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The awesome girls of The show on 10 previewed windows Vista and it is bad ass. I can not wait for this to come out. Check out the video.

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Clintus

From HeraldNet

By David Germain
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - The world’s most famous movie star, his personal life settling down with the happily overhyped birth of his daughter, and the long-awaited third flick in his action franchise - it all sounds like a fine kickoff for Hollywood’s summer season, which got under way Friday with the debut of Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible III.”

It’s the first of a rush of big movies expected to get the industry off and running after 2005’s dismal summer.

“It looks like there’s a blockbuster every single week from this point forward,” said Bruce Snyder, head of distribution at 20th Century Fox, which scored the year’s biggest hit so far with “Ice Age: The Meltdown” and has “X-Men: The Last Stand” debuting over Memorial Day weekend.

The two weekends between the “Mission: Impossible” and “X-Men” sequels brings one of the year’s most anticipated films, Tom Hanks’ and Ron Howard’s “The Da Vinci Code,” along with “Poseidon,” a remake of “The Poseidon Adventure,” and “Over the Hedge,” the latest animated comedy from the makers of “Shrek.”

During the lackluster summer of 2005, domestic movie revenues were $3.6 billion, off 9 percent from the year before, while attendance tumbled 12 percent (factoring in higher ticket prices).

Studio executives generally blamed a weak film lineup, though many conceded that competition from video games, home-entertainment systems and other new technology was making it harder to lure people out to the movies.

“There was a lot of discussion about the quality of the films, the malaise about whether people wanted to go to the movies. I think it was a combination of all those factors,” said Nikki Rocco, head of distribution for Universal, whose upcoming summer releases include Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn’s romantic comedy “The Break-Up” and Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell’s cop thriller “Miami Vice.”

“But now they’re back in a moviegoing mode,” Rocco said.

Revenues for all of 2005 were $8.95 billion, down 5 percent, while attendance fell 8 percent with just under 1.4 billion tickets sold, but Hollywood has rebounded this year.

Receipts are running 7 percent ahead of last year’s and attendance is up 3.5 percent, according to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

“Mission: Impossible III” should continue to push Hollywood’s business up. Over the same weekend last year, the Crusades saga “Kingdom of Heaven” debuted with an anemic $19.6 million, pacing the top-12 movies to just $78.5 million.

That was a paltry take for early May, which has become Hollywood’s unofficial kickoff for summer.

This weekend, “Mission: Impossible III” alone could rake in nearly as much as the top-12 movies combined a year ago. “Mission: Impossible II” had a $57.8 million debut weekend in late May six years ago, and the new sequel could do more.

Cruise had his biggest debut ever last summer with $64.9 million for “War of the Worlds.”

Cruise is “arguably the most bankable star in the world,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations. “I would say ‘War of the Worlds’ last year was a really good test case, because remember, that movie was released in the immediate wake of the Oprah jumping-on-the-couch incident and that time frame. That gave Cruise his biggest opening weekend ever.

“So you’ve got to say, the guy is Teflon-coated when it comes to his ability to bring in an audience, regardless of his public persona.”

“It’s a good year for the movies this time,” said Rory Bruer, head of distribution for Sony, which is releasing “The Da Vinci Code.” “When you have ‘Mission: Impossible’ and ‘Da Vinci’ coming up, we should stay in this sweet spot for a while.

“If we’re all making movies people want to see, they will go out and see them.”

Not sure who I agree with. I don’t think last summer’s lineup was that bad. I thought some really great stuff came out, just read my reviews. But I think the main reason is all the stuff you can now get for home. Still, nothing beats a good movie theatre.

Clintus

I read this and just had to post about it. My brother in law had so much trouble with these guys that even kicked a guy out of his house. Took them like 5 trips to get it all right. He says if it wasn’t for the NFL sunday ticket he would tell them frak off.

As seen on Techdirt. - Earlier this week, we wrote about a bunch of DirecTV installers (who work for a contractor) who blew the whistle on the fact that their employer told them to lie to customers, saying that a phone line was required to be hooked up to the DirecTV box. If they didn’t lie and get customers to hook up the phone line, the installers were fined $5 per box that wasn’t hooked up that way. DirecTV wants the connections to make it easier for them to track usage and to push pay-per-view content on users. Of course, now that the story has been exposed, rather than apologize or explain their position… the contractor in question fired the complaining installers (found via Broadband Reports). It’s not too surprising that a company that believes lying to customers is a good policy would also figure that whistleblower protection laws don’t really apply either.

Clintus