All Screen articles in 29 July 2008 – Page 4
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Features
Italy/United Kingdom - It takes three to fandango
New Italy-UK sales outfit Fandango Portobello Sales made a splash in Cannes this year with Matteo Garrone's Naples-set Mafia drama Gomorrah. The title won the Grand Prix, was one of the most coveted films in the Marche, and one of the few Italian films in recent years to sell worldwide.Overseeing ...
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Features
New Projects - Graphic encounters
Iron Man 2Marvel Studios and Paramount return in 2010 with Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark/Iron Man and Jon Favreau once again at the helm. Downey Jr has also signed to play Sherlock Holmes, in a project based on a graphic novel, for Warner Bros.The AvengersNo relation to the 1998 ...
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Features
United States - Docs Under The Microscope
Cara Mertes, director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program (DFP), is an award-winning former executive producer of PBS's documentary showcase P.O.V. who knows only too well how unforgiving the non-fiction arena can be. For every Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock and Alex Gibney there are thousands of film-makers whose stories ...
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News
US distribution - Seismic shift in specialty landscape
Some independent players see it as a 'healthy correction', others as a 'turning point'. One company chief recently suggested, in a Los Angeles Film Festival speech whose words have ricocheted around the indie community, 'the sky really is falling'.However you describe it, what has happened to the US independent industry ...
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Features
Online Distribution - The trouble with downloads
Opinion may be split on whether online downloads are the future of home entertainment but everyone agrees on the key limiting factor to the expansion of downloads: bandwidth."What we're waiting for is broader, more reliable, more ubiquitous bandwidth," says US analyst Roger Kay. "Video as a data type is as ...
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News
Profile:UK director Tom Hooper
In terms of scale, Tom Hooper may never top his recent feat of directing the nine-hour HBO mini-series John Adams.The historical epic shot for 110 days on a budget of $110m, with more than 200 speaking parts. 'It's like my Lord Of The Rings, except I don't have to do ...
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Features
The Critical View - War of words
The argument about possessory credits and the creative heft of the screenwriter is almost as old as the film industry itself.It predates the squabble between Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles over the writing credit on Citizen Kane - which the director wanted all for himself; it underpinned the on-set ...
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Features
International - Cliff scales the heights
Nine new entries wrestled their way into Screen's international chart this week, with Japan, South Korea, India, Germany, China and France providing new films alongside the big Hollywood blockbusters.Japanese films continue to make their mark with two further entries opening in their home territory this week.Ponyo On The Cliff - ...
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Features
United Kingdom - Mother Care
Shane Meadows' Somers Town, after much praise at the Berlinale and awards at Tribeca and Edinburgh, has had an unusual path to screen. The genesis of the project was not with a seasoned writer or director, but from famed advertising agency Mother.Ad legend Robert Saville, one of the founders of ...
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News
Home Entertainment: A bolt from the Blu'
When Toshiba announced in February it would stop developing high-definition DVD players, it marked the end of a format battle that looked like it might rival the VHS vs Betamax videotape war of the 1970s and 1980s.Toshiba's announcement cleared the way for Sony's Blu-ray to take the next generation of ...
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Features
Production - Armenia - The apricot revolution
For more than a century, Armenia's main export has been its people: men like MGM investor Kirk Kerkorian, who fled oppression and settled in Russia, France and North America. The country of 3.2 million people began post-Soviet independence in the early 1990s in the throes of a devastating earthquake and ...
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News
In The Animation Vanguard: John H Williams on Space Chimps
Space Chimps, which opened in the US through Twentieth Century Fox last weekend, taking $7.4m, is the second CG-animated film financed independently by Vanguard Animation.An initiative of Shrek producer John H Williams and his Vanguard Films, the unit was founded to make a modestly budgeted ($40m), high-quality CG film every ...
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Features
The American stream - Leading download sites in the US
Amazon UnboxThe big beast of internet shopping stepped into the movie downloading business when it set up Unbox in late 2006. It now boasts more than 5,000 movies for US users to rent or buy, though customers need to download its video-playing software. Rentals are mostly $3.99 and most purchases ...
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News
here! acquires North American rights to Yen Tan's Ciao
here! Films has acquired North American distribution rights to Ciao, a gay-themed drama directed by Yen Tan which won the jury prize for best feature at the recent Philadelphia International Gay And Lesbian Film Festival.here! sister company Regent Releasing will distribute the film in theatres later in 2008.The film follows ...
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News
Borman, Graves license movie rights to The Seven Sins
Producers Moritz Borman and Peter Graves will produce a film based on The Seven Sins: The Tyrant Ascending, a book by Jon Land which is inspired by the life of Fabrizio Boccardi.Borman will produce and Graves will executive produce the film and have acquired rights to two sequels (subject to ...
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Reviews
The X-Files: I Want To Believe
Dir. Chris Carter US. 2008. 104 mins. Six years after the end of the long-running TV series - and ten after the first movie spin-off -- writer-director Chris Carter and stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson re-open the X Files with a nicely dark and dense supernatural thriller which Fox ...
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News
Palador lines up October release for Tokyo Sonata
India's Palador Pictures is planning to release Tokyo Sonata by Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa in October this year. Palador picked up theaward-winning titlefrom Fortissimo Films at this year's Cannes. The Best Film Award in the Asian & Arab category bagged by Tokyo Sonata at the recently concluded Osian's-Cinefan film festival ...
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News
Online video viewing in Europe doubles since 2006
The number of Europeans regularly watching online video has doubled since 2006, according to new data from JupiterResearch.The new report finds that 28% of Europeans now regularly watch online video, making it the most popular online media activity.Even with time spent on online video up 50%, TV is not being ...
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News
Sarajevo competition to include Blaz Kutin world premiere
The 14th Sarajevo Film Festival (Aug 15-23) has announced its feature and short films competition. The 10 features competing include one world premiere - Slovenian Blaz Kutin's We've Never Been To Venice -plus seven international premieres.The Focus programme will feature the most awarded films from the region: Romanian Radu Muntean's ...
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News
Korean film exportsup by37% in first half of 2008
The Korean Film Council (KOFIC) hasreported local box office and export figures for the first half of the year, which show that film exports bounced up by 37% to $10.2m, after steep declines since 2005. Sales to North America shot up by 1,740% from $154,500 to $2.84m, mostly due to ...