Amazon Pacts With Universal to Stream Movies to Subscribers

Continuing its chase of Netflix, Amazon.com struck another licensing agreement for streaming content, this time with NBC Universal for movies.our editor recommends4 Ways Amazon vs. Netflix is Good CBS, Netflix Sign Two-Year Content Agreement The deal announced Thursday comes a week after it struck a similar one with CBS and after Netflix re-upped with NBCU in a deal involving TV shows. While Amazon and Universal wouldn’t disclose the number of titles involved – or any financial metrics – the arrangement puts the number of movie and TV titles that Amazon makes available to its Prime Instant Video subscribers above 9,000. Some of the licensed film titles involved in the deal announced Thursday include Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Billy Elliott, Babe, Fletch and Notting Hill. Amazon’s offering is free to subscribers of its Prime discount shipping service, which is $79 a year. Netflix charges $96 a year for unlimited streaming. Netlix, though won’t say how many titles are available, except that it is “vastly more” that what Amazon offers. "We are very excited to offer Prime members popular Universal films at no additional cost," Cameron Janes, director of Amazon Instant Video, said in a press release Thursday. "Our customers love movies and now we offer them more than 2,000 movies to choose from with Prime Instant Video." When Amazon announced a week ago a deal with CBS for TV shows like Frasier, Cheers, Star Trek and The Tudors, it boasted of 8,000 titles for Prime streamers, suggesting that the arrangement disclosed Thursday involved up to 1,000 Universal movies. Related Topics Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Cheers Amazon.com NBCUniversal Universal Pictures Netflix Star Trek

Rosario Dawson Falls Into Trance

Vincent Cassel also aboardThe cast of Danny Boyle's next film, Trance, just keeps getting better and better. The latest names poised to sign on? Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassel. There have been a few casting switcheroos on this one, mostly notably the apparent loss of Michael Fassbender. And there's still no confirmed word on whether the likes of Colin Firth will be aboard when the cameras crank this autumn. But what we do know right now is that James McAvoy will play an employee of an art auction house who acts as the inside man during a heist. The crime goes badly wrong and McAvoy ends up with amnesia about where the loot is being hidden. That leads his much more dangerous accomplice (Cassel) to try to crack the secrets out of him using a hypnotist. Dawson, meanwhile, has signed up for the main female character, a woman who develops an odd relationship with both of them. Feeling like a return to Boyle's Shallow Grave/Trainspotting roots, Trance will be shot with a thrifty budget, before the footage is shelved as the director concentrates on his London Olympic opening ceremony duties. Once those are complete, he'll pick Trance back up again and start editing in August 2012 ready for a March 2013 release.

Chuck Close

Chuck Close's father died when he was eleven years old. Most of his early works are very large portraits based on photographs (Photorealism or Hyperrealism technique) of family and friends, often other artists. In 1962, he received his B.A. from the University of Washington in Seattle. He then attended graduate school at Yale University, where he received his MFA in 1964. After Yale, he lived in Europe for a while on a Fulbright grant. When he returned to the US, he worked as an art teacher at the University of Massachusetts.

Close had been known for his skillful brushwork as a graduate student at Yale University. As he explained in a 2009 interview with the Cleveland Ohio Plain Dealer, he made a choice in 1967 to make art hard for himself and force a personal artistic breakthrough by abandoning the paintbrush. "I threw away my tools", Close said. "I chose to do things I had no facility with. The choice not to do something is in a funny way more positive than the choice to do something. If you impose a limit to not do something you've done before, it will push you to where you've never gone before."

Close's first one-man show was in 1970. His work was first exhibited at the New York Museum of Modern Art in early 1973. In 1979 his work was included in the Whitney Biennial. "One demonstration of the way photography became assimilated into the art world is the success of photorealist painting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is also called super-realism or hyper-realism and painters like Richard Estes, Denis Peterson, Audrey Flack, and Chuck Close often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs. The everyday nature of the subject matter of the paintings likewise worked to secure the painting as a realist object."

One photo of Philip Glass was included in his black and white series in 1969, redone with water colors in 1977, again redone with stamp pad and fingerprints in 1978, and also done as gray handmade paper in 1982.

Close suffers from Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, in which he is unable to recognize faces. Due to this disorder, Close was first driven to paint portraiture. By painting portraits, he is better able to try and recognize and remember faces.