Highest, Lowest Price of Movie Tickets in 2012

A movie ticket in Tokyo Japan is $21.5, but the cheapest in the world is just $4.95.

Photo from mconnors’ morgueFile

The number one movie in the world, as predicted, is The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part Two. The last stretch of the popular vampire series snagged $340.9 million in its worldwide debut. Depending on one’s location, the price for seeing the movie in the big screen could be heavy or light.

While a small continent in Asia sits atop the 10 most expensive cities to watch a movie, five cities are in Australia. The other four cities are in Europe.

Watching Bollywood movies is a bargain basement recreation. In the top 10 cheapest movie tickets, five are found in India. The cheapest is in Hyderabad. Seven are in Asia, two are in Europe and one in North America.

Top 10 most expensive movie tickets in the world

1. Tokyo, Japan: $21.5
2. Zurich, Switzerland: $18.5
3. Geneva, Switzerland: $18.5
4. Perth, Australia: $17.5
5. Sydney, Australia: $17.5
6. Adelaide, Australia: $17.5
7. Melbourne, Australia: $17.5
8. Oslo, Norway: $16.5
9. London, United Kingdom: $15.5
10. Brisbane, Australia: $15.5

Top 10 cheapest movie tickets in the world

1. Hyderabad, India: $4.95
2. Tehran, Iran: $6.23
3. Belgrade, Serbia: $6.76
4. Pune, India: $7.16
5. San Salvador, El Salvador: $7.43
6. Mumbai, India: $7.45
7. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: $7.61
8. Bangalore, India: $7.62
9. Delhi, India: $7.78
10. Cluj-Napoca, Romania: $8.15

Data from Expatistan.com; cost of living index

Any of the US cities did not fit on both lists; but since 1995, the ticket prices have risen steadily. The movie ticket price hit the all-time high in the second quarter of 2012, averaging at $8.12. The average price in 1995 was lower than the cheapest of today, $4.35.

Premium 3D theaters, higher cost of movie production and general inflation affected these prices. Do you think the price of movie tickets is justified?

Sources:
Top 10 most expensive movie tickets; Expatistan
Top 10 cheapest movie tickets; Expatistan
Movie Ticket Prices Reach All-Time High in Q2 of 2012; The Hollywood Reporter
Box Office Report: ‘Breaking Dawn – Part 2’ Bites Off $340.9 Million Global Opening; The Hollywood Reporter

Zombies Still

From the ancient times up to now, we’re still in love with the idea.

Photo from Lindsey Turner’s Flickr

Stories about zombies are rampant. I first learnt of it in the traditional story telling during Halloween season. Now, seasons after seasons of TV shows are featuring zombies. The end of the Twilight Saga, whether you accept it or not, will be a blockbuster in a few weeks. Gamers will kill off zombies again in the new Resident Evil 6. Even songs and commercials are inflicted by the zombie virus.

Why do we love it?

Hollywood can produce movies where we don’t have to use our imaginations. What we watch in movies is extremely believable. In the top 10 bestselling horror movie franchises, Texas Chainsaw Massacre rounded the 10^th position with $364 million, and while the Exorcist notched the top 1 with $2.3 billion. This meant people wanted to be scared (for a while). These people wanted to see gore. This stuff is wicked cool.

The zombie idea is interesting. We wanted to know how humans would fare against the dead. There are different stories that can be created around it. I’m sure you’ve seen one where the character saw a zombie close friend (or family). Would he shoot in the head or let the zombie kill him?

Aside from an array of possible stories, zombies won’t die out because there are rooms for variations. Zombies are supposed to be dead, only the virus controls the body to disseminate terror. But now, they can have emotional memory: the zombie close friend can stop himself from attacking, hinting the main character to run because he doesn’t want to hurt.

Among the weak points of being a zombie is the sluggishness. You’ll be easy to snipe and run from. But Edward’s flashy. The witch in Left 4 dead Xbox game will chase you.

Zombies are ugly and bloody. But the bulk of the dread comes from their ability to transform you into another and well produced sound effects. See this, they can be funny as well like this zombie in Starburst commercial.

People can play around the idea of undead and be lucrative in selling it. So zombies will remain still.

Should we have more zombie stories or do we need to move on?

Source:
Happy Halloween: Top Ten Best Selling Horror Movie Franchises Of All Time; Bossip

Back to Mix Tapes

Gifting mix tapes has been a good music sharing idea.

Photo from stock.xchng

You pile a set of songs that testify your taste in music. You record it to a tape, a cassette tape that’s a rarity now, and give it away. This is a good way to know quality music beyond familiarity, and a way for your friend to know you more.

But like casette tapes, the activity of mix tape exchanges is extinct or nearly. Now, we just share a link from YouTube if we liked a song. There’s less interaction in discovering new songs since we just do it on our own. Many people like me will cruise through iTunes and rely on luck to track a new song I’ll add on favorites.

I’m also in the hunt of great stories. I’ve read and watched perks of being a wallflower – a wonderful work. It’s set in the 90’s and there’s a lot of mix tape handouts between the characters. They are friends because they like the same thing – good music!

Digital music is a hindrance to this comradely kind of music sharing. We just don’t share music anymore as much as in the 90s. It’s hard to go back in that era since this advancing technology is pushing us forward at a fast pace like everything in this generation.

I like music that my friends recommend me. Well not all of it, but if we clicked, there’s extra meaning to that song. The new MySpace has that initiative to incorporate music sharing in a social networking platform. Hell yes! They got that need and this may be a modern mix tape.

I listen to almost any music. The three exceptions are (a) the  unduly sad songs that make me run away as far as I could from the slightest sound of it, (b) certain heavy metal because meaningful lyric is huge for me and (c) songs that I don’t understand, like K-pop.

On my mix tape, many will be from 80s to 90s. Today, almost every songs are either cheesy or club-like that sounds alike. There’s only few contemporaneous songs that impresses me. I’ll have Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, Nada Surf’s Always Love, and The Beatle’s Let It Be.

What songs will be in your mix tape?

Is Asian Horror Better Than its American Remakes?

American remakes of Asian horror films tend to be overly explanatory.
by Deborah Bell of Seshat Travels

Photos are screenshots from Ju-on, Ringu and The Echo

For a good part of the last decade much of Hollywood devoted itself to cranking out remakes or adaptations of successful Asian horror films less well known on our own shores. Prompted by the success of “The Ring” starring Naomi Watts in 2002 – Gore Verbenski’s remake of Japan’s highest grossing horror film to date, the 1998 film “Ringu” — the marketplace was flooded with Americanized versions of East Asian flicks. Unfortunately for Hollywood, their attempts to cash in on this trend proved wildly uneven and produced far lower box office revenue than was anticipated.

Thus the flood of remakes dribbled to a slow leak. One trouble with these movies was that filmmakers on this side of the Pacific seemed to (wrongly) think that American audiences wouldn’t understand the subtleties and symbolism that permeate Asian horror. They replaced creeping tension with jump scares and offered slam-bang CGI instead of psychological shudders, and so ended up stripping their scripts of the very elements that made the originals work so well. But even a truckload of visual effects and a hot Hollywood actress in the lead can’t save scripts that lack true chills at their heart.

American remakes of Asian horror films tend to be overly explanatory, and usually resolve according to traditional Hollywood standards: with most of their plot threads tied up neatly at the end. Such ready explanations do not always exist in the Asian horror originals, where plots are often a lot more complex and sometimes told in a non-linear fashion, thus making those films all the more fascinating to unravel.

With endings that can be interpreted in multiple ways and containing cultural themes or ideas outside of our more familiar Hollywood horror standards, Asian horror challenges its viewers to pay attention and use their brains to try to figure out the plot twists and turns for themselves. This results in a much more involved movie experience than what the majority of the remakes provide.

The wise horror fan knows to avoid those carbon-copy American remakes and head straight for the originals. It really doesn’t take much effort beyond accepting the idea of subtitles in order to “get” Asian horror. “Ju-On” (2002, Japan), “The Echo” (2004, Philippines), “A Tale of Two Sisters” (2003, South Korea) and “Pulse” (2001, Japan), are all are excellent and incredibly scary films that deserve a worldwide audience.

But beyond the obvious first selections, there exists a slew of other fantastic Asian horror flicks out there that luckily Hollywood hasn’t touched yet. “Audition” (1998, Japan), “Infection” (2004, Japan), and “The Maid” (2005, Philippines) quickly come to mind as offering first-rate scares and/or psychological shudders aplenty. The Internet abounds with lists of dozens of really excellent Asian horror flicks that American fans may not have seen, but would greatly enjoy. I invite horror fans who may not be familiar with these films to take a look, it’s definitely worth it!

What is the creepiest horror film for you?

I’m a Tampa Bay Pop Culture Reviewer for Examiner.com, and a contributing writer at SciFi4Me.com, where you will find a vast array of sci-fi news and reviews, interviews and cool links to other science fiction sites.

Cool Sentimental Celebrity Tattoos

These five celebrities have great tattoo ideas.

People endure striking pain to earn themselves a tattoo. Planting a permanent ink on the skin renders the owner a uniquely indicative individual, marking a brand different from the majority.

Some call their tattoos art, even when one’s tattoo is just a cross. But most people get tattoos because they usually have meanings in their life that he or she wants to be constantly reminded of. With just a glance, that person wants people to know his identity. Aside from that, certain tattoos look cool just like these celebrity tattoos:

Photo from justjared.com

Zac Efron. YOLO; which means “You only live once”.

Photo from SNL

Kelly Clarkson. LOVE THEM MORE; “It’s easy to love your friends, but it’s harder to to love people who are trying to make it difficult. I’m all about loving more.”

Photo from stylebistro.com

Keith Urban. PHOENIX; “I’ve always loved symbolism and mythology, the symbolism of the phoenix being something that succumbs to the challenges and burns in the fire, but then is resurrected from the ashes and rises up even stronger than before”

Photo from tumblr.com

P!nk. BARCODE; which reads “1 9879-11299-1 3” (Her lucky number 13, birth date and release date of album m!ssundaztood)

Photo from funkyhead.co.uk

David Beckham. ARM TATTOOS; Among others, the design focuses on his and his wife’s personal lives

What tattoo do you have or want to have?

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