Small MPU – Page 627
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News
Barrack heads race for Russian Oscars
Valery Ogorodnikov's Barrack is heading the field in the race for the Russian equivalent of the Oscars, the Nikas, which will be awarded by the Russian Academy of Motion Picture Arts in Moscow on April 22.Barrack was nominated in 10 categories, including best feature, best director and best screenplay for ...
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FRANCE 9 July
Shrek 2 remainedon top this week taking in an additional 1.5 million admissions. Dawn Of The Dead opened in the fourthspot for 194,031 admissions. LesChoristes sees its lowest rank in its 16 week run now down to number 8.Other new films include the Drew Barrymore vehicle 50 First Dates at ...
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UK drives European DVD bonanza
When it comes to the success of DVD in Europe, sales andpenetration are being driven by the UK - but the continent's Easterncountries are still playing catch up.Speaking at Screen International's LearningLessons: Europe And The US seminar, JeanPaul Commin, president of industry body the International Video Federation,said that in 2003, ...
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Leigh to nominate Katrin Cartlidge bursary recipient
UKdirector Mike Leigh will nominate the recipient of a bursary from the recentlyfounded Katrin Cartlidge Foundation at the forthcoming Sarajevo Film Festival.Leigh, who is serving as the president of the festival'sinternational jury this year, will announce his choice on August 24 before agala screening of his film Career Girlswhich featured ...
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Reviews
Right Now (A Tout De Suite)
Dir/scr:Benoit Jacquot. France. 2004. 95minsBenoitJacquot's Right Now contains a series of incidents rather than what onemight usually call a story - which hits just the right note for this study of ayoung woman drifting without a compass through a tumultuous period of her life.Based on events that happened to Elisabeth ...
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Dirty Pretty Things script wins top Humanitas prize
Steven Knight's screenplayfor the drama Dirty Pretty Thingswon the feature film category in the 30th Humanitas Prize ceremony in LosAngeles yesterday (8), earning $25,000 as judges praised its "stark andrealistic depiction of the life of undocumented workers".Jacob Estes claimed the$10,000 Sundance Feature Film honour for the screenplay to his directorialdebut ...
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Film piracy business set to increase
Screen International's DVD: The Home Cinema Summit last week revealed the growing threat of piracy to the film industry's bottom line.According to Thomas Dillon, the Motion Picture Association's (MPA) legal counsel for anti-piracy, Europe, Middle East & Africa, seizures of pirate DVDs rose from 7.5m in 2002 to 16.5m in ...
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Reviews
Broken Flowers
Dir/scr: Jim Jarmusch.US. 2005. 106minsAfter diversions into genre-subversion like mysticalwestern Dead Man and modern day samurai saga Ghost Dog, Jim Jarmusch makes afull scale return to the kind of lugubrious, meticulously observed comedy thatfirst made his reputation in the 1980s.Commercial prospects arevery robust for Broken Flowers, a film that fans ...
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Miller, Rodriguez set for second dose of Sin
FrankMiller has already begun scripting Sin City 2, which he will co-direct withRobert Rodriguez. The project will be jointly owned by Disney and The WeinsteinCompany.Speaking at the annual distributors lunch hosted by theWeinsteins, Miller said it was too early to announce casting.However he did confirm the project will be shot ...
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Haneke's Hidden leads the race for Palme d'Or
Nobody has stumbled across a Brown Bunny. Nobody has discovered amasterpiece. That seemed to sum up the feeling about this year's competitionfilms as Cannes heads towards its last days. A sluggish edition thus far hasn't stirred the passions of some yearsand the decision to support veteran filmmakers has brought mixed ...
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Pele plots film expose of South American football
Football legend Pele isplanning what he says will be a sporting equivalent to Fernando Meirelles' Cityof God. Pele says he has beenworking on a script which will expose the seedy underbelly of South Americanfootball, where the flip side of the beautiful game is endemic corruption inthe boardroom."Flamengo is the best-supported ...
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Spice Factory plans US invasion
In what could become an international rush ofcompanies to exploit new US tax incentives and the cheap dollar, theever-opportunistic UK-based financing outfit Spice Factory has teamed up withLA-based Cameo FJ Entertainment to create the American Independent Film Fund(AIFF).The partners aim to exploit recent US tax incentivesand claim to have raised ...
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Mackenzie recruits Jamie Bell for Foe
Director David Mackenzie's next film will be Hallam Foe, a £4madaptation of the Peter Jinks novel, to star Jamie Bell. Mackenzie's breakthrough film Young Adam screened in Un CertainRegard two years ago and he was back in Cannes this week seeking finance for HallamFoe,which is scheduled to shoot in Scotland ...
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Irish Screen raves with Human Traffic team
Irish Screen is backing five features from the producers of UK club culture hit Human Traffic - including its sequel Human Traffic 2: Five Go Mad In Goa - marking the first of several local financing sources expected to emerge at Cannes.The Dublin and London-based operation is fully financing Fruit ...
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Comstock shells out coin for Wild Bunch's Coin
Along with sales to The Weinstein Company on Nomad and Outlander,French sales and finance house Wild Bunch has secured a financial co-producerfor Michael Civetta's Coin Locker Babies in Japan'sComstock.Comstock has come on board the surreal coming-of-agetale which stars Liv Tyler and was adapted in part by Sean Lennon, son of ...
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Celestial's Love travels to Korea, Japan
Celestial Pictures hasscored a pair of major pre-sales on Peter Chan's musical Perhaps Love to Korea's Show East and Nippon Herald for Japan.The Hong Kong-based companyco-financed and is handling worldwide sales on the $10m film which is currentlyshooting in Shanghai. Produced by Chan's ApplausePictures and Los Angeles-based Ruddy Morgan Organisation, ...
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What The Bleep sells like Lightning
Los Angeles-based LightningEntertainment has continued a raft of major sales on the spiritual docu-dramaand North American box office hit What The Bleep Do We Know!' Rights to Will Arntz, BetsyChasse and Mark Vicente's picture went to Hopscotch & Polyphony forAustralia and New Zealand, Revolver Entertainment for the UK, Filmhouse forMexico, ...
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Arclight strikes raft of sales on Dragon Squad
Arclight Filmshas struck a raft of territory deals on the action thriller Dragon Squad, with key sales going to Momentum in theUK, Aurum in Spain, and Nordisk in Scandinavia.Daniel Lee'sthriller, starring Sammo Hung, Simon Yam, Shawn Yue and Michael Biehn, centreson a team of Interpol agents who travel to Hong ...
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Tartan sails off with French hit 36 Quai
The UK'sTartan Films has acquired Gaumont's French hit 36 Quai Des Orfevres, starring Daniel Auteuil and GerardDepardieu.The deal was brokered byJane Giles of Tartan Films and Philippe de Chaisemartin of Gaumont. The policethriller, which amassed more than 2.1 million admissions in France, has sold toan array of markets, including Japan ...
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Checkmate for Northam, Flanagan in St Petersburg
Fionnula Flanagan and JeremyNortham will star in the psychological thriller Checkmate, which is set tobegin production in St Petersburg on May 31.The Thelma Productionproject marks the first collaboration between international production companyBig Star Entertainment and UK-based financiers Future Films.Voltage Pictures is handlinginternational sales on the story of the enigmatic Lazarov ...