The Oscar nominations were announced yesterday, which means it’s time again to see who’s winning in the eternal fight between the movie studios, the Motion Picture Academy, and the loosely-organized group of spunky kids known as The Scene.

Yesterday morning, along with an anonymous group of spectators, I updated the ever-growing spreadsheet now spanning the last nine years of Oscar-nominated film. I added this year’s 29 nominees to the list, a collection of 274 films in total. (You can read about more sources and methodology at the end of the entry.)

Don’t miss the Statistics sheet, which covers all the aggregate year-by-year stats. Download or view it below, or read on for my findings. As always, if you have any additions or corrections, let me know.

View full-size on Google Spreadsheets.

Download: Excel (with formulas) or CSV

Findings

Note: These numbers will change as we get closer to the ceremony, and I’ll do my best to keep them updated until Oscar day.

Continuing the trend from the last couple years, fewer screeners are leaking online by nomination day than ever. Last year at this time, only 41% of screeners leaked online; this year, that number drops again slightly to 38%.

But if you include retail DVD releases along with screeners, 66% of this year’s nominated films have already leaked online in high quality. This makes sense; if a retail DVD release is already available, there’s no point in leaking the screener. But I think it’s safe to say that industry efforts to watermark screeners and prosecute leaks by members have almost certainly contributed to the decline.

The gap between theatrical and DVD release dates seems to have stabilized, hovering around 105 days for the last few years. This year, the gap between US release to first leak seems to have dipped slightly, from a median 23 days last year to 17 days.

The chart below shows how camcorder and telesync leaks for Oscar-nominated films continue to decline in popularity, while nearly every nominated film is eventually leaked on DVD. (The only exception seems to be 2008’s Il Divo, which never appeared to get a US retail release.)

One prediction: The end of the DVD screener is near. This year, Fox Searchlight distributed three screeners with iTunes — 127 Hours, Black Swan, and Conviction — to all 93,000 voting members of the Screen Actors’ Guild, marking the first time a major studio’s used Apple’s service for screener distribution.

Voters get the additional convenience of being able to watch films on their computers, Apple TVs, iPads and iPhones, while studios save the time and expense of distributing physical media. If this experiment’s successful, it seems likely other studios will follow.

Miscellanea

Some random notes:

• This year, three films were leaked online within a day of their theatrical release — Iron Man 2, Alice in Wonderland, and Harry Potter.
• The Rabbit Hole screener was leaked online eight days before its theatrical release, while Winter’s Bone was the slowest to leak online (so far) at 125 days after its theatrical release.
• Oscar-nominated films tend to get released late in the year, but how late? More nominated films have been released on December 25 than any other day, but the median date is October 20.
• For the first year, the first high-quality leak of a film — Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — was a PPV rip, most likely from a hotel’s new movie releases on pay-per-view.
• Retail Blu-Ray rips are now frequently being leaked online now before retail DVDs, so I’ve modified the “Retail DVD” column to include them.

Methodology

As usual, I included the feature films in every category except documentary and foreign films (even makeup and costume design). I used Yahoo! Movies for US release dates, always using the first available date, even if it was a limited release. Cam, telesync, R5, and screener leak dates were taken from VCD Quality, with occasional backup from ORLYDB. I always used the first leak date, with the exception of unviewable or incomplete nuked releases.

Finally, the official screener dates came from Academy member Ken Rudolph, who lists the date he receives every screener on his personal homepage. Thanks again, Ken!

For previous years, see 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008 (part 1 and part 2), 2009, and 2010.

I’ve been dealing with a family illness, but couldn’t let the Wikileaks Cablegate incident pass without comment. In between hospital visits, I’ve been jotting down links related to the historic leak.

It’s a stunning experiment of forced transparency, prying open government against its will without much care or concern about the ramifications. Wikileaks is the Pirate Bay of journalism — an unstoppable force disrupting whole industries because they can.

To help make sense of my own opinions about it, I rounded up some of the more interesting responses and visualizations. Enjoy.

Continue reading “Wikileaks Cablegate Reactions Roundup” →

Big news! I’m very happy to announce that I’ve joined Expert Labs as a Project Director, working alongside the wonderful and talented Anil Dash and Gina Trapani. (Read the official announcement.)

Our goal’s to help government make better decisions about policy by listening to citizens in the places they already are: social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Our first project is ThinkUp, an open-source tool for archiving and visualizing conversations on social networks. It started with Gina scratching a personal itch, a way to parse and filter @replies. But it’s grown to be something more: a tool for policy makers to harness the collective intelligence of experts.

There’s tons to do, but I’m particularly excited to tackle ThinkUp’s ability to separate signal from noise, making it easier to derive meaning from hundreds or thousands of responses, using visualization, clustering, sentiment analysis, and robotic hamsters. I’m planning on building some fun hacks on top of ThinkUp, as well as keeping an eye open for other vectors to tackle our core mission.

Officially, I started on Monday and it’s already been an incredible week. I flew to Washington DC, attended the FCC’s first Open Developer Day, and a day of meetings with various groups at the White House.

What I found was inspiring: a group of extremely clever and passionate geeks, working from within to make things better. Some agencies are definitely more clueful than others, but it was clear that they want our — and your — help. I was skeptical at first, but they’re sincere: they want meaningful public participation and they need smart people to make it happen.

Want to join in? The easiest thing to do would be to install ThinkUp on your server. Give it a try, see what you think and, if you can, contribute — code, design, and documentation are all welcome.

If you’ve read Waxy for a while, you’ll know I very rarely touch on political issues here. It’s not that I’m apolitical — like anyone, I have opinions, but I don’t often feel engaged enough to write about it.

So, why would I go to a Gov 2.0 non-profit? For three main reasons:

1. It’s important. To tackle our most serious national issues, we need better communication between government and citizens. I want my son to grow up in a world where he doesn’t feel disconnected and disillusioned by government, and I want government to meet the needs of the people, rather than favoring those with the most money or the loudest voices.
2. It’s exciting. Technology is quite possibly our best hope of breaking down that divide, using social tools to disrupt the way that governments are run and policy is made. I love designing and building tools that use social connections to tackle difficult problems, and it feels like government is an area ripe for disruption.
3. I love the team. I’ve known Anil and Gina for years and have long admired their work. They’re both extraordinarily talented and creative people, and I feel lucky to call them both friends. The opportunity to work with them was too hard to pass up.

How can I pass that up?

And what about Kickstarter? I recently stepped back into my original advisory role, and will continue to help out the team however I can — dispensing unsolicited advice, recruiting new projects, writing the occasional article, and evangelizing for them around the world, like I did at Free Culture Forum in Barcelona two weeks ago. Kickstarter’s leading an indie-culture revolution, thanks to amazing leadership and a brilliantly creative team, and it was a pleasure working with them.

This isn’t a change in direction for me, but a change in focus. Both Kickstarter and Expert Labs are bringing smart people together — people who might never connect otherwise — to create things, to change things, to make the world a better place. I can’t wait.

Proof!

Memeorandum made some minor markup changes recently which broke Memeorandum Colors, a Greasemonkey script I wrote that colors Memeorandum based on linking behavior. (Read more about it.)

If you were using Memeorandum Colors, here’s the updated Greasemonkey script and Firefox extension. (Unfortunately, it won’t work in Chrome because they haven’t implemented cross-site requests in user scripts yet.)

Now, a funny story. On Monday afternoon, I was alerted that the script was broken by a guy named Pat, a political blogger in Detroit. He asked politely if I’d fix the script, and I promised to take a look at it. I fixed it last night and was cleaning it up for release this morning, when I saw this on Twitter:

I never looked at his site, so was totally unaware of his political leanings. I was just busy.

Enjoy the code, Pat! Sorry I took so long to fix the code you use and love, for free, every day.

Update: Pat deleted his three tweets (archived above for posterity) and, in an epic 17-tweet rant, offered me and five others “an ass kicking that you will never, ever forget.” He follows up with a threat to sue me for publishing his “likeness and words” — screenshots of the three deleted tweets above, posted in public, addressed to me, and reproduced for non-commercial commentary and criticism under the Copyright Act’s “fair use” provisions.

Update 2: And now his Twitter account’s gone. I saved an archive of his threatening tweets for posterity. If you want to get in touch, his new account is @RightBloggerPat.

August 6: Pat wrote a followup on his blog, with his perspective of the whole ordeal. He admits he jumped the gun and apologizes for the mistake. Case closed.

Over at the Kickstarter blog, I interviewed R.U. Sirius about his project to create a collective memory project about Mondo 2000, culminating in a website, book, and possible film project directed by Mondo art director Bart Nagel.

Aside from the Kickstarter project, we also talked about the history of Mondo and its long-term impact, their rivalry with Wired, and the long-lost unpublished issue. He also reveals that Joi Ito bought the $750 reward to fictionally write yourself into Mondo’s history, which is funny because Joi was actually on the masthead.

The full transcript is on the Kickstarter blog, or you can download it or listen below.

Back in 1999, my first job out of college was at Gettingit.com, a San Francisco-based webzine edited by R.U. Sirius. I was a total Mondo/Wired/bOING bOING fanboy in the early ’90s, so the opportunity to go work with R.U. was incredibly exciting to me. In a disappointing turn, he was an incredibly nice and normal guy, instead of the hyperactive cyberhippy on mescaline that I was expecting.

I recommend reading Patrick Farley’s The Guy I Almost Was, a classic webcomic that nicely characterizes my impressions of the early ’90s cyberculture scene. (Patrick Farley just ran a successful Kickstarter project to revive Electric Sheep, and R.U. backed it.)

Random trivia: In July 1999, we tried to sell R.U.’s soul on eBay. Here’s the image I made for the auction:

In the latest Kickstarter Podcast, I interviewed indie comics legend James Kochalka and Pixeljam Games’ Rich Grillotti and Miles Tilmann about Glorkian Warrior, their retro-inspired videogame that mixes hand-drawn and 8-bit pixel animation.

• Kickstarter Podcast #5 – Glorkian Warrior

James Kochalka is undeniably prolific, though he balks at the word. He’s kept a daily comic diary of his life on American Elf for the last 12 years, released 40+ books, recorded 10 albums, and just appeared in a scifi film. But he’s never made a videogame, something he’d been aching to do since he was a kid.

Thanks to a chance meeting at a chiptune concert, Kochalka’s collaborating with Pixeljam Games to make it happen. Pixeljam’s responsible for some of my all-time favorite Flash games, such as Dino Run, Gamma Bros., Ratmaze, and Mountain Maniac. It’s a match made in geek heaven.

Their Kickstarter project ends tonight, so get the Glorkian Warrior game, mini-comic, and other exclusive rewards while you can.

Bonus track, for hardcore Kochalka fans:

• James Kochalka sings the Glorkian Warrior theme song

Yancey rounded up our SXSW appearances over at the Kickstarter blog, but I thought I should mention it here…

On Saturday night, Kickstarter, Tumblr, and SoundCloud welcome you to F*CK YEAH! SXSW, a party with music/visuals by Eclectic Method sponsored by the nice folks at ThePlanet. It’s at Emo’s on Saturday night, from 6:30pm until late.

On Sunday 11am, I’m doing a solo talk about a mish-mash of my interests, focused around metagames — both games about games, and games built on games. Quite possibly the only talk at SXSW to mention Mechanical Turk, Desert Bus, Barack Obama, VVVVVV, and Metafilter.

Also in amazing panels, Kickstarter’s own Perry Chen (Monday w/Robin Sloan), Yancey Strickler (Wednesday w/Allison Weiss), and Fred Benenson. You should go to every one. More details here.

See you in Austin!

I’m a huge fan of both indie comics and indie journalism, so I was thrilled to see Pulitzer-nominated cartoonist Ted Rall start a Kickstarter project last month to fund his return to Afghanistan. I may not always agree with his politics, but I’ve found his long-form foreign reporting to be unique and thought-provoking.

He graciously agreed to an interview over Skype, which we posted late last week as the second episode of the Kickstarter Podcast. I thought it came out well, though I clearly still need to work on my audio mixing skillz (sounds better on headphones!) and perfecting my NPR voice.

You can stream and download the MP3.

• Kickstarter Podcast #2 – Interview with Ted Rall

Rall’s a controversial figure, especially reviled among political conservatives, even though he’s leveled some of his toughest criticisms at the Obama administration. While most attention’s focused on his syndicated cartoons, he’s also written six non-fiction books, half of those focused on his travels across the ‘Stans — Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. In 2002, he published To Afghanistan and Back, a mix of written dispatches, cartoons, and a graphic novella documenting his experiences on the ground during the U.S. invasion after 9/11.

All of Ted Rall’s previous trips were funded by news organizations, but with budgets for foreign correspondents slashed, he’s turned to his fans to fund his return trip. We talk about the changing media landscape, his previous books, and what it’s like being a NYC cartoonist in one of the most dangerous places on Earth.

The more things change…

“… Anyone who wants to can see a list of all the events you are planning on attending? It’s like a stalker’s delight.”

— Comment about Upcoming.org from September 23, 2003, six days after launch

“It’s bad enough we’re using real names and telling people where we’ve been. Now it’s like prepping someone for the best times to try robbing your apartment.”

— Comment from June 2005

Further back, from the Montreal Gazette, September 1983…

From 1977, don’t list your weddings or funerals in the paper, unless you want to get robbed…

While digging through some books, I stumbled on this DEN.net press packet from November 1999, six months before the notorious video startup’s collapse.

The packet’s a nice little time capsule of their dot-com excess, with promo materials, a breathless press release about their relaunch (“Youth Culture Network Creates Groundbreaking Content That Revolutionizes The Interactive Entertainment Experience”), and copies of articles from the New York Times, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal.

They took the site down for three full days to launch their redesign, something you don’t see often these days. “DEN is here and we’re changing the face of entertainment for Gen Y audiences, bringing this age group an interactive experience unlike anything they’ve known,” said then-CEO, Jim Ritts. (He was ousted three months later after their IPO was shelved.)

For me, the highlight is an included copy of “The 4th Annual P.O.V. 100 Best Web Sites,” where they appeared at #4. Published by the short-lived P.O.V. magazine, which itself shuttered a month before DEN declared bankruptcy, it’s a nice artifact of the era.

All the usual suspects are there — Broadcast.com, hot off their $5.7B acquisition by Yahoo!, Third Voice, and Six Degrees, alongside webzines like Feed, Word, and Brunching Shuttlecocks and proto-blogs like Cardhouse, Obscure Store, and Jeffrey Zeldman Presents. Debuting on the list at #93, a new search engine named Google that “really works, scouring billions of links for junk-free matches — and it does so quickly.” #100 is Joshua Schachter’s Memepool, “an ever-expanding set of links from smart folks who exist only in cyberspace.”

I was going to scan it in, but managed to find a PDF created by the author himself. With his permission, I’ve mirrored it locally:

Surprisingly, DEN.net is still online, an archive of some old videos and documents, with the intriguing tagline “We’re back…” But since it’s stayed exactly the same since August 2007, I wouldn’t hold my breath for a relaunch.