Small MPU – Page 1451
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News
Mad Love opens 6th LA Latino int'l film festival
The 6th Annual Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF) presented by co-founder/actor Edward James Olmos kicks off today (Friday July 19th) with Vicente Aranda's Juana La Loca (Mad Love) from Spain. To be held at its traditional venue, the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, from July 19th to July 28th, ...
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News
Hong Kong supernatural comedy conjures $1m in five days
China Star's supernatural comedy, My Left Eye Sees Ghosts, (pictured) possessed the top spot at the Hong Kong box office this week, grossing HK$7.79m ($1m) from 46 screens in the five days to July 17.The film features the lucrative combination of star Sammi Cheng and director-producers Johnnie To and Wai ...
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News
Serbian local productions unable to repeat 2001's success
While Serbia's local productions regularly outperform Hollywood releases, this year home-grown titles are suffering - despite overall admissions rising 21% year-on-year for the first six months of 2002, from 1,665,245 in 2001 to 2,021,843 tickets sold this year. Unlike most emerging and mature markets, summer is a slow season ...
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Shanghai Disneyland sparks fears of Hong Kong rival
Plans have been initiated for a Shanghai Disney theme park. It was reported in the Hong Kong Economic Times that Shanghai's government signed a letter of intent with Walt Disney Co. The news has prompted concerns that the park would rival Hong Kong Disneyland, currently under construction and hoped to ...
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News
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, ...
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News
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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News
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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News
Brother wins top prizes at PiFan
Clearly there was no World Cup animosity. German film Getting My Brother Laid (aka Mein Bruder Der Vampir) was the big winner at the 6th edition of the Pucheon International Festival of Fantastic Film (PiFan) in South Korea. The film, which won Sven Taddicken the best new director prize at ...
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News
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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News
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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News
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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News
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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Reviews
Dirty Deeds
Dir: David Caesar. Australia. 2002. 98 mins.Hot on the heels of the last Australian gangster caper, The Hard Word, comes David Caesar's equally macho, amoral and raucous Dirty Deeds, with the distinct advantages of a decent budget, a smart script and a vibrantly realised late-1960s setting. In addition, a top ...
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News
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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News
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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News
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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News
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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News
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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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 ...