At the same time that Blockbuster U.K. has entered administration (bankruptcy) and announced 160 of its stores across the U.K. will be closing, Blockbuster in the U.S. is having similar difficulties. Dish Network, the parent company for Blockbuster, announced this week that 300 Blockbuster video rental stores across the U.S. will close up shop in the coming weeks. The company told the Denver Post that around 3,000 employees will lose their jobs.

These new closings are on top of the 500 stores that Dish shut down last year. The company stated that only around 500 Blockbuster stores remain. This is down from the 4,000 U.S. stores the company had at the beginning of 2010, the same year it entered bankruptcy. The specific stores that will be closing have not been unveiled, but consumers who still live around a Blockbuster (and who still want DVDs or Blu-Rays) might want to watch for closeout sales.

A Dish company spokesperson told the Post that the company is currently evaluating Blockbuster stores on a case-by-case basis, and that underperforming stores will be closed. The company is also evaluating whether or not to sell smartphones and wireless service at Blockbuster stores, a sign of the times if there ever was one.

Deloitte, the firm administering Blockbuster, has announced that 160 Blockbuster stores in the U.K. will be closing. The possibility of more store closing announcements in the near future was not ruled out.

“Having reviewed the portfolio with management, the store closure plan is an inevitable consequence of having to restructure the Company to a profitable core which is capable of being sold,” said Lee Manning joint administrator of Blockbuster U.K at Deloitte. “We would like to thank the company’s employees for their support and professionalism during this difficult time. We are also grateful to the customers for their continued support.”

The closings mean around 1,000 Blockbuster employees will soon be out of work or shuffled to other stores. The stores won’t close immediately, however, and a hotline has been put in place to help employees find other work.

In the meantime, the closing stores will remain open for business. Customers will get to enjoy “closing down promotions” as the stores close.

Competition from online retailers and the rise of streaming digital media are causing increasing difficulties for physical retailers. British retailers HMV and Game Group have also entered administration within the past year.

Deloitte claims that Blockbuster U.K.’s “core” business is still solid. A buyer for the company’s 528 stores across the U.K. will be sought. Blockbuster U.K. currently employs 4190 people.

Unlike HMV, which suspended trading of its stock on the London Stock Exchange, Blockbuster stock will continue to trade normally. Deloitte also made a point to assure customers that all gift cards will be honored.

“In recent years Blockbuster has faced increased competition from internet-based providers along with the shift to digital streaming of movies and games,” said Lee Manning, a Deloitte partner and one of the people assigned to jointly administer Blockbuster U.K. “We are working closely with suppliers and employees to ensure the business has the best possible platform to secure a sale, preserve jobs and generate as much value as possible for all creditors.”

Blockbuster U.K. is just another in a line of British retailers of physical media to run into financial trouble. In addition to HMV, GameStop closed its stores in the U.K. last year and Game Group entered administration in March of last year. These failures are almost certainly a sign of things to come in the U.S. and the rest of the world, as media consumption shifts from physical discs to downloadable and streaming options.

Michael Bay is kicking himself right now, for not thinking of it first. I could easily see the Tetris cubes turning into robots and trying to take over Earth. Or they could be spaceships, letting out little green men every time they score a Tetris. Either way, the video is funny, and like a lot of movies that fall into this category, they tease us by not giving too many details.

Production values are pretty high for this parody. If it really came out, I would probably see it, but I’s wait for the Redbox.

If Battleship gets its own blockbuster action movie, why not Tetris? This pretty much sums up everyone’s assumptions about what that movie was about.

Although the previous video was good for copying summer movies, this is still my favorite live-action Tetris video:

In Q4 2011, home entertainment streaming content was up 2.5% at $549 million, and the market brought in $4.45 billion as a whole. With physical video rental outlets like Blockbuster in serious decline, home streaming services will continue to grow, and the owners of Hulu, News Corp., Disney, Comcast and Providence are looking for ways to better capitalize on and to protect profits – and Hulu isn’t the only platform that will be requiring user-authentication – News Corp. owned Fox, as well as other Comcast services, will likely adopt the new login model.

Still, it will likely take some time to actually implement these changes, while streaming content providers are scrambling to figure out how to best monetize their shows. While the practice of having to enter an account number of a service a user pays for is technically not forcing a viewer to pay for Hulu content – the provider likely expects an initial drop in user base. Though, it’s unlikely Hulu will see the sort of drastic loss that Netflix experienced when it attempted to divide its services with the introduction of Qwikster.

The Avengers stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgård, Cobie Smulders and Samuel L. Jackson.

The clip, titled “The Face Off”, can also be viewed in iTunes by clicking here.

Here are all the clips released so far. If you’re pressed for time 1, 3, and 4 are the best. Just sayin.

Clip 1: Scarlett Johanson, er I mean Black Widow, escapes an impossible scenario and kicks some a**. Giggidy.

Clip 2: Featured on the Late Show with David Letterman when Cobie Smulders stopped by for an interview. Not much action, features Smulders’ character Maria Hill.

Clip 3: Tony Stark confronts Loki and tells him about the Avengers.

Clip 4: Thor and Captain America battle Loki’s army.

Clip 5: Nick Fury and Loki battle with words.

That’s all, folks. Check out comingsoon.net for a full list of all the promotional videos for The Avengers.

Speaking of, WWTDD has an awesome animated gif of the green behemoth in action, which helps me believe the hype and excitment is not being misplaced:

After seeing that, it’s even more incentive to take part in Facebook’s promotion for The Avengers, if only for the chance to see the movie a little earlier. Over at SlashFilm, they’ve posted a “60 things We Learned On The Set of The Avengers primer, which sheds some light concerning which storyline Joss Whedon will be focusing on:

- Even though The Avengers is a sequel to all the Marvel movies that have come before it, they made sure to give every character “an introduction in this movie as if they never had a movie before.”

- The story begins from SHIELD’s point of view. As you know, SHIELD an organization in charge of the safety of the world. An event occurs which causes problems for Nick Fury, and he must try to get this group to come together and fight the threat.

- Thor is already back on Earth, and how he got back is explained

- Thor’s brother Loki is involved in the Chaos and Thor attempts to be hands on in the solution. Thor believes that Loki is still redeemable, while others do not.

- Hawkeye is on his own mission for most of this story.

- Bruce Banner has gotten past what happened in the previous Hulk movies. He has not transformed into The Hulk in years and SHIELD isn’t after him to be the Hulk. SHIELD has him aboard the Hellicarrier helping with some important lab work — they need Banner for his Gamma expertise.

- Captain America is struggling with the change in society, morals, values, and also technology.

- Black Widow is on another mission when we find her.

The wait is almost over.

Long story short, I looked everywhere for this obscure film. Netflix did not have it. Redbox did not have it. My girlfriend was calling every Blockbuster in a ten mile radius and they did not have it! I spent about 45 minutes on this fruitless pursuit.

Eventually, I realized I could probably just download a digital version online. Of course I could! I didn’t even know you could download a movie from Amazon, but you can, and I did. And what a piece of garbage it was (which has nothing to do with this story)!

The point is, resources are getting ever more expensive and physical retailers (in my opinion) have become more and more disappointing (they never have what we’re looking for). Randomly searching for something can waste a lot of gasoline, time, and energy. Why not just turn on the computer, and download what you want.

NPD Group monitors trends in rentals and guess what they found out? That’s right, people don’t like to drive to Blockbuster! In fact, more people rent from Redbox, probably because it’s closer (in most cases) and it’s cheaper (come on folks, $1 versus $5). Less surprising is that even more people simply just download their movies.

Senior vice president and industry analysis for The NPD Group Russ Crupnick had this to say about the trend:

“The movie-rental market is clearly undergoing a sea change, as consumers become better equipped to access on-demand and streamed movies and are more comfortable with available delivery options”

But old habits die hard and the movie rental business has not completely transformed. 37% of rentals go to Redbox, 31% go to digital and streaming formats, and the remainder go to physical retailers (like Blockbuster). I’m sure this will continue to change as consumers become more comfortable renting online.

While the news for DISH Network is largely good, fans of the once-indomitable Blockbuster found little to get excited about. While the Blockbuster-branded streaming service has continued to grow, Blockbuster’s brick-and-mortar locations have not fared nearly as well. DISH announced in their earnings report today that 500 of the remaining 1,500 Blockbuster stores would be closing in the coming months, with more closings likely to follow.

In the days before online streaming services became popular, Blockbuster was the biggest name in home video rental. When the popularity of Netflix’s DVD-by-mail service began to grow, Blockbuster launched a competing service of their own that allowed users the option of getting the DVDs in their queue by mail, or in-store. With the advent of RedBox’s movie rental kiosks and online video streaming services like Netflix, however, Blockbuster’s brick-and-mortar stores began to suffer. The situation eventually became so bad that Blockbuster found themselves in bankruptcy. That’s when DISH Network came along. DISH bought Blockbuster, and almost immediately launched a Blockbuster-branded streaming video service to compete with Netflix and Hulu.

While the streaming service has helped save Blockbuster as a company – and boosted DISH Network’s bottom line in the process – its success has not been enough to save Blockbuster’s brick-and-mortar retail chain. The closure announced today will leave the company with just 1,000 stores in the country. You can bet it will only be a matter of time before those doors are closed, too.

Are you upset that more Blockbuster stores are closing? Do you (or anyone you know) still go to video rental stores in your area? Let us know in the comments.

After spending the day with Jinping in Los Angeles, Biden pressed on the trade dispute in question as the two had dinner, stating “we’re really close,” said an official who was present. “It would be great to get this done.”

Jean Prewitt, president of the Independent Film and Television Alliance adds, “we do think it’s a breakthrough,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “For the first time we really have the building blocks to begin to work competitively in that marketplace,” she added. Presently, about 40 foreign indie films get a release in China each year, along with the typical 20 from Hollywood, with producers haggling over 2-3% of the gross. Now, they will be able to get roughly what they get elsewhere, in China. The new agreement might not only affect revenue – Su Mu, a professor at Beijing’s film academy, claims Chinese cinema has basically been ‘tricking’ moviegoers into theaters through the use of big name movie stars as of late, instead of making worthwhile films with actual production values and plots. “More U.S. movies may force domestic producers to take a correct attitude toward their works and learn from others,” Mu tells the Guardian.

Market trends suggest that Hollywood blockbusters are in demand in China, and in 2011, 803 new theaters opened, many of which were equipped to handle Imax and 3D movies. “This is a very big deal,” adds Chris Dodd, describing the new arrangement. Biden and Jinping agreed the new rules will be under review in 5 years.