LOS ANGELES (AP) ? The "Twilight" team finally has earned some love ? or loathing ? from Team Razzies.
"The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn ? Part 2" was picked as last year's worst picture Saturday by the Razzies, an Academy Awards spoof that hands out prizes for Hollywood's lousiest movies on the eve of the Oscars.
The finale to the blockbuster supernatural romance dominated the Razzies with seven awards, including worst actress for Kristen Stewart, supporting actor for Taylor Lautner, director for Bill Condon and worst screen couple for Lautner and child co-star Mackenzie Foy.
Adam Sandler was named worst actor for the raunchy comedy "That's My Boy," his second-straight win after 2011's "Jack and Jill," which swept all 10 Razzie categories a year ago. Pop singer Rihanna won worst supporting actress for the action dud "Battleship."
"Twilight" movies had been well represented in Razzie nominations over the years but had not won any key awards there. Razzie voters joke that as with "The Lord of the Rings" finale winning best picture at the Academy Awards, they were waiting for the last "Twilight" flick on which to heap their scorn.
"I have a pet theory, which is that the box office on 'Twilight' films is very impressive, but my theory is that instead of 40 million individual girls going to see it, it's 8 million girls going to see it five times each. People who love those movies just adore them," said Razzies founder John Wilson. "I believe the attitude of people who really love 'Twilight' movies toward this subject is very similar to the pomposity with which the Academy Awards addresses the whole rest of the world. Our whole existence is all about making fun of pompous, so 'Twilight' really is right up our alley."
The "Twilight" finale also won for worst screen ensemble and worst remake, rip-off or sequel. For worst picture, it beat out "Battleship," ''That's My Boy," the family flick "The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure" and Eddie Murphy's comedy flop "A Thousand Words."
Stewart's worst-actress prize came for both "Twilight" and her fairy-tale update "Snow White and the Huntsman."
In the five "Twilight" movies, Stewart stars as sullen teen Bella Swan, who falls for ageless vampire hunk Edward Cullen (worst-actor nominee Robert Pattinson) and finds herself at the center of a love triangle with him and her childhood pal, werewolf stud Jacob Black (Lautner).
Stewart set a consistent standard of emotional stoniness throughout the "Twilight" movies, Wilson said.
"Acting should involve having an expression on your face, and she is blank, other than the morose kind of half-Goth thing her character does," Wilson said. "I didn't realize Snow White and Bella were soul sisters, because of the very limited range of what she can do. I think it was Dorothy Parker who said about Katharine Hepburn that she runs the 'gamut of emotions from A to B.' Kristen Stewart is so expressionless she might as well be a brick wall."
Sandler's "That's My Boy," which also won the worst-screenplay Razzie, flopped at the box office and continues a gradual decline in receipts for the comic actor's movies.
"He's an enormous star who is on what I call the 'down-alator' of his career," Wilson said. "He's about to step off the same cliff Eddie Murphy stepped off about 10 years ago. Eddie Murphy has never come back, and Murphy is more talented."
Facebook Director of Product Blake Ross is leaving the company, he announced in a Facebook post yesterday afternoon. For those of you who weren't reading TechCrunch in 2007, Firefox co-founder Ross and Joe Hewitt came to Facebook through its acquisition of?Parakey, a web OS that was still in stealth at the time. Parakey was Facebook's first acquisition.?Hewitt, who spearheaded many Facebook Mobile projects, left the company in 2011.
Like Apple and Facebook, Microsoft has found itself victim of a cyberattack this week. Announced on its Security Response Center Blog, Microsoft says that it had detected an intrusion to a small number of corporate machines, though it claims that customer data was once again?unaffected. While Microsoft didn't expressly say that
TEL AVIV // An Israeli plan to drill for oil in the Golan Heights aims to entrench the country's hold on a territory Israel annexed from Syria despite international opposition, analysts said yesterday.
Experts say the Israeli decision to issue its first oil-exploration permit in the Golan to a settler-run company, was at least partly driven by the ultranationalist ideology of Israel's minister of water and energy resources, Uzi Landau, in a bid to convey a message that the Golan would not easily be returned to Syria.
The Israelis also appear to be taking advantage of the violence and chaos in Syria.
The timing of the decision "is directly related to the fact that the Syrian government is not free to deal with this problem and that the Syrian army cannot pose a threat to Israel right now", said Yaron Ezrahi, an Israeli political analyst.
"This is mostly an Israeli ploy to deepen its commitment to the occupied Golan Heights," said Mr Ezrahi. "It's part of the right's political programme."
The Israeli decision, which was announced late on Thursday, is likely draw into condemnation from the United States and other allies just weeks before Barack Obama, the US president, is due to visit the country for the first time since taking office in 2009.
Israel captured the Golan Heights during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, when it also took over the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The country annexed the Golan in 1981, although that move was never recognised by the international community.
It has not annexed the West Bank despite massively expanding its Jewish settlement enterprise there, and pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005.
The country had considered exploring for oil in the Golan previously, but chose not to carry out drilling to avoid clouding prospects of peace talks with Syria.
They held four rounds of indirect negotiations through Turkey in 2008 but these were suspended after Israel's invasion of Gaza in December that year.
The Israeli government may now view chances of renewing negotiations as dim, analysts said.
Yossi Alpher, a veteran commentator on Israeli politics and diplomacy, said: "There is no peace process with Syria, Syria is in a state of chaos and appears to be breaking up as a sovereign state - all this might have persuaded even centrist Israeli energy ministers to grant the oil licence."
The licence was granted to the Israeli subsidiary of US-based Genie Energy, headquartered in New Jersey, which is associated with several known pro-settler figures. Effie Eitam, a former Israeli minister who lives on a Golan settlement, runs Genie's Israeli business, and the company's advisers include the British media mogul Rupert Murdoch and Dick Cheney, who served as the US vice president under George W Bush from 2001 to 2009.
Geological testing by Israel had indicated a potential for "significant" oil deposits in the area, according to the Israeli business newspaper Globes.
The exploration licence is unlikely to upset Israelis, partly because the plateau is viewed as far less politically sensitive than the West Bank, where the Israeli occupation and settlement is hindering Palestinian statehood. Furthermore, polls have shown that most Israelis would oppose returning the Golan, which has become a major domestic tourist destination with its verdant nature trails, vineyards, orchards and a ski resort.
More than 20,000 settlers live in at least 30 Jewish communities in the Golan, where an approximately equal number of Syrians - mostly from the Druze sect - also reside. Israel views the high-altitude plateau as a major security asset because it gives the country a vantage point for monitoring Syrian army movements and serves as a natural blockade against any military threats from Syria, with which Israel has fought three wars since its creation in 1948. The Golan also provides about a third of Israel's fresh water supply and is the site of a major Israeli wind turbine project.
Experts say exploration for oil in the Golan may spur a potentially explosive situation should significant amounts be discovered.
"If Israelis will find oil, I assume there will be a greater degree of aggression on the part of the Syrians to restore their sovereignty over the Golan," Mr Ezrahi said.
While Israel's oil exploration may not deter future peace talks with Syria, it might stir tensions even if a pact is reached between the two countries, experts said. Israeli papers reported this month that the Egyptian minister of petroleum, Osama Kamal, has charged that Israel owes Egypt about US$480 billion (Dh1.76 trillion) for oil pumped from the Sinai Peninsula in the years after Israel captured the area in 1967. Israel returned Sinai to Egypt under a 1979 peace pact.
ROME (Reuters) - A leading member of Italy's center-left coalition, frontrunner in polls for this weekend's election, said on Thursday the country should seek revisions of European Union budget rules.
"We have a duty to renegotiate the fiscal compact," Nichi Vendola, leader of the Left Ecology Freedom party (SEL), told a briefing for foreign reporters. "Europe needs expansive economic policies."
Some investors fear that Vendola will push a center-left government too far to the left and prevent a coalition agreement with outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti, which is seen as the most market-friendly election outcome.
He is one of several front-line members of the center-left bloc who say the fiscal compact, a EU treaty imposing fiscal discipline and balanced budgets, will hamper Italy's recovery from its longest recession in two decades.
Vendola is the main coalition ally of Pier Luigi Bersani's Democratic Party (PD), which had a more than 5 point lead over Silvio Berlusconi's center-right when a polling blackout ahead of this weekend's election started on February 9.
While Bersani generally has tried to maintain good relations with Monti, Vendola and the prime minister have traded barbs throughout the election campaign.
"Monti's year in government left the country wounded," Vendola said on Thursday. "Austerity must be loosened to restore necessary oxygen to an economy that is out of breath."
Monti helped restore market confidence in Italy with an austerity drive when he was appointed in 2011 to head off a Greek-style debt crisis.
He sharply raised taxes and raised the retirement age to try to put accounts back on track, but the measures further weakened an economy already in recession.
Monti, now leader of a centrist bloc, may end up a Vendola ally after the vote if the center-left needs help to form a stable majority, despite the attacks during the campaign.
Monti has said Bersani should dump his coalition partner because he will hold up reforms that the euro zone's most sluggish economy desperately needs, while Vendola has accused Monti of stifling growth and driving up unemployment.
"I have no idiosyncratic personal beef with Monti," Vendola said. "If the center-left is not self-sufficient after the vote, we'll have to see if there is a majority in parliament that supports our agenda."
Bersani has said he will continue along Monti's path of fiscal prudence, while easing the tax burden on workers and pensioners. Monti has said he is willing to ally with "reformist" forces after the election.
(Reporting by Steve Scherer and Giselda Vagnoni; Writing by Steve Scherer; Editing by Michael Roddy)
Approximately 150 federal and state law enforcement agents launched a massive raid on one of the biggest?perpetrators?of government fraud in America: The Scooter Store. Yes, that's right. The nation's largest provider of single-person electric vehicles and power chairs is the target of a federal investigation, probably because many of the people who ride around their "personal mobility?devices" don't actually need them.
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Surf the Internet, draft important emails and enjoy your favorite apps with the refurbished Acer Iconia Tab with WiFi 10.1" Touchscreen Tablet PC. Featuring Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) OS, 16GB of internal storage, 1280 x 800 resolution and 802.11b/g/n WiFi, this tablet PC combines great performance and mobility. Stay connected, wherever you are.
Acer Iconia Tab with WiFi 10.1" Touchscreen Tablet PC:
Technical Specifications:
1.20GHz NVIDIA Tegra 3 Quad-Core Mobile processor
1GB DDR3 of system memory and 16GB on-board storage memory
10.1" touchscreen, 1280 x 800 resolution, virtual keyboard with Swype
Built-in 802.11b/g/n WiFi
Additional Features:
Front facing camera
Built-in microphone
16GB on-board storage memory, additional memory via microSD card slot
GPS
Software:
Android 4.0 OS (Ice Cream Sandwich)
What's in the Box: What's a Tablet PC?
Tablet PCs are compact, ultra-portable entertainment devices that let you read email, surf the internet, read eBooks, view photos, play games, listen to music and watch video files. Most tablets are based on a smaller operating system, which allows you to purchase and download additional applications from supported stores. Tablet PCs do not have a CD/DVD drive and will not run Microsoft Windows or its applications. Tablet PCs function as a secondary device for casual entertainment purposes, and are not meant to replace a computer. They are ideal for use around the home and on the go with Wi-Fi or 3-4g mobile broadband connections (pay as you go, contract may be required for service).
Platform:
Android
Primary Color:
Gray
Processor Brand:
NVIDIA
Processor Type:
NVIDIA Tegra 3 T30L Quad-Core Processor
Processor Speed:
1.20 GHz
System Ram:
1 GB
Hard Drive Size:
N/A
Laptop Screen Size:
N/A
Screen Type:
Multi-touch Display
Battery Type:
Lithium Ion
Network Connection:
802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN
Connector Type:
1 x MicroUSB 2.0
Operating System:
Google Android
Accessories Included:
AC Adapter
Operating System Version:
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
Model No.:
A210-10g16u
Shipping Weight (in pounds):
1.64
Product in Inches (L x W x H):
13.0?x?11.6?x?2.0
Walmart No.:
551134752
Rated 4.3 out of 5 by 7reviewers.
Rated 5 out of 5 by dave2144 `GREAT TABLET GREAT VALUE. SAME QUALITY AS TABLETS SELLING FOR TWICE THE PRICE. ONE OF THE FASTEST TABLETS AROUND QUAD CORE . SUPER BRIGHT CLEAR SCREEN. WI FI CONECTS INSTANTLY. TOUCH SCREEN IS ONE OF THE BEST. WE BOUGHT TWO. YOU WILL BE SATISFIED. ACER MAKES A GOOD PRODUCT 02/18/2013
Rated 1 out of 5 by Larzen Avoid Acer products Avoid the Acer A500 Tablet (and perhaps all Acer products). My A500 power switch was never soldered to the motherboard and as such became completely disconnected. 2 different professional techs informed me that this was a manufacturing defect . since it was 13 months old Acer refused to stand behind its product. They will only repair it for $199 plus shipping costs. Even though 2 professional repair tech assured me that the problem was due to a manufacturing defect. Even the tech I spoke to at acer.mytechhelp.com told me "... it was a built in design flaw , because that way consumers would have to replace their tablets. 02/12/2013
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