Small MPU – Page 690
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Holland to direct National Lampoon's Ratko: The Dictator's Son
National Lampoon has signed Savage Steve Holland to direct the fish-out-of-water story Ratko, the company's second in-house production after Bagboy.National Lampoon's Ratko: The Dictator's Son follows the adventures of a despot's son who heads to the US to attend college. Robert Mittenthal and Michael Rubiner wrote the screenplay.The National Lampoon, ...
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Sundance Institute Documentary Fund gives grants to 25 projects
The Sundance Institute Documentary Film programme has announced the 25 feature projects to receive what the Institute says is a record number of grants from the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund.The recipient projects were chosen from more than 300 applications from 20 countries. The Sundance Institute Documentary Fund was established in ...
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Participant boards environmental comedy Taildraggers.
Participant Productions is partnering with producers Jay Chandrasekhar and Julia Dray of Broken Lizard to develop the comedy Taildraggers.Participant's director of production Nate Moore will oversee the project about five slackers in Alaska who stumble upon a plot to syphon oil while working as pilots for a low-budget airline. Will ...
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Scarlet, Schafer promoted at Tribeca, Freccero joins full-time
Peter Scarlet has been promoted to artistic director and Nancy Schafer has been promoted to co-executive director of the Tribeca Film Festival.Jennifer Maguire Isham, who served six years as festival president, becomes executive vice president of Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff's Tribeca Enterprises and will seek out ...
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Pirates faces international challenge from Shrek
Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End should stay at the top of the international box office in its third weekend, although Shrek The Third will pose a challenge.Buena Vista International's high seas adventure stands at a staggering $438m following its $216m launch weekend two weeks ago last weekend's biggest ...
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Editorial opinion: dangers of diversity
There are two words that should be worrying the international film business: cultural diversity. That's not in any way to disagree with the principle: globalised trade does have an innate drive towards homogenisation, with the big overpowering the small. So United Nations body Unesco was fully justified in raising the ...
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BBC Films: a drama or a crisis'
The planned relocation of BBC Films back to BBC headquarters has provoked a panic in the UK, where producers fear the future of one of the territory's most important financiers is under threat. Geoffrey Macnab reports. At Cannes last month, BBC Films arrived with what its boss, David Thompson, has ...
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Jon Kilik: for whom the Bell tolls
The US producer of The Diving Bell And The Butterfly tells Peter Bowen how he got the film made when both Johnny Depp and Universal dropped out. The French-language memoir The Diving Bell And The Butterfly (Le Scaphandre Et Le Papillon) marks the third collaboration between US producer Jon Kilik ...
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James Gray: good cop, bard cop
Shakespeare and Italian melodrama provided the creative inspirations for James Gray's We Own The Night, set in New York in the 1980s. Peter Bowen reports. The inspiration for James Gray's We Own The Night, a character-driven drama about a man who has hidden his past only to confront an inevitable ...
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Sydney Film Festival plans to get competitive
The Sydney Film Festival will become a competitive event for new directors, probably starting with its 50th edition in 2003, if it raises enough funding. The International Federation of Film Producers' Associations (FIAPF), which accredits international film festivals, has already given its formal approval for the plan.Sydney director Gayle Lake ...
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Naomi Kawase: force of nature
Naomi Kawase, director of Cannes award-winner The Mourning Forest, tells Jason Gray why the elements are on her side. A dense forest. A young woman follows a wild-haired old man as they struggle upwards through thick underbrush. They are covered in mud and sweat. The young woman helps the man ...
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Abel Ferrara: go go dancer
The new film from energetic film-maker Abel Ferrara is a sexy, glossy comedy - or so he promises, says Sheri JenningsWhat does a director like Abel Ferrara, who has already had four films invited to Cannes, do for his next act' Something completely different, it seems.Ferrara's Go Go Tales screened ...
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Chiara Arroyo: asilent witness
The Mexican director of the Cannes prize-winner Silent Light tells Chiara Arroyo why he chose to make a film about an isolated German-speaking sect. Just a decade ago, Mexico's Carlos Reygadas was a high-profile human-rights lawyer for the European Commission, specialising in armed conflicts. Now he is one of the ...
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Black Gold: storm in a coffee cup
Coffee expose Black Gold riled multinationals in the US and is now raising awareness in the UK. Chris Evans speaks to film-makers Marc and Nick Francis about taking on the world's second-largest export industry. Following Super Size Me, An Inconvenient Truth and most recently Michael Moore's Sicko, brothers Marc and ...
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Wildlife documentaries: nature calls
Following the global success of March Of The Penguins, animal films are the hot new genre. But is there a market for theatrical wildlife documentaries' Melanie Rodier reports. From meerkats to elephants, turtles to polar bears: in the post March Of The Penguins marketplace, a host of animal-based nature documentaries ...
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Creature features
Screen staff reporters identify forthcoming nature documentary projects.Animals In Love (Fr)Dir: Laurent CharbonnierFrench director Charbonnier, who was the DoP on the Oscar-nominated documentary Winged Migration, makes his directorial feature debut on the $10m Animals In Love, which explores courtship and love in the animal kingdom. Produced by Jean-Pierre Bailly for ...
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Case study: The Meerkats
Billed as a coming-of-age tale, BBC Films' The Meerkats is an attempt to mount a resolutely big-screen experience. Melanie Rodier reports. Now in post-production, James Honeyborne's The Meerkats is the first theatrical nature documentary from the UK's BBC Films.Co-financed by The Weinstein Company (TWC), the film is a collaboration with ...
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China: cheaper thrills
Faced with a rapidly expanding cinema sector, Chinese producers are looking to end their reliance on martial-arts epics. Sen-lun Yu looks at the new funds aiming to generate an upturn in cheaper commercial homegrown product. Chinese film-making may be best-known internationally for its eye-popping martial-arts films and its lavishly mounted ...
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Shanghai International Film Festival: going for growth
Shanghai is expanding market activities in 2007. Sen-lun Yu reports.Celebrating its 10th edition this year, the Shanghai International Film Festival (Siff), held June 16-24, is gradually expanding its film market and intends to demonstrate China's business potential.Aside from the Jin Jue Competition, the festival's main competitive section, and the Asian ...
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Film business training: adifferent class
Europe is getting serious about film business training. Richard Brass looks at the upturn in formalised training across the continent, and speaks to graduates from some of the key courses. In most companies, the thought of letting anyone without training loose on the financial, accounting, marketing, legal and sales operations ...