movies

Remember the $195 Sony Blu-ray player from last week? Feh. Amazon has a promotion going that blows it out of the water. In a nutshell, you can save $100 instantly when you buy a Blu-ray player and four Warner Home Video movies. Choose carefully and you can get out the door with all that loot for just $177.78 shipped. Possibly even less.

Start with the player: You can choose the $199.98 Sylvania NB500SL9 (never heard of it, but it comes with an HDMI cable), or the better-known Samsung BD-P1500 for $207.98. I started with the latter, then … Read more

The New York Times announced that it has launched a movie reviews API that will make it easier for visitors to access the publication's library of 22,000 movie reviews dating back to 1924.

Realizing that it's sitting on a vast library of movie reviews and its current RSS feed only displays the latest 65 articles, the Times decided that it needed to give its readers access to its entire library of reviews to complement its current offering and make it easier for visitors to find all the film information they're looking for.

So far, the Times … Read more

It is, quite literally, a cliff hanger.

The Italian Job gang has stolen the gold. But their bus is hanging over the edge of a cliff. Michael Caine, who survived to become Batman's batman, utters the words: "Hang on a minute, lads. I've got a great idea."

So how can the gang save themselves and their illegally obtained life savings in this '60s cult classic? Now the Royal Society of Chemistry is asking the world's engineers to find a solution to one of the great movie endings--no helicopters allowed.

The rules are quite simple: Assume … Read more

Starting at $25, "bundles" of mainstream films can be added to a computer's hard drive during the ordering process on Dell.com. The bundles available currently include genre groupings like the comedy collection of Zoolander, Nacho Libre, and School of Rock, and trilogies like Spider-Man and The Fast and the Furious.

Though the selection is limited and all of the movies come packaged in Windows Media DRM, the content offerings will be updated regularly in the future, according to Dell … Read more

Remember Circuit City's deal on the Sony BDP-S300 Blu-ray player? It was $199.96, but most buyers had to pay sales tax. (Actually, I'm surprised no one called me out on the erroneous "$199.96 shipped" headline.) Well, ClubMac has the BDP-S300 for five bucks less ($194.99), with free shipping and no sales tax. No rebates, either.

Because I posted about this player just a couple weeks ago, I won't repeat the details here. However, you should read CNET's recently updated review, which mentions the firmware update that corrects a couple of the … Read more

Apple announced today that it has not only become the world's most popular TV programming store, thanks to 200 million unit sales of TV shows, but that all four of the major networks--CBS, Fox, ABC, and NBC--are offering high-definition content on the iTunes store.

"We've got an incredible fall 2008 TV lineup with over 70 prime time comedies and dramas, including many of the most popular shows on TV in stunning HD," said Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of Internet services. "With over 200 million episodes sold, iTunes customers have proven they love watching television on their computer, iPod, iPhone and TV with Apple TV."

If Apple is the world's leading store for buying TV shows and the world's largest music retailer, how can Blu-ray and it's measly 8 percent market share, expect to compete with Apple's freight train as it starts to pick up steam in the movie space?

I contacted Apple for its latest movie sales figures, but the company didn't provide any. Because of that, I'm forced to consider the fact that as of this past January, it had sold 7 million films on iTunes after 15 months of availability. Consider the fact that Blu-ray hit the 7 million-units-sold mark after 18 months, and it's quite obvious that people are ready and willing to download films instead of buying an expensive player and media to go with it.… Read more

No, this isn't that Aaron Sorkin thing.

Film on Facebook, a project that the social network first announced in conjunction with this spring's South by Southwest Festival, will be debuting its first film on Thursday.

The movie, called One Track Mind, is a surf-theme movie created by Woodshed Films, the production company behind a number of outdoors-focused productions, including several created by crunchy singer-songwriter Jack Johnson. It'll be available on Facebook Thursday and Friday, and a live-chat session with director Chris Malloy will take place on Thursday evening.

The film and video chat session will be broadcast … Read more

It's true that we only think of you as a close friend, but that doesn't mean we don't appreciate your support! On today's show, we attempt to sell off Jeff's old busted G4 Powerbook, make fun of Don Cheadle's awful British accent, fan out over the new Avengers movie, and do our impression of some of the most popular video game quotes. If nothing else, listen to this show for Jeff's spot on Mario!

So after yesterday's Apple announcement, Jeff and I have finally agreed to shed our ancient G4 Powerbooks for one of the new Macbooks. The question that I'm sure other people are asking right now is which one should we get? We both want to spend less than $2,ooo, so it's a toss-up between the $1,600 Macbook and the $1,999 Macbook Pro. Is the slightly larger screen and dual-video cards worth the $4,000 price difference? We've both gotten so comfortable using a 15 inch screen that it seems difficult to adjust to a 13 incher. And what about that giant one-piece track pad? There are so many questions to answer about the design, but we'll be getting both models into the office tomorrow, so that's when the deliberation will begin. Is anyone else in this boat with us, trying to decide between the two? For me, it's less a question about performance and more a deliberation about screen size. I don't travel much and don't do image or video editing (I don't even have Photoshop!), so maybe all those extra features aren't worth it for my purposes. Help!!

Before I unveil this week's iPhone apps, I wanted to see if anyone else had the same iPhone problem I have. I keep having this issue with iPhone app updates that won't finish downloading and demand that I connect to iTunes to finish the update. But even when connected to iTunes, not all of the apps update and I'm left with that number on my home screen saying I need to update when I've done everything I can to complete the process. I also get some update notices dated before I downloaded the app, which clearly … Read more