The documentary "Bully" has sparked much controversy over its ratings battle, and it looks like all the hubbub may have worked in favor of youngsters pining to see the film. more ›

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) member who leaked five feature films to The Pirate Bay was sentenced to two years of probation and fined $3,000 today. Wes DeSoto, 34, pleaded guilty in October to a single federal account of uploading a copyrighted work being prepared for commercial distribution. more ›

At the National Association of Theatre Owners' CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas, Christopher Dodd, the former Democratic senator from Connecticut, is addressing attendees today in his first public comments since taking over as chairman and CEO of the MPAA nine days ago, reports Deadline. more ›

The MPAA filed a suit on behalf of five major Hollywood studios against Hotfile, a subscription-based online streaming media service. The suit alleges that the Panama-based company engages in "unabashed theft" of copyrighted material and of further fostering it by incentivizing and rewarding its users to upload and link to the most popular files. more ›

Between Kanye West's Runaway and Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, ballet is staging a serious cinematic comeback. Black Swan opened at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year, and the psychosexual thriller has soared from festival to festival ever since, in the same company as Aronofsky's previous film The Wrestler. more ›

Despite the lack of Gimps, samurai slices and Nazi scalps, Jackie Brown remains my favorite Quentin Tarantino film. I'm pleased as rum punch to share that it's playing in a free, outdoor screening Friday at sundown as part of the Alamo Drafthouse's Rolling Roadshow series, presented in association with the Cinefamily. The series goes beyond the drive-in, bringing audiences to the very locations where films were shot (in this case, it's the Del Amo Mall in Torrance). If that weren't enough, QT & Co. will be on-deck, hopefully accompanied by chicks with guns. But this isn't your only chance to catch the stars under the stars this weekend! The Echo Park Film Center's Filmmobile brings writer/director Allison Anders and her girl gang drama Mi Vida Loca back to the streets of LA (follow EPFC on Twitter @EPFCfilmmobile for exact location), and the Outdoor Cinema Food Fest hauls The Hangover into Exposition Park. more ›

A FCC decision today approved a request to allow first-run movies to be seen on home TVs, even while films are still in theatres, according to The Wrap. "Approving a request by the Motion Picture Association of America, the FCC rejected objections from the National Association of Theater Owners and the Independent Film and Television Alliance... more ›

Yvonne Braithwaite-Burke doesn't trust you to pay your Metro fare; NPR reports on moves to make Metro's honor system history. more ›

Photo by kpe II via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr more ›

Who made this weekend festival weekend? There are about a million different events going on around the city this weekend, so enjoy the fall weather and get out there! One strike against pirated movies: the MPAA is filing a lawsuit against internet video sharing sites cinematube.net and ssupload.com, claiming that these sites infringe upon the MPAA's copyright. Kiefer Sutherland could be facing up to 18 months of jail time for his drunk-driving arrest. Next... more ›

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is pissed about the "hundreds of billions" of dollars swallowed by piracy and counterfeiting and it has taken the outrage to our fair City of Angels ("...and Demons," as the press release says). The Chamber has released results of a Gallup survey, coinciding with this week's Counterfeiting and Piracy Awareness shenanigans claiming that one-quarter of all Angelenos are admitted pirates. But we're certain that percentage is far greater. In fact,... more ›

We're not sure how you say bullshit in French, but there's a "controversial" film slated to screen at Cannes this week that should be called Red Flag. more ›

A Word or 36: 60 Minutes was interesting what with alleged ratfink George Tenet telling us all the things he should have been telling us years ago, when it would have mattered, when we could have done something about it. Tonight - Monday - April 30th, 2007 D'backs @ Dodgers (PRIME, 7:00 p.m.) How I Met Your Mother/The New Adventures of Old Christine/Two and a Half Men/The King of Queens (CBS, 8-10:00 p.m.) Two... more ›

After yesterday's announcement of the death of former MPAA president and LBJ presidential aide Jack Valenti, we thought Freakazoid's tribute to Valenti might be a nice way to rememberthe man. more ›

Jack Valenti dies. Does this mean the end of those annoying 'downloading movies is like stealing your grandmother's purse' previews before every dvd ever made? - Bloomberg Eve crashes her gold Maserati on Hollywood Blvd. - TMZ Sexual battery charge filed in Los Angeles against ’Girls Gone Wild’ founder Joe Francis. Look out for 'Some Dude Goes Wild on Joe Francis' on dvd, real soon. - Boston Herald Dad who was released from prison... more ›

Welcome to the LAist weekly tech news roundup. Each week I'll be bringing you the latest, and hopefully most interesting, technology news from around the city, the state, the country and maybe even the world. Also, if you have any news, tips or things of interest you want to point out, feel free to drop me a line at: themacist [at] gmail dot com. Now, let's get to the news: Microsoft was ordered by... more ›

This is your last warning. Don't go posting those Oscar screeners on the Internet. Not now, and not ever! After all, you could end up like Salvador Nunez Jr., a 27-year-old Norwalk resident who was charged today with copyright infringement. Nunez allegedly got DVD copies of Flushed Away from his sister, who has the privilege of reviewing cartoons for the Academy. The MPAA knows this because they imprint digital watermarks on all screeners in... more ›

This Film Is Not Yet Rated - Keep the violence cartoonish and the sex missionary -- that seems to be the guiding principle of America's self-appointed film censors, the MPAA. In this fascinating look into the heart of a corrupt, shadowy and increasingly out-of-touch organization director Kirby Dick deftly exposes the MPAA's rank hypocrisy vis à vis depictions of homosexuality, female pleasure, "abnormal" sexuality and violent content. more ›

The modern day saints in the movie industry have somehow convinced Los Angeles Boy Scouts that the virtues of copyrights are on par with first aid and citizenship. So, yes, modern day LA Scouts can get a merit badge for showing that they demonstrate an understanding of digital law. Take that, knots! Scouts will be instructed in the basics of copyright law and learn how to identify five types of copyrighted works and three... more ›

If you’ve ever wondered why most sex scenes in mainstream American movies suck (and not in the good way), then this movie is for you. This Film Is Not Yet Rated is a surprisingly good documentary that unearths the shadowy mechanisms of the MPAA’s “voluntary” movie rating system. This film is very smartly directed by Kirby Dick and cleverly edited by Matthew Clarke, fastidiously untangling the collusion between movie studios and the government to... more ›

This week a memo was leaked, or found, or stolen from South Park co-creator Matt Stone to the MPAA (the people who hand out the ratings for movies). The film in question was South Park: The Movie. more ›

Director Atom Egoyan will have a hard time selling his new film Where The Truth Lies. The MPAA slapped a rare NC-17 rating on the flick for explicit sexual scenes between the three costars: Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth and Rachel Blanchard. The movie also stars Alison Lohman. more ›

Hollywood studios filed a new batch of lawsuits against file swappers on Thursday mostly targeting those who frequently use Bittorrent technology. And, for the first time, the studio's lawsuits used the peer-to-peer file sharing companies' own data to track down individuals accused of trading movies online. The Motion Picture Association of America said it filed 286 lawsuits against people around the United States based on information acquired from file-trading sites shut down earlier in the year. more ›

Over at BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow showcases some really sharp reasons why Hollywood is dying. The most important part of all this is that piracy of movies isn't mentioned at all. Although, the MPAA would have us believe that piracy is the holy grail of a slumping box office. more ›

It used to be "You can click but you can't hide" but now the MPAA is going even further. While it might be small potatoes compared to the $4.8 million police were granted to get you to buckle up, the MPAA has given $186 grand for surveillance cameras to be placed in LA's downtown Fashion district -- the "hotbed of hard copy movie piracy" according to Daily Variety. more ›

First, the MPAA started running their own "Respect Copyright" advertisements, hosted by set painters, stuntmen and the jelly-bean dish refillers at craft service tables. Fortunately, people fought back. What followed was a call to arms against the MPAA's "Respect Copyright" in-theater commercials by a myriad of Internet sites, including our friends over at Defamer. more ›