Large MPU – Page 1240
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Reviews
Filthy Earth
Dir: Andrew Kotting. UK. 2001. 111minsAndrew Kotting's follow up to his quirky, much admired road movie documentary Gallivant offers an extreme vision of rural hardship. Inspired by Emile Zola's La Terre (Earth), it saturates the screen with mud and muck, blood and viscera to create an unrelenting portrait of squalor, ...
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News
Pearl Harbor and Shrek hit $400m worldwide
Buena Vista International (BVI) had major cause to celebrate this week as its World War II epic Pearl Harbor crossed $200m in international box office gross, taking it to over $400m worldwide. Harbor, which was BVI's big hope in the summer blockbuster season, became the second film, which debuted in ...
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News
US box office bonanza: new rules, new targets
Total box office receipts in North America for the year 2001 passed $5bn this week - setting a record pace not only for the summer season - which closes in a fortnight on Labor Day weekend - but for the year. This time last year, box office was at $4.71bn ...
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News
Samaha takes advantage of Oz investor frustration
Elie Samaha's Franchise Pictures has secured a new source of film financing through the German Commerzbank-backed Academy Film Fund (AFF), which has tapped Australian entertainment financiers frustrated by the tax changes in their own market. The AFF aims to raise up to Euros 200m ($176m) from private German individuals by ...
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News
Goldbacher develops Utopia and Faith
Sandra Goldbacher, the UK writer-director who impressed buyers at Cannes with her second feature Me Without You, has started work on two contemporary scripts, Faith and Utopia.Faith is a London-set story about magic and witchcraft, while Utopia is set in a commune in an arctic-like region. Goldbacher, who debuted with ...
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News
San Sebastian unveils 14 'Pearls' for sidebar
Spain's San Sebastian International Film Festival (Sept 20-29) unveiled the fourteen titles which will comprise the "Pearls from Other Festivals" section of its Open Zone (Zabaltegi) line-up.Following last year's model, "Pearls" shows a heavy emphasis on films which screened at Cannes. There are also several titles from Berlin and at ...
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News
Screen Comment:
To hear it now from Francis Ford Coppola, the same Hollywood studio system that released his magnificent acid trip of a movie, Apocalypse Now, would never today dare indulge such an extravagantly ambitious and vainglorious undertaking by a director. Even by one who had previously made a truck-load of money ...
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News
Brazilian soccer star signs for Shooting Star
Soccer superstar Ronaldo has signed up to be the star subject in feature-length football documentary Shooting Star.Along with being the main interviewee, the Brazilian striker will represent the fatherhood section as the film explores the seven stages of life - including birth, boyhood, adolescence, manhood, mid-life crisis and old age ...
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News
Sackman & Co form Lions Gate Redux with ThinkFilm
Jeff Sackman, former president of Lions Gate Films, is returning to the North American distribution market with a new outfit accompanied by some familiar names, including former Lions Gate Releasing co-president Mark Urman and Andy Myers, a veteran of Canada's distribution scene.The new company, ThinkFilm, will be headed by Sackman ...
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News
Hollywood logs on with on-line studio coalition
In an unusual show of cooperation, five Hollywood studios - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, ParamountPictures, Sony Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Bros - are banding together to create an on-demand movie service that will offer theatrical films via digital delivery for broadband Internet users in the US. The service will primarily be an ...
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News
Lot 47 hires distribution veteran Thompson
Distribution veteran Bill Thompson has joined New York-based distributor Lot 47 Films in the newly created position of vice president, general sales manager.Thompson began his career as a salesman in 20th Century Fox's Washington DC branch. Hemoved to New York in 1978 to become director of sales for Cinema 5 ...
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News
German audiences increase as cinemas decline
While German cinema admissions have climbed 8% to 80.3 million and box office takings increased 9.6% to $406.8m for the first half of 2001, there are deeply unsettling developments elsewhere in the market, according to the German Federal Film Board (FFA).Germany's bullish exhibition sector, once a model of robust optimism, ...
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News
Canada's Equinox reveals $59.1m slate
Montreal-based Equinox Entertainment's new production and development slate will have a total budget of $59.1m (C$80m), including approximately $23.3m (C$36m) for a series of Italian/Canadian 'movies of the week' and feature film co-productions.Equinox, the filmed entertainment division of La Compagnie France Film Inc., which previously focused on distribution, will team ...
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News
Studios warm to Mexican flavour
The statistics speak for themselves. Mexico boasts the biggest number of screens in Latin America; with close to 3,000, nearly double that of Brazil, a country twice its size. Mexico is a growing market too: theatrical revenues rose by 20.2% in 2000, and now 20th Century Fox ranks Mexico ...
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News
Carlstrom strikes first look deal with SF
Nordic major Svensk Filmindustri (SF) has signed a first -look deal with Swedish producer Bjorn Carlstrom, who previously spent 10 years working for competitor Sonet Film."We have been in talks for some time," SF head of production, Kerstin Bonnier, told Screendaily, "because we believe Bjorn Carlstrom will compliment our other ...
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News
Danish comedy laughing all the way to the bank
Danish producer Regner Grasten has proved once again, with the release of Anja & Viktor through BVI, that he runs the most successful Danish production company when it comes to local box office performance. Graesten's Regner Graesten Filmproduction (RGF), established in 1984, produced the musical romantic comedy, a sequel to ...
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Reviews
Mostly Martha
Dir: Sandra Nettelbeck. Germany. 2001. 107 mins.German 'food' melodrama Mostly Martha may be utterly predictable but it was one of the few world premieres at the Locarno Film Festival which showed strong potential to break out of the festival circuit and European arthouse markets. Set mainly in the kitchen of ...
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News
Portugese producer Branco courts controversy
Paolo Branco, the prolific Paris-based Portuguese producer, is attracting attention for all the wrong reasons these days. This week it emerged that he is being sued by AGRIF, a citizens' group in favour of French identity and Christian values. Branco goes to the high court on Tuesday (August 21) to ...
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News
Pie 2 stays on top; Rat Race opens with $11.8m
Universal's American Pie 2 became the first film since June to stay at number one at the North American box office for a second weekend, taking an estimated $21.4m over the three day Friday to Sunday period for a ten-day total of $87.6m.The R-rated teen sequel, however, fell 53% from ...
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News
Warner Spain executive Ed Weinberg dies at 53
Veteran distribution executive Ed Weinberg died last week in Spain after suffering a brain stroke. The respected Weinberg who was deputy general manager of Warner Bros' joint venture with Sogefilms in Spain was 53 years old.He died on Aug 4 and is survived by his wife Dianna and sons Scott ...