Youtube video leads to hollywood deal

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A producer from Uruguay who uploaded a short film to YouTube in November 2009 has been offered a $30m (£18.6m) contract to make a Hollywood film. The movie will be sponsored by director Sam Raimi, whose credits include the Spiderman and Evil Dead films. Fede Alvarez's short film "Ataque de Panico!" (Panic Attack!) Featured giant robots invading and destroying Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. It is 4 mins 48 seconds long and was made on a budget of $300 (£186).

So far it has had more than 1.5 million views on YouTube. I uploaded (Panic Attack!) On a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of e-mails from Hollywood studios," he told the BBC's Latin American service BBC Mundo. It was amazing, we were all shocked. The movie Mr. Alvarez has been asked to produce is a sci-fi film to be shot in Uruguay and Argentina. He says he intends to start from scratch and develop a new story for the project.

If some director from some country can achieve this just uploading a video to YouTube, it obviously means that anyone could do it, he added. YouTube recently revealed the most watched videos of 2009. Britain's Got Talent star Susan Boyle topped the chart with more than 120 million views worldwide of her debut on the show.

Climate talks leaves Russia cold

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As President Dmitry Medvedev prepares to join talks to save the planet in Copenhagen, only a minority of Russians will be worrying much about the outcome. Climate change and the environment are not big issues for most Russians - and most of the time the government seems equally unconcerned.

"Global warming, the Kyoto Protocol, cutting emissions, nuclear waste, incinerators - it might be a topic of discussion among Moscow's business elite, but the masses are nowhere near these issues. No-one's talking about them," said former Russian deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, an outspoken critic of the current Russian government.

There is one popular opinion, though that Russia is a cold country and warming it up slightly wouldn't do any harm.

Russia has pledged to ensure that greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 are at least 25% below 1990 levels. But since they are currently 34% below 1990 levels - thanks to an economic slump that coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union - the economy can continue to grow for some time before it becomes necessary to go green.

A poll conducted this summer suggests that Russia is far less concerned about climate change than other European countries. Only 46% of 1,008 respondents in Russia said it was a very serious problem, and only 54% favored government investment to address climate change if it might hurt the economy - figures closer to those for the US or India than for Western Europe.