Small MPU – Page 44

  • News

    Rule Number One starts shooting with change of investors

    2007-09-14T10:48:00Z

    Kelvin Tong's horror thriller Rule Number One is set to start principal photography in Hong Kong next Wednesday (September 19), making him the first Singapore director to cross over to mainstream Hong Kong cinema. Two Singaporean production outfits - MediaCorp Raintree Pictures and Scorpio East Pictures - and Hong Kong ...

  • Reviews

    Married Life

    2007-09-14T12:01:00Z

    Dir: Ira Sachs, US, 2007. 90minsIra Sachs's new film Married Life commences with wonderfully droll cartoon-like credits that simultaneously amuse with their archness and efficiently evoke the 1940s era in which the film is set. Like the film as a whole, however, they promise a great deal that is, alas, ...

  • News

    Spyglass takes remake rights to 2004 French hit Narco

    2007-09-14T13:02:00Z

    TF1 International has announced the sale of remake rights for Tristan Aurouet and Gilles Lellouche's Narco to Spyglass Entertainment. The film, about a man suffering from narcolepsy who gets to live out his dreams every time he falls asleep, bears the international title, The Secret Adventures of Gustave Klopp and ...

  • News

    Russian box office to double in five years - report

    2007-09-14T13:12:00Z

    Russian box officewill more than double over the next five years, according to a report from analyst Dodona Research.The study, Cinemagoing Russia, predictsthe 2006gross of US$412mwill top $850m by2011.The driving force will be multiplex building, tied to the boom in retail developments in the country. Shopping mall owners are themselves ...

  • News

    Hutton joins Fox as head of UK publicity

    2007-09-14T13:26:00Z

    Twentieth Century Fox has appointed Annabel Hutton as its head of UK publicity.Hutton, a former Premier PR executive, will replace Fox publicity head Liz Green. She will be based in London and will report directly to Fox's UK marketing director Elizabeth Kesses.Hutton, who has worked in film since 1994, oversaw ...

  • News

    UK Film Councilgives $1m backing to Kidulthood follow-up

    2007-09-14T13:29:00Z

    Noel Clarke, director of cult UK film Kidulthood, is to direct his first feature Adulthood, with $1m (£520,000) backing from the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund. Adulthood, written, directed and starring Clarke follows up on the first film's story.Adulthood is produced by George Isaac and Damian Jones for Cipher ...

  • News

    UK Film Council gives $1m backing to Kidulthood follow-up

    2007-09-14T13:29:00Z

    Noel Clarke is to direct his first feature Adulthood, a follow-up to cult UK film Kidulthood which he wrote and starred in.The film received $1m (£520,000) backing from the UK Film Council's New Cinema Fund. Adulthood, written, directed and starring Clarke follows up on the story of the first film ...

  • Reviews

    Death Defying Acts

    2007-09-14T16:19:00Z

    Dir: Gillian Armstrong UK/Australia. 2007. 97 mins.The period romance is back in style if the UK success of Atonement is anything to go by, but Death Defying Acts is so corny and old-fashioned that only diehard romantics are likely to consider it magical. The relationship between famed escapologist Harry Houdini ...

  • News

    Dardenne brothers ready to shoot new feature

    2007-09-14T21:06:00Z

    Shooting is to begin on Oct 1 on Le Silence De Lorna, the latest feature from Palme D'Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.The new film stars Arta Dobroshi as a young woman from Albania who wants to emigrate to France even if that would mean that she has to marry ...

  • News

    Southern Star expands TV production slate

    2000-08-30T18:19:00Z

    Australia's Southern Star is stepping up television production with five new projects, worth a combined $17m (A$30m), including The Rubicon, a co-production with the UK's Warner Sisters.The slate, according to Southern Star Entertainment CEO Errol Sullivan, represents 18 months of intensive work finding new financing pathways that avoid the dangers ...

  • News

    Ben X selected as Belgian Oscar candidate

    2007-09-14T21:12:00Z

    Nic Balthazar's debut feature Ben X has been chosen as this year's Belgian Oscar candidate. The decision was made on Friday and was agreed on unanimously by both Flemish and French-speaking communities. Since its world premiere last month in Montreal, where it won the audience prize and shared the ...

  • News

    Meadows and Frazer collaborate again on Somers Town

    2007-09-14T21:35:00Z

    Director Shane Meadows and writer Paul Frazer are working together again on Tomboy Films' Somers Town, which began shooting this week. The short film follows the lives of two boys living in the Somers Town area of London. Filming started last week for three weeks on location in the UK ...

  • News

    Screen opinion - liberal profits

    2007-09-14T00:00:00Z

    Whenever commentators have run out of inspiration during the long march of festival screenings, there's always that lazy column filler about how politics is taking over the cinema. We've heard it about Cannes and Berlin in recent years, based on the success of overtly political polemical documentaries, notably from Michael ...

  • News

    A match made in Bollywood

    2007-09-14T00:00:00Z

    A Chinese-language, partially studio-backed film, Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, may have just walked off with the top prize from Venice, but these days the US studios seem more intent on learning Hindi than Mandarin Chinese.Over the past few months, the studios have announced a string of local-language production deals in ...

  • Features

    In Focus - India - What the US Studios are producing

    2007-09-14T00:00:00Z

    Sony PicturesOne of the first US studios to get involved in Hindi-language production, Sony recently completed Beloved (Saawariya), directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, and which it fully financed, and plans to release in November. In 2002, Sony was involved in the global distribution of Lagaan, initially through its Indian channel, ...

  • Features

    Canada - Blindness In sight

    2007-09-14T00:00:00Z

    Fernando Meirelles sits in an office at a prison in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. "I was so afraid," he says. The director of the critically-beloved City Of God and the widely-respected The Constant Gardener is recalling the nausea of pre-production on his new film Blindness.Meirelles had sought to adapt Jose Saramago's ...

  • Features

    United states - Mumble-Mania

    2007-09-14T00:00:00Z

    Joe Swanberg never wanted to change the world or rewrite the rules of cinema. He simply wanted to make movies, preferably on his own terms with a group of friends and collaborators.A Chicago-based independent film-maker, Swanberg has not only staked out a niche identity that has attracted a modicum of ...

  • Features

    United Kingdom - Shooting from the hip

    2007-09-14T00:00:00Z

    Our success is down to the people we have," says Revolver Entertainment's MD and founder Justin Marciano, not in a boastful way but giving credit where credit is due. "We have one of the best unknown teams in the industry."Staying unknown, however, could be a challenge as Revolver celebrates its ...

  • Features

    Argentina - Returning to look at the light side

    2007-09-14T00:00:00Z

    Anahi Berneri is at the vanguard of a new generation of female directors in Argentina that also includes Lucrecia Martel, Lucia Cedron and Ana Katz. Her debut feature, A Year Without Love (Un Ano Sim Amor) won the Teddy award at the 2005 Berlinale for its depiction of a writer ...

  • Features

    Spain - Investigating women's lives

    2007-09-14T00:00:00Z

    It was a role in Ken Loach's 1995 Spanish Civil War film Land And Freedom that inspired Iciar Bollain to become a director. With a CV of local productions under her belt, Bollain impressed Loach at auditions for the film, so much so that he created a part for her."Ken ...