Here is Matt Drudge's take on Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" about a slave who gets freed and goes on a bounty mission to track down his wife.
It premiered in New York last night, and will be released Christmas Day.
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SEE ALSO: QUIZ: Can you guess the movie by its tagline? Test your knowledge here >
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The 19th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards nominees are out!
While "Lincoln," "Argo" and "Silver Linings Playbook" lead the pack for nominations, there are a few shocks and surprises.
Among those left off the list are "Moonrise Kingdom," Jon Cryer, who beat out Jim Parsons at the Primetime Emmy Awards this year for Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, and Ben Affleck for a lead acting nod.
In fact, "Two and a Half Men" is left out in its entirety. Also left off the list this year is Showtime's "Dexter" while AMC's popular "The Walking Dead" finally received a nod.
Two huge snubs include Amy Adams, expected to receive a supporting role nod for "The Master," and Kathryn Bigelow's heavily touted "Zero Dark Thirty" for the equivalent of the Oscar's Best Picture award. In its place came "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," featuring Judi Dench and Bill Nighy about a couple who stay at what they believe to be a restored hotel.
The awards are usually a good predictor of who will be nominated for – and will take home – an Oscar. The SAG Awards take place Sunday, January 17.
Check out the nominees below:
Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
"Argo"
"The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"
"Les Misérables"
"Lincoln"
"Silver Linings Playbook"
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
Bradley Cooper / Pat – “SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK”
Daniel Day-Lewis / Abraham Lincoln – “LINCOLN”
John Hawkes / Mark – “THE SESSIONS”
Hugh Jackman / Jean Valjean – “LES MISÉRABLES”
Denzel Washington / Whip Whitaker – “FLIGHT”
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
Jessica Chastain / Maya – “ZERO DARK THIRTY”
Marion Cotillard / Stephanie – “RUST AND BONE”
Jennifer Lawrence / Tiffany– “SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK”
Helen Mirren / Alma Reville – “HITCHCOCK”
Naomi Watts / Maria – “THE IMPOSSIBLE”
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role
Alan Arkin / Lester Siegel – “ARGO”
Javier Bardem / Silva – “SKYFALL”
Robert De Niro / Pat, Sr. – “SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK”
Philip Seymour Hoffman / Lancaster Dodd – “THE MASTER”
Tommy Lee Jones / Thaddeus Stevens – “LINCOLN”
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
Sally Field / Mary Todd Lincoln – “LINCOLN”
Anne Hathaway / Fantine – “LES MISÉRABLES”
Helen Hunt / Cheryl – “THE SESSIONS”
Nicole Kidman / Charlotte Bless – “THE PAPERBOY”
Maggie Smith / Muriel Donnelly – “THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL”
Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series
"Boardwalk Empire"
"Breaking Bad"
"Downton Abbey"
"Homeland"
"Mad Men"
Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series
"30 Rock"
"The Big Bang Theory"
"Glee"
"Modern Family"
"Nurse Jackie"
"The Office"
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series
Steve Buscemi "Boardwalk Empire"
Bryan Cranston "Breaking Bad"
Jeff Daniels "The Newsroom"
Jon Hamm "Mad Men"
Damian Lewis "Homeland"
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series
Alec Baldwin / "30 Rock"
Ty Burrell / "Modern Family"
Louis C.K. / "Louie"
Jim Parsons / "The Big Bang Theory"
Eric Stonestreet / "Modern Family"
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series
Edie Falco / "Nurse Jackie"
Tina Fey / "30 Rock"
Amy Poehler / "Parks and Recreation"
Sofia Vergara / "Modern Family"
Betty White "Hot in Cleveland"
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries
Kevin Costner / "Hatfields & McCoys"
Woody Harrelson / "Game Change"
Ed Harris / "Game Change"
Clive Owen "Hemingway & Gellhorn"
Bill Paxton "Hatfields & McCoys"
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries
Nicole Kidman / "Hemingway & Gellhorn"
Julianne Moore / "Game Change"
Charlotte Rampling "Restless"
Sigourney Weaver "Political Animals
Alfre Woodard "Steel Magnolias"
Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Television Series
"Boardwalk Empire"
"Breaking Bad"
"Game of Thrones"
"Sons of Anarchy"
"The Walking Dead"
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Just in time for the holidays we're giving you have a chance to win an iPad mini. Become a newsletter subscriber now and you'll have a chance to win Apple's latest tablet. If you're the lucky winner you will have all of these great features at your finger tips and can stock up on our favorite iPad mini apps. Click below to enter and to start receiving one or more of our newsletters to keep up to date with the news you need to know.
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The Oscar-winning team behind a film about the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty, have denied suggestions that they condoned the use of torture by including a scene in which waterboarding is used to interrogate a suspect.
Zero Dark Thirty, from director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, has been at the centre of controversy in the US ever since its existence was revealed in the wake of Bin Laden's killing at his compound in northern Pakistan in May last year by a US Navy Seal squad.
The project first drew flak from Republicans after it emerged that Barack Obama's administration shared information with the production team, amid pre-election fears that the movie might influence voters by portraying the president in a flattering light.
More recently there have been suggestions (via an article in the Washington Post) that the real life CIA agent on whom actor Jessica Chastain's character is based is far from a heroic figure.
The latest row to surround the film centres on claims by some critics that Zero Dark Thirty glorifies torture by showing the use of waterboarding leading to Bin Laden's killing, as well as claims that the controversial scene is not based on historical events. In a new interview with theWrap, Bigelow and Boal have denied both allegations.
"This movie has been and will continue to be put in political boxes," said Boal. "Before we even wrote it, some people said it was an Obama campaign commercial, which was preposterous. And now it's pro-torture, which is preposterous.
"We're trying to present a long, 10-year intelligence hunt, of which the harsh interrogation programme is the most controversial aspect. And it's just misreading the film to say that it shows torture leading to the information about Bin Laden.
"If you actually watch the movie, the detainee doesn't say anything when he's waterboarded. He gives them some information that's new to them over the civilised setting of a lunch – and they go back to the research room and all that information is already there."
Bigelow added: "Do I wish [torture] was not part of that history? Yes. But it was."
Bigelow's film finds itself so firmly at the centre of a media maelstrom that — at least according to the makers' contention — journalists are making errors left, right and centre. Chastain told theWrap that her character, contrary to speculation in US newspapers, was exactly like the reputedly troublesome real-life CIA agent she is said to be based on.
"I think it's great that information is coming out about her," Chastain told theWrap after the film's US premiere at the Dolby theatre in Los Angeles on Monday night. "For so long I haven't been able to say anything about her, and now I can finally talk about her a little." She added: "I was talking to Kathryn this afternoon, and she said, 'Everything in the story sounds just like our character."
The new movie already appears to be one of the early frontrunners for the Academy Awards in February, having been awarded influential prizes from New York, LA and Boston-based critics' organisations.
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
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When we described several moves Facebook recently made that place it in direct competition for TV ad dollars, we received a lot of criticism from our readers in the comments underneath the story.
TV has its defenders, apparently, and they don't ever see a time they'll turn off the television in favor of streaming video via Facebook.
Fair enough.
But it's not just about Facebook's business ambitions, or whether advertising on Facebook is more effective than TV.
It's also about the economics.
If Facebook is to grow its revenue base, it must take ad dollars from old media -- and that means television.
Here are six financial facts that all suggest Facebook will be forced to compete against TV in the future:
1. Facebook has a "big numbers" problem, which means it will be forced to steal adspend market share from TV.
Facebook will book more than $4 billion in ad revenue this year. There is no point in Facebook going after marginal businesses anymore. Facebook must find markets worth billions to move the needle. And while it might shift some dollars from Google or Groupon, the secular economic trend is for digital ad media to steal share from old media. This eMarketer chart (right) predicts that TV will have difficulty increasing / maintaining its market share of ad dollars while digital media only grows.
2. Online video is one of the biggest growth areas in digital advertising, and Facebook cannot afford to sit on the sidelines.
A minute spent watching video online is a minute NOT spent watching it on TV. Dollars are shifting to online video, and ad rates for video are higher than those for the regular display ads you usually see on Facebook. Spending on video ads are predicted to reach about $13 billion this year; and $28 billion in 2017. Facebook will need to take its share of those dollars if it is to continue to grow.
3. TV dollars are already shifting online.
Digital media commands more than 36% of consumer media time but only 15% of overall advertiser spending, according to Barclays Capital analyst Anthony DiClemente. Adspend on digital is growing at double-digit rates, but not so for TV. In order to grow, Facebook must take dollars from old media -- and most of those dollars are in TV. The shift is already happening, Wall Street analysts say.
4. Digital media is already the No.1 competitor to TV.
The web already ate print and billboards. TV is next. (Click to enlarge chart for details.)
5. Facebook and Google have both created Nielsen-like audience "ratings" to make their numbers directly comparable with TV's.
For years, TV commanded ad dollars because it was able to tell advertisers what audience ratings they got for their money. The web. meanwhile, talked about clicks. Clicks are aren't the same as humans -- especially when it comes to the way media gets bought. Advertisers want to buy gross ratings points (repeated eyeballs in bulk, basically), not clicks. Now Nielsen is doing for Facebook what it did for TV. Once advertisers can compare audiences plus ROI on Facebook, versus mere audiences on TV, TV will likely lose the comparison.
6. Some TV clients -- like politicians -- are already convinced Facebook offers them more than TV.
President Obama won re-election in part because his campaign team had better data than Mitt Romney's. The Romney team, infamously, was working with its own misleading polls, and worst of all over-estimated the percentage of white people among voters and under-estimated the percentage of non-white minorities. TV doesn't solve these elementary data errors. But Facebook -- which tells candidates everything they need to know about its users -- has one of those Big Data warehouses that can identify voters down to the individual, not just the local TV market. Notably, the Obama campaign was working on its Facebook army a year or more before the election. And this Michigan candidate believes she won because her GOP opponent spent on TV while she spent on Facebook.
Given the secular, macro shifts in ad dollars, it's hard to imagine a scenario in which Facebook doesn't steal at least a slice of the ad dollars that would have gone on TV.
Disclosure: The author owns Facebook stock.
SEE ALSO: Facebook Is Quietly Implementing A Plan To Destroy Television
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Jeff Zucker doesn't even take over the role of President of CNN Worldwide until the new year, but the TV exec already has his sights set on at least one new addition to the network: Ann Curry.
According to The New York Post, Zucker "is interested in installing Curry in CNN’s 8 p.m. time slot, we hear, which is currently occupied by Anderson Cooper."
Zucker previously worked with Curry when he was the executive producer of the "Today" show and later head of NBC Universal.
In his new role as president of CNN, Zucker wants the scorned "Today" show anchor to come in as a high-profile personality but later transition to a “Christiane Amanpour role” as a globetrotting correspondent.
“Jeff wants a headliner like Rachel Maddow or Bill O’Reilly in prime time,” sources tell the Post. “He cannot allow the low ratings at CNN to continue . . . so he can’t hire a nobody. Curry fits that CNN-smarty-pants-foreign-affairs type.”
The source adds that Curry is a perfect fit to help revitalize the struggling news network, saying, “Package her experience as a news anchor for 14 years at NBC with the sympathy that’s remained out there for her after the way the ‘Today’ show treated her."
As for Cooper, he told CBS’ “This Morning” last week, “We’ve always done well when things are happening, and it’s in the slower times that we’ve run into problems, and I hope we figure it all out.”
Cooper, meanwhile, has seen better days.
His syndicated daytime talk show "Anderson Live" was just cancelled in October and he temporarily went blind last week.
But it's not just Curry who Cooper should keep an eye on, sources tell the Post that Zucker is also "looking to Erin Burnett to revive CNN’s ratings by making her a morning anchor with a male co-host" — a position that could be perfect for Cooper if he plays his cards right.
Zucker, who is leaving his gig as Executive Producer of Katie Couric's self-titled daytime talk show for the bigger CNN job, also reportedly wants to eventually bring his friend Couric to the news network — which could make it one big, happy "Today" show reunion as the NBC morning show's ratings continue to be at record lows without Curry or Couric.
A rep for CNN dismisses any rumors, telling the Post, “There is no shortage of rumors about what Jeff will do. He doesn’t start until late January, and any speculation at this point is just silly.” An NBC rep said, “Ann Curry is under contract with NBC News.”
SEE ALSO: Jeff Zucker Named President Of CNN >
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For anyone who has ever wanted to have a pint with Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin, you're in luck — New Zealand has a new addition to its Hobbiton tourist town, and its none other than The Green Dragon, the famed Hobbit watering hole.
Tourists and residents alike can now enjoy non-Hobbit-sized drinks at the brand new pub, located near Matamata in the North Island of New Zealand.
It is a part of the film set used for the new Hobbit movie and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and has been rebuilt with a functioning fireplace, plumping, and water pipes after being burned down for The Return of the King.
Hobbiton manager Russell Alexander told The Daily Mail that he estimates the release of the new Hobbit trilogy could bring in 100,000 visitors over the next year alone. And Hobbiton Board director George Hickton hints that The Green Dragon may even convert into an inn for overnight stays in the future.
Source: Hobbiton Tours
Source: Hobbiton Tours
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The blindness of liberals to Obama's drone policy along with their outcry about waterboarding has rankled MSNBC's Joe Scarborough.
Liberals (plus John McCain) are furious at the waterboarding scene in upcoming movie "Zero-Dark-Thirty," which suggests that the torture method was helpful in tracking down Osama Bin Laden.
Part-time liberal, part-time conservative Scarborough got furious right back. He wrote an op-ed for Politico that rips liberals and blows the horn for, if not more torture, at least more analysis into the true effect of 'enhanced interrogation techniques.'
Scarborough writes:
It is a fascinating thing to behold when the most self-righteous among us are forced to watch their false idols crumble to the ground in a miserable heap of rubbish.
For him, enhanced interrogation not only works, but it's here to stay, and moral discussions about how the U.S. goes about performing acts like waterboarding shouldn't be suppressed, but encouraged.
"As I have said repeatedly," Scarborough writes. "Americans should continue to debate the moral dilemmas caused by interrogation techniques."
He points out that waterboarding is an actual training event for attendees of the military's Survival Evasion Resistance Escape school, also known as SERE ("seer"), where students are eventually captured and "tortured" (waterboarded) by instructors.
He then targets the Left's "outright lies" about the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques:
"The left's twisted morality pose on this topic too often comes in fits and starts, with the most righteous of the lot declaring Bush a war criminal for his interrogation techniques while granting absolution to the man who champions a far more brutish approach. One wonders where these secular televangelists have gone in a week when BBC reporters tell of an 8-year-old girl having her young skin pierced by a drone bomb’s shrapnel while watching her grandmother being blown to a thousand pieces in front of her young eyes."
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Jon Stewart took on Michigan's new "right-to-work" laws in the opening segment of The Daily Show Tuesday night, blasting Republican Governor Rick Snyder for signing two bills that will make it illegal to require workers to pay union dues as a condition of employment.
"So it's really a right-to-work-around-the-unions-for-the-corporation," Stewart said. "It's one of those things that are actually named for the opposite of the thing they do. Like strip bars call themselves gentlemen's clubs — they're not."
But Stewart was disappointed with the unions' protest chants.
"Dude, you're from Michigan, Detroit, 8-Mile. You've got to come up with something better than 'busting, disgusting.'"
And then he made up his own union rap.
Watch the video below:
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Harvey Weinstein is in the dog house.
The Miramax and Weinstein Company co-founder's Greenwich Village neighbors are apparently fed up with the movie mogul's barking hounds.
According to the New York Post, Weinstein and his fashion designer wife, Georgina Chapman, let their beloved four-legged friends, Rocky and Myrtle, bark to their hearts’ content in the back yard of their $14.9 million, five-story, eight-bedroom townhouse on Bank Street.
Neighbors tell the Post, "The barking begins at about 8 a.m. and can span hours at a clip."
West 12th Street resident Richard Falcone told the paper, “He doesn’t give a damn — that’s his attitude."
Falcone's wife, former New York Times food critic Mimi Sheraton, told the Post of her famous neighbors: "Graydon Carter told me that Harvey Weinstein is a very good neighbor ... Well, he may be a good neighbor on Bank Street, but his name is mud on West 12th Street.”
Sheraton described the dogs’ barking as “very loud and cutting," adding that "It’s just a lack of consideration. Instead of taking the dogs out and walking them they just let them out in the yard.”
Neighbors have reportedly tried everything to silence the yapping pups.
One neighbor purchased an ultrasonic bark-control device, others have posted handmade signs on trees, and some have even complained to the Department of Environmental Protection, the agency responsible for noise complaints — all to no avail.
“311 calls and all other so-called legal means have failed to get him to control his constantly yapping dogs," wrote a neighbor in a letter to the editor of monthly neighborhood publication, WestView News. "Only bad press could stop Harvey Weinstein from ignoring the grief he is causing his neighbors.”
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"Storage Wars" fans, get ready for a dose of reality.
According to star David Hester, A&E's top-rated program is a fake.
If you've never seen an episode of the series, the show follows a group of professional buyers who bid on unpaid storage units to, hopefully, find something worth selling for a profit.
In a complaint filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, the show's star claims that everything about the show is a fraud from alleged staged items inside the "hidden treasure" storage lockers to scripted interviews with cast members.
Hester claims he was fired from the series after expressing his discomfort with production staff and the network about the staging of items in lockers, which he suggested was possibly illegal behavior.
Here's everything Hester claims is fake about the reality auction series:
1. The items found in the lockers are staged.
Hester claims A&E fills storage units bought on the show with "valuable" and "unusual" items to add to the show's drama, and will sometimes fill entire lockers. Among items he claims were put in lockers were a valuable collection of Elvis Presley newspapers from when the singer passed. The papers in the unit were valued at upwards of $90,000. Hester was said to have paid $750 for the entire locker.
In the complaint, he suggests that a company called Off the Wall Antiques provides A&E with access to items featured on the show in return for compensation.
From the complaint via TMZ:
"The truth is that Defendants regularly salt or plant the storage lockers that are the subject of the auctions portrayed on the Series with valuable or unusual items to create drama and suspense for the show. Defendants have even gone so far as to stage entire storage units, and will enlist the cooperation of the owners of the storage facilities to stage entire units."
The claim goes on to suggest show producers schedule item appraisals sometimes weeks ahead of time before they appear on the show.
2. The interviews with the stars are scripted.
3. Many of the scenes – including the colorful auctions – are staged by producers.
"While on location filming an auction, Defendants (A&E) also film footage of the cast members and the public bidding when no actual auction is taking place in order to make it appear that any of the cast members is bidding at any given auction, whether or not he or she is actually bidding on the unit."
4. A&E pays for storage units for those who can't afford to purchase them.
"In addition, Original pays for the storage lockers bid on by certain cast members, but not others, in order to give the weaker cast members an advantage over the more experienced and successful bidders such as Hester."
Hester also claims the network paid certain female stars to receive plastic surgery.
" … Nearly every aspect of the Series is faked, even down to the plastic surgery that one of the female cast members underwent in order to create more "sex appeal" for the show."
The lead female stars on the show are Brandi Passante, one of the storage unit bidders, and Laura Dotson who runs the auctions along with her husband, Dan.
This isn't the first time the validity of the show has been questioned. Hester says concern from viewers prompted the series to issue a press release stating the show's veracity:
"There is no staging involved. The items uncovered in the storage units are the actual items featured on the show."
This newly filed lawsuit may begin to bring similar shows under scrutiny including Spike's "Auction Hunters."
Hester is seeking damages upwards of $750,000 for wrongful termination.
You can read the entire suit HERE.
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The video game universe in 2012 is a study in extremes.
At one end, you have the old guard striving to produce mass-appeal blockbusters. At the other end, you have a thriving community of independent game developers scrambling to find an audience for their idiosyncratic visions.
Check out the best games of the year >
Can't we all just get along?
Turns out, we can. For while some industry leaders are worried (and not without cause) about "disruptive" trends — social-media games, free-to-play models, the switch from disc-based media to digital delivery — video games are blossoming creatively.
This fall, during the height of the pre-holiday game release calendar, I found myself bouncing among games as diverse as the bombastic "Halo 4," the artsy "The Unfinished Swan" and the quick-hit trivia game "SongPop."
Some of my favorite games this year have benefited from both sides working together. The smaller studios get exposure on huge platforms like Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network.
The big publishers seem more willing to invite a little quirkiness into their big-budget behemoths. Gamers win.
Arkane Studios' revenge drama combined a witty plot, crisp gameplay and an uncommonly distinctive milieu, setting a supernaturally gifted assassin loose in a gloriously decadent, steampunk-influenced city.
No 2012 game was more ambitious than BioWare's sweeping space opera.
Yes, the ending was a little bumpy, but the fearless Commander Shepard's last journey across the cosmos provided dozens of thrilling moments.
This moving adaptation of Robert Kirkman's comics dodged the predictable zombie bloodbath in favor of a finely tuned character study of two survivors: Lee, an escaped convict, and Clementine, the 8-year-old girl he's committed to protect.
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The most unexpected breakout star of Art Basel Miami Beach wasn't an artist, gallery owner or hard-partying celeb — it was a stray cat who was spotted rubbing elbows with the likes of Demi Moore, the Hilton sisters and Kanye West.
The cat was first picked up by Demi Moore at the exclusive Chanel dinner at the Soho Beach House, where the feline ate gourmet meats and cheeses atop the actress' lap. Fellow dinner guests such as (from left) Wendi Murdoch, Karlie Kloss and Dasha Zhukova didn't even seem to faze the cat.
Then, during a Diane Von Furstenberg lunch at the Soho Beach House on Thursday, the Hilton sisters (seen here with the Brant brothers), picked up the kitty and later put it up in their hotel suite at the nearby Fontainebleau. The sisters took the liberty of appropriately naming the cat "Soho."
On Sunday, newly-named Soho boarded the Jordache private jet that Kanye West was also on, according to the New York Post.
Paris and Nicky Hilton were also on the New York-bound plane.
But it was Nicky Hilton who eventually adopted Soho for good, giving the once stray cat a glamorous new home. On Monday, she Instagrammed this photo of the feline in Los Angeles, writing "Oddest napping place ever."
Welcome to your new life, Soho!
SEE ALSO: See how stars partied at Art Basel >
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On Tuesday night, Amanda Seyfried appeared on "The Late Show With David Letterman" to promote her upcoming Christmas day film, "Les Misérables."
But this wasn't an ordinary press appearance by the 27-year-old actress.
In order to help combat a bad case of stage fright, Seyfried knocked back three drinks before sitting down with Letterman — and it showed.
When the late night host asked if she had been drinking, Seyfriend responded, "Yeah, I'm pretty drunk ... I'm a big fan of whiskey."
But it didn't stop there, Seyfried also admitted "I have to go on record saying I've never done a live television after, um, noon without some kind of liquid courage."
Watch the awkward interview below:
SEE ALSO: 'Storage Wars' star claims show is fake after being fired >
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It may have taken months of construction, but Reddior ParanickFilmz created and shot a frame-by-frame reenactment of "The Dark Knight Rises" trailer ... made entirely out of LEGOS.
The stop motion ad is a truly epic:
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Two Albuquerque men who were allegedly plotting to kill singer Justin Bieber have been arrested, according to CBS affiliate KRQE News 13.
According to the report, the two men allegedly formed a detailed plot to murder and castrate the Canadian pop singer and three other individuals at his recently sold out Madison Square Garden concerts in New York City.
Mark Staake has been arrested in Vermont, while the other individual, Tanner Ruane, Staake's nephew, has been apprehended in New York.
Ruane was said to allegedly have "murder tools" including pruning shears in his possession.
The National Post reports the two were arrested November 20 before Bieber's MSG performances.
The plot allegedly also called for the murder of Bieber's bodyguard.
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We know "The Avengers" and "The Dark Knight Rises" are among some of the highest-grossing films of the year; however, were they the most popular online?
Google rounded up the most searched films of the year, accounting for those with the largest volume of searches.
We're surprised by some of the films left off the list (primarily "The Amazing Spider-Man").
Though Batman and Iron Man receive some love, one thing's for certain. The Internet loved Channing Tatum.
The fourth film in the franchise made the least of any of the prior installments, yet still pulls in enough interest to warrant another sequel next year along with a spinoff.
It only makes sense that the final "Twilight" film ("Breaking Dawn Part 2) would garner a lot of interest from its Twihard fans.
The film saw the largest opening weekend of any film in the franchise earning $340.9 million worldwide.
Fans of Nicholas Sparks' "The Notebook" were anxious to see Rachel McAdams return in another one of the author's popular book adaptations opposite People's Sexiest Man of the Year, Channing Tatum.
The Valentine's Day flick earned nearly $200 million worldwide.
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Professor Alice Roberts, the researcher and television presenter, reveals her extreme diet on the road.
5.45am Sacrifice breakfast for an extra 15 minutes' sleep. Black coffee. When I'm shooting a documentary somewhere hot, like Arizona, we set off early.
6.15am Travel to a cave in the Grand Canyon. We're often schlepping around with lots of kit. After a boat ride it takes us two hours to get all the equipment up to the cave.
10am I'm strict about taking nuts and dried fruit with me and, if I have access to milk, small packets of porridge to eat in a break.
1pm Film an interview in the cave then plunder the emergency stash of cereal bars.
2pm Lunch on the road is usually the same as breakfast and tea in remote places – packet meals. I'm veggie and generally get vegetable curry or rigatoni.
3pm. Another cereal bar on the boat.
8pm A big salad at the hotel. After a few days of vegetable curry I crave my husband's home-made pizza.
NIGEL DENBY dietitian
This is nowhere near enough to give Alice everything she needs. Cereal bars, dried fruit and nuts, the odd bit of salad and packet meals don't make a balanced diet. Of course, these are extreme conditions and it shows that not every programme has swanky on-location catering. She'll need more than pizza to make up for a few days of this, though.
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Last night’s premiere of The Hobbit marked one of the most glittering occasions London’s Leicester Square has seen all year. The film was so eagerly anticipated in New Zealand that director Peter Jackson took over Wellington for its premiere, with 100,000 people lining the streets. In London, fans braved freezing temperatures for a glimpse of stars such as Sir Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman and its royal guest, the Duke of Cambridge. Only the absence of the Duchess of Cambridge marred the occasion.
But it’s not just the excitement of Jackson’s follow-up to Lord of the Rings that has galvanised even infrequent cinema-goers. The film itself is a unique experience: cinema has never looked and sounded quite like it did at the Empire Leicester Square last night.
Three features combined to create the hyper-real effect: the gradual maturing of 3D into a technology that is less intrusive than it once was; Peter Jackson’s controversial decision to use the hyper-realistic 48 frames per second rate (or high frame rate; see below); and the unique chance to watch the film with a sound system called Dolby Atmos, which the sound business claims is the future of cinema, because it offers more realistic presentation of effects and music than ever before.
The cinema industry is being forced to introduce more and more sophisticated technology in order to woo an audience used to the ever-improving options offered by home cinema. Although the UK box office was worth £1.04 billion in 2011, more than a quarter of UK screens are still not digital, leaving domestic televisions often offering pictures that seem to most viewers to be considerably sharper than those experienced in cinemas. Although film prints can look stunning, they don’t in every cinema. No wonder the rate of digitisation has more than doubled in the past two years, when the DVD and video market is now worth more than £2 billion a year.
It is the trend for digital film that is driving those improvements in cinema, and sound is playing as big a part as images. Julian Pinn, the cinema marketing director of Dolby, says that although just a few films have been made using Atmos so far, it will soon be easy to find. “Sound is the medium by which directors often say they are able to make greater emotional impact on audiences,” he says, “and Atmos is one of the tools that makes people realise how different the cinematic experience is from the home.” The premiere will, however, be the only screening of The Hobbit to use the technology.
Where previous Dolby systems have been arrayed on walls like a single speaker, with Atmos a range of individual speakers enable sound to appear to come from much more precise locations. The result is immersive in a way that is apparently far more realistic.
The Cinema Exhibitors’ Association, the industry trade body, is keen to point out that despite advances in home technology, the shared experience of going to see a film is hard to replicate in the living room. One in five, it claims, goes out for dinner or a drink after a film, with the industry contributing therefore to the wider economy.
For TV buyers, next year promises to be the year of ultra-high definition images, with sets costing more than £22,000 now on sale in time for Christmas. But in cinemas, 4K films, as they are called, are already being released and the 3D looks convincing, while the sound can even come from the ceiling.
For now, at least, it seems that hobbits look better on the big screen than in the living room.
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Peter Jackson's latest adaptation of a JRR Tolkien is innovative in the way it looks and sounds writes Matt Warman.
