In the course of releasing boatloads of data to contestants in its "Beat Netflix's Recommendation Algorithm" contest, they may not have disguised where that data came from as well as they should. The plaintiff, known here as Jane Doe to preserve privacy, alleges that her identity could be divined from the data, and thus threatens her civil right to privacy. Apparently, two researchers compared Netflix reviews to IMDB reviews and figured out some identities that way.

The suit seeks a cash settlement for each of the 2 million Netflix customers involved, and also seeks to stop the upcoming sequel to the original Netflix contest. We'll keep you updated on the suit—it's a pretty interesting one, for sure. [Wired]

Needless to say, the drive is also loaded up with DRM—but you are allowed to run it on 5 registered devices and burn it to DVD, so it's not unreasonable. And since it has been deemed as a "collectible", fans will surely line up to fork over their $29. [Play via OhGizmo]

In 2001 in Iraq, two American NAVY pilots - Butch Masters and Tom Craig - are ordered to bomb an abandoned plant. The order appears to be false. American experts get killed in the plant. A secret chemical device, called "Rainmaker", designed for oil fields destruction, gets stolen. Military court cannot prove pilot's intention, and gives them dishonorable discharge. After 7 years Craig is reach [sic] and famous. He manages a private pilot team, working for Top Gun and for movies. Masters is a "grease monkey" in a small airport. He still tries to investigate his old case, and dreams of his own pilot's team. In order to get a license to fly Russian jets, Masters goes to St.Petersburg... At the same time, Kurdish terrorist group plans to capture a part of Northern Iraq ... They plan to use "Rainmaker" to destroy oil fields... Terrorist's base is located in Northern Iran... NAVY intelligence offers Masters chance to "clean his name" by performing a secret ... mission ... Using unmarked planes, they have to bomb the base and destroy "Rainmaker". Doomed to death, betrayed by friends, left in Syrian desert, Masters and his team finds unexpected support from a side of "Russian Nights" jet fighter aerobatic group. Russians and Americans go to final battle side by side, and leave no chance to terrorists.

Yes, it looks like I'll wait till it hits the web to watch that scene. For those who actually want to spend any money to suffer this Mario Van Peebles vehicle at 24 frames per second, you will will be able to enjoy it in November 9.

The pilots allegedly responsible for this stunt were the Russian Knights, the Russian Air Force Aerobatic team based in Kubinka, Russia. [Kerosene Cowboys via The Dew Line]

While on this speed I even managed to pull out my fingers in glove for an inch or two outside - it became heated very fast because of immense friction force plane undergoes with the air.

That's what the pilot who remained in the cabin said he did after his crazy comrade ejected, landing safely on the ground. I don't know what this movie is, but I definitely want to see it.

To add even more awesome details, the actual airplane is the SU-35UB prototype, identified by its tail number 801. This is the most advanced Sukhoi fighter ever built. Crazy Ivans indeed. [The Dew Line]

Update: Apparently, the jump was not filmed on the air, but he flew the Su-35 without a cockpit. Check the details here.

The plot could be described in one sentence: "The new Enterprise goes out to investigate an alien being that's threatening to destroy the Earth." That's it. But how Roddenberry executed such a simple premise shows why this man was a visionary that George Lucas couldn't even dream of comparing himself to.

Since it's been years since you've last seen the movie—about 15 years for me—I'll give a short recap. Admiral Kirk comes back to take command of the Enterprise, a ship that's spent the last 18 months being retrofitted, in order to intercept a giant gas cloud that demolished three Klingon Warbirds with ease. The film spends the first half of the movie assembling the cast, showing off the Enterprise exterior, and basically letting everyone settle in to their roles. It then spends the entire second half of the movie journeying from the outer edge of the gas cloud into the center. What's there? The Voyager 6 space probe. (There's no actual Voyager 6 probe in our reality, in case you're wondering.)

Turns out V'ger (Voyager 6 with space dirt on its nameplate) was lost after it hit a black hole, which dumped it in the vicinity of a "machine planet". That planet? The Borg fucking homeworld circa 300 years ago. (The Borg aren't mentioned by name, but material deemed canon claims Roddenberry designated the species as the Borg.) The Borg fitted V'ger with "advanced" technology and sent it back to Earth to fulfill its mission of relaying information back to its creator.

Kirk manages to stop this thing by connecting V'ger with Voyager 6, recognizing that the now-sentient machine is looking for HUMANS as its creator, and tries to send the proper codes for V'ger to finish its mission instead of killing everyone on Earth. Kirk fails until the handsome Captain Decker, who was demoted to Commander because both he, Kirk and Kirk's ego couldn't fit into the same chair, merged with V'ger and created a new advanced life form. The life form explodes into another dimension and the movie ends.

So what the hell is this movie about? Quite a lot of things, but none of these plot lines or themes are satisfactorily concluded. Besides the obvious religious analogies that involve the creator and God and meeting the maker and somehow finding a purpose to life, there are a few weird subplots that all end as abruptly as V'ger does.

There was the Decker/Ilia relationship, which symbolized a man finally being able to "physically" be with a woman—the avowed celibate woman—who tormented him years before by not allowing his photon torpedoes anywhere near her docking bay. Then there's Spock's journey to find out the meaning of life, trying to decide whether he's going to go with Logic or Emotion (big L, big E). A mindmeld with a sentient machine that has the entire knowledge of the universe makes the decision for him, and it's the latter. No real explanation of this either; Spock just wakes up from swapping minds with a robot to realize that he's not one.

And of course, there's the theme of growing old and obsolete. Everyone's 10 years older than when the series ended, carrying around a little more paunch and a little less muscle. Even Kirk has been replaced by a younger, better looking version of himself. Only by strongarming his way back into the hot seat does he manage to prove that yes, he IS out of touch, and needs someone younger to save his ass repeatedly.

All of this is buried under $49 million of special effects. That's $139 million in today's money. In comparison, the similarly effects-laden Star Trek 2009 movie cost $150 million. Both were pretty good LOOKING for their time, with Star Trek 1979 spending (what seemed like) a larger percentage of the film just flying around and looking at stuff. The influence of 2001: A Space Odyssey weighs heavily on the way the movie-makers did things, even 11 years later.

But what's the point of this movie? Like I said, it was in part a big thank-you to long time fans, as evidenced by old characters popping up to say hello. Nurse (now Dr.) Chapel, played by Roddenberry's wife, who also was the voice of the computer in TNG and JJ Abram's Star Trek movie, makes a few appearances. Yeoman Rand, the blonde sexpot from the first season of the series, also pops up in order to screw up a transportation sequence and kill two people. She may hold the record for longest time without a promotion in Star Trek history.

That was half the reason. The other half was because Roddenberry had more to say, and now he had the money to say it with. Gone were the cheap purple sets and cardboard rocks of the '60s series; in are the clean, sterile lines we've seen in many "traditional" space operas of the last 30 years. You may think that the only reason why the movie eschewed the lived-in, half-assed quality of the original was because they finally had money, but you'd only be half right. They also did this for a reason; because space needs orderliness. Why? Because space is fucking scary.

The movie is littered with reasons why space is "the final frontier". Kirk rushes a jump to warp—normally an everyday occurence in the Star Trek universe—before Scotty says it's ready and creates a temporal wormhole where the ship almost eats it in a near-hit with an asteroid. The villain is a piece of technology we sent out, basically telling us that even benign actions like the search for information may come back (by way of the Borg) to shoot us up the ass. Transporting, a relatively safe way of traveling, won't just kill you, it'll turn you into a disgusting, screaming blob of tissue if there's just ONE circuit board malfunctioning. Hell, the seductively bald female Lieutenant that V'ger abducts, kills, and machine-clones was doing nothing more than just standing there. In order to combat all the chaos out there, outside your raised shields, you need to make sure your system in here runs with military precision.

The Next Generation, arguably the best iteration of Star Trek, continues the train of thought started by Star Trek: The Motion Picture. There wouldn't be that without this. No Picard, Data, Riker or Geordi without a movie that basically amounts to as a dealer test drive of the new Enterprise. No more romping around the galaxy having your way with this or that alien. It's judgement time; time to prove that Humanity actually belongs in space and is capable of handling what's out there. Encounter at Farpoint, here we come.

So go back and watch the movie again, this time on Blu-ray in the comfort of your own home. Hell, if you've put a little bit of money into your home theater it may be better than the actual theater you saw this in in 1979. But this time, watch with the knowledge of the last three decades of Star Trek with you. [Star Trek Movie Collection]

Gizmodo '79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

Iimage credit Wikipedia, Trekcore

Digital Domain was already working on some secondary characters for Transformers 2 while George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic building the main robots like Optimus Prime. Yes, Transformers 2 had such a big budget that DD was hired just to ride shotgun.

One key moment of DD's handiwork depicts the transformation of a girl named Alice—played by actress Isabel Lucas—into a lethal robot. The main shot, seen above, uses digital techniques like advanced particle simulation (physics) to tear 10,000 pieces of skin away from a girl's body—the kind of high-concept graphics that require lots of software know-how, and computers to do incredible amounts of heavy lifting. It was the sort of shot that showcased everything DD could do.

When Michael Bay saw it, he found it lacking.

After watching an early edit of the movie, Bay had decided that although the wide shot of Alice was nice, the film was missing a close-up—he wanted 40 frames of the girl's face as she began transforming.

The close-up wouldn't take as much as the full-body master shot. Instead of 10,000 pieces of skin, only about 50 had to move. But because of time, budget and manpower constraints, this animation had to be done the old-fashioned way—working by hand. It meant that five guys would spend the next three months of their lives on less than two seconds of the finished film.

Computer graphics supervisor Paul George Palop walked me through their process of crafting the "very, very painful" 40 frames.

The goal sounded simple: Transform this closeup of a human into a closeup of a robot. Alice's face would begin to shatter away, revealing a gruesome creature underneath. But to model in 3D over digital film takes some prep work. To make the effect look real, the guys would need to map the 2D film original shot into digital 3D space. Then they could add all the neat robot stuff.

First, the DD team cut out all of the background and extraneous objects (including Shia LaBeouf's head), isolating the female figure. It's the first step of a classic technique known as rotoscoping, a trick that predates Disney, in which animators overlay cartoon characters and other animation on top of live action backgrounds. (Now that CG has blended humans and cartoons, it's probably safe to say that there isn't an FX-heavy movie made now that doesn't involve some kind of rotoscoping.)

With the basic 2D work done, DD used a laser scan of Lucas' figure to create a perfect 3D map. The rotoscope plate was then laid over this map, allowing the animators to work with real image depth and geometry. We don't have that exact shot, so we stole a still from the later wide shot to make the point. On the right, you have the 3D body scan model. On the left, you can see the 3D applied to the 2D figure.

One artist worked solely on the little skin plates that cracked away around Alice's mouth. Each of these 50 or so pieces was hand-animated, frame by frame, to create the short effect. But to enhance the illusion of movement, artists applied extra texture to the tiles along with some displacement mapping to each tile's edge, which essentially complicates the square shape into an array of small triangles. (See how they look all jagged in the version on the right?) One the 3D-animated shapes were laid out, they had to be naturally lit, lest the girl's skin look unnatural before she transformed completely into a metal monster.

In the meantime, the exact movements of the human Alice head needed to be applied to the newly animated robot Alice head, so that any movement from the former could be copied instantly in the latter.

Finally, all of the pieces were composited, rendered and placed on a newly drawn background. You'll notice that beyond the obvious visual effects, artists beefed up Alice's figure a bit. They rebuilt the end of her left arm and, while they were at it, added a bit more lift in the back of her hair. Even with a blockbuster megamovie deadline, there's always time for last-minute styling.

After all of this meticulous work—three months of effort from digital effects masters—audiences everywhere got a bonus 40 frames of remarkable robotic transformation. Ironically, one of the movie's chief complaints would be its length.

In 1929, The Great Depression popularized popcorn as a movie time treat since it was cheap, easy, tasty and somewhat filling. Back then, a bag cost you 5 cents. Now, a (small) bag costs you $4.75. Sure, our new bag is probably a bit bigger, but it's vastly more expensive.

In fact, when adjusted for inflation, popcorn prices* have seen an ironic 666% price increase, while movie ticket prices have increased a more moderate 66%. The above picture tells the story to scale, but just in case you're a bigger fan of numbers:

1929
Movie - $4.32 ($0.35 pre-inflation)
Popcorn - $0.62 ($0.05 pre-inflation)

2009
Movie - $7.20
Popcorn - $4.75

What gives? As many of you know, Hollywood takes a majority of ticket proceeds (we're talking upwards of 70% or more) during the first few weeks a film is released. Not so coincidentally, those first few weeks are also usually a film's best-attended screenings. So theaters fall back to popcorn, soda and candy to make money because Hollywood doesn't see a cut of these sales.

But is this 666% popcorn price increase evil? Obviously, numbers don't lie. Has the increased price of popcorn helped keep ticket prices in check? Possibly, though there's no real way of knowing.

Still, one thing's for sure: Those stadium seats and surround sound systems won't pay for themselves...right?

* Explanation on Data
Movie ticket data is based upon stats by the MPAA/NATO, seen here, with a 2009 estimate based upon the 2008 price. Realize that movie ticket price is always an average of all tickets sold per year, which drops the price greatly due to child tickets, matinees and second run theaters.

Popcorn price was based upon the widespead 5-cent bag of popcorn compared to a small popcorn from the AMC in Brooklyn, OH—which we feel is, if anything, a conservative sampling of movie popcorn prices. We'd love to have an average sale price on movie popcorn across America (just as we do tickets), but that data is not tracked by either the Popcorn Board or the National Association of Concessionaires.

Additional research by Andrea Wang, Graphic by Jesus Diaz

It'll be available in a two- or three-disc set on Blu-Ray, and feature a new short film called BURN-E, as well as Presto, the short that ran alongside the film in theaters. The sets also have a documentary on the studio called The Pixar Story, a "retro suite of video games," and of course the standards like commentary and a behind-the-scenes look. The double and triple-disc sets will run for $36 and $41, respectively, and there will be single, double, and triple-disk DVD sets as well. [Official Site]

How will they play in the update? Kind of like easter eggs, says Abrams, who stressed that the movie will be targeted toward people who have no idea of the history, yet have appearances by old die-hard devices like Uhura's Bluetooth headset that series fans can pick out. This means we should all get our wallets ready for the torrent of replica gadgets coming in 2009. [MTV Movies via Crunchgear]

[Moviebox]

A movie based on Nolan Bushnell's founding of Atari was sold to Paramount on Friday and Leonardo Dicaprio is set to play the lead. Most people remember Bushnell for Atari, but I remember him for the scathing pit of rancid pizza and yuppie spawn called Chuck E. Cheese.

When the local mall's Gap wouldn't take me as a sales associate, I got a job at Chuck E. Cheese for $4 an hour stamping a greasy matching digit on the forearms of children and parents alike as a kidnapping security measure. (No one got outside with a kid without the same digits on their paws.) You'd be surprised that the kids weren't scared of a 6-foot rat but thought the rubber stamp was a tazer. Later, the managers realized I would be much more acquiescent to tasks like answering phones and sweeping up than the kids from the wrong side of the tracks in Hackensack, so I got those jobs, too, while everyone else got to sneak in games of Outrun. It was then that I decided I should go to college. By the way, I worked 10 hours shifts and the music soundtrack to the place was 20 minutes long on infinite repeat. [Hollywood Reporter]