movie

Southwest ups in-flight viewing with on-demand TV and movies

People flying on Southwest Airlines can now watch on-demand movies and TV on their tablets, smartphones, and laptops via the planes' Wi-Fi.

The airline announced today that it's boosting its in-flight entertainment to include new movie and television packages. This feature is available on all Wi-Fi-equipped aircrafts, which is about 75 percent of the Southwest's fleet.

"Providing a comprehensive and robust in-flight connectivity system for our customers is paramount," Southwest Airlines' senior vice president of business development Dave Ridley said in a statement.

Southwest now boasts eight channels of live television, which customers can stream directly … Read more

Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn Google internship trailer debuts

To their shock and horror, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn realize that by landing an internship at Google, they are actually "looking at some sort of mental 'Hunger Games' against a bunch of genius kids for just a handful of jobs."

This scene is shown in the recently-released trailer (see below) for the upcoming movie titled "The Internship." The film features the two "Wedding Crashers" stars as they try to make it in the world of Google's high-tech interns. The only catch is that they're "so old" and aren't … Read more

An Amazon Prime report card: Is it really worth $79 per year?

I've been an Amazon Prime customer for nearly a year now, meaning it's time for me to decide whether to continue subscribing to the program.

In case you're unfamiliar with it, Prime works like this: For $79 annually, you get unlimited movie and TV streaming, one free borrowed e-book per month, and automatic two-day shipping on nearly everything you buy (with no minimum dollar amount).

Awesome deal, right? Maybe, and maybe not.

Let's start with the streaming. Amazon has vastly expanded its movie- and TV-show libraries over the past year, to the point where I'd … Read more

The Hunger Games Adventures for iOS: Playtime in Panem

Can't get enough Katniss Everdeen? The next movie, "Catching Fire," won't hit theaters until November, but you don't have to wait until then to return to Panem.

The Hunger Games Adventures takes you there, after a fashion, challenging you to explore, battle, and, well, make money. It's kind of a quest-oriented FarmVille, and in fact the game originated on Facebook.

If that's not your thing, or you prefer more action, check out Hunger Games: Girl on Fire. It's an endless runner that's all about running, jumping, and shooting.

Here, you need … Read more

Top 5 sci-fi robot girlfriends

Valentine's Day is a horrible tradition. It's a romantic "musical chairs" where you either stand alone in a metaphorical puddle of rejection, or turn to your partner and price out the worth of their love in flowers and chocolates.

To hell with it.

To level the playing field, I say we need to put science fiction's premise of the humanoid robot companion on the fast track to becoming a reality. … Read more

Poll: Do you listen to movies or TV over headphones?

I suppose it's still a fair assumption that more people listen to music than movies with headphones, but there has to be a growing audience listening to movies, TV shows, and YouTube videos via their headphones. Thanks to the booming popularity of tablets, might the ratio of movies-to-music listening time be moving away from music? Or not?

I watch a lot of movies at home with headphones on. They present a level of detail that you can get from speakers only when you play them really loud. With headphones, I don't have to crank the volume. They're … Read more

Walk the plank: Pirate Bay documentary now online

The names Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, and Fredrik Neij might not mean much to the average person, but in the annals of Internet history, they will always be known as the co-founders of The Pirate Bay -- one of the most popular file-sharing hubs of all time.

Now you can view an 82-minute documentary titled "TPB AFK" (The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard), a film that chronicles the people behind the Pirate Bay attempting -- and failing -- to navigate past Swedish authorities who accused them of numerous copyright infringement charges.

The movie, released under a Creative Commons license and directed by Simon Klose, officially debuted for free today online and at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. Here's the official synopsis from the "TPB AFK" Web site:… Read more

'Star Wars' spin-offs said to focus on Han Solo and Boba Fett

The first two "Star Wars" spin-off films will focus on Han Solo's origin story, and the "rogue's gallery of galactic scum" in bounty hunter Boba Fett's world, Entertainment Weekly reported today.

Yesterday, Disney announced that it would be releasing a series of spin-off films built around individual "Star Wars" characters and produced alongside three forthcoming full-length "Star Wars" sequels. According to EW, the first two side projects will be about a young Han Solo and about Boba Fett.

"Several sources close to the projects confirmed this was the direction the development was taking," EW wrote, "although each cautioned it's still very early in the process, and, well, the deal could always be altered further." … Read more

DreamWorks CEO Katzenberg sees big profit in small screens

Consumers will eventually pay less for entertainment streamed to smaller devices, with studios and distributors basing prices on the size of the destination device, movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg predicted today.

A tiered pricing market, in which people paid less to see a movie on a cell phone than a theater, would result in greater consumption in developing markets where people depend more on their mobile devices for entertainment, the DreamWorks Animation SKG chief executive said today at the Founders Forum conference on digital media in Los Angeles.

"People will pay by the square inch," Katzenberg said, according to … Read more

Disney will spin off films based on 'Star Wars' characters

Disney CEO Bob Iger said today that the Hollywood giant plans on making a series of new spin-off films based on existing "Star Wars" characters.

These new films would be in addition to the forthcoming "Episode VII" that is slated for a possible 2015 release (and which will be directed by "Star Trek" director J.J. Abrams), and two subsequent full "Star Wars" sequels.

Iger revealed the news in an interview on CNBC today (see video below), explaining that the spin-off films will be produced alongside the full "Star Wars" … Read more