All Screen articles in 7 April 2003
View all stories from this month.
-
News
Audiences elect Head Of State over Core, Basic
Movie audiences flirted with the idea of a new President over theweekend as the Dreamworks comedy Head Of State opened at number one on an estimated$14m. The poorly reviewed $35m picture stars Chris Rock as an aspiringpolitician who ends up in the White House. It co-stars Bernie Mac and wasco-written ...
-
News
Lord Of The Rings beats Lord Of The Rings
In the same week that Universal announced Peter Jackson would be directing a King Kong re-imagining for release in 2005, the second of the New Zealand director's epic The Lord Of The Rings trilogy surpassed the international cumulative gross of its predecessor.The Two Towers became the fifth highest grossing film ...
-
News
Marleen Gorris to direct Bronte
Academy Award-winning director Marleen Gorris is to direct Bronte, the story of the Bronte sisters.The Dutch director, who won the best foreign-language Oscar for Antonia's Line, is to go into pre-production in May for Random Harvest, the UK producer and tax-based financier which acquired the screenplay from DreamWorks SKG.Angela Workman, ...
-
News
Oscar Moore screenwriting prizewinners secure production co, director
Jason and Brendan Butler, the new Dublin-based screenwriters who won last year's Oscar Moore Screenwriting Prize, have secured a director and a production company for their script Ton Of Money.Irish production outfit Octagon Films has optioned the project, a comedy about a group of criminals who come across £1m in ...
-
Reviews
Valentin
Dir: Alejandro Agresti. Argentina/Holland. 2002. 82mins.Valentin is an immensely likeable if lightweight addition to the existing host of nostalgic, bittersweet comedies about growing up in a dysfunctional family. Small but perfectly formed, it is keenly pitched at middlebrow art-house audiences and quality broadcasters. Miramax, which is also funding director Alejandro ...
-
News
French film festival in Los Angeles opens with 24 Hours
The annual CityOf Lights, City Of Angels Film Festival in Los Angeles has unveiled its lineupof 11 new French films which will screen from April 8 to 12. The festival,which is supported by L'ARP, Directors Guild Of America, Film & TVDepartment of the French Embassy, SACEM, Unifrance and Writers Guild ...
-
News
Scooby cast sign on for Warner's sequel
Warner Bros hassigned up actors Freddie Prinze Jr, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Matthew Lillard andLinda Cardellini to return in the sequel to Scooby-Doo which is set to start shooting on April14 and to open domestically on March 26, 2004.The filmreunites the team behind the first film - James Gunn, will be ...
-
News
Newcomer wins Denmark's NatFilm Natsvaermer award
At the opening gala for the 14th edition of Denmark's NatFilm Festival newcomer Jannik Johansen received the Natsvaermer Award along with $3,600, which is presented annually to a new talent. The 37 year-old Johansen has written and directed several shorts including A Quiet Death (1997) and Off Track (1999), before ...
-
News
Blue Moon wins Grand Prize at Diagonale
Andrea Maria Dusl's feature debut Blue Moon was the winner of this year's Euros 19,000 Grand Prize at the Diagonale Festival of Austrian Cinema which closed in Graz on March 30. Meanwhile, the Diagonale's Euros 10,000 Prize for Innovative Production was shared ex aequo by Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion (for Elsewhere) ...
-
News
New film investment, distribution company launched in South Korea
Kim Dong-joo, ex-president of Korea Pictures, has announced the launch of an ambitious new investment and distribution company to focus on film and the performing arts. Named Show East, the company has recently began shooting on its first feature Mutt Boy, by the director of Korea's current box-office record ...
-
News
Germany's Constantin Film reports increased sales
Germany's leading independent distributor-producer Constantin Film posted a 3% year-on-year increase in sales to Euros 131.2m "in spite of the continuing crisis on the German media market last year", according to figures for the 2002 fiscal year.Constantin reported that it had reached the targets set at the beginning of 2002 ...
-
News
Istituto Luce re-focuses on documentaries
Italy's 79-year-old state-owned Istituto Luce has decided to re-focus on its original role as Italy's leading maker of documentaries."We want to revitalise our role as a documentary-maker and give it new impetus. We will no longer just make "montage" documentaries, but will produce new ones too," said Istituto Luce ...
-
News
Italy's Mediaset records increased profits
Mediaset, Silvio Berlusconi's private Italian network, recorded a 45.7% rise in net profits in 2002 to Euros 362m. In 2001, net profits had slipped to Euros 248.4m on the back of losses linked to the company's minority stake in KirchMedia.Overall, however, the group's net financial position on December 31st 2002 ...
-
News
HAF decision to be taken today
Organisers of the Hong Kong Asia International Film Finance Forum (HAF) will today (Tuesday, Apr 1) take a decision as to whether to press on with the projects market scheduled to take place next week (Apr 7-9).Hong Kong is at the centre of an outbreak of a killer virus known ...
-
News
Leslie Cheung dies, aged 46
Hong Kong actor and singer Leslie Cheung Kwok-Wing reportedly leapt to his death from a Hong Kong hotel on Tuesday. He was 46. According to Hong Kong broadcaster RTHK, Cheung jumped from the Mandarin Oriental hotel in the Central district of Hong Kong Island in the early evening. He was ...
-
News
BVITV appoints Alison Homewood
Buena Vista International Television (BVITV) has appointed Alison Homewood as vice president of sales for Europe, Middle East and Africa, it was announced by Tom Toumazis, vice president and managing director, BVITV. Homewood will report directly into Toumazis and joins BVITV from BBC Worldwide where she was deputy managing director ...
-
News
Hong Kong Asia Film Financing Forum postponed
The organisers of the Hong Kong Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) have confirmed that the event has been postponed until further notice due to the outbreak of a deadly virus in Hong Kong. More than 450 industry professionals from 20 countries had registered to attend the projects and co-production market ...
-
News
CIA thriller recruits UK core audience
Buena Vista International's CIA thriller The Recruit expanded from one to 381 sites in its second weekend on release in the UK and swept straight to the top of the chart with $1.4m (£920,472).The wide opening of The Recruit kept other new hopefuls, including day-and-date launch The Core, off the ...
-
News
European competition watchdog to rule on Stream/Telepiu merger
The competition watchdog of the European Commission (EC) is tomorrow expected to announce that the merger of Italian pay-TV companies Telpiu and Stream can go ahead.The deal was sealed five months ago with the News Corp-controlled Stream buying Telepiu from Vivendi Universal's Canal Plus unit for Euros 900m. The deal ...
-
Reviews
The Suit (Shik)
Dir: Bakhtiar Khudoinazarov. Russ-Ger-It-Fr. 2003. 95 mins.The latest outing by director Bakhtiar Khudoinazarov is, essentially, about three country lads fooling about, telling unlikely stories and occasionally becoming maudlin or lovestruck. Charming in its own small way, it is unlikely to have the impact of 1999's Luna Papa on the international ...