All News articles – Page 4991
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France, Cuba sign co-operation deal
Europe's most prolific film producer France and the Caribbean minnow Cuba have signed a co-operation deal intended to strengthen the links between their film industries.The deal was signed last month by David Kessler, head of France's Centre National de la Cinematographie (CNC) and Omar Gonzalez, chairman of Institut Cubain d'Art ...
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Morgan Freeman to play Nelson Mandela
Morgan Freeman is to play Nelson Mandela in a film version of his autobiography, Long Walk To Freedom, according to the film's director Shekhar Kapur. Kapur, a British-Pakistani director who made the transition from "Bollywood" to Hollywood with films such as The Four Feathers and Elizabeth, made the announcement at ...
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Reese shines for BVI as Sweet Home Alabama passes $30m
Reese Witherspoon continued to charm internationalaudiences over the weekend as Buena Vista International's comedy-romance SweetHome Alabama took $5.4m from 1,527 theatresfor a $30.8m cumulative total. The animated adventure Treasure Planet, which flopped in the US, added another $4.6m from2,575 venues and now has a $38.9m running total, while comedy The ...
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AMPAS names scientific and technical Oscar honorees
The creators of an industrystandard special effects tool and two leading camera developers are to receiveOscar statuettes when the Academy hands out its scientific and technical awardson March 1. Alias/Wavefront will receivean Oscar for The Maya, its 3-D animation software that has been almost universallyadopted by the industry's leading effects ...
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Palm Springs honours Zeffirelli, Redgrave, the late Conrad Hall
Franco Zeffirelli, LynnRedgrave, composer Michel Legrand and producer Mace Neufeld will each receive aLife and Career Achievement Award at the Palm Springs International FilmFestival gala awards ceremony on Jan 11. Organisers will also stage a tribute tothe late cinematographer Conrad Hall, the double-Oscar winner who died over theweekend and was ...
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Online Film Critics opt for The Two Towers
New Line's The LordOf The Rings: The Two Towers tookbest picture and director honours in the 2002 Online Film Critics SocietyAwards, voted on by 132 internet journalists from around the world. The secondpart of Peter Jackson's fantasy adaptation added best ensemble acting,editing, visual effects and sound to its haul but ...
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Star Trek's 10th outing opens well but is no Nemesis for Rings
The latest title in the Star Trek film franchise opened well in the UK over the first weekend of the new year, taking second place with $3.1m (£1.96m) - including $536,135 or previews.Despite recording a good site average of $7,365 from its 426 locations the sci-fi adventure, the tenth in ...
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Mega-merger set to rock South Korean film industry
A radical shake-up of the South Korean film industry is in the offing, with major CJ Entertainment reportedly entering final negotiations to acquire 40% of Plenus Entertainment, owner of the industry's second major studio, Cinema Service.According to a report by local magazine Film 2.0 today, representatives from both sides have ...
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IN-motion parts from Myriad
German media group IN-motion has sold its remaining 30% stake in Myriad Pictures to the existing shareholders and will in future concentrate its film/TV activities out of UK-based subsidiary IN-motion Pictures Ltd.In a statement, the Frankfurt-based group stated that it exited from Myriad as of January 1, but would continue ...
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Warner scores its biggest ever international year with $1.6bn in 2002...
Harry Potter became 2002's highest grossing film internationally in what was the final triumph in a record year for Warner Bros Pictures.The company saw its best year of all-time at the international box office in 2002, pulling in $1.6bn and beating its previous record of $1.34bn, set in 2001, by ...
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Amitabh Bachchan rescues Bollywood box office
Bollywood may be the biggest producer of films in the world but the ratio of hits to flops in 2002 made depressing reading. In one of the worst years in the history of the local film industry, 2002 saw the release of 132 films out of which 124 failed to ...
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Three films break box office records in Australia
Several box office records have been broken over the Christmas/New Year holiday period in Australia. The Two Towers notched up the biggest ever opening week and Bowling For Columbine the biggest opening week for a documentary. And, as the year closed, Crackerjack became the highest grossing Australian film for 2002.After ...
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Kaurismaki tops Finnish award nominations
Aki Kaurismaki can no longer be said to be an unrecognised filmmaker in his native Finland after his award-winning The Man Without A Past became his most successful film at the local box-office ever and picked up the highest number of nominations for the local film awards: the Jussi. Best ...
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World premieres dominate Rotterdam's Tiger Award competition
This month's International Film Festival Rotterdam will showcase eight world premieres in its centrepiece section, the VPRO Tiger Award Competition.Titles debuting in the 14-film competition include Eliane Caffe's Brazilian-French film Jave Valley (Os Narradores De Jave); China's Welcome To Destination Shanghai (Mu Di Di Shanghai), directed by Andrew Cheng; and ...
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Billy Elliot delivers ratings success for BBC
The BBC scored a spectacular hit with Billy Elliot on New Year's Day, with the in-house production becoming the most popular film on TV during the Christmas period across all channels.The BBC Films and Working Title Films collaboration recorded 12.2 million viewers, pushing the BBC's The Mummy, which attracted 10.7 ...
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Third Danish film confirmed for Berlin's Kinderfilmfest
Danish animator Jannik Hastrup's latest feature-length animation, The Boy Who Wanted To Be A Bear (Drengen Der Ville Gore Det Umulige), has become the third Danish film to be confirmed for the Berlinale's Kinderfilmfest. The film had its world premiere in France and Benelux on Dec 18 as L'enfant Qui ...
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Harry Potter sweeps past $500m
Warner Bros Pictures, celebrating its biggest international gross of all time in 2002, scored its first triumph of the new year as Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets whipped past the $500m mark at the box office over the weekend. Already the fifth biggest international grosser of all time, ...
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The Pianist sweeps National Society Of Film Critics awards
Roman Polanski's The Pianist swept the board at the National Society Of Film Critics awards voted on by 55 US film critics at Sardi's Restaurant in New York City on Saturday night. The film won best picture, best director, best screenplay and best actor categories, continuing the divided awards season ...
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The hard facts about soft money
Hard cash may have heavyweight appeal and a sense of immediacy, but it is in increasingly short supply. Patrick Frater examines how soft money has become the currency of choice for the world's independent producers. Over the next weeks, and leading up to the Screen International European Film Finance Summit ...
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The Two Towers towers over the competition
New Line's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers stayed atop of the competition in its third week in North American theatres with a $25.7m haul that gives Peter Jackson's Tolkien adaptation a mighty $261.7m running score, according to studio estimates released on Sunday (Jan 5). The second instalment ...