Attack of the movies
The Report this week is dominated by the Academy Awards, taking the top 4 spots and 13 of the Top 25 (if you count another big jump in views for Stephen Hawking at #4). In the aggregate this is not too much different than the past two years, where the top American movie award show took 12 slots in 2014 and 14 in 2013. The 87th Academy Awards article led at #1 with an impressive 6.2 million views, though a rather low mobile view count of 12.17% suggests those numbers might be somewhat inflated; Best Picture Birdman had 2.2 million views with 50% mobile views.
Also of note this week was the death of actor Leonard Nimoy (#5). Nimoy's article was also one of the most edited recently, and is currently topping the automated Top 20 most edited articles report as of March 1, showing that 193 editors have hit "edit" 524 times. As a recent creation, you probably didn't know this report existed—you should take a look.
For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation of any exclusions.
For the week of February 22 to 28, 2015, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the most viewed pages, were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 87th Academy Awards 6,123,378 
Just as this year's awards held on February 22 were a bit predictable (Really? Birdman won? I'd never have guessed!), it was just as predictable that this entry would top the chart this week. 2 Academy Awards 
3,924,466 See #1 3 Birdman (film) 
2,198,754 
Received nine Oscar nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director for Alejandro González Iñárritu, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Cinematography. Birdman has only appeared in the Top 25 twice previously, for two weeks in January 2015 when it peaked at #10. 4 Stephen Hawking
1,888,402 
The former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, black hole theorist and latter-day science icon makes his 17th straight appearance in the Top 25 this week. And at the Oscars, Eddie Redmayne (#8) won Best Actor for portraying him in The Theory of Everything (#20). 5 Leonard Nimoy
1,859,929 
The death of this beloved actor on February 27, best known for playing the role of Mr. Spock in the Star Trek franchise, led to widespread tributes. Spock's Vulcan salute bade us to "live long and prosper," as Nimoy did himself. 6 Chris Kyle
1,333,736 
America loves a good, old fashioned culture war, and while Clint Eastwood's American Sniper may not have wowed critics nor drawn great overseas crowds, it has played spectacularly well in America's conservative heartland. After dropping to #8 and 850,000 views last week, news that Eddie Ray Routh was found guilty of the deaths of Kyle and Chad Littlefield on February 25, after three hours of jury deliberations, raised the profile of this article once again. 7 Whiplash (2014 film)
1,007,753 
A new entry to this chart, Whiplash won the Oscars for Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Supporting Actor for J. K. Simmons (pictured). It had also been nominated for Best Picture. Whiplash was written and directed by Damien Chazelle based on his experiences in the Princeton High School Studio Band, and stars Miles Teller as a student jazz drummer who seeks the respect of an abusive teacher played by Simmons. Though critically acclaimed, you may not have been aware of the film, which had only grossed about $12 million worldwide (on a $3.3 million budget) prior to its Academy Award wins. 8 Eddie Redmayne 
953,953 
See #4, Redmayne won Best Actor at the Oscars for portraying Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (#20). 9 Fifty Shades of Grey
902,584 
The release of the film adaptation (#11) of this onetime Twilight fanfic continues to draw fans, though it is very unlikely to be drawing Oscars this time next year. 10 Dakota Johnson
848,159 
The daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson plays the lead role in Fifty Shades of Grey (film) (see #11). Griffith and her daughter were at the Oscars (of course), where some inane kerfuffle on the red carpet occurred over the fact that Griffith hadn't chosen to watch her daughter's film. We know our parents and children have sex (God willing), but we don't need to watch it.
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- Just missing the Top 25 this week: 26. Alejandro González Iñárritu (531,666 views); 27. Melanie Griffith (530,798 views); 28. Facebook (517,306 views); 29. J. K. Simmons (516,168 views); 30. The Grand Budapest Hotel (513,267 views, also the last article to exceed 500,000 views).
- From the Raw WP:5000: Last article to exceed 250,000 views was Mullet (haircut) (#148) (induced by reddit); Last to exceed 100,000 views was Martin Sheen (#595), last to 75,000 was Nigeria (#964), 50,000 was Marie Curie (#2004), 40,000 was Cognitive dissonance (#2894), and 30,000 was Alcohol (#4702).
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