Archive for the ‘Entertainment’ Category

BFI to celebrate Hitchcock films

Posted on Apr 22, 2012 08:01:42 AM

The British Film Institute has revealed details of its celebration of film-maker Alfred Hitchcock, which includes restorations of his silent movies.

He added: "Music is the first step to reframing how we see cinema. There are different strains of world music and it proves that his films belong to all of us."

Both The Ring and Champagne will be screened live on The Space – a digital arts service which has been developed by Arts Council England in partnership with the BBC and BFI.

Ruth Mackenzie, director of the London 2012 Festival, told the BBC: "Alfred Hitchcock is one of the great artists of the 20th Century and like all great artists he makes us look at the world differently – and he makes his art form transform itself after his input."

The BFI on London's South Bank will also house an exhibition paying tribute to Hitchcock, who died aged 80 in 1980.

Over his career, spanning six decades, the director was nominated for five Oscars – but won just one honorary statuette, in 1968.

DVD reviews: Downton Abbey and more

Posted on Apr 21, 2012 08:02:04 AM

Downton Abbey, Season Two

Who’s in it? Hugh Bonneville, Maggie Smith
Rating 4 out of 5
The plot The second series picks up at the beginning of the First World War, which means Matthew Crawley is on the front lines, Lady Sybil is working as a nurse, and most of the servants have been sent off to fight. The romances from season one continue to simmer, but past wives and new engagements get in the way. Overall, this season is as watchable, fast-paced and smart as the first, and Maggie Smith continues to shine with her acerbic one-liners.
Dh150, aido.com

Underworld Awakening

Who’s in it? Kate Beckinsale, Stephen Rea, Michael Ealy
Rating 3 out of 5
The plot The fourth film in the Underworld series boasts the best action sequences yet (mostly due to the meteoric progress film special effects have made since the first film was released in 2003). The story meets vampire warrioress Selene (Beckinsale), after she’s escaped imprisonment and found herself in a new world disorder where humans have discovered vampires and lycans and have declared an all-out war on them.
Dh65, aido.com

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I am David against the Goliath, says Christian Louboutin

Posted on Apr 20, 2012 05:02:04 PM

On most days, iconic shoe designer Christian Louboutin treats his stupendous success garnered by his signature red soles with impressive magnanimity. But the diminutive French designer saw red, when fashion giant Yves Saint Laurent allegedly stepped on his toes by rolling out its own set of red-bottomed heels last year.

"The trial is still happening… I know in the fight I am David against the Goliath. I know that I am a mosquito that can be hammered… But this is my identity, my signature, my trademark," said Louboutin stressing the word "my" in a chat with tabloid!.

Ironically, the multi-million dollar legal battle over trademark protection is being carried out as he celebrates his 20th anniversary in the sole business.

"It’s very unfair because PPR [who owns YSL] owns luxury brands and they should know better. I own a colour in a very specific place and it’s a weird thing because they themselves have a specific colour to some of their brands. For instance, Gucci has their red and green ribbon, and I wouldn’t take that ribbon and put it in my shoes. Why? Because I have some respect," said Louboutin, whose designs have covered the heels of Hollywood A-listers including Blake Lively, Sarah Jessica Parker and Scarlett Johannsson.

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Orbital: The ’90s Revival Is On (And On)

Posted on Apr 19, 2012 11:01:50 PM

Story By: by Michaelangelo Matos

Orbital is, from left to right, Paul and Phil Hartnoll.

When brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll began making their own version of the American house music and techno sweeping through English pop in the late 1980s, they took their name from the motorway that circles London’s suburbs and, back then, linked the new rave scene together. The two were from Sevenoaks, a southeastern exit on the Orbital, the moniker they’ve recorded and performed under ever since.

Right from the start, with their 1990 debut “Chime,” Orbital specialized in big, warm riffs that were equally effective at moving masses of bodies in a field or causing outbreaks of air-keyboard among those listening on the radio. When they performed, the pair almost always played live. Most acts that don’t just DJ on stage sound harder, techier. But the Hartnolls wrote tunes whose repetitiveness seemed integral to their melodic structure, not incidental to it — one of their big live favorites was titled “Lush,” and that’s a canny self-description.

Orbital became one of the premier festival groups of the ’90s, not just at big dance-music events in the U.K. like Tribal Gathering but at the rock-oriented Glastonbury too. That extended, partly, to the U.S., where the brothers frequently got over with tracks like the guitar-shredding “Satan” and “The Box,” featuring a dulcimer. But Chemical Brothers-style chart crossover eluded them, and in 2004, after seven albums and endless tours, the Hartnolls decided to part ways professionally.

It wasn’t too surprising when Phil and Paul began performing their classics again in 2009 — the lag time between “retirement” and getting back in the game is growing smaller by the year. But while most reunion albums sound like the uninspired, profit-taking ventures they are, Orbital’s eighth non-soundtrack album, Wonky, sounds refreshed, as if the duo’s time off together had rejuvenated them creatively.

As Phil Hartnoll told me — in two separate Q&A sessions conducted for The Record in August 2011 and March 2012 — some of that can be put down to the fact that much of the music was written for them to play out, injected in between their hits, like “Halcyon And On And On” and “Impact (The Earth Is Burning).”

You had a ringside seat to the American record biz trying to sell electronic dance music to America in the ’90s. What was your impression of the music’s popularity in America at first?

PHIL HARTNOLL: We came over with Meat Beat Manifesto in 1992. That was our first proper tour of America. We had people — little ravers — following us around from gig to gig. The geographical size of England is so small it’s a breeding ground for subcultures. When we went over to America, with the huge enormity of it, you [had] little pockets of ravers and rave culture in every little town and every city that we played. But it was never on a national scale at that point. It was represented quite a lot, in each little city, but the only way of talking from city to city was via the Web. The ravers had uniforms: the big baggy trousers, the Dayglo, pacifiers. They pretty much stayed uniform in that. It was the same nationally. They had their own little dress code.

We went back and forth through America doing tours. We did another tour that was us, Moby, Aphex Twin and Vapourspace. We did the Community Tour, with the Crystal Method and the Lo-Fidelity Allstars. Putting together a package like that was indicative of the rave scene in America, having these bigger people tour [together]. Otherwise, it was pretty difficult to do a little tour, individually, and with all the other bands as well at the time.

Perry Farrell saw us in L.A. and decided to have us on Lollapalooza [in 1997, with] Korn and Snoop Dogg — and then they had us. We played after Tool, which was the main act. We sold ourselves as the disco bit at the end, as a way to explain to people how it could work as actual fact. And it did sort of work in places. Which is the beauty of a festival: you’re preaching to the non-converted. You as an audience might not listen to Orbital, but at a festival, you might check them out.

I did get the feeling, when we went into the meetings on how we were going to market this, there wasn’t really much of an idea: “Oh, it would be so much better if you could get some vocals on your instrumental music.” Lots of pop conveyor-belt techniques, trying to push us in that direction. [We were] comfortable ignoring them — we just did what we did and that was it. So it was down to touring and touring and touring.

Have you guys always played live with the miner’s hats with the flashlights?

The torch glasses! That came about from a practical point of view. We were used to playing in acid house clubs, which had strobes and smoke machines. We needed to see what were doing, because we’re running all the instruments live. We found these in a gift shop in New York opposite what used to be Tower Records — a shop called Space Age Gifts, a novelty shop, definitely not there anymore. It must have been ’92. We found novelty glasses and cut them up and put Maglites in them. That became our trademark.

Soundtracks became a big way that America started to understand electronic dance music a little. How did you end up doing The Saint theme in 1997?

Graeme Revell was an English guy that did the soundtrack. He hated the original theme tune to The Saint, so he farmed it out to us. He knew we liked old ’60s soundtracks. He did [the soundtrack for] Spawn as well, [in] which we had a track called “Satan” [originally from 1991]. He really loved that track and had the great idea of getting [Metallica's] Kirk Hammett to do some guitar over it. That was a typical example.

There was a lot of backlash against dance music in the early ’00s. When Eminem put out “Without Me” and rapped, “Nobody listens to techno,” people believed it. What was your sense of the retraction, the backlash to that music in the U.S.?

We did a tour, directly after 9/11, in October — just us on our own. It was really interesting, being interviewed all across the country about terrorism. The overall sort of thing was, “Oh, you’re so brave to come over here.” Because it was real wake-up call for everybody realizing that they are [vulnerable]. Whereas me, little London boy who grew up where there were threats of bombs going off around the corner from the IRA, I’ve been brought up with terrorism. They don’t have rubbish bins in England because that’s the typical place of dumping a bomb. I’m used to this. I’m used to looking out for bags left alone on the tube. That’s just second nature to me. It was no big deal for us to go over there.

The New York gig was about six weeks after 9/11. It was just enough time for people to get over it enough to come out. We were thinking, “Well, what’s going to go on here?” You know, we’re playing things like “Satan,” and our visuals are all these things that we would call Satanic: bombs and horrible things that people do to other people. We didn’t want to be insensitive. [And] the gig blew my mind. It’s one that will stick out in my head forever. The people coming up to us: “We really needed to explode and let our hair down.” It was very moving.

Was 2004′s Blue Album planned as your farewell?

That time felt like we were stuck in a rut. At the time it felt like we couldn’t move on creatively. It was like those vultures in [The] Jungle Book: “What we are going to do now?” “Dunno … what are we going to do now?”

Did you feel, maybe even in retrospect, that Orbital’s way of working and the rave scene as a whole had both kind of exhausted themselves?

I never really thought about that, but now that you say that I think I could possibly agree with that. It was a bit of a lull — banging your head against the wall. We [got] set in our ways. Our heart wasn’t in it. We both questioned what we were doing. That’s why we stopped.

Did having a few years of not being Orbital make it easier for you and Paul to just hang out and be family again?

At the beginning we did family things and stuff like that, but we kept our distance, really. We’d been in each others’ pockets for so long, we needed a break.

Did things cool off between you two beyond just wanting to just stay away for a while?

Yeah, they did. Paul always wanted to work with an orchestra, which he did; I DJed a lot more, which really brought back my love of music. I had another little project going on working with some musicians down in Brighton and that was really good. Paul had been in a couple of bands before, but really, we hadn’t done anything apart from each other.

When you DJ, what kind of stuff are you playing?

I really mix it up. Obviously, being Phil from Orbital, certain people in the audience expect a couple of Orbital classics, which I shove in there. But I normally take a live version or something like that. The emphasis is on the partying, the enjoyment, and the fun. I play anything from house to electro, like Kraftwerk. I don’t stick in one genre — just like Orbital, really.

How did you end up reforming Orbital?

Somebody suggested for the [U.K. festival] Big Chill that we do a reunion gig [in 2009]. We said, “Yeah, that would be great. Let’s do that.” That snowballed into two years of touring, which was a surprise to us. We built our working relationship back up and got to a place where we thought we’d start making some music to inject into the live set. There was no master plan to do all these gigs. It developed slowly.

We ended up writing a bit of music together. That snowballed into an album. It was really, really enjoyable doing that. We had all the extra bits and bobs when we got Flood involved. Paul had worked with Flood, and he’s fantastic. We went to record it in a nice studio just for the fun of it. I think we were a bit worried that we would’ve ended up where we left off, in a dark place, don’t know what to do — it wasn’t like that at all.

Obviously, Flood knows the studio really well. Does it become more of a playground in that way?

Totally. Especially with him — he’s a vintage-synth collector. It’s like going into a museum of old analog synthesizers. We didn’t actually use a lot, but it was great fun playing with them, for sure.

Recording in a nice studio is a change from how you started—your first single, “Chime,” was made in your bedrooms. Did you always make stuff at home, or were you making some of the earlier records in bigger studios?

It varied from album to album. We were a bit spoiled because we had to pay for [Wonky] ourselves. It was a business decision that we wanted to do for enjoyment, really. And I suppose, through retrospect, there was the fear of us losing our fire again.

How do you guys divide the work when you make music?

I take more of a role of a producer and he takes more of the role of the writer. But it’s a very grey area. Paul sits at the computer. I make musical suggestions that I can play [on keyboards], but it’s faster on the computer.

Did you set any kind of parameters when you were making the album?

No. What we did do, though, is we drew a diagram. We were thinking about, “What would be good live?” If we were in this place that we had ever got going on and don’t know what to do, we’d refer to this diagram. Not that we followed it to the letter, but it was really good to go on with. We did this flow chart starting with the big bang, if you like — the introduction.

We went into a time vortex, which then led us back to this old track that had never seen the light of day, dragged [it] from the vaults, and brought that up to date. It’s called “Stringy Acid.” With the advent of dubstep, we wanted to do a similar sort of track. [On the diagram] it’s mostly squiggly symbols and squares. ["Beelzedub" is] the dubstep take on “Satan.” That was developing live over the two years before.

That’s like James Brown, who would rearrange his songs live and then cut them with new lyrics.

Right. The way we play live, we set up our studio onstage, our instruments around us. We use Ableton as our sampler, if you like. We’ve got no set patterns. Obviously, set patterns in arrangements do end up falling into place, because they sound better that way. But basically, we’re improvising with the structure of the song, so we can make the song last a minute or an hour if we like. When you’re sending that many messages to the synthesizer, you’ve got all the frequencies that you can change. That’s all going into my mix index, where you’ve got effects and levels.

The audience really do play a large part in the way we play. If you can see them really enjoying a piece, you sustain it — or you take it away from them if they’re not liking it. We’re improvising within the structure of the song, really. In rehearsals, our first run-through was two-and-a-half hours long, and it was bad. Now we’ve whittled it down to 90 minutes. And we still play just the same songs. It’s us finding our way, or going off on a tangent, and trying things out — sort of getting ProLogic about it.

“Where Is It Going?” — Wonky‘s final song — could have been on the first album. It could be on any of your albums, really. Obviously if you’re crafting things to fit between your earlier music, it makes sense. But I’m curious if you have been paying any attention in the last few years to a number of young dance producers, such as Lone, who deliberately go for that early-’90s sound?

I do pay attention to it. I don’t necessarily get as excited about it as I would have done back then, but I still get excited about it. I don’t know if it’s had an effect, because once you’ve been there, you’ve heard it. But there’s a guy called L-Vis 1990 …

He owns the label Night Slugs.

Yeah. Night Slugs, they’ve got an old school feel about them, particularly him: very basic 909, a few bits and bobs, very minimal — early house music, really.

It isn’t just a couple of people — it’s happening all over. It’s starting to be like how a ’70s rock band would put a reggae song on their album — a lot of younger electronic dance music musicians have to have an “old school” track on their album now.

Right, I know — it’s funny, isn’t it? I just put it down to their age, really. I don’t know how old they must have been in the ’90s. God, they might not even been born. [laughs] Just being born, really. There was an ’80s vibe going a couple of years ago, wasn’t there? It’s a phenomenon that does happen quite a lot with house music.

Police say Houston death not criminal, case closed

Posted on Apr 15, 2012 08:02:03 PM

Los Angeles: Beverly Hills police said on Wednesday they had closed their investigation into the death of singer Whitney Houston in a hotel room bathtub two months ago after concluding no crime was committed.

"Based on the findings of our investigation and our review of the coroner’s report, we have determined that this is not a criminal matter," the Beverly Hills police department said in a statement.

"The BHPD investigation has been officially closed." Houston, 48, who had a long history of drug abuse, was found dead on Feb.11, and an earlier Los Angeles County Coroner’s report said she died of accidental drowning due to the effects of cocaine use and heart disease. Wednesday’s statement by police said detectives "found no evidence of foul play," but it did not address drug use.

The final coroner’s report last week said white powder, along with a spoon, mirror and rolled-up paper, were found in the Beverly Hilton hotel bathroom where Houston died hours before she had been due to attend a pre-Grammy party.

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Haifa most popular on Twitter

Posted on Apr 14, 2012 11:01:42 AM

Published April 9th, 2012 – 07:37 GMT

Lebanese singer Haifa Wahbi was ranked in first place among most influential Arab figure on the internet social network Twitter. A poll was held on the website ‘Famous TV 2’ and Haifa received the highest number of votes defeating stars and politicians, even different VIP figures on Twitter.

It is said that Haifa’s fans have reached 170 thousands in only five months and most of them are actively interacting with her on a daily basis. Haifa was considered the most intelligent and witty in the manner she responds to fans.

Ranbir over Shahid?

Posted on Apr 12, 2012 11:01:50 PM

Choreographer Ahmad Khan, a close friend of both Ranbir Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor, was recently caught in a very uncomfortable situation when both the stars required his expertise.

Finally Ranbir got Khan’s coveted dates, while Shahid shot two of his songs with choreographer Chinni Prakash." It is true I had to opt out of two songs with Shahid for Kunal Kohli’s film to do the short film with Ranbir. But there was no other way out. Ranbir’s film is a totally new experience. He has narrated an entire love story in four minutes," he said.

"We had to use a 100 Nissan cars, arrange expert drivers from Bangalore and Mumbai…It was an entirely new experience. In fact, Shahid was most co-operative. He advised me to go for the Ranbir project. I felt sorry to see Shahid do the two songs with Chinni Prakashji with whom Shahid had never worked with before. But this film with Ranbir was a completely new opportunity for me."

Khan insists the last-minute opting out has not affected his friendship with Shahid. "In fact, I am choreographing another number with Shahid for Kunal Kohli’s film. There are no hard feelings between me and Shahid," he said. —

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Fans to catch South African DJ duo Goldfish in Dubai

Posted on Apr 12, 2012 02:01:50 PM

Goldfish need little introduction in Dubai having wowed crowds many a time at previous events.

The South African DJ duo will headline the South African Freedom Day party on the patch of sand fast becoming known officially as Sandance Sands.

In conjunction with Infusion Magazine and The South African Business Council, support acts for the event on April 27 include South African Dubai-based DJs Charl Chaka, Just Lance, Nthayi and Nasimi Beach resident Smokingroove.

South African Freedom Day commemorates the first post-apartheid elections held on April 27 in 1994, which resulted in Nelson Mandela’s victory on 10 May, 1994, as he became the country’s first black President.

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Whit Stillman: An Indie Auteur Is Back (Wink Intact)

Posted on Apr 11, 2012 11:02:09 PM

Story By: by Ella Taylor

by Jeannette Catsoulis

As one of the debutantes in that film might say, Stillman remained a perfect gentleman throughout. He said nothing about the review until awards night, when we stood at the podium, ready to hand out prizes. Then he hissed, in a stage whisper: “So why didn’t you like Metropolitan?”

Revisiting the film after a recent screening of Stillman’s new movie, Damsels in Distress — a delightfully giddy comedy about a bevy of college coeds striving to spread hygiene and happiness at a third-tier East Coast university — I asked myself the same question.

So here I am now in the restaurant of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, revisiting my pan of Metropolitan and trying to explain that at the time I was a novice critic — and likely motivated by class hostility to the upper-crust young things who people his films.

“Oh, yes,” says Stillman, nodding briskly. “The sociology is pretty antagonizing.”

In Damsels in Distress, Greta Gerwig (left) plays high-minded, take-charge coed Violet — who invites transfer student Lily (Analeigh Tipton) into a set of friends whose mission it is to cheer up the depressed and improve the socially lacking.

Stillman is one of those filmmakers who attracts cult followers and detractors in roughly equal measure. His protagonists come from backgrounds like his own — well-born but financially embarrassed and willfully eccentric WASPs, at odds with the modernity that surrounds them.

Stillman comes from oldish money but has none himself; went to Harvard and, at 60 years old, still dresses like an unreconstructed preppie; defends bourgeois values in a world that scorns them; loves disco but hates hip-hop.

“Everyone came down so hard on disco; it only lasted four or five years,” he grumbles. “No one criticizes hip-hop, and it goes on forever.”

That may be why his previous film, The Last Days of Disco, flopped at the box office, why it took him another 13 years to make another, and why Damsels in Distress features a new dance, the sambola. The name, if not the moves, is a hybrid of the samba and the bolero. He hopes it will catch on.

Chronic anachronism is the lifeblood of Stillman’s ensemble comedies. From Metropolitan through Barcelona and The Last Days of Disco to Damsels, every movie is built around gabby fish out of water, old souls in fetching young bodies who are driven by a crusading zeal and whacked-out ideals.

They never shut up, theorizing endlessly in arcane but perfectly turned prose. They burst unpredictably into song and dance that owes more to Fred Astaire and the brothers Gershwin than to Glee. They founder on the condescension or betrayal of others, or on their own self-regard — or, in Damsels, on a sheer sincerity that keeps them bouncing back with irrepressible buoyancy.

In the new movie, fledgling indie queen Greta Gerwig plays Violet Wister, a compulsive rescuer in full-skirted frocks who sets up a campus suicide prevention center in which she ministers to depressive black-clad nymphs and neanderthal frat boys with coffee, doughnuts and musical numbers. For all her take-charge manner and high-minded principles, Violet is an innocent who deflates like a pricked balloon when she’s betrayed, then blooms anew without much ado.

Stillman on the set of Damsels in Distress.

“In all the years I’ve been away, I’ve become more aware of aspects of comedy I really love,” says Stillman. “I saw Elf with my daughters in Paris, and loved everything about Will Ferrell’s innocent naivete. This film gave us the chance to do that in the college fraternity.”

There’s a lot going on in Damsels, but not much that you could call a coherent plot. Titled in sly homage to George Stevens’ 1937 musical comedy A Damsel in Distress — written by the British humorist P.G. Wodehouse, with whom Stillman must surely share genetic material — the film careens between girls in pearls and manic frat boys whose odor must be dispatched with fragrant soaps. The campus boasts an Anal Love Association and a newspaper, The Daily Complainer, but love and beauty and hope blossom in odd places.

No wonder Stillman’s detractors accuse him of whimsy. And though he calls his movie “a comedy of ideas, even if they’re lame ones,” he won’t discuss them. My own sweaty efforts to pick out the thematic flow of his films elicit a faraway look, somewhere between amused and bemused or — when, in desperation, I blurt out some bromide about friends with benefits — something very like alarm.

“When you make a film, you can put in — or exclude — what you want. It’s a utopian thrill to exclude all kinds of things in a film that you can’t take out in the world,” he says. “You get something that works, and then you put it in without thinking about it, and you hope it comes from some logical place and is not pointlessly absurd.”

He pauses, then adds wickedly, “You want it to be pointfully absurd.”

Though he has a powerful intellect and a ready wit, Stillman is more switched on by what he calls extravagance of character than by intellect per se. One of his favorite courses at Harvard examined the role of the dandy in literature, and he interrupts himself to admire an elderly man in full military regalia who makes an entrance into a restaurant full of Hollywood suits.

Like all his films, Damsels is stuffed with quixotic types striving after ideals they’re ill-equipped to achieve.

“I do find something touching about a sincerely scholarly idiot,” he says — “these people who are wound up and have aspirations, but they’re not intelligent at all, and their sensory apparatus is limited, but they’re determined to prove themselves in this way. To be an intelligent barbarian is kind of awful. But someone who is unintelligent, and aspiring to scholarly achievement, it’s really touching and encouraging. It’s a utopian thing, I think.”

There’s not a mean girl in sight in Damsels, no teen jargon or anything remotely cool. Instead, there’s a ton of infectiously cockamamie optimism, high spirits more suited to 1930s screwball than to the low-key sensibilities of mumblecore. (Stillman hired several under-25 veterans of that lo-fi film movement to run the Damsels set after a fortuitous meeting with Lena Dunham, the creative force behind Tiny Furniture and the new HBO comedy Girls.)

With careful nurturing from distributor Sony Pictures Classics — not known for comedies until it saw unexpected success last year with Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris — Damsels may be the vehicle that carries Stillman from neglected indie auteur to crossover success; it’s a lure, dangled for graying boomers old enough to sing along with Gershwin — and for youngsters struggling to define themselves in a world that has made no room for them.

“Weirdly. Weirdly,” says Stillman when I suggest that he may, at last, achieve hipness with a new generation of clever young things with ill-fitting lives. Then he says, grinning, “Damsels is mumblecore, with clearer diction.”

UPDATE 1-Samsung posts record Q1 profit on smartphone boom

Posted on Apr 7, 2012 02:02:25 AM

* Estimates Q1 op profit at 5.8 trln won vs 5.0 trln fcast

* Estimates Q1 sales at 45 trln won

* Q1 smartphone sales estimated at 44 mln units – analysts

* Shares up 25 pct so far this year

By Miyoung Kim

April 6 (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics, the
world’s top technology firm by revenue, posted record quarterly
profits of $5.15 billion on booming sales of its Galaxy
smartphones and the Note, a mini-tablet and phone.

Samsung, which raced to the top of the global smartphone
rankings last year with close to a fifth of the market, from
just 3 percent in 2009, should consolidate its position against
Apple Inc and others with more product launches,
including a revamped Galaxy S, over the next few months.

January-March operating profit was 5.8 trillion won, almost
double the year-ago level and better than a consensus forecast
of 5 trillion won from analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters
I/B/E/S. It also topped the preceding quarter’s previous record
of 5.3 trillion won.

Revenue was 45 trillion won.

Samsung, Asia’s most valuable technology firm worth some
$191 billion, released its January-March estimates on Friday
ahead of detailed quarterly results due on April 27.

“There was a big surprise in profit, while revenue was in
line, which suggests a stronger than expected profit margin from
the handset division thanks to robust sales of high-end models
like the Galaxy S and Note,” said Choi Do-yeon, analyst at LIG
Investment & Securities.

“Handset margins are estimated to have topped 20 percent and
profits from the division also topped 4 trillion won. This is
really a blowout result and there could be more surprises in the
coming quarters as other businesses such as chips show
recovery.”

Samsung is expected to have shipped a record 44 million
smartphones in the first quarter just ended, up by almost 25
percent from October-December levels, according to a Reuters
survey of analysts.

Samsung introduced the Galaxy Note, a mini-tablet and phone
with a screen half the size of the iPad, in late October, and
the top-end model has quickly become its core profit earner.

Sales of the Note, which has revived the throwback stylus
function, have topped 5 million, increasing the pressure on
gadget strugglers HTC, Nokia and Research
in Motion.

“Sales of the Note were very good and it’s become Samsung’s
fresh money generator,” said Lee Seung-woo, an analyst at
Shinyoung Securities, speaking ahead of Friday’s estimates.

The handset division is likely to account for around two
thirds of Samsung’s total profits, analysts forecast.

WINNING FORMULA

While Apple is Samsung’s biggest rival in smartphones, the
U.S. company is also its biggest client, gobbling up Samsung’s
high-end displays and microchips for its iPhone and iPad.

“Samsung’s integrated business model – for instance, it
makes its own application processors and AMOLED screens – is the
biggest ingredient of its winning formula, which, in our view,
can’t be easily copied,” Daniel Kim, an analyst at Macquarie,
wrote in a research note.

Song Myung-sup, an analyst at HI Investment & Securities,
forecast Samsung’s smartphone market share gains would
accelerate with the release, probably in June, of the next
version of the Galaxy S. “Its smartphone growth momentum will
continue at least until the end of the third quarter,” he said.

Earnings prospects for memory chips, where Samsung is also a
world leader, have also brightened since Japan’s Elpida Memory
filed for bankruptcy, prompting its customers to switch to
rivals such as Samsung and SK hynix to secure
supplies of the chips used in smartphones and laptops.

“Contract chip prices are likely to continue to rise in the
second quarter, possibly another 10-15 percent, as big customers
like Apple, Dell and HP may seek to increase
supply in the wake of Elpida’s trouble,” said Choi Sung-jae, an
analyst at SK Securities.

Samsung shares have risen by a quarter so far this year, and
hit a life high of 1.351 million won ($1,200) on Wednesday. Over
the same period shares in Apple have soared by more than half,
taking the California-based firm’s value to above $582 billion -
more than three times that of Samsung.