Monday, August 11, 2008

The DVD Rental Industry

The DVD rental industry came into being in the last part of the previous century. Around 1999, some companies came up with the idea of an online DVD rental system. The system, when introduced, became quite a success as it offered convenience with no extra charges.

The convenience of ordering a movie from home became hugely popular. And with the additional facilities like cheap rentals, no late fees and no due dates it really caught the fancy of the market. Even postal charges were not included and viewers could order online, 24 hours a day, from a huge collection of movies.

From the very beginning, the DVD rental industry became quite fashionable and it outdated the general DVD rental shop, which had all kinds of extra charges tagged with a DVD. The online availability of DVDs made it more popular as the viewer did not have to go anywhere to watch his favorite movie.

The process of ordering the DVD became simple like never before. The viewer just had to visit the DVD rental company's website, get a membership and choose from the list of movies available on the site. He could then order for the movies and the movies would get delivered by first class post to him in no time at all. In some ways, the DVD rental industry has also given a big boost to the postal system of every country.

The big players

The DVD rental by mail industry was pioneered by the US firm Netflix, launched in 1999 to take advantage of the power of the internet and cheap and easy delivery of DVDs by post, while eliminating late fees or any kind of hidden charges. Netflix was the first one to introduce online DVD rentals and was able to get a patent on this business idea. They are the pioneers in the online DVD rental industry. Netflix is the ideal model for the entire industry and is still the dominant company in the U.S.

Another DVD rental industry giant, Lovefilm, alone controls 23 percent of all DVD rentals from all over the world. Lovefilm delivers out over 2 million discs per month. It is a UK based company that offers various types of membership plans and facilities as well.

Another big player in the DVD rental industry, Blockbuster controls over a quarter of the market and has increased emphasis on its online division, with quality probably just as good as its brick and mortar store. Blockbuster claimed one million online customers in August 2005, two million by March 2006, and finished the first quarter of 2007 with three million.

Conclusion

The DVD rental industry had an explosive growth in 2005 and 2006 and it is expected to continue through for at least several more years. Though the boom in this industry is yet to create history in the world of cinema, the DVD rental industry will probably continue this excessive growth for at least several more years as it goes for the big picture, driving many street video shops out of date in the process.

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Sunday, August 10, 2008

Film Review: Live Free or Die Hard

Kevin L. Powers

An improvement over the previous mess but a good film this does not make. Let’s just say that this film, like much of what Hollywood is putting out lately, is geared towards the brain-dead crowd who wants their action loud and story nil (or gone altogether) and R-rated violence numbed to the PG-13 crowd so that everyone and their grandmother won’t feel offended to go see. I’m offended that groundbreaking Die Hard franchise has been dumbed down to a knock-off of itself with neither the creativity nor the heart of its predecessor.

Let’s just forget that in both the first two films the heart of the film was watching how far John McClane (again Bruce Willis) will go to save the woman he loves not to mention his marriage. Everything he did was geared towards McClane discovering what truly made him both an endearing and fallible hero. He was someone whom the audience felt went through hell in order to reach heaven. Although in the third film the relationship with his wife was numbed down to a couple phone calls and off remarks from secondary characters, you never felt like McClane had any personal stake in what was going on around him and therefore the film became nothing more than a cop film with no heart. Nothing we hadn’t seen before by the countless other Die Hard knock-offs of the ‘90s.

The new film Lie Free or Die Hard is nothing more than action set pieces stitched together in an action movie with little story to tie everything together. I’m not saying there isn’t one; I just saying that other knock-offs have come up with better. In Die Hard 4 McClane is having problems with his daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who looks to be in college prompting me to think has twenty years really gone by since the last film?) and to top it off he’s been put in charge of bringing a local hacker (Justin Long) to Washington D.C. for questioning by the FBI. This routine pick up turns into a blood bath of bullets as McClane soon discovers that the hacker may be responsible for helping a terrorist take over the United States via computers. The rest of the film follows McClane and the hacker from one set piece to the next as they try to overthrow the terrorists trying to overthrow the U.S. government. I commend screenwriter Mark Bomback for trying his hand at a patriotic action film similar to what Stallone did with his Rambo films, but those films had a heart and spirit left void here.

Once you get past the first fifteen minutes of set up which is atrociously paced giving the impression of a bad script with even worse acting from everyone involved because everything feels forced, the action set pieces are quite good and excellently handled by director Len Wiseman and his crew. This is not surprising since Wiseman did an excellent job on the Underworld series of films if only he had borrowed those screenwriters for a rewrite. There are several nice moments between McClane and the hacker, whose constantly asks why McClane does what he does, that question the definition of what a hero “is” and what a hero sacrifices in order to become a hero. These scenes are at the heart of the film only by the end of the film there is no payoff for McClane’s character as he never truly realizes what he has sacrificed to become this “All-American Hero” that everyone in the film claims he is.

I’m sure they tried to show this through his relationship with his daughter Lucy, who at the beginning of the film claims her mother’s maiden name, but her scenes are few and far in between and she comes off as a last minute addition to the film as her character truly has nothing to do.

The film also has no problem going against character as the mastermind behind the terrorism Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) has no problem forcing his men to kill innocents in order to kill McClane, as the scene in the tunnel plainly shows, but for no reason at all he has problems killing McClane’s daughter, McClane being the man that killed his girlfriend and constantly provokes him to no end. Gabriel should’ve had no problems killing McClane’s daughter and then taunting him to no end but because the film is hampered by so many other things these scenes in the third act are laughable at best.

The film is best played for laughs as that’s all that’s left in the franchise since McClane has now become as bad as Spider-Man with the one liners and retorts. Not once in the entire film do you ever feel McClane is any danger and not once do you find yourself taking anything seriously. We all know it is a film and meant to entertain but how far does the action film genre have to fall before we finally say enough is enough? Where are the original Die Hards or Lethal Weapons or First Blood? Has the well dried so much or does Hollywood just no longer have a backbone? Where has the heart gone?

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A considerable amount of time of our day is spent in travelling from one place to another. Most of us either drive cars or travel in them. The journey can be boring and lack luster if there is no provision for entertainment in the cars, specially when the journey is long and we spend more time in travelling. Listening to entertaining music tracks is the best way to make our journeys exciting and interesting. An efficient car audio system can give us great music while we are in the vehicle.

The car audio and video systems are the efficient music and video players that give great music and video playback. Generally the cars come with the stock car audio systems which are already installed in the automobile by the manufacturer, however most people prefer the custom systems which are configured as per the owner's choice. The most general car audio systems include an audio player with advanced speakers and with the provision of radio reception. Most of the people listen to music tracks and FM radio while driving.

Earlier tape decks were used in the cars, however now people prefer the advanced CD players that can play MP3, AAC, WMA and other music formats. Users can buy car audio and video systems from various outlets or online shops. More recently the trend of installing video players and screens in the cars has become popular. People prefer to watch movies and music videos while they are travelling long distances. The car video players along with LCD screens are used in the automobile to get the perfect entertainment. These screens can be fitted either above the rear view mirror or any other suitable location in the automobile.

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Tuesday, August 5, 2008

What Makes a Great Zombie Movie?

There are no sure things in Hollywood, but one genre of horror movie that seems to always just draw people to it is the zombie movie. I think part of what makes zombie movies terrifying, even the older ones with slow zombies, is the taboo. They're not human, but they're close enough to bring up the cannibalism taboo.

There's something great about zombie movies, which with George Romero's influence have also become renowned for having hidden political and social commentary. This combination makes these horror movies particularly interesting, even above many of their peers. Zombie movies also tend to have a cult following, keeping them popular even years and years after release to DVD.

There are several main factors that make up a great zombie movie.

#1: Interesting Zombies. The best zombie movies have a wide variety of zombies who could be odd looking, funny looking, or terrifying, but the best zombie movies have something that sets their zombies apart from the rest.

#2: Gore. Zombie fans can tell you one of the major things everyone waits for is the first extremely gory death scene. It's just not a zombie movie without one violent death scene.

#3: Non Cliched Characters. Don't get me wrong, there are always basic cliche characters, but the best zombie movies have one or two characters who really stick out as being unique and different. They're not just the pretty girl who gets killed or the rich jerk who gets what's coming to him. "Cemetery Man" is one of the best examples of this.

#4: Man vs. Zombie. The majority of good zombie movies have a siege mentality, with humans struggling to survive against the zombie onslaught. Most zombie movies are also synonymous with "zombie apocalypse."

#5: One Human Psychopath/Idiot. Usually there is one person who is either a psychopath and thus is as much of a danger as the zombies, or there's one idiot who does something stupid which lets the zombies in.

These are just a few of the things that make a great zombie movie. Not all of these always have to be present, but they definitely help. The new remakes of the old Romero classics are continuing the new trend of running zombies, which is definitely different from all the old school interpretations which had zombies strong, but slow.

This is a good base for starting a zombie movie. The one other interesting trend is the explosion of shorter fan films which are usually pretty funny zombie movie parodies, but that's for another article.

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Free Movies - Reasons to Avoid Those Illegal Download Sites

Free Movies! You see that all over the internet these days along with the words "no fee" and "easy." Sometimes those words are wonderful, but other times they are a red flag that something just is not right.

The internet makes downloading free movies possible, but is it always worth the cost? In general, people usually get exactly what they pay for. In the case of free movies, many times consumers do get the price they pay for in the form of a lack of quality and a lot of trouble.

There are options when it comes to downloading free movies online. They include skipping by those free file sharing and bootleg sites and moving on to legitimate membership sites allowing members to download free movies. Some great reasons for joining a membership site include avoiding the following.

The Law - File sharing sites are illegal. Many people do it and never get caught, but some do and the end up suffering the legal consequences of downloading free movies from these types of sites. Besides, it always feels best to do things the "right" way and it is dumb to take that risk just to save a small amount of money to watch a terrible quality bootleg movie. You will pay a lot more in legal fees than you would have paid for downloading those free movies from a legitimate movie download membership site.

The Possibility of Downloading a Bootleg - Many people are a little confused about what a "bootleg movie" is. Unbelievably, bootlegging a movie involves someone carrying a video camera into a movie theater and then filming the movie screen as the movie plays. With a bootleg, you get terrible sound and picture quality along with the general noises associated with a movie theater, such as people coughing, getting up to go for a snack, etc.

The Quality of the Free Movies - Speaking of quality, if you dedicate time out of your life to watching a movie, don't you want to experience it fully? Some free movies available on the internet are of terrible quality, even if they are not bootleg copies. With legitimate movie download membership sites, you can download free movies with great resolution and clarity, just as they were meant to be seen.

The Absence of Technology - With movie download sites, you download free movies with the latest technology, like you purchased it on DVD from a store. You can even burn the free movies you download from movie download sites onto a DVD, allowing you the convenience to watch your free movies anywhere you choose.

The Increasing Costs of Legitimate Movies - Although obvious, many people do not consider this factor when downloading free movies. The more people download bootleg and illegal movies from file sharing sites, the higher the cost becomes for free movies downloaded legally. Movie production companies have to make a profit or they cannot make movies. These companies have to make up for lost revenue by increasing prices or they will not stay in business. If you love movies, why would you want to put movie production companies out of business?

Hopefully, you can see why downloading free movies from a legitimate movie download site is best. It is also easier because of advanced search functions and 24/7 customer service support. An illegal site will not offer you any benefits.

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Jessica Alba inThe Love Guru -

http://www.nirvanastyle.com/html/fashion_articles.php?id=351





Author: Aparna Prakash Mon Jun 9, 2008

Jessica Alba stars in the new Mike Myers comedy The Love Guru which opens in theatres across North America on Friday, June 20. The Love Guru is the story of an American boy who is raised in an Indian Ashram. He returns to America and becomes the Love Guru to celebrities. Jessica Alba plays the estranged wife of a star hockey player and she approaches the Love guru for help.


Love Guru is to be released acroos America on Friday June 20th and this is a preview.


You can find out more about the movie at their website at

Check out the official website http://www.lovegurumovie.com for more details.


The film has created controversy the way it has been filmed in India. Many religous groups

are trying to band the movie so let us see what is in near furture for the film.





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Hindus urge FCC intervention in "The Love Guru" movie

Hindu groups contacted Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today urging intervention in the matter of the upcoming Hollywood movie "The Love Guru" saying "it will hurt the religious sentiments of millions of Hindus worldwide".

Bhavna Shinde, representing Hindu Janjagruti Samiti and Sanatan Society for Scientific Spirituality, in a communiqué to FCC Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Kevin J. Martin and four other commissioners, said, "…If the trailer is an indicator of the content of the movie…then we feel that this movie is most likely to hurt the sentiments of seekers from various spiritual paths…it will hurt the religious sentiments of millions of Hindus worldwide, who hold the 'Guru-disciple' relationship as sacred…we are supporting Rajan Zed's protest against the denigration…Poking fun is one thing, but if it creates a sense of belittling other's faith, then it is wrong."

FCC is an independent United States government agency charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. Since it does not cover movies as such, Shinde wrote in this communiqué, "…the movie will end up on TV and Cable at a later date, further penetrating the myths about the sacred concept of the Guru, and hurting religious and spiritual sentiments."

Meanwhile, furthering the drive pioneered by acclaimed Hindu and Indo-American leader Rajan Zed, various organizations and leaders have been coming out expressing concern about the possibility of this film hurting the sentiments of Hindus worldwide and urging filmmakers to be more responsible when handling faith related subjects. Zed has been saying that from the information available about the movie, it appears to be lampooning Hinduism and Hindus and using Hindu terms frivolously. Various Hindu, Catholic, Presbyterian, Jewish, Native American, Methodist, Buddhist, youth, film, spiritual/religious, music, yoga, civil rights, etc., leaders have already issued statements in support of this cause espoused by Rajan Zed.

On the other hand, Hindu groups have recently been approaching film distributors associations, exhibitors groups, regulatory bodies, government ministries, theater owners, etc., in various parts of the world urging them not to distribute/screen "The Love Guru" till Paramount Pictures, its presenter, makes necessary changes to it.

G. Kendrick Macdowell, Vice President of the National Association of Theatre Owners, largest exhibition trade organization in the world, replying to one such request wrote, "I am sympathetic to your concern as I have been to the ashrams in India and know a little bit about the guru-disciple relationship. I have not seen the trailer or the movie, but I can guess that it satirizes 'gurus on the make'. I doubt I would find it funny. Nevertheless, we are not in a position to take action you recommend …we are a trade association, and we cannot interfere with the decisions of our members regarding what movies or trailers to play…"

A prominent Jewish Rabbi, Elizabeth W. Beyer of Nevada, has called for boycott of "The Love Guru" because it "…lampoons Hinduism, mocks Ashram life and Hindu philosophy…" and asking "who laughs at religious practices".

Paramount Pictures, through its Senior Vice President National Publicity, Jessica Rovins, has earlier stated, "It is our full intention to screen the film for Rajan Zed and other Hindu leaders in the U.S. once we have a finished print."

It may be recalled here that advance screenings of Mel Gibson's 2004 movie "The Passion of the Christ" were held for clergy and others.


"The Love Guru"; a comedy starring Mike Myers (of Austin Powers fame, who is also the co-writer and co-producer), Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake, Ben Kingsley; and directed by Marco Schnabel; is set to release on June 20 next. In it Myers, an American, raised in an ashram in India, moves back to US as Guru Pitka to seek fame and fortune in the world of self-help and spirituality.

Hinduism, oldest and third largest religion of the world, has about one billion followers. Moksha (liberation) is the ultimate goal of Hinduism.

Paramount Pictures Corporation is a global producer and distributor of filmed entertainment.

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It includes four parts:
Part one: How to download TV show for free.
Part two: How to put TV show on iPod.
Part three: Where to download free movie for iPod.
Part four: Play iPod on TV without Apple TV.

Part one: How to download TV show for free.
For iPod users, you can buy one episode at a time or a whole season from the iTunes Store

and you can watch on your iPod, computer, or widescreen TV using Apple TV, but it cost

$1.99. If you feel it’s trouble to download TV show from iTunes, you can follow this guide to

download TV show for free.
Here’s a quick video tutorial on how to download TV shows for free:
http://www.cucirca.com/2007/12/28/how-to-download-tv-shows/.

Part two: How to put TV show on iPod.
After download TV show on your PC, please take your time to put TV shows to iPod, coz iPod

can only play MP4 and H.264 video, but many TV show play as AVI format, even some

shows plays with BETA and World Cup play as HDTV, so you need some thirty part

software to help you rip DVD and convert video to MP4 video, and then sync it to iPod via

iTunes. I highly recommend the Daniusoft DVD to iPod Suite, it can easily rip CSS copy

protected DVD to iPod and convert WMV, AVI, MOV, FLV, DivX, XviD video to iPod touch/

Nano/ Classic with high quality.
Here is the official download site: http://www.daniusoft.com/dvd-to-ipod-suite.html;
And the official step-by-step guide about how to put dvd video TV show to iPod:

http://www.daniusoft.com/tutorial/ipod-guide.html.

You just need to Install and run it, click ‘Load DVD’ to import DVD or click ‘Load file’ to add

video file (or TV shows). If you don’t want to convert the whole DVD, you can click ‘trim’ to

cut segment you like. DVD regular have many chapters, if you want to join them into one

file, you can pitch on ‘Merge into one file’, and your iPod can display only one image of

whole movie as in music.
But don’t forget that it’s legal convert DVD to iPod for personally not any commercial

purposes.

Part three: Where to download free movie for iPod.
There are some free movie websites for movie fans to download movie for iPod and other

players.
ShowStash(http://www.showstash.com/): Lots of popular TV shows, cartoons, etc.
Mefeedia(http://www.mefeedia.com/): "Find thousands of video blogs (video podcasts), and

watch them on your computer, video iPod or PSP."
The Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com/): Movie reviews, information about

upcoming movie premieres, movie clips, and more.
Free Public Domain Movies and Documentaries (http://www.jonhs.net/freemovies/): Free

movies and more, all available for free download.
iFilm(http://www.ifilm.com/): One of my favorite places on the Web for great videos, trailers,

etc.
Here is a listing of free movie download webistes http://www.daniusoft.com/tutorial/free-

movies-download.html.
Most of downloaded movies are AVI file, you can use Videora or Daniusoft DVD to iPod

Suite to convert AVI video to iPod video.

Part four: Play iPod on TV without Apple TV.
This part is about how to play iPod on TV without Apple TV. As you know, Apple TV is a

connector which allows you to stream media files from your computer and view iPod video on

TV. You can also store the media files on the unit's hard drive, but the current price of the

unit is $300 more or less. So, the article helps you play iPod on TV so you can watch iPod

video on TV for free. And you also can watch the video here to know more Why Apple TV is

pointless if you've got an iPod.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXd66cNZYD4.

It just includes three steps:
Step 1.take a composite video cable. As picture follow:


Step 2, simply plug one end of the cable into the headphones port on iPod and the other end

into TV. There is a little problem to plug the composite video into TV because you can't plug

it in like you normally do.

Here is the diagram helps explain what cables go where in TV.


In fact, the plugs on TV will be in this order: Red, White, yellow. Plug the cables in this

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Step 3 , set iPod on TV up. Don’t worry, it doesn't hack the iPod and everything goes safe.
From the main screen of your iPod, go to 'Video' -> 'Video Settings'. Scroll to TV Out and make it 'Ask' instead of 'Off'.
Then, 1) Scroll down to TV Signal and make sure its NTSC if you live in North America/Japan or PAL if you live anywhere else.

2) So after you've set iPod on TV up, back out to Video menu and go pick an iPod video to

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3) Before the video starts, select 'TV On' , turn on TV and go to wherever you go when you
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