But I think most of the people who do this aren't being lazy, they're being cheap (in the worst sense of the word). It's easier and quicker to get most of the films I've seen pirated by people I know on Google Play than it is on torrents.

For a while my parents (in their 60s, not very tech-savvy) were using Popcorn Time without being aware it was illegal. They stopped once I told them it was, my mother was very shocked.

This nails it, 100%. Unfortunately, explaining to people that they're freeloaders doesn't trigger enough guilt to make them stop, so I think it's time for a stronger legal response to piracy. Also agree 100%. For example, I know people who spend ~$20 every day on very basic takeout food because they don't want to be bothered to cook who laugh at me for spending ~$20 on occasion to buy a film I want to have permanently on blu-ray/digital release. I have a lot of trouble believing that someone willing to spend more than $20 on food they could have made themselves for a few dollars values their time so little they're willing to spend ~2 hours watching movies they didn't actually want to see. Sometimes even several hours re-watching them.

I'm glad that Disney changed the name of the film and withdrew their trademark application for the phrase "Dia de Los Muertos", it was clearly causing offence. However, I'd like to point out that trademarking the name of a film is standard practice, and more importantly would only restrict others from using the phrase in association with the film or associated products. There seems to be a widespread (and mistaken) impression that the phrase being trademarked would somehow restrict the use of the phrase in its traditional usage. It would not. For example, the name of our related (though now entirely secularized) holiday, Halloween, has been trademarked multiple times. Each trademark protects only the products or services specifically identified in the application, and does not prevent anyone else from continuing to use the word Halloween. Or to file their own trademark for "Halloween", associated with their own product or service. I think it's understandable that the filmmakers and lawyers at Disney thought nothing of it until complaints were made.

How would you propose doing this? If you do an average absolute difference in rank between lists, the, short lists benefit because there's less variation among the most well-known, well-liked films. I can think of different ways to try and correct for list length, but that can get a bit dicey. Anyway, among the public lists of full length, the most similar list is MovieMan89's, with an average absolute difference in rank of 28.9. The least similar full list is Films's, with an average absolute difference in rank of 49.5.