Latest – Page 520
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Features
India - UFO prepped for lift-off
One of the more surprising revelations made by the Indian businessman and entrepreneur Raaja Kanwar, the man pioneering digital cinema and exhibition in the territory, is that he is not "a fan of Hindi movies".Kanwar's prefers English-language films and international arthouse movies and on meeting him one can see the ...
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France - Critical mass
Jean-Michel Frodon, director of France's venerable Cahiers Du Cinema since 2003 has spent the last couple of decades travelling the world to track the newest trends in world cinema. He is also the man behind the decision to launch an English edition of the Cahiers, the 50-year-old bastion of film ...
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Industry moves
KING IS A PARTICIPANTJonathan King has left Focus Features as executive vice-president of production and has joined Participant Productions as executive vice-president in charge of production. Prior to Focus, King served as president of production for Laurence Mark Productions, working on such titles as Dreamgirls and The Lookout.SULTAN MAKES PEACE ...
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Set Report - Cracking the code
Alex de la Iglesia has built a reputation across Europe as a comedy director with a larger-than-life persona and spontaneous style of film-making. So it came as little surprise to find him painting the walls of St Edmund Hall in Oxford and bellowing at his crew to work faster when ...
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High-disappointment DVD
About two weeks ago, Jeffrey Katzenberg said in the course of an interview he was not particularly impressed with the new high-definition DVDs such as Blu-ray. He did not see much in the way of improvements from the standard format discs. Neither the image nor the sound did much to ...
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The Bean counters rejoice
Mr Bean's Holiday held firm at the top this weekend generating $13.5m over the three-days, bringing its total to a whopping $145.3m in just five weeks. BVI comedy Wild Hogs was not far behind, taking $11.6m - a 30% increase on last weekend - after expanding to a further 18 ...
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Editorial - Screen says The future calls
There's an otherwise rather ordinary individual working at Screen's London offices whose telephone ringtone is a snippet from Captain Beefheart's relatively obscure 1967 debut album Safe As Milk. That's the long tail in action. It's a fair guess the person concerned is one of a statistically small group who serendipitously ...
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United Kingdom - Warrior Spirit
At a recent ceremony at the Kenyan Embassy in London, producer Simon Channing Williams was awarded the Order of the Grand Warrior. The honour came his way primarily for his efforts in Kenya on behalf of The Constant Gardener Trust, the charity he helped set up after shooting that John ...
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Canada - This time it's personal
In 2005, Risa Morimoto learned her late uncle was a kamikaze, one of the suicide pilots of Imperial Japan during the Second World War. For an outside observer, the more startling aspect of her discovery is that her uncle only died 20 years ago - he survived the war.If there ...
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Features
Industry moves
Ray joins Kimmel armBingham Ray has joined Los Angeles-based financing and production company Sidney Kimmel Entertainment as president of the newly formed Kimmel Distribution. Industry veteran Ray has headed United Artists and October Films.Rice departs Disney for United ArtistsDennis Rice has left The Walt Disney Studios to join United Artists ...
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Features
Set Report - The War Makers
It is a cold, bright morning in a tiny village two hours outside Beijing, and Hong Kong star Andy Lau, dressed in floor-sweeping Qing Dynasty robes, is ordering around a group of extras.A veteran of more than 130 films, Lau knows a thing or two about placing extras on their ...
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Features
And the winner is..
Running alongside this column is the industry's most comprehensive and, one likes to think, accurate chart of the top-grossing films during the past weekend in the international marketplace.It should be pointed out that even such an established chart faces problems that are intrinsic in putting together a compilation of the ...
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Features
Mr Bean feasts as 300 holds firm
Universal's hit comedy Mr Bean's Holiday kept the international top spot this weekend, grossing $17m from 45 territories and bringing its total to $125.9m after four weeks. 300 continues to battle in second place and generated $13.5m from 55 territories in its sixth week. A handful of new thrillers dot ...
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Features
Market focus - Two heads good'
Plans for the international distribution of Grindhouse are being re-evaluated in English-speaking territories following the film's performance in its first few weeks in the US.Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's double-bill, composed of a feature from each director - Tarantino's Death Proof segment and Rodriguez's horror flick Planet Terror - opened ...
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Features
United States - India meets Hollywood
Los Angeles-based Christina Marouda had always enjoyed Indian cinema. But it was only when she worked at the city's two biggest film festivals, Afi Fest and the Los Angeles Film Festival, that she realised Indian films needed a better platform in the world's movie capital."Apart from Cannes and Berlin, Indian ...
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Features
United States - A man of the world
When Catherine Hardwicke's The Monkey Wrench Gang hits the screens in 2008, it will be the result of 15 years of careful nurturing for its veteran producer Edward R Pressman.The story of environmental activists fighting over-development in the American West has just been waiting for the right time to find ...
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Japan - Secrets and lives in modern Tokyo
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is one of the few modern Japanese film-makers with worldwide recognition, both as a genre director and as an auteur. With films such as Cure, Pulse and Retribution (which screened at Venice last year) Kurosawa's name is synonymous with J-horror.Yet his filmography offers much more than scares. ...
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China - The balance of power
Inspired by the Chinese classical novel Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, multiple award-winning Hong Kong director Mabel Cheung (The Soong Sisters, An Autumn's Tale) is putting together a project, Red Rose And White Rose, based on the story of two women caught up in male power plays.The first is Princess ...
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Features
Industry moves
STAMBLER JOINS THINKFILM FROM MAGNOLIABen Stambler has left Magnolia Pictures and joined ThinkFilm's New York office as director of acquisitions. Stambler served for three years as manager of acquisitions at Magnolia and played a key role in the acquisitions of The Host, The Signal and Jesus Camp. He will jointly ...
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United Kingdom - Re-animated
When Bristol-based Aardman ended its deal with DreamWorks in late January 2007, the early dissolution of the pact did not come as a surprise - there had long been talk of culture clashes between the UK animation company and its publicly traded Hollywood partner.Aardman remained quiet at the time because ...