Danny Puff

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) It's back.

The virtual reality headset, the gizmo that was supposed to seamlessly transport wearers to three-dimensional virtual worlds, has made a remarkable return at this year's Game Developers Conference, an annual gathering of video game makers in San Francisco.

After drumming up hype over the past year and banking $2.4 million from crowdfunding, the Irvine, Calif.-based company Oculus VR captured the conference's attention this week with the Oculus Rift, its VR headset that's more like a pair of ski goggles than those bulky gaming helmets of the 1990s that usually left users with headaches.

"Developers who start working on VR games now are going to be able to do cool things," said Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey. "This is the first time when the technology, software, community and rendering power is all really there."

While VR technology has successfully been employed in recent years for military and medical training purposes, it's been too expensive, clunky or just plain bad for most at-home gamers. Oculus VR's headset is armed with stereoscopic 3-D, low-latency head tracking and a 110-degree field of view, and the company expects it to cost just a few hundred bucks.

A line at the conference snaked around the expo floor with attendees waiting for a chance to plop the glasses on their head and play a few minutes of "Hawken," an upcoming first-person shooter that puts players inside levitating war machines.

Attendance was also at capacity for a Thursday talk called "Virtual Reality: The Holy Grail of Gaming" led by Luckey. When he asked the crowd who'd ordered development prototypes of the technology, dozens of hands shot into the air.

"There's been a lot of promise over several decades with the VR helmet idea, but I think a lot of us feel like Oculus and other devices like it are starting to get it right," said Simon Carless, executive vice president at UBM Tech Game Network, which organizes the Game Developers Conference. "We may have a competitive and interesting-to-use device, which you could strap to your head and have really immersive gaming as a result."

Sony and Microsoft are reportedly working on similar peripherals, as are other companies. Luckey contends that the innovations Nintendo made with its Wii U, Sony is planning with its upcoming PlayStation 4 and Microsoft is likely tinkering with for its successor to the Xbox 360 don't seem like enough.

"We're seeing better graphics and social networks, but those aren't things that are going to fundamentally change the kind of experiences that gamers can have," said Luckey.

A growing list of high-profile game makers have sung the device's praises, including Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, "Minecraft" mastermind Markus Peterson, id Software's John Carmack, "Gears of War" chief Cliff Bleszinski and Valve boss Gabe Newell.

Valve is planning to release a VR version of its first-person shooter "Team Fortress 2" for the Rift, but Luckey is hoping that designers in attendance at this week's conference begin creating games especially for the doodad.

"The doors are already open," noted Luckey. "People are already telling us things they want to do with the Rift that they can't do with traditional games."

Luckey said prototype versions of the technology are being distributed to developers now, and he anticipates releasing a version for consumers by next year.

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Online:

http://www.oculusvr.com

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang.

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CASABLANCA, Morocco (AP) A Moroccan rapper known for his protest songs said Friday after completing a yearlong prison sentence that he will be concentrating on his studies and improving his music and is unsure about further activism.

Mouad Belghouat's angry rap songs excoriating the gaps between rich and poor in Morocco provided the soundtrack to the North African kingdom's Arab Spring protest movement in 2011 that called for social justice and greater democracy.

But while Belghouat, known as El-Haqed or "the enraged," was in prison, the February 20 movement, as it was known, faded away as popular ire with the state was defused by a string of reforms promulgated by the king.

"I will concentrate more on my studies I have my high school exams to pass in June," said a pale, subdued 26-year-old Belghouat to journalists and activists, showing only occasional flashes of his trademark irreverent sense of humor. "I played around a lot before, and in prison I discovered the importance of reading more."

The rapper appeared in glasses, which supporters say he now needs because of how his health deteriorated in prison where he said he experienced harassment and even went on hunger strike at one point to protest conditions.

Belghouat was convicted in May for insulting a public official over his song "Dogs of the State," which was addressed to the police. An online video accompanying the song portrayed a police officer with a donkey's head prompting the lawsuit by authorities.

"You are paid to protect the citizens, not to steal their money," said one lyric. The song then asks the police to arrest the wealthy businessmen who have divided the country up for themselves.

Morocco, a popular tourist destination for Europeans, has one of the highest discrepancies between rich and poor in the Arab world, according to international development agencies.

"It was a huge relief when he was released," said Abdullah Abaakil, an activist with the February 20 movement that introduced the rapper at the news conference. He emphasized that Belghouat was key for the movement to reach out to young people, especially in the country's myriad slums. "He suffered for all of us... he more than did his part."

As the protests died away, dozens of activists from the February 20 movement have been arrested and imprisoned. A statement by 18 local non-governmental organizations in December said at least 58 activists were in prison.

Belghouat, who described in an Associated Press interview last year how he would go to poor neighborhoods to raise people's awareness about the injustices in the country, was noncommittal about his future as an activist.

"I am just out of prison, and I'm still tired, so I need a bit of time to answer this question about how I will assess the situation of the February 20 in the country," he said, though he didn't rule out staying involved. "And if tomorrow there was a demonstration for February 20, I might well join, why not?"

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Associated Press reporter Smail Bellaoualli contributed to this report.

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By Steve Pond

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Paul Williams, a pioneering music journalist who started the first magazine devoted to rock 'n' roll criticism, died on Wednesday in Southern California. He was 64.

Williams was the founder of Crawdaddy! magazine and the author of more than two dozen books about music, popular culture and new-age philosophy. He died of complications related to Alzheimer's, which came on after he suffered a brain injury in a 1995 bicycle accident.

Williams was a 17-year-old student at Swarthmore College when he launched Crawdaddy in 1966. At a time when the mainstream media looked askance at rock music and the only magazines devoted to the sound were teeny-bopper publications like Tiger Beat, Williams wrote in the first issue that his goal was "neither pinups nor news briefs" but "intelligent writing about pop music."

"Paul was the first to write about rock music seriously," singer-songwriter Mojo Nixon told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2009, when he participated in a benefit to raise money for Williams' medical expenses. "Most pop music was meaningless fluff, but Paul realized that something else was going on there."

Crawdaddy!, whose early writers included Jon Landau and Richard Meltzer, predated Rolling Stone, which Jann Wenner launched in 1967 after meeting with Williams. Williams left Crawdaddy! in 1968, but relaunched it in 1993 as a subscription-only newsletter.

In addition to his work with the magazine, Williams wrote for a number of other publications, including Rolling Stone, for which he interviewed the seminal science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick in 1974. Williams became friends with the author and served as the executor of Dick's literary estate after the writer's death in 1982.

He also took on tasks as disparate as volunteer firefighter and campaign manager for Timothy Leary's run for California governor.

Williams' books include "Outlaw Blues," "Das Energi," and a number of works on Bob Dylan - including "Dylan - What Happened?" about the singer's 1979 conversion to Christianity. After the book's publication, Dylan's office reportedly ordered 114 copies so the singer could give them to friends.

Williams suffered an accident riding his bicycle in 1995, and was hospitalized for a month with a brain injury. He recovered, but later began to show signs of dementia. His wife, singer-songwriter Cindy Lee Berryhill, put him in a managed-care facility in Encinitas, Calif., in 2008.

On Sunday, three days before his death, a one-day celebration of Williams' life was held at the Boo-Hooray Gallery in New York City, with music provided by Berryhill and Lenny Kaye.

According to a Facebook post by Berryhill, Williams died on Wednesday night in the company of his oldest son.

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By Zorianna Kit

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Tony and Emmy Award winning singer and actress Kristin Chenoweth is known for her perky personality ranging from roles in Broadway's "Wicked" to television's "Glee" and performing a closing number at February's Oscar ceremony with host Seth MacFarlane.

On Friday, the diminutive (4ft 11in) actress moves to the dark side in the indie movie "Family Weekend." She plays a mother so consumed by work that she ignores her own children and squabbles with her husband, until her teenage daughter kidnaps and ties up both parents in a bid to get their attention.

Chenoweth, 44, talked to Reuters about the film, her Christian faith and the serious accident last year that forced her to re-evaluate her life.

Q: What was it like being tied up for most of the duration of "Family Weekend?"

A: I am done with that tape! I was mostly in the same room and in the same position for four weeks. Lots of times I couldn't speak so I had to moan or grunt. And when I was spoken to, the tape (on my mouth) had to be ripped off. I was constantly getting waxed, I guess you could say.

Q: Are the parents the villains in the film?

A: One thing I learned is the basic good nature of people. They want to do right. This woman has a full plate and it has gone awry. It wasn't always bad. But with the pressure of being the breadwinner, she lost sight of what was truly important.

Q: Speaking of things going awry, you were cast on "The Good Wife" TV series but that all changed when a lighting rig fell on your head on the set last July.

A: It was bad. I was banged up, completely black and blue. My head was cut open, I had a skull fracture and cracked teeth. I had to get my memory going again (because) I was knocked out. My mom and dad came to stay with me and I was saying, "Why me? Why me? I was just standing there!"

My mom said: "Why not you? Life happens and you're no special or different or worse off or better off than anybody else. You're lucky to be alive and we are going to be grateful." It was a great piece of advice.

Q: Besides the physical trauma, what was the emotional damage?

A: One thing I really struggled with was having to stop and be quiet and still. That was the worst part about it. So I was like, Okay, clearly I'm supposed to be still. I've been going at it for so long, and so hard in so many different areas. Honestly, I think it was good. I can't believe I'm saying that, but it really makes you take stock of what's important.

Q: So how have you restructured you life post-accident? You still have a lot going on - voicing next year's animated film "Rio 2" and promoting a new ship that's being built for Royal Caribbean, among others things.

A: I'm being choosy with how I spend my free time. I can be very much a hermit and I'm trying not to do that anymore. I'm trying to enjoy the moments instead of going, 'Okay, I've got that behind me, what's next? I've got to do that and that and that ...' I want to enjoy it when it's happening.

Q: How does your Christian faith inform your professional and personal life?

A: Being a person of faith in show business is interesting. I've done lots of things maybe some Christians wouldn't do. But I've also said no to a lot of things that nobody knows about. It's a fine line to walk, but I have to keep true to my faith and pray and do the best I can.

I was at the History Channel (premiere) for "The Bible" miniseries and it's as important for me to go to that event as it is for me to go to a GLAAD event because I'm a gay rights activist. In some people's views, that is a direct conflict. But I don't see it as such. It's something that I've taken heat for and been praised for.

Q: You're adopted. How does that shape you?

A: Mainly that I feel a lot of love from my mom and dad who adopted me. Maybe I would have had a very different life had I not been adopted but my parents have really helped shape who I am. I do things sometimes they don't agree with, but I'm their kid and they love me. I know they feel like they won the lottery and I feel like I won the lottery. They got me and I got a home. The right home.

(Reporting By Zorianna Kit, Editing by Jill Serjeant)

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LONDON (Reuters) - British actor Richard Griffiths, best known for his roles in 'Withnail and I' and the Harry Potter films, has died at the age of 65 after complications following heart surgery, his agent said on Friday.

Griffiths spent almost four decades in radio, film, on television and on stage, and received some of his industry's top awards for his role in Alan Bennett's play "The History Boys".

The portly actor filled the screen as the lascivious Uncle Monty in the cult 1987 film 'Withnail and I'.

But younger fans will remember him for his portrayal of a much crueler avuncular figure - Harry Potter's red-faced and bullying uncle Vernon Dursley.

Daniel Radcliffe, who played the boy wizard and performed with Griffiths in the stage play "Equus", said the veteran performer had encouraged and coached him and helped him get over his nerves.

"Richard was by my side during two of the most important moments of my career ... any room he walked into was made twice as funny and twice as clever just by his presence. I am proud to say I knew him," Radcliffe said in a statement.

Griffiths' agent, Simon Beresford, described him as "a remarkable man and one of our greatest and best-loved actors". He said Griffiths died in hospital on Thursday.

The actor was born in Thornaby-on-Tees in Yorkshire, northern England, the son of a steelworker. Both his parents were deaf and he learned sign language to communicate with them.

After studying drama in Manchester, he worked in radio and theatre, building a reputation as a Shakespearean clown.

He reprised his role as teacher Hector in a film of "The History Boys" in 2006. One of his best known roles on television was a cookery-loving detective in "Pie in the Sky".

On stage, he was known for his intolerance of mobile phones ringing during performances, and halted plays several times to complain and even eject offending audience members.

Nicholas Hytner, director of Britain's National Theatre, said Griffiths' unexpected death would devastate his "army of friends".

"Richard Griffiths wasn't only one of the most loved and recognizable British actors - he was also one of the very greatest," Hytner said in a statement.

Griffiths was given an OBE in 2008 and is survived by his wife Heather.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday it plans to acquire the book recommendation website, Goodreads.

In buying Goodreads, Amazon gets a community of bibliophiles primed to buy and recommend books - one of its key areas of business.

"Goodreads has helped change how we discover and discuss books and, with Kindle, Amazon has helped expand reading around the world," Russ Grandinetti, Amazon vice president, Kindle Content, said in a release.

Based in San Francisco, Goodreads is a social network site that lets bookworms catalog and review books. Co-founded by Otis Chandler, whose family once published the Los Angeles Times, Goodreads has more than 16 million members, who have generated more than 23 million reviews.

"We're looking forward to inspiring greater literary discussion and helping more readers find great books, whether they read in print or digitally," Chandler, who also serves as CEO of Goodreads, said in a statement.

Terms of the deal, expected to close in the second quarter, were not disclosed.

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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TORONTO (AP) Research In Motion Ltd., once written off as dead amid fierce competition from more modern mobile devices such as the iPhone, surprised Wall Street Thursday by returning to profitability and shipping more BlackBerry 10 phones than expected in the most recent quarter.

It will take several quarters, though, to know whether RIM is on a path toward a successful turnaround. RIM just entered the crucial U.S. market with the new phone last week. And despite selling a million BlackBerry 10 phones in other countries, RIM lost subscribers for the second consecutive quarter.

Thursday's earnings report provided a first glimpse of how the BlackBerry 10 system, widely seen as crucial to the company's future, is selling internationally and in Canada since its debut Jan. 31. The 1 million new touch-screen BlackBerry Z10 phones were above the 915,000 that analysts had been expecting for the quarter that ended March 2. Details on U.S. sales are not part of the fiscal fourth quarter's financial results because the Z10 wasn't available there after the quarter ended.

Investors appeared mostly happy with the financial results. RIM's stock rose as high as $15.55 as trading opened Thursday after the release of results, though it saw a sharp drop in the final hour of trading and closed at $14.45, down 12 cents.

Many analysts had written RIM off last year, but now believe the Canadian company has a future.

"I thought they were dead. This is a huge turnaround," Jefferies analyst Peter Misek said from New York.

Misek said the Canadian company "demolished" the numbers, especially its gross margins. RIM reported gross margins of 40 percent, up from 34 percent a year earlier. The company credited higher average selling prices and higher margins for devices.

"This is a really, really good result," Misek said. "It's off to a good start."

The new BlackBerry 10 phones are redesigned for the new multimedia, Internet browsing and apps experience that customers are now demanding.

The BlackBerry, pioneered in 1999, had been the dominant smartphone for on-the-go business people and other consumers before the iPhone debuted in 2007 and showed that phones can handle much more than email and phone calls. RIM faced numerous delays modernizing its operating system with the BlackBerry 10. During that time, it had to cut more than 5,000 jobs and saw shareholder wealth decline by more than $70 billion.

In the most recent quarter, RIM earned $98 million, or 19 cents a share, compared with a loss of $125 million, or 24 cents a share, a year earlier. After adjusting for restructuring and other one-time items, RIM earned 22 cents a share. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had been expecting a loss of 31 cents.

Revenue fell 36 percent to $2.7 billion, from $4.2 billion. Analysts had expected $2.82 billion.

RIM shipped 6 million BlackBerry devices, including 1 million on the new system. But RIM lost about 3 million subscribers to end the quarter with 76 million. It's the second consecutive quarterly decline for RIM, whose subscriber based peaked at 80 million last summer.

Bill Kreyer, a tech analyst for Edward Jones, called the decline "pretty alarming."

"This is going to take a couple of quarters to really see how they are doing," Kreyer said.

The company also announced that co-founder Mike Lazaridis will leave the company. He and Jim Balsillie had stepped down as co-CEOs in January 2012 after several quarters of disappointing results, but Lazaridis said he stayed on as vice chairman and a board director to help new CEO Thorsten Heins and his team with the launch of the BlackBerry 10. With that underway, Lazaridis plans to retire May 1. He said he has no plans to sell his 5.7 percent stake in the company.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Lazaridis said the board wanted both him and Jim to stay, but Lazaridis decided "it was the right time" to leave.

Heins, formerly RIM's chief operating officer, has spent the past year cutting costs and steering the company toward the launch of new BlackBerry 10 phones. Lazaridis said Heins has done an excellent job completing the BlackBerry 10 system and launching it around the world.

"The results speak for themselves," Lazaridis said.

Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu said RIM returned to profitability much sooner than expected. He said it was driven by higher gross margins, cost reductions and the sale of the new BlackBerry.

In a research note, Wu wrote that RIM "is here to stay with stabilization in its business and balance sheet" but said the key question remains whether the company can maintain momentum in an industry dominated by Apple and Google's Android software.

The Z10 has received favorable reviews since its release, but the launch in the critical U.S. market was delayed until late this month as wireless carriers completed their testing.

A version with a physical keyboard, called the Q10, won't be released in the U.S. for two or three more months. The delay in selling the Q10 complicates RIM's efforts to hang on to customers tempted by the iPhone and a range of devices running Android. Even as the BlackBerry has fallen behind rivals in recent years, many users have stayed loyal because they prefer a physical keyboard over the touch screen on the iPhone and most Android devices.

RIM, which is changing is formal name to BlackBerry, said it expects to break even in the current quarter despite increasing spending on marketing by 50 percent compared with the previous quarter.

"To say it was a very challenging environment to deliver improved financial results could well be the understatement of the year," Heins said during a conference call with analysts.

Heins said more than half of the people buying the touch-screen Z10 were switching from rival systems. The company didn't provide details or specify whether those other systems were all smartphones. He said the Q10 will sell well among the existing BlackBerry user base. It's expected in some markets in April, but not in the U.S. until May or June.

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By Brent Lang

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Fay Kanin, an Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning screenwriter, died Wednesday of natural causes. She was 95.

In addition to her award-winning work, Kanin served as the second female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, the nonprofit organization behind the Academy Awards, from 1979 to 1983.

"She was committed to the Academy's preservation work and instrumental in expanding our public programming," the Academy said in a statement. "A tireless mentor and inspiration to countless filmmakers, Fay's passion for film continues to inspire us daily."

Kanin's credits bridged the small and big screen, and she often specialized in romantic comedies that explored the age-old theme of the battle of the sexes. She received her Oscar nomination for penning the 1958 romantic comedy "Teacher's Pet," which served as a vehicle for Doris Day. Other film credits included "My Pal Gus," a 1952 comedy with Richard Widmark; "The Opposite Sex," a 1956 musical remake of "The Women"; and "Rhapsody," a 1954 musical romance starring Elizabeth Taylor.

On TV, Kanin won three Emmys - two for writing "Tell Me Where It Hurts" (1974), which followed a disenchanted housewife who forms a discussion group, and another for producing "Friendly Fire" (1979), which starred Carole Burnett and dramatized a family's discovery that their son had been killed by accidently by U.S. troops.

Kanin's career was briefly derailed after she and her husband, screenwriter Michael Kanin, ran afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee and were blacklisted in the early '50s for their alleged Communist sympathies. The couple was unable to work for two years until director Charles Vidor asked them to write the screenplay for "Rhapsody."

In addition to her work with the Academy, Kanin served as the president of the Screen Branch of the Writers Guild of America and as chair of the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress, and was involved in other film industry organizations.

Although she worked regularly and was in demand at a time in which screenwriting remained closed to all but a handful of women, she shied away from making too much of her glass ceiling shattering legacy.

"I don't think you think of yourself as a pioneer," Kanin said. "I just felt very fortunate."

Kanin remained married to her husband for five decades. The couple got married in 1940 and Michael Kanin died of lung cancer in 1993. They had two sons, Joel and Josh, and two grandchildren. Josh died at age 13 of lung cancer.

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NEW YORK (AP) Fox network says Demi Lovato is returning as a judge of "The X Factor."

The singer-songwriter will be back alongside series creator Simon Cowell when the singing competition begins its third season this fall.

Although calling Lovato "really, really annoying," Cowell said he enjoys working with her. She joined the panel of judges last year.

Thursday's announcement comes as the panel is being revamped. Britney Spears and record producer Antonio "L.A." Reid departed after Season 2.

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PARIS (Reuters) - A French actress has filed a complaint with the Paris prosecutor for breach of privacy over Internet rumors alleging she has a relationship with President Francois Hollande, the prosecutor's office said on Thursday.

A spokesperson for the prosecutor's office told Reuters that actress Julie Gayet had filed a complaint against "persons unknown", a common formulation under French law, on March 18 over rumors circulating on Twitter and blog sites for some weeks.

A lawyer for Gayet did not immediately respond to phone calls and Hollande's office declined to comment.

Hollande and first lady Valerie Trierweiler are unmarried but have been in a relationship for several years. They met when she was working as a journalist for a French magazine.

Their relationship came under media scrutiny during Hollande's campaign for the May presidential election and in the months afterwards as Trierweiler became an active tweeter and maintained a literary review column in Paris Match magazine.

Gayet, 40, has dozens of film credits to her name including a minor role in the 1993 Franco-Polish drama "Three Colors: Blue" and a leading role in "Select Hotel", for which she won two awards for her depiction of a young drug addict.

(Reporting by Chine Labe; Writing by Catherine Bremer; editing by Mark John and Michael Roddy)

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