All Screen articles in 24 June 2007 – Page 2
-
Reviews
Captivity
Dir: Roland Joffe. US. 2007. 84 minsThe controversy surrounding the marketing of Captivity proves to be more interesting than the film itself. Banned American billboard images considered too intense for public display earned Captivity the kind of notoriety that publicity budgets cannot buy. Anyone seduced by the whiff of scandal ...
-
News
London UK Film Focus to screen 40 films to about 150 buyers
The London UK Film Focus (LUFF), which runs from June 25-28 at the revamped BFI Southbank, is expected to attract around 150 buyers to London. Around 40 films will be screening. The event, a showcase for British films, is now in its fourth year. LUFF's organisers claim that approximately $2m ...
-
News
Munich's Collina to make dramatic remake of The Champagne Spy
Munich-based Collina Films has hired Israeli writer-director Nadav Schirman to make an English-language adaptation of his documentary The Champagne Spy.The real-life story centres on Jewish Mossad agent Wolfgang Lotz who became addicted to his covert identity as an ex-Nazi playboy and millionaire horse breeder in Cairo in the 1960s.Collina's general ...
-
News
PPI's Shrek The Third hits Germany, Spain
Paramount/PPI's Shrek The Third is riding a wave and should stay on top of the international arena this weekend.The animated feature has grossed $123.1m to date and will add considerably to its haul through expected strong holds and launches in Germany on Jun 21 and Spain on Jun 22.The distributor ...
-
News
Byrne named to head GE/NBC Universal equity fund
Thomas M Byrne has been hired as managing director to lead GE Commercial Finance - Media, Communications & Entertainment business and NBC Universal's $250m joint venture Peacock Equity Fund.Megumi Ikeda has also been named executive director, will be based in London and reports to Byrne.Byrne will lead an international team ...
-
News
IFC First Take to release Last Winter in North America
IFC Entertainment has acquired all North American rights to Larry Fessenden's supernatural thriller The Last Winter and will release through its multi-platform IFC First Take label.The film premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and screens this week at the Los Angeles Film Festival.Larry Fessenden wrote and directed the ...
-
Reviews
Transformers
Dir: Michael Bay. US. 2007. 142mins.Director Michael Bay delivers another stylishly shot, escapist movie gumball with Transformers, an orgiastic action extravaganza based on Hasbro's line of convertible kids' action toys. Some likeable characters and early, intriguingly seeded plot strands of clandestine overlap are sacrificed at the altar of expediency and ...
-
News
Parvez Sharma: love & faith
Parvez Sharma'sIslam, My Love could be the most controversial documentary of the year. Jeremy Kay finds out why.A film arrives this autumn with the potential to blow through institutionalised thinking in a manner that will make Michael Moore's polemics seem breezy by comparison.Responses will inevitably be polarised, but 33-year-old film-maker ...
-
News
German exhibition: uneasy riders
Germany's rocky ride continues as the 2007 box office looks set to stall, writes Martin Blaney. Germany's cinema fortunes were revived in 2006 after a poor 2005, with a year-on-year increase in box-office takings of 9.6%, and admissions rising by 7.9%. But exhibitors have had little to cheer in the ...
-
News
French exhibition: Hollywood makes a play
France's dominance of the local market looks set to be replaced by Hollywood this summer. Nancy Tartaglione-Vialatte reports. While the box office for the first five months of 2007 shows a 12.6% decrease compared to last year, exhibitors are nonetheless optimistic. Last year's early numbers were blurred by the mega-hit ...
-
News
Spanish exhibition: negative impact
Claire Wallerstein reports on the country's drop in admissions and negative impact of the new film law. Spain has the most screens per capita worldwide outside the US, and yet admissions reached only 121 million for 2006 - the lowest since 1998.Revenue increased just 0.2% year on year, to $856.6m ...
-
News
Italian exhibition: hot shots
With distributors now braving the Italian mid-summer, Italy's box-office prospects are heating up. Sheri Jennings reports. The Italian exhibition sector is looking strong, with a 23% year-on-year increase in box-office revenue for the first quarter, and an impressive slate of summer blockbusters still to come.May ushered in Spider-Man 3 and ...
-
News
Etgar Keret and Shira Geffe: the nextbig sting
Husband-and-wife film-making team Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen won the Camera d'Or at Cannes last month for Jellyfish, a surreal drama inspired by US indie films. Edna Fainaru reports. Etgar Keret is a celebrity at home in Israel. A prolific writer of short stories and graphic novels that have been ...
-
News
Marjane Satrapi: drawing on the past
Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian-born film-maker of Persepolis, tells Antonia Carver why she hopes it will be seen as a film that just happens to be animated. Following the success of her graphic novels, Marjane Satrapi received enquiries from several US studios. 'One wanted to make a kind of Beverly Hills ...
-
News
Strong Fox finds comfort in Grass
Fox's Christian Grass, distributor of the year at the upcoming Cinema Expo, says a solid partnership between distributors and exhibitors is essential for the future. Michael Gubbins reportsThere is a certain irony in this year's choice of distributor of the year at European exhibitor conference Cinema Expo. Christian Grass, executive ...
-
News
Exhibition: clean windows
Calm is restored after the furore over release windows, but the issue remains a live one. Richard Brass reports. Tensions have been running high between exhibitors and distributors over narrowing theatrical and DVD release windows, but for now the storm has abated.Earlier this year, Twentieth Century Fox attempted to release ...
-
News
Critical opinion: the people's choice
When critics bemoan the state of Hollywood movies, they are also implicitly - and unfairly - criticising the film-going public who flock to see them, says Lee MarshallThe back-to-back releases of Spider-Man 3, Shrek The Third and Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End have generated a spate of op-eds ...
-
News
UK exhibition: rule Britannia
UK exhibitors anticipate a record-breaking performance this year, but still await digital rollout, writes Diana Lodderhose. The UK box office has seen a healthy start to the year, with takings up 7% in the first five months compared to the same period in 2006, generating $661.9m (£332.1m).February and March were ...
-
News
Box office: the global perspective
With 2007 on course to break box-office records, Leonard Klady explores how developments in the international market hold the key to the future of the film industry. Widespread predictions that 2007 would break recent box-office records look to be well founded. The international box office generated $4.5bn in the first ...
-
News
Cine Expo talking point: alternative means
Exhibitors struggle to find alternative revenue streams, reports Richard Brass.For exhibitors it is the holy grail: how to maximise the use of all that expensive real estate by getting paying customers through the doors at off-peak times.However, despite regular announcements of its imminent expansion, using cinemas for anything other than ...