TiVo Shares Up As Investors Look For DVR Patent Case Settlement With AT&T

TiVo popped 7.9% in early trading after it prevailed late Thursday in a Texas court ruling that involves its DVR patent infringement suit againstAT&T — even though the ruling curiously didn’t say anything about the other part of the company’s suit, against Verizon. You’ll hurt your head if you try to sort through the mostly technical issues underlyingU.S. Superior Court Judge David Folsom’s decision about howhe’ll deal with the patent claims. But the upshot is that “AT&T will see a high chance of losing and so will likely enter into a favorable settlement with TiVo,” Lazard Capital Markets analyst Barton Crockett says this morning. David Miller of Caris & Co isn’t so sure: He expects AT&T to go to trial beginning in January. He also decided not to raise his estimates for TiVo because it’s “somewhat confusing” that the judge didn’t include Verizon.”The majority of the Street was under the impression that both cases were being heard in tandem,” he says.

CW looks to Netflix to kick up visibility

Warner Bros. and CBS execs are giddy about the big payday promised by the Netflix licensing pact for CW shows. But there are also great expectations that the deal will yield bigtime promo dividends to CW -- both with viewers and in the creative community.The hope is that the increased exposure for CW shows among Netflix's more than 25 million subscribers will bring new viewers to the latest episodes airing on the network, as has often been the case when a series that is still running new segsrunning new segs in primetime bows in syndication. CW brass are also banking on a residual marketing value in getting the net's brand front and center with the younger auds that tend to be the most avid users of Netflix's streaming service."It's such a great fit because the demographics of Netflix and CW are so similar," said Rick Haskins, CW's exec veep of marketing and brand strategy. "From a marketing perspective, anytime you can get the CW name and our shows' names out there in a different venue it can only help."The premium that Netflix is paying for the early syndication window on CW shows should also go a long way toward convincing writers and other creative talent that it is worth their while to field shows to the network. Heretofore, shows from CW, and its WB Network and UPN predecessors, have failed to generate much coin in traditional off-network syndication or through international licensing.As much as net execs were cheering the news of the Netflix windfall on Thursday, CW can't take to its own air to tubthump the availability of the shows. The network can't afford to alienate its TV station affiliates, particularly its core Tribune Broadcasting partner, with on-air marketing pointing viewers to Netflix, even though the deal does not involve current-season episodes.Haskins has no doubt that Netflix will be an ideal forum for encouraging viewers to sample CW's serialized dramas, which lend themselves to the kind of marathon viewing that many users seek from Netflix."It's the way our viewer consumers media these days," Haskins said. "It's the 'I want what I want and I want it now generation.' Netflix is a perfect way to answer that request." Contact Cynthia Littleton at cynthia.littleton@variety.com

MTV World launches Iggy

Viacom's MTV World has introduced the launch of their global music platform, named MTV Iggy, that will aim to expose worldwide music functions to U.S. audiences through its website as well as on-air programming. The woking platform will debut on-air on March. 17, with half-hour world music spotlight "The MTV Iggy Show" airing on mtvU. Other iterations from the platform may have presences on MTV and MTV2. Furthermore, the woking platform is sponsoring worldwide band competition "The Very Best New Band on the planet,Inch that will climax having a live show broadcast on November. 10. As MTV World's senior v . p . and gm Nusrut Durrani stated inside a statement: "Present day music fans reside in an amazingly connected world where pop music is without edges Latin American audiences love K-Pop and emcees in the Congo have found fans in Belgium. ...MTV Iggy provides a U.S. stage for artists who're catching fire around the world.Inch MTV World also includes Korean-oriented MTV K, and India-centric MTV Desi. Contact the range newsroom at news@variety.com

Analyst: Cowboys And Aliens May Be The Only 3Q Movie Write-Down As Overseas Ticket Sales Grow

Movie moguls usually have to grit their teeth during the media company quarterly earnings season as they begrudgingly acknowledge the bombsthey had to write off. But the 3Q reports that will begin to come out in two weeks could be different, RGC Capital Markets analyst David Bank says this morning. Only one film from the quarter — DreamWorks’ Cowboys And Aliens – “looks likely to be a write-down.” And the outlook for 4Q is encouraging due to “the strong existing slate, combined with the likelihood of surprise ‘tentpoles’ and…relatively easy comps” vs 4Q10. He’s particularly impressed by the soaring returns from overseas where the number of movie theaters is growing. He notes that this year major films are generating more than 1.65 as much from international box offices as they do from domestic, up from 1.45 last year. Bank says that Hollywood is zeroing in on the right investment formula: Spend big on “culturally neutral action/adventure movies” that play well abroad — and slash budgets for comedies that often don’t travel well. For example in 2003 overseas ticket sales for Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl were only slightly ahead of domestic. But overseas audiences spent more than three times as much as U.S. ticket buyers did this year on Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. It’s not a fail-safe formula, he says, pointing to the so-so international results for Sony’s The Green Hornet. But the strategy paid off for the studio with Bad Teacher, which only cost about $20M to produce.

Mickey Rourke Has Java Warmth

Together with Kellan LutzNo, the headline doesn't always imply that Mickey Rourke and Twilight's Kellan Lutz are getting away . in the film business and so are now pimping a completely new Lynx deodorant scent: the pair has signed onto Margate House Films' new indie thriller Java Warmth.With Conor Allyn behind the digital camera, Warmth will uncover a mysterious American type (Lutz) storing his anti-Islamic habits to synergy getting a Muslim cop to have the ability to take lower a simple-fingered, jewel-robbery-happy quantity of terrorists in Southeast Asia. Rourke will probably be however in the law, playing a jewel crook who dreams within the terror types' nasty schemes. Seems fitting.The completely new film is an element from the wave of productions that have attracted stars to Asia to use. Rourke and Lutz join an inventory that already includes the type of Christian Bale and Kevin Spacey. Furthermore, it marks something from the reunion for your pair, who already labored together round the incoming Immortals.Allyn scribbled the script along with his father, Make the most of, and contains already started shooting.

Roush Review: Lifetime's Five, HBO's Enlightened

Jeanne Tripplehorn They rarely make TV-movies like Lifetime's Five (Monday, 9/8c) anymore, and I really wish they would. A sensitively told issue-of-the-week anthology in the classic life-affirming tear-jerker tradition, the high-profile talent is on both sides of the camera in these intertwined vignettes dealing with breast cancer. Though the subject matter is wrenching, the tone here is more about emotional uplift, emphasizing the importance of bringing loved ones along for the fight.Among the directors: Jennifer Aniston, Demi Moore and Alicia Keys, who all know better than to get in the way of a splendid cast that includes Patricia Clarkson (cue the Emmy speech), Jeanne Tripplehorn, Rosario Dawson, Ginnifer Goodwin and Josh Holloway.Want more Matt Roush? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!The first segment, directed by Moore, is an evocative short story-like piece set in 1969 as a family gathers to watch Apollo 11 touching down on the moon, signifying social progress. Things aren't quite so up-to-date in this household, as a little girl named Pearl is kept in the dark as her mother (Goodwin) lays dying in another room. Pearl grows up to be an empathetic oncologist played by Tripplehorn, and she's the connecting thread to the other stories - including that of "Mia" (directed by Aniston), a wonderful character portrait told through a tapestry of flashbacks, as Mia (Clarkson) looks back on the two years since her diagnosis, a potential death sentence that she takes instead as a challenge to live life to the fullest. "I haven't been very nice to people. I was supposed to die," says this memorable survivor, whose caustic mock funeral is a highlight of the movie.The next anecdote, about an exotic dancer named "Cheyenne" (Nikita's Lyndsy Fonseca), has an O Henry-like quality, as Cheyenne worries, "What happens when we lose our 'thing'?" - not just on the job, but also in her marriage to a handsome young loan shark. Humor is the defining element in the sardonic story of "Lili" (Dawson), an independent career woman who tries to shut out her domineering mother (Jenifer Lewis) and judgmental sister (Tracee Ellis Ross) from her treatment of this speed bump in her busy life. Easier said than done.The final segment focuses back on Pearl, who has spent years helping everyone else cope but must now face the disease head-on and is determined not to repeat the mistakes of her family. The title Five refers less to the movie's episodic structure than to a wall of tiles in Pearl's clinic, where cancer-free survivors get to "kiss the wall" when they reach the five-year milestone. It's a symbol of hope likely to resonate with the Lifetime audience.Also premiering tonight: a new HBO half-hour that's billed as a "comedy," but as usual, it's hard to tell. When it comes to HBO's so-called comedies, it's not all that difficult to curb our enthusiasm. (Although Larry David's long-running hit was on fire for much of the summer.)Sundays are currently being squandered on new seasons of the dreary Hung and How to Make It in America. This relegates two more intriguing properties to Mondays: the twee noir parody Bored to Death (9/8c), which at least has the feel of a comedy (and a strong indie-cred cast), and the peculiar new Enlightened (9:30/8:30c) which feels more like a Showtime dramedy in its focus on a damaged female hero whose life isn't exactly a laugh riot.Our first look at Amy (the electrifying Laura Dern) is not a pretty one. She's mid-meltdown at corporate HQ, screeching like a madwoman at those she feels wronged her, an act of career suicide. Flash forward three months to a transformed and calmer Amy, enlightened after a Hawaiian self-help retreat and a swim alongside a symbolic sea turtle. She's now ready to share her Zen, but the new touchy-feely Amy is confronted by a world determined to keep her at arm's length. Who can blame them?The problem here is that we only know Amy at these extremes, from PMS rage to PMA (positive mental attitude), and while Dern commits fully to the role, Amy still feels like an annoying, exasperating caricature who probably ought to be committed. Enlightened is clearly a deeply felt show, and the cast is terrific, including Diane Ladd (Dern's real-life mother) as Amy's skeptical mom, Luke Wilson as her likable drugged-out ex who resists her self-help efforts, and Mike White (who co-created the show with Dern) as an admiring mouse of a co-worker in the basement where she's unhappily reassigned.I wish I were as invested in Amy's journey as she is, but as she blathers on about being an agent of change at her uncaring corporation, I find myself restless to change the channel to something that's actually entertaining or, yes, enlightening.Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!Tags: TV Guide Magazine, Matt Roush, Breaking News

REVIEW: Anna Faris Draws the Short Straw in What's Your Number?

There are hundreds of reasons we should welcome the new trend of movies featuring women who aren’t afraid to admit they enjoy sex and who use language that isn’t always granny-approved. In theory, the Georgia O’Keefe-like flowering of the genre should speak of a newfound freedom in how we think and talk about women’s sexuality. There’s just one problem: The movies are crap. And more often than not, they’re filled with women who worry more about what others think of them rather than less. That was true of the allegedly groundbreaking (and extremely popular) Bridesmaids. But the tendency is even more pronounced, and more egregious, in What’s Your Number?, in which Anna Faris plays a twentysomething who totes up the number of guys she’s slept with (19) and realizes it’s nearly twice the alleged average, as reported in Marie Claire magazine. She vows that the next guy she sleeps with will be the one, and she won’t have to worry about feeling slutty any longer. As distasteful as that premise is, you could probably do something with it, and early in What’s Your Number?, director Mark Mylod — who has directed largely for television (Shameless, Entourage) and has made a handful of features like Ali G Indahouse and The Big White — peppers us with a montage of ridiculous women’s mag headlines, stuff about changing yourself to make men like you more, not that there’s anything wrong with the way you are, mind you. That suggests at least a glancing awareness of the way young, single women are groomed to think there’s something wrong with them if they can’t attract Mr. Right. But in the end — actually, well before the end — What’s Your Number?, instead of refuting such idiocy, plays like a movie ripped from the pages of one of those magazines: What if I’ve slept with too many guys? What if nobody wants me because I’ve slept around too much? My sister is getting married, but I’m not! Waaaaaaah! What’s Your Number? does pay feeble lip service to the double standard that it’s OK for guys to sleep with anyone they want, while women must somehow maintain the illusion of purity and inexperience. But the vibrations of insecurity radiating from Faris’s character, who bears the unscrupulously cute name Ally Darling, are almost too much to bear. It doesn’t matter that Faris is in on the joke — it still steamrolls over her. As the movie opens, Ally is ditching one of the guys who keep drifting into her life without committing — this time, it’s a green-obsessed biker dude played by Zachary Quinto, who rolls out of her bed and out the door with barely a shrug. This isn’t what Ally wants, understandably, and it doesn’t help that her older sister, Daisy (the wonderful Ari Graynor, who has a knack for being both kittenish and deadpan, though she has little to do here), is obsessed with her upcoming nuptials. The pair’s uptight mom, played by Blythe Danner, hovers nearby, expressing consistent disappointment and displeasure with her younger daughter, while beaming at the older. After a chance encounter with a formerly tubby but now slimmed-down ex, Ally becomes convinced that some of her former beaus may have improved with age. Luckily, her across-the-hall neighbor, a cutie with commitment issues of his own — his name is Colin, and he’s played by an unfettered, ridiculously appealing Chris Evans — has the know-how to track people down out of nowhere. And so he and Ally begin riffling through her past to secure her future.