Large MPU – Page 1511
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News
French backers grow wary of culture, bank on commerce
Caution is the new buzzword in French film financing circles, with challenging fare such as the forthcoming Paris Je T'aime struggling to attract investors who increasingly favour big budget bankable hits.A challenging series of 20 five minute short stories - each one set in one of Paris' 20 districts ...
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Italy's Mikado Film picks up Fuehrer Ex
Italian distributor Mikado Film has picked up Winfried Bonengel's controversial Neo-Nazi drama Fuehrer Ex which screened in Official Competition in Venice last week and received its North American premiere at the Toronto Film Festival yesterday.In addition, the film's sales agent - Bavaria Film International - will handle international distribution for ...
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News
India's Madhu takes international rights on Mr And Mrs Iyer
Mumbai-based sales company Madhu Entertainment & Media, which is fast becoming a regular at film markets, has picked up international rights to Mr And Mrs Iyer (aka Love In The Time Of Violence), an English-language film by Aparna Sen.The film had its premiere in Locarno, where it won the NETPAC ...
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News
Valli to direct Tibet Project for German Friends
French director Eric Valli, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his feature Himalaya in 2000, has been signed up by Munich-based production house Friends Production to direct the ethnological road movie The Tibet Project (working title).Based on a screenplay by Valli, the Canadian-based, Oscar-nominated Chinese screenwriter and ...
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News
Egoyan to be honoured by Cinema Tout Ecran festival
Canadian director Atom Egoyan will be honoured with a retrospective at the 8th Cinema Tout Ecran International Film and Television Festival in Geneva (October 21-27) which showcases feature films produced by or for television.Meanwhile, among the films already confirmed for this year's International Competition are Willem van de S. Bakhuyzen's ...
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News
Studio Babelsberg chief Bacher exits suddenly
Less than a week before Babelsberg Studios' 90th anniversary on September 16, the German film industry has been rocked by the news of CEO Gabriela Bacher's sudden exit.Studio Babelsberg Motion Pictures (SBMP) was created last autumn, with Bacher in control of overseeing all media activities of parent Vivendi Deutschland. Bacher ...
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News
Paramount Classics buys House Of Fools
Paramount Classics has bought North American and other international rights to Andrei Konchalovski's House Of Fools (Dom Durakov), which won the second prize at Venice last week.In a deal mirroring its pick-up last week of another Venice favourite, Patrice Leconte's The Man On The Train (L'Homme Du Train), Paramount classics ...
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News
UK's Granada Film axed
Granada Film, the UK operation behind Ghost World, Bloody Sunday, The Gathering and Mira Nair's upcoming Vanity Fair adaptation, is being axed.The move means that none of the major ITV commercial broadcasters in the UK have a permanent film operation, despite announcements that the service would spend $155m (£100m) on ...
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News
Paramount Classics buys House Of Fools
Paramount Classics has bought North American and other international rights to Andrei Konchalovski's House Of Fools (Dom Durakov), which won the second prize at Venice last week.In a deal mirroring its pick-up last week of another Venice favourite, Patrice Leconte's The Man On The Train (L'Homme Du Train), Paramount classics ...
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Reviews
The Four Feathers
Director: Shekhar Kapur. US-UK. 2002 125minsThe question of whether the world really needs another version of The Four Feathers is convincingly answered by Shekhar Kapur's stirring approach to the venerable tale of Empire and honour. Boasting a strong cast of rising young stars and handsomely captured locations, the classic adventure ...
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News
Toronto: A Festival Of Quiet Americans
Last year at Toronto, the events of September 11 pushed everything else into numbed insignificance. This year, the Festival offered a comforting sense of business as usual - Miramax and Lion's Gate cherrypicked the top titles, celebrity-spotting recaptured the front pages and the old, familiar debate resumed over whether the ...
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News
Japan bucks Evil box-office trend
After a mediocre performance in North America and most international territories, Resident Evil is taking Japan by storm with a first week gross of $10m.Released on an initial 190 screens nationwide, distributor Amuse Pictures expects the action-horror title, based on the popular video game series, to end up grossing at ...
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News
Indian industrial giant Tata Group moves into film production
Indian industrial giant Tata Group has entered the Bollywood film production sector, signing up Indian superstar Amitabh Bachchan to star in its first film, Aitbaar.Tata is the latest in line of new entrants into the Indian film industry: in July 20th Century Fox announced plans to produce its first Bollywood ...
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News
Alta Films takes Magdalene Sisters for Spain
Madrid-based distributor Alta Films has picked up rights in Spain to Venice Golden Lion winner The Magdalene Sisters.Alta also said it had closed Spanish rights to 11.09.01, the compilation of short films from 11 international directors reflecting on the terrorist attacks of last year. The effort screened Wednesday in Toronto ...
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News
Toronto Comment - The Battle For Screens
It is one the aggravating paradoxes of the cinema business that even as internationally flavoured film festivals keep growing in popularity in every corner of this globe, the films they show are finding it ever harder to secure a distribution toehold in even the most adventurous of commercial theatres. The ...
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Toronto Comment - Oscar's Foreign-Language Race
While we revel in the scope of international movies selected to screen at the Festival, a different kind of selection process is going on in over 50 countries around the world. The question: which film will represent that country in the race for the best foreign language film Academy Award'While ...
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Toronto Comment - Seoul Survivors
Perhaps it will come as no great shock to learn that of all the commercial products that the US so successfully exports around the globe, only its film industry enjoys the dominant market share in virtually every country that has opened its doors to outside trade. What may be more ...
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Toronto Comment - Canada's Five Per Cent Solution
Unless you're in "the industry," you probably don't read film trade magazines. Sure, you know about the weekly "Box Office Top 10" that runs in your newspaper's entertainment column, and that it currently lists such films as Signs and My Big Fat Greek Wedding.But you probably don't know the ...
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Toronto Comment - The British Are Screening!
It is just 20 years since screenwriter Colin Welland held an Oscar aloft and famously declared: "The British are coming!" Chariots of Fire was the Oscar Cinderella story that year, Gandhi was waiting in the wings and filmmakers as diverse as Bill Forsyth and Peter Greenaway were about to leave ...
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Toronto Comment - Collective Experience Is Everything
There's nothing like watching a film in a theatre with an audience. It's an experience that stubbornly outstrips all competition - whether it be theme parks, DVD or VHS, computers or even TV. After Sept 11 last year, the theatrical box office boomed and continues to grow throughout the world. ...