Large MPU – Page 3289
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News
UK Film Councilgives $1m backing to Kidulthood follow-up
Noel Clarke, director of cult UK film Kidulthood, is to direct his first feature Adulthood, with $1m (£520,000) backing from the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund. Adulthood, written, directed and starring Clarke follows up on the first film's story.Adulthood is produced by George Isaac and Damian Jones for Cipher ...
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News
UK Film Council gives $1m backing to Kidulthood follow-up
Noel Clarke is to direct his first feature Adulthood, a follow-up to cult UK film Kidulthood which he wrote and starred in.The film received $1m (£520,000) backing from the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund. Adulthood, written, directed and starring Clarke follows up on the story of the first film ...
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Reviews
Death Defying Acts
Dir: Gillian Armstrong UK/Australia. 2007. 97 mins.The period romance is back in style if the UK success of Atonement is anything to go by, but Death Defying Acts is so corny and old-fashioned that only diehard romantics are likely to consider it magical. The relationship between famed escapologist Harry Houdini ...
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News
Dardenne brothers ready to shoot new feature
Shooting is to begin on Oct 1 on Le Silence De Lorna, the latest feature from Palme D'Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.The new film stars Arta Dobroshi as a young woman from Albania who wants to emigrate to France even if that would mean that she has to marry ...
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News
Southern Star expands TV production slate
Australia's Southern Star is stepping up television production with five new projects, worth a combined $17m (A$30m), including The Rubicon, a co-production with the UK's Warner Sisters.The slate, according to Southern Star Entertainment CEO Errol Sullivan, represents 18 months of intensive work finding new financing pathways that avoid the dangers ...
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News
Ben X selected as Belgian Oscar candidate
Nic Balthazar's debut feature Ben X has been chosen as this year's Belgian Oscar candidate. The decision was made on Friday and was agreed on unanimously by both Flemish and French-speaking communities. Since its world premiere last month in Montreal, where it won the audience prize and shared the ...
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News
Meadows and Frazer collaborate again on Somers Town
Director Shane Meadows and writer Paul Frazer are working together again on Tomboy Films' Somers Town, which began shooting this week. The short film follows the lives of two boys living in the Somers Town area of London. Filming started last week for three weeks on location in the UK ...
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News
Screen opinion - liberal profits
Whenever commentators have run out of inspiration during the long march of festival screenings, there's always that lazy column filler about how politics is taking over the cinema. We've heard it about Cannes and Berlin in recent years, based on the success of overtly political polemical documentaries, notably from Michael ...
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News
A match made in Bollywood
A Chinese-language, partially studio-backed film, Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, may have just walked off with the top prize from Venice, but these days the US studios seem more intent on learning Hindi than Mandarin Chinese.Over the past few months, the studios have announced a string of local-language production deals in ...
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Features
In Focus - India - What the US Studios are producing
Sony PicturesOne of the first US studios to get involved in Hindi-language production, Sony recently completed Beloved (Saawariya), directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, and which it fully financed, and plans to release in November. In 2002, Sony was involved in the global distribution of Lagaan, initially through its Indian channel, ...
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Features
Canada - Blindness In sight
Fernando Meirelles sits in an office at a prison in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. "I was so afraid," he says. The director of the critically-beloved City Of God and the widely-respected The Constant Gardener is recalling the nausea of pre-production on his new film Blindness.Meirelles had sought to adapt Jose Saramago's ...
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Features
United states - Mumble-Mania
Joe Swanberg never wanted to change the world or rewrite the rules of cinema. He simply wanted to make movies, preferably on his own terms with a group of friends and collaborators.A Chicago-based independent film-maker, Swanberg has not only staked out a niche identity that has attracted a modicum of ...
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Features
United Kingdom - Shooting from the hip
Our success is down to the people we have," says Revolver Entertainment's MD and founder Justin Marciano, not in a boastful way but giving credit where credit is due. "We have one of the best unknown teams in the industry."Staying unknown, however, could be a challenge as Revolver celebrates its ...
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Features
Argentina - Returning to look at the light side
Anahi Berneri is at the vanguard of a new generation of female directors in Argentina that also includes Lucrecia Martel, Lucia Cedron and Ana Katz. Her debut feature, A Year Without Love (Un Ano Sim Amor) won the Teddy award at the 2005 Berlinale for its depiction of a writer ...
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Features
Spain - Investigating women's lives
It was a role in Ken Loach's 1995 Spanish Civil War film Land And Freedom that inspired Iciar Bollain to become a director. With a CV of local productions under her belt, Bollain impressed Loach at auditions for the film, so much so that he created a part for her."Ken ...
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News
Indian stars offer to plead for Rajkumar's release
Prominent Indian film stars - including Tamil superstar Rajnikanth - have offered to walk into the jungle to plead with bandit Veerappan for the release of Kannada matinee idol Rajkumar.Veerappan kidnapped Rajkumar and three of his relatives near the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border on July 30. Only one group of hostages ...
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News
The summer everyone had a hit
The 2007 blockbuster season exceeded the projected numbers in emphatic style. Hollywood top brass were celebrating the first $4bn North American summer before the season officially came to a close over the Labor Day weekend (August 31-September 3), and the international profile looks equally bullish. According to informal figures collated ...
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News
Box office summer '08 - preview
The books have barely closed on summer 2007 and already next summer's calendar is filling up fast with strong Hollywood product. While this year distributors benefited from a lack of major sporting events, 2008 presents hurdles such as the Summer Olympics, which start in Beijing on August 8, and the ...
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Features
King Apatow
Producer-writer-director Judd Apatow has created something of a domestic empire, with 2007 hits such as Knocked Up and Superbad showing formidable staying power in a sea of franchise films and remakes. They have so far taken over $240m at the US box office and $277m globally. Knocked Up has taken ...
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Features
2008 Summer Calendar
May 1 - Iron Man (Paramount Pictures) This Marvel Comics adaptation looks set to kick-start the summer with a bang. Robert Downey Jr stars as Tony Stark, a man who turns into a superhero after a near-death accident in Afghanistan. Gwyneth Paltrow and Terrence Howard also star.May 2 - Made ...