Small MPU – Page 103
-
News
Verhoeven opens book on Russian Azazel.
Paul Verhoeven is ramping up production on his long-gestating tsaristRussian crime romp The Winter Queen, now called Azazel.Shooting is set to begin this summer in St Petersberg and London afterPeter Hoffman's Los Angeles-based Seven Arts Pictures finalisedpay-or-play deals for Verhoeven and Milla Jovovich.Verhoeven's long-time collaborator Gerard Soeteman, who wrote thedirector's ...
-
News
Okonedo to star in Skin
The Little Film Company is commencing sales here on true-lifeSouth African saga Skin starring Oscar nominee Sophie Okonedo.Shooting is set to begin in May on the co-production between the UK'sElysian Films and Bard Entertainments and South Africa's MoonlightingFilms.The project centres on the extraordinary genetic case of Sandra Laing,a black woman ...
-
News
Katapult scores with Zidane documentary
Katapult Films Sales has closed deals on several titles here, led byDouglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno's experimental documentary Zidane:A XXI Century Portrait.Rights have gone to Kinowelt in Germany and Circulo in Spain. Salesagent David Jourdan completed a deal for Italian rights with Dolmenbefore the market.Meanwhile Maria Maggenti's romantic comedy Puccini ...
-
News
Lucas and Roth steal leads in Six Bullets
Production has started on Myriad Pictures' heist thriller Six BulletsFrom Now with Josh Lucas, Tim Roth and Dermot Mulroney set to star.Myriad chief Kirk D'Amico is in Berlin pre-selling the project, whichrecounts the 1972 break-in at New York's luxury Pierre Hotel in whichrobbers dressed in dinner jackets made off with ...
-
News
Jeonju selects film-makers for digital shorts showcase
The Jeonju International Film Festival (JIFF) has announced Pedro Costa, Harun Farocki, and Eugène Green have been selected for Jeonju Digital Project 2007, formerly known as Digital Short Films by Three Filmmakers. JIFF, which has a focus on independent and digital films, has been sponsoring short film projects annually ...
-
News
Buyers team up for Telemontecarlo take-over
Telecom Italia and nascent internet giant Seat-Tin.it have confirmed that they are in talks to buy a majority stake in Telemontecarlo (TMC), the troubled Cecchi Gori Group-owned TV platform.A joint statement from Telecom and Seat-Tin.it stated that the two companies were in the "preliminary stages of negotiations" for the free-TV ...
-
News
Hexagon launches martial arts label
New Japanese distributor Hexagon Pictures has announced a production label specialising in action, Japanese Budo Action. 'We're doing something nobody else has done before in Japan. For action, the market is the world - it works everywhere,' says president Yoichi Sakai.The label's films will incorporate traditional Japanese martial arts like ...
-
News
Aku Louhimies back on his feet with She-Wolf
Finnish director Aku Louhimies is is pushing ahead with his next project, She-Wolf, putting controversy over his last film behind him.Produced by Aleksi Bardy of Helsinki Film, the new film begins shootingin April. Based on a novel by Leena Lander, it is a love story set inthe Finnish civil war. ...
-
Reviews
The Tracey Fragments
Dir: Bruce McDonald. Canada. 2007. 80mins.Canadian Bruce McDonald has moved in a new direction, forsaking gonzo humour for multi-image experimentation in this first-person portrait of an angry persecuted teenager that lurches between tactile realism and fantasy. McDonald (Road Kill, Highway 61, Hard Core Logo) will move beyond his core of ...
-
Reviews
The Home Song Stories
Dir. Tony Ayres, Australia, 2007, 103 min.,With immigration dominating the headlines in Australia as well as in Europe and the US, The Home Song Stories is a period film that gives a twist on current news - a lively melodrama about a roll-with-the-punches beauty whose long march through marriages and ...
-
Reviews
Eye In The Sky (Gen Zong)
Former Johnny To writer Yau Nai Hoi makes an astonishing genre film debut with Eye In The Sky. Slick, fast and at times even furious, it introduces a new directorial talent with considerable mastery of film language who should go far, even if his first work bears his master's imprint. ...
-
Reviews
When Darkness Falls (Nar Morkret Faller)
Dir: Anders Nilsson. Swe-Ger. 2006. 135mins.A dark Swedish three-parter, When Darkness Falls makes up in gritty energy and social conscience what it lacks in structural cohesion. It doesn't so much weave together its three stories about how people deal when threatened; it simply runs with each one for 10 minutes ...
-
Reviews
Hounds (Jagdhunde)
Dir: Ann-Kristin Reyels. Germany. 2007. 87mins.It's not easy to be cute and bleak at the same time, but Hounds, the debut feature from Ann-Kristin Reyels, pulls it off. An edgily tender coming-of-age story, it lays the acerbic social observation of Mike Leigh over the gritty provincial realism of the brothers ...
-
News
Prime and ImaginAsian take A Bloody Aria to US
Korea's Prime Entertainment has pacted with New York-based ImaginAsian Entertainment to co-distribute comic thriller A Bloody Aria in the US.Dylan Marchetti, director of theatrical productions and acquisitions for ImaginAsian, signed with Juyoung Park, senior manager of international sales and acquisitions for Prime Entertainment at EFM.'ImaginAsian is about bringing top-quality Asian ...
-
News
The Match Factory to handle new Hamer feature
Michael Weber's The Match Factory has picked up worldwide rights, excluding Scandinavia and German-speaking territories, to Bent Hamer's latest project O'Horten which began shooting in Norway on January 29. The film, which follows locomotive driver Odd Horten on a fatefully absurd odyssey on his first days of retirement, has actor ...
-
News
Lilly The Witch prepares to fly with Ruzowitzky
Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky, whose latest feature The Counterfeiter had its world premiere in the Berlinale's Competition this weekend, is changing genres again with his next project, the children's film Lilly The Witch (Hexe Lilli).The $11.7m (Euros 9m) co-production between Munich-based blue eyes fiction, animation and VFX specialist Trixter, Studio ...
-
News
UK admissions hit 26-year high
UK admissions between January and June this year reached a 26-year high as cinemas punched 71 million tickets, according to the cinema advertising association monitor (CAA).The tally is all the more impressive coming despite the dent in June's attendance levels from the European Championship soccer tournament. Ticket sales during that ...
-
News
Schafer's gay and lesbian film doc finds buyers
Andre Schafer's Here's Looking At You, Boy is tickling the fancy of buyers worldwide. Schafer's documentary, telling the story of the coming-out of gay and lesbian cinema, has sold worldwide in advance of its premiere in Panorama later this week.Amsterdam-based sales agent Sydney Neter of SND Films has closed deals ...
-
News
Sony sells Japanese anime to France
Rezo Films has acquired French rights from Sony Pictures ReleasingInternational (SPRI) to the Japanese anime title Tekkonkinkreet, whichreceived its world premiere in Berlin's Generation 14Plus strand.Rezo has set an April 25 theatrical release date for the Studio 4°C andAniplex co-production, which will be renamed Amer Beton for the Frenchmarket.Tekkonkinkreet is ...
-
News
Buyers go gaga for Estonian Lotte From Gadgetville
Buyers are going gaga for Estonian animated feature Lotte From Gadgetville. Midway through the EFM, the film - aimed at pre-school kids in the 3-to-8 age range - Lotte has now sold to 15 territories for theatrical. Lotte, on Sola Media/Atrix Film's EFM slate, has gone to Finland (Filmkempaniet), Poland ...