‘Elvis & Nixon’ Sets Kevin Spacey & Michael Shannon In Tale Of Historic White House Hangout – AFM

by Jen Yamato
EXCLUSIVE: Historical drama Elvis & Nixon has set two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey to play President Richard Nixon opposite Oscar nominee Michael Shannon as rock ‘n’ roller Elvis Presley as the reconfigured project hits AFM this week. Written by actor Cary Elwes with Hanala and Joey Sagal, Elvis & Nixon centers on the historic 1970 meeting between King and the president that famously yielded one of the more curious White House photo ops in pop culture history.
Liza Johnson (Hateship Loveship, Return) is directing Elvis & Nixon, which The Butler’s Cassian Elwes is producing with Holly Wiersma. Byron Wetzel is executive producing alongside Tim Smith and Paul Brett for Prescience, which is backing the project. Bloom’s Alex Walton and Ken Kao are taking Elvis & Nixon to foreign buyers at AFM. CAA and Elwes are co-repping domestic rights.

More about that meeting: On the morning of December 21, 1970, Presley showed up on the White House lawn asking to speak with the president at the height of his revived rock ‘n’ roll stardom. President Nixon received him in the Oval Office, where they discussed the patriotic Presley’s views on drug use and hippies (he didn’t care for either, though he would develop an addiction to barbiturates), and the King asked to be sworn in as an undercover federal agent, leaving behind a gifted Colt .45 for the president. Less than four years after their powwow, Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal; three years after that, Presley was dead at 42.

Elvis & Nixon unfolds during the course of a week. Eric Bana and Danny Huston once were attached to the roles, but it’s a new package that’s also seen some script revisions that Bloom is introducing this week in Santa Monica. Filming is slated for an early 2015 start. “It’s almost hard to fathom this story which evolved in the Oval Office between these two extraordinary men,” said Walton. “It’s almost too good to be true.”

Shannon, seen recently as General Zod in Warners’ Man Of Steel and the Toronto hot title 99 Homes, just finished his run on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, which ended last month after five seasons. He’s repped by CAA, Wetzel Entertainment and Morris Yorn.

Spacey also is enjoying small-screen acclaim with his Netflix series House Of Cards, which returns for its third season next year. He’ll reprise his role in WB’s comedy sequel Horrible Bosses 2, in theaters November 26. He’s repped by CAA and Joanne Horowitz Management.

Bloom is in production on Shane Black thriller The Nice Guys, starring Russell Crowe, and in post on Gus Van Sant’s The Sea Of Trees, starring Matthew McConaughey. They’re at AFM with Michael Apted’s Unlocked with Noomi Rapace, Renny Harlin’s Jackie Chan starrer Skiptrace and the John Moore-helmed The Hunters as well as the Gillian Flynn adaptation Dark Places, starring Charlize Theron; Liam Neeson actioner A Walk Among The Tombstones; The Woman In Black: Angel of Death; soccer biopic Pele; Jane Got A Gun, starring Natalie Portman; and Out Of The Dark, starring Julia Stiles and Scott Speedman.

Nov 11, 2014 1:11 pm

Sony Loves ‘Elvis & Nixon’ Tender, Leads Strong International Sales – AFM

Elvis Meets Nixon

"The President and the King" - a Short Film by Seth Swirsky.
You ever hear about the day Elvis Presley unexpectedly flew to Washington, went to the White House and requested a meeting with President Richard Nixon? Now see what it actually looked like using the 26 photographs taken that morning by White House photographer, Oliver Atkins.
The film also features a rare interview with Jerry Schilling, one of the main men in Elvis Presley's 'Memphis Mafia', who was in the oval office that day!

Top Android news of the week: Sony smartwatch, Android Wear 5.0, Lollipop rolling out

Summary: This week Sony's Android Wear watch appeared, as did details about new features in Android Wear 5.0. Google confirmed Lollipop is rolling out.

Sony Smartwatch 3 now available for purchase

Sony has joined the Android Wear army with the launch of the Smartwatch 3. It's not very stylish but has a slightly rugged construction that may appeal to those with active lifestyles.

The MSRP of $249 for Android Wear smartwatches seems to be popular, and the Sony Smartwatch 3 joins models from other OEMs at this price.

Source: The Verge

New features in Android Wear 5.0 detailed

Lollipop, aka Android 5.0, is rolling out for a number of devices. This includes Android Wear watches, and new features have been detailed by Phandroid.

New features include better ways to handle battery life and storage needs. New watch faces are part of the new package as well as better handling of the display for those with vision issues. There are several other big features detailed in the Phandroid article.

Source: Phandroid

Google confirms Lollipop rollout has begun

When major versions of a mobile OS get announced, device owners start chomping at the bit to get it. Nexus device owners got the good word from Google this week as it confirmed that Lollipop has begun rolling out.

It's a sign of the times that the notification from Google was done on Twitter.

Source: Google

Samsung and BlackBerry partner to make Android more secure

Security is on everyone's mind and Samsung is aiming to address that with a partnership with BlackBerry. The alliance will pair Samsung's Knox platform with BlackBerry's secure BES12.

The duo claims this offering will provide an end-to-end security solution for the enterprise.

Source: BlackBerry

Topics: Mobility, Android, Google, BlackBerry, Samsung

Here's How To Figure Out Everything Google Knows About You

When you use Google, you are making a deal. You get to use Gmail and search and YouTube and Google Maps for free and in exchange, you agree to share information about yourself. Google gets to sell that information to advertisers.

The more Google knows about you, the more it can match you to an advertiser who thinks you are an ideal customer. Advertisers are willing to pay more for ads served to ideal potential customers. For instance, airlines want to target people who love to travel. Children's clothing makers want to target parents.

Google uses a lot of methods to learn about you. There's the stuff you tell Google outright when you sign up for its services, like Gmail and Google Maps, or via an Android phone, like your name, phone number, location, and so on. Google also deduces information about you from watching your internet searches (what do you search for? click on?) and from the stuff you do with Google's products.

By visiting a site called "Ads Settings" you can see what Google knows about you.

It's not that easy to find Ads Settings. First, click on the link below or type it into your browser: https://www.google.com/settings/

Then click on "Account history".

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-google-knows-about-you-2014-11#ixzz3JCdvu1Ot

Apple Pay Gives Glimpse of Mainstream Appeal for Mobile Payments

For years, tech companies have dreamed of a future in which people ditch their wallets and pay for things with their smartphones. And for years, that has not happened.

But Apple may be on to something.

In the three weeks since the company released Apple Pay, its first stab at a mobile wallet, some major retailers are seeing a wave of consumers eager to check out at the register with their iPhones.

And even some of Apple’s competitors, like Google and Softcard, say Apple has helped create general awareness of mobile payments, including for their services.

Whole Foods, the high-end grocery chain, said it had processed more than 150,000 Apple Pay transactions. McDonald’s, which accepts Apple Pay at its 14,000 restaurants in the United States, said Apple Pay accounted for 50 percent of its tap-to-pay transactions. And Walgreens, the nationwide chain of drugstores, said its mobile wallet payments had doubled since Apple Pay came out.

Apple Pay is still far from a dominant payment system. But the retailers’ numbers are the first faint signs of a mainstream willingness to stray from cash and cards. Apple, analysts say, has tapped into something.

Whole Foods, the grocery chain, said it had processed more than 150,000 Apple Pay transactions since the service started. CreditEric Risberg/Associated Press

"Quite frankly, a lot of it has to do with the strength of the Apple brand and how much merchants and customers love how easy the experience is,” said Denée Carrington, an analyst with Forrester Research. “I’m not saying it’s changing the landscape overnight. But this has never happened with other mobile wallets.”

Not all retailers are blown away just yet by early adoption of Apple Pay. Toys “R” Us, which supports Apple Pay in all of its 870 stores, said that although the number of mobile payments at its stores increased after the introduction of Apple Pay, there were still relatively few mobile payments because customers were still learning about the new technology.

But Softcard, Google and other companies that also offer mobile wallet products, say that Apple’s entrance may be good for all players that offer mobile payments.

“Apple Pay has been a huge tailwind,” said Michael Abbott, chief executive of Softcard, a mobile wallet backed by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.

Mr. Abbott said that because of Apple, many companies now want to support the same technology for paying by phone: near-field communication, which enables devices to exchange information wirelessly over very short distances. This consistency would help make paying for things with a smartphone less confusing for shoppers.

Since Apple Pay was released, the Softcard app has been downloaded more often by new customers and used more frequently by its existing members, according to Mr. Abbott.

Last week, Google said its mobile payment product, Google Wallet, had also been used more after Apple Pay’s release.

“It’s a rising tide that has lifted all boats,” Mr. Abbott said.

Mobile payments have quickly been growing more popular, but over all, spending with a smartphone is low. The research firm Gartner estimated that worldwide, people spent $235.4 billion through mobile payments in 2013, compared with $163.1 billion in 2012. But that number is much smaller in North America, where consumers spent about $37 billion through mobile transactions in 2013, up from $24 billion the previous year.

Jan Dawson, a telecom analyst for Jackdaw Research, said that the hurdle for Apple Pay was that only the latest Apple phones, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, support it. Also, there are still many American merchants who do not support mobile payments. So it will probably take several years before Apple Pay becomes mainstream, he said.

“Apple Pay is going to be a slow-burn success,” Mr. Dawson said. “Until then, it will be something of a novelty and something that most consumers use occasionally if they use it at all. That’s still enormous progress.”

Apple Is Now Worth More Than The Entire Russian Stock Market

With Apple at record highs, its market capitalization is now bigger than Russia's entire stock market (the 20th largest market in the world). What's more, as Bloomberg notes, there would be enough money left over after selling Apple and buying Russia to purchase over 190 million contract-free 64Gb iPhone6 Pluses (enough for every Russian).

Via Zero Hedge

As Bloomberg adds,

If you owned Apple Inc., and sold it, you could purchase the entire stock market of Russia, and still have enough change to buy every Russian an iPhone 6 Plus.

...

Russia, the 20th largest among the world's major markets, is not the only one Apple has surpassed. The company, which forecasts a record holiday-sales quarter and has $155 billion in cash, is also bigger than 17th-ranked Singapore and 18th-ranked Italy.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-is-now-worth-more-than-the-entire-russian-stock-market-2014-11#ixzz3JCb0Vlmh