Small MPU – Page 2151
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News
Messier leaves Vivendi in denial, Fourtou appointed
Jean-Rene Fourtou, the former head of France's largest chemicals firm, was last night voted in as chairman and chief executive of Vivendi Universal. He replaces the Jean-Marie Messier, architect of the company's transition from water group into media mogul, but whose dash for growth cost the firm billions of Euro. ...
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Global cinema admissions overtake world population
More cinema tickets are being bought across the globe than there are people in the world, according to new research from UK-based media analyst Screen Digest.Worldwide average per capita visits now stand at 1.1 across the globe, according to the research. Predictably, the lion's share of cinema ticket sales is ...
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Germany's RTL continues its buying spree
RTL Television is on a spending spree - taking advantage of the void left by the insolvent Kirch Group and strengthening its position in the German market as the most aggressive buyer of free-TV licenses.Just a week after announcing a deal with Warner Bros. International Television for a package of ...
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Cambridge film festival boasts multiple UK premieres
Director Alex Cox is to attend the Cambridge Film Festival (11-21 July) for the UK premiere of his Revengers Tragedy, an adaptation of the Jacobean classic.The festival will open with the UK premiere of Pedro Almodovar's Talk To Her, and will close with David Cronenberg's Spider.Other titles receiving their UK ...
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BBC approved for ITV Digital rescue
State broadcaster BBC, which has frequently been criticised for its costly embrace of digital services, has won the licence to run channels on the UK's collapsed ITV Digital platform.The award, made by the Independent Television Commission today (July 4), is said to give the digital terrestrial (DTT) platform the best ...
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Reviews
Cuckoo (Kokoshka)
Dir: Alexander Rogozhkin. Russia. 2002. 100 min.Awarded best director and best actor (Ville Haapasalo) at last week's Moscow Film Festival, where it proved an audience favourite, Alexander Rogozhkin's new film is another of his contemporary metaphors that deals with war and peace, man's instinct for survival and his need to ...
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News
Cuckoo heralds Russian spring
Last week's Moscow International Film Festival marked a milestone for the Russian film industry with Oscar-winning director Nikita Mikhalkov declaring at the closing ceremony that "the crisis in Russian film is over." Mikhalkov, who is both festival chief and Russia's best known director internationally, had good reason for his claim. ...
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News
Spirited opening for Japanese animation on Korea
Hayao Miyazaki's record-breaking Japanese animated hit, Spirited Away, received a strong reception in South Korea and its capital city of Seoul at the weekend which could see it becoming one of the biggest Japanese successes ever in the country.The film had to settle for second place in the Seoul chart ...
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News
Swedish Film Institute withdraws funding from major local production
The Swedish Film Institute (SFI) has taken the unprecedented step of withdrawing its financial support of $540 000 (SEK 5m) for the screen adaptation of 2001 local bestseller, Popular Music From Vittula (Popularmusik Fran Vittula). The funding would have made up a quarter of the film's budget.The dramatic move comes ...
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News
UGC slashes the price of its UK cinema loyalty card
UGC Cinemas UK has announced that its cinema loyalty card is to undergo a massive price reduction in a bid to attract more cinemagoers - at the same time bringing it in line with its continental European equivalents.The card, known as the 'Unlimited Pass', is the only subscription loyalty card ...
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News
InterCom co-founder returns to shake up Hungary's DVD market
After five years away from the industry George Mihaly, the former Hungarian partner of Andy Vajna, is back on the film scene with a new DVD venture called Ariel International. Mihaly who built the Budapest-based InterCom into Hungary's leading distribution and exhibition outfit during the early nineties was ousted by ...
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News
Pinewood-Shepperton appoints sales & marketing director
UK studio group Pinewood-Shepperton has appointed Nick Smith as its new sales and marketing director.Smith joins from Nokia, where he was European head of sales for interactive services. Before that, he worked in the UK broadcast sector with spells at LWT, Granada and United News and Media.Pinewood and Shepperton finalised ...
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News
Germany's CinemaxX posts Euros 29.6m net loss
Germany's multiplex market leader CinemaxX posted a net loss of Euros 29.6m for the 2001 financial year, due to depreciation of Euros 17.6m and an adjustment for discounted loans to Ufa-Theater of Euros 3.5m.The company's financial report noted that this was despite the fact that the number of cinema-goers to ...
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News
Hong Kong's Celestial Pictures pulls out of Naked Weapon
Hong Kong's Celestial Pictures has pulled out of co-producing action title Naked Weapon with East Asia Entertainment, a division of eSun Holdings which owns Media Asia Group.The English-language film, loosely based on producer Wong Jing's 1992 tongue-in-cheek action comedy Naked Killer, was initially developed by East Asia with Wong on ...
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News
Arsenal loads up with Only The Strong Survive, Fast Runner
Germany's Arsenal Film has picked up Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker's musical documentary Only The Strong Survive and Zacharias Kunuk's Inuit language action thriller Atanarjuat - The Fast Runner. Only The Strong Survive has been screening in an homage at this week's Filmfest Muenchen to Hegedus and Pennebaker, while The ...
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News
The Next Big Thing to be April's first production
A production deal signed this week signals that The Next Big Thing, a feature written by and to star Magda Szubanski, is likely to be Australia's April Films' first production. The private owners of the Sydney-based company have put $1.7m (A$3m) of their own money into project development since establishing ...
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Karlovy Vary film festival opens new 'industry liaison office'
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival opened yesterday with a renewed emphasis on the concerns of the European film industry in the form of a sales co-ordination office. Four years after abandoning efforts to establish a working film market where international rights could be bought and sold, the festival has ...
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News
France to end ban on TV advertising of films
Just as a number of major international film distributors are beginning to seriously question the value of television advertising in the increasingly expensive movie marketing equation, France looks set to overturn its historic ban on advertising films on TV."We are the only country in Europe which such a restrictive position" ...
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Hour Of Religion praised at Italy's Nastro d'Argento awards
Marco Bellocchio's Hour Of Religion; scooped the best film prize at Italy's oldest awards, the Nastri d'Argento, which were held on Saturday night in the Sicilian coastal resort of Taormina. The Italian auteur also received the award for best story, while the best actor prize went to the film's lead, ...
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News
Good Machine wins High Hopes award at Munich film festival
US production house Good Machine has won German collection society GWFF's High Hopes Award for Michel Gondry's feature debut Human Nature (pictured) at this year's Munich Filmfest.The prize, worth Euros 25,000, was open to all directorial debuts in the Filmfest's international programme as well as from the American independents section.Meanwhile, ...