Movie news and Movie Trailers for Movie Lovers http://cinepopulis.com/ en-us Copyright 2010 Attention all shoppers, the next time you go to grab a grocery cart, you might notice some new carts added to the bunch. They aren't just any carts, they're carts catered to your kids. If you look close enough, you'll notice a movie monitor. There's a screen at the top of the cart for mom and dad that will tell parents about products as they go down the aisle. The same screen works as the super remote, and allows children to choose one of three 30-minute Disney movies. "It's cool 'cause it has a TV in it so they won't be getting out of the basket," Courtney Sanders, a mother, said. "It's about making the shopping experience more pleasurable for even our littlest shoppers," Director of Public Affairs for King Soopers Kelli McGannon said. "As a parent, and as somebody who's worked at King Soopers, the experience is just that much better for the parent, which just means you all go home happy." http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1325 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1325 Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:23:38 -0700 Today Apple announced that it is giving publishers the ability to offer subscriptions on the iPad, iPods and iPhones. But as my colleague Jeff Bercovici points out, there's a pretty big catch. Publishers have to give subscribers the option to buy the subscription through iTunes or by leaving the app and buying it through a web browsers. Why? Because if users subscribe through iTunes Apple keeps 30%. If they subscribe externally Apple keeps nothing. And considering there are upward of 50 million iTunes subscribers, that's going to make things tough for publishers. Are users really going to want to enter in their credit card again on another site when they could just tap their iTunes account? And when they do that it means a 30% haircut off of each subscription which is a revenue source publishers are relying on. http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1324 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1324 Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:22:56 -0700 Those book cases full of carefully labeled DVD's have been, in the past two years, slowly giving way to queues full of digital movie copies as American's have steadily moved away from owning physical media to digital copies stored on their hard drives. Now, according to IHS Screen Digest research, even those digital copies are beginning to disappear as consumers turn instead to renting videos on the Internet, with the trend accelerating so strongly that the company predicts that by 2013, Internet video on demand movie (iVOD) movie revenue will exceed that of electronic sell-through (EST), a first in the industry. The company says it expects iVOD revenue to reach $341.7 million in 2013, up from $155.2 million in 2010, an increase of more than 120 percent. And, it says, EST will increase as well, but at a more pedestrian 43.6 percent rate, to reach $331.1 million in 2013, up from $230.6 million in 2010. By 2015,it says, the iVOD market will reach $439.1 million, compared to $396.8 million for EST. http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1323 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1323 Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:22:10 -0700 You may have noticed the MPAA started including smoking on their reasons for a particular rating. The brouhaha surrounding that decision has died down a bit, largely because tobacco use is now twenty percent as offensive to the American public as drunk driving, but in a lot of other countries where smoking is much more prevalent, this is still a hot button issue. No country in the world purchases more cigarettes than China, and after a new study showed Chinese children are more likely to smoke after seeing movie stars do it, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has decided to lay down the law. According to The Hollywood Reporter, movies will no longer be allowed to depict minors smoking or buying tobacco products, as well as anyone lighting anywhere smoking is banned. This includes all public buildings and will probably be the sorriest point of contention for filmmakers. That being said, movies are supposed to, for the most part, glorify realism, and if you can't smoke in certain places, films should depict that, or at least implement consequences if characters do. As to whether or not it's realistic for minors not to light up, it probably isn't, but as long as surveys showing it influences children are released, decisions like this will continue. http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1322 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1322 Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:21:08 -0700 Christopher Nolan's Inception is a wholly original work, and a superb one at that. Blending the heist and action genres with elements of philosophy and psychology, the result is one of the smartest and most entertaining films of the year. At this year's Academy Awards it is all but a shoo-in to win the prize for Best Original Screenplay, but it's important that it takes Best Picture as well. While there's no denying that Inception's nine competitors in the category are perfect examples of the best films 2010 had to offer, a win for Nolan's film would send a message to the entire industry: focusing on ingenuity, originality and imaginative storytelling can not only earn a studio prestige and hardware to put on a mantle, but can also be a method of earning $823 million at the international box office. Something needs to be done in order to encourage gambling and chance taking among studio bosses and there is no better way to get that message across. http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1321 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1321 Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:38:53 -0700 Let's be brutally honest -- love has never been depicted honestly in the movies. Oh sure, you have your occasional Before Sunrise, Adam's Rib, or Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore that depicts two people as being messy, sad, and complicated. They fight, they throw things, they walk away from one another. But they are uncommon. If movies ever depicted love as it truly was, there wouldn't be studies insisting romantic movies are harmful to viewers. No, those aren't the words of someone bitter and alone. They are simply the words of someone who spent a good week researching romantic movies, trying to pull them apart and figure out what defined them in every decade. Hating on the romantic comedy is popular right now, and those of us who have gleefully chopped them up and ridiculed them usually scream how romance was better in the Golden Age. Romantic movies were real and honest back then; now they're glib, insulting, and far-fetched. http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1320 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1320 Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:34:59 -0700 Aamir Khan is on the jury of the Berlin International Film Festival here. And he is in tears. Not because of jury duties, but because he is battling the cold and wind while being mobbed by fans on Potsdamer Platz, the festival hub. '˜Ganz schnell!' (quickly), the fans scream to friends who are clicking their pictures with Aamir Khan. Khan spoke to DNA in Berlin. Excerpts from the interview: Will Hollywood producers of Bollywood films help us reach global markets? Hollywood producers don't add any value to Indian films. They are producing hardcore mainstream Indian films aimed at Indian audiences. I haven't seen Udaan or Love, Sex and Dhoka, but there may be films whose natural sensibility and audience is international. Otherwise, Indian directors are fooling themselves if they think dubbing their films into English is going to help them expand markets. If the film has no legs, it won't work with audiences '' it makes no difference if the producer is from Bollywood or Hollywood. For that matter, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Inception were very successful in India even though they were not aimed at India. The films worked because they were good; their success did not pre-suppose knowledge about Indian audiences. http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1319 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1319 Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:33:21 -0700 I remember seeing Thelma & Louise''just reissued by MGM in a 20th-anniversary Blu-Ray edition''with my mother upon its release in 1991. I must have been home on break from graduate school. I know we enjoyed it, though we stopped somewhere short of full-on love. And of course we argued about the ending, though I can't remember who took what side. What I do recall is that in 1991, Thelma & Louise was a movie you had to see; for months after its release that summer, the film was the subject of op-ed-page debates and chat-show controversy. Like Do The Right Thing in 1989 or Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004, Ridley Scott's two-girls-on-the-run road movie was 1991's de rigueur conversation piece. Two decades later, Thelma & Louise persists in the popular imagination as an epochal and groundbreaking film, one for which there is a "before" and an "after." No roundup of movies about female empowerment (empowerment! How's that for a hit of 90s nostalgia?) would be complete without it. But has Thelma & Louise lasted as anything more than a feminist benchmark? Is it a feminist benchmark? And is it any good? http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1318 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1318 Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:30:47 -0700 SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK), the global leader in flash memory cards, today announced that it has begun supplying a 4 gigabyte (GB)1 microSDHC'„¢ mobile memory card pre-loaded with the full-length Paramount Pictures' 'Iron Man 2' movie for bundling with MetroPCS' new Indulge LTE smartphone. This card delivers a high-quality movie watching experience on the new Android-based handset by Samsung. 'Our card helps MetroPCS deliver premium content that is both secure and easily accessible, and provides measurable real-time data that gauges consumer interest in the content' One of 2010's hottest movies, 'Iron Man 2' can be instantly played from the SanDisk microSDHC mobile memory card by inserting it into the Indulge phone, which contacts the MetroPCS network automatically. This intelligent SanDisk mobile memory card provides specific, real-time network data to MetroPCS to measure customer interest in digital content. Details of aggregated, anonymous consumer usage will allow MetroPCS to determine the impact of its movie offering, which in turn allows them to provide customers with more customized content and services in the future. 'Our card helps MetroPCS deliver premium content that is both secure and easily accessible, and provides measurable real-time data that gauges consumer interest in the content,' said Robert Khedouri, vice president and general manager, software and solutions, SanDisk. 'This allows MetroPCS to deliver a premium mobile experience to its customers and take full advantage of this new smartphone's rich features.' http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1317 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1317 Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:29:43 -0700 Australian filmmaker Philippe Mora is at the Berlin International Film Festival this week to talk about his planned 3D biopic about surrealist artist Salvador Dali. That film sounds quite interesting (Alan Cumming is set to star), but while discussing 3D in general, the director dropped a bigger bombshell: He has discovered two short, 3D propaganda films shot by the Nazis back in 1936 ''- putting them way ahead of Hollywood in terms of developing the technology. This isn't the first time Mora's discovered interesting Nazi film materials. His documentary 'Swastika' was released in 1973 and featured previously unseen color film footage from Hitler's home movies shot by Eva Braun at his Obersalzberg retreat (pictured above). Those scenes now turn up in nearly every documentary about the Third Reich... The 3D footage was uncovered while Mora was preparing another documentary on the Nazis, this one detailing how the Third Reich used images to create their own reality and control the masses. http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1316 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1316 Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:28:44 -0700 David F. Friedman, the godfather of B-movie gore who produced 1963's "Blood Feast," which paved a bloody path that led to increasingly graphic horror movies, has died. He was 87. Friedman died Monday of heart failure at a nursing home in Anniston, Ala., said Bridget Everett, his niece. "It's hard to think of anybody who was more important to exploitation films," said Eric Schaefer, an expert on the exploitation genre and a professor of visual and media arts at Boston's Emerson College. "He was a link to the old road-show days of exploitation that begin in the 1920s and obviously was a crucial producer." As a longtime chairman of the board of the Adult Film Assn. of America, Friedman also was "a constant champion of the rights of adults to see adult material," Schaefer said. http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1315 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1315 Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:27:56 -0700 Now appearing on Android phones: digital copies of Blu-ray Disc movies. The new Unstoppable Blu-ray Disc, out today ($40; also on DVD), includes a digital copy that can be transferred to Android devices. Buyers will have to use the BD Live feature via an Internet-connected Blu-ray player to get a copy playable on their Android device. They will also need an Android 1.6 or higher device with the Pocket BLU app installed (available for free at the Android Market). http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1314 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1314 Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:27:16 -0700 Premiere of modern version at Berlin film festival includes Jon Snow 'news headlines' As his cinematic version of Coriolanus premiered at the Berlin film festival Ralph Fiennes, regarded as one of Britain's finest classical and stage actors, finally joined the ranks of film directors, along with his sisters Martha and Sophie. Despite the long gestation of his directorial debut, in which he also stars, he already has his sights on filming another Shakespeare play. "We have talked a bit about it, though I don't know when it would be," he said. "It's Antony and Cleopatra: not only because it is a great love story, but also because it is written very cinematically. It cuts from Egypt, to Rome, to the ocean. In fact, if Shakespeare was alive today, I think he would write very easily for the cinema." http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1313 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1313 Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:47:08 -0700 Over at The Browser, Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky names and discusses his top five books on films and filmmaking. There's an obvious one (Sidney Lumet's Making Movies), an unexpected autobiography (Kirk Douglas's The Ragman's Son), and then the following screenplay tome. From Aronofsky's piece: The Writer's Journey, Christopher Vogler. It's the Bible for screenwriters. I think it's the best book on how to write a screenplay ever written. It helped me get through so many roadblocks as a writer. Vogler adapted the work of Joseph Campbell, an American academic, to the art of screenwriting. Vogler's approach to screenwriting was based on Campbell's theory that, because of myths, the arc of a hero's journey was a story ingrained deeply inside all of us. I really incorporated his ideas and techniques into how I structured films''I referred to it a lot. http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1312 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1312 Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:46:27 -0700 'The Turin Horse,' the final film from Hungarian arthouse master Béla Tarr, isn't likely to rock the boat too much for fans of the director's work as this first teaser for the film bears out, and those hoping for more enigmatic long takes will be pleased. A lantern trembles as wind blows and some faint creepy organ music plays in the back in the spot for the film, and well, that's about it. 'The Turin Horse' will tell the story of a rural farmer and his daughter who find their jobs and livelihood compromised when their work horse becomes ill. The two-and-a-half-hour film was lensed by Fred Keleman ('The Man From London'), scored by Mihály Víg and co-written by longtime Tarr collaborator László Krasznahorkai. http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1311 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1311 Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:37:06 -0700 Academy Award®-winning actress Reese Witherspoon will be a presenter at the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony, telecast producers Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer announced today. In 2005 Witherspoon received her first Oscar® nomination and took home the award for her leading performance as June Carter in 'Walk the Line.' She'll be seen next in 'Water for Elephants' and 'This Means War.' http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1310 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1310 Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:35:43 -0700 Happy Valentine's Day! It's time to get together with that special someone in your life and spend money you don't have on garish rituals that would probably be much more romantic if you didn't feel compelled to commit them out of obligation to a calendar and/or greeting-card manufacturer. I mean! It's time to get together for a nice dinner and a movie -- hopefully one with some intimate, even sexy moments between the characters onscreen. If you can find one. Which might be difficult. http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1309 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1309 Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:33:22 -0700 It looks like the "Governator" might soon be returning to the big screen. Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger took to Twitter earlier this week to confirm that his agents will officially begin taking movie offers for him once again. "Exciting news," he wrote. "My friends at CAA have been asking me for 7 years when they can take offers seriously. Gave them the green light today." Arnold's film credits have been few and far between since he became the governor of the debt riddled state. He made cameo appearances in 2003's "The Rundown" and the 2004's "Around the World in 80 Days," and most recently had a cameo in "The Expendables." http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1308 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1308 Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:32:47 -0700 In 2006, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone terminated New Jersey native Tom Cruise's contract with Paramount after "Mission: Impossible 3." Redstone explained, "He's a terrific actor. But we don't think that someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot." Cruise can have that effect on people. From his breakthrough performance in 1983's "Risky Business" onwards, Cruise has been an A-lister in movies. But while promoting "War of the Worlds" by Steven Spielberg, Cruise made an appearance jumping on Oprah Winfrey's couch and proclaiming his love for new girlfriend Katie Holmes. Reports surfaced this week that Cruise and the Church of Scientology are under investigation from the FBI over allegations of human trafficking. Cruise reportedly requested the Church to custom-build him a luxury SUV. http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1307 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1307 Sun, 13 Feb 2011 11:12:43 -0700 When one wants to watch an African movie, its either Ghanaian or Nigerian movie that comes in mind. I have always complained, advocated and shown my strong aversions to the TV stations in Ghana for only showing Ghanaian and Nigerian movies when actually it's supposed to be African movies slot. My argument has always been that movies from the above named countries alone do not represent Africa. We need to be presented with what the other African countries are also doing in terms of movies. http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1306 http://cinepopulis.com/news.php?id=1306 Sun, 13 Feb 2011 11:07:38 -0700