plus 4, Stock jumps for Novato's Sonic Solutions after Best Buy deal - Marin Independent Journal |
- Stock jumps for Novato's Sonic Solutions after Best Buy deal - Marin Independent Journal
- Precious’ ready to pop for director, young star - Vindy.com
- Michael Jackson's This Is It (movie) - Daily Press
- Third leading Chinese movie studio eyes listing, this time on New York ... - Chicago Tribune
- Sherlock Holmes” to Sponsor “Family Guy” Special - NBC Miami
| Stock jumps for Novato's Sonic Solutions after Best Buy deal - Marin Independent Journal Posted: 03 Nov 2009 11:11 PM PST IJ staff and wire reports Shares in Novato-based Sonic Solutions surged 17 percent Tuesday after announcement of a deal with Best Buy Co., the largest U.S. retailer of consumer electronics. Best Buy is forging an alliance with Roxio CinemaNow, a division of Sonic Solutions, to stream movies to consumers over the Internet. The deal was announced Tuesday but reported in the media late Monday. Best Buy is trying to nudge consumers away from its stores' DVD aisles by making it easier for them to rent and buy movies over high-speed Internet connections. The software making it possible to shop CinemaNow's video library will be included on all the Web-connected devices sold in Best Buy's more than 1,000 U.S. stores. That means consumers who buy flat-panel TVs, Blu-ray players, personal computers and mobile phones from Best Buy would be able to get downloads of videos the same day they are released on DVDs. Shares in Sonic Solutions rose 17 percent, to $6.13, in trading on the Nasdaq stock market. The stock was still rising in after-hours trading. The stock's 52-week high is $6.60. It has traded in the $15 range in recent years. Sonic Solutions, a 500-employee company based at 7250 Redwood Blvd., acquired CinemaNow last year. The alliance with Best Buy marks the latest industry step away from the DVD format. Consumers are getting more ways of finding home entertainment with just a few clicks instead of traveling to a video rental store or waiting for a disc to be delivered through the mail.Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and DVD-by-mail pioneer Netflix Inc. all have been winning over consumers with their own digital delivery systems. Blockbuster Inc. also has a deal with CinemaNow that lets people rent movies over the Internet. Netflix gave an indication of the growing popularity of new video-delivery methods in its earnings report last month. It said that 42 percent of its subscribers streamed at least 15 minutes of video through its Internet-viewing service during the last quarter, up from 22 percent at the same time last year.
Read more Business and stocks stories at the IJ's Business and stocks section. The Associated Press contributed to this report This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| Precious’ ready to pop for director, young star - Vindy.com Posted: 03 Nov 2009 10:42 PM PST By JOHN ANDERSON "Precious" is hardly the feel-good movie of 2009, but the people around it should be feeling pretty good. It had a double win at Sundance, ringing endorsements from Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, Oscar buzz swarming around Mo'Nique and, now, Friday's release. If it all feels like the other shoe's about to drop, you won't get an argument from Lee Daniels. "It's like I'm on a cloud, waiting for someone to pop it," said the 49-year-old director ("Shadowboxer") and producer ("Monster's Ball"), who acknowledges that his movie — whose full title is "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" — is concerned with the same feelings he's having: Of not being worthy, of not loving yourself enough, of not being confident about your accomplishments. "The key to Precious," he said of the character, "is that she learns to love herself. And it's a hard thing to do. You're conditioned to not love yourself, to think yourself unworthy. I'm conditioned right now to think the cloud is going to pop. 'Precious' makes you look at that in a hard way." He laughed. "In a really hard way." No kidding. The 300-plus-pound heroine of Sapphire's novel and Geoffrey Fletcher's riveting script is illiterate, abused, pregnant for the second time by her father and in a duel to the death with her mother — a matriarchal monster named Mary (Mo'Nique). The only relief Precious enjoys from her harrowing existence is in her fantasies — heartbreakingly rendered by Daniels, all pastel-wonderland, music-video confections — until she meets a special teacher, Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), and a social worker played by Mariah Carey. Lenny Kravitz plays a nurse. "All my friends are in the movie," Daniels laughed. If there is a backlash, it may likely come from members of the black community. "Most black people I know who have seen the film prefer 'Akeelah and the Bee' to 'Precious,' just as many preferred 'Waiting to Exhale' to 'Monsters Ball,'" said NY Press critic Armond White, who is black. "The black degradation on view in 'Precious' seems to be what Hollywood and the media prefer. It's difficult to square the hype for 'Precious' with Obama's election. Maybe nothing's really changed." Naturally, there's disagreement. "This movie has a black cast and a black director, but a universal story," said Gabourey Sidibe, the Brooklyn-born, Harlem-raised, 26-year-old who plays Precious. "Being illiterate and abused by your parents is not a black trait. Where the film premiered, in Utah, it's pretty much all white people, and after every single screening, people would come up and say, 'This is my story; this girl is me.' And it wasn't all white women — it was white men, too. There was no rhyme or reason to the age, either; it was all over the place." Sidibe is not Precious: Although size, weight and skin tone are all elements in the story, Sidibe says she didn't need to absorb any lessons in self-worth. "I do have pride and I do love myself," she said, "but I don't love myself because I'm a big woman. If I were to change, I'd continue to love myself. I think it's harder when you look differently, and not just being big: If you're darker, or your hair's different, there are so many ways the outside world pushes you to not love yourself." She said some of the feedback she's been getting — during her rather abrupt introduction to media insanity — has been revealing. "People say, 'Oh, you're so confident, people love your confidence,' and my feeling is, 'You wouldn't say I'm so confident if you thought I was beautiful.' Just because I don't fit that image, I'm supposed to have so much confidence. Just because I'm not slitting my wrists because I don't look a certain way?" She admits she had no real dramatic training pre-"Precious" (playing a pirate in "Peter Pan" at Lehman College in the Bronx was her biggest credit), so she feels an indebtedness to Mo'Nique. "I learned from her how to act with someone else." They also found a way to get past the horror. "Mary and Precious are in a constant fight and during those scenes, Mo'Nique and I just loved each other more. We'd hug and dance and sing and laugh, because once the director said 'Action,' she'd be throwing a skillet at me." This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| Michael Jackson's This Is It (movie) - Daily Press Posted: 01 Nov 2009 02:38 PM PST LOS ANGELES — "Michael Jackson's This Is It" pulled in $101 million worldwide in its first five days, and distributor Sony is extending the farewell performance film beyond its planned two-week run. The film was the No. 1 Halloween thriller domestically with a $21.3 million opening weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. The previous weekend's No. 1 movie, Paramount's low-budget horror sensation "Paranormal Activity," slipped to No. 2 with $16.5 million, lifting its total to $84.8 million. "This Is It" raised its domestic total to $32.5 million. The movie pulled in $68.5 million overseas, including $10.4 million in Japan, $6.3 million in Germany, $5.8 million in France and $3.2 million in China. "He's just loved everywhere on the planet," said Rory Bruer, head of distribution for Sony. "It doesn't matter if it's Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, South America. Every continent in the world loved him and his music." In Great Britain, where Jackson had planned a marathon series of 50 London concerts starting last July, the movie earned $7.6 million. "This Is It" captures Jackson in behind-the-scenes performances in the weeks before his death last June, as he rehearsed his biggest hits for the London shows. While "Paranormal Activity" led Halloween's scary movies, an established horror franchise lost its fear factor as Lionsgate's "Saw VI" fell sharply in its second weekend after an anemic debut. "Saw VI" came in at No. 5 this weekend with $5.6 million, raising its total to just $22.8 million after 10 days. Previous sequels in the serial-killer series all had topped $30 million during opening weekend alone.
Copyright © 2009, Newport News, Va., Daily Press This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| Third leading Chinese movie studio eyes listing, this time on New York ... - Chicago Tribune Posted: 03 Nov 2009 12:16 AM PST HONG KONG (AP) — A third leading Chinese movie studio is aiming for a listing — this time on the New York Stock Exchange — as the country's entertainment companies turn to the capital markets to raise funds. Beijing Polybona Film Distribution Co. is aiming to go public in the second half of next year or the first half of 2011, Chief Executive Yu Dong told The Associated Press in a phone interview Tuesday. The company will start drafting its listing application early next year, he said. Polybona's rivals are making similar moves. Huayi Brothers Media Corp. debuted on China's new small companies market in the southern city Shenzhen on Friday, surging 148 percent on its first day of trading. The state-run China Film Group is planning to list in Shanghai, spokesman Weng Li told the AP recently. Yu said he wants to list Polybona in the U.S., where entertainment stocks are common, to open up the company to American and other foreign investors. China still restricts foreign access to its domestic stock markets to certain institutional investors. He said Polybona has already received funding from the venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Matrix Partners China, with the second company investing 100 million Chinese yuan ($15 million). "The capital markets are starting to recognize Chinese movie studios," he said. The executive declined to reveal Polybona's revenue or profits, but said he estimates its movies will account for 800 million to 1 billion Chinese yuan ($117 million to $146 million), or 20 percent of the Chinese box office this year. Polybona's businesses encompass movie distribution, production and multiplexes. Among its recent productions are the upcoming Jackie Chan historical epic "Big Soldier," the historical thriller "Bodyguards and Assassins," starring Donnie Yen, the police thriller "Overheard" and "Mulan." Yu said Polybona will have 50 movie screens by the end of the year, but hopes to increase that number to 100 by the end of next year and 200 in three to five years. While still small compared to the U.S., the Chinese box office is growing rapidly. Government statistics show Chinese revenues surged from 920 million yuan in 2003 to 4.3 billion yuan in 2008 ($703 million) — compared to $9.8 billion in the U.S. last year. The number of movie screens grew by 570 to nearly 4,100 — an average of 1.6 new screens every day. ____ On the Net: Beijing Polybona Film Distribution Co.: http://www.polybona.com.cn Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| Sherlock Holmes” to Sponsor “Family Guy” Special - NBC Miami Posted: 02 Nov 2009 01:29 AM PST Replacement sponsor found after Microsoft backed outBy DANIEL MACHTUpdated 4:30 AM EST, Mon, Nov 2, 2009
It's true Watson -- Sherlock Holmes will take on "Family Guy's" case. Warner Bros. is set to air a sneak peak from its upcoming detective film "Sherlock Holmes" during a special half-hour episode of "Family Guy" on Sunday, The Associated Press reported. Last week, Microsoft bailed as sole-sponsor for Fox's "Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show." After reportedly finding out the episode would include Holocaust and incest jokes, the software behemoth said they feared "Family Guy's" off-color humor might clash with its Windows branding. "Sherlock Holmes," starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, will debut in theaters in December. First Published: Nov 2, 2009 4:10 AM ESTThis content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
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