The Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of All Time [Movies]

By Casey Chan Oct 16, 2011 3:00 PM 37,556 99

TorrentFreak recently published a list of the most pirated movies over BitTorrent of all time and apparently, what we watch in theaters is what we like to pirate off the Internet. All of the most popular movies have been illegally downloaded a gazillion times.

Here's the list, which dates back to early 2006:

1. Avatar (21 million downloads)
2. The Dark Knight (19 million downloads)
3. Transformers (19 million downloads)
4. Inception (18 million downloads)
5. The Hangover (17 million downloads)
6. Star Trek (16 million downloads)
7. Kick-Ass (15 million downloads)
8. The Departed (14 million downloads)
9. The Incredible Hulk (14 million downloads)
10. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (14 million downloads)

Any surprises? Kick-Ass obviously doesn't hold a candle to the rest of the movies in terms of Blockbuster power, so there's one. The Incredible Hulk being a top 10 pirated movie surprises me since they had another Hulk that everyone pretended didn't exist. Other than that though, the formula is quite simple: Sci-Fi Comic Book Gun movies with Leonardo DiCaprio starring. [TorrentFreak]

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Alan Turing's Biopic Might Get the Hollywood Hunk Treatment from Leo DiCaprio [Movies]

By Kyle Wagner Oct 12, 2011 2:00 PM 4,470 13

Alan Turing, the venerable WWII-era nerd icon who helped crack the Nazi Enigma machines and came up with the robot sentience-checking Turing Test, is the subject of a new biopic, and apparently Leonardo DiCaprio "has the inside track" to play him.

Warner Bros bought the script for The Imitation Game for seven figures after bidding against several other studios, which Deadline claims is because Leo is lined up to star as Turing. No one's officially attached to the film yet, but Ron Howard is also rumored to be interested.

Hollywood rumors are just as fickle as tech rumors, so don't be surprised if casting takes a left turn, but still: DiCaprio, Turing, WWII, Enigma machines, fighting Nazis, the British government being dicks. Come on, you're seeing this. [Deadline via NY Mag]

Image Credit: Kevin Winter / Getty Images Entertainment

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Bonus Download Wednesday Continues: Apple's iOS Movies App Is Awesome [Ios Apps]

By Sam Biddle Oct 12, 2011 1:53 PM 21,146 33

Apple's "iTunes Movie Trailers" app is one hell of a misnomer: it doesn't just beam down the giant library of trailers we love. The new app lets you buy tickets, find nearby theaters, and chart film releases on a calendar.

This could be really, really useful: watch a trailer that looks great, check if it's out yet, find the nearest theater it's playing in, then buy a ticket for you and your beautiful significant other. Even sync it across your devices with iCloud! All from your iOS 5 gadget. Go download it now. [iTunes via 9to5Mac]

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Watch Live: Blockbuster Streaming Service Brings More Movies than Netflix [Blockbuster]

Watch out Netflix, big blue's coming for you. Dish Network subscriptions are getting bundled up with a new service called Blockbuster Movie Pass, which includes Blockbuster's DVD-by-Mail and a new media streaming service. The bottom line? More titles than Netflix.

The combination satellite, mail, and streaming service is pretty massive: 100,000 DVDs by mail, 4,000 movies streaming by web, and 3,000 to your TV. In keeping with the old Blockbuster plans, you'll be able to exchange your movies in store and get access to 3,000 games by mail.

Adding the new streaming service will start $10 a month for existing Dish Network subscribers—expect to pay more if you want more than one DVD a month. New subscribers will get one year free if they subscribe before the end of January. What about the rest of us? Too bad! Blockbuster Movie Pass wiil be available only to Dish Network subscribers—at least for now.

Should Netflix be shaking in its boots? The $10 plan would be a no-brainer if I subscribed to cable or satellite. Netflix's combination DVD and streaming costs $16 per month and doesn't offer games, or in-store exchange, which I always thought was a convenient feature. Blockbuster says it has more than anyone else, but Netflix's streaming library of 20,000 titles will probably keep a lot of people hanging on—no matter how disaffected they are with Netflix after the company's recent missteps. [Dish Network]

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The Movies on Netflix Streaming Are About to Suck a Lot More [Video]

A large portion of the fresh movies that you can watch on Netflix's Watch Instantly streaming service are supplied through a deal with Starz. Like Toy Story 3 and Let Me In. Well, they're going to disappear on February 28.

Starz announced today that contract negotiations with Netflix have broken down and that when the current contract expires on February 28, 2012, their content will no be available on the streaming service.

"Starz Entertainment has ended contract renewal negotiations with Netflix. When the agreement expires on February 28, 2012, Starz will cease to distribute its content on the Netflix streaming platform.  This decision is a result of our strategy to protect the premium nature of our brand by preserving the appropriate pricing and packaging of our exclusive and highly valuable content.  With our current studio rights and growing original programming presence, the network is in an excellent position to evaluate new opportunities and expand its overall business."

We're not just talking newer releases that are made available thanks to the Starz deal. Everything from action favorite Big Trouble in Little China to Casino to Night of the Living Dead to The Toxic Avenger, along with 1000 other titles, are all courtesy of Starz. (Update: Night of the Living Dead is in the public domain, but it's currently listed as a Starz Play title, weirdly.)

This is bad news on the day after you needed to decide which Netflix streaming/DVD at home account you want before getting hit with a $6 monthly increase to your current subscription.

This isn't the first time Starz and Netflix have disagreed on what some believe to be an agreement that heavily favors Netflix. Earlier this year Starz announced they would be adding a 90-day waiting period for TV with movies following for Netflix Instant Streaming.

Fortunately, Netflix has several months to lure Starz back to the table, or secure other deals like the one it's got with Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM via Epix to fill in the hole. But as Netflix grows, it's increasingly difficult for the service to convince Hollywood that its service won't destroy the film and television industry. Netflix knows that it's gonna need the studios on its side to build out Watch Instantly as the DVD business slowly crumbles—and they're going to have to pay dearly for it, like they did for Mad Men, at $1 million an episode. Can Netflix afford it? [PR NewsWire via The Next Web]

UPDATE: Business Insider spoke to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings about today's announcement from Starz. He thanked Starz for being a content partner and explained that Starz content was a huge percentage of views a few years ago but that viewership has dropped off.

Because we've licensed so much other great content, Starz content is now down to about 8% of domestic Netflix subscribers' viewing. As we add a huge more content in Q4, we expect Starz content to naturally drift down to 5-6% of domestic viewing in Q1. We are confident we can take the money we had earmarked for Starz renewal next year, and spend it with other content providers to maintain or even improve the Netflix experience.

Your more Starz. [Business Insider]

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These Unprecedented Hubble Movies Just Left Me Speechless [Video]

When I first saw these never-before-seen time-lapse videos—captured over the course of 14 years by the Hubble Space Telescope—I just couldn't believe my eyes. Hubble photos can be beautiful, but these videos just left me speechless.

The videos show stellar jets firing at 440,000 miles (770,000 kilometers) an hour. Stellar jets are a product of the creation of stars, something that happened to our very own Sun about 4.5 billion years ago.

The jets' nature, however, are still a mystery. While we know that they happen during the birth of the star, astronomers don't really know why, how and what is the role they play in the formation of the star itself.

The team of scientist—led by Patrick Hartigan, of Rice University in Houston, Texas—focused on some of the Herbig-Haro objects, which were studied for the first time in 1950 by George Herbig and Guillermo Haro. Located 1,350 light-years from Earth, these objects are near the Orion Nebula in the northern sky and the constellation Vela in the southern sky.

The results of their patient capture process are not only beautiful. They have given astronomers extraordinary insight that now will be incorporated into their computer simulation models.

In HH 2, for example, several bow shocks can be seen where several fast-moving clumps bunch up like cars in a traffic jam. In another jet, HH 34, a grouping of merged bow shocks reveals regions that brighten and fade over time as the heated material cools where the shocks intersect.

In other areas of the jets, bow shocks form from encounters with the surrounding dense gas cloud. In HH 1 a bow shock appears at the top of the jet as it grazes the edge of a dense gas cloud. New glowing knots of material also appear. These knots may represent gas from the cloud being swept up by the jet, just as a swift-flowing river pulls along mud from the shoreline.

One of the main revelations is that the jets are not continuous, but sporadic, "launched in clumps." These clumps may show scientists the rate at which these stars are created, as matter falls into the stars' core from the accretion disk, restarting the jet each time.

The jet phase takes about 100,000 years, so these 14-year time-lapse captures are just an insignificant fraction of that process. And still, they are absolutely beautiful and breathtaking. Just imagine the dimensions of those gas colums, spanning beyond their entire primitive solar system. [Hubble]

The song in the video is Staralfur. Get it on iTunes.

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