As the theatrical release netted a franchise record opening weekend of $125 million – and that’s without the 3D component originally planned – ABC has announced that the last two Harry Potter movies, Deathly Hallows Part One and Two, will get their television debut on ABC Family. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been …
Apps & Web
54 Years of Batgirls and Batwomen
This Wednesday sees the release of Batwoman #0, by J.H. Williams III, W. Haden Blackman and Amy Reeder–a prologue to an ongoing series due to launch early next year. There have been upwards of half a dozen Batgirls and Batwomen over the years, some more durable than others; here’s a brief history of some of the more prominent …
Will The Holiday Season Bring Too Many 3D Movies?
What if there are too many 3D movies and not enough 3D theaters? That’s the problem facing the movie industry this holiday season, as six different 3D movies will be fighting for the attention of moviegoers and the kindness of theater owners. Although the number of screens equipped to handle 3D movies has more than doubled in the last …
Top Ten Monday Tech Deals
It’s Monday! Time for some handpicked gadget deals.
Acer 10.1-inch netbook: $179.99 (Target)
With the imminent run-up to Black Friday, we’ll see plenty of deals on netbooks. Target comes out of the gate swinging with the 10.1-inch Acer Aspire One at $180. You’ll have to find it in-store, though, which we all know means you’ll end …
Why Are People Abandoning Cable TV?
Is the internet finally following through on its threat to kill television? New reports are showing that viewers are dropping their cable subscriptions and, more interestingly, not replacing them with another cable or phone subscription. Numbers for the third quarter of 2010 show that Time Warner Cable lost 155,000 subscribers, more than …
What’s Special About This Week’s “The Walking Dead”
If you’re one of the millions of people who tune in every week to watch AMC’s The Walking Dead, good: We don’t have to convince you to watch the show. Just in case you haven’t tuned in, this week might be one in particular that could get interesting: It’s written by the comic book creator Robert Kirkman.
(More on TIME.com: “The Walk …
Amazon Rolls Out eBook Gifting
In an effort to compete with the awkwardness of gift cards and donations to charity made in your name, Amazon has just announced that it’s “the first major bookstore to offer eBook gifting.”
Kindle books will now feature “Give as a Gift” links and will be e-mailed to recipients, who can then read the books on any device that …
Emanata: Spider-Man Meets the Mayor
The most widely circulated American comic book this week isn’t anything you can buy in comics stores: it’s Amazing Spider-Man, You’re Hired!, a skinny one-shot included with Wednesday’s New York Daily News, and distributed for free on Marvel’s iPhone/iPad app. (It doesn’t seem to be available on the Web, though.) Written by Warren …
The Boys Who Might’ve Been Harry Potter
An everyday bespectacled teenage boy from Britain suddenly discovers that he is destined to become the most powerful magician of all – oh, and that he has a surprising affinity with owls. It’s the formula that made JK Rowling’s Harry Potter a massive success, but seven years earlier, Neil Gaiman was doing exactly the same thing for DC …
MySpace Integrates Facebook, Universe Doesn’t Collapse
You can now log into the social network that nobody uses anymore with your username and password from the social network everyone uses. And with that, MySpace has pretty much given up on trying to be a social network in the interest of serving as a personalized entertainment site instead.
That’s actually pretty smart.
You can now …
Tough New Anti-Piracy Legislation on the Way?
The US Senate Judiciary Committee has passed controversial new legislation to fight internet piracy that will allow the Justice Department to shut down domain names of sites that, in their view, enable piracy. The legislation was opposed by many, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Amazon.com and Google, all of whom felt that …
FCC To Step In Over Cable Provider/Broadcaster Disputes
The skirmishes that have left cable viewers in different parts of the country without channels like Fox Sports, Food Network and G4 over the last few months may soon be a thing of the past, if cable companies manage to convince lawmakers to set new rules that would, they argue, protect customers from disappearing content in the …