All Screen articles in 4 February 2008
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News
Meet The Spartans, Rambo lead North American box office
Fox's comedy spoof Meet The Spartans starring Sean Maguire and Carmen Electra narrowly squeezed out Lionsgate/The Weinstein Company's (TWC) action saga Rambo to open top on an estimated $18.7m at the weekend.Rambo took $18.2m and sees Sylvester Stallone reprise his role as the die-hard former Green Beret who assembles a ...
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Showbox picks up world rights to Kim's Dream
Seoul-based distributor/investor Showbox Mediaplex has picked up worldwide sales rights excluding Japan for celebrated Korean director Kim Ki-duk’s upcoming film Dream. Top Japanese star Odagiri Joe (Sad Vacation, Tokyo Tower) stars opposite leading Korean actress Lee Na-young (Maundy Thursday, Someone Special).The film tells the story of the mysterious connection ...
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News
Coen Brothers take top honours at DGA Awards
Joel and Ethan Coen boosted their chances of Academy Awards glory next month after they won the Directors Guild Of America (DGA) award for outstanding directorial achievement in feature film 2007 for No Country For Old Men.The DGA honour is a very strong indicator of Oscar success - all but ...
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RKO is latest producer to sign interim agreement with WGA
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has singed another interim agreement following deals late last week with Lionsgate and Marvel, this time with RKO Pictures subsidiary RKO Productions.RKO Productions' filming schedule, to be announced next week, includes several original screen projects, as well as the financing, production, and distribution of ...
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News
Brian Burkin joins SPE's international production division
Brian Burkin has joined Sony Pictures Entertainment's International Motion Picture Production division as senior vice president business affairs and operations.Burkin, who started his career in private practice and served nine years as senior vice president of business affairs at Miramax Films, will assume responsibility for negotiating deals and managing relationships ...
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News
Robert Elswit wins ASC Oustanding Achievement Award for Blood
Robert Elswit won top honours in the 22nd Annual American Society Of Cinematographers' (ASC) Outstanding Achievement Awards for feature film for There Will Be Blood on Saturday [Jan 26].Elswit beat out Roger Deakins for The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford and No Country For Old Men, ...
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Manda Bala film-makers win Microsoft HDi Grant during Sundance
Director Jason Kohn and producer Jared Goldman received the Microsoft HDi Grant during the Sundance Film Festival last week from the Sundance Institute and Microsoft Corp for their 2007 festival entry Manda Bala (Send A Bullet).The prize is worth an estimated $100,000 and provides the film-makers with the resources to ...
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News
River, Water take top prizes at Sundance Film Festival 08
Tia Lessin and Carl Deal's Hurricane Katrina tale Trouble The Water won the 2007 Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize: Documentary award and Courtney Hunt's tale of immigrant smuggling in Frozen River took the Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic prize at the awards night ceremony in Park City on Saturday [Jan ...
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News
LA's Film Independent wins $150,000 grant James Irvine Foundation
Film Independent has received a three-year $150,000 grant from the James Irvine Foundation to further its Talent Development Programmes and diversity initiatives.The grant will specifically support Film Independent's signature diversity programme, Project: Involve, and three editions of Film Independent's annual talent guide, which spotlights graduates of Film Independent's Talent Development ...
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News
Magnolia to distribute ten Oscar-nominated shorts in US theatres
Magnolia Pictures and Shorts International have announced they will partner for the third year running to bring the 10 Oscar-nominated live-action and animated short films to US theatres on Feb 15 prior to the awards ceremony on Feb 24.The Oscar Shorts programme will at first open in approximately 50 cities ...
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Second AFI Dallas festival to open with The Last Lullaby
The World Premiere of Jeffrey Goodman's noir thriller The Last Lullaby starring Tom Sizemore and US premieres of the music documentaries Glass: A Portrait Of Philip In Twelve Parts and Sonic Youth: Sleeping Nights Awake are among 15 titles named in this year's AFI Dallas 2008 International Film Festival line-up.Additional ...
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New Year Parade, Song Sung Blue take Slamdance top prizes
Tom Quinn's The New Year Parade won the 14th Annual Slamdance Film Festival's Grand Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature and Greg Kohs' Song Sung Blue took corresponding documentary honours at the weekend.The Grand Jury Award For Best Animated Short went to Andrew McPhillips's Blood Will Tell, the Grand Jury ...
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News
SPC buys The Wackness, Frozen River as Sundance ends
Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) has paid low seven figures for North American rights to Jonathan Levine's The Wackness, which won the 2008 Sundance Film Festival's Audience Award: Dramatic prize on Saturday [Jan 26].The deal marked SPC's third pick-up following Courtney Hunt's dramatic grand jury prize winner Frozen River and Mark ...
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News
Day-Lewis, Christie win top film honours at SAG Awards
The 14th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards crowned Daniel Day-Lewis and Julie Christie king and queen of the acting world on Sunday [Jan 27] and positioned the pair at the forefront of the race for the lead actor Oscars next month.The jovial ceremony at the Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Center ...
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Fortissimo and Circe Films team up for art titles
Dutch based film company Fortissimo and Amsterdam-based production outfit Circe Films are teaming up to producea series of European arthouse titles. They announced their new partnership in Rotterdam.The first co-produced feature will be Face, the next project of Tsai Ming-Liang, initiatied by French JBA Productions.Fortissimo has taken salesrights to previous ...
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Reviews
The Escapist
Dir: Rupert Wyatt. UK/Ireland. 2008. 105mins.In his debut feature The Escapist director Rupert Wyatt animates the virtues of the B-movie thriller - direct expression, taut construction and a stripped down psychology-with a more conceptually unorthodox narrative design that collapses time and space.In the script he wrote with Daniel Hardy, Wyatt ...
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Reviews
Donkey Punch (2007)
Dir. Olly Blackburn, 2007, UK, 90 minutesDonkey Punch, in young male slang, is a term for a hard blow to the back of the neck during sex, which produces a clench that gives pleasure to at least one person in a couple. This act kills a vacationing girl from Leeds ...
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Reviews
The Great Buck Howard
Dir: Sean McGinly. US. 2008. 87 minsThe Great Buck Howard is a well-made character piece which is so slight, good-natured and ever so slightly bland that it is likely to land in a commercial no man's land somewhere between the mainstream and the arthouse. Produced by Gary Goetzman and Tom ...
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Reviews
Transsiberian
Dir: Brad Anderson. US. 2008. 111 mins.The latest entry in Brad Anderson's increasingly fascinating oeuvre is an ambitious thriller set on the Transsiberian train from China to Moscow which recalls train-set thrillers from the 1970s like Silver Streak, The Cassandra Crossing and Murder On The Orient Express, not to mention ...
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Reviews
The King of Ping Pong (Ping-Pongkingen)
Dir: Jens Jonsson. Sweden. 2007. 107 mins.Growing pains in a cold climate: this formula has reaped handsome dividends for Nordic cinema in the past, most spectacularly for Lasse Hallström's My Life as a Dog, and more modestly for Dagur Kári's Icelandic art-house hit of 2003 Noi Albinoi. Swedish comedy-drama The ...