Small MPU – Page 149
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News
EM.TV shares slide as Kirch investment in doubt
Shares in ailing German media concern EM.TV & Merchandising hit a 2001 low on Thursday amidst speculation that the Germany cartel office could block the KirchGroup's plans to invest in the company.Speaking to Financial Times Deutschland, an official at the cartel authority was quoted as saying that the office "will ...
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News
Shochiku veteran unveils 13-title indie slate
Former Shochiku production head Kazuyoshi Okuyama is preparing a slate of 13 films, including several financed by foreign partners.In addition to his Team Okuyama production company, the veteran producer is developing the slate with QFront Movie, a new film company he has launched with the backing of the Tokyu Group, ...
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News
Sweden renews company funding policy
The Swedish Film Institute has announced that it is to continue its policy of backing independent producers and production companies rather than individual productions.The scheme was established last year in order to help production companies cover overhead costs while developing new projects. Unlike traditional state backing, where funds are allotted ...
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News
Japan's SKY Perfect loses chairman, president
SKY Perfect Communications, which runs dominant but loss-making Japanese satellite broadcaster SKY PerfecTV, has confirmed that its chairman Koya Mita and president Hajime Unoki will resign.Though the company has not officially decided on successors, press reports have named Yasushi Hosoda, president of Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan, as Unoki's replacement. According ...
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News
Amelie opens 55th Edinburgh Film Festival
Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie is to open this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival, which runs August 12-26.Amelie, released as Amelie From Montmartre in France, is set for UK release on October 5 through Momentum, which picked up the film earlier this year. The story of a naive waitress who eventually finds ...
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News
Fox Searchlight boards Boyle's 28 Days Later
Fox Searchlight Pictures has acquired worldwide rights to 28 Days Later, the next film from director Danny Boyle and producer Andrew Macdonald, continuing 20th Century Fox's relationship with the British film-making duo after A Life Less Ordinary (1997) and The Beach (2000).The $15m film is to be co-financed by Searchlight ...
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News
UK's May box office take hits 26-year high
The mammoth release of The Mummy Returns and the ongoing success of Bridget Jones's Diary helped make May's admissions in the UK the highest for the month in 26 years, according to figures released by the Cinema Advertising Association (CAA).In its fourth week on release, The Mummy Returns has grossed ...
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Y Tu Mama Tambien breaks Mexican box office record
Alfonso Cuaron's steamy drama Y Tu Mama Tambien has smashed Mexican box-office records for local films, ending its first week on release in Mexico with $2.19m from just 230 prints. This is the highest opening week figure ever earned by a Mexican film. The Mummy Returns, by contrast, made $1.86m ...
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News
Former All Saint Shaznay Lewis makes feature debut
Former All Saints member Shaznay Lewis is turning to feature films after the highly-publicised break-up of the all-girl pop act.The only All Saint not to appear in Dave Stewart's critically-panned Honest is making her feature debut in soccer comedy Bend It Like Beckham.Lewis will play the captain of a soccer ...
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News
Zhang Yimou to direct Chinese Olympic bid promos
Controversial Chinese director Zhang Yimou has begun work directing a series of short films for China as part of its bid to host the Olympic Games in 2008.The decision to commission Zhang is surprising, given his previous run-ins with the Chinese government. Zhang, who recently directed The Road Home and ...
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News
Local boy Jensen picks up Norway's Aamot honours
Norwegian director Knut Erik Jensen has received the Norwegian Aamot Award in Oslo, Norway. The annual award given by Norway's theatre managers and distributors was bestowed on Jensen for "his ability to capture the life and history of Norway's northernmost regions in a poetical way".Jensen is the director of the ...
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News
RTL sells distributor SND to France's M6
Pan-European media giant RTL Group has sold its French distribution offshoot SND to French broadcaster M6, in which the Luxembourg-based group already holds a major stake.Eric Marti, who founded SND in 1997, is to be replaced by Thierry Desmichelles. Marti sold the company to RTL Group in 1998, keeping a ...
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News
Netherlands proposes overhaul for tax incentives
After months of uncertainty surrounding the future of the Dutch tax incentive scheme, policy-makers from the three government ministries involved have sent a proposal to parliament recommending the current film-friendly climate be preserved with the establishment of a new scheme offering even more generous incentives, but tempered by much tighter ...
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News
Telefilm head LaPierre departs for Canadian Senate
The chairman of Telefilm Canada, Laurier LaPierre, is leaving his post, marking the third departure of senior management from the federal film and television agency. LaPierre, a respected journalist who has served since 1998, has resigned to accept an appointment to the nation's senate. His departure leaves something of a ...
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News
Shanghai rewards Antitrust with Golden Urn
Antitrust, an alarm-bell ringing picture about monopolies and the abuse of the power of technology, was the big winner at last night's closing ceremony of the Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF). The MGM-distributed picture scooped one Jin Jue (Golden Urn) for best film and another, best director, for the UK's ...
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News
Tomb Raider's a smash: $48m opening for Paramount
Paramount Pictures' movie-of-the-video-game Lara Croft: Tomb Raider made a big impression at the North American box office at the weekend, taking a massive $48.2m despite across-the-board bad reviews. The movie is the third consecutive hit for director Simon West after Con Air and The General's Daughter and confirms its Oscar-winning ...
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Reviews
Trouble Every Day
Dir: Claire Denis. France. 2000. 99 mins. Claire Denis tiptoes perilously close to Golden Turkey land with this ponderous study of insatiable desire and twisted eroticism, which will command initial interest from buffs on the strength of its director's previously impressive track record (Chocolat, I Can't Sleep, Beau Travail) ...
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Finder's Fee wins top audience prize at Seattle
The Seattle Film Festival concluded its 27th event yesterday with a ceremony at which awards determined by local audiences were handed out. Prizes - dubbed the Golden Space Needle Awards - were determined from the 200 feature films screened over the epic 25-day running time of the festival.Jeff Probst's US ...
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Gong Li climbs aboard Sun Zhou's Train
Chinese superstar actress Gong Li is to star in the new film by Sun Zhou, re-uniting her with the director of Berlin 2000 competitor Breaking The Silence. That film just won her the runner-up prize for Best Actress at the recently completed Seattle Film Festival.Production of Sun's new film, The ...
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Reviews
Slogans
Dir. Gjergj Xhuvani. France-Albania 2001. 90 mins.The last of the Balkan countries to rid itself of communist bliss, Albania has very good reasons to celebrate its new-found freedom of expression, as it is does here with this satire on enforced political indoctrination. Verging somewhere between realism of the kind that ...