Warner Bros. cancels Canada previews

[captaincanadapirate]

well at least we know how to get 'ready' for a movie

I love this..this cracked me up when i seen this picture...and thought this is what newfoundlanders do when going to the movies....put a cam in the box....with enough room for some beers!

[satviewer2000]

Hmm, does that mean Canada is no longer considered to be the "Number one haven for Islamic terrorists"?

[buttzilla]

Hmm, does that mean Canada is no longer considered to be the "Number one haven for Islamic terrorists"?

No you still are. You also grow that good weed. :P :P
I love your national anthem too.

O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.

With glowing Cam's we film thee,
We like our movies strong and free!

From full and widescreen,
O Canada, we ignore copy guard for thee.

God keep our media glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

[DereX888]

Blame Canada... (as usual )

They can go f* themselves anyways, don't they?

well at least we know how to get 'ready' for a movie

I love this..this cracked me up when i seen this picture...and thought this is what newfoundlanders do when going to the movies....put a cam in the box....with enough room for some beers!

I thought newfies are too d... err, aren't too smart to figure out how to use camcorder, much less fit it in the beer box? (and what about those few bottles of beer less in the box? That would start a riot! )

[BJ_M]

well there is more alcohol in each bottle to make up for it

[rotten apple]

These ads were the straw that broke my camel's back, so to speak. Yeah, so piracy is stealing. So is taking away life-hours of a display unit, player, speakers, receiver, and switchbox that I paid good money for. Can you say "hypocrisy", MPAA?

SCDVD said it best. I have been pushed past the point at which I begin to push back, and considering how I am being treated like my money is coated with poop by these people because of where I live, I figure they can just cope with less of it now. Sod them.

Hypocrisy yes..but as you really know they don't give a fcuk - you can't reason with such an extreme greed mentallity ( and (at least) whats directly based on that).They do what they do merely because they CAN (legally) get away with it,morality,foresight and rationality can all go a take a flying jump if they don't get in the way of their selfish desires of avarice being fulfilled.(but they can fleetingly (pretend to) possess such qualities if they get backed into a corner and desperate enough to save their bacon ,just don't expect those qualities again when mere mortals are having a tough time due to their actions, i mean come on it is the entertainment industry its not like they are expendable and can be replaced by a whim or anything the imagination can come up with to relax and occupy itself instead ( at a fraction of the cost and not having endless inane subjective restrictions foisted on to you out of the blue to the point where it significantly diminshes the worth + pleasure of the original experiennce)

Your grievance i imagine would just get " you aren't forced to buy their product and watch it on your equipment" and if you can't even make copies from the original for your own personal use(which imo is the most perverted of their wants to expect to buy a seperate copy for each format/machine etc) and there is no other source, your equipment will end up a nonfunctional display piece.That you bought the equipment with a fair expectation of quality with value for money of the media that you would put on it isn't going to give SOME shareholders happy news is it, so you know exactly will be done to try to correct the unfairness you are experiencing..

If they expended as much effort improving the viewing experience, as they do trying to prevent someone from copying it - they might have more customers.

YES and they clearly don't(though this is notibly/obviously(?) from someone NOT a film buff), think of the number of films that you find entertaining despite their age that holywood made over a certain time span. Push that same time span to present day...Do you think recent hyped movies today such as "superman returns" or "king kong" and the endless SFX remakes of old shows, are or will have much of a "half life"..i mean (original)star wars was hyped for its visuals at the time but imo that the sfx of decades ago can't be expected to match todays - regardless those films still inspire as such Classic movies do ( whether that be "Gone with the Wind" "2001:A Space Odysey", ET or "The sound of music" etc).I'd guess "lord of the rings" has a chance of becoming classic even when the visuals are not the main promo/hyped point
but unsurprsingly the ready made classic story had little to do with the efforts of the studio..

[DereX888]

rotten apple

[skaterboii]

I saw that Ocean's 13 Trailer in the Cinemas over here in New Zealand, considering Canada is supplied by Region 1 DVDs by the USA @ the same time as USA DVD releases, I don't know why your Canada & Hollywood can't sort this !@#$ out.
Plus over here, Region coding doesn't exist on DVD Players & recorders, so suck on that hollywood.

[edDV]

Down to three regions with BluRay. I'm happy to see Japan is in region 1.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc

[Nilfennasion]

edDV: The defeat of any region coding system will remain inevitable as long as there is the situation we have in Australia, New Zealand, or the UK. That is, in Region 2/4, not only is there a wide gulf between what is available to Region 1 and the local product, there is also a gulf in quality. Independent or ownership-broken films like Videodrome are a good example of this. The Criterion Region 1 disc has multiple audio commentaries, trailers, a second disc featuring such things as footage that was used to comprise the videos Max watches when he still has a nodding acquaintence with reality, and so forth.

The Region 4 disc does not even have 16:9 Enhancement. So the question becomes which is going to end up getting the cash from an obsessive video junkie who just became the owner of a 106cm (that's about 42" for the Americans) plasma TV? Gee, tough choice...

rotten apple: When one looks at history, one sees a bit of a pattern where some kind of oligarch keeps heaping crap upon the little people until their tolerance is exceeded. The commercial enterprises are seeing this effect now with the populace's real wages shrinking whilst their costs continue to rise. Not that I consider Michael Moore an authority, but he was dead on when he pointed out that while CEOs seem to have no check on what they pay themselves, the workers in the corporations they run were making $100 less per pay period (a fortnight) in 2001 than was the case in 1991, when adjusted for inflation. $100 is a lot of loaves of bread or bottles of milk, I am sure you would agree. If anything, it has gotten even worse in the last six years.

Hence, sales of DVDs are flattening out, companies that keep upping their prices far in advance of inflation like Games Workshop are seeing their net profit plummet, and fast food joints like McDonald's are posting losses for the first time in half a century. I used to argue with one person all the time about how the consumer can only take so many price rises without concordant wage increases before it comes back to hurt the producer. Their counterargument was that the fourteen year old boys that the producer I was using as an example, in this case Games Workshop, do not care as long as they have sufficient money coming from another source. Well, given that Games Workshop's net profit from a diminished 100+ million pound intake was a mere two million last year, I think we have finally reached that event horizon where asking price and user income have finally blown out of proportion. Unless companies get their fingers out fast and realise that its the people who drive Holdens rather than Rolls Royces that keep them in the black, they are going to price themselves right out of viability.

In the first year I had a DVD player, I had a steady job and could afford to spend as much as $500 in a fortnight buying DVDs. So sometimes I did. The fact that the product on offer was often of dubious quality did not matter because the other expenses I had were not making this a hardship. Nowadays, however, as the powers that be say "oh, you could afford to rent a disc this week? I must not be taking enough!", I have no qualms about saying my DVD burner gets a lot of use simply because legitimacy prices itself right out of the market. The problem is way more widespread than just overpriced discs, it is a failure of the competitive market system.

It's only going to get worse for Sony et al from here in without major social change.

[marshalljames]

Yeah, you folks are just clamoring for those downloads. Nothing makes a good DVD like scratchy audio, washed pulsing video, cropped widescreen, extra "sounds effects" (coughing, bodies moving, kids giggling), picture that wiggles as the cameraman scratches his ass every 20 minutes, and the random head bobbing in front of the movie as the person leaves to take a piss.

.

Well thats not my experience with Telesync's.Generally they are fairly good quality,some are a little on the dark side and the soundtrack can be low at times(turn it up)
I have never seen anyone walk past,or heard any coughing noises.From what i understand the better telesync's are dubbed .

And to Warner,Fox et al.Keep your movies most of them are crap anyhow and not worth the price of admission.Just like the music industry you were caught with coke spoons up your nose.keep on snorting losers...........

[DereX888]

And to Warner,Fox et al.Keep your movies most of them are crap anyhow and not worth the price of admission.Just like the music industry you were caught with coke spoons up your nose.keep on snorting losers...........

Although I completely disagree with your first part of the post (the one I don't quote here), I must admit you've hit it right on the target.
I'm working in the 'sho-biz' related office, along with about 70-80 other employees locally and 3000+ associates throughout the world (many of whom I contact often).
In my workplace I've seen and met many big and small 'celebrities' and 'important' people.
I won't quote any names since I'm under almost 50-page long NDA (and I like my nice fat paychecks :P ) but I can say it too: majority of them, big majority, are exactly what you've said: coke snorting loosers.
The fact is that very few of them have any real (not faked) respect among all of us working here nd abroad, and I can tell from more and more comments like yours, that many 'regular' people finally start to see the 'stars' and 'celebrities' for what most of them really are - the coke snorting loosers, good looking imbeciles, overpaid idiots, and so on... IMHO this has to do *a lot* with the lowered sense of morality for the downloading of movies and music; most of people who download pirated copies know it is wrong to steal, but I guess they don't hesitate to steal from an overpaid 'coke snorting looser' as much as they would if they will be stealing from a people they would respect.

And the medias itself are to blame for it partially too. Political correctness combined with the propagation of a "ghetto culture" in music and movies for past 15-20 years had to finally give the fruit in the form of very cynical, morally blind, unable to tell right from wrong (unless they told so), take-it -now-why-wait, nothing-sacred-attitude lazy generation (or 2 generations, since IMHO previous generation to mine - those older than 30 - are often like this too).
Just my 0.02...

[SCDVD]

Most of the time they manage to keep their way of life out of public view but occasionally we get to see a glimpse of how they REALLY live. Check out this little piece of video about the real David Hasselhoff. Do you think he owns the DRM rights on this video as well?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYj6TceYio0

[Seeker47]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070509/ap_en_mo/canada_film_piracy

Ripped from the headline --

TORONTO -
Warner Bros. canceled all of its advance screenings and accused Canada of being at the forefront of the piracy market.
Wow, Canada is accused of being at the forefront of piracy! Move over, China! :P

Oh, you naughty, naughty Canadians !

[Snakebyte1]

Well, Warner Brothers (and all the others) should stop releasing all their movies here, and stop releasing DVDs here as well. That should stop us from pirating their precious movies and they will be oh, so happy. Of course, they will have to forgo all the profits they currently get from the majority of paying customers, but thats OK. Its better to lose a dollar to save 50 cents, right?

D.

[Nilfennasion]

Its better to lose a dollar to save 50 cents, right?

I would not quite put it like that.

These days, theatrical exhibition is a loss-leader to other revenue streams. Kind of like how an expensive advert at halftime works. Almost all films lose money on what the studios call "current production". The films that do not lose money on current production are the extreme grossers such as the recent Star Wars prequels, the Pirates Of The Caribbean series, or big blockbusters like that.

The only reason studios still bother showing films in theatre is so they can negotiate with retailers like Blockbuster/Walmart or television studios for shelf space and airtime. It is much easier to get prime real estate on the shelf when you can say "this film grossed four hundred million in theatres" than when you have to say "this film was made on a budget of thirty million and did not recoup it" (eg. Serenity).

This is the thing, though. When it comes to recovering costs, the grosses from the USA are all that matter to the producers. The rest of the world, especially the parts that do not speak English in sufficient qualities to justify avoiding the extra cost of dubbing, can take a flying leap for all they care. This harkens back to the glory days of the studio system, when foreign taxation made profits virtually impossible to retrieve. Even Canada, in spite of sharing borders with the USA, is about as important to the US-based studios in the lengthy equation as are England and Australia.

With the relative expense of cinematic distribution and returns compared to distributing the films on home video (and the returns on that investment), the studios could literally stop distributing their product to any country's theatres and literally save more than they lose. Especially if they continue to sell the DVD in that country.

[gll99]

Lobbying governments works!!!!! Wait until fall and see what our self labelled "New Government" is planning to introduce. It could send our kids with video cellphones straight to the clink for a 2 year rest if this goes through as announced.

btw) If the screeners and previews are like this movie you can keep them.
I love action/adventure films with a mix of treasure hunting... something like National Treasure and Sahara but I resisted going to the theatre when The DA Vinci code came out expecting that there would be huge crowds. Then time passed and I resisted buying or renting the DVD because some friends weren't overly enthused with the movie. Then it came on cable to pay per view but I resisted again figuring in a few short months it will be on the movie channel (TMN) anyway so I can wait. Well I finally watched it a few weeks back and it's a stinker. Generally, Ron Howard films are entertaining and Tom Hanks can be good at times usually more often than not but this movie did nothing. Not the actors fault but ....... am I glad I didn't waste my money on this one.

To: MPAA
Please keep these types of films out of Canada.

Forever grateful,
Thank You,
Me

[Seeker47]

Lobbying governments works!!!!! Wait until fall and see what our self labelled "New Government" is planning to introduce. It could send our kids with video cellphones straight to the clink for a 2 year rest if this goes through as announced.

Gee, and I thought you Canadians were so much more sensible about avoiding stupid laws and stupid enforcement of them. Or at least that is the picture Michael Moore has painted of you . . . . .

[DereX888]

Lobbying governments works!!!!! Wait until fall and see what our self labelled "New Government" is planning to introduce. It could send our kids with video cellphones straight to the clink for a 2 year rest if this goes through as announced.

Gee, and I thought you Canadians were so much more sensible about avoiding stupid laws and stupid enforcement of them. Or at least that is the picture Michael Moore has painted of you . . . . .

Border is too long and too unprotected.
Liberal idiocy and political correctness moronism has been sipping thru cracks into Canada all the time... or maybe its the other way around, sometimes Im not sure
In general most of Provinces keep quite reasonable governments, but when it comes to federal govt - I dare to say Canadian Federal Govt. is more corrupted and stupid than anything Nixon/Carter/Clinton/Bush combined could ever do, just thank God there is no such big and well equipped Army in Canada
Its been like this since the times of first communist Trudeau's govt. in Canada IMHO. But thats politics OT....