Article by James Gevork of Starstruck Extreme

Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon has just been released this past week and flocks of people have already watched it and it has already hit the box office status.  The much awaited third movie from the Transformers franchise did not disappoint fans. Megan Fox did not return as Mikaela Banes but Victoria’s Secret model, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley comes in to play Sam Witwicky’s love interest. She plays Carly Spencer, the original character from the cartoon which Mikaela Banes was based on.  The third movie sees Sam Witwicky, played by actor Shia Labeouf, freshly out of college, with a new job and a new girlfriend, as well as another Decepticon plot to rule the universe to tear down. Catch Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon in theatres near you!

 Monte Carlo is another movie whichopened this past weekend. It stars Disney Channel’s star Selena Gomez, Gossip Girls’ Leighton Meester and Katie Cassidy. It is set in Monte Carlo and tells of a story about a girl who assumes an heiress’ identity when she is mistaken for the heiress. This is a definitely fun movie to watch with your tweens.

 Zookeeper is another movie to watch out for. It is set to come out in July 8^th. It stars funny man Kevin James with Rosario Dawson and Leslie Bibb. It’s a story about animals breaking their code of silence and decides to talk to help their Zookeeper find love. Definitely a fun family movie, catch it when it comes out in theatres on July 8, 2011.

Article by Jackson Esmalian of The Gang TV

Celebrities and their families are never spared from the spotlight and drama. Award winning actor Billy Bob Throton is a testament to this. Just recently, Thorton’s daughter, 32 year old daughter Amanda Brumfield was found guilty of manslaughter.

On October of 2008, Brumfield’s goddaughter, 1 year old Olivia Madison Garcia died while in Brumfields care. Brumfield shred a close relationship with the family of Olivia. Apparently she was best friends with the child’s mother. In her apartment diapers, a playpen and other supplies for child care were found, supporting her claims of having close ties with the family.

The defense claims that Olivia had fallen out of the rib while trying to climb out. Reports show that this caused a “second-impact syndrome”. In short it affected an earlier injury that was already present. After the accident Brumfield painted the child’s toenails and proceeded to feed her bananas then lay with her on the floor before reporting the accident to police 2 hours later. Earlier charges f first degree murder were waived by the jury earlier.

Brumfield and Thorton have not been in a good relationship. The Actor separated with Bromfield’s mother early in her life and they have not kept in touch much. Thorton has admitted not having been there for Brumfield in her early life, for which he expressed much guilt.  Before the indiction Thorton and Brumfield were said to have reconciled but the relationship between father and daughter never improved. They have been estranged for quite some time now.

Whether you like Taylor Swift, Garth Brooks, or Keith Urban, there’s one way by which you will listen to their music other than going out and buying it and that’s by tuning in to your favorite country music radio station.

And even though bands like Dream Theater, Phish, and other bands that favored playing live as opposed to airplay of their records, you can even find stations that play their music almost all of the time, along with other bands in the same genre.

It’s no different with Christian music where you can not only hear bands like Petra, who have gone long since, along with artists that play some inspiring devotional music, such as Steven Curtis Chapman and so on.

If you live in the United States, it might be easy to listen to your favorite bands or genre of music that is readily available through the several local radio stations throughout the country. But what if you live outside of the United States?

There’s a solution to this that has been getting better and better since the previous century through the ability to listen to music online. And no, we’re not talking about illegal downloads, but online radio that has literally exploded in terms of content by citizen DJs (if there is such a word) and by local radio stations that understand what it means to have a global audience loyal to their programming.

And you can find it all, whether you love 80s rock, or pop, or even the latest offerings in smooth jazz in the highest quality of sound that is just as good as the sound quality that you’ll get to hear on conventional radio.

No matter what you want, it can be found over the internet.

Let us admit the fact that the Christian music industry is one of the fastest growing industries today whose expansion is twice the rate of the secular music industry. And there are just as many radio stations that play this kind of music with millions of viewers wanting to listen to the songs that are released every week.

Since music is a major part of Christianity, there are a large number of artists that record albums and even have a tour to visit fans that love their music and the message it conveys. But since they cannot go everywhere, to other countries, for example, finding another medium to convey the message of hope, love, and peace in the form of gospel music has made itself available over the internet.

While there are radio stations that do play music that is related to Christianity, this has spread to other countries, thanks to the far-reaching effects of free internet radio.  With the kind of choices that are available to users nowadays, there is no doubt that you not only keep with the latest updates in Christian music but also find access to some of the older songs that you also grew up with.

And if you are not sure on how to access these radio stations, all you have to do is log on to the internet and find free radio stations that will not only play this kind of music but tunes from several other genres as well.

Steven Spielberg, in securing the screen rights to the book known as Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy written by two prominent Guardian journalists is all set to have his studio oversee the productions of the movie.

The book has been written as an investigative thriller along the lines of “All the President’s Men” carefully documenting the life of Julian Assange right from his childhood all the way to the creation of the infamous Wikileaks website in 2006.

It also meticulously documents the close and secretive relationship between The Guardian and Wikileaks, and their collaboration which is considered by many to be one of the greatest journalistic scoops for a long time to come. Along with this, there is detailed coverage of the leak of almost 250000 secret cables that were released in December 2010.

While this project in no doubt undertaken by DreamWorks, Spielberg’s company, there are other projects that are also underway to cover this story in the form of a documentary by Alex Gibney and a biopic that is based on a New York article by Raffi Khatchadourian and that will be co-produced by HBO and the BBC.

In comparison to these projects, DreamWorks version seems to be in the initial stages since it requires a screenwriter, a cast and a director. And while Julian Assange fighting with an extradition order to Sweden where he has to deal with sexual abuse allegations, there is little doubt that this movie will raise a lot of eyebrows and get attention from moviegoers everywhere.

If there is anything that is apparent about Christopher Dodd, Hollywood’s newly elected chief lobbyist, it is the fact that he says what he means even if it is a bit too truthful. Speaking at the Cinemacon Industry Convention not so long ago, he said that Hollywood knows how to sell their movies but is not able to market itself in the way it should.

It is due to this fact that Washington does not look at Hollywood as an industry that generates billions of dollars to the economy and employs millions as a result, but just as ‘red carpets and tuxedos’.

This is the reason why Dodd considers this aspect to be top priority since he has been elected as Hollywood’s chief lobbyist.  He thinks that the best place to deliver his message is through the convention where movie studios introduce their upcoming movies to movie theater owners.

While he did not want to announce any policy changes on top issues such as piracy, it was clear that his stance on Hollywood to market itself much better was of primary importance at this point.

And while his suggestion to move theater owners to host Saturday morning community meetings to discuss issues that the movie business faces along with inviting their local senator among other heads in politics might be an impressive one, there is no doubt that it will not be long before Hollywood gets a makeover in regard to their ability to market themselves and their offers to both the public and the politicians in Washington.

Everyone loves listening to the radio whether you are doing some work or simply relaxing. Even though the medium of television has pushed the radio out of the spotlight some time ago, there is no doubt that whether you like listening to specific music genres such as gospel music or any other, the radio is still a popular medium of entertainment.

And if that is not enough, ever since the prior limitations of only listening to local radio stations has been removed, thanks to several of them making their presence felt over the internet, this new avatar has garnered a global base of listeners regardless of whether you’d like to tune into music or even your favorite talk radio show.

Yes, there are websites that you can visit and find radio stations – and you get to listen for free, that play a plethora of genres ranging from rock, pop, jazz, and world music, as well as music from different eras as such as 70s, 80s and 90s music.

All you need is a computer and a broadband internet connection in order to access these stations. All in all, listening to some entertaining music while working, doing the house chores, or relaxing is as simple as doing a Google search over the Internet.

If one has had any doubts as to whether the movie industry has fared well over the last year or so, thanks to the economic recession, file sharing, BitTorrent and so on and so forth, the recent results that have come from the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) suggest a different tale altogether by indicating an 8 % improvement over 2009. Yet one wonders how this is possible due to the fact that all these factors can be a dampener in the revenues that the box office generates.

However, one can take into consideration two factors that have led to a stellar performance by the movie industry this year, and that is because of the recent success of 3D movies and the growth of the Asian market.

And while the naysayers were all but predicting the end of profitability as we know it in the movie industry, thanks to the headway that Kazaa and FastTrack were making in those days, nothing can be further from the truth as movie industry officials now think of this phenomenon as having an adverse impact on moviegoers who would enjoy getting their movies for free instead of going out to watch a movie.

But with the latest advancements, one can only surmise that despite the onslaught of the digital age into almost every area of our lives, the movie industry will continue to thrive, thanks to its latest innovations and the recent MPAA results say just that.

Television killed radio in the 80s. That’s for a fact, and people who lived during those times know how music television literally changed the way people listened to music as a whole. And while one good turn deserves another, the exponential growth of the internet also resulted in television taking the hit in terms of viewership just as the radio had done so many years ago.

However, one should know that the internet has spawned a new avatar of radio in the form of streaming radio that pretty much anyone in the world can listen provided they have a decent internet connection.

It doesn’t matter whether your tastes lie in jazz, rock and pop or even talk radio as there are several radio stations over the internet that caters to listeners that enjoy specific genres as a whole. What this means is that regardless of where you are, one can listen to specific radio stations in locations that they’ve never had access to until the internet (and Web 2.0) has reinvented radio in this format.

Of course, there are some of us who don’t specifically like any genres in particular, and there are options available for them too in the form of the top 40 songs that are released every week, and this only goes to show that the reach of the internet is limitless, and more importantly, that radio will always be a part of our lives.

Almost all of us have grown up in an era of music that we stay attached to. Take for example, 80s music, which comprised of glam rock and synth pop that remains fondly as memories that we will always cherish despite the fact that things have certainly changed a lot since then.

Of course, the idols that we had in those days have either slowed down (and become demi-gods in any case) or have also given way to younger stars, thanks to changing trends in music, and perhaps how we listen to music as well.

Of course, with MTV all that changed as music videos became an integral part of 90s music, while the rise of a different kind of pop dominated the scene except for some rock bands such Guns N Roses, Metallica and Nirvana.

And while some of young ones who used the internet for almost anything and everything these days are pretty ignorant of the days gone by, some of us can still relive those special moments in our childhood by listening to free internet radio that play music from these eras.

And while this is a constant reminder that we are not getting any younger, we can possibly continue to feel young by perusing through the large catalogue of internet radio stations that have sprung up over the internet, and is run by people who share our love for music and the eras in which it was much more than music!