"The Social Network" may or may not be the movie of the year. There's still three months to go, after all. Here are Ty and David Denby giving reason to think it might be. What "The Social Network" definitely is is the latest example of a very old and successful Hollywood defense mechanism: absorbing competing media, subverting them, or both.

Make no mistake. Social media like Facebook are a bigger threat to the movie box office than anything since the arrival of television six decades ago. Ask a 14-year-old whether he or she would rather go to a movie or be on Facebook, and chances are the question won't even have been heard since he or she is actually already on Facebook and too engrossed in it to pay attention to what you're saying. Going to a movie used to be one of the best ways to escape parents. Now escape is just a mouse click away. It's not that moviegoing has lost its appeal to teens or is likely to. It's that moviegoing as a habit threatens to. Video games were bad enough. But Hollywood's been on to them at least since "Tron" ("Tron: Legacy" is coming out in December). More generally, movies have become bigger-screen versions of video games, courtesy of pinball editing, Krakatoa-scale explosions, and lowest common denominator character motivation.

DANVILLE, Calif., Oct. 1, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ActionView International, Inc. (Pink Sheets:AVEW) today announced additional professional match-ups scheduled for the October 16, 2010 World Championship Full Contact (WCFC) event at The Rail Event Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. The October 16th pro-am event will feature three professional fights, including the previously announced match between "Super" Steven Siler from the Riven fight team and Steven "Razor" Sharp of Absolute MMA, and 7 amateur bouts with fighters from some of the western United States' top mixed martial arts facilities, including Absolute MMA, The Academy, The Bernales Institute, Kingdom Klub, and Wicked Ways Muay Thai.

NEW YORK, Oct. 1, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Despite MSG Media's attempts since early this year to engage DISH Network in good faith negotiations, no agreement was reached for DISH Network to continue to carry MSG Network and MSG Plus. Therefore, as of midnight last night, DISH is no longer carrying the networks on its channel lineup, and New York area sports fans will now miss exclusive live coverage of the Knicks, Rangers, Islanders, Devils and Sabres.

NEW YORK and KNOXVILLE, Tenn., Oct. 1, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- IMAX Corporation (Nasdaq:IMAX) (TSX:IMX) and Regal Entertainment Group (NYSE:RGC), today announced an expansion of the companies' joint venture agreement to include installation of an additional 16 to 25 new IMAX(r) theatres in the United States. These theatres, which are part of an amendment to the parties' original 2008 joint venture agreement, are in addition to Regal's previously committed rollout of 39 IMAX joint venture theatres, 34 of which are in currently in operation. As part of the agreement, Regal also plans to upgrade eight of its existing film-based IMAX theatres with IMAX's digital projection technology.