The difference to theft is that you are not actually taking property, you're reproducing it. It's copyright infringement. And that doesn't sound catchy or damaging at all.

With regards to security, it's certainly a factor these days because of the open nature of exchanged data, especially between companies. It's pointless for studios to worry about people sneaking into cinemas with camcorders and try to police horrible camversions of theatrically released films all while the VFX effects, DVD authoring and PR people who work on the film post-production handle the material so insensitively, bringing it home to work on or sharing it with their friends and family. That's where those pristine early copies come from.

Isn't that akin, using your analogy, of giving someone a gun and blaming them when they shoot you?

Anyway, whoever heard of a book being pirated until they became digitilised? I've no idea why all these organisations aren't going after the manufacturers of the tools that enable piracy in the first place.

Truly beautiful shots so far. I am genuinely inspired.

Yup. I've seen a few episodes and I thought it was really enjoyable. It was shortly after the movie was released and I heard about how bad it was - wanted to see whether the source material was really as good as folks were saying.

Sweet, the DiF team pulled it together for Close Encounters!

I've just completed 5 years working as an editor for a medical writing agency (we work for various pharmaceutical companies) and now I'm not sure what what to do next. My brother's looking to set up a studio and has invited me to join him, we'd be doing shorts, movies, TV, commercials etc. as well as regular photography. So in 5 years time I suppose my plan is to either have progessed and become a medical writer or be working in the entertainment business/working on a TV show/sitting at the premiere of the hard sci-fi film I'm writing.

Bit late to this, but in my opinion anything done should be geared towards demonstrating passion.
Passion for the project, passion for the story, the characters, the cast and crew. i find that passion can
be infectious.
The flipside is to go for the mystery, the 'no-one can be told what the matrix is, you have
to see it for yourself' idea.

Ooh, so exciting!

1. Lethal Weapon (another classic action movie to add to the collection)
2. Unforgiven (beautiful and brutal film, glad you've got this on your list!)
3. Transformers 3 (shooting fish in a barrel!)
4. The Dark Knight
5. American Beauty (I like Road to Perdition more, but this was a great movie)
6. Batman Returns

I confess I've not even seen most of the rest!

By the way, at this moment, Dark Knight is well ahead (63 points), followed by Transformers 3 and Who Framed the Stupid Rabbit? (33 each), Super 8 (30), and then Close Encounters and Citizen Kane (22)*. Come on guys, are you really going to make me watch Citizen Kane again?
*that is, unless I've forked up!

I didn't much like this movie. Mainly because the central character is an unlikeable douchebag and the film never seems to know how to handle it. It never seeks to explain why he's acting the way he does and what motivates him - he appears to be a dick because he wants to be. He's a borderline sociopath. The film seems to want to counteract this by making all the people he's up against equally unlikeable. Then at the end the film wants the audience to feel sorry for him, and this was a bit too forced and sudden for my liking.

In the interviews on the LOTR dvds, he comes across as a charming person. What unfortunate news to start the year off.

I really enjoyed this episode of the Intermission, and I'm hoping you do more episodes when you chat about DiF and general stuff (the anniversary episodes only come along once a year after all!).