Small MPU – Page 3521
-
News
Profile:UK director Tom Hooper
In terms of scale, Tom Hooper may never top his recent feat of directing the nine-hour HBO mini-series John Adams.The historical epic shot for 110 days on a budget of $110m, with more than 200 speaking parts. 'It's like my Lord Of The Rings, except I don't have to do ...
-
Features
United Kingdom - Mother Care
Shane Meadows' Somers Town, after much praise at the Berlinale and awards at Tribeca and Edinburgh, has had an unusual path to screen. The genesis of the project was not with a seasoned writer or director, but from famed advertising agency Mother.Ad legend Robert Saville, one of the founders of ...
-
Features
Production - Armenia - The apricot revolution
For more than a century, Armenia's main export has been its people: men like MGM investor Kirk Kerkorian, who fled oppression and settled in Russia, France and North America. The country of 3.2 million people began post-Soviet independence in the early 1990s in the throes of a devastating earthquake and ...
-
News
In Focus:A hero's welcome
Modern Hollywood has had a thing for spandex tights and alter egos ever since Christopher Reeve launched into the Manhattan skyline in Warner Bros' 1978 hit Superman.While subsequent superhero adventures have met with varying degrees of success, there is a level of accomplishment and ambition in recent years that suggests ...
-
Features
New Projects - Graphic encounters
Iron Man 2Marvel Studios and Paramount return in 2010 with Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark/Iron Man and Jon Favreau once again at the helm. Downey Jr has also signed to play Sherlock Holmes, in a project based on a graphic novel, for Warner Bros.The AvengersNo relation to the 1998 ...
-
News
Home Entertainment: A bolt from the Blu'
When Toshiba announced in February it would stop developing high-definition DVD players, it marked the end of a format battle that looked like it might rival the VHS vs Betamax videotape war of the 1970s and 1980s.Toshiba's announcement cleared the way for Sony's Blu-ray to take the next generation of ...
-
Features
Online Distribution - The trouble with downloads
Opinion may be split on whether online downloads are the future of home entertainment but everyone agrees on the key limiting factor to the expansion of downloads: bandwidth."What we're waiting for is broader, more reliable, more ubiquitous bandwidth," says US analyst Roger Kay. "Video as a data type is as ...
-
Features
The American stream - Leading download sites in the US
Amazon UnboxThe big beast of internet shopping stepped into the movie downloading business when it set up Unbox in late 2006. It now boasts more than 5,000 movies for US users to rent or buy, though customers need to download its video-playing software. Rentals are mostly $3.99 and most purchases ...
-
Features
International - Cliff scales the heights
Nine new entries wrestled their way into Screen's international chart this week, with Japan, South Korea, India, Germany, China and France providing new films alongside the big Hollywood blockbusters.Japanese films continue to make their mark with two further entries opening in their home territory this week.Ponyo On The Cliff - ...
-
News
Korea's Cinema Service makes sales debut
One of Korea's largest producer-distributors, Cinema Service, is making its market debut as a film seller this week with a slate of nine pictures including local box office hit Bichunmoo.The $5m martial arts romance has scored 2.3 million admissions at the Korean box office. Shot in Shanghai with a Chinese ...
-
Features
The Critical View - War of words
The argument about possessory credits and the creative heft of the screenwriter is almost as old as the film industry itself.It predates the squabble between Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles over the writing credit on Citizen Kane - which the director wanted all for himself; it underpinned the on-set ...
-
News
Hong Kong's Media Asia takes back Infernal rights
Hong Kong's Media Asia has announced that it has retrieved rights to seven films it had previously licensed to UK-US distributor Tartan Group, including its hugely successful Infernal Affairs trilogy. In a legal notice, the Hong Kong company said that, as of July 4, it has terminated all licence agreements ...
-
News
Melbourne fest's financing market and fund to continue
The government of the Australian state of Victoria brought a smile to the faces of filmmakers attending the opening of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) tonight, by pledging $2.3m (A$2.4m) to extend the life of the festival's investment fund and financing market. 'We were not certain that funding would ...
-
News
Naked Of Defenses picks up top prize at Japan's Pia fest
Japanese director Masahide Ichii's Naked Of Defenses won the Grand Prix at the 30th edition of the Pia Film Festival (PFF), which ran from July 19 to 25 in Tokyo's Shibuya district. A total of 15 films, both feature-length and shorts, were selected to screen in competition from 601 submissions ...
-
News
Venice Days premieres include Aprahamian's Broken Lines
Czech director Bohdan Slama's A Country Teacher (VenkovskyUcitel) will have its international premiere at this year's Venice Dayssidebar, which is heavy on European and Eastern European films in thisyear's edition.A Country Teacher, sold by Wild Bunch, tells the story of a brilliantprofessor who moves to the Bohemian countryside in order ...
-
News
Council of Europe sponsors Sarajevo's main award
The Council of Europe has become the partner of the Sarajevo Film Festival and sponsor of the 'Heart of Sarajevo' award for the best feature film.Since 1988, the European Support Fund for the Co-production and Distribution of Creative Cinematographic and Audiovisual Works, or Eurimages, has worked within the Council of ...
-
News
Samantha Morton to direct drama for UK's Channel 4
Actress Samantha Morton will make her directorial debut on a Channel 4 television drama, The Unloved.The drama is a Channel 4 production with co-finance from regional screen agency EM Media through the European Regional Development Fund.The story is about a young girl growing up in a children's home.Morton plans to ...
-
News
Japanese box office plummets 13.7% in first half of 2008
Japanese box office earnings for the first half of 2008 totaled $743.54m (Y79.83bn), a 13.7% drop from the same period last year, according to figures reported by media trade publication Bunka Tsushin.The total comprises grosses of the the top 13 foreign and local distributors in the territory, representing approximately 95% ...
-
News
Sundance names documentary film-makers for Aug lab
The Sundance Documentary Composers and Story Lab has named the seven film-makers and six composers invited to the lab Aug 3-8 at the Sundance Resort in Utah.The lab, which will explore the creative process in sound and story and the role of film music in nonfiction storytelling, is a collaboration ...
-
News
Man On Wire takes British feature prize at third BritDoc
The UK's third BritDoc documentary festival wrapped on Friday (July 25) with James Marsh's Man On Wire continuing its festival awards spree by winning the British Feature Film Documentary Prize.Jerry Rothwell's Heavy Load - a film about a punk band with learning difficulties that was pitched at BritDoc in 2006 ...