Here’s the new official movie trailer for next summer’s latest take on the moody web-slinger of New York City, Peter Parker.

“The Amazing Spider-Man” looks at the comic book hero’s origins more deeply, but mostly it will be about the special effects and 3-D.

Here’s the video:

Persistence — even if it is the whiny, likely undeserved, lunkheaded legal version of it — certainly pays off.

But you have to marvel at the bizarre karma going on, given that my favorite matching pair of digital ottomans, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, are poised to collect up to $300 million from the shares they got in a settlement with Facebook and its CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg over the founding of the social networking giant.

That’s right, folks, the rich do get richer, especially if they pursue their case well past the point of shame.

It’s not clear how many of the 1.2 million shares the Winklevii still have from the settlement they got in 2008, since they wrangled with their own lawyers over it, and the stock has also split.

But let’s assume the Olympic rowers kept a chunk, which will be worth a lot of gold-plated oars if Facebook reaches the upward of $80 billion valuation it is expected to in its upcoming initial public offering.

Facebook filed its long-expected IPO earlier this week.

And here’s a lovely tweet about the IPO from Cameron Winklevoss, who is looking very fetching on his Twitter page, even if it is perhaps about time to lose the rower meme image thing, given he’s on the closer side of 30 years old.

We r excited 4the #FacebookIPO + wish the company + all involved the very best,an amazing accomplishment! cc @tylerwinklevoss @DivyaNarendra

— Cameron Winklevoss (@winklevoss) February 2, 2012

He sent it to his twin brother, Tyler, and also to Divya Narendra, their other partner in the ill-fated ConnectU service.

Without going into all the well-gone-over deets (go see the Aaron Sorkin-penned movie and believe about 26 percent of it), ConnectU was the Harvard University dating site that Zuckerberg allegedly submarined in order to start Facebook.

Well, presumably water under bridge — unless you are talking about the perpetually disgruntled Winklevii.

At the time they finally dropped their seven-year fraud lawsuit this past summer, they then reopened to a different one then pending.

“The Social Network 2: The Overly Compensated Vii Strike Back,” anyone?

MORE ON THE FACEBOOK IPO:

• Facebook’s Ad Business Is a $3 Billion Mystery
• Viral Video: Farewell to the No-IPO Mark Zuckerberg
• Zuckerberg Is the Billion-Share Man: Who Owns What, Who Makes What in the Facebook IPO
• Zuckerberg Tells Investors, “We Don’t Build Services to Make Money”
• Mobile Highlighted as Key Risk Factor (and Opportunity) in Facebook Filing
• Stop All That Poking: Facebook Filing Temporarily Crashes SEC Web Site
• Zynga Accounted for 12 Percent of Facebook’s Revenue in 2011
• Facebook Has 845 Million Users
• On Its Eighth Birthday, Facebook Files to Raise $5 Billion in Massive IPO (Get Your S-1 Here!)
• Go the F**k Back to Sleep, Silicon Valley: Facebook IPO Likely to File Later Today at Earliest
• Dude, Where’s My Facebook IPO Filing? (Ashton’s on Hold!)
• The Quiet Man: Meet the Less-Known Face of the Facebook IPO, CFO David Ebersman
• Facebook Board Meeting Today for Final IPO Okays
• Facebook (Eye)PO: Tracking the Truth of the Biggest Deal of Web 2.0
• Viral Graphic: Visualizing the Facebook IPO
• Is Facebook IPO on Track for Late May?
• IPO Watch: Facebook Hiring Brunswick to Help With Comms for Expected Public Offering
• Complete Facebook coverage

Here’s a trailer for an unusual movie called “Lock-Out,” about a prison revolt in space and, of course, the need to rescue the daughter of the President of the United States.

It’s full of all kinds of special effects, naturally.

Enjoy:

Which is why this pitch-perfect impression, from “The Soup,” of Richards rating the Oscars — nominations for the annual movie awards were just announced — is even better, if possible.

On “War Horse,” for example: “There was war. And there was a horse.”

Exactly:

Here’s a really terrific video tribute to legendary Hollywood director and producer Steven Spielberg, done for the recent 2012 David O. Selznick Achievement Award from the Producers Guild.

It highlights a plethora of films Spielberg has made over his long movie career, many of which — once you see them strung together — have a heavy techie, special-effects or simply sci-fi element.

It’s pretty impressive to see such a significant body of work collected so well.

Enjoy:

Here’s a very cute video trailer, titled “Off the Grid,” for the upcoming Academy Awards, the annual movie award show that will feature the return of host Billy Crystal.

It features cameos from a few well-known celebrities. Enjoy:

Why do I simultaneously like and am annoyed by Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt?

Perhaps it’s their twee names, perhaps their indie acting tics, perhaps their faux-childlike thing — all while being so dang cute.

Others must agree, since the video of the pair — who co-starred in the movie, “(500) Days of Summer” — singing Nancy Wilson’s “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” has gotten more than six million views on YouTube since its posting this weekend.

Here they are at full power, with a note on Deschanel’s Hello Giggles site that says she bonded with Gordon-Levitt “over a mutual appreciation for Harry Nilsson and Nina Simone.”

Hello Giggles? Ironically juxtaposing Harry Nilsson and Nina Simone? A ukulele? Could they be any more hipster?

No, they cannot, and it works once again:

Here’s the fifth in a series of videos blogs, or vlogs, being done by director Peter Jackson on his making of “The Hobbit” movie.

I really like how he’s doing this online, especially given the interest from the huge fan base for the fantasy novel by J. R. R. Tolkien.

The prequel to “The Lord of the Rings” film trilogy, which Jackson also directed, “The Hobbit” is being filmed in New Zealand — standing in for Middle-earth — and will be released in two parts, in December 2012 and December 2013.

Enjoy:

According to the expected year-end box-office data figures compiled by Hollywood.com, the industry raked in $10.1 billion for 2011 in North America.

While that seems like a nice haul, it’s 4.5 percent less than in 2010. While not enough to result a major downturn in limo-riding and Botox, the results are likely to cause entertainment moguls some worry, since they are accompanied by continuing trends, including another year of lower attendance.

And given that the revenue was unusually bolstered by more higher-priced 3-D movie-ticket prices — Hollywood released several dozen 3-D films in 2011, double the previous year’s amount — the latest numbers are even more disappointing.

While some holiday movies did well — namely “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol,” which has taken in about $70 million domestically since its opening less than two weeks ago — it pales in comparison to such digital hits as Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 videogame, which pulled in $400 million in one day from the much-desired youth market.

It surpassed $1 billion in sales in 16 days, eclipsing the box office of the blockbuster movie “Avatar,” which took 17 days to gross seven figures.

Does that mean that the continued competition for the leisure time of pretty much everyone between digital and analog has gotten worse — an epic battle of the movie industry versus game players, tablets and smartphones?

Or is it because so many movies made in 2011 turned out to be just awful? (If you saw “New Year’s Eve,” you’ll know exactly what I mean.)

One thing is clear: No one is going to pay for poor-quality content, no matter the screen size.

More number-crunching to come, as the industry debates the issue into 2012 (coincidentally, the title of a movie I happened to like, as you can see below!), and at the upcoming D: Dive Into Media at the end of the month, down near Los Angeles, in the belly of the Web-smacked beast.

Until then, let’s hope it does not come to this next year:

Streaming is the future. We’re focused on it. DVD will do whatever it’s going to do. We’re not — we’re going to try to not hurt it, but we’re not putting a lot of time and energy into doing anything particular around it and then we’re focused on, how do we take advantage of this incredible global streaming opportunity.

That was Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, at the UBS media conference earlier this month, reiterating the point that Netflix has been making over and over again for some time: They want out of the DVD business, even though it is generating more than $1 billion a year for them.

Hastings and his team are convinced that even though consumers say that discs are important to them, their usage data shows that few people … use them. “Old fogey discs,” Hastings calls them.

Netflix tried very hard to accelerate the decline of DVDs with the Qwikster fiasco. Since then, Netflix has been careful to tell its subscribers who are still paying for DVDs that it is happy to have them around.

New subscribers are a different story, though. Netflix exclusively pushes its $8-a-month unlimited-streaming option, on its site and in its promotional materials. You have to work very hard to discover that the company still rents DVDs, and that’s by design.

Same deal for former subscribers that Netflix is trying to woo back: Even if you used to get both DVDs and streaming videos from Netflix, the company will only tell you about its streaming plan in its “come back!” emails. (See the screenshot of an email my colleague Tricia Duryee, who quit her hybrid plan this fall, got recently, at the bottom of this post.)

But the message is most clear for people who want to give someone a Netflix subscription as a present: The company no longer allows you to gift a subscription that includes a DVD plan, period.

Go ahead and see for yourself — there’s no way to give Reed Hastings and company an extra $8 a month for a service they’re still providing to some 11 million subscribers.

The one tiny workaround that the company offers (if you look very, very hard — or do what I did, and call up Netflix PR and ask) is the ability to let current subscribers extend their current deal. So, for instance, if you’re currently getting the equivalent of a $16-a-month hybrid disc-and-streaming option, and someone gives you a year-long $8-a-month streaming gift, you can convert that into a six-month hybrid plan.

But, boy, that’s complicated. Easier to just give someone a year of streaming, and then send them a check so they can add the DVD portion on their own. Which is what we just did this morning, here at the AllThingsD Brooklyn outpost.

So to repeat: If you work very, very hard, Netflix will let you give it money, and will let you rent DVDs in return. But it would really prefer that you didn’t.

In a deal that was struck some time ago and is close to fruition, BermanBraun is prepping three major Web properties for AOL that will focus on pets, men and, interestingly, the weather.

After I inquired, AOL confirmed that the Hollywood production company — headed by former Yahoo and ABC exec Lloyd Braun and former Paramount exec Gail Berman — will debut the trio of sites around March. The new sites will use rich features and a slick design to attract premium advertisers.

The pair will jointly sell the advertising, but the sites themselves will be operated by BermanBraun in cooperation with AOL’s media unit, the Huffington Post Media Group. The deal was struck in late 2010, before AOL bought the Huffington Post for $300 million in January of this year.

While AOL has partnered with many outside sites, this will be the most prominent one since that acquisition.

Since then, much of the new content development on AOL has been aimed at drastically increasing the number of sites with that brand. There have been more than two dozen of those since March.

In this case, the Huffington Post Media Group, run by Arianna Huffington, has typically either created new topic sites or relaunched old AOL ones.

This week, for example, the company rejiggered AOL TV as HuffPost TV, as well as announcing El Huffington Post, an international Spanish-language version of the Huffington Post that will debut in early 2012, in partnership with El País.

The BermanBraun effort, though, is more independent and large-scale. It will feature extensive video and heavy use of imagery. Huffington Post will be involved in editorial selection, and has been working closely with the firm on incorporating social elements.

“It’s been a very dynamic and collaborative partnership — we’ve worked together on everything from design to picking the editors,” said Roy Sekoff, founding editor of the Huffington Post Media Group, about the arrangement. “BermanBraun brings a distinctive approach to their sites, and we’ve helped infuse that with our focus on real-time, social, and building community.”

Sekoff declined to give more details, such as the names of the sites. (They won’t be HuffPost Pets, HuffPost Weather and HuffPost Dudes, though!)

Pets could be a strong category if done in a new way, especially if designed with new tablet devices in mind. And weather, to my mind, is a sleeper category if reimagined freshly.

BermanBraun — which also develops television shows and movies — has a lot of experience in the online content arena. It has previously created Web sites for Microsoft’s MSN unit, including the high-profile celebrity site Wonderwall.

It will be interesting to see how the collaboration turns out. In the meantime, here’s my favorite weather song — Lena Horne rules! — to enjoy until the three sites launch:

This is just plain creepy, and just when you thought it was crazy hillbillies (“Deliverance”) chasing the imbecilic group, it’s some kind of sci-fi, alien-hunting-people plot (“Predator”).

Still, this movie trailer for the upcoming “The Cabin in the Woods” is creepy!

What do you get when you mix classic science-fiction novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs with a Confederate solider and Mars?

Why, “John Carter,” of course.

Here is the trailer for the movie, which is chock-full of elaborate special effects:

Right now I’m just in the thinking-about-it stages. It’s a really big movie and it’s going to be a great movie no matter who writes it.

– Aaron Sorkin, discussing the possibility of writing a biopic about Steve Jobs for Sony

I motored on up north to lovely Petaluma, Calif., on Sunday, to be on Leo Laporte’s most excellent “This Week in Tech” show.

My fellow panelists included Milk’s Kevin Rose, CNET’s Rafe Needleman and all-around good guy Mike Elgan, talking about a wide range of topics, from Google’s music efforts to Rose’s distaste for Amazon’s Kindle Fire to the tech in the latest “Twilight” movie.

Here’s the whole show for your viewing pleasure:

Hollywood director James Cameron debuted the trailer for the upcoming 3-D version of the huge movie hit, “Titanic,” on Facebook earlier this week, where he also delivered an intro.

Why? Perhaps it’s the movie’s nearly 10.5 million fans on the social networking site, which Cameron referenced.

You can only see those remarks on Facebook, but here’s the trailer for the rerelease, coming out next April, as well as a video of Cameron at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference in 2010, where he first revealed that “Titanic” would come out in 3-D:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111118/viral-video-titanic-in-3d-gets-facebook-lift/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111117/peter-chernin-on-hollywood-asia-growth-and-not-yahoo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111117/peter-chernin-on-hollywood-asia-growth-and-not-yahoo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/#comments Thu, 17 Nov 2011 22:34:20 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=145420

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

We’re following the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Hollywood mogul Peter Chernin.

The much-respected entertainment exec, who was the longtime president of News Corp. (which owns this Web site), now runs his own production company in Santa Monica, Calif.

Chernin Entertainment has had some big early successes, including the hit movie “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” and the adorkable television show “New Girl.”

But Chernin has always been much more Internet-curious than the average Hollywood mogul. He was deeply involved in the creation of the Hulu premium video service, and now serves on the board of the Pandora online music site. He’s also been giving the troubled situation at Yahoo a look-see with some private equity firms.

Chernin declined to talk about this deal in an onstage interview with Peter Kafka, but he does discuss the prospects for the old media world in the digital age, and the giant opportunities in Asia:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111117/peter-chernin-on-hollywood-asia-growth-and-not-yahoo-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111117/viral-video-mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-which-snow-white-film-is-going-to-fall/ http://allthingsd.com/20111117/viral-video-mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-which-snow-white-film-is-going-to-fall/#comments Thu, 17 Nov 2011 08:27:31 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=145103

And here’s the CGI-rich trailer for the second “Snow White” movie that Hollywood will be pumping out.

First there was “Snow White & the Huntsman,” which is all angsty and dark, and stars the ever-glowering Kristen Stewart as Snowie, and Charlize Theron as the Evil Queen.

This one, called “Mirror Mirror,” is funny, and stars Julia Roberts as the wise-cracking baddie, with an ingenue in the role of Ms. White.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111117/viral-video-mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-which-snow-white-film-is-going-to-fall/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111114/viral-video-the-fantastically-freaky-cgi-of-snow-white-the-huntsman/ http://allthingsd.com/20111114/viral-video-the-fantastically-freaky-cgi-of-snow-white-the-huntsman/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 08:41:39 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=143623

And here I thought the sulky genius of Kristen Stewart would fade away after the final two “Twilight” movies made their debut — one opens this week (yay!).

Instead, this trailer for “Snow White & the Huntsman” looks 100 percent freakier than any sparkly vampires.

The CGI special effects seem pretty awesome here, from the explosion of scary birds to the soldiers who shatter like black glass to the de-aging of the Evil Queen to the blobbish mirror-mirror-not-on-the-wall.

And not one single sign of any adorkable whistling dwarves to be found.

Oh, just watch:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111114/viral-video-the-fantastically-freaky-cgi-of-snow-white-the-huntsman/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111109/viral-video-more-hobbit-from-the-vlog-files-of-peter-jackson/ http://allthingsd.com/20111109/viral-video-more-hobbit-from-the-vlog-files-of-peter-jackson/#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:10:44 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=141649

Famed director Peter Jackson, who helmed the “Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy, has promised to continue his production video blog from the movie set of “The Hobbit,” which is filming in New Zealand.

The man keeps his promise with a new installment that has lots more action.

I read the classic book when I was but a wee lass, so I will be very interested to see how it comes to life.

Here’s the latest vlog:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111109/viral-video-more-hobbit-from-the-vlog-files-of-peter-jackson/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111101/viral-video-so-a-guy-chainsaws-a-parking-meter-as-a-movie-promo/ http://allthingsd.com/20111101/viral-video-so-a-guy-chainsaws-a-parking-meter-as-a-movie-promo/#comments Tue, 01 Nov 2011 07:13:19 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=138148

Here is an odd, but strangely satisfying, video of a man sawing a parking meter in half with a chainsaw.

It is inexplicably a promo for the movie “In Time,” which just opened and stars Justin Timberlake.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111101/viral-video-so-a-guy-chainsaws-a-parking-meter-as-a-movie-promo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111024/netflix-heads-to-uk-to-take-on-amazon/ http://allthingsd.com/20111024/netflix-heads-to-uk-to-take-on-amazon/#comments Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:04:35 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=136028 Netflix says it will bring its streaming video service — but not its DVDs — to the United Kingdom and Ireland in “early 2012.” The announcement confirms earlier reports and speculation that the company would target the U.K. after a Latin American expansion in 2011; other reports have the company moving into Spain as well. Unlike other Netflix expansion moves, in the U.K. the company will run up against its first entrenched digital competitor: Amazon’s LoveFilm, most often known as “the Netflix of Europe.” Netflix reports Q3 earnings this afternoon.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111024/netflix-heads-to-uk-to-take-on-amazon/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111013/viral-video-the-avengers/ http://allthingsd.com/20111013/viral-video-the-avengers/#comments Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:01:43 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=131817 Lotsa superheroes, lotsa CGI and special effects, lotsa techie gadgets.

You had me at lotsa.

Here’s the trailer for the upcoming movie “The Avengers.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111013/viral-video-the-avengers/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111012/universal-dumps-60-home-video-rental-plan/ http://allthingsd.com/20111012/universal-dumps-60-home-video-rental-plan/#comments Wed, 12 Oct 2011 19:12:11 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=131634 It’s a week for home video about-faces. Universal has dumped plans to let some home viewers rent an Eddie Murphy/Ben Stiller comedy for $60 while it was still in theaters. Comcast’s movie studio reversed course just days after news of its “Tower Heist” plan surfaced. Though the rental plan was only slated for Atlanta and Portland, several theater chains had said they would boycott the movie nationally in protest.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111012/universal-dumps-60-home-video-rental-plan/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111011/viral-video-heres-the-trailer-for-the-60-movie-for-free/ http://allthingsd.com/20111011/viral-video-heres-the-trailer-for-the-60-movie-for-free/#comments Tue, 11 Oct 2011 07:27:52 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=130875

Here is the latest trailer for “Tower Heist,” the new Eddie Murphy/Ben Stiller movie that Universal will offer to home viewers for $59.99, while the Hollywood film is still in theaters.

It’s part of an unusual experiment in digital distribution.

It does look funny, but does it look $60 funny?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111011/viral-video-heres-the-trailer-for-the-60-movie-for-free/feed/ 0