hollywood

Should the Hollywood film studios ever try to revive antipiracy legislation similar to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), they will be without the help of three former allies in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Representatives Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), Howard Berman (D-Calif.), and Joe Baca (D-Calif.) all lost their seats following Tuesday's election, as noted today by blog Ars Technica.

All 3 were among the 31 sponsors of SOPA and were also among the 23 that didn't pull support for the proposed legislation after opponents organized massive Internet protests. SOPA supporters said the bill was designed … Read more

In Apple's never-ending negotiations with record labels, iTunes boss Eddy Cue often played the good cop to Steve Jobs' bad cop. But for current CEO Tim Cook, Cue may well be Mr. Fix-It.

In a surprising executive shuffle, Apple announced Monday that Scott Forstall, who runs software development for the iPad and iPhone, would be leaving the company, along with retail chief John Browett. Cue, an Apple employee for 23 years who was chief of iTunes since it launched in 2003, has now absorbed control of the Siri voice recognition service and the disappointing Apple Maps.

For the affable … Read more

Google Play's position among the top destinations for entertainment content, right there alongside Apple and Amazon, can no longer be denied.

Google announced today that it now has the licenses to offer movies and TV shows from News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox, which means Google Play can rent and sell material from all the major Hollywood studios. Google also locked up a deal with Time Inc. to distribute the media company's top magazine titles such as People, InStyle, and Time.

Perhaps most telling for Google is the deal it struck with Warner Music Group, one of the … Read more

Ultraviolet light is invisible to humans -- and similarly, it's been hard to spot the movie-locker system named UltraViolet (UV).

UV is a set of standards and specifications created by a consortium of Hollywood film studios, software and hardware companies and Web retailers. The technology is designed to create an ecosystem that enables consumers to store their films in the cloud and then access the titles with any one of scores of different UV-compatible Web-connected devices.

With DVD sales ailing, UV is supposed to entice consumers to start buying movies again. Only problem is, consumers haven't shown much … Read more

It might not be easy to use an iPhone to record and edit a Hollywood-style short, but it's possible.

Anna Elizabeth James and Michael Koerbel, the duo behind Majek Pictures, have a history of seeing how well the latest Apple devices handle cinema production values, not just point-and-shoot video, and this time around they've used an iPhone 5 to create "All Up To You," an amusing 96-second mini-musical about running out of gas in the desert with only Siri to help.

Creating the short was a scramble to find dancers, to print app icons on boxes, … Read more

Make it a Blockbuster night.

Remember that? It wasn't that long ago that Blockbuster was king of home video and the company's name was synonymous with weekend entertainment for millions of Americans. But the original Blockbuster business is dead now. Netflix and Coinstar (Redbox) rule supreme and Hollywood's home entertainment business is in the toilet.

Against that dismal backdrop, the studios are excited about a 1 percent uptick for the first half of the year in U.S. home-video sales, according to the Digital Entertainment Group. DEG said total revenue came in at $8.4 billion, while … Read more

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. -- It's hard to believe that a bunch of corrugated steel could be so famous. But when that bunch is nine letters that are 45 feet tall, and that combine to stretch 400 feet across, you get what is likely the world's most recognizable sign.

This is, of course, the Hollywood sign, a universal image representing the entertainment industry, and a monument that literally towers over Tinseltown.

But with its 90th anniversary coming up next spring, it may surprise some to learn that the sign has had its global status for only a fraction of its … Read more

HOLLYWOOD, Calif.--Deep inside a series of very cold vaults, surrounded by thick concrete and protected from fire and water damage, more than 76,000 movies sit on shelves, preserved for future generations to enjoy.

Welcome to the Academy Film Archive, the storage arm of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. On your right is a stack of cans containing several reels of the 1962 classic "Lawrence of Arabia." On your left are several cans comprising a copy of "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Since opening its doors in 1927, the Academy -- the folks … Read more

BURBANK, Calif.--Back in the dark ages of modern 3D filmmaking -- meaning more than a year or two ago -- the process of aligning imagery coming from the two cameras required to shoot in 3D could be slow, methodical, and frustrating work. But one company thinks it has done away with those days forever.

At 3ality, an outfit here that is among the leaders in the nascent new era of 3D filmmaking -- as opposed to the horrible 3D films dating back a few decades -- there's no reason to labor over the optimization of such imagery after … Read more