Unseen World!

Today HBO announced it will be making its movies and TV Shows available on the Web to subscribers through HBO Go,which up until now has been in private beta. HBO Go is part of the cable industry’s TV Everywhere strategy to make TV content available online to paying subscribers. It contains 600 hours of movies and TV shows which can be streamed live and even in HD. HBO Go is available first to Verizon FIOS subscribers. Since I am a Verizon FIOS customer, I logged into HBO Go this morning and checked it out. (Despite reports elsewhere that it won’t be available until Thursday, it is in fact now live). Below are my initial impressions and screenshots.

The videos play decently and you can watch in HD, but if I wasn’t already paying for HBO I certainly wouldn’t pay for access to this site. The choice of shows and movies is just not that great. You can watch every episode of The Wire, and the final season of The Sopranos, but not one episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. You get a lot more in your cable subscription, especially if you get multiple HBO channels. The on-demand option is great, but essentially HBO Go is competing with much broader array of choices on the TV which can also be made on-demand through a DVR. There are some movies like The Watchmen and Taken, which I think I’ve already seen three times each this month on TV, and a spattering of older archived movies like Canadian Bacon, but for the most part the selection is worse than what you get on Netflix via its streaming option. I’m not sure I want to see The Chumscrubber in HD.

The site itself is well-designed, image heavy with lots of entry points. You are greeted with a slideshow view of ten shows and movies on heavy rotation, including the movie Taken, HBO Series Big Love and The Wire, and a Dennis Miller special. If you have HBO, you can’t really avoid any of these shows, so nothing special there except that you can stream it anywhere on your laptop. Tabs across the top allow you to explore deeper into movies, series, comedy, sports, documentaries, and “late night” (aka, HBO’s hard-hitting sex documentary series like Real Sex). Everything is done in Flash, which makes it a beautiful experience, but it won’t be accessible on an iPad or iPhone without converting the site into an app

For each series, you can choose any episode for at least one season, but some shows are missing. You can also create a watchlist to watch shows later. When I was clicking through the site, the streaming quality was great, but when I tried to switch to another show or movie the audio to Canadian Bacon kept playing in the background (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing—I love that movie).

My main issue with HBO Go is not the fact that it is behind a paywall (after all, that is HBO’s business even on TV) or the site’s look and feel. The site’s navigation is clean, everything is easy to find, and the playback looks great. And moving part of its video library online is a smart move for HBO. My issue is with the selection. It’s not just that 600 hours of rotating shows and movies is just a fraction of what HBO shows on TV in any given month. Managing 600 hours of on-demand video is resource intensive, so HBO has to set some limit. HBO is not Web video company. But Hulu or even Verizon could manage a bigger catalog, and even keep the paywall.

TV is moving online, as this first step by HBO illustrates. But ultimately, I want all the channels I get through Verizon to be available for searching, managing, and video streaming on the Web. Verizon FIOS already lets me program my home DVR from the Web, but I can only watch those shows on my TV. There is still a disconnect between my computer and my TV, and that is frustrating. And yes, I want it all because I am already paying for it.

It’s a shocking deal no one saw coming in a million years. According to an official press release from the Walt Disney Company, Disney has bought Marvel Entertainment for the hefty price of $4 billion. Under the deal, Disney gains control of more than 5,000 Marvel characters, and Marvel gains their massive marketing infrastructure.

"This transaction combines Marvel’s strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters including Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor with Disney’s creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories," said Robert A. Iger, President of The Walt Disney Company. "Ike Perlmutter and his team have done an impressive job of nurturing these properties and have created significant value. We are pleased to bring this talent and these great assets to Disney."

So, there you have it. Marvel is now a Disney brand in all senses of the word. Obviously, this has just been announced, but the big question looms: What will this mean for all those upcoming Marvel movies? We’ve all marveled at the creative networking Marvel Entertainment has been doing, and the way Kevin Feige has been building little bridges of creative continuity throughout their cinematic universe. So far, they seemed to be doing everything right by fans, and creating movies that could draw in newcomers and hardcore geeks. What is it going to mean for the films when a behemoth like Disney takes control? Family friendly, mythology-be-damned, direct-to-DVD offerings? Or will it just mean a lot more Slurped cups and action figures? Time will tell, but something tells me the future of the Marvel cinematic universe might have become a little less bright

We know that 2012 is a very controversial topic, and Seeking Closure is not a mindless the world is crumbling movie, but it is based on 2012and the events that may or may not happen but,the movie follows characters as they come to terms that in three hours they are going to die, and in coming to grips with that ,they realize they have to fix some wrongs in their lives before they go. They are Seeking Closure.
The main theme is "Don’t do anything today you may regret tomorrow, because there may not be one."

Real Info is available @ Dec 12, 2012

District 9, abbreviated D-9, is a 2009 science fiction film directed by Neill Blomkamp, released on August 14, 2009 in North America by TriStar Pictures, starring Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope and Robert Hobbs.

The film is based on Alive in Joburg, a 2005 short film directed by Blomkamp and produced by Sharlto Copley. Like the short film it’s based on, District 9 takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa, and poses analogies to the events that occured during the apartheid system enforced by South African government between 1948 and 1994. Much of the film is shot in a documentary-style, including a mix of interviews, news footage, and video from surveillance cameras. The title of the movie is a reference to District Six, a former inner-city residential area in Cape Town, South Africa, declared a "whites only" area by the apartheid government in 1966, with a population of 60,000 forcibly relocated to Cape Flats, 25 kilometres away.

The clip isn’t yet properly live at Apple, the site meant to be hosting it in the US, but you can see it in 1080p with this link, or at the French MSN site.

Here’s the quick recap: Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) arrives (in his wheelchair) on Pandora. He sees the planet’s beauty and, though him, we’re quickly introduced to the ten-foot tall alien Na’vi avatars. Implanted in his Na’vi body, Jake leads us on an exploration of Pandora. We see Zoe Saldana’s Na’vi character and Jake’s imprinting session with Pandora’s version of a dragon. (Hey Anne McCafferey, did you get a royalty check?) There’s even a glimpse of Pandora at night, and a little bit of the new power suits in action, which weren’t much seen in the Comic Con footage. We don’t see Sigourney Weaver, but do get a glimpse of Drag Me To Hell’s Dileep Rao as one of the Avatar technicians.

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