Kevin Smith announces that his final directorial effort will be Clerks 3

We knew this was coming, but I didn’t think it would make me this sad. Kevin Smith, who has been talking about his retirement for a while now, has announced that his final film will be a second sequel to his first film, 1994’s Clerks . The news comes after his intended swan song, the two-part hockey movie Hit Somebody , was set to become a six-part television miniseries . No news yet on which channel might host Hit Somebody . Some are guessing AMC, where Comic Book Men resides, but considering Smith’s generous amounts of colorful language, I’m thinking somewhere premium would work best — who wants to watch censored Kevin Smith? (Not a lot of people, judging by the short life of ABC’s Clerks: The Animated Series — but don’t rule out a possible return for that. coughcough::get on it, Adult Swim::coughcough) Smith’s retirement will be a bummer, considering he just proved he has stories like Red State up his sleeve; it’s sad to think he won’t try to do something else out of the box. (Insert dirty Chasing Amy joke here.) No additional information is out yet about Clerks 3 , but watch for more rumblings next year. I hope Matt Damon and Ben Affleck come back for this (if they don’t do Hit Somebody , that is). Kevin Smith Is Heading Back To The Quick Stop One More Time!! [Ain’t It Cool News]

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Kevin Smith announces that his final directorial effort will be Clerks 3

New Apple iTunes 11 interface revealed

Vintage ad scanned and Flickr’d by James Vaughan . Wouldn’t it be nifty if the newest iteration of iTunes , which in my opinion is one of a great company’s poorest products, looked like this? The Ping-less iTunes 11 is set to launch this month, likely today, according to hints dropped in this Wall Street Journal profile of Apple exec Eddy Cue. It’s not that big a secret, anyways; the Apple.com iTunes splash page says it’s “coming in November,” and there aren’t many days left in November. Below, *actual* screenshots of the new interface. Come to think of it, the new UI resembles the vintage ad more than iTunes 10 does! But I don’t like it. I wish iTunes were a skinnable, interpret-able service with an API, like Twitter is (for now, anyway)—imagine if you could use any third-party client you wanted to access the service, as cleanly and free of cruft as you please. Library view Album view

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New Apple iTunes 11 interface revealed

Researchers Find Megaupload Shutdown Hurt Box Office Revenues

An anonymous reader writes “We’ve heard this one before, over and over again: pirates are the biggest spenders. It therefore shouldn’t surprise too many people to learn that shutting down Megaupload earlier this year had a negative effect on box office revenues. The latest finding comes from a paper titled: ‘Piracy and Movie Revenues: Evidence from Megaupload.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Researchers Find Megaupload Shutdown Hurt Box Office Revenues

Original Star Wars trilogy scribe Lawrence Kasdan reportedly attached to new trilogy, plus Simon Kinberg

That didn’t take long: within one month, we got all of our screenwriters lined up for the new Disney-Lucasfilm Star Wars trilogy, and one of them is a pretty reliable man for the job. As we reported earlier, Michael Arndt will be taking Episode VII , and now it’s being reported that Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg will take on Episodes VIII and IX , though it’s unspecified who will take which script. If you recall, Kasdan wrote both Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi , and if I may make a wild prediction, I’m going to call the final episode for him. Let the veteran round out the new trilogy. Kinberg is also hardly a slouch, having written Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Sherlock Holmes , plus he’s currently writing the sequel to X-Men: First Class , on which he was a producer. (In other words, experience in sci-fi/fantasy franchises.) Both Kasdan and Kinberg will also join Kathleen Kennedy as producers on both films. All three of the new movies will be based on story notes from George Lucas , but will be written and directed by others. Probably the best thing for Star Wars that George Lucas could ever do at this point. The Hollywood Reporter (and several other sites) seem to have this news all but confirmed. Disney-Lucasfilm have not offered a comment yet, except to say that they will make an official announcement on StarWars.com , where they confirmed Arndt’s role. For the moment, that is still the most recent news item . Photo credit: Collider Sources: Lawrence Kasdan, Simon Kinberg Lock Deals to Write and Produce ‘Star Wars’ Installments [The Hollywood Reporter]

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Original Star Wars trilogy scribe Lawrence Kasdan reportedly attached to new trilogy, plus Simon Kinberg

Disney acquires Lucasfilm

The Walt Disney Company today announced that it has agreed to acquire Lucasfilm Ltd. in a stock and cash transaction valued at $4.05 billion, with Disney paying “approximately half of the consideration in cash and issuing approximately 40 million shares at closing.” Press release announcing the deal here . Here’s a list of all the media Disney already owns: ABC; Pixar; Marvel; as well as Hollywood, Mammoth and Buena Vista Records, just for a start. So here’s one interesting snip: “Our long term plan is to release a new Star Wars feature film every two to three years.” Reached by phone, here was Vader’s comment to Boing Boing. (Shoop: Xeni)

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Disney acquires Lucasfilm

Sweden Imports European Garbage To Power the Nation

Hugh Pickens writes “NPR reports that Sweden’s program of generating energy from garbage is wildly successful, but recently its success has also generated a surprising issue: There is simply not enough trash. Sweden has recently begun to import about eight hundred thousand tons of trash from the rest of Europe per year to use in its power plants. Sweden already brings trash from Norway and hopes to get garbage from Italy, Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic countries. Sweden creates energy for around 250,000 homes and powers one-fifth of the district heating system. Its incineration plants offer a look into the future where countries could potentially make money off of their trash instead of dumping. Landfilling of organic materials – a highly inefficient and environmentally degrading system (PDF) — has been forbidden in Sweden since 2005 and emissions of the greenhouse gas methane from landfills has fallen dramatically (PDF). ‘I hope that we instead will get the waste from Italy or from Romania or Bulgaria or the Baltic countries because they landfill a lot in these countries,’ says Catarina Ostlund, a senior advisor for the country’s environmental protection agency. ‘They don’t have any incineration plants or recycling plants, so they need to find a solution for their waste.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Sweden Imports European Garbage To Power the Nation

Use Windows 8 as a Windows Home Server

Still not convinced you want to upgrade to Windows 8? Here’s one more tempting reason t do so: Windows 8 can actually be a great Windows Home Server replacement. It offers most of the same features for sharing, storing, and protecting lots of data on your network. More »

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Use Windows 8 as a Windows Home Server