Latest – Page 510
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Features
Analysis - Shaping the future
Who controls the future of creative content is the big question posed at the 2008 Media Summit in London.The high-level conference, organised by Screen International, Broadcast and Q magazine, brings some of the biggest thinkers in the film, television and new media businesses to talk about the changing entertainment language.They ...
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Features
Editorial - It's a booty call
"It will never be harder than it is today to pirate a movie," a blogger told a film conference last year. It's one of those phrases that sticks in the mind. It was certainly intended as a warning but for him it was also a statement of the bleeding obvious.It's ...
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Features
Brazil - Amazon green
Lionel Chouchan has launched many film festivals in his native France, including the Deauville Festival of American Cinema, the Festival International du Film Fantastique d'Avoriaz (now based in Gerardmer) and the Festival du Film Policier de Cognac. But for the director of Paris-based communications agency Le Public Systeme none of ...
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Features
Canada - Community service
Contemplating the conclusion of another successful edition of the Vancouver International Film Festival (Viff), Alan Franey, the festival's director since 1988, is a happy man.Once again, paid admissions to the 300-plus films screened - among them She's A Boy I Knew, winner of the Vancity People's Choice Award for Most ...
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Features
United Kingdom - Shoot The Moon
David Sington has landed, so to speak. The 20-year veteran of the TV documentary world has generated great interest (not to mention high-profile deals) with his first theatrical documentary, In The Shadow Of The Moon.The film, about the Apollo space programme, won the World Cinema audience award at Sundance in ...
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Features
Piracy - 'Internet piracy is far and away our biggest threat'
The rise of internet file-sharing has opened a whole new front for piracy of all films - not least independents. The availability of films for download on the internet even before their initial theatrical release makes the prospect of profitable licensed distribution of independent films in some territories even more ...
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Features
International - Lissi animates the tills
Germany's animated adventure Lissi Und Der Wilde Kaiser was the highest non-US entry into the international top 40 this weekend, taking $6.9m from 905 screens across three territories.The comedy, released through Constantin Film, opened to number four in the chart and enjoyed a $7,609 screen average - the fourth highest ...
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Features
A strong rat run
Analysis: International box-office - Weekend October 26-28(Last3-dayweek)Film (origin)gross $ScrsCume $Terr1(1)Ratatouille (US)$22,611,0004,271$348,162,311292NewSaw IV (US)$12,413,1331,642$12,413,133153(2)Stardust (UK-US)$10,905,8102,789$60,551,073434NewLissi Und Der Wilde Kaiser (Ger)$6,885,826905$6,885,82635(31)Surf's Up (US)$4,344,9692,230$63,944,881356(5)The Orphanage (Sp)$4,022,917369$20,497,89617(3)Resident Evil: Extinction (US)$3,619,9972,087$56,554,424318NewLe Coeur Des Hommes 2 (Fr)$3,611,486535$3,611,48629NewCrows: Episode 0 (Jap)$3,479,025259$3,479,025110(16)The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising (US)$3,150,1761,982$11,033,3193011(9)Going By The Book (S Kor)$3,014,715343$8,326,427112(4)Shadow Boxing 2 (Rus)$2,889,874646$10,151,290313(6)Rush Hour 3 ...
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Features
Box office: data - The Critical view - Malick magic
It was the major coup of the second Rome Film Festival: Terrence Malick, the great recluse of US cinema, would be appearing on stage for one of the high-calibre 'conversations' about film. Malick is the JD Salinger of the film world: he's famous for not giving interviews (the last was ...
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Features
Editorial - Screen says - The ideas business
The fear that one day the money might just dry up is a permanent fact of life even for established film-makers. This year's Screen International UK Film Finance Summit was a fine opportunity to take the temperature of a major international business and that underlying concern was tangible.There's a general ...
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Features
Start-ups - The Newcomers
Although notoriously one of the most risky sectors of the global film industry, it is easy to see why so many want to be in North American distribution. Choose the right personnel, secure financial backing, build a strong pipeline, commit a sensible amount to p&a, get the marketing right - ...
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Features
United States - Ehud Resurrected
Changes are afoot at Bleiberg Entertainment, where effervescent company founder Ehud Bleiberg is already plotting his next big move as a hugely successful year draws to a close.A familiar face on the foreign sales circuit for many years, Bleiberg knew it was time to make a bold move two years ...
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Features
United Kingdom - Early light
When asked about her taste in films, Tanya Seghatchian points to the wall behind her desk, and two very different posters for her past productions: one for Pawel Pawlikowski's low-budget award-winner My Summer Of Love and another for megahit franchise Harry Potter.Seghatchian - previously best known as the development executive ...
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Features
Germany - All's fair
The topic on most people's lips at the recent Frankfurt Book Fair (October 15-19) was not the latest literary sensation, but rumours about the extraordinary saga at London talent agency Peters Fraser Dunlop (PFD).Caroline Michel, the company's beleaguered chief executive, cancelled her visit to Frankfurt at the last minute, still ...
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Features
New Line Cinema at 40 - The Ringleaders
Some 40 years after Bob Shaye formed New Line Cinema in his Greenwich Village apartment, the company is a bona fide Hollywood studio, sitting alongside Warner Bros in the Time Warner family. And it has some of the biggest franchise properties in the business under its belt - The Lord ...
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Features
2008: The New Line Highlights
Jan 25: Be Kind RewindMichel Gondry's latest offbeat comedy features Jack Black as a video-store employee who accidentally erases all the tapes, so re-enacts and refilms them. Mos Def co-stars.Feb 29: Semi-ProWill Ferrell plays a former benchwarmer who returns to his basketball team in an attempt to take them to ...
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Asian tigers show their claws
Two very different Korean openers hit the international chart this week: Ra Hee-chan's comedy Going By The Book, and Kim Mi-jung's historical murder mystery Shadows In The Palace. Going By The Book is a broad comedy about a traffic cop and a bank robbery gone wrong, while Shadows In The ...
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Features
The Critical view - The art of war
The autumn epidemic of films dealing with the US's entanglement in Iraq and Afghanistan has launched dozens of features and op-ed pieces but predictably, most of these were written before many of the films had surfaced. So pundits were limited to commenting on the fact that, whereas most of 1970s ...
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Features
Editorial - Peer pressure
There's an interesting survey out this week that demonstrates how gossip influences human behaviour. Boffins (or possibly eggheads) at the German Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology have spent large amounts of time and public money showing that humans give an extraordinary amount of credence to word-of-mouth references.The methodology involved ...
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Features
United Kingdom - Life After Death
Death At A Funeral was written as a spec script by London-based writer Dean Craig to direct himself for around $200,000 (£100,000). But a friend, US writer-director-producer Laurence Malkin had bigger ambitions."He said, 'No, we'll do it for $20m,'" Craig remembers. "I said, 'Are you nuts' It's a little film ...