‘Walking Dead’ Showrunner Glen Mazzara Leaving

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Glen Mazzara, who led AMC‘s “The Walking Dead” to ratings highs after the exit of Frank Darabont, is leaving the show.

The announcement came with the unsurprising news of a fourth-season pickup for the series. It continues AMC’s rocky record with its showrunners, but the network said the decision was mutual.

While AMC has clashed with showrunners before over money, a person familiar with the situation told TheWrap that this time the issue is “100 percent not about money or contracts.”

Rather, it is about a difference of opinion over where the show should go in the fourth season and beyond. It involves AMC, Mazzara and the show’s writers and producers, who include Robert Kirkman, creator of the comics that provide the basis of the series.

Kirkman might be the fans’ choice to take over as showrunner, given that most of its characters were born on his pages. But he also has a busy career writing comics and novels.

In a statement, Kirkman said he believes Mazzara and AMC came to the decision “in the best interest of the future of the show.”

In an interview with TheWrap in October, Mazzara said he would love to remain with the show until the end, “if AMC and the fans would have me.”

“I would love to be the guy shutting the lights off,” he said at the time.

It didn’t work out that way, even though Mazzara has made “The Walking Dead” this season’s top-rated drama — even beating network shows. It also has a legitimate shot at ending the season as TV’s top scripted show overall.

“Both parties acknowledge that there is a difference of opinion about where the show should go moving forward, and conclude that it is best to part ways,” AMC said in a statement.

AMC also said the decision is “amicable” and that Mazzara will remain showrunner for the remainder of the third season, which resumes airing in February. The episodes have already been filmed, and Mazzara will oversee postproduction.

He is also looking for his next project.

“My time as showrunner on ‘The Walking Dead’ has been an amazing experience, but after I finish season 3, it’s time to move on,” said Mazzara. “I have told the stories I wanted to tell and connected with our fans on a level that I never imagined. It doesn’t get much better than that. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this journey.”

Mazzara took over the show after Darabont parted ways with it after its first season. Darabont was just one of several showrunners to have issues with AMC.

Jason Horwitch left “Rubicon” during its lone season. The third season of “Hell on Wheels” was briefly put on hold last month when showrunner John Shiban left.

“Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner nearly walked from the show during a contract dispute last year. And “Breaking Bad” briefly looked into leaving AMC before creator Vince Gilligan’s contract was renewed.

Kirkman’s full statement included his thanks to Mazzara and the show’s fans.

“I am in full support of both AMC and Glen Mazzara in the decision they have come to and believe the parties came to this decision in the best interest of the future of the show,” Kirkman said. “I thank Glen for his hard work and appreciate his many contributions to ‘The Walking Dead’ and look forward to working with him as we complete post production on Season 3. I am also excited to begin work on another spectacular season of this show that I know means so much to so many people. This show has always been the result of a wide range of extremely talented men and women working tirelessly to produce their best work collectively. I believe the future is bright for ‘The Walking Dead.’ Thank you to the fans for your continued support.”

Executive producer Gale Anne Hurd also expressed her thanks.

“I am appreciative and grateful to Glen for his hard work on ‘The Walking Dead,’” she wrote. “I am supportive of AMC and Glen’s decision and know that the series is in great hands with one of the most talented and dedicated casts and crews in the business. I look forward to the show’s continued success.”

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China probes Yum Brands’ KFC over safety of chicken products

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Yum Brands Inc‘s fast-food chain KFC was supplied with chicken in China that contained excessive amounts of antibiotics, said food safety authorities investigating allegations of tainted KFC products.

The finding by the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) deals a blow to KFC’s reputation in China, where it is facing fierce competition from the likes of Taiwanese-owned fried chicken chain Dico and Japanese-style noodle chain Ajisen (China) Holdings Ltd. Yum Brands has forecast a drop in same store China sales in the fourth quarter.

Eight of the 19 batches of chicken samples Yum Brands sent to a testing laboratory in 2010 and 2011 contained overly high levels of antibiotics, the SFDA said in a statement on its Website late on Thursday.

An investigation is underway to determine whether Yum Brands had taken corrective measures at that time, and the Louisville, Kentucky-based company may face harsh penalties if the probe showed laws had been violated, the SFDA said.

Shares in Yum Brands have slumped 4 percent since December 18 when China’s state television CCTV reported that some poultry suppliers in eastern Shandong province had fed chickens with anti-viral drugs and hormones to accelerate their growth.

The SFDA is looking into the CCTV report and has not released its findings yet, but authorities in Shandong have already shut two chicken farms in eastern China, including one that supplied KFC and McDonald’s Corp, the official Shanghai Daily newspaper reported on Thursday.

Officials at Yum Brands in China could not be immediately reached for comment.

KFC’s subsidiary in China has pledged to cooperate with the authorities, while McDonald’s wrote on its official microblog that its chicken and raw materials pass through independent, third-party laboratory tests.

Shares in Yum Brands, which also owns Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, closed 1 percent lower at $ 69.49 in New York on Thursday.

China has been trying to stamp out health violations that have dogged the country’s food sector amid reports of fake cooking oil, tainted milk and even exploding watermelons. In 2008, milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine killed at least six children and sickened nearly 300,000.

(Reporting by Samuel Shen and Kazunori Takada; Editing by Ryan Woo)

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Two Reasons Fiscal Cliff Chaos Is Actually Terrific

Immediately after House Speaker John Boehner’s Plan B fell apart Thursday night, Dow futures plummeted and the media freaked out (Huffington Post headline: “END OF THE WORLD“). Boehner and his deputies skulked out of the Capitol, humiliated. His Hail Mary plan to create leverage for Republicans in the fiscal cliff negotiations with Republicans lay in tatters. Soon, his speakership may, too.

But Plan B’s demise doesn’t ensure we’re going over the cliff—it simply narrows the options. And two bits of good news are embedded in the failure. First, if we do go over the cliff, a resolution will arrive sooner than it would have otherwise. That’s because Plan B’s biggest effect, had it passed, would have been to inoculate Republicans against the charge that they blew up the economy to protect “millionaires and billionaires” from tax hikes. Now that they’re vulnerable to that charge, public pressure will be much more intense and likely to elicit a quick concession.

Second, it’s now clear that the only way to avoid the cliff is through a bipartisan bill that can pass the House, probably with substantial Democratic support. The GOP’s self-defeating revolt will shift the center of gravity to the left. Here’s where things get tricky: Boehner has said he won’t bring a bill to the floor unless it has the support of the majority of his caucus. Lost in Thursday night’s disarray was that the overwhelming majority of House Republicans—all but 30 or so of his 241 members—supported Plan B’s tax hike on millionaires. So it’s not impossible to imagine him gaining the support of 121 Republicans (he may need fewer because of vacancies) for a deal that raises taxes on households earning, say, $ 400,000 or $ 500,000, especially if that deal also contains cuts to entitlement programs and removes the dreaded sequester.

But gaining that support is far from a sure thing. It’s what Republicans and Democrats are now frantically trying to gauge. If Boehner can’t get a majority of his caucus on board, then he’ll truly be facing the end of the world—or at least the end of his speakership. The conservatives I polled Thursday night agreed (contra some media chatter) that Plan B’s failure doesn’t threaten Boehner’s job. But they also thought that if Boehner were to pass a cliff bill without a majority of his caucus, he’d be doomed.

In a drama Aaron Sorkin might have scripted, Boehner may soon be faced with the choice of holding firm and hurtling everyone into the abyss or saving the country from chaos by passing a Democratic-friendly bill with only a minority of Republicans—at the cost of his speakership, which (more Sorkin drama) is up for a vote on Jan. 3.

Either way, though, there’s a little more certainty this morning that things will end sooner rather than later. So despite the hyperbole and market turmoil, last night’s vote actually brought some good news.

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Kenya police: 28 people killed in clashes

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A police official says 28 people have been killed in clashes between farmers and herders in south-eastern Kenya.

Anthony Kamitu, who is leading police operations to prevent the attacks, said Friday that the Pokomo tribe of farmers raided a village of the Orma herding community, called Kipao, at dawn in the Tana River Delta.

The latest deaths in a tit-for-tat cycle of killings may be related to a redrawing of political boundaries and next year’s general elections, according to the U.N.

At least 110 people were killed in clashes between the Pokomo and Orma in September and October.

Animosity between the two communities over land and water resources has existed for decades.

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“Les Miserables” movie relies on close-ups for emotional punch

NEW YORK (Reuters) – For British director Tom Hooper, the key to turning “Les Miserables” from the wildly popular stage musical to a cinematic experience both sweeping and intimate, was all in the close-up.

The stage musical has left audiences around the world wiping away tears with its themes of justice, redemption and romantic and familial love. So bringing it to life on screen for fans and filmgoers was “hugely daunting,” Hooper says.

Still, the Oscar-winning director of “The King’s Speech,” was ambitious, wanting to offer even more of the “intense emotional experience” that has kept fans returning to various stage productions since “Les Miserables” made its English language debut 27 years ago.

“I felt very aware of the fact that so many millions of people hold this close to their hearts and would probably sit in the cinemas in complete fear,” Hooper told reporters about his big screen take on the tale of French revolutionaries rising up against powerful forces.

Movie stars Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway were all put through an intense audition and rehearsal process, to make sure they could sing take after take, live, with cameras positioned right in their face.

It also features a large ensemble including Amanda Seyfried and Eddie Redmayne, as well as Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter who lead the comic relief song, “Master of the House.”

“I thought the great weapon in my arsenal was the close up, because the one thing on stage that you can’t enjoy is the detail of what is going on in people’s faces as they are singing,” Hooper said. “I felt (that) having to do a meditation on the human face was by far the best way to bring out the emotion of the songs.”

That tactic may or may not have paid off for a movie that is seen as one of the front runners for Oscar awards in February. Early screenings of the film that opens on Christmas Day have moved some audiences. Critics have praised the performances, but given the movie as a whole less than top marks.

The movie reunites the same team that worked on the original musical, including French composer Claude-Michel Schonberg, lyricist Alain Boublil, and English language adapter Herbert Kretzmer. It adds one original song to the existing show, which includes the well-known “I Dreamed a Dream”.

Jackman plays petty thief Jean Valjean, the protagonist of the story based on French writer Victor Hugo’s epic 1862 historical novel “Les Miserables.” Valjean transforms himself into a respected businessman but struggles for decades to escape the clutches of his nemesis, police inspector Javert (Russell Crowe), and along the way encounters factory worker Fantine (Anne Hathaway).

TIMELY MESSAGE

Inspired by films such as 1991′s “The Commitments,” singing was filmed live rather than later recorded in a studio to give the movie a more authentic feel.

Hathaway lost 25 pounds (11.3 kg) for the role and cut her long brown hair. She spent six months perfecting the task of crying and singing at the same time for “I Dreamed a Dream” and is a hot favorite for a best supporting actress Oscar.

In a twist of fate, Hooper had initially seen Hathaway singing to Jackman a boisterous version of the “Les Miserables” song “On My Own” at the 2011 Academy Awards ceremony, just when he was trying to decide whether to direct the film and was thinking about casting.

“I was sitting there, going: ‘There is something very strange happening’,” he joked. “Whatever happened, it certainly worked, because I ended up casting both of them.”

Hooper said he took his inspiration mostly from Hugo’s novel rather than any one stage production, and thus saw Crowe’s Javert more as a “deeply honorable” character than a simplistic “bad guy” as portrayed in some productions.

The time also felt right, he said, to bring the story to a larger audience on the big screen.

“There are so many people hurting around the world because of social, economic, inequality and inequity. There is such anger against the system,” he said, “whether it’s the protests on Wall Street or in London at St Paul’s, or the seismic shifts happening in the Middle East.”

“‘Les Miserables’ is the great advocate of the dispossessed,” Hooper said. “It teaches you the way to collective action is through passionate engagement with the people around you. It starts with love for the person next to you.”

(Editing by Jill Serjeant and David Storey)

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Study: Solo stars at higher death risk than bands

LONDON (AP) — Rock ‘n’ roll will never die — but it’s a hazardous occupation.

An academic study published Thursday confirms that rock and pop musicians are more likely to die prematurely than the general population, and finds that solo artists are twice as likely to die young as members of bands.

Researchers from Liverpool John Moores University and Britain’s Health Department studied 1,489 rock, pop, punk, R&B, rap, electronica and New Age stars who became famous between 1956 and 2006 — from Elvis Presley to the Arctic Monkeys.

They found that 137 of the stars, or 9.2 percent, had died, representing “higher levels of mortality than demographically matched individuals in the general population.”

The researchers dismissed the “fanciful but unsubstantiated” popular myth that rock stars tend to die at 27 — as Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse all did. The average age of death was 45.2 years for North American stars and 39.6 for European ones.

Solo performers had twice the death risk of members of bands. Lead researcher Mark Bellis speculated that could be because bands provide peer support at stressful times.

“Solo artists, even though they have huge followings, may be relatively isolated,” said Bellis, director of the Center for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University.

Music critic John Aizlewood agreed that solo artists receive more attention and adulation — and also more pressure.

“And when you are a solo act, irrespective of what they say in interviews, it’s an incredibly egotistical thing,” he said. “So you tend to be dealing with people who are more emotionally extreme.

“They have an ego in the way a drummer or even a lead guitarist in a band doesn’t.”

In good news for aging rockers, the study found that, after 25 years of fame, stars’ death rates began to return to normal — at least in Europe. A European star still living 36 years after achieving fame faces a similar mortality rate to the European public. But U.S. artists continue to die in greater numbers.

Bellis said factors contributing to the difference could include longer careers — and thus longer exposure to rock ‘n’ roll excess — in the U.S., a huge, populous country with greater opportunities for aging stars to stay on the road. Europe’s stronger social safety net and socialized medicine may also play a role, he said.

The research, which updates a 2007 study by the same team, was published in the online journal BMJ Open.

The study suggests the infamous rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle may not be entirely to blame for rock stars‘ death risk.

The researchers looked for the first time at the role of “adverse childhood experiences” — such as physical or sexual abuse — on stars’ later behavior.

They found that performers who had had at least one adverse childhood experience were more likely to die from drug and alcohol use or “risk-related causes.”

“Substance abuse and risk-taking in stars are largely discussed in terms of hedonism, music industry culture, responses to the pressures of fame or even part of the creative process,” the researchers said.

However, they said, “adverse experiences in early life may leave some predisposed to health-damaging behaviors, with fame and extreme wealth providing greater opportunities to engage in risk-taking.”

But Ellis Cashmore, a cultural studies professor at Staffordshire University and author of the book “Celebrity/Culture,” said it would be wrong to overlook “artistic frustration” as a factor in artistic self-destruction.

He said troubled artists from Vincent Van Gogh and Ernest Hemingway to the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson all illustrate “the torment that creativity brings with it.”

“Perhaps it is the continual striving for some sort of unattainable artistic perfection that drives them,” he said.

___

Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless

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Economic impact of Canada retail sales jump seen small

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada retail sales in October jumped by a stronger-than-expected 0.7 percent from September to hit a record, but analysts said the figures were less impressive than they seemed and would not do much to boost recent sluggish economic growth.

Statistics Canada said on Thursday that retail sales in October reached C$ 39.45 billion ($ 39.85 billion), the third consecutive all-time high. Sales have now grown for four straight months.

But analysts, who had expected a month-over-month increase of 0.2 percent, noted that in volume terms sales were only up by 0.3 percent.

This, they predicted, would not have a major effect on October gross domestic product data due out on Friday. The consensus forecast is for a 0.1 percent increase.

“It’s volume that matters to GDP such that while the (October) gain was positive, it will translate into GDP much less powerfully than the headline would suggest,” Scotiabank economists Derek Holt and Dov Zigler said in a note to clients.

Canada’s economy grew at a sluggish 0.6 percent pace, annualized, in the third quarter. Although the Bank of Canada is predicting fourth-quarter growth of 2.5 percent, annualized, that looks to be too optimistic given exporters’ problems with weak markets and the strong Canadian dollar.

The retail sales data helped push the Canadian dollar up to a session high of C$ 0.9875 versus the U.S. dollar, or $ 1.0127, compared with C$ 0.9890, or $ 1.0111, before the release. It later slipped back and at 10:05 a.m. (1505 GMT) was trading at C$ 0.9893, or $ 1.0111.

In October, gains were reported in eight of 11 subsectors, representing 92 percent of retail trade.

On annualized terms, fourth-quarter retail sales growth so far is an anemic 0.6 percent, compared with the 2.2 percent rise recorded in the third quarter.

Benjamin Reitzes, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, also noted sales growth from October 2011 was just 1.7 percent, matching June’s figure and the second-lowest since Canada emerged from recession.

“Underlying sales continue to slow, which has been the story for much of the past year, as modest job growth, warnings about over-indebtedness and the allure of cross-border shopping weigh on retailers,” he said in a note to clients.

Sales at motor vehicles and parts dealers grew by 1.6 percent on the back of a 1.6 percent increase in sales by new car dealers, who posted a fifth consecutive monthly gain. Sales at gasoline stations also advanced by 1.6 percent.

Food and beverage store sales were up by 0.5 percent. Furniture and home furnishings store sales fell by 2.0 percent while electronics and appliance stores recorded a decline of 1.6 percent.

(Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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State Department security chief leaves post over Benghazi

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday its security chief had resigned from his post and three other officials had been relieved of their duties following a scathing official inquiry into the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

Eric Boswell has resigned effective immediately as assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a terse statement. A second official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Boswell had not left the department entirely and remained a career official.

Nuland said that Boswell, and the three other officials, had all been put on administrative leave “pending further action.”

An official panel that investigated the incident concluded that the Benghazi mission was completely unprepared to deal with the attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

The unclassified version of the report, which was released on Tuesday, cited “leadership and management” deficiencies, poor coordination among officials and “real confusion” in Washington and in the field over who had the authority to make decisions on policy and security concerns.

“The ARB identified the performance of four officials, three in the Bureau of the Diplomatic Security and one in the Bureau of (Near Eastern) Affairs,” Nuland said in her statement, referring to the panel known as an Accountability Review Board.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted Boswell’s decision to resign effective immediately, the spokeswoman said.

Earlier, a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Boswell, one of his deputies, Charlene Lamb, and a third unnamed official has been asked to resign. The Associated Press first reported that three officials had resigned.

PANEL STOPS SHORT OF BLAMING CLINTON

The Benghazi incident appeared likely to tarnish Clinton’s four-year tenure as secretary of state but the report did not fault her specifically and the officials who led the review stopped short of blaming her.

“We did conclude that certain State Department bureau-level senior officials in critical positions of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a lack of leadership and management ability appropriate for senior ranks,” retired Admiral Michael Mullen, one of the leaders of the inquiry, told reporters on Wednesday.

The panel’s chair, retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering, said it had determined that responsibility for security shortcomings in Benghazi belonged at levels lower than Clinton’s office.

“We fixed (responsibility) at the assistant secretary level, which is, in our view, the appropriate place to look for where the decision-making in fact takes place, where – if you like – the rubber hits the road,” Pickering said after closed-door meetings with congressional committees.

The panel’s report and the comments by its two lead authors suggested that Clinton, who accepted responsibility for the incident in a television interview about a month after the Benghazi attack, would not be held personally culpable.

Pickering and Mullen spoke to the media after briefing members of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee behind closed doors on classified elements of their report.

Clinton had been expected to appear at an open hearing on Benghazi on Thursday, but is recuperating after suffering a concussion, dehydration and a stomach bug last week. She will instead be represented by her two top deputies.

Clinton, who intends to step down in January, said in a letter accompanying the review that she would adopt all of its recommendations, which include stepping up security staffing and requesting more money to fortify U.S. facilities.

The National Defense Authorization Act for 2013, which is expected to go to Congress for final approval this week, includes a measure directing the Pentagon to increase the Marine Corps presence at diplomatic facilities by up to 1,000 Marines.

Some Capitol Hill Republicans who had criticized the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi attacks said they were impressed by the report.

“It was very thorough,” said Senator Johnny Isakson. Senator John Barrasso said: “It was very, very critical of major failures at the State Department at very high levels.” Both spoke after the closed-door briefing.

Others, however, took a harsher line and called for Clinton to testify as soon as she is able.

“The report makes clear the massive failure of the State Department at all levels, including senior leadership, to take action to protect our government employees abroad,” Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

Senator Bob Corker, who will be the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the new Congress is seated early next year, said Clinton should testify about Benghazi before her replacement is confirmed by the Senate.

Republicans have focused much of their firepower on U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who appeared on TV talk shows after the attack and suggested it was the result of a spontaneous protest rather than a premeditated attack.

The report concluded that there was no such protest.

Rice, widely seen as President Barack Obama’s top pick to succeed Clinton, withdrew her name from consideration last week.

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Christopher Wilson)

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Nintendo’s amazing triumph in Japan may doom the company internationally

According to Japanese gaming bible Famitsu, Nintendo (NTDOY) 3DS sold 333,000 units in the week ending December 16, while Sony’s (SNE) PS Vita limped along at 13,000 units, the new Wii U did an okay 130,000 units and the PlayStation 3 managed to sell 46,000 units.  The utter hardware domination of the 3DS is reshaping the Japanese software market. Franchises that were thought to be fading have been revitalized in their portable versions. The 3DS version of the ancient Animal Crossing series, famed for being the game where nothing happens, hit a staggering 1.7 million units last week in Japan. Inazuma Eleven sold 170,000 units in its launch week, up from 140,000 units its DS version managed in 2011.

[More from BGR: RIM, HTC and Nokia could all be headed the way of Palm]

Nintendo’s portable console 3DS had a muted start in its home market in the spring of 2011. Many thought that Sony would have a fair shot at competing with Nintendo once Playstation Vita launched at the end of 2011. But once Nintendo executed an aggressive price cut for 3DS in the summer of 2011 and then launched a large-screen version of the console in mid-2012, the gadget has grown into a Godzilla in Japan, demolishing both Sony Vita and aging tabletop console competition.

[More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 browser smokes iOS 6 and Windows Phone 8 in comparison test [video]]

3DS is doing well also in America, where its lifetime sales are moving close to the 6 million unit mark this holiday season. According to NPD, the 3DS sales in the United States topped 500,000 units in November. That’s a decent number, though far from the torrid volume the portable is racking up in its home market. The U.S. November video game software chart was dominated by massive home console juggernauts: new installments of Call of Duty, Halo and Assassin’s Creed franchises shifted more than 13 million units in retail. At the same time, the Japanese software chart remains in a ’90s time warp, dominated by Nintendo’s musty masterpieces: Super Mario Brothers, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, etc.

Japanese and American tastes have always been different. But what we are witnessing now is a particularly fascinating divergence. American consumers are spending more of their time and money on smartphone and tablet games, while console game spending is increasingly focusing on massive, graphically stunning blockbuster titles on Xbox360 and PS3. The casual gamers are shifting to mobile games, while hardcore gamers remain attracted to sprawling epics on home consoles. The overall video game spending in America keeps declining month after month, as casual titles and mid-list games slide. But the Triple A whales like the Call of Duty series are doing better than ever.

In Japan, Nintendo has been able to battle back iPhone and Android game invasion with a nostalgic series of portable games that basically recycle the biggest hits of ’80s and early ’90s. Mario, Pokemons and other portable heroes are slowly losing their grip on U.S. and European consumers. But in Japan, some form of national nostalgia is keeping Nintendo on track.

The problem here is that the Japanese success of the 3DS may now be convincing Nintendo that it does not have to reconsider its business strategy. The smartphone and tablet game spending continues growing explosively across the world. Unlike console games, mobile game sales in China are legal. The global gaming spending is shifting towards new hardware platforms even as console mammoths like Halo still reign in America. At this critical juncture, Nintendo has managed to cocoon its home market in a web of nostalgia, turning the 3DS console and its Eighties left-over franchises into epic bestsellers yet again.

This means that there is no sense of urgency to push Nintendo into rethinking its long-term plans. The company may continue simply ignoring the smartphone and tablet challenge, designing new portable consoles and the 28th Mario game to support it. Twenty years ago, Japan’s insularity doomed its chances to succeed in the mobile phone business. And now the idiosyncratic nature of Japan may be leading its biggest entertainment industry success astray.

This article was originally published by BGR

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“Gangnam Style” in line for UK dictionary inclusion

LONDON (Reuters) – He has the most-watched video in Youtube history, become a pop sensation with a horse-riding dance craze that has swept the world and now Korean singer Psy may cement his place in popular culture with recognition from a British dictionary.

“Gangnam Style,” Psy’s signature song, has been chosen along with “fiscal cliff” and “Romneyshambles” as some of Collins Dictionary‘s words of the year.

“We were looking for words that told the story of the year,” said Ian Brookes, the dictionary‘s consultant editor.

“Some words are from events that have been and gone and so are not likely to stick around … but others are probably here to stay.”

Other headline entries centered on American politics.

“Fiscal cliff” has drawn a lot of attention as the deadline for Congress and President Obama to agree on government spending and tax plans draws nearer.

While the term “Romneyshambles” entered the British public’s consciousness after Mitt Romney‘s gaffe-ridden visit to London in July in which he questioned Britain’s readiness to host the Olympics.

The inclusion of “47 percent” on the list after a leaked video showed Romney telling donors that 47 percent of Americans would definitely vote for Obama because of their dependency on the government capped off a bad year for the losing presidential candidate.

Collins received over 7,000 submissions on its online database.

Twelve words of the year – one for each month – were then selected on the basis of the frequency with which they were spoken, how many places they appeared and their longevity in public discourse.

Appearing on the Collins words of the year list is no guarantee of insertion in the next dictionary.

But Gangnam Style stands a very good chance, Brookes said.

“It’s obviously a craze, so there’s the possibility it will go away. But it’s been heard by so many people that I think it’s probably earned the right to go into the dictionary.”

Other words of the year include “mummy porn” after the popularity of the “Fifty Shades of Grey” books, and “superstorm” after Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc along the east coast of America in October.

(Reporting By Peter Schwartzstein, editing by Paul Casciato)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: “Gangnam Style” in line for UK dictionary inclusion
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