Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace returns to theaters in 3D February 12, 2012
It's time to mark your calendar Star Wars fans, whether you plan to be first in line to check out the new 3D-converted editions of each movie, protest their rerelease in a new format or just avoid the theater altogether now that The Phantom Menace has officially been slated to return next year on February 12th. The effects guys at Fox, Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic reckon the immersi
Hasbro hops on the 3D bandwagon with Transformers Cine-Mask 3D glasses
Have any kids that want to see Transformers: Dark of the Moon this summer? Then you'll likely want plan on adding $10 to the cost of each ticket, as Hasbro has come up with the ingenious idea to produce these Transformers Cine-Mask 3D glasses and sell 'em in stores before the movie's release. Available in Optimus Prime and Bumblebee versions, the masks each envelop a standard set of RealD 3D glas
How Social Media Helped Toy Story 3 Win at the Box Office
The Behind the Social Media Campaign Series is supported by Oneupweb, an award-winning agency specializing in search marketing, social media and design for mid-to-enterprise level brands. Download Oneupweb’s free whitepaper, “The Bloody Truth about Social Media.”Toy Story 3 was one of the biggest films of 2010. As Pixar’s 11th full-length film, the third and final chapter in the world of Buzz L
LIVE: Never Say Never Director Jon Chu Talks 3D Movies & Bieber-mania
Never Say Never, AKA the Justin Bieber movie, hits theaters on February 11. Today, February 10, starting at 4:00 p.m. ET, Mashable will be chatting with the film’s director, Jon Chu (@jonmchu) about what it’s like to make a 3D concert film, Bieber-mania and how social media has influenced the marketing efforts for the project.Concert films have been a cinematic staple since the early 1960s. Fro
How Does 3D Technology Work?
The Innovative Entertainment Series is supported by Dolby. “Like” Dolby for a chance to have Adam West read your Facebook status update, live, on camera, February 18th.In 1838, Sir Charles Wheatstone first described the process of stereopsis: the process by which humans perceive three dimensions from two highly similar, overlaid images. Or, the process by which Avatar looks like a mind-blowingl
IntoNow Can Hear What You’re Watching On TV. The Media Check-In Game Just Changed.
“The problem was that no one wanted to type in the bar they were at,” Adam Cahan told us when we met with him last week to see his latest venture, IntoNow. He wasn’t talking about his startup. Instead, he was talking about Dodgeball, the location-based service that came well before Foursquare. That is, he was describing why Foursquare took off while Dodgeball didn’t, even though they had the same
How the War on Piracy Will Change in 2011
Andrew Wallenstein is senior editor at paidContent, where he writes about the digital entertainment business out of Los Angeles. He is also a frequent contributor to NPR’s “All Things Considered.” If there was ever any doubt that the war on piracy was going to escalate this year, just look at how a new study out last week from research firm MonitorMark was received. Sponsored by the U.S. Chamb
“Oldboy” Director Shoots New Horror Film on iPhone 4
South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook — the director of 2003’s critically acclaimed Oldboy — says his new film was shot entirely on the iPhone.The fantasy-horror film Paranmanjang, which means “life full of ups and downs” in Korean, is about half an hour long, and was made on a budget of 150 million won ($133,000). According to the Associated Press, Park says the iPhone’s small size and light w
Streamonomics
God bless 2010 as the year when everybody, including Twitter, caught up to Twitter. Now that we know the importance of streaming realtime, what are we going to do with it? I’ve been doing some thinking as I recover from a pinched nerve that has made it agony to do anything other than feel sorry for myself. Thanks to painkillers, acupuncture, and the iPad, I’m slowly regaining most everything but m
“Tron” Still King on Twitter, Despite Box Office Rivals
Little Fockers and True Grit may have claimed first and second place at the Christmas box office, but TRON: Legacy is still tops on Twitter.Real-time social media tracker Trendrr evaluated the top three films at the weekend box office from December 23 to 27. Despite coming in third place at the box office, TRON: Legacy continues to generate nearly twice as many tweets as either Little Fockers o
Why Does it Cost $300 to Buy Avatar on 3D Blu-ray?
Who's buying 3DTVs and 3D Blu-ray players? People who watched 3D movies in theaters, then want to re-live the experience at home. So why are the top movies, like Avatar and Coraline only available as bundles with hardware? What's the deal? More »
Fandango Goes Big Screen on the iPad
Movie ticketing service Fandango has updated its popular iOS app to support the iPad. Fandango for iPad [iTunes link] is a free app that lets users not only browse movie showtimes and purchase tickets but also watch trailers and movie clips, see critic and user reviews, and get a glimpse at what films are especially hot at the box office.Fandango is the nation’s leading ticketing service, and i
Fanhattan Promises Better Internet TV Through The Power Of Data
The TV is the last screen in most people’s homes to be conquered by the Internet. Although with so many companies both big and small going after that screen—Google, Apple, Boxee, Roku—it seems like someone will eventually figure it out. Now you can add to that list Fanhattan, a new company spun off from Vuze, the maker of the popular Bittorrent client which has been downloaded 150 million times
TechCrunch TRON LEGACY Screenings In New York And San Francisco
Longtime TechCrunch readers know we like to have movie screenings on opening day for cool science fiction type blockbusters. Sometimes we get into legal trouble, but let us worry about that. It always works out in the end. TRON LEGACY officially opens this Friday, December 17. We’ve reserved and prepaid two big theaters for the 3-D version of the movie, one in New York (470 seats) and one in San F
Prima Cinema plans to offer $500 first-run movie downloads, with a mere $20k setup fee
To achieve balance in all things, a new startup called Prima Cinema apparently figures while the proletariat are rejoicing over Netflix all you can eat $7.99 streaming and Redbox $1 rentals, there's room at the high end and will offer a $20,000 digital delivery system to bring home first-run movies as soon as they come to theaters in theaters for $500 a pop. Beyond simply achieving the goal of ma
Boxee CEO To Big Media: “Resistance Is Futile”
With all the new Internet TV boxes and services sprouting this holiday season—from Google TV and Apple TV to the Boxee Box, Shufflr, and beyond—there is a lot talk about people cutting their cable cords and just getting all of their TV from the Internet. That is not going to happen anytime soon until the best TV shows and movies become available online at the same time as on TV, but the directio
How Social Media Is Changing the Way Movies are Promoted
video The Movie and Tech Series is supported by DVDVideoSoft. Discover Free Studio, a full collection of free software to process video, images and audio at DVDVideoSoft.com. Clean, free and user-friendly.From self-funded independent projects to big-name Hollywood blockbusters, the movie industry has embraced social media. Big time.Historically, of course, this makes a lot of sense. Classical Hollywood
Netflix: Will This Movie Ever End?
By Dian L. Chu, EconForecast After driving Blockbuster out of business and taking a good chunk of subscribers from cable TVs, Netflix (NFLX) is now setting sight on the streaming video business. On Monday Nov. 22, Netflix announced a new subscription service--$7.99 a month for unlimited downloads of movies and television shows, while raising prices (by one dollar) on its existing DVD-related servi
5 Mobile Apps for Finding Great Movies
The Movie and Tech Series is supported by DVDVideoSoft. Discover Free Studio, a full collection of free software to process video, images and audio at DVDVideoSoft.com. Clean, free and user-friendly.Perusing the mobile app landscape, it’s pretty clear that a whole bunch of developers love movies. For movie fans, this is pretty great because it means there are tons of apps for movie addicts to choo
Get Ready For Movie Theaters That Watch You
Movie theaters are already watching you; in an effort to curb piracy, many theaters have systems that pinpoint camcorder-wielding patrons. But the next generation of those systems will be watching for something else entirely: how much you're enjoying the movie. More »
Battling Chimeras: Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone 7 is a sprawling mobile platform that, by year’s end, will power about a dozen devices, from four manufacturers, spanning 60 carriers through 30 countries. According to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Windows Phone 7 was created to be, “Always delightful and wonderfully mine.” It was a reactionary moment in the company’s history — an answer to a question asked three years earlier.On Jan
“The Social Network” Hits Theaters: Mashable’s Complete Coverage
The Social Network arrived in theaters nationwide this weekend, pulling in $9 million in its first day as it opened No. 1 at the box office. The David Fincher-directed and Aaron Sorkin-written film about Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg might not be as entrenched in the social zeitgeist as Facebook itself, but it’s doing quite well so far.Earlier this week Mashable hosted two early premieres for the fil
New Web Service Solves the What-to-Watch Conundrum
This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.Name: InveniQuick Pitch: Inveni is a discovery engine that gives highly personalized recommendations based on a user’s universal taste profile and recom
Buying Movie Tickets Helps Fund Public Schools in DonorsChoose.org Campaign
video DonorsChoose.org has partnered with Paramount Pictures, Participant Media and Walden Media to offer a $15 DonorsChoose.org gift code when you purchase a ticket to the upcoming documentary, Waiting for “Superman”The code can be used on DonorsChoose.org, a non-profit dedicated to funding small classroom projects in American public schools, to support projects like a new projector for science class o
Star Wars flicks to see 3D re-release, starting with Episode 1 in 2012
The Star Wars series hasn't even hit Blu-ray yet, but The Hollywood Reporter reports sources are saying George Lucas definitely intends to refill his money pit in 2012 by bringing out the movies, one each year, in 3D. Unfortunately that means even if you're optimistically expecting a well done 3D conversion process Episode IV is at least five years away since the plan is to release the movies in
Facebook Movie Gets Overwhelmingly Positive Reviews, But Will People Go See It?
Premiering at New York Film Festival yesterday and coming to theaters October 1st, the world’s first Hollywood movie about the founding of a social network can now also claim the bragging rights of a solid 100 score on movie review aggregator Metacritic as well as a 9.9 score on Rotten Tomatoes. While both the Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes sample sizes are currently small, The Social Network joi
How Flixster Found Its Groove
This post is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark as a new part of the Spark of Genius series that focuses on a new and innovative startup each day. Every Thursday, the program focuses on startups within the BizSpark program and what they’re doing to grow.With Twitter, Facebook, Google and Foursquare dominating the tech news cycle, it’s easy to forget about Flixster and its movie discovery service