All articles by Geoffrey Macnab – Page 195
-
News
Woody Allen's Anything Else finally finds UK home
Woody Allen's Anything Else has at last found a home with a UK theatrical distributor, it was announced yesterday.The comedy is to be released on 40 prints in late July by Optimum Releasing, who acquired the film from Capitol Films in a joint acquisition deal with MGM Home Entertainment. Anything ...
-
News
City Screen looks to expand UK arthouse circuit
Arts Alliance Media (AAM), the venture capital firm which owns a majority stake in City Screen, is looking to expand the art house cinema chain yet further.The company has already earmarked another unnamed London cinema outside the West End to add to the City Screen circuit, which currently stands at ...
-
News
Media Programme, Eurimages merger 'inevitable'
Jacques Toubon,head of the Eurimages production aid scheme, thisweek told Screendaily.com that mergerwith the Media programme may become "inevitable".The former French culture minister said that such a move could be a consequence ofthe imminent enlargement of the European Union (EU)."Soon the MEDIAProgramme and Eurimages' membership will overlap, with the consequence ...
-
News
British Film Institute unveils plans to 'open up'
The British Film Institute (bfi) is to receive one of thebiggest shake-ups in its 70-year-history.Following a nine month internal review, chairman AnthonyMinghella and Director Amanda Nevill have announced a series of initiatives to"open up" a cultural organisation which, though widely respectedworldwide, has developed a reputation for being aloof and too ...
-
News
Capitol racks up Big sales on high profile slate
Capitol Films is racking up sales on the high profile, threepicture slate - comprising Mark Mylod's The Big White, Robert Towne's Ask The Dust and Robert Altman's Paint - that it is co-financing with German media fund VIP.The Big White, aFargo-style comedy drama starring Robin Williams, Holly Hunter, James Woods ...
-
News
ContentFilm hits the acquisitions trail
ContentFilm is on theacquisitions trail. The London and New York based company, which formallycompleted its takeover of Winchester Entertainment on Friday (March 26), hasconfirmed it is now looking to buy distribution companies and libraries."It's part of the general strategy of trying tobuild an integrated film company...it's definitely the intention to ...
-
News
Verve takes UK rights to Winterbottom's Code 46
Fledgling UK distributor Verve Pictures has acquired Michael Winterbottom's Code 46 and is planning a 60 print release for the film in September.Code 46 is the biggest title which Verve has yet handled. The sci-fi drama, starring Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton, received its world premiere at last year's Venice ...
-
News
New UK distributor builds release slate
Enjoy Cinema Ltd., the new UK theatrical distribution outfit set up earlier this year by Simon Gosling (ex-HanWay), has announced details of its first acquisitions.To mark the 10th anniversary of the end of apartheid, Enjoy is to release Jason Xenopoulos' Promised Land in the early summer. Based on the novel ...
-
News
Lords lash out at tax loophole closure
Thecontroversy over the government's decision to close down film taxloopholes last month erupted in the House of Lords this week.LabourGovernment spokesman Lord Davies came under fire yesterday as the House OfLords debated the film tax crisis. An array of Tory peers queued up to attacklast month's abrupt decision by the ...
-
News
Winchester finally becomes Content
The name Winchester Entertainment PLC is set to disappear, it was confirmed yesterday as further details of the merger between Winchester and Ed Pessman and John Schmidt's ContentFilm inc. were announced.Subject to shareholder approval at an extraordinary general meeting on 26 March, the new enlarged entity is to be called ...
-
News
New indie collectives preach cost efficiencies
Is small beautiful' Certainly not was the verdict of the panellists on "Collective Power: Buying and Selling Alliances," speaking this month at Screen International's Modernising European Cinema Summit at the Berlin Film Festival - all of whom are involved in the new wave of indie-combos set up across Europe in ...
-
News
Learning to love the critics
Is there a crisis in European film criticism' That was one key question being asked during Friday's European Film Academy event, "How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Critics."Panellist Ken Loach (in Berlin with competition entry Ae Fond Kiss) blamed the decline in critical standards on "market forces ...
-
News
Delpy lines up dark directorial debuts
In Berlin with competition title Before Sunset, actress Julie Delpy has revealed further details of her two new directorial projects, both of which are slated to feature roles for her Before Sunset co-star, Ethan Hawke.The $4m Tell Me is a modern fairy tale about a woman trapped with a man ...
-
News
Smith rides Intandem with August
Ex-Winchester boss Gary Smith yesterday announced that he was back in the film business with a new sales and production outfit, Intandem Films.The company is handling international rights on Bille August's thriller Return To Sender, the long-gestating project from writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (The World Is Not Enough) ...
-
News
Hanway tipped to handle Foresight slate
HanWay (owned by Jeremy Thomas) is emerging as the prime candidate to handle international sales on many of the films made through Foresight Film, the new Section 48 production fund launched by Prescience Film Finance that aims to raise £10m for a £40m film slate in the 2004/2005 tax ...
-
News
British industry rocked by $375m equity cull
The British filmindustry has been left in a state of shock following the surprise announcementthis week that tax authority the Inland Revenue is pulling down the"guillotine" on the UK's tax equity funds.Veteran producerJeremy Thomas warned that the move would have "major implications"for employment in the UK industry.Pointing out thatup to ...
-
News
Sisters sales boost Highpoint's Dutch ties
London-based outfit High Point Films, in Berlin for the first time, has concluded another sale on its Oscar-nominated Dutch title, Twin Sisters. The film (which is being released in the US by Miramax) has now gone to Sweden (Atlantic Film) following earlier deals with Germany (Kinowelt) and Japan. The major ...
-
News
UK's Soda scores with German Miracle
Effervescent new UK outfit Soda Pictures, set up in 2002 by Eve Gabereau and Edward Fletcher, confirmed yesterday that it has taken UK rights to The Miracle Of Berne from Bavaria Film.Soda plans to release the football-themed drama, set at the time of West Germany's 1954 World Cup win, in ...
-
News
Content fields Beautiful offers
Following the Berlinale competition screening of Hans Petter Molland's Beautiful Country earlier in the week, Content International's Jamie Carmichael has received firm offers from the three major territories left unsold, Japan, Germany and Italy, and is expected to close deals in the next imminently.'It's a wonderfully intelligent and moving film ...
-
News
Greenaway goes to battle in search of human soul
Speaking in Berlin following the screening of Tulse Luper's Suitcases, Part II, maverick British director Peter Greenaway revealed details of his next major project - a Russian language epic set in the aftermath of the 30 Years War.Augsbergenfeld, as the project is called, is a historical, baroque film about an ...