Week in review: Call of Duty Black Ops shows games can beat movies - Movies

Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:
Review: Call of Duty Black Ops shows games can beat the drama and action of movies — The continuous improvement of this game series shows something that fans have long known. Video games are as good at telling stories and conveying artistic themes as movies, books, or music.
Apple’s Wozniak calls Android the winner in smartphone race — Oh Woz, we love it when you shoot from the hip.
Can the internet bring down the TSA’s new enhanced pat-down search, also known as “touch my junk”? — Would-be traveler John Tyner has become a cause célèbre on the internet because he refused to subject himself to what he considered to be invasive body searching at the San Diego airport.
Steve Perlman shows off OnLive’s disruptive MicroConsole (video) — We talked to OnLive’s chief executive about its games-on-demand system.
Google investor John Doerr: Zynga is our best company ever — Doerr, the legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist, gave high praise to Zynga, the leading social game company, saying it was one of the best investments his firm had ever made
And here are five more articles we think are important, thought-provoking, fun, or all of the above:
Battle for your texts: Facebook Messages vs. Kik mobile chat — Now that we’ve seen Facebook’s new messaging service, it’s clearly not the threat to email we previously thought. But the new messaging service could pose a problem for the hot mobile chat startup Kik, which we’ve covered extensively.
Confirmed: Accel sold Facebook shares at $34B valuation — Looks like it isn’t just employees who are cashing out on their Facebook shares.
Microsoft and Cisco throw down the gauntlet for living room teleconferencing — Cisco’s Umi teleconferencing camera for home living room use and the Microsoft Kinect motion controller have more in common than you might think.
Why Texas may be a better electric car state than California — When power plant heavyweight NRG Energy announced that it would invest $10 million in the rollout of the nation’s first privately-finance electric vehicle charging network, it also revealed that the city it would debut in would be … Houston, Texas. Um, what?
Developers: Get ready for your closeup in VentureBeat’s Mobile App Spotlight — Are you an app developer with a creation that’s ready for the klieg lights? VentureBeat has partnered with Intel to provide a new showcase for your mobile app: VentureBeat’s Mobile App Spotlight.
Companies: Accel Partners, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Kik, Microsoft, NRG Energy
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Cineplex Entertainment to rent, sell movies online - Movies

TORONTO (Hollywood Reporter) - Far away from the local multiplex, Cineplex Entertainment is selling Hollywood movie titles to Canadians.
The Canuck exhibition giant has joined the movie download business, allowing Canadians to rent or buy movies from its own website, Cineplex.com, day and date with DVDs and Blu-ray releases.
Most new release rentals are priced at $4.99 each, with older titles costing $2.99 or $3.99.
To own, around 2,600 titles sell from $5 to $24.99 each, with an average new release costing $19.99.
The movies can then be played on a PC computer or other digital devices, and even stored in Cineplex's online digital locker.
The move aims to allow Canadians to view a Hollywood movie title at one of Cineplex's theatres, buy a physical DVD or Blu-ray disc at a multiplex store, and now download movies so that consumers think of Cineplex when they think of movie-viewing.
The digital download offering extends Cineplex's roots as a bricks and mortar multiplex destination, and allows the exhibitor to keep pace with new digital technologies, including VOD, new video formats, including release of titles in high-definition Blu-Ray format, and online video downloading and streaming.
The movie download service also allows Cineplex to keep pace with new competition from iTunes, Netflix Canada service and other foreign video portals.

� Continued...
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UPDATE 1-Cineworld 42-week sales up as 3D movies lure audiences - Movies

* Sees FY at least in line with market view
* Box office sales for 42 weeks to Oct 21 up 8.3 pct
(Adds details)
Oct 26 (Reuters) - Cineworld Group Plc (CINE.L) said on
Tuesday its total revenue grew 8.5 percent in the 42 weeks to
Oct. 21 as 3D movies attracted audiences despite pressure on
consumer spending.
The British cinema chain said the second half had a number
of successful releases, including "Shrek Forever After (3D)",
"The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" and "Toy Story 3" (3D), which was
the biggest film release of the year to date according to
research firm Rentrak.
"The higher number of admissions since the half year end
(June 30) has helped to increase retail revenues in what
remains a challenging consumer environment," Cineworld said in
a statement.
The company also said it was confident of continued growth
for the full year at least in line with market expectations on
a promising line up, including "Harry Potter: Deathly Hallows
1".
In August, Cineworld had posted a nearly flat first-half
pretax profit as it lost some audience to the soccer World Cup,
but said it started the second half strongly with a string of
blockbusters and 3D films.
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Harry Potter fans brave wind and rain for premiere - Movies

LONDON (Reuters) - Thousands of fans descended on Leicester Square in central London on Thursday, braving wind and rain to catch a glimpse of the stars on the red carpet for the new Harry Potter film's world premiere.
Young British actors Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, who have played the central roles for the last decade, appeared with J.K. Rowling, the author behind the hugely successful boy wizard books on which the movies are based.
Watson, 20, grabbed the limelight, sporting her new short haircut and wearing a short black dress.
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1," the seventh and penultimate Potter picture, hits U.S. theatres on November 19 and looks set to provide another big pay day for Warner Bros.
The Hollywood studio decided to split the final book about Harry and his wand-wielding pals into two films after the first six movies amassed $5.4 billion at the global box office.
In Deathly Hallows Part 1, Harry, Ron and Hermione set out on a mission to track down and destroy the secret to evil Lord Voldemort's immortality and destruction -- the Horcruxes.
The three are forced to fend for themselves outside the comfort of Hogwarts school, and the pressure to fight the forces of evil sees best friends Harry and Ron come to blows.
The actors have spoken of mixed feelings about a franchise that has turned them into A-list stars and multi-millionaires.
Grint, 22, felt a sense of relief that a decade of filming had finally ended.
"It's just really great, it's a sense of real freedom because filming on Harry Potter...it does take over your life and it is really long shoots and it's just nice to be out and do your own thing for a change," he told Reuters.
BILLION DOLLAR TARGET
Robert Conner, a dead ringer for actor Grint who plays Ron in the series, was near the front of the queue of fans, having pitched his tent on Tuesday evening.
"I'm a big fan," he said. "I've actually got a Harry Potter tattoo, which I've shown to quite a few members of the cast. I just love Harry Potter. I love the books, I love the films, love the cast."
Paul Taylor, 46, travelled from Sheffield, England, in the early hours of the morning to book his spot.
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How the unions lost the Hobbit war - Movies

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - As more and more Hollywood productions are made in other countries, the studios are determined to limit union influence as much as possible.
Will entertainment workers of the world unite? Probably not any time soon. They just tried, and it blew up in their faces.
The two-month Hobbit affair in New Zealand began with local actors attempting to organize the film and ended with a smackdown from U.S.-based Warner Bros., which extracted an additional $25 million in incentives from the island nation and secured passage of antiunion legislation, apparently negotiated directly between the government and key Warners executives including New Line president Toby Emmerich and Warners Home Entertainment president Kevin Tsujihara.
As labor leaders (including the Screen Actors Guild, which boycotted in solidarity) withdrew under a barrage of negative publicity and even death threats, they were left to wonder: what went wrong?
Just about everything:
- The local union, New Zealand Actors Equity (NZAE), never made clear to the public why it was trying to organize the production. Were working conditions the issue? Pay rates? Residuals? There was never a detailed or consistent answer.
- Early on, a key legal issue arose: Could actors be engaged as employees rather than independent contractors? The union never developed a clear response to this question, instead focusing on odd stopgaps for protecting actors engaged as independent contractors.
- NZAE failed to develop significant support from local actors. A planned meeting -- canceled due to a counter-demonstration -- was expected to draw only about 90 attendees. Meanwhile, meetings and rallies of industry workers, including actors, who opposed the union's actions attracted thousands.
- In what seems an unusual arrangement, NZAE is a unit of an Australian union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). The initial spokesperson for labor in the dispute was an Australian, Simon Whipp. Those facts alone incited charges in New Zealand that union activists from its larger neighbor were endangering a $500 million two-film production vital to the New Zealand economy.
- The unions took little account of the public reverence for director-producer Peter Jackson, who was knighted less than a year ago for services to the arts. Jackson's role in the affair was complex: at times he reiterated the studio message that the project might move to another country, while at other times he vowed to "fight like hell" to retain the project in-country.
- In any case, MEAA/NZAE seemed unprepared for the media firestorm that its organizing attempt generated. And the unions had little political support within New Zealand. When the center-right government weighed in against the unions, the Labour party was silent.
In the end, the entire fracas redounded to the benefit of the government and Warner Bros. Under an "urgency" procedure, the legislature passed in a single day laws that put all Kiwi film (and videogame) workers effectively beyond the reach of the unions. That conforms to the ruling National party's political agenda. Government ministers at various times acknowledged that the legislation was being introduced and fast-tracked at the behest of the studio, and at other times denied this, but without explaining in that case why urgency was required.
Meanwhile, Warners secured an extra $25 million in production incentives on top of tens of millions of dollars the project already qualified for. That seemed like a power grab by the studio. However, New Zealand did receive a valuable benefit: an agreement by the studio to include on Hobbit DVDs and electronic copies a video promoting the country as a tourist destination.
That's no small move, considering how much New Zealand tourism benefited from the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Kiwi actors on the films will now receive residuals. That seems like a win for the union, but a studio-side source claims that a residuals proposal was made before the NZAE organizing campaign kicked in. The facts are unclear.
Ultimately, the country retained the production it could ill-afford to lose. New Zealand has become a popular filming location because of its scenery, and skilled (and obviously English-speaking) crews -- but also because of its lower wage rates and lack of unions. Keeping the project in-country was do or die for the local industry: as Prime Minister John Key put it, "If you can't make The Hobbit here, frankly, what movies are you going to make here?"
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In Japan, 3D films get kicked by new samurai flicks - Movies

TOKYO (Reuters) - Hollywood 3D movies may be huge in Japan, but a wave of new samurai films threatens to tarnish their image by dazzling audiences with old-school action and some clever new twists to the sword-and-kimono stories.
From the works of filmmaking legend Akira Kurosawa, such as "Seven Samurai," to dramas aired on public broadcaster NHK, samurai fare has long been a staple of Japanese entertainment.
But several films in the genre are hitting theaters in a big way this autumn, led by Takashi Miike's "13 Assassins," fresh from its Venice film festival world premiere last month, kicking off a run of six major releases over three months.
The boom highlights the growing importance of older audiences to Japan's film business as the population rapidly ages and retirees with ample time and money return to the multiplexes to take in the kind of movies they enjoyed back in the samurai cinema heyday of the 1950s and '60s.
"People are retiring, the kids have left home and it's just the husband and wife with time on their hands," said Masao Teshima, president of Asmik Ace Entertainment, the studio behind "The Lady Shogun and Her Men" and "Abacus and Sword."
"There's a market for samurai dramas made for such people," he told Reuters, noting that those aged 60-65 represent Japan's biggest population segment.
Indeed, Toho release "13 Assassins," a remake of a 1963 film about a band of samurai hired to bump off the cruel brother of a Shogun, opened at a solid No. 3 on the last weekend in September, despite tough competition in a crowded market from 3D holdovers "Umizaru: The Last Message" and "Resident Evil: Afterlife."
One weekend later, "Lady Shogun," which Asmik is co-distributing with Shochiku, swashbuckled to a No. 2 debut, according to box office tracker Kogyo Tsushinsha, boding well for the upcoming four samurai movie releases.

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Book Talk: Derek Landy lauds the skeleton who stormed his life - Movies

CANBERRA (Reuters) - As a fan of horror movies, martial arts and detective stories, Derek Landy thought he was set for a career writing screenplays until a skeleton detective stormed his imagination -- and children's bookshelves.
The snappily dressed Skulduggery Pleasant popped into Landy's mind while he was traveling, and within months was down on paper in the first of the Irish writer's best-selling fantasy novels, "Skulduggery Pleasant," that was published in 2007 and was this year voted Irish Book of The Decade.
Landy, from County Dublin, has just released the fifth book in the series, "Skulduggery Pleasant: Mortal Coil," which follows Pleasant and his teenage sidekick Valkyrie Cain as they try to protect a known killer from an unstoppable assassin.
Turning his hand to children's books was quite a shift for Landy, who had written two films since being thrown out of art college, one about zombies called "Boy Eat Girls" and the other a thriller in which everyone dies called "Dead Bodies."
Landy spoke to Reuters about his life with a skeleton:
Q: You released both the fourth and fifth books in the series this year. How did you fit it all in?
A: "I stopped having a life. I had been promising myself a break for about a year or two, a break between Skulduggery books when I could do something different, but it hasn't worked out according to plan. But as it is, it is still fantastic and I am really enjoying it and nowhere near the start of burn-out."
Q: You have said this will be a nine-book series.
A: "Absolutely. I don't know what will happen afterwards. If I get to the end of the nine books and the characters are still alive then they may come back in two years' time but I don't know how the last book ends yet. They could be dead."
Q: So you aren't fed up with Skulduggery yet?
A: "I am kind of wary of it and I expected it to hit me certainly by now but it hasn't and I am hugely thankful for that. But it is important for me to do something completely different in between the Skulduggery books while still sticking to the Skulduggery schedule."
Q: You say he just arrived in your head one day?
A: "It was kind of weird. Ideas don't really come like that. Writers might get a hint of an idea that you expand but with Skulduggery, his name came to me and it told me who he was and what he was and what he was like. I don't know why his name popped into my head but it told me everything I needed to know and suddenly I was writing a book."
Q: Is it true that a Skulduggery film is under development?
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UPDATE 2-Citi ordered to pay actor Larry Hagman $11.5 mln - Movies

* Citi ordered to pay $1.35 mln compensatory damages
* Also to pay $10 mln punitive damages for serious conduct
* Citigroup says disagrees with filing, reviewing options
(Adds Hagman's age, background)
By Joseph A. Giannone
NEW YORK, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Larry Hagman, the actor who
played the villainous J.R. Ewing in the 1980s TV show "Dallas,"
has won his case that he was victimized by Citigroup Inc (C.N),
and the bank was ordered to pay over $11 million in damages.
The total award includes $10 million in punitive damages
that Citi must pay to charities selected by Hagman, $1.1
million in compensatory damages and nearly $440,000 in legal
fees.
Hagman, who also played astronaut Anthony Nelson in "I
Dream of Jeannie" in the 1960s TV show, had requested $1.35
million in damages. He could not be reached for comment.
Hagman accused Citi in May 2009 of a breach of fiduciary
duty and breach of contract, fraud by misrepresentation and
omission, failure to supervise and violation of federal and
state law, according to the ruling by an arbitration panel of
FINRA, a self-regulatory body of the U.S. financial industry.
The allegations stemmed from unspecified securities held in
Citi accounts, as well as the purchase of a life insurance
policy.
Hagman received the unusually large award after the
arbitrators found Citigroup Global Markets "engaged in serious
misconduct," meeting FINRA's standards for punitive damages,
the ruling said.
"We are disappointed and disagree with the panel's finding
and we are reviewing our options," said Citigroup spokesman
Alex Samuelson.
Hagman, who turned 79 last month, continues to appear on TV
and in movies, including the 1998 political spoof "Primary
Colors." More recently he has played off his role as a Texas
oilman to become a spokesman for a solar energy company.
According to Solar World, Hagman's California home was the
largest residential producer of solar power in the United
States.
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PRESS DIGEST - Singapore newspapers - Sept 30 - Movies

SINGAPORE, Sept 30 (Reuters) - The following are stories
from Singapore newspapers on Thursday. Reuters has not verified
these stories.
STRAITS TIMES
Singapore's first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew was admitted
into hospital late on Wednesday for treatment of a chest
infection. Lee, who is minister-mentor in the cabinet of his
son, current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, suffered a fall on
Monday and had gone to hospital on Tuesday for physiotherapy.
- The government on Wednesday rejected a suggestion by a
censorship review committee to allow R-rated movies to be
screened in suburban areas. It did, however, agree to let
companies provide R-rated content via video-on-demand services.
BUSINESS TIMES
- Junket operators, who organise visits to casinos and
provide credit to gamblers, may make an appearance in Singapore
seven months after the opening of the city-state's first
casino. Singapore's Casino Regulatory Authority (CRA) said on
Wednesday it has received licence applications from junket
operators endorsed by Resorts World Sentosa, which is owned by
Genting Singapore (GENS.SI). CRA did not say how many
applications were received.
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Will your new film be a hit? Ask the web - Movies

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tracking web searches for new songs, video games and movies can predict which ones will be big hits, but often not much better than traditional methods, researchers at Yahoo Inc reported on Monday.
And they confirmed earlier findings that showed searches associated with diseases, such as Google's Google Flu Trends, were not any more effective than traditional methods for predicting the spread of infections.
Tracking web searches worked the best in predicting how a new video game would sell, Yahoo's Sharad Goel and Jake Hofman said.
"Here we show that what consumers are searching for online can also predict their collective future behavior days or even weeks in advance," they wrote in a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Specifically we use search query volume to forecast the opening weekend box-office revenue for feature films, first-month sales of video games, and the rank of songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, finding in all cases that search counts are highly predictive of future outcomes," they added.
"We considered four different classes of web activity. At least three of them we do a pretty good job of predicting outcomes," Goel said in a telephone interview.
Counting the number of searches related to new songs was the least effective, they found.
But Goel said using Billboard Top 100 listings to predict whether a song would stay at the top of the charts worked as well as or better than counting web searches.

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Facebook gets movie treatments as social media hits high - Movies

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Facebook hits the silver screen this fall with two movies coming out within weeks of each other at a time when social media is at an all-time high.
Independent documentary "Catfish" and glitzy Hollywood feature "The Social Network" couldn't be more different. But both could very well be two sides of the same coin.
"We've gotten to a point where it's time to reflect on it," said "Catfish" filmmaker Ariel Schulman.
"'The Social Network' shows us how we got here. 'Catfish' shows us where we're at."
Facebook is the most popular social networking site in the world with over 500 million active users. Sites like MySpace, microblogging site Twitter, and Tumblr are also thriving, creating an intricate online world where everything from dating websites to video game communities have users who put their personal lives out on public display.
As "Catfish" illustrates, not everyone on these sites is who they say they are.
"Catfish", which opens in U.S. theaters on Friday, follows Nev Schulman, a photographer who falls in love with a girl on Facebook. Over time, their romance blossoms and they begin to text and talk on the phone.
When Nev, his brother Ariel and their friend Henry discover some startling revelations, they set off on a road trip to meet the girl in person.

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Lindsay Lohan admits flaws but says career not over - Movies

Lohan, 24, recently released early from jail and a rehabilitation program and now ordered to attend behavioral therapy classes twice a week, told Vanity Fair magazine in an interview conducted one week before her jail term began that she would cut back on hedonistic ways to revive her career.
"I want my career back," she told the magazine. "I want the respect that I had when I was doing great movies. And if that takes not going out to a club at night, then so be it. It's not fun anyway."
The "Freaky Friday" actress said landing in Los Angeles several years ago was "very go-go-go" with ample freedom and money that brought upon damaging behavior, but now she "was fine" and her acting ability was in top shape.
"I don't care what anyone says. I know that I'm a damn good actress," she said. "And I know that in my past I was young and irresponsible, but that's what growing up is. You learn from your mistakes."
Adding to her confusion, she said, was that she constantly read U.S. tabloids, which she called "really scary and sad."
"I would look up to those girls...the Britneys and whatever. And I would be like, I want to be like that," she said.
Reports of alcohol abuse were overplayed, she said, while dealing with her father was far harder.
"I think everyone has their own addictions and hopefully learns how to get past them," she said. "I think my biggest focus for myself is learning how to continue to get through the trauma that my father has caused in my life."

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Venice festival gambles on youth, movie mavericks - Movies

LONDON (Reuters) - What the Venice film festival lacks in star power this year it hopes to make up for with an unusually young list of directors and the appearance of some of Hollywood's more enigmatic figures.
With the irrepressible Quentin Tarantino heading the jury that hands out the coveted Golden Lion at the end of the Sept. 1-11 event, it is fitting that mavericks and misfits more than movie royalty look set to steal the headlines.
"In a way Venice can still hold itself up and say 'we've got the edgier American people coming, as you have Vincent Gallo and Monte Hellman, for example," said Jay Weissberg, film critic for trade publication Variety who is based in Italy.
"It makes it look as if they are holding up the art side of cinema."
It is a calculated gamble at a time when Venice, the world's oldest film festival and one of its most prestigious, is struggling to fight off competition from Toronto, which overlaps with Venice and features many of the same movies.
Its location in North America, relatively low costs and the presence of so many industry executives looking to deal all make Toronto a tempting alternative for studios keen to showcase their films as the unofficial cinema awards race gets underway.
Stars expected in Venice this year include Natalie Portman, Helen Mirren, Ben Affleck, Catherine Deneuve and Tarantino, but, according to The Hollywood Reporter, "that's still a far cry from the star-studded cast of previous years."
Youth, at least, is on Venice's side, with the average age of filmmakers in the main competition an unusually low 47.
They include 41-year-old Darren Aronofsky, winner of the Golden Lion in 2008 with "The Wrestler", who presents "Black Swan", a ballet-themed psychological drama starring Portman.
Also in competition is Oscar winner Sofia Coppola, 39, with comic drama "Somewhere".
At the other end of the age range are 78-year-old Hellman, competing with low-budget crime drama "Road to Nowhere," and Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski, 72, on the Lido beachfront with the thriller "Essential Killing."
BUZZ SURROUNDS GALLO, PHOENIX
In Essential Killing, actor and painter Gallo stars as an Afghan Taliban fighter who is captured but escapes on his way to a secret detention centre in Europe.
The topical subject, and Gallo's reputation as an uncompromising, eccentric artist, make it one of the more eagerly anticipated movies in competition.
Robert Rodriguez's out-of-competition "Machete" has also been highlighted. The action picture set partly along the U.S.-Mexico border features Jessica Alba, Don Johnson, Lindsay Lohan and Robert De Niro.
"With Mexico, immigration and the drug wars a daily front page story in the U.S., Machete is likely to draw ample buzz," said Sheri Jennings of Screen International.
Actor and director Casey Affleck presents his documentary "I'm Still Here", about his brother-in-law actor Joaquin Phoenix's surprise decision to retire in 2008 and reinvent himself as a hip-hop musician.
A bizarre TV chat show appearance last year as a mumbling, shaggy-haired guest had industry watchers wondering if Phoenix's new act was a hoax, and already critics are debating whether I'm Still Here is more "mockumentary" than documentary.
And Julian Schnabel directs "Slumdog Millionaire" star Freida Pinto in "Miral", about an orphaned Palestinian girl growing up in the wake of the first Arab-Israeli war who finds herself drawn into the conflict.
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Smoking still too common in movies, CDC says - Movies

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of U.S. movies showing people smoking has declined since 2005, but cigarettes still feature in far too many films and could be influencing young people to take up the habit, according to a report released on Thursday.
The report's authors recommended that movie ratings also consider whether the film depicts smoking and suggested strong advertisements about the dangers of smoking precede movies that show tobacco use.
"The results of this analysis indicate that the number of tobacco incidents peaked in 2005, then declined by approximately half through 2009, representing the first time a decline of that duration and magnitude has been observed," the team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the University of California San Francisco and elsewhere wrote.
"However, nearly half of popular movies still contained tobacco imagery in 2009, including 54 percent of those rated PG-13, and the number of incidents remained higher in 2009 than in 1998," they added in the CDC's weekly report on death and illness.
Two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Democrat Edward Markey and Republican Joseph Pitts, who both serve on the Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote the Motion Picture Association of America encouraging the industry to adopt stronger anti-smoking measures.
"Exposure to onscreen smoking in movies increases the probability that youths will start smoking. Youths who are heavily exposed to onscreen smoking are approximately two to three times more likely to begin smoking than youths who are lightly exposed," the CDC report reads.
The researchers counted each time tobacco use was shown in the biggest-grossing films of 1991 to 2009.
"This analysis shows that the number of tobacco incidents increased steadily after the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement between the state attorneys general and the major cigarette companies, in which the companies agreed to end brand placement," they wrote.
They said the Motion Picture Association of America had done little to make changes but noted some studios had made voluntary changes and said Viacom was the first company whose movies rated for youth showed no use of tobacco in 2009.
They suggested more policies could encourage filmmakers to do better.
"Such policies could include having a mature content (R) rating for movies with smoking, requiring strong antitobacco ads preceding movies that depict smoking, not allowing tobacco brand displays in movies, and requiring producers of movies depicting tobacco use to certify that no person or company associated with the production received any consideration for that depiction," they wrote.
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