Latest – Page 504
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Features
International - Asterix the champion
France's Asterix At The Olympic Games won first place in the international arena by a long run this weekend as the family film enjoyed a mammoth $38.3m take and accounted for 20.8% of the top 40 revenue.The latest instalment of the comic book adaptation played across 3,002 screens in 19 ...
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Features
Local exposure
Czech cinemas enjoyed their highest-grossing year ever in 2007, with box office receipts reaching a total of $66.9m (ckr1.2bn). This represents a 20% increase on 2006, although ticket prices also increased 3% in 2007. Admissions were 12.8 million, up 11% from 2006.Much of the success has been down to strong ...
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FeaturesViggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises
A first-time Oscar nominee for best actor, Viggo Mortensen tells Mike Goodridge how he put himself in David Cronenberg’s hands to play a Russian hoodlum in Eastern Promises.
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Features
Smart money
Benjamin Waisbren does not mince words when he weighs up the film business from a financier's point of view (and using financiers' parlance). "Film's a wonderful, iconic art form; it's not a great asset class," says the New York-based president and CEO of new film-finance operation Continental Entertainment Group (CEG). ...
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Features
United States-Italy - Spike goes to war
Spike Lee's The Miracle At St Anna is alternatively being billed as the director's Second World War project and as his Italian project. Both are true - it is his first war film and the first project he has shot almost entirely outside the US."It's a miracle this film got ...
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Features
France-Spain - Coach's driving ambition
As it heads to the European Film Market in Berlin, Franco-Spanish sales company Coach 14 is also celebrating its first birthday.Founded by former Funny Balloons partner Pape Boye and Jaume Domenech, the company has offices in Paris and Barcelona, with backing from Spanish production outfit Iris Star, which was founded ...
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Features
United Kingdom - Mountain high
It has been an exciting year for Summit Entertainment. The company - with ex-Paramount executive Rob Friedman - tapped into a $1bn financing fund via Merrill Lynch to move into US distribution and in-house producing, making it a fully vertically integrated studio with development, financing, domestic distribution, production, and foreign ...
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Features
Awards Countdown - The Oscars - By the numbers: oscar nominations
2008 nominees with the most previous nods20 nominations Kevin O'Connell, sound mixing on TransformersO'Connell was nominated previously for Terms Of Endearment (1983), Dune (1984), Silverado (1985), Top Gun (1986), Black Rain (1989), Days Of Thunder (1990), A Few Good Men (1992), Crimson Tide (1995), Twister (1996), The Rock (1996), Con ...
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Features
International - The very best figures
Russian comedy The Very Best Film (Samiy Luchshiy Film) claimed the international crown this weekend with a mammoth $17.8m opening weekend in two territories, accounting for 9% of the international top 40 revenue.The parody, distributed through Caroprokat, enjoyed a $16.5m opening in Russia, the biggest ever in the country. It ...
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Features
The Critical view - Acts to grind
When writing a film review, I have a checklist in the back of my head. Did I mention the editing’ What kind of look are the director and DoP going for - handheld cine-realism, washed-out widescreen nostalgia, garish techno-futurism’ How about the sound design, the soundtrack, the miking of dialogue: ...
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Features
In focus - Video-on-demand - Big films on a moving screen
It is called the halo effect. Last year when Apple unveiled its iPhone, the technology and business press fell to its knees in supplication. If Apple does it, it has to be good. Last week, the company announced a deal with all the Hollywood studios that will, from February, see ...
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Features
In focus - Digital rights in Europe - 'It's an absolute minefield'
The US has been the leader in digital technologies - from downloads to digital cinema - because it has a large homogenous market where cultural, technical and legal differences are minimal.Contrast that to Europe, which is a complex jumble of states, each with their own laws and traditions. Apple will ...
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Features
United States - Animal attraction
It's day six on the set of Green Porno and star Isabella Rossellini is having sex with a snail. Which is OK, because she is a snail too. After all, this whole bizarre set-up was her idea.Commissioned by Christopher Barry, vice-president, digital media and business strategy for US cable network ...
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Features
United Kingdom - Moxie Mania
Since she founded Newcastle-based production company Ipso Facto Films 15 years ago, Christine Alderson has had a successful track record producing 11 independent features and more than 50 shorts and documentaries, including recent European Film Award nominee Irina Palm and Sue Heel's School For Seduction. Now, Alderson is creating a ...
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Features
United Kingdom - Planet Holywood
It is no coincidence producer Jo Gilbert is sitting in a new, swish Belfast hotel as she speaks to Screen - the setting is just one part of the radical redevelopment of the city centre."People don't know what to think about Belfast but it's incredibly stylish since the Good Friday ...
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Awards Countdown - BAFTA nominations - BAFTAs strike a serious tone
The blizzard of nominations for Atonement, There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men suggests a year in which the Orange British Academy Film Awards were devoid of surprises.Atonement for one always seemed destined for BAFTA glory. It has the literary pedigree that BAFTA voters like in a ...
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Features
Awards Countdown - People - Awards people
JAVIER BARDEMThe actor tells Mike Goodridge about the challenges of playing a man with a black heart in No Country For Old MenAs Anton Chigurh, a lethal assassin with no conscience or humour who kills his way through the south-east US in the Coen brothers' No Country For Old Men, ...
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Features
Production - Germany - Deutsche courage
The German film industry may never have looked so good. Last year, Germany hosted a record number of international and US productions and boasted a stunning array of local talent, including Oscar-winner Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives Of Others), Fatih Akin (The Edge Of Heaven) and Marc Rothemund (Sophie ...
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Production - Hungary - Feast or Famine'
Before the new facilities at Budapest's Korda Studios opened for business in 2007, Hungary was attracting more international footloose productions than the country's crews could handle. Thanks largely to its lauded 20% tax rebate on productions shooting in the country, the annual spend by film productions in Hungary has multiplied ...
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Features
All quiet on the Eastern front
With the exception of Davis Films' comic-book adaptation Solomon Kane, which began filming on location in Prague in early January, the streets and sound stages of Eastern Europe are mostly silent right now. The US writers' strike is damaging the production business at all levels, from major facilities such as ...