don’t waste your money

don’t waste your money

Watching a movie at your local cinema isn’t cheap. Admission is more than $10 in many areas and when you add in the price of popcorn and soda, it’s a small fortune. If you’re going to spend all that cash, you want to make sure the film you’re paying to see is worth the investment. Flixster can help.

Flixster (http://www.flixster.com) is social networking Web site for movie fans. Users can submit their own movie reviews and rate current releases on a five-star scale. It also features trailers, cast lists, screenshots, show times etc. — everything you need to determine if you want to see a movie now or wait to rent it later.

But as a social networking site, Flixster offers much more. You can take a movie compatibility quiz and, based on your score, meet other users with similar tastes or compare your interests with those of your friends.

the grammy boost

The 2009 Grammy Awards helped give an ailing music business a bit of a Valentine’s Day gift. Overall album sales were up more than 16 percent over last week, reports Billboard’s chart guru Keith Caulfield. But despite the brief injection of good news, album sales were still down about 12 percent over the same week last year.

Benefiting the most from the awards were album of the year winners Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. The pair’s country-tinged “Raising Sand” rocketed up the chart, moving from the No. 69 position all the way to the No. 2 spot. The album sold 77,000 copies this week, according to Billboard.

Other big Grammy gainers were Coldplay and Adele. The British pop stars moved from No. 31 to No. 8, and sold 62,000 copies. Best new artist winner Adele, meanwhile, moved into the Top 10 on the U.S. pop chart. Her soulful “19” was up from No. 27 after selling 57,000 copies.