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Watch this 23-minute behind the scenes video to see how the number 1 movie of all time was conceptualized and created by James Cameron.

According to Box Office Mojo, as of January 26, 2010, Avatar earned approximately US $1,878,025,999 worldwide (that’s almost 1.9 billion US dollars). In the United States alone, the movie’s ticket sales for 40 days is a staggering $558,179,737. That domestic gross accounted for almost 30 percent of the revenue worldwide. Next to the US is China (with $103,113,774), Russia ($96,259,863), and South Korea ($79,691,558). The Philippines ranked in the bottom ten with only $5,197,803 ticket sales since the movie debuted on December 17, 2009. Maybe this figure was caused by the MMFF with almost all Philippine cinemas showing only local films from December 25 to January 6?

I predict that Avatar’s total box office sales will increase to 2 billion dollars in the middle of February 2010. And when this happens, the Pandora 3D movie will be the first film to reach the 2-billion-dollar mark.

FYI: The Titanic reached the 1.8 billion dollar profit in 70 days. Avatar did it only for 38 days.  I myself watched the movie 4 times. How many times did you watched it?

As you know by now, the latest installment of the Twilight movie franchise, The Twilight Saga: New Moon opened to beat the opening day record of The Dark Knight, earning $26 million on its first day, and then moving on to conquer the third spot on the record debut list earning $141 million on its first weekend. Here are some of the movie’s best moments.

#4 The Paper cut and the Break Up
Mush aside, there would be no New Moon without the break up. I think that this scene was handled quite well in the movie. Teenage girls had their fill of tragedy, confusion and true love with this scene, yet it was not overdone and overly saccharine.

It is one testament of sacrifice and true love, vampire style. The rest of Hollywood surely have exploited this formula before, but not in the way Stephanie Meyer and New Moon did it.

This pivotal scene was made even better with Kristen Stewart’s performance. Admit it, being in a room filled with vampires and you get a paper cut. It defies all logic that all these supposedly refined vampires would start attacking you; much like being naked in a crowded room of men could make them start raping you. But the movie tried to stay true to the book and the scene was made truly magical by Stewart’s acting.

#3 Meet the Wolves, Bella
One should note that the computer graphics done on the werewolves were really breath-taking and top notch. They were gruesome, big, and completely scary (but kinda cute), almost like how Meyer depicted them in her book.

This scene deserves mention because it introduces us to Laurent’s evilness and holds a surprise when Bella is saved by… another werewolf. This is one of the few times the movie changed what was written in the book. In the book, a pack of werewolves saved Bella, but here we only have one. Maybe it was to give more importance to Jacob’s character and would build into the next scenes where we find Jacob again saving Bella from sure death from diving off a cliff into dangerous waters.

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The film industry has always been fascinated by the possibilities of impending doom. Whether it is through an alien invasion or natural disaster, many movies have been made about several scenarios wherein a large group of people or even the entire planet meets its harrowing fate.

As the visual effects technology becomes better, filmmakers have also become more audacious about the plots but are still able to shed enough focus on the human drama and how mankind copes with the situation. Here are the five best movies that you can watch:

1. Earthquake
The title itself already tells the audience what the movie is about, but the premise that a seismic activity might happen anytime is very real for pretty much everyone. The 1974 film was able to recreate the destruction of cities using scale models cut between real actors and large sets.

It was also one of the first films that attempted to make the cinemagoers feel part of the experience. They achieved this by adding large speakers to some cinemas’ pumped audio that sounded similarly to an earthquake. The absence of acting and plot did not deter or prevent the film’s success, since audiences paid mostly to watch the disaster.

2. War of the Worlds
The popular H. G. Wells novel has actually been adapted into film several times though there are really only two that stand out: the 1953 version by George Pal and the 2005 movie by Steven Spielberg. None of these adaptations used the same setting and period described in the book and instead was made for the current time when it was filmed. Still it shows the central enemies were the aliens in their iconic tripods. Both films captured the chaos of humans while they attempt to escape the wrath of their conquerors, something sorely lacking in other invasion films like Independence Day.

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With the fears of recession and overall scrimping on unnecessary expenses, Microsoft shows some marketing savvy by positioning it as the better and cheaper alternative to Apple’s Macintosh.

Microsoft recently released a new ad featuring Lauren, a bespectacled redhead. In the commercial, a voice-over tells her to go hunt for a laptop that would suit her needs, and if she does, Microsoft would buy it for her. Lauren then goes into an Apple store, but quickly goes back out and dejectedly reports that the store did not have her preferred laptop: one that has a comfortable keyboard, a 17 inch screen and fast performance. The only thing she could afford from the Apple store is a 13 inch Macbook.

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Here’s a demo-video of the newest functions and features of iPhone 3.0:

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last January, Dell unveiled this sleek, sexy, ultrathin notebook called Adamo which had techies speculating furiously. Is this going to be a Macbook Air nemesis? Will this be the notebook that will give Apple a run for its money?

Sadly, answers could not immediately be found, because Dell revealed no specs nor internal features (booting wasn’t even allowed, reportedly). The sleek, black Adamo was literally just displayed for all to see and nothing else. On the outside, the machine sports a 13″ display covered edge-to-edge in glass, three USB ports, an eSATA jack, a backlit keyboard. It also is 0.65″ thick.

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From how I see it, 2009 will be the year of video advertising, but it may not be YouTube’s year at all.

Recent reports have related about the rise of Hulu, which is significant for two reasons. One is that Hulu seems to be getting better reception nowadays and is said to be getting people off YouTube into its own domain.

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YouTube is one of my guilty pleasures. I have a confession to make. Netflix does not do it for me, and somehow my brick and mortar video rentals have tapered off last year, thanks partly to these videos:

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