Small MPU – Page 3398

  • News

    Skarsgaard to star in Scandinavia's most expensive film project

    2007-02-11T07:57:00Z

    Swedish Hollywood-actor Stellan Skarsgaard will star in The Knight Templar - Svensk Filmindustri's $30.3m (Euro 22.8m) adaption of Swedish writer Jan Guillou's bestselling trilogy of Arn Magnusson - currently lensing on locations in Morocco.Skarsgaard will perform as Arn's uncle in Scandinavia's so far most expensive film project - two features, ...

  • News

    Lordi ready to rock for Finnish horror film

    2007-02-11T08:02:00Z

    Finnish monster hard-rock group Lordi, which won last year's Eurovision Song Contest, will star in a $5m horror movie from Finnish producer Markus Selin, of Solar Films, who has for the last four years delivered the number one local top-grossers on the Finnish charts.Selin will be in Berlin to discuss ...

  • News

    Rock Haven finds home with TLA

    2007-02-11T08:07:00Z

    TLA Releasing has acquired worldwide rights here from journalist andfirst-time film-maker David Lewis to his drama Rock Haven.The story follows a spiritual man who moves to the coast to live withhis devoutly Christian mother and falls in love with an older man.Newcomer Sean Hoagland stars with Laura Jane Coles and ...

  • News

    Friend and Barr cast for Russian gangster movie

    2007-02-11T08:20:00Z

    UK actor Rupert Friend (Pride & Prejudice) and Jean-Marc Barr (Dancer In The Dark) are attached as cast for US writer-director Tony Pemberton's $ 4.5m gangster movie Buddha's Little Finger based on the novel of the same name by Victor Pelewin.The film's Berlin-based producer Rohfilm has brought Mikhail Kalatozov's Kalatozov ...

  • News

    Verhoeven opens book on Russian Azazel.

    2007-02-11T08:24:00Z

    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

    2007-02-11T08:31:00Z

    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

    2007-02-11T08:53:00Z

    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

    2007-02-11T08:58:00Z

    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

    2007-02-11T09:02:00Z

    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

    2000-07-24T19:23:00Z

    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

    2007-02-11T09:10:00Z

    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

    2007-02-11T09:23:00Z

    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

    2007-02-11T10:30:00Z

    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

    2007-02-11T11:49:00Z

    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)

    2007-02-11T12:01:00Z

    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)

    2007-02-11T12:25:00Z

    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)

    2007-02-11T12:36:00Z

    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

    2007-02-12T04:00:00Z

    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

    2007-02-12T04:00:00Z

    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

    2007-02-12T04:00:00Z

    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 ...