Large MPU – Page 1913
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News
Cannes market- Deals or no deals
It is difficult to judge the success of the business done at the Cannes marketplace outside the context of the weight of hope, even expectation, that preceded it.After relatively flat markets at Toronto, AFM and Berlin, there was some hope Cannes would provide a necessary kick for business.Such hope was ...
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Interview:Oliver Stone
'America has defined itself in the early 21st century as a cowboy state. George W Bush has hyperbolically expressed all the cowboy mentality the world holds of America.'So says Oliver Stone from Louisiana, three days before he starts shooting W, his serio-comic look at the 43rd president of the USA ...
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Victory Media to finance EM.TV internet venture
Private German film fund Victory Media plans to co-finance EM.TV & Merchandising's proposed internet platform Junior Web through its 16th MultiMediaFonds.The fund, which plans to raise the necessary capital from private individual investors by mid-December, will channel about $29m (DM66m) into the web-site and about $25m (DM57) into co-producing nine ...
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Interview: Walter Salles
Brazilians Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas have an agreement to co-direct films every few years which take a close look at life in Brazil.They have two films to their joint credit - Foreign Land in 1996 and Midnight in 1998 (as well as the Loin Du 16eme short from the ...
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Interview:Matteo Garrone, director of Gomorrah
Matteo Garrone's coruscating portrait of life in two of Naples' Mafia-controlled suburbs was the talk of this year's Cannes, stirring critics into talk of a return to Italian cinema's neo-realism heyday.The director shot the film in Camorra territory such as Scampia, a neighbourhood where someone dies every three days at ...
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Features
International - Cannes hits home
While Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull clearly took the international crown this weekend, representing a whopping 65% of the top 40 revenue, a couple of Cannes competition films fared well in their home territories, each passing the $1m mark.Cannes Grand Jury Prize winner Gomorrah was the ...
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Features
The Critical View - Power corrupts
Like many critics, I tend to mean something good when I describe a film as 'powerful'. But like many people, if you asked me if power was always a good thing, I'd answer that it all depends on how it's used.This semantic contradiction was brought home to me at the ...
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Mike Leigh joins speakers at the International Screenwriters Festival
Mike Leigh joins some of the best-known names in the UK film industry for this year's International Screenwriters' Festival in Cheltenham.The event (July 1-3) has established itself in the last three years as one of the key events in the industry calendar, bringing together business and screenwriters.Leigh is enjoying another ...
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Europe goes Sex mad, but Indy still on top overseas
Knocked off its domestic perch, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull stayed on top overseas despite hot weather across Germany and central Europe as a muscular $71.5m haul from 8,439 sites in 60 territories boosted the score to $266m.This weekend's domestic champion Sex And The City came ...
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Sex defies predictions with $56m US opening
New Line's long awaited TV adaptation Sex And The City defied low-ball predictions and elbowed Indiana Jones off the top perch to launch at number one through Warner Bros on an estimated $55.7m.If the nay-sayers had been concerned about the breadth of the demographic that would turn out to support ...
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News
Kang to head KOFIC
South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism has appointed Kang Han-sup as the new chairman of the Korean Film Council (KOFIC). A well-known critic, Kang has been a professor of film at Seoul Institute of Arts since 1994. His experience also includes serving on the Media Ratings Board in ...
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News
The Works plans September UK release for Jar City
The Works UK Distribution is taking on the UK release of Baltasar Kormakur's Oscar submission and local box-office hit Jar City.The thriller is based on award-winning Icelandic novel Tainted Blood (Myrin). It stars Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson as a police inspector who has to investigate a murder that might be tied ...
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Bavaria takes on new Gronenborn, Haussmann films
Bavaria Film International has picked up worldwide distribution rights to new films by Esther Gronenborn and Leander Haussmann.Gronenborn's Kaifeck Murder, which is headlined by Benno Fuermann and Cannes competition jury member Alexandra Maria Lara, is a fictional story based on a real murder case from the small Bavaria village of ...
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News
ONdigital postpones float; doubles subscribers
UK digital terrestrial broadcaster ONdigital has reportedly postponed its planned flotation until next spring, due to unfavourable market conditions and parent company Granada Media's recent share slide.Granada and Carlton Communications, the two ITV companies that each own 50% of ONdigital, had been expected to sell about 20% of the pay-TV ...
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News
Astro Boy creator Tezuka's MW gets live action treatment
Legendary manga artist and animator Osamu Tezuka's MW is being adapted into a live-action film starring Hiroshi Tamaki.Based on a manga serialised in Big Comic between 1976 and 1978, MW stars Tamaki as a high level banker leading a double life as a calculating serial killer. He takes revenge on ...
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News
Finnish industry starts sound awards to honour Jyrala
Film director Mika Kaurismäki, singer/actor Samuli Edelmann, producer Pete Eklund, sound designer Joonas Jyrälä and Kari Jyrälä are working together to start a new foundation to honour late Finnish sound designer Paul 'Pappa' Jyrala, who died in 2007.The new association plans to launch the Pappa Awards for New Talents. Sony ...
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Australia's Prodigy, UK's TFD rejoin for thriller Road Train
Producers Michael Robertson of Australia's ProdigyMovies and Paul Cowan and Chris Wheeldon of the UK's TFD will again work together on Road Train.The supernatural thriller will mark the debut of director Dean Francis, working from a script by Clive Hopkins.Prodigy and TFD also worked together on crocodile horror hit Black ...
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European Commission set to extend state aid rules until 2012
The European Commission is set to extend the current rules for state aid for film support schemes until 2012.The move is designed to allow more breathing space while it considers the long-term future of the rules. The announcement came jointly from European Commissioners Viviane Reding and Neelie Kroes, who are ...
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Revolver joins UK's Film Distributors' Association
The UK's Film Distributors' Association (FDA) has added Revolver Entertainment as its newest member.The FDA now has 22 member companies.Revolver, which was founded in 1997, has released films including Kidulthood, Tell No One, andMy Brother Is An Only Child. Releases coming soon include Female Agents and The Wackness.Revolver chief executive ...
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Locarno's Frederic Maire will move to head Swiss Film Archive
The Locarno Film Festival will now have to start looking for a new artistic director after the news that the present incumbent Frederic Maire is to become the successor to Herve Dumont as head of the Swiss Film Archive from November 1, 2009.According to an agreement reached with the festival ...