Small MPU – Page 865
-
News
SPC buys The Wackness, Frozen River as Sundance ends
Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) has paid low seven figures for North American rights to Jonathan Levine's The Wackness, which won the 2008 Sundance Film Festival's Audience Award: Dramatic prize on Saturday [Jan 26].The deal marked SPC's third pick-up following Courtney Hunt's dramatic grand jury prize winner Frozen River and Mark ...
-
News
Day-Lewis, Christie win top film honours at SAG Awards
The 14th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards crowned Daniel Day-Lewis and Julie Christie king and queen of the acting world on Sunday [Jan 27] and positioned the pair at the forefront of the race for the lead actor Oscars next month.The jovial ceremony at the Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Center ...
-
Reviews
The Escapist
Dir: Rupert Wyatt. UK/Ireland. 2008. 105mins.In his debut feature The Escapist director Rupert Wyatt animates the virtues of the B-movie thriller - direct expression, taut construction and a stripped down psychology-with a more conceptually unorthodox narrative design that collapses time and space.In the script he wrote with Daniel Hardy, Wyatt ...
-
Reviews
Donkey Punch (2007)
Dir. Olly Blackburn, 2007, UK, 90 minutesDonkey Punch, in young male slang, is a term for a hard blow to the back of the neck during sex, which produces a clench that gives pleasure to at least one person in a couple. This act kills a vacationing girl from Leeds ...
-
Reviews
The Great Buck Howard
Dir: Sean McGinly. US. 2008. 87 minsThe Great Buck Howard is a well-made character piece which is so slight, good-natured and ever so slightly bland that it is likely to land in a commercial no man's land somewhere between the mainstream and the arthouse. Produced by Gary Goetzman and Tom ...
-
Reviews
Transsiberian
Dir: Brad Anderson. US. 2008. 111 mins.The latest entry in Brad Anderson's increasingly fascinating oeuvre is an ambitious thriller set on the Transsiberian train from China to Moscow which recalls train-set thrillers from the 1970s like Silver Streak, The Cassandra Crossing and Murder On The Orient Express, not to mention ...
-
News
Screen Opinion- Time is of the essence for digital change
If the recent flurry of digital download plans does nothing more than force a rethink of the 'wait and see' policy towards digital change in international markets, it will have performed a considerable service. In Europe, in particular, it's time to stop talking the talk and start walking the walk.A ...
-
Features
In focus - Video-on-demand - Big films on a moving screen
It is called the halo effect. Last year when Apple unveiled its iPhone, the technology and business press fell to its knees in supplication. If Apple does it, it has to be good. Last week, the company announced a deal with all the Hollywood studios that will, from February, see ...
-
Features
In focus - Digital rights in Europe - 'It's an absolute minefield'
The US has been the leader in digital technologies - from downloads to digital cinema - because it has a large homogenous market where cultural, technical and legal differences are minimal.Contrast that to Europe, which is a complex jumble of states, each with their own laws and traditions. Apple will ...
-
News
Daniel Battsek - talking pictures
In the two-and-a-half years since Daniel Battsek took over the reins at Miramax Films, the British executive has established a corporate culture that is at once fresh and familiar.Gone are the outbursts, publicity stunts and grand plays of the brilliant, larger-than-life mogul Harvey Weinstein.In their place is an equally mesmerizing ...
-
News
Miramax opens up Italy with Eagle Pictures pact
Miramax International appears to have found a new Italian outlet for at least some of its higher profile titles, selling three films to fast-growing Eagle Pictures.The Italian production and distribution company is understood to have picked up John Frankenheimer's Reindeer Games; Chocolat, directed by Lasse Hallstrom and starring Juliette Binoche ...
-
Features
United States - Animal attraction
It's day six on the set of Green Porno and star Isabella Rossellini is having sex with a snail. Which is OK, because she is a snail too. After all, this whole bizarre set-up was her idea.Commissioned by Christopher Barry, vice-president, digital media and business strategy for US cable network ...
-
News
Japan - Bringing home the horror
Nikkatsu's legendary film studios in Chofu City, a suburb of Tokyo: a set of a weatherbeaten beach house stands in the centre of the studio as gaffers and set dressers work away. Artificial moonlight bleeds through slats in the structure's opaque roof, illuminating decrepit furniture and marine equipment inside.Once adjustments ...
-
Features
United Kingdom - Moxie Mania
Since she founded Newcastle-based production company Ipso Facto Films 15 years ago, Christine Alderson has had a successful track record producing 11 independent features and more than 50 shorts and documentaries, including recent European Film Award nominee Irina Palm and Sue Heel's School For Seduction. Now, Alderson is creating a ...
-
Features
United Kingdom - Planet Holywood
It is no coincidence producer Jo Gilbert is sitting in a new, swish Belfast hotel as she speaks to Screen - the setting is just one part of the radical redevelopment of the city centre."People don't know what to think about Belfast but it's incredibly stylish since the Good Friday ...
-
Features
Awards Countdown - BAFTA nominations - BAFTAs strike a serious tone
The blizzard of nominations for Atonement, There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men suggests a year in which the Orange British Academy Film Awards were devoid of surprises.Atonement for one always seemed destined for BAFTA glory. It has the literary pedigree that BAFTA voters like in a ...
-
Features
Awards Countdown - People - Awards people
JAVIER BARDEMThe actor tells Mike Goodridge about the challenges of playing a man with a black heart in No Country For Old MenAs Anton Chigurh, a lethal assassin with no conscience or humour who kills his way through the south-east US in the Coen brothers' No Country For Old Men, ...
-
Features
Production - Germany - Deutsche courage
The German film industry may never have looked so good. Last year, Germany hosted a record number of international and US productions and boasted a stunning array of local talent, including Oscar-winner Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives Of Others), Fatih Akin (The Edge Of Heaven) and Marc Rothemund (Sophie ...
-
Features
Production - Hungary - Feast or Famine'
Before the new facilities at Budapest's Korda Studios opened for business in 2007, Hungary was attracting more international footloose productions than the country's crews could handle. Thanks largely to its lauded 20% tax rebate on productions shooting in the country, the annual spend by film productions in Hungary has multiplied ...
-
Features
All quiet on the Eastern front
With the exception of Davis Films' comic-book adaptation Solomon Kane, which began filming on location in Prague in early January, the streets and sound stages of Eastern Europe are mostly silent right now. The US writers' strike is damaging the production business at all levels, from major facilities such as ...