Tag archive: Oscar

I absolutely loved Black Swan. I’m just not sure I can accurately say that I enjoyed it. When I first walked into Black Swan, I wasn’t sure what to think. When the movie was over and I walked out, I still wasn’t sure what to think. Despite how that might sound, that is not a criticism, but rather high praise for director Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler, Requiem for a Dream), and Natalie Portman, who present a movie that is complex,… Read More

Though it's difficult to picture a more accurate Abraham Lincoln than Liam Neeson, Daniel Day-Lewis is a surprisingly acceptable alternative. Over the weekend, Director Steven Spielberg revealed that the British actor will portray one of the most revered presidents in United States history. “Daniel Day-Lewis would have always been counted as one of the greatest of actors, were he from the silent era, the golden age of film or even… Read More

Video service Vudu has become the first on-demand digital video provider to offer a download-to-own option for high-definition movies, starting off with 50 HD titles from independent film companies like Kino, FirstLook, and Magnolia Pictures—and that happens to include the just-won-an-Oscar documentary Man on Wire. Under the service, high-definition titles can be stored on a user's Vudu set-top box or in the online Vudu vault,… Read More

As video sharing site YouTube gets closer and closer to consumers' living room television, it's no surprise the service is trying to come up with ways to offer higher quality content than, say, teenagers doing karaoke via a Web cam or eight years-olds staging sock puppet plays. To that end, YouTube has announced Screening Room, a dedicated area of the YouTube site featuring high-quality shorts from independent filmmakers.… Read More

Nokia has announced a partnership with Oscar-nominated director Spike Lee to create what it's calling the “world's first social film.” Cantered on the theme of how music “tells the story of humanity,” the film will be assembled through original content captured on mobile devices and submitted to the Nokia Productions site via the Internet. “The future of filmmaking is changing and mobile-generated… Read More

Mega game-publisher Electronic Arts has disclosed brief details of two games it is developing with Oscar-winning film director Steven Spielberg. The games will mark the first fruit of EA's much-heralded (and now doubt expensive) multi-year partnership with Spielberg announced in late 2005. Under the deal, Spielberg will develop three new games for Electronic Arts; EA gets full rights to the games, while Spielberg gets first crack at… Read More

The world's largest video game publisher, Electronic Arts, posted a larger-than-expected quarterly loss this week, and lowered its forecasts of future profits below Wall Street estimates as it admits it is not counting on revenue from its much-anticipated video game Spore for its fiscal year ending in March 2008—meaning it could be up to a year (or more!) before the game reaches consumers. Electronic Arts offers a number of… Read More

Sierra Entertainment's new video game Scarface: The World is Yours is scheduled to hit retail stores October 8, and will feature sound design and audio effects on par with big-budget Hollywood blockbusters, mixed at George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch by Oscar-winning sound designer Randy Thom. “Scarface is an icon of American cinema and the game needs to live up to not only the film's enduring legacy but also quality… Read More

Microsoft announced yesterday that it has entered a partnership with Oscar-winning husband-and-wife team Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh to create the third installment of the Halo Xbox video game franchise, as well as an entirely original game. Director, writer, and producer Jackson and screenwriter Walsh brought the enormously successful Lord of the Rings trilogy and (more recently) King Kong to movie screens and innumerable DVD players… Read More

Warner Brothers yesterday announced the upcoming releases of their latest HD DVD titles. The Fugitive and Blazing Saddles are due to hit store shelves May 23 for $28.99 each. For those not familiar with these films, Warner Brothers describes the plots of the movies as follows: The Fugitive stars Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones in a box-office hit and Best Picture Oscar-nominated motion picture based on the long-running TV series… Read More

“The civil suits against unnamed “John Doe” defendants seek up to $150,000 per downloaded digital file and come as the film industry prepares for its annual Oscar telecast in Hollywood where awards for top films and stars are given out.    The studios claim they lose $3.5 billion worldwide in annual revenues from sales of illegally copied movies on video and DVD formats in street bazaars and black… Read More

Shake 3 includes new Mac OS X only features such as Shake Qmaster network render management software that allows visual effects artists to easily distribute rendering tasks across a cluster of Apple's Xserve 1U rack servers or desktop Power Mac G4 computers for maximum performance and efficiency. In addition, Mac OS X users of Shake receive unlimited network render licenses at no extra cost. Shake 3 also includes new features available… Read More

Shake 3 includes new Mac OS X only features such as the Shake Qmaster network render management software and unlimited network rendering licenses which allow visual effects artists to easilydistribute rendering tasks across a cluster of Apple's Xserve 1U rack servers or desktop Power Mac G4 computers for maximum performance and efficiency. Shake 3 also includes new visual effectsfeatures available to Mac OS X, Linux and IRIX customers… Read More

Code-named “Chihiro” (after the young heroine of celebrated director Hayao Miyazaki's Oscar-nominated animated film Spirited Away, fact fans), the project is being worked on in collaboration withSega, and Microsoft will be hoping that Sega will replace its current Naomi arcade systems (which use a powerful variant of Dreamcast technology) with the new Xbox-based boards. This would not only give Microsoft's console a… Read More