Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Tolkien Lawyers Sue Studio, Ahead of ‘Hobbit’ Release

Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins in New Line Cinema’s and MGM's fantasy adventure “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Warner Bros. has declined to comment on a lawsuit by the estate of "The Hobbit" author J.R.R. Tolkien. (AFP Photo
Los Angeles. Warner Bros. declined to comment Tuesday on a lawsuit by the estate of author J.R.R. Tolkien claiming that the film giant is abusing its right to merchandising linked to “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit.”

Filed in Los Angeles weeks before the release of the first “Hobbit” movie, the lawsuit — a copy of which was obtained by the Hollywood Reporter — seeks at least $80 million in damages from the studio.

The late British author’s lawyers claim Warner has breached the terms of an original agreement which allowed it to make money from the kind of physical merchandising common in the pre-Internet age.

“The original contracting parties... contemplated a limited grant of the right to sell consumer products of the type regularly merchandised at the time such as figurines, tableware, stationery items, clothing and the like.

“They did not include any grant of exploitations such as electronic or digital rights, rights in media yet to be devised or other intangibles such as rights in services,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit claims that Warner Bros. and other defendants, including New Line Productions Inc, have “with increasing boldness, engaged in a continuing and escalating pattern of usurping rights to which they are not entitled.”

The defendants “also have asserted and continue to assert that they have rights relating to a wide variety of goods and services beyond ‘articles of tangible personal property,’” the suit reads.

A spokesman for Warner Bros. responded to a request for reaction by saying: “No comment at this time.”

The lawsuit comes ahead of the world premiere in Wellington next week of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” the first installment of director Peter Jackson’s highly anticipated new Tolkien trilogy.

The first “Hobbit” movie will be released worldwide in December. The second, “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” is due next December, and “The Hobbit: There and Back Again” in July 2014, according to the IMDb movie database.

The “Lord of the Rings” trilogy of movies — based on Tolkien’s epic fantasy novels originally published in the 1950s — were released in 2001, 2002 and 2003.

Agence France-Presse

Monday, November 12, 2012

Kidung Jemaat 427 Kusuka Menuturkan - I Love To Tell the Story


 
 
Translete in Indonesia "Kusuka Menuturkan", KJ 427
1 'Ku suka menuturkan cerita mulia, cerita Tuhan Yesus
dan cinta kasihNya. 'Ku suka menuturkan cerita yang benar,
penawar hati rindu, pelipur terbesar.
'Ku suka menuturkan, 'ku suka memasyurkan cerita
Tuhan Yesus dan cinta kasihNya.
Mat 28:19-20;Mrk 16:15;Luk 24:47;Kis 1:8;
2 'Ku suka menuturkan cerita mulia yang sungguh melebihi
impian dunia. 'Ku suka menuturkan semua padamu,
sebab cerita itu membawa s'lamatku.
'Ku suka menuturkan, 'ku suka memasyurkan cerita
Tuhan Yesus dan cinta kasihNya.
3 'Ku suka menuturkan cerita mulia; setiap kuulangi
bertambah manisnya. 'Ku suka menuturkan sabdaNya
yang besar; dan yang belum percaya, supaya mendengar.
'Ku suka menuturkan, 'ku suka memasyurkan cerita
Tuhan Yesus dan cinta kasihNya.
4 'Ku suka menuturkan cerita mulia; pun bagi
yang percaya tak hilang indahnya. Dan nanti kunyanyikan
di sorga yang kekal cerita termulia yang lama kukenal.
'Ku suka menuturkan, 'ku suka memasyurkan cerita
Tuhan Yesus dan cinta kasihNya.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

U.S. Presidential Election 2012: Barack Obama Wins Re-election

President Barack Obama has retained the White House and has defeated Republican challenger Mitt Romney. The results was projected just before 11:30 p.m. ET by several U.S. networks including CNN, NBC and CBS.

“Four more years,” Obama was the simple message on Obama’s official twitter account.
Obama defeated Romney in a series of key swing states despite a weak economic recovery and persistent high unemployment as U.S. voters decided between two starkly different visions for the country.

Obama’s narrow wins in Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire – all states that Romney had contested – effectively ended Romney’s hopes of capturing the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the White House.

Obama’s victory in the hotly contested swing state of Ohio — as projected by TV networks — put him over the top in the fight for the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the White House and ended Romney’s hopes of pulling off a string of swing-state upsets.

Obama scored narrow wins in Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire – all states that Romney had contested – while the only swing state captured by Romney was North Carolina, according to network projections.

There was no immediate word from the Romney camp on the reported results.

Obama enters his second four-year term faced with a difficult task of tackling $1 trillion annual deficits, reducing a $16 trillion national debt, overhauling expensive social programs and dealing with a gridlocked U.S. Congress that looked likely to maintain the same partisan makeup.

The economy was rated the top issue by about 60% of voters surveyed as they left their polling places. But more said former President George W. Bush bore responsibility for current circumstances than Obama did after nearly four years in office.

About 4 in 10 said the economy is on the mend, but more than that said it was stagnant or getting worse more than four years after the near-collapse of 2008. The survey was conducted for The Associated Press and a group of television networks.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images: Supporters of U.S. President Barack Obama cheer after networks project Obama as reelected during the Obama Election Night watch party at McCormick Place November 6, 2012 in Chicago, Illinois
Democrats got off to a quick start in their bid to renew their Senate majority, capturing seats in Indiana and Massachusetts now in Republican hands.

In Maine, independent former Gov. Angus King was elected to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Olympia Snowe. He has not yet said which party he will side with, but Republicans attacked him in television advertising during the race, and Democrats rushed to his cause.

Polls were still open in much of the country as the two rivals began claiming the spoils of a brawl of an election in a year in which the struggling economy put a crimp in the middle class dreams of millions.

The president was in Chicago as he awaited the voters’ verdict on his four years in office. He told reporters he had a concession speech as well as victory remarks prepared. He congratulated Romney on a spirited campaign. “I know his supporters are just as engaged, just as enthusiastic and working just as hard today” as Obama’s own, he added.

Romney reciprocated, congratulating the man who he had campaigned against for more than a year.
Earlier, he raced to Ohio and Pennsylvania for Election Day campaigning and projected confidence as he flew home to Massachusetts. “We fought to the very end, and I think that’s why we’ll be successful,” he said, adding that he had finished writing a speech anticipating victory but nothing if the election went to his rival.

But the mood soured among the Republican high command as the votes came in and Obama ground out a lead in critical states.

Like Obama, Vice President Joe Biden was in Chicago as he waited to find out if he was in line for a second term. Republican running mate Paul Ryan was with Romney in Boston, although he kept one eye on his re-election campaign for a House seat in Wisconsin, just in case.

Supporters of US President Barack Obama cheer results on election night November 6, 2012 in Chicago, Illinois. AFP PHOTO / Saul LOEBSAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
Voters also chose a new Congress to serve alongside the man who will be inaugurated president in January, Democrats defending their majority in the Senate, and Republicans in the House.

The long campaign’s cost soared into the billions, much of it spent on negative ads, some harshly so.

In the presidential race, an estimated one million commercials aired in nine battleground states where the rival camps agreed the election was most likely to be settled – Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada.

In a months-long general election ad war that cost nearly $1 billion, Romney and Republican groups spent more than $550 million and Obama and his allies $381 million, according to organizations that track advertising.

In Virginia, the polls had been closed for several minutes when Obama’s campaign texted a call for volunteers “to make sure everyone who’s still in line gets to vote.”

In Florida, there were long lines at the hour set for polls to close. Under state law, everyone waiting was entitled to cast a ballot.

According to the exit poll, 53 percent of voters said Obama is more in touch with people like them, compared to 43 percent for Romney.

About 60% said taxes should be increased, taking sides on an issue that divided the president and Romney. Obama wants to let taxes rise on upper incomes, while Romney does not.

Other than the battlegrounds, big states were virtually ignored in the final months of the campaign. Romney wrote off New York, Illinois and California, while Obama made no attempt to carry Texas, much of the South or the Rocky Mountain region other than Colorado.

There were 33 Senate seats on the ballot, 23 of them defended by Democrats and the rest by Republicans.

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque: Supporters of U.S. President Obama cheer during his election night rally in Chicago
 Democratic Rep. Chris Murphy, a Democrat, won a Connecticut seat long held by Sen. Joe Lieberman, retiring after a career that included a vice presidential spot on Al Gore’s ticket in 2000. It was Republican Linda McMahon’s second defeat in two tries, at a personal cost of $92 million.

The GOP needed a gain of three for a majority if Romney won, and four if Obama was re-elected. Neither Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada nor GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was on the ballot, but each had high stakes in the outcome.

All 435 House seats were on the ballot, including five where one lawmaker ran against another as a result of once-a-decade redistricting to take population shifts into account. Democrats needed to pick up 25 seats to gain the majority they lost two years ago.

Depending on the outcome of a few races, it was possible that white men would wind up in a minority in the Democratic caucus for the first time.

Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, raised millions to finance get-out-the-vote operations in states without a robust presidential campaign, New York, Illinois and California among them. His goal was to minimize any losses, or possibly even gain ground, no matter Romney’s fate. House Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California campaigned aggressively, as well, and faced an uncertain political future if her party failed to win control.

In gubernatorial races, Republicans picked up North Carolina, where Pat McCrory won easily. The incumbent, Democratic Gov. Bev Purdue, did not seek re-election.

In a campaign that traversed contested Republican primaries last winter and spring, a pair of political conventions this summer and three presidential debates, Obama, Romney, Biden and Ryan spoke at hundreds of rallies, were serenaded by Bruce Springstein and Meat Loaf and washed down hamburgers, pizza, barbecue and burrito bowls.

Obama was elected the first black president in 2008, and four years later, Romney became the first Mormon to appear on a general election ballot. Yet one man’s race and the other’s religion were never major factors in this year’s campaign for the White House, a race dominated from the outset by the economy.

Over and over, Obama said that during his term the nation has begun to recover from the worst recession since the Great Depression. While he conceded progress has been slow, he accused Romney of offering recycled Republican policies that have helped the wealthy and harmed the middle class in the past and would do so again.

Romney countered that a second Obama term could mean a repeat recession in a country where economic growth has been weak and unemployment is worse now than when the president was inaugurated. A wealthy former businessman, he claimed the knowledge and the skills to put in place policies that would make the economy healthy again.

In a race where the two men disagreed often, one of the principal fault lines was over taxes. Obama campaigned for the renewal of income tax cuts set to expire on Dec. 31 at all income levels except above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples.

Romney said no one’s taxes should go up in uncertain economic times. In addition, he proposed a 20 percent cut across the board in income tax rates but said he would end or curtail a variety of tax breaks to make sure federal deficits didn’t rise.

The differences over taxes, the economy, Medicare, abortion and more were expressed in intensely negative advertising.

Obama launched first, shortly after Romney dispatched his Republican foes in his quest for the party nomination.

One memorable commercial showed Romney singing an off-key rendition of “America The Beautiful.” Pictures and signs scrolled by saying that his companies had shipped jobs to Mexico and China, that Massachusetts state jobs had gone to India while he was governor and that he has personal investments in Switzerland, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

Romney spent less on advertising than Obama. A collection of outside groups made up the difference, some of them operating under rules that allowed donors to remain anonymous. Most of the ads were of the attack variety. But the Republican National Committee relied on one that had a far softer touch, and seemed aimed at voters who had been drawn to the excitement caused by Obama’s first campaign. It referred to a growing national debt and unemployment, then said, “He tried. You tried. It’s OK to make a change.”

More than 30 million voters cast early ballots in nearly three dozen states, a reflection of the growing appeal of getting a jump on the traditional Election Day. NP