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?

No Time for TV

I don’t want to watch someone else live their lives.
by Keyyth G. of whataboutkeyyth

Photo from Edwart Visser’s flickr (flash.pro)

TV; we all love it. Everyone has that favorite show that they set time aside to watch. The really dedicated TV lovers have several that they time their lives to. There is something for every member of the family. Cartoons for the kids, lifetime for the ladies, sports for the men, soaps for grandma; there are an endless variety of chooses. Sadly though that seems to be the most exciting part most people’s day, they wake up and watch the news while they get ready for work, on their lunch breaks they catch up on the drama of their soap operas, after which time they spend the rest of the day wondering what new plot twist tomorrows show will bring. Then when the day is don’t they rush home unwinding with their regularly scheduled programs, and end their nigh by listening to the news again; allowing the night anchor redeliver news the morning anchor may have missed.

I myself don’t watch TV for two reasons. The first; I did at one point share the same love for TV as anyone else, and I also had my regular shows that I would make sure that I caught. The shows that I watch depicted situations that I was dealing with in my everyday life. I’d watch and see how the main character would present his problem. Somehow in the 22 minutes of the program he’d managed to make several attempts but fails to fix his problem sparking a few laughs along the way, address someone else’s problem, and ultimately fix his own problem, and learning a life lesson all in that made him better for the experience.  I’d engulf myself in the show, but get anger when I see that my own situation isn’t resolved with a TV show-like quickness. I’d adopt a desire for someone else’s life only because they may be presented with adversity but before the day was over they had it solved. I guess you can say I was one of those extreme TV watchers.

The second reason: I don’t want to watch someone else live their lives, I want to experience the excitement of doing something for myself. When we live through the people that we watch eventually we will grow to dislike the life we have.  I want to be the person jumping out of the planes, or breaking records in someone’s Olympics. I don’t want to talk with friends about how they life they lived on that one show was exciting, I want to be able to say “they could have made a show from my exciting life.” I’m sure a little TV is fine, but at this time I just don’t have time for TV!

Get up and live, the TV will be there tomorrow;
life is now!

I’m a 22 year old college student currently pursuing my associates degree in computer science. I’m an artist, well I am whenever I get a chance to be which is far and in between here lately.

How To React When Things Happen In Real Life

Have you ever done something that was so unusual and different that you didn’t know how to react to the situation, purely because you’ve never seen how it should be reacted to?

by Ann Skelly of blANNd

Photo from Haley Neal’s flickr

Sometimes I react to things in such ways because that’s how the character in the movie reacted. That’s how the fictional person in the book reacted. That’s how normal people react. But when faced with completely new experiences and situations you end up not knowing how you should act, you end up not putting everything you can into opportunities because you’re too busy second guessing yourself and trying to remember if you’ve read about this somewhere.

The best thing to do with everything and anything, is everything and anything you can, with everything and anything you have. I learned this from winning a competition last year, but I was too busy trying to act how I thought I should be rather than having fun and making the most of it. Now I watch the videos of me on YouTube and I cringe. Partly because I know I could’ve done so much better, and partly because I know that my hair wasn’t how I thought it looked. Damn.

It’s better to do more than less, is probably the moral of these few paragraphs. Or it could be to experience opportunities without fear of looking stupid. For me, it’s both. I know now that I should embrace looking stupid because someone’s always going to think you are anyway. There’s no point in trying to please everybody otherwise you just disappoint yourself and you miss out. Don’t mind others and do what you want, how you want.

I’m Ann Skelly, retired Anantara’s 2011 Elephant Polo Reporter, currently an Irish teenager. I like to write about things.