The Tragic Saga of FilmXTRATOM

A few days ago, JoBlo's Twitter account (@joblo) called out an online blogger known as Tom S Perkins (@FilmXTRATOM) for straight-up stealing 85% of his video review of Iron Man 2 from their write-up by JimmyO (the corresponding FilmXTRA video has been removed).

Using cutting-edge technology known as Google, I identified the rest of his review (which sounded equally professional) as having come from Den of Geek, and others noted that snippets of his Alice in Wonderland review also came from JoBlo.

After a few hours of collective internet hatred heading his way, Perkins finally signed onto his account in order to thoroughly deny that he'd done any wrong (here, here, and here), before finally caving early the next day (here).

It is worth noting at this point that Hey U Guys, which sponsored/ran Tom's videos for some period of time, almost immediately disassociated themselves from him via their Twitter (@heyuguysblog). Since this is something that is essentially developing and spreading, I've seen a lot of people just finding out about this demanding to know their position, but they've already made it clear. You can read their announcement here, here, here, and here.

This is when, suspiciously, the video reviews from 2010 vanished from his YouTube channel (here), along with any comments identifying the plagiarism on his page or on any videos. Perkins' previously-promised apology letter failed to materialize, and people I follow were suspicious that Tom wasn't ready to fess up to all of his crimes after all. In the interest of public service, I thusly have gone through every one of Tom's videos to find the plagiarism in question.

Pineapple Express
Review in FilmXTRA #9 taken from Empire (unidentified writer)

Righteous Kill
Review in FilmXTRA #11 taken from NewsBlaze (Prairie Miller)

Tropic Thunder
Phrase "more explosions than Krakatoa" in FilmXTRA #12 taken from Mansized (Chris Laverty). Can't access the full review to see if more was taken, Mansized is password protected...?

Death Race (2008)
Review in FilmXTRA #13 taken from The Movie Blog (John Campea)

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
Review in FilmXTRA #15 taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Mirrors
Review in FilmXTRA #18 taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Burn After Reading
Review in FilmXTRA #19 taken from Daily Mirror (David Edwards) and View London (Matthew Turner)

Ghost Town
Review in FilmXTRA #22 taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Eagle Eye
Review in FilmXTRA #22 taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Quantum of Solace
Review in FilmXTRA #23 taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Pride and Glory
Review in FilmXTRA #26 taken from View London (Matthew Turner). Plot summary seems to be taken from official press release.

Max Payne
Review in FilmXTRA #27 taken from View Oxford (Matthew Turner)

Note: In FilmXTRA #29 he starts passing off the classic "Invisibles" screen caps as a segment he created. Clever!

Body of Lies
Review in FilmXTRA #30 taken from View Hamilton (Matthew Turner, he's stalking you!)

Changeling
Review in Film XTRA #31 taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Lakeview Terrace
Review in FilmXTRA #33 taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
Review in FilmXTRA #34 taken from View London (Matthew Turner) and Bloody-Disgusting (Brad Miska)

Transporter 3
Review in FilmXTRA #35 taken from View London (Matthew Turner) and Empire Online (Chris Hewitt)

The Spirit
Review in FilmXTRA #38 taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Twilight
Review in FilmXTRA #39 taken from View Auckland (Matthew Turner)

Role Models
Review in FilmXTRA #40 taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Seven Pounds
Review in FilmXTRA #41 taken from Mirror.co.uk (Mark Adams)

Frost/Nixon
Review in FilmXTRA #41 taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Defiance
Review in FilmXTRA #42 taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
Review in FilmXTRA #43 taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

In addition, there is also this review over at Blogger News Network, which has a passage quite similar to the one I Googled.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Review in FilmXTRA #44 taken from View Auckland (Matthew Turner)

Watchmen
Review in FilmXTRA #45 taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Duplicity
Review in FilmXTRA #47 taken from View Auckland (Matthew Turner)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Review in FilmXTRA #49 taken from View Hamilton (Matthew Turner)

Star Trek (2009)
Review in FilmXTRA #50 (Part 2) taken from IGN UK (Orlando Parfitt) and View London (Matthew Turner)

Fast & Furious
Review in FilmXTRA #51 taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Terminator: Salvation
Review in FilmXTRA #54 taken from View Auckland (Matthew Turner)

The Hangover
Review here taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Night at the Museum 2: Battle For the Smithsonian
Review in FilmXTRA #56 taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Review in FilmXTRA #57 taken from Collider (Matt Goldberg) and undoubtedly one other source, which, despite repeated Googling, I could not find.

Brüno
Review here taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Moon
Review here taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Public Enemies
Review here taken from View London (Matthew Turner) and Daily Mail (Chris Tookey)

The Hurt Locker
Review here taken from View Auckland (Matthew Turner) and STL Today (Calvin Wilson)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Review here taken from View London (Matthew Turner) and Total Film (Jonathan Crocker)

I Love You, Man
Review here taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Review here taken from View London (Matthew Turner), SFX (Andrew Osmond), and probably at least one more I couldn't identify.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Review here taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

The International
Review here taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

Inglourious Basterds
Review here taken from JoBlo (Chris Bumbray) and (yes, really, as far as I can tell) IMDb user laurylou-1, plus potentially others I couldn't identify

The Time Traveler's Wife
Review here taken from JoBlo (Chris Bumbray)

Funny People
Review here taken from View London (Matthew Turner)

District 9
Review here taken from View London (Matthew Turner) and JoBlo (Chris Bumbray)

Dorian Gray
Review here taken from Shadows on the Wall (Rich Cline) and View London (Matthew Turner)

Gamer
Review here taken from View London (Matthew Turner), SFX (James White), and Mark Reviews Movies (Mark Dujsik)

Surrogates
Review here taken from View London (Matthew Turner) and JoBlo (Jenna Busch)

The Invention of Lying
Review here taken from JoBlo (Chris Bumbray) and possibly somewhere else

Up
Review here taken from JoBlo (Chris Bumbray) and possibly somewhere else

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
Review here taken from JoBlo (Chris Bumbray) and possibly somewhere else

Zombieland
Review here taken from JoBlo (Brian Kelley) and possibly somewhere else

The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Review here taken from View London (Matthew Turner) and IGN UK (Chris Tilly)

9
Review here taken from JoBlo (JimmyO) and possibly somewhere else

The Men Who Stare at Goats
Review here taken from View London (Matthew Turner) and possibly somewhere else

Harry Brown
Review here taken from Little White Lies (Josh Winning)

The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Review here, oddly enough, doesn't appear to be taken from anywhere, or at least, the internet is too flooded with Twilight crap for Google to find it.

Paranormal Activity
Review here taken from View Auckland (Matthew Turner) and JoBlo (JimmyO)

Law Abiding Citizen
Review here taken from JoBlo (Chris Bumbray) and possibly somewhere else

The Box
Review here taken from JoBlo (Chris Bumbray) and possibly somewhere else

Avatar
Review here taken from JoBlo (Jenna Busch) and possibly somewhere else

Sherlock Holmes
Review here taken from JoBlo (Chris Bumbray)

This has already taken more time than I could have possibly imagined, so I'm not going to scrutinize his channel, but previously, I did determine that he was doing the same on his live podcasts, with the most recent podcast making for a perfect example.

EDIT (05/09/10 6:00PM): I got a little heat from the charming Scott Weinberg of Cinematical (@scottEweinberg) for running the list, and I see his point (it is kind of like ganging up on him, and I have to completely admit to having already made two days worth of jokes at his expense on Twitter), but the true purpose of the list is to a) alert people whose work might have been stolen (which some fellow Twitterers indicate that it has), and b) make sure Tom confesses to everything he's done. There have been indications (based on the leisurely pace Tom is dealing with this, and the rate at which he deletes accusations of plagiarism from his YouTube channel and videos) that he had some thoughts about trying to fess up to some but not all of the theft. It also seems pretty clear that the guy had found ways to make money off of his hackism, via a merchandise shop and Google advertising, and he was being invited to premieres in the UK.

The silly thing, I think, is the whole idea of plagiarism itself. I write about movies because I love writing about movies. The point is to express my thoughts on them, which is something I'd do whether I had a blog or not. To skip over that part of the process is unfathomable to me, because what appeal could running a channel about movies possibly have if you don't actually want to put out your own, original thoughts about them? If that part of it is a chore to you, then clearly you should focus your energy elsewhere.

EDIT 2 (05/09/10 7:30PM): Somewhat ironically, it seems I've inadvertently discovered further plagiarism in the form of @iZone, which has ALSO been targeting Matthew Turner's reviews. Matthew had 42 of his reviews stolen by FilmXTRATOM and an unidentified number of reviews stolen by iZone. Make him feel a little better by following him on Twitter, and hopefully assure that all of his content will be heard from him first in the future.

EDIT 3 (05/10/10 4:00 AM): Unsurprisingly, most of the links to the videos have stopped functioning since I posted this about 12 hours ago. However (equally unsurprisingly), the videos have only gone private as opposed to being deleted from YouTube entirely.

According to Turner, Tom has also issued his personal apology. I have only seen the one comment Turner Tweeted, but Tom claims he was "trying to test the corruptibility of YouTube". Gee, sorry, Tom, what a noble thing to do!

When I first started at DVDTalk, there was a forum post about a plagiarist who had just been deleted. His excuse was supposedly that he "liked the passages" he'd ripped from reviews so much, he'd put them into the same document as his reviews in an attempt to write something equally good, and they just happened to stay in.

Readers may also appreciate the story of "comedian" Nick Madson here and here over at Patton Oswalt's MySpace blog, which broke a little over a week ago. The second blog, in particular, is essential.

EDIT 4 (05/10/10 5:20 AM): Thanks to YouTube video by a user named FuryoftheFilmFan (how fitting), I realize I would be remiss if I did not mention FredLozano, the JoBlo poster who first alerted anyone about any of FilmXTRATOM's crimes. He deserves as much credit as anyone, if not more, for without Fred, Tom would still be getting away with everything.

In addition to FuryoftheFilmFan, a user named OrionSyndicate910 has created a very nice video about the situation here.

EDIT 5 (05/10/10 2:24 PM): In case you wanted to read FilmXTRATOM's apology letter, you can do that here at JoBlo. As a Twitter user pointed out, if he was "testing the corruptibility of YouTube", what purpose did it serve plagiarizing for his weekly live videos?

Luckily, Tom is resilient. As per his most recent Tweet, he will continue to do his video reviews. Well, thank goodness.

EDIT 6 (05/10/10 9:51 PM): Well, even though Tom seems to be prepared to put up new videos this week, it's still good to see that he has finally pulled the trigger and deleted the videos from his account (previously, he had only made them private).

I have two videos on YouTube, which are clip montages from films. They were both flagged at one point by movie studios, but I noticed even while the videos were not available, my view counts remained.

My theory about Tom's attempt to leave the videos "private" is that he could continue being a YouTube Partner -- and thusly, keep profiting from his plagiarism -- if the videos still existed, along with the view counts.

That said, I am not certain as to whether Tom is currently a YouTube Partner. I am going on the implied word of OrionSyndicate910, who suggests that Tom is (or was) a Partner, so make of it what you will.

EDIT 6 (05/11/10 11:42 AM): OrionSyndicate910 has posted a new video which explicitly states that Tom has been a YouTube Partner for 2 months.

By way of this story, I also got mentioned on FilmDrunk, my favorite movie blog on the internet. Day: made.

EDIT 7 (05/11/10 3:07 PM): Initial whistleblower Fred Lozano has put up his own two cents on the issue. Fred also Tweets as @BubblegumWay.

EDIT 8 (05/14/10 11:42 PM): Matthew Turner has a blog up about it, and the newest Empire video blog references the whole mess.