All articles by John Hazelton
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NewsHollywood's foreign policy: producers looking increasingly to international locations
On the eve of the annual Locations Trade Show in Los Angeles (April 16-18), Screen reports on why US producers are looking beyond their borders to international locationsmore than ever before.
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Reviews
Knowing
Dir Alex Proyas. US. 2009. 121 minsNicolas Cage is a single-parent prophet of doom in Knowing, an ambitious but overwrought piece of apocalyptic sci-fi from I, Robot director Alex Proyas. Bringing his National Treasure: Book of Secrets audience to the mix, Cage should have the mainstream pulling power to make ...
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ReviewsStreet Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
Dir Andrzej Bartkowiak. US. 2009. 96 minsEven avid fans of the classic video game on which it is based are likely to give a thumbs down to Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. Coming 15 years after the first big-screen Street Fighter -1994’s $99m-grossing Jean-Claude Van Damme outing - this ...
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Christie Digital USA's Jack Kline on changing models
Over the past three years, digital cinema has finally become a reality for a growing number of exhibitors and distributors around the world. And although the global credit crunch has slowed the industry's conversion from 35mm prints and projection, Jack Kline still has his sights set firmly on the digital ...
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Reviews
Friday The 13th
Dir Marcus Nispel. US. 2009. 97mins. Hollywood's latest 're-imagining' of a video era horror classic is a muscular but pretty unimaginative take on the films that turned hockey-masked, machete-wielding anti-hero Jason Voorhees into a slasher icon. Director Marcus Nispel and producer Michael Bay, who successfully updated The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ...
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News
Short sighted: Screen profiles the Oscar-nominated shorts
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECTTHE CONSCIENCE OF NHEM ENNominated three times before and an Oscar winner in 1990 for his documentary short Days Of Waiting, Steven Okazaki went to Cambodia to research and shoot The Conscience Of Nhem En. The film explores issues of conscience and complicity in the story of ...
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News
NeoClassics' new wave of world cinema
Though he did an early stint in Hollywood as a senior attorney at Warner Bros and a business affairs executive at ICM, Irwin Olian has spent most of his working life as an entrepreneur in the financial, medical and mining industries.But even while he was busy in other fields, he ...
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US moviegoers get into New Line romcom
Romantic comedy He's Just Not That Into You was this weekend's top earner as a quartet of new releases produced another big haul at the US box office. The Warner/New Line romcom opened significantly better than expected, grossing an estimated $27.5m from 3,175 screens, for a per-screen average of $8,649. ...
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Benjamin Button big in international market with $31m weekend
Multiple Oscar nominee The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was the big winner at the international box office this weekend, grossing an estimated $31m from 5,126 screens in 47 markets. Taking its international total so far to $72.5m, the Brad Pitt-Cate Blanchett drama opened at number one in Spain and ...
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United States - Content provider
When he relocated to Los Angeles last August, ContentFilm International president Jamie Carmichael was "in search of bigger and stronger films".And the move, says Carmichael, who set up the international sales arm of the UK's ContentFilm plc in London six-and-a-half years ago, "has been quite transformational".With its front office effectively ...
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News
Bill Mechanic returns to animation with Coraline
Coraline may be the first animated film that Bill Mechanic has made under the banner of his Los Angeles-based production company Pandemonium, but the studio-chief-turned-producer is hardly a newcomer to the animation world.When he was at Disney in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the home-video division Mechanic oversaw and ...
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Reviews
Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans
Dir Patrick Tatopoulos. US. 2009. 92 mins With Kate Beckinsale absent and her ex-partner Michael Sheen as its unlikely star, it's no surprise that the third instalment of the werewolves-vs-vampires Underworld franchise is more of a traditional creature feature than its hip'n'sexy predecessors. The shift might attract a few new, ...
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Nominees react to their Oscar nods from Mumbai to Hollywood
Nominees were celebrating from Los Angeles to Mumbai to London on Thursday as news of the Academy Awards nominations flashed around the world. Speaking from the Indian premiere of Slumdog Millionaire in Mumbai, producer Christian Colson said local celebrations over the ten nominations earned by the film - which was ...
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Reviews
New In Town
Dir Jonas Elmer. US. 2009. 96 mins New In Town sees Renee Zellweger returning to the genre which, in the Bridget Jones films, has given her two of her biggest worldwide hits. But there's nothing in this run of the mill romantic-comedy - co-starring Harry Connick Jr and marking the ...
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News
Awards Countdown - Best documentary - Reality check
AT THE DEATH HOUSE DOORSteve James and Peter Gilbert, the award-winning makers of Hoop Dreams, produced and directed this look at the death penalty through the eyes of long-time Texas death-house chaplain Pastor Carroll Pickett. The audio tapes Pickett recorded on execution days show “the toll it takes on a ...
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News
Profile:The VFX genius behind The Spirit
His title at San Francisco and Los Angeles-based visual effects and production company The Orphanage is chief technology officer. But Stu Maschwitz is no gadget-obsessed geek.'There are a lot of people who get off on the technical challenges; I'm not one of them,' asserts Maschwitz, who co-founded The Orphanage in ...
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Golden Globe nominees respond around the globe
Honourees greeted news of their Golden Globe nominations from locations both exotic and prosaic onThursday in the hours following the dawn nominations announcement in Los Angeles by theHollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA).