All Toronto articles – Page 158
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ReviewsDean Spanley (2008)
Dir. Toa Fraser. New Zealand/UK. 2008. 99mins.New Zealand director Toa Fraser’s Dean Spanley overcomes an uncertain and sketchy opening section to register as a moving and visually wondrous evocation of magic and imagination. The movie’s tonal shifts are fairly abrupt and the first third is frustratingly ...
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Lionsgate UK buys Caine-starrer Harry Brown from HanWay
Lionsgate UK has acquired the distribution rights to Harry Brown, being produced by Matthew Vaughn and Kris Thykier's MARV Films.HanWay Films is selling the project worldwide and handled the Lionsgate deal for MARV.Michael Caine has come on board to play the title role, opposite Emily Mortimer. Gary Young wrote the ...
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Fortissimo strikes Gigantic French deal with La Fabrique De Films.
Fortissimo Films has closed an all-rights French deal for Toronto title Gigantic to La Fabrique De Films.Matt Aselton directed the Killer Films and Epoch Films production, which has its world premiere Monday in Discovery.The surreal love story stars Zooey Deschanel, Paul Dano and John Goodman.Fortissimo EVP of International Sales Nicole ...
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Burns gets CTV backing for My Canada feature series
Toronto-based producer Michael Burns has teamed with Canada's largest private broadcaster CTV in the development of My Canada, a series of director-narrated documentary features after the fashion of Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg. Burns, who envisioned the series and commissioned Maddin, has enlisted top Canadian directors to create their own personal ...
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Media Luna adds five titles including Katia's Sister
Sales company Media Luna Entertainment has added five new titles to its Toronto lineup, including Mijke de Jong's Katia's Sister (Het Zusie Van Katia) which will have its North American premiere in Toronto tonight.De Jong's intimate portrait of a 13-year-old girl living in Amsterdam who loses her Russian mother and ...
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Magnolia takes North American rights to Julia from StudioCanal
StudioCanal has announced a North American sale on Erick Zonca's Julia. Magnolia Pictures has taken the film which stars Tilda Swinton. Julia was released earlier this year by StudioCanal in France and has sold to some 23 territories including Germany's Kinowelt, Spain's Verigo and the UK's Curzon Artificial Eye. In ...
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The Works rocks with UK rights to Anvil!
The Works UK Distribution has taken all UK rights to Sacha Gervasi's rockumnetary Anvil! The Story Of Anvil.The deal was sealed by the Works UK Distribution's managing director Mick Southworth and director of marketing Laurence Gornall, and CAA's Micah Green and Brian Kavanagh-Jones.The film is about Toronto-based metal band Anvil, ...
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Venice Film Festival confirms permanent date change
The 65th Venice Film Festival artistic director Marco Muller has confirmed that next year's festival will open later, on September 2. More significantly, he said that the shift to the first Wednesday in September would be a permanent one. That means that, while the next two years will not see ...
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Generator stirs up Ghost Machine in Belfast
New UK genre production outfit Generator Entertainment continues to build its busy slate with principal photography starting yesterday (Friday) on Chris Hartwill's debut feature Ghost Machine.The supernatural thriller stars Sean Faris, Rachael Taylor, Luke Ford and Richard Dormer.Anchor Bay Entertainment has US distribution rights and worldwide sales are being handled ...
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ReviewsGhost Town
Dir: David Koepp. USA. 2008. 103 mins.A minor studio comedy notable as the first Hollywood starring vehicle for UK comic Ricky Gervais, Ghost Town takes a formulaic story about a curmudgeon learning to love and spices it up with some Gervais-style sarcasm and smartass dialogue. Making ...
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ReviewsSauna
Dir: Antti-Jussi Annila. Finland. 2008. 83mins.Finnish director Antti-Jussi Annila (Jade Warrior) invokes slavishly two masters, Andrei Tarkovsky and Stanley Kubrick, with this intensely baroque and religion-inflected period horror movie. The severely grotesque atmosphere and mannered style suffocate the promising ideas and results in a dramatically incoherent ...
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ReviewsThe Secret Life Of Bees
Dir: Gina Prince-Bythewood. USA. 2008. 110 minsInspirational life lessons abound in The Secret Life Of Bees, a wholesome, heartwarming version of the Sue Monk Kidd bestseller. The mixture of personal heartache and social history is handled with tender loving care, but is so sentimental and sermonising ...
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Celluloid kicks off Toronto with busy sales for Venice titles
Celluloid Dreams has closed a number of deals on Venice/Toronto titles Achilles And The Tortoise and Mark Of An Angel, plus a number of key deals on Venice title Birdwatchers.Safy Nebbou's French thriller Mark Of An Angel has sold to the UK (Metrodome), Greece (Odeon), Canada (Seville), and Switzerland (Xenix). ...
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BackUp launches new funding scheme with indie distributors
French film financing agency BackUp Films has created a new funding scheme intended to co-acquire distribution rights alongside independent distributors. The venture, entitled Districup, will share risk with distributors while the distributors will have the opportunity to own all of the co-acquired rights following the first exploitation cycle.In its first ...
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Memento adds sales on Goodbye Solo to Benelux, Switzerland
Memento Films International has generated strong buzz on Venice Horizons title Goodbye Solo with sales to Imagine in Benelux and Xenix in Switzerland. Following its premiere in Venice, the film is also being pursued with offers from France, Portugal, Greece and Italy among others.Ramin Bahrani's third feature will hit Toronto ...