Hollywood

About seven months before he died, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was pitching a plan for a subscription-video service to leaders in Hollywood.

Les Moonves, CEO of CBS, the entertainment conglomerate and parent company of CNET, said Jobs approached him with the idea about a year ago, according to story in The Hollywood Reporter. Moonves shared the revelation on Saturday while addressing attendees of the UCLA Entertainment Symposium in Los Angeles.

Jobs died in October following a long fight with pancreatic cancer.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Moonves also said that Jobs failed to persuade him to support the subscription service. &… Read more

Not all of the major Hollywood studios are participating in Apple's new iCloud feature that enables users to store their movies and TV shows on Apple's servers.

Apple announced upgrades to its Apple TV system at its iPad press event yesterday. Among them were 1080p support, better navigation and the ability to re-download video from Apple's iCloud.

AllThingsD reported yesterday that Fox and NBC Universal are holdouts and that the reason has to do with exclusive licenses that those studios have with Time Warner's HBO.

This is the same contractual obligation that plagued the UltraViolet platform … Read more

Ordinarily, I would write that Aereo, the Internet video company slammed yesterday by lawsuits from nearly every major TV broadcaster in New York, is doomed.

I would write that Aereo is headed for the same gloomy ending as ivi.TV and Zediva. These were goofy, legal-loophole plays that were shut down by the courts faster than you can say permanent injunction.

But hold up.

Aereo is supported by some very smart people. Barry Diller, one of the savviest media tycoons around, is an investor and is on the board. There's no doubt that he and the company anticipated a … Read more

Kim DotCom is out on bail and the MegaUpload founder didn't waste time before going on a public relations offensive.

For the past month, DotCom has been locked up in a New Zealand jail after being accused by the United States government of criminal copyright violations, racketeering, and money laundering. U.S. officials say that MegaUpload cost copyright owners $500 million in damages and is part of the biggest online piracy case ever. They want DotCom to stand trial in this country.

Now, in an attempt to clear his name, DotCom is doing media interviews and telling his side … Read more

Hollywood hasn't given up trying to persuade consumers to buy and collect movies or on digital rights management.

Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox are partnering with Sandisk and Western Digital to develop antipiracy devices in an effort to secure 1080p high-definition movies once they're in the wild.

The companies announced today that they have formed a new consortium called Secure Content Storage Association (SCSA). The group will create the standards which they hope will be adopted by makers of Blu-ray players, tablets, and smart TVs. As of yet, the SCSA doesn't have a device to show … Read more

Foreclosures, bankruptcies, eviction notices, and tears.

That's the picture painted Thursday in a New York Times op-ed piece about a Hollywood film industry that is supposedly "contracting."

Hilary De Vries, a screenwriter and book author, writes about how Hollywood's middle class is hurting. We're not talking Brad and Angelina or Martin Scorsese. We're talking about the guy you might remember from a soap opera or the writing team for a lesser-known sitcom. De Vries offered anecdotes about how her neighbors--several cash-strapped actors and screenwriters--have lost homes to foreclosure. She described how popular eateries are … Read more

UCLA film school undergrad Michael Barryte of the Belated Media YouTube channel suggests a hypothetical story alteration to "Star Wars: Episode 1" that seems much more engaging than the original.

"Initially I wanted to do something on Episode I because of the rerelease, but I didn't want to bash the movie, because everyone's done that," Barryte told Crave in an e-mail. "So I started doing a video highlighting all the things that were good about the film, and that evolved into me just going through and taking those key points and 'rewriting' the whole thing."

I don't think the prequel is a total dud, but even I have some difficulty keeping track of the many plot holes and twists and turns in the story. Then there's the matter of the outspoken Jar Jar Binks, which is not exactly the most popular character in the Star Wars universe. … Read more

Perhaps, like me, your troubled sense of self-worth has been caused by following Paris Hilton's cultural moves too closely.

The iconic heiress seemed once to put the eyes and the tease into "zeitgeist." Now she teeters on the brink of something closer to evanescence.

I am grateful to Mashable, therefore, for discovering this extraordinary music video in which La Hilton suddenly becomes every teenage girl's mom. For in it she accesses her inner Serge Gainsbourg and talks of the dangers of texting while drunk.

The lyrics drift beyond literature into a chasm of ethereal splendor.

Hilton … Read more

All the build up to an extradition hearing in the MegaUpload case was supposed to culminate with a court fight today in New Zealand.

But all we get is another bail hearing involving Kim DotCom, MegaUpload's founder, according to U.S officials (Update" DotCom was released on bail). A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, told CNET that its lawyers have yet to file extradition paperwork with the New Zealand court and have until March 2 to do so. It's unclear how long after the paperwork is filed that … Read more