movies

Vdio, the online movie and television service from the makers of Rdio, is now open to anyone in the U.S. and U.K.

Rdio announced the news on its blog Wednesday, saying Vdio is no longer available solely to those people who have Rdio subscriptions.

Rdio launched Vdio in April as a competitor to similar services from Apple and Amazon. The offering lets users buy, rent, and share movies and television shows with others in real time. In addition to Web-based viewing, Vdio lets users access its programming from the iPad through its mobile application.

Vdio is available now … Read more

Netflix streaming is heading to the Netherlands.

The company said Wednesday that the service will be available in "late 2013," adding that its streaming service will offer "Hollywood, local and global TV series and films, including critically-acclaimed Netflix Original Series such as 'House of Cards' and 'Arrested Development' whenever and wherever they like on tablets, phones, TVs, game consoles and computers."

Last year, Netflix made a significant push into Europe by launching its streaming service in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Norway. The service is also available in the U.K., Ireland, and the small island country … Read more

Squrl is a streaming-video player that lets you search and browse many of the Web's most popular video services, all from one place. The main dashboard offers a number of ways to quickly find interesting videos from around the Web, and even has a powerful engine for serving personalized recommendations. What's more, Squrl didn't degrade the video quality from its original sources, and playback seemed to be smooth without any glitches or freezes.

While it's not required, we suggest connecting Squrl with your various social media accounts, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even Netflix, in order … Read more

The hilarious, new buddy movie "The Heat" stars Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy as Special Agent Sarah Ashburn and Det. Shannon Mullins, respectively -- two fiercely independent crime fighters who must first forge their own connection and learn to respect and trust each other's abilities if they are ever to connect the dots on a major case.

Download.com caught up with the film's director, Paul Feig -- best known for directing the Oscar-nominated "Bridesmaids," co-producing the TV series "Freaks and Geeks," and playing science teacher Mr. Eugene Pool on "Sabrina, … Read more

One of my favorite apps of 2012, Bad Robot Interactive's Action Movie FX, just got even better.

Available for iOS, the app lets you add Hollywood-style special effects to videos you've shot with your iPhone or iPad.

What kinds of effects? Suppose you're making a movie that involves blowing up a car (as all good movies should). Action Movie FX includes a missile-attack sequence that ends with a gorgeous fiery explosion. All you do is record at least 5 seconds of video (in this case, footage of your car), then wait for the app to render the … Read more

You know what my iPad doesn't have? A DVD player. So how am I supposed to watch all the great movies in my DVD collection? I'm talking "The Rock," "The Shawshank Redemption," "The Incredibles," "The Matrix," and so on. (It's true: I have awesome taste in movies.)

No doubt Apple, Amazon, and Google would love for me to buy their digital versions of all my platter-based movies, but I already bought them once. Do I really have to spend $10 to $15 to buy them again?

Not today. Movie-discovery … Read more

Roger Corman, one of the all-time great makers of B-movies, is bringing his collection to YouTube.

Corman, maker of 400 films that span horror; sci-fi; action and adventure; comedy; and other genres, is launching "Corman's Drive-In," a new subscription channel where fans can watch films like "The Crybaby Killer" and "Little Shop of Horrors," two of Jack Nicholson's first movies. The channel launches on June 13.

Subscriptions to "Corman's Drive-In" will cost $4 a month, and come with unlimited access to 30 films at a time. Other films from … Read more

Free CUDA Movie Converter takes advantage of Nvidia's CUDA parallel processing technology to speed up video conversions in computers with CUDA-capable Nvidia graphics cards. Of course, Free CUDA Movie Converter works in any PC running Windows 2000 to 8, but running it on CUDA-capable machines lets you harness your GPU's extra processing power. We tried it on an ASUS Netbook running Windows 7 HP and equipped with Nvidia's CUDA-capable second-generation Ion graphics processor. This proved a great test platform since the Netbook's extremely limited resources make the GPU's help that much more welcome. Free CUDA … Read more

The next cinematic installment of J.R.R. Tolkien's written masterpiece "The Hobbit" returns to U.S. theaters on December 13, but in the meantime, be sure to check out a new trailer for the film courtesy of Warner Bros.

As expected, Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" picks up where "An Unexpected Journey" left off. It continues the tale of Bilbo Baggins' journey to take back the Lonely Mountain from the gold-hungry dragon Smaug in an attempt to reclaim the Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor. All of the actors who played the main characters -- Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, and Thorin Oakenshield -- from the first film reprise their respective roles once again.… Read more