2010 Blockbusters ….

So summer blockbuster season is over …. but whats going to be big in 2010 ???

Any of these …. let us know if you know something we don’t

Iron Man 2
Kick-Ass
The A Team
The Wolfman
Robin Hood
The Expendables
Inception
Tron: Legacy
Toy Story 3
Predators

is this the new LOST …?

Flashforward, the high-concept US drama series, has become the fastest-selling Disney series of all time, and broadcasters around the world are showing it as quickly as possible in a bid to beat piracy.

The programme, in which an unexplained event makes people around the world see into their future after blacking out for two minutes, has premiered in Britain on Channel Five, in Australia and even been dubbed into Russian within days of its US premiere.

“Even before Mipcom begins we have sold it to 100 territories, already making it the fastest-selling series in our history,” said Disney Media Networks president global distribution Ben Pyne on the opening day of TV trade festival MIPCOM.

He said persuading other networks to premiere the programme quickly was part of a new policy.

“This helps to reduce piracy but also allows bigger-than-life global marketing campaigns and get shows into audiences homes sooner.”

On Friday, eight days after its US premiere, the Russian version of Flashforward, known as Remembering What Will Be, was first shown.

In the UK, the programme aired on Five four days after US network ABC premiered it. Its second episode airs tonight.

Previously television companies would send tapes across the world to promote shows – but now that could be done over the internet, with broadcast quality clips that could be adapted for local use.

So watch this space … and let us know what you think ….

Spotify is going offline …. but in a good way

Spotify is going offline. Not in a bad way, but in a potentially profitable way.

From today, “premium” subscribers to the music streaming service will be able to select their playlists and set them to be ‘Available offline’. According to Spotify, “Those playlists will then be synced to the computer so you can listen to your favorite tunes even if your internet connection goes down or if you’re at summer house with no connection at all.”

The interesting question that we haven’t been able to determine but which will doubtless be investigated in great detail by Spotify premium-owning geeks around Europe is: do the songs have any digital rights management (DRM) attached?

Spotify streams in the patent-free Ogg Vorbis format, but it actually caches what you’ve listened to (on a Mac, for example, you’ll find the songs you’ve listened to or might be about to listened to in an strange format in your home folder at /Library/Caches/com.spotify.client/Storage/.

As much as anything, it’s a neat way to avoid having to pay streaming bills (though not of course music publishing charges) if you keep listening to the same songs.

Unclear – but it’s not clear if those files actually have DRM too. Clearly, the app does something else to the files so that it can read them but others can’t. In that sense, the obfuscation amounts to a sort of rights management: Spotify can read them, but others can’t. But it’s not the way you usually think of them.

The question now is whether this will mean more people will sign up for Premium ??

The last time there was a public declaration it was that something like 2% of users have gone for it – though the introduction more recently of the iPhone version may mean that’s moved up. But – Spotify on your desktop machine? What’s the point? Don’t you always have your songs with you if you want them, on a digital music player? It seems like an oddly retrograde step, to encourage people to use computers to store songs again.

Nevertheless, if it grabs you, you can also now pay for your premium subscription.

Spotify has specified that you can store up to 3,333 songs on up to three devices including your phone. You have to have the latest version of Spotify, and may need to log out and in again to see it. Premium only, of course.

So – will that make you more likely to pay for the privilege ?

Sun pays Lily Allen 10k

The Sun has agreed to pay Lily Allen £10,000 in damages over an article that wrongly alleged she called Victoria Beckham a “monster” and The X Factor judge Cheryl Cole “stupid and superficial”.

The singer denied ever making the comments, which first appeared in a French magazine, and sued for defamation and false attribution of authorship. The Sun apologised to the singer in print and online, following on from a court order made on Wednesday.

The article in question, headlined “Ranting Lily” and published in the Bizarre showbiz column on 7 May, also referred to a tirade against Wag culture and criticism of Cole’s husband, the Chelsea footballer Ashley Cole. Today the Sun printed an apology for the story on page 14: “In May we reported in Bizarre that Lily Allen had made various offensive remarks about David and Victoria Beckham and Ashley and Cheryl Cole in an interview with a magazine.

“We now accept that Lily didn’t say these things to the magazine and we apologise to Lily for the upset and embarrassment caused by repeating them.”

Allen’s lawyer, Mark Thomson of Atkins Thomson, confirmed that the Sun had also agreed to pay the singer damages of £10,000, plus her costs.

The disputed comments attributed to Allen came from an article in the French sports-themed magazine So Foot entitled “Les footballeurs courent après tout ce que je deteste” – which roughly translates to “I hate footballers”. Allen is continuing with legal action against So Foot.

Are Orange in iPhone price war?

Orange’s success in breaking into O2′s exclusive deal to stock the iPhone is expected to lead to a Christmas price war with the cost of the Apple handset coming down for UK consumers.

It is also likely to be available from at least one more mobile phone operator, with Vodafone also understood to be close to signing a deal with Apple, though it may not have the device in time for Christmas. Executives at Vodafone, which stocks the iPhone in just under a dozen countries, have long maintained that they would like to get their hands on it in the UK.

T-Mobile, which had been holding on-off talks with Apple for some months, is understood to have dropped out of the race.

Orange earlier announced that it will stock the latest version of the iPhone – the 3GS – in time for Christmas.

It has refused to give any detail on pricing, but the Orange deal is understood to be less complicated than the one O2 signed in the summer of 2007 to gain its status as exclusive UK partner, and it is expected to undercut the current hefty price of the phone.

Under O2′s deal the network had to share some of the revenues it made from customers using the iPhone, with Apple. The Orange deal, in contrast, does not have any revenue-sharing component and as a result the company, owned by France Telecom, is expected to offer the iPhone at a cheaper price than O2.

Losing its exclusive grip on the iPhone is a blow to O2, which has used the phone to cement its position as the market leader in the UK over the past two years with its rivals consistently blaming the “iPhone effect” for the brand’s success. O2 has 20.7 million UK customers and has sold an estimated 1.7 million iPhones in the UK.

It has also provided a boost to Carphone Warehouse, which has been O2′s exclusive independent retail partner. The company, Europe’s largest independent mobile phone retailer, will also stock the iPhone for Orange. But in a note to staff this morning, Orange UK chief executive Tom Alexander suggested that more independent retailers may also get the phone.

“It’ll be available in all of our Orange shops, online, and will also be available through some of our specially selected partner stores,” he said.

It remains unlcear, however, whether Orange’s use of a two-year break clause in O2′s five-year deal with Apple, originally revealed by the Guardian more than a year ago, has allowed the company to renegotiate its own terms and therefore retaliate in a Christmas price war.

In other countries where Apple has released the iPhone to more than one network, its partners have not had to sign away some of the ongoing revenues they make from customers so it is unlikely that O2 is being kept to its original terms. Part of the reason for the change in tack at the Californian company is that the Apple iTunes store has been so successful in selling applications to iPhone users that these revenues are starting to replace revenues from the mobile networks.

Certainly O2 insiders maintain that the company has been preparing for an end to its exclusive hold for some time. It has already grabbed another hotly anticipated handset under an exclusive deal for the Christmas market, but the hefty price tag it has placed on that device – the Palm Pre – may put off many users.

The breaking of O2′s exclusive deal in the UK leaves the US as the only one of the original four markets in which Apple launched with just one operator after legal issues led to the German and French markets having to be opened up.

Film to premiere on mobile phone …

RAGE is the first feature film to premiere exclusively on mobile phones and even better …. It wont cost you a penny!

This unique mobile premiere links directly to Sally Potter’s vision for the film, as RAGE tells the behind-the scenes story of a crisis at a New York fashion house through a series of intimate interviews, as if shot by a schoolboy on his mobile phone over a seven-day period.

The filmmakers have partnered with Babelgum for this revolutionary release strategy, which sees RAGE simultaneously available on mobile, online, digital screens and DVD.

Check out more information on it here http://ragethemovie.com/