Blockbuster Inc, which has dominated the home video rental business for more than a decade, is preparing to file for bankruptcy protection next month, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

Executives from Blockbuster and its bondholders have been meeting with the six major movie studios to try to persuade them to continue to supply the company with new DVDs while it seeks to restructure its debt load of almost $1 billion (U.S.) under the U.S. Chapter 11 rules, the newspaper reported on its website.

Blockbuster is planning to seek bankruptcy protection in mid-September and try to get out of leases on 500 or more of its 3,425 stores in the U.S., the Times said, quoting studio sources involved in the talks.

Blockbuster has lost a total of $1.1 billion since the beginning of 2008. It has closed nearly 1,000 stores in the past year alone, a reflection of consumers' rapidly declining interest in renting movie DVDs from retail locations now that they can rent them via the Internet or from kiosks in grocery stores.

Star staff

Best Supporting Actor nominee Martin Short is skipping this Sunday’s Primetime Emmy Awards bash in the wake of his wife’s death earlier this week.

A spokeswoman for the Canadian comic said Short is not attending the annual Los Angeles TV party, where he’s nominated for a rare dramatic performance on the legal thriller Damages. The Emmys will be broadcast Sunday at 8 p.m. on CTV and NBC.

Short’s partner of 30 years, retired actress Nancy Dolman, died earlier this week at age 58. There will be no funeral service.

The Canadian Press

As U2 wrapped up their first concert in Moscow Wednesday night, lead singer Bono surprised about 55,000 fans in the audience by calling Russian rocker Yury Shevchuk, a critic of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, on stage.

“You might know this man,” Bono said to the crowd. The pair performed Bob Dylan's classic “Knockin' on Heaven's Door,” with Shevchuk, frontman for the Russian rock group DDT, singing a Russian version before joining Bono on the original tune. Shevchuk left the stage shouting “Russia.”

On Sunday, as U2 arrived in Moscow, Shevchuk took part in an illegal rally in downtown Moscow to protest the construction of a highway through a forest northwest of the capital. At a meeting with Putin in May, Shevchuk assailed the suppression of opposition protests.

U2's concert at Moscow's Luzhniki stadium, part of its 360 Degree tour, had a human rights focus that ran afoul of law enforcement officers. Tents set up by Greenpeace and Amnesty International were closed and five Amnesty activists were detained.

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The rights groups didn't receive permits for the tents, Interfax reported.

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