All News articles – Page 5067
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News
Venice's Critics Week line up
Sipro Scipione and Francesco Sframeli's Two Friends (Due Amici), a tale adapted from the theatre about two Sicilians who live on the outskirts of a large Northern Italian city, is the only Italian film selected for the Critics Week competition at this year's Venice Film Festival.The competition line-up, selected by ...
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Venice's Critics Week line up
Critics' Week (Settimana Internazionale della Critica)Two Friends (Due Amici) Dirs: Sipro Scipione and Francesco, Italy An Honest Shopkeeper (Un Honnete Commercant) Dir: Philippe Blasband, BelThe Exam (Emtehan) Dir: Nassere Refaie, IranRodger Dodger Dir: Dylan Kidd, US Kite (Zmej) Dir: Aleksej Muradov, Russia Woman Of Water (Mizu ...
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Italy's President speaks out in favour of new media law
Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi has spoken out for the first time about the controversial issue of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's control over the nation's media, urging Parliament to draft a new media law that will guarantee impartial news coverage.Ciampi also asked the prime minister himself to sign his official ...
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Belgium ratifies new film tax shelter scheme
Belgium is to become the latest European country attempting to use tax as a way of boosting film production, following the government ratification of a new tax shelter over the weekend.The new measures will allow film investors to set off Euros 750,000 of corporation tax, provided that their total tax ...
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Seijun Suzuki's comeback film is honoured in Brisbane
Pistol Opera, (pictured) the first film in eight years directed by Japanese master Seijun Suzuki, has won the first FIPRESCI (Federation Internationale de la Presse Cinematographique) Award to be presented at the Brisbane International Film Festival (BIFF), which ended yesterday. Chair of the FIPRESCI jury, Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, ...
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Hong Kong pay-TV service iTV to close
Hong Kong's Pacific Century CyberWorks (PCCW) plans to shut down its ailing pay-TV service, iTV, in September and hand its video-on-demand (VoD) licence back to the Broadcasting Authority.ITV offers interactive services such as VoD, home shopping and broadband internet access and was billed as the world's first VoD platform when ...
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Emmy winner from last year to direct first feature
As bets start being placed on which of the finalists will win Emmy Awards this year, one of last year's winners, the acclaimed theatre director Gale Edwards, has signed up to direct her first feature, The Dressmaker. Set in the in 1950s, The Dressmaker is about a woman who has ...
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Japan's Kadokawa acquires Daiei film studio
Kadokawa Shoten Publishing, a publishing house with extensive media interests, has reached an agreement to acquire the Daiei studio from Tokuma Publishing.Once a major studio, Daiei went bankrupt in 1971 and later became the wholly owned subsidiary of Tokuma. Over the last 10 years it has staged a corporate ...
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Game of Dog and Mouse at UK box office
With school holidays now officially underway the UK box office saw a battle for the key children's market at the weekend as Columbia TriStar launched Stuart Little 2 into direct competition against Warner Bros chart-topping holdover Scooby-Doo.However Scooby-Doo eased to victory with a mighty second weekend take of $3.96m (£2.5m), ...
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Disney enters branded consumer electronics market
The Walt Disney Company is entering the consumer-electronics market in a licensing deal with Motorola to develop a line of themed Disney products beginning with cordless telephones and walkie-talkies.Further down the line, Disney plans to enter additional licensing agreements to offer its own branded TV sets, DVD and CD ...
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Vivendi Universal spins off streamlined Canal Plus
Vivendi Universal is to re-structure its 100% subsidiary Groupe Canal Plus around the division's most valuable assets: its French broadcasting activities; its film production and rights holding division StudioCanal as well as its stake in Spanish broadcasting operation Sogecable. All will be folded back into Canal Plus SA, which is ...
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Denmark's Nimbus picks up rights to classic French novel
Danish production group Nimbus has bought the film rights to French classic novel Maldonne. A romantic thriller, Maldonne is the story of a down on his luck businessman who poses as a richer man in order to secure an inheritance and win over a beautiful woman. It was written in ...
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Mexico's widest-ever release threatened with ban
El Crimen Del Padre Amaro - due to get the widest release ever for a Mexican film, on 300 prints - is provoking controversy ahead of its scheduled local release on August 16th. A Catholic group has launched a website inviting people to petition for the ban of Carlos Carrera's ...
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India's Censor Board chairman resigns over porn proposal
Vijay Anand chairman of India's Censor Board of Film Certification is understood to have offered to resign after his proposal to legalise the exhibition of X-rated films in selected approved cinemas in the country was rejected by the Indian Government. The Government of India is yet to respond to ...
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Vivendi Universal sued, Canal Plus Group to be broken up
Against the background of French newspaper reports suggesting that its Canal Plus division will now be broken up, Vivendi Universal and former chairman Jean-Marie Messier are to be sued by a group of US investors. The investors, operating under the banner Rosenbaum Partners, bought shares between February and July of ...
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Scorsese, Kiarostami to preside over Cannes' Cinefondation
Directors Martin Scorsese and Abbas Kiarostami have agreed to be honorary presidents of the Cannes Festival's Cinefondation. As such they will preside over the twice yearly "Residence" internship, which helps young film-makers prepare for their first or second feature film.The festival said: "they wished to show their attachment to the ...
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Macquarie Film Corp. - from Dirty Deeds to Wannabes
At the same time as Australia's Macquarie Film Corp. was celebrating the successful weekend opening of its first backed film Dirty Deeds; it was also announcing the eighth and final film to be backed under its current scheme: The Wannabes.Dirty Deeds, the first film to benefit from Macquarie's interest in ...
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MIIB storms Germany with $11.2m, scores $26m weekend
Columbia TriStar Film Distributors International (CTFDI)'s Men In Black II (MIIB) continued its impressive international run with an $11.2m opening weekend in Germany on 1,166 prints, according to studio estimates released today. When figures are confirmed this week it should establish MIIB as the sixth highest opener of all time ...
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Stuart Little 2 is big, but still disappointing, in lacklustre movie weekend
Columbia's latest box office victory was a small one. Family sequel Stuart Little 2 opened at the top of the charts over the weekend with a so-so $15.6m take, according to studio estimates released yesterday. That beat DreamWorks' adult drama Road To Perdition by a mere $0.3m.It was an uncharacteristically ...
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Hong Kong films performing 30% below 2001 levels
While Hong Kong has high hopes for the international success of big budget summer films like The Touch, Highbinders and Hero, many feel that mainland China will prove a bigger market for Hong Kong movies than the West. The first half of 2002 has been disappointing for Hong Kong film, ...