The Netflix bears are salivating.

When the video-rental company reports earnings later today, Netflix's financial performance is expected to show sluggishness due to higher costs of streaming content and an international expansion. The company's increased dependency on streaming movies over the Internet is supposed to mean slimmer margins than when the business was focused on renting DVDs.

In the immediate future, movies from Disney and Sony Pictures are supposed to disappear next month. Netflix obtained those films via a deal with Starz, the premium cable-TV service, but the contract was not renewed. This will diminish an already slim … Read more

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled its Oscar nominations this morning, there were some very familiar names among the honorees.

Joe Letteri, for example. And Tim Burke and Scott Farrar.

These may not be people that appear regularly in the pages of "Us Weekly," but to those who follow the visual effects industry, they're on par with Meryl Streep and George Clooney.

Only one film can win the Oscar for best visual effects, but today, five films were nominated.

As usual, George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic was honored, this year for its … Read more

A roboticist I know was on a train in Japan when an elderly lady asked him what he did for a living. When he said he builds robots, she smiled and told him she can't wait until she gets a robot nurse.

That isn't how we all hope to live out our final years. Certainly not Frank, a cranky ex-thief who finds himself in the unwanted care of an Asimo-esque robot nurse in the independent movie "Robot & Frank."

The Jake Schreier-helmed feature just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won over critics with its quirky charm. It was based on a short-film idea from Christopher D. Ford, who penned the screenplay.

Starring Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon, Liv Tyler, and James Marsden, it's set in the near future and explores the comedic possibilities of mixing the unwilling, curmudgeonly Frank with the irrepressible VGC-60L (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard), which is dedicated to making him exercise and eat healthier breakfasts. … Read more

For nearly three years, "Star Wars" fans everywhere have been coming up with their own takes on the beloved film's many famous scenes--15 seconds at a time.

This is "Star Wars Uncut," a project to remake George Lucas' 1977 classic, entirely from fan-made scenes. And while the in-progress results have been available all along for all to see, the project's developers had never publicly released their finished product. Until now.

Today, as Laughing Squid wrote, Casey Pugh, who conceived of the "Star Wars Uncut" project, finally released his director's cut of … Read more

Imagine: You're walking down the street at night. You turn a corner, and suddenly, coming your way, you see someone with "Avatar" playing on their jacket.

It's a futuristic notion, but according to the folks at open-source hardware maker Adafruit Industries, it's one that's just months away.

That's because Adafruit has just unveiled Flora, its brand-new Arduino and Arduino-compatible wearable electronics platform. Designed to give anyone the ability to craft a matrix of up to hundreds or someday, more than 1,000 small LED "pixels," Flora is meant to make it possible to easily craft custom wearable multi-LED pixel designs perfect for art events like Burning Man, or even the streets of whatever town you live in. … Read more

Facebook has held talks with Vevo about moving the music-video service away from YouTube and over to the social network's platform, sources with knowledge of the talks told CNET.

While the sources said the discussions are very preliminary and noted that there's still another year remaining on Vevo's contract with YouTube, meetings have occurred between Vevo and Facebook at least twice. The most recent talks took place within the past two weeks, the sources said.

Facebook is interested in a similar arrangement to the one Vevo has now with Google's YouTube. Facebook would stream Vevo's … Read more

Maybe it went something like this.

"It's 'Resident Evil: Retribution,'" said the Sony marketing department. "It's kind of cool. Well, coolish. So why don't we showcase some Sony products in there? Just to make them seem, you know, kind of cool?"

The trailer-makers' pinched faces failed to hide their inner aghastness. Somewhere, they believed this series to be high art. This was a glorious video game brought to celluloid life. Five times. Or, wait, was this, "Resident Evil: Retribution," the sixth?

They couldn't remember. Making movies and then making ads … Read more

If you're a storyteller, wouldn't you want the chance to have "Gladiator" and "Blade Runner" auteur Ridley Scott help you with a project? And wouldn't it be great to have half a million dollars to spend on it?

That could be your future if you're the winner of YouTube's Your Film Festival, a competition to unearth the world's best storyteller that Google's video sharing site announced today.

Beginning February 2, YouTube will open up the film festival to anyone in the world who's 18 or older and has … Read more

With sites like Reddit, BoingBoing, PostSecret, and I Can Has Cheezburger blacked out today in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, you might think this would be a peaceful, relaxed Wednesday for the people who run them. You'd be wrong.

All across the Internet, sites like those and many others stood up to register their opposition to SOPA and PIPA. But for some of those who have gotten the most attention for their activism, today has actually been crazier than usual, despite not having to constantly update their publications all day.

"Today … Read more