All articles by Geoffrey Macnab – Page 190
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Reviews
An Inconvenient Truth
Dir: Davis Guggenheim. US. 2006.98mins"I'm Al Gore. I used to be the next president of theUnited States... I don't find that particularly funny," former vice-presidentAl Gore declares early on in Davis Guggenheim's fascinating documentary,bounding on stage before one of his multi-media lectures about global warming.Gore is a contradictoryfigure, aloof and ...
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News
Act, Knatchbull acquire UK distributor Artificial Eye
In a further shake-up to the UK distribution market,Artificial Eye Film Company, for 30 years the UK's leading distributor of arthouse and foreign language films, has been acquired byAct Entertainment Group, owner of Curzon Cinemas, andKnatchbull Communications Group.Terms of the acquisition were not released.The deal comes just as Artificial Eye ...
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News
StudioCanal deal will help Optimum become bigger
Furtherdetails have emerged of how UK distributorOptimum Releasing is going to expand following its acquisition by French major,StudioCanal. Optimum'smanaging director Will Clarke refused to say how much StudioCanalpaid for the company he founded in 1999, but rival distributors werespeculating that it could have been as much as $31.7m (Euros 25m). ...
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Optimum deal marks shift in UK distribution
Studio Canal's acquisition of Optimum, just a few months after Lionsgate's takeover of Redbus,marks a major shift for the UK indie distributionbusiness. Not so long ago, it was a side of the industry that waswidely seen as over-stretched, cash-strapped and scrambling to stay afloat. Distributors were invariably to be heard ...
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Reviews
Confetti
Dir: Debbie Isitt. UK.2006. 100mins.A good-natured but uneven farce, Debbie Isitt's Confettipokes fun at the marriage industry, using a mockumentarystructure borrowed from Christopher Guest's BestIn Show - but with engaged couples instead of dogsin the limelight. Meanwhile, the deadpan humour and low-key acting style aredistinctively British, with a cast that ...
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News
Da VInci Code backer pulls out of film business
InvictaCapital is to quit the UK film business, says managing director Niall Bamford.TheLondon-based company, one of the powerhouses behind the sale andleaseback-driven production boom in the UK in recent years, is estimated tohave raised over $2.2bn (£1.25bn) for the film industry in the last five years.Recentprojects the company has backed ...
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Da Vinci Code backer pulls out of film business
InvictaCapital is to quit the UK film business, says managing director Niall Bamford.TheLondon-based company, one of the powerhouses behind the sale andleaseback-driven production boom in the UK in recent years, is estimated tohave raised over $2.2bn (£1.25bn) for the film industry in the last five years.Recentprojects the company has backed ...
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News
Chadha to shoot JR in Dallas remake
Gurinder Chadha has confirmed that she is to direct Twentieth Century Fox's screen adaptation of TV series Dallas(which ran from 1978-1991.)Thefilm, scripted by Robert Harling (Steel Magnolias), will star JohnTravolta as Texas oil magnate JR Ewing and Jennifer Lopez as hishard-drinking wife, Sue Ellen. Luke Wilson and Shirley Maclaine are ...
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UK distributor sets eyes on Lights In The Dusk
In the run-up to Cannes, UK distributorArtificial Eye has taken UK rights to Aki Kaurismaki's Lights In The Dusk (Laitakaupungin Valot).The film,strongly tipped for a Cannes competition berth, is the third part ofKaurismaki's trilogy that started with Drifting Clouds(1996) and continued with The Man Without A Past (2002.) Thetheme of ...
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News
New UK Film Council measures embraced by producers
British producershave given an enthusiastic response to two new measures that the UK FilmCouncil (UKFC) is putting into place with effect from April 15.The first is totry to ensure that producers using funding from UKFC do not defer "theirindividual fees and/or production company overheads." Stating that the UKFCwould do all ...
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Stephen Fry teams with Dev Benegal for Ramanujan
British actor, filmmakerand novelist Stephen Fry is to join forces with leading Indian auteur Dev Benegal in making Ramanujan, a biopic about the "genius" Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. The film isgearing up just as the UK-India co-production treaty is on the verge of beingsigned.The idea is that Fry willdirect the ...
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UK gets more detail on new film tax system
As the UK Government'slong-awaited Finance Bill was finally published on Friday, accountants andlawyers went into over-drive to analyse what implications the Bill holds forthe UK film industry. With 26 film-related pagesand 62 pages of explanatory memo in the 489-page Bill, this was not an easydocument to digest. Even some experts ...
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Reviews
Alien Autopsy
Dir: Jonny Campbell UK.2006. 95minsFitfully entertaining, but undermined by its owninanity, Alien Autopsy is muddled anduneven fare which shows yet again how difficult it is for the best Britishcomic talent to make the transition to the big screen. Its stars Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, hugely popular TVpersonalities in the ...
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News
Pernille Fischer Christensen's A Soap sold to the US
Pernille Fischer Christensen's Silver Bear winning debutfeature A Soap has been acquired byStrand Releasing for US and by Theodora Films for Italian rights. The US deal was struck between Jon Gerransof Strand Releasing and Natja Rosnerof Trust Film Sales."We're thrilled to be working with Nimbus Filmand Trust Film Sales again, ...
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Reviews
Wilderness
Dir: Michael J Bassett. UK 2006. 91mins"Get them out of here. Get them to the island andteach them a bloody lesson!" the governor at a young offenders institutionroars at the inmates early on in Wilderness,Michael Bassett's lurid but enjoyably cheesy horror picture.This is not subtlefilm-making. Dario Poloni's screenplay is influencedby ...
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News
Revolver acquires UK rights to Tideland
Aggressive new London-based distributor RevolverEntertainment has taken UK rights to Terry Gilliam's Tideland. Revolver will be releasing the film (represented by Hanway) in British cinemas later this summer.A US deal has also now been struck on Tideland with what a Hanwayspokesperson calls "a well-established independent." Full details will beannounced shortly.Tideland ...
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Michael Winterbottom options controversial memoirs
Fresh from the controversy ofhis Berlinale Silver Bear winner The Road To Guantanamo,prolific British director Michael Winterbottom is setto tackle an equally contentious project. Winterbottomrevealed this week that his company Revolution has optioned Murder In Samarkand, the memoirs of Craig Murray, the former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan. Comedian Steve Coogan ...
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Nordisk racks up sales for action-adventure feature
Danish based sales outfit Nordisk has been racking up sales at Berlin's European Film Market. As the market in the Martin Gropius-Bau closes its doors, the company has confirmeddeals on action-adventure The LostTreasure of the Knights Templar to Medallion Media for Japan,A-Film for the Benelux,Ukrainian DVD Company for CIS, D-production ...
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Latido wraps up sales on its Berlin slate
As the European Film Market(EFM) enters its final furlong, Massimo Saidel'sMadrid-based Latido has been wrapping up sales on anumber of titles on its Berlin slate. Goya winner The Method has gone to France (CTV), and Chile (Bazooka) with Mikado poised to take Italian rights.De Profundis, Latido's big-budget adultanimated feature, has ...
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Iran exporters blossom at the European Film Market
New Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may haveunsettled western governments with his fervid anti-western rhetoric but thathasn't affected the continuing international push of Iranian cinema. There were six Iraniantitles in official selection in Berlin this year, and for the very first time,the Government has paid for private Iranian sales outfits to ...