All Screen articles in 26 January 2006 – Page 4
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News
Megabox finds new backer following Loews pullout
Major Korean multiplex chainMegabox has secured investment from the private equity arm of StandardChartered Bank which has acquired a 45% stake in the company for $73m. The deal follows anagreement reached last month for former Megabox shareholder, US exhibitor Loews Cineplex, to sell its 50% stake inthe company for $79m ...
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News
Pioneering film competition to encourage use of new technologies
Screen International is holding a pioneeringfilmmaking competition at its Cinema Next conference on February 3rd.Three filmmaking teams will take part in The Cinema Next Mini-Movie Competitionwhere they will use mobile phone cameras to produce short films which will be shot,edited and screened at this London-based conference. The teams will be ...
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News
Israeli-Palestinian consortium joins forces to promote docs
The Israelis and Palestinians are about to join forces in arare alliance, on a project entitled Greenhouse, whose purpose is to train andcoach promising documentary filmmakers in the Mediterranean region. Originally initiated by David Fisher at theNew Foundation for Cinema and Television (NFCT) in Tel Aviv, and Adam Zouabi, the ...
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News
The Works gets on board Winterbottom's new film
London-based sales company The WorksInternational has acquired the international sales rights to Michael Winterbottom's TheRoad to Guantanamo, which will premiere incompetition at the Berlin Film Festival.The film is based on the true storyof four British men who travel from the UK to Pakistan to attend a wedding, just after 9/11. ...
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Foreign shoots brought $243m to France in 2005
Foreignfilm production in France for 2005 brought in $243m (Euros 200m) last year, accordingto Film France. RonHoward's Cannes opener The Da Vinci Codeand Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antoinettewere among major contributors to the figures.FilmFrance also announced that France's Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur region (PACA) wasthe prime shooting location for foreign and local productions. In ...
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Reviews
Little Miss Sunshine
Dirs: Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris. US. 2006. 100mins.The first big hit of the 2006 SundanceFilm Festival, sold the night after its first screening last Friday to FoxSearchlight for over $10m, Little MissSunshine is a genuinely delightful comedy about a family of misfits on a roadtrip to a beauty pageant.Playing ...
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Reviews
The Illusionist
Dir.Neil Burger. US. 2005. 110mins.Magic is the artof distraction. The Illusionistsucceeds because writer-director Neil Burger has his audience concentrate onEdward Norton's title character while Paul Giamatti'sfoil bustles around the picture providing the drama. The resulting periodromantic thriller is an attractive after-dinner treat which not only tastesdelicious but lingers on the ...
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News
Screen Gems tops US with Underworld sequel
The Sony stable enjoyed an excellent weekend at the North Americanbox office as Screen Gems' supernatural sequel Underworld: Evolution romped to the top of the charts andColumbia's Fun With Dick And Jane crossed $100m in its fifth weekend.Underworld: Evolution opened number one far ahead of the competition on an estimated$27.6m, ...
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Reviews
Friends With Money
Dir/scr: Nicole Holofcener. US. 2006. 88mins.Nicole Holofcener's thirdfemale-skewed ensemble piece confirms her as a distinctive, urbane commentatoron the life of (affluent) women in America today. An incisive snapshot ofcontemporary values as grappled with by four Los Angeles women, Friends With Money is only her thirdfilm, but stints on episodic television ...
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Reviews
Underworld: Evolution
Dir: Len Wiseman. US. 2005.106mins.The mostly young male horror fans who turned 2003vampires-vs-werewolves saga Underworld into a surprise hit will probably find what they'reafter in this sequel: plenty of gory action, some cool effects and even a bit ofsex.Broader audiences won't havemuch patience with the tediously convoluted plot and unvarying ...
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News
Sundance wakes up with Sleep, Tired deals
In the second major acquisition at this year's Sundance, WarnerIndependent Pictures has paid $6m for North American and UK rights to Michel Gondry's surreal romance The Science Of Sleep.WiP chief Mark Gill and his team swooped after the French-producedpicture's world premiere here on Sunday night, which drew rapturousapplause for attending ...
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Sony Classics swoops on Russian Oscar entry The Italian
Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) has picked up North American rightsfrom Lenfilm to Andrei Kravchuk's feature directorial debut and Russian 2006 submissionfor the foreign language Oscar The Italian.Set in 1942, The Italian charts a five-year-old orphan's efforts to avoid adoption byan Italian family as he tries in vain to locate his ...
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News
Narnia leads international box office for fifth weekend
The Chronicles Of Narnia extended its international supremacy to a fifth consecutiveweekend as it added an estimated $13.3m through Buena Vista International (BVI)to raise the running total to $342.6m.Boasting a worldwide total just shy of $614m, Narnia currently ranks as the 27th biggest filmof all time after it overtook The ...
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News
Penguins director Jacquet announces Fox movie
Luc Jacquet has announced in Sundance what his next film will beafter his worldwide documentary smash March Of The Penguins - a narrative-documentaryhybrid with the working title The Fox And The Child.Filming on the Euros11m project is scheduled to run from March2006 to March 2007 in France, Italy and Romania ...
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Sundance launches arthouse anniversary initiative
The Sundance Institute has launched The Sundance Institute ArtHouse, a partnership with national arthouse theatres that will screen filmsfrom the festival past and present as part of the year-long celebration of theInstitute's 25th anniversary.14 theatres in cities ranging from Orlando, Florida, to Nashville,Tennessee, and Bellingham, Washington, are among those that ...
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News
IFC takes North American rights to Hamer's Factotum
IFC Films has picked up all North American rights to Bent Hamer'sCharles Bukowski adaptation Factotum, which had originally been bought after its Cannes worldpremiere by Picturehouse but which was returned to the market last week.The picture, which screened at Sundance this weekend, has earnedMatt Dillon plaudits for his portrayal of ...
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News
Bergstein, Tutor buy Capitol as core of ambitious group
The three owners ofLondon-based Capitol Films - Sharon Harel, Jane Barclay and Hannah Leader -have announced that their long-in-the-works sale of Capitol to LA-basedentrepreneurs David Bergstein and Ronald N Tutor has been completed. Bergstein and Tutor now haveambitious plans to form an international entertainment group which will becalled Capitol with ...
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News
Warner Bros goes west with Sichuan partnership
Warner Bros InternationalCinemas (WBIC) is expanding into the mid-south and southwest corners of China through a strategic partnership with Sichuan PacificCinema Circuit, one of the leading circuits under China Film Group. The two partners will makejoint efforts to explore this region of China which is relatively undeveloped compared to thewealthier ...
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News
Korean conglomerate acquires LJ Film
Korean conglomerate Prime Industrialhas acquired Seoul-based production company LJ Film in a move to expand intothe entertainment sector. LJ Film is reportedlyexchanging $18.1m in stocks with Innotz, a subsidiary of major Korean softwarefirm Haansoft, which in turn belongs to the Prime corporation. Prime - which has corebusinesses in development and ...
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News
Global growth cheers French cinema at Rendez-Vous
Audiences for French films around the world grew 49% year-on-year in 2005, led by March Of The Penguins in the US, according to figures revealed at the 8th annual French FilmRendez-Vous in Paris.Themarket, which closed yesterday, heard that French films had been seen by 73.6 million internationalcinema-goers, generating $448m(Euros 369m). ...