Small MPU – Page 2158
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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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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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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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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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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 ...
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News
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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Reviews
Ticket To Jerusalem
Dir: Rashid Masharawi. Palestine-Netherlands. 2002. 84 mins.Hyped as the scoop at this year's Taormina Film Festival, Ticket To Jerusalem turns out to be a worthy but rather flat and one-sided fable about a Palestinian projectionist trying to show a film in occupied Jerusalem. With its made-in-Palestine tag and its film-on-film ...
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News
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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News
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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News
Media Asia Films takes four films from start-up Base Production
Hong Kong's Media Asia Films has signed a four-picture deal with start-up production outfit Base Production, headed by Hong Kong director Andrew Lau.The first picture under the two-year deal will be $5.1m (HK$40m) thriller, I Want To Be You, set to star four previous winners of the Best Actor award ...
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News
Fox 2000 takes remake rights to Denmark's Catch That Girl
Denmark's Nimbus Film has sold English-language remake rights on its children's film Catch That Girl (Klatretosen) to Fox 2000.The Hans Fabian Wullenveber-directed film, which appeared in the Kinderfest arm of this year's Berlin Festival, is the story of a 13 year-old girl who robs a bank in order to save ...
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News
South Korean film banned from screening in home territory
Cannes Critics' Week selection Too Young To Die by South Korean director Park Jin-pyo has been effectively banned in its home country, following a decision by the local Media Ratings Board to give the film a 'restricted' rating. The rating prohibits advertising of any kind and obliges the film to ...
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News
Jean-Luc Godard to lecture at Montreal World Film Festival
Iconic filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard will attend the Montreal World Film Festival (Aug 22 - Sept 2) to give a lecture on filmmaking and his place in it. The lecture, entitled Le regard de Jean-Luc Godard sur le cinema d'aujourd'hui et de demain (Jean-Luc Godard and the Cinema of the Present ...
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News
Italy's Mikado adds three titles to its slate
Italian arthouse distributor Mikado has added three new titles to its line-up, including Manoel de Oliveira's Cannes contender The Uncertainty Principle.An entangled family drama adapted from the novel by Agustina Bessa-Luis, The Uncertainty Principle tells the story of the wealthy Antonio, played by Ivo Canelas, and Jose Luciano (Ricardo Trepa), ...