Video Games

Playing action video games could help dyslexic children read faster, a new study suggests. Neuroscientists from the University of Padua in Italy tested the reading ability of two groups of 10-year-olds after one group had played action video games and the other played non-action video games. According to the study , published Thursday in Current Biology, playing fast-paced video games helped improve dyslexic children's reading speed more than a year of intense, traditional therapies could.

Years before Adam Lanza shot up Sandy Hook Elementary School in December, his mother, Nancy, had enrolled him there in the hopes that the boy would pull out of his shell. He never did. A new investigation, co-reported by the Hartford Courant and PBS Frontline , plunges into the minutiae of one of America's most mysterious families -- mysterious perhaps solely because of the massacre Adam Lanza, 20, perpetrated in Newtown, Conn., which left 26 dead at the school, plus himself.

Elizabeth Daley, a former producer, has served as dean of USC's School of Cinematic Arts for more than 20 years. She's also the founder and executive director of the USC Institute for Multimedia Literacy, which develops educational programs and conducts research on "the changing nature of literacy in a networked culture. " What purpose do you think violence serves in entertainment? It's so interesting as to how you define what we mean by violence in entertainment. Should we talk about Oedipus?

No image I know in the history of Western painting is more brutal than the crucifixion scene in the Isenheim Altarpiece. Its violence would make Quentin Tarantino blush. When German Renaissance artist Matthias Grünewald first set brush to limewood panel to paint the mammoth altarpiece around 1512, however, his intention was not to gross out viewers. Shock them, perhaps, but not disgust them. In fact the artist had something entirely different in mind - something generous and committed.

As part of a broader gun control plan he announced last month, President Obama said he will push Congress to fund research into the causes of gun violence - including, potentially, the role of entertainment. Researchers have been tackling the subject of links between violent entertainment and violent behavior for years, often coming to divergent conclusions. Here are a few intriguing findings: In a 2009 study called "Comfortably Numb," psychologists at the University of Michigan, Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and Iowa State University found that exposure to violent media numbs people to the pain and suffering of others.

No doubt thousands of college kids in California play video games when they are not in school, and now one state lawmaker is proposing to bring the expertise they are gaining into the classroom. Assemblywoman Marie Waldron (R-Escondido) has introduced legislation that  could someday have California universities offer a degree in creating and designing video games. "Video game design is a growing industry that is in need of a highly skilled workforce," Waldron said Monday. "These are well-paid jobs for a young generation that is struggling for economic opportunities.

This sturdy Austrian had supporting roles in the recent action movies "Skyfall" and "Zero Dark Thirty," the TV western "Justified" and the military video game "Medal of Honor: Warfighter. " The ubiquitous performer - actually a semiautomatic pistol - is the Glock-17. A kind of Kevin Bacon of firearms, the Glock-17 appears without ceremony in movies and TV shows year after year, largely because it's also popular with the law enforcement officers being depicted. There is one place, however, where the Glock-17 is treated like a star - along with the dainty Walther PPK/S handgun that is James Bond's sidearm of choice, the long-barreled Winchester rifles the Prohibition agents tote on the 1920s-set HBO show "Boardwalk Empire" and the oversized Desert Eagle pistols used in the "Modern Warfare" and "Far Cry" series of video games.

Walt Disney Co.'s video game division laid off about 50 staffers Tuesday from several locations on the same day that it closed the Austin, Texas, studio that produced its "Epic Mickey" titles. The layoffs were separate from the people who lost their jobs at Austin-based Junction Point, according to a knowledgeable person not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Disney's Interactive Media unit, which also includes online content, has shed jobs recently as it attempts to meet Chief Executive Robert Iger's publicly stated goal of achieving profitability in its current fiscal year.

For “Downton Abbey” fans, the temptation to insert one's self into the action can at times be overwhelming, never more so than during Sunday night's heartbreaking, four-hanky weeper of an episode . Didn't we all want to  jump into the show and rush Sybil off to the hospital or, failing that, push Lord Grantham and Sir Philip in front of a speeding train? Now, thanks to an exceedingly clever person named Bill Kiley , that reality is one step closer (if not quite realized)

THQ? RIP. The Agoura Hills video game publisher that only five years ago had a market value of more than $2 billion sold most of its assets at a bankruptcy auction that closed on Tuesday. Games in development and production studios owned by THQ were bought by a variety of competitors for a total of $72 million, according to documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. That exceeded a "stalking horse" bid THQ had from private investment firm Clearlake Capital Group, which offered to take the entire company private for $60 million.