Word: billioned
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...hoary Oscar tradition of using famous movies and celebrities as the punch lines to jokes understandable to the mass of viewers - most of whom haven't seen, and might not have heard of, the smaller films and actors, who tend to get the awards. Oooh, Avatar, $2.5 billion at the box office ... Heh heh, George Clooney, world's coolest movie star ... Rim shot. (See pictures of Oscar fashion from the red carpet...
...Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart). The victors' chief competition, Meryl Streep and Clooney, were two more examples of the haves: 16 Oscar nominations (but no win since 1983) for Streep, and radiant Clooneyness for George. What do you give the man who has everything? Nothing. Same with Cameron, whose $2.5 billion worldwide take for Avatar will let him cry all the way to the bank, which he could now buy. (See the top 10 movie performances...
...included, since the highest-rated Oscar shows in the past 15 years were when the big prizes went to the megahits Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The scheme worked: half of the Best Picture nominees have grossed more than a quarter-billion dollars worldwide. Here's the full roster, with each movie's domestic and worldwide gross...
...Avatar, $720.2 million, $2.559 billion 2. Up. $293 million, $723 million 3. Inglourious Basterds, $120.5 million, $313.6 million 4. District 9, $115.6 million, $304.8 million 5. The Blind Side, $250.5 million, $251 million 6. Up in the Air, $83 million, $153.5 million 7. Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, $47.4 million. $53.3 million 8. A Serious Man, $9.2 million, $24.2 million 9. The Hurt Locker, $14.7 million, $21.4 million 10. An Education, $12.1 million, $17.1 million...
...have been waging a decades-long fight against the international energy company Chevron, claiming that years of poorly managed oil drilling has all but destroyed their ancestral forest homes. (Most of the work was done by Texaco, but Chevron bought the corporation in 2000.) There's currently a $27 billion lawsuit against Chevron - perhaps the largest ever such case concerning pollution - making its way through Ecuadorean courts, and a ruling is expected soon...