Movies

If I can tell you one thing about trying to TiVo Sunday night's Oscars, it's that being online during the ceremonies was definitely not a safe place to be.

This is the era of time-shifting, and I like to take full advantage of the fact that I can set my DVR to record something like the Oscars and then sit down later on and watch it at my leisure and yet still be surprised by what happens.

But just as the show was beginning, I switched over to TweetDeck to check something out on Twitter and was horrified … Read more

Wall Street is once again fretting over Netflix.

Some analysts didn't know what to do with themselves on Tuesday when the share price of the Web's top movie rental service shot past their performance expectations. Sure, Netflix continues to return boffo earnings, but after the company's share price hit $70, some brokers took a hard look at Netflix's prospects for the future, according to a MarketWatch story by reporter Therese Poletti.

What the analysts found was a Web video-on-demand segment filling up fast with competitors. That apparently spooked analysts at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Susquehanna … Read more

The hard times just keep slapping Blockbuster. The company announced Wednesday that it posted a $435 million loss for the fourth quarter.

The poor performance is especially hard, considering it happened in the fourth quarter--usually Blockbuster's best months. In the third quarter, the company lost over $114 million.

Back in September, the company announced that it would be closing up to 960 underperforming stores to increase its earnings by $50 million to $60 million. Blockbuster closed 374 U.S. stores last year and plans to accelerate its plans to shutter an additional 545 retail locations this year.

To revitalize … Read more

Pay-TV juggernaut HBO has officially announced the launch of HBO Go, a video-streaming service.

Unless you are one of the 38 million cable subscribers who gets HBO or sister service Cinemax, HBO Go won't be offered to you, the company has said.

HBO Go provides subscribers Web access to the same movies HBO screens on cable TV--at no extra charge. This is the on-demand movie provider's attempt to hang on to subscribers during a down economy, as Netflix and other Web video services attract more and more consumers looking to reduce entertainment costs.

The new streaming service is … Read more

Everyone knows that George Lucas has had a disproportionately large impact on our society. His "Star Wars" films have, over the last 33 years, become one of the globe's primary cultural touchstones.

Suppose you found yourself in a standoff with someone from a country or way of life that wants to harm you. If you suddenly said something like, "Luke, I am your father," you both would probably break up laughing.

But a film expected to make its world debut at the South by Southwest film festival next month in Austin, Texas, suggests that there'… Read more

In case you weren't paying attention, 2009 was a banner year for big, big visual effects movies.

And the teams that crafted the most impressive work were honored Tuesday morning, along with all the best and brightest in filmmaking, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominations for the 2010 Oscars.

Here at CNET News we have a special place in our heart, as you might expect, for visual-effects-heavy movies because of the fantastic amounts of technology and computing power that goes into them.

As usual, the Academy chose just three films as visual-effects nominees. … Read more

Update at 8:25 a.m. PST Feb. 2: "Avatar" has snagged nine Oscar nominations: visual effects, best picture, art direction, cinematography, directing, film editing, sound editing, sound mixing, and music (original score).

When the trumpets sound Tuesday morning and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces its annual Oscar nominations, could there be any more of a sure thing than that James Cameron's mega-hit "Avatar" will grace the list of visual effects honorees?

After all, while many people have enjoyed the film's sprawling anti-colonialism storyline, there's little doubt that what … Read more

Update at 2:10 p.m. PDT: This story has been modified to reflect both Jon Landau and James Cameron's membership on the advisory board of virtual world platform developer Multiverse.

Since the release of his massive hit "Avatar," director James Cameron has gotten plenty of deserved attention for his filmmaking innovations, having invented a camera system that captured live footage of his actors and integrated it immediately into fleshed-out scenes from his fictional world of Pandora.

But movies may not be the only medium Cameron's innovation is pushing toward the future. In fact, the technology … Read more

Thanks to a new technology that allowed people to drive a rover across the world of Pandora from the smash hit film "Avatar," we might soon see a wide range of games or other projects that use the exact same 3D models as the films they're based on.

In December, McDonald's launched a game called PandoraRovr, in which anyone could explore James Cameron's fantastical moon. While an otherwise normal Flash-based promotion put together on behalf of one of the film's corporate partners, what made the game unusual is that the imagery in it was … Read more