Small MPU – Page 4283
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Reviews
Party Monster
Dir: Fenton Bailey & Randy Barbato. US. 2003. 98mins.Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, the documentary film-makers behind The Eyes Of Tammy Faye and prosperous production outfit World Of Wonder, made a film in 1998 called Party Monster, about the notorious club promoter Michael Alig who created the Club Kid scene ...
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News
Co-productions boost Czech release slate
Nearly half of all Czech films scheduled for release during 2003 are co-productions with Slovakia, the Republic's erstwhile partner in the former Czechoslovakia.One of the few female Czech directors, Michaela Pavlátová (pictured), makes her debut with Lassitude In Two, a psychological drama based on a novel by Slovak author Tina ...
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News
Forced exit for Tobis distribution head
Marlies Weber, head of distribution at Berlin-based Tobis Film, has been forced to vacate her position as of today.Speaking to Screendaily.com, Weber (pictured) said that she was "not going of her own free will" and does not yet have anything else lined up.Meanwhile, Magnus Vortmeyer, Tobis Film's head of press ...
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News
Golden Harvest takes The Grudge
Hong Kong studio Golden Harvest has become one of the first international distributors to sign on for Ghost House Pictures' remake of Japanese director Takashi Shimizu's The Grudge (Ju-On). The company has acquired Hong Kong and Malaysian rights to the film which will be the second production from Ghost House, ...
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News
Canada pursues commerce over culture
Ararat and Crash producer Robert Lantos is readying a series of big-budget films with international casts - in line with Canadian funding body Telefilm's aim to support films with box office potential.It has been almost a year since federal funding body Telefilm spelled out its aim of focusing on supporting ...
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News
Taipei film festival unveils 5th edition line-up
The Taipei Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its fifth edition (March 9-22) which includes a special focus on cinema from Australia and Japan. Among the eight films that will screen in the Australian New Current section are four from Tony Ayres, including last year's critical hit Walking On ...
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News
Merger mania ignites again in Hollywood
Sony's chief executive officer Nobuyuki Idei has denied any intention to sell either his music operations or his movie studios, insisting last night that they are "a cornerstone in our overall strategy.""We want to be very clear in stating that our entertainment businesses, Sony Music Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment, ...
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Reviews
Yes Nurse, No Nurse! (Ja Zuster, Nee Zuster)
Dir: Pieter Kramer. The Netherlands. 2002. 100mins.Busby Berkeley comes to Amsterdam in all-singing, all-dancing Dutch-language musical Yes Nurse, No Nurse!. Relentless innocence and Mary-Poppins optimism may bore the more cynical before the end, but it contains enough visual style and sheer kookiness to carry the majority through to the inevitable ...
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News
New films by Rohmer, Akerman and Fridriksson get Eurimages cash
New feature films by Eric Rohmer, Chantal Akerman and Fridrik Thor Fridriksson are among nine projects awarded over Euros 3.3m by Eurimages.Two projects were backed in the funding category for larger projects with commercial promise: Euros 700,000 for Didier and Thierry Poiraud's French-German-UK co-production Le Retour De James Bataille and ...
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News
Warner Bros signs Indonesian free TV deal
Warner BrosInternational Television Distribution (WBITD) has signed a multi-year deal withIndonesia's Pt Duta Visual Nusantara Tivi Tujuh for free televisionrights to a raft of pictures, television series, animated series, TV movies,miniseries and documentaries for broadcast on the company's channel TV7.The dealincludes broadcast rights to Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone, ...
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News
IMAX records first profitable year since 1999
IMAX Corporationhas reported its first profitable year since 1999, with annual revenues (endingDec 31 2002) of $130.7m compared to $118.7m in 2001. Fourth quarter revenueswere $37.3m compared to $33.9m for the same period the year before.Thecompany's co-chairmen and co-CEOs Richard L Gelfond and Bradley JWechsler said they expected IMAX to ...
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News
Palm signs on for Assayas Cannes pic demonlover
Chris Blackwell's PalmPictures has acquired all US and Caribbean rights to Olivier Assayas'thriller demonlover, with plansfor a theatrical release in the autumn followed by a DVD release in 2004.The multi-layered storycentres on a corporate mole who discovers an online torture chamber. ConnieNielson (Gladiator, One Hour Photo),Chloe Sevigny (Boys Don't Cry),Gina ...
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UK's BFI appoints new head
The British Film Institute (BFI) has appointed Amanda Nevill as director, the UK film and TV body announced on Friday.Nevill, who is currently head of the National Museum of Photography, Film and TV in Bradford, Yorkshire, will take up the post in June. The move has raised eyebrows as many ...
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Reviews
Facing Windows (La Finestra Di Fronte)
Dir: Ferzan Ozpetek. It/UK/Turkey/Port. 2003. 105mins.Ferzan Ozpetek is one of the few contemporary Italian directors who manages to straddle the arthouse-commercial divide. Born in Turkey, the director drew strongly on Anatolian themes in his first two films, The Turkish Bath (1997) and Harem Suare (1999), but with his last, 2001's ...
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News
Alliance, Canal Plus set for UK distribution pact
Alliance Atlantis and Canal Plus are close to finalising a deal for Alliance to handle UK distribution on a slate of high-profile English-language titles from Canal Plus's production operation, Le Studio Canal Plus.The anticipated deal is understood to cover six pictures, and is likely to include Kathryn Bigelow's The Weight ...
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News
THINKFilm buys Scherfig's Berlin hit Wilbur
THINKFilm has acquired all North American rights to Lone Scherfig's darkly humorous drama Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself. The film, which is her English-language debut, is Scherfig's next film after Italian For Beginners, which was a critical and commercial hit around the world including the US. Trust Film Sales handled ...
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News
New animation companies launched in Germany, Spain
MTM Medien & Television Muenchen, which has been nominated in the Foreign Language Film Academy Award category for Caroline Link's Nowhere In Africa is branching out into animation production.This follows plans by MTM and the animation production house Papa Loewe Filmproduktion to work together on the development of animation films.The ...
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News
Sex, History and Hinglish - Bollywood's new genres
The failure of several big-budget Indian films last year, both at home and abroad, has forced Indian filmmakers to experiment with new themes. A three-hour, big-budget Hindi movie of boy-meets-girl theme, with top stars, lavish sets, spectacular scenes set in New Zealand and Switzerland and extravagant song-and-dance numbers, costs about ...
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News
DreamWorks considering Cinar acquisition
DreamWorks SKG is one of several companies pondering the purchase of troubled Canadian animation house Cinar Corp, according to a report in Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper. Citing unnamed sources, the report says the studio is in league with California-based investment firm Triyar Capital and Michael Hirsh, the former CEO ...