All articles by Wendy Mitchell – Page 4
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News
Ealing goes gravedigging with John Landis comedy
John Landis will direct black comedy Burke And Hare for Ealing Studios and Fragile Films.Based on a true story, Burke And Hare is about two 19th century graverobbers who find a lucrative business providing cadavers for an Edinburgh medical school. Piers Ashworth and Nick Moorcroft, who previously wrote Ealing hit ...
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News
MercuryMedia strikes BBC deal for debt doc IOUSA
London-based MercuryMedia has struck a UK television deal with the BBC's current affairs strand This World for IOUSA.Patrick Creadon's Sundance-selected documentary feature has its UK premiere at this week's Sheffield Doc/Fest.IOUSA is about America's growing national debt and its consequences.Here at AFM, the film screens today and tomorrow for Cinema ...
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News
IFC Festival Direct moves into High Point's Left Bank
High Point Films continues its AFM sales with IFC Festival Direct taking North American rights to chiller Left Bank.The deal was struck with High Point's director of sales Elisar Cabrera and IFC manager of acquisitions Jeff Deutchman.Left Bank is the feature debut of Belgian director Pieter van Hees, part of ...
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News
Bankside strikes US Baker deal with Panorama
UK-based Bankside Films has kicked off the AFM by announcing that Panorama Entertainment has taken all US rights to Gareth Lewis' The Baker.Gareth's brother Damian Lewis stars with Kate Ashfield and Michael Gambon. The comedy is about a hitman who hides out in a remote village where locals mistake him ...
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News
Intandem rocks with Bendelack's Sweet Baby Jesus
London-based Intandem Films has taken on worldwide rights for Steve Bendelack's new comedy Sweet Baby Jesus. The cast will include Lily Tomlin, Tom Green, Melanie Griffith, Michael McKean, Alison Pill (Milk), and Sean Brosnan (Laws Of Attraction).The ensemble comedy revisits the story of the Nativity set in 1970s Bethlehem, Maryland. ...
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News
Geoffrey Rush sings along with Bankside's Bran Nue Dae
Geoffrey Rush has signed on to lead the cast of Bran Nue Dae, which Bankside Films is selling here. Fellow Australian actors Ernie Dingo, Missy Higgins and Dan Sultan will also star in the feature adaptation of the popular Australian stage musical. Rachel Perkins co-writes and directs.Principal photography started in ...
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News
Goalpost starts sales on Jean Charles de Menezes story Brazuca
Brazuca, the Jean Charles de Menezes project formerly known as Leave To Remain or Jean Charles, has finished principal photography after shooting in both the UK and Brazil.UK-based Goalpost Film is launching international sales here at the AFM, and Imagem Group will handle Latin American sales. The film will be ...
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News
High Point strikes North American deal with BFS for The Race
High Point Films is kicking off AFM with a North American pre-sale for its new family feature The Race. BFS Entertainment has pre-bought all North American rights. Colm Meaney, Susan Lynch and Niamh McGirr star in the story of the young daughter of poor farmers who dreams of becoming a ...
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News
Intandem signs on for $25m supernatural thriller Mortis Rex
UK-based Intandem Films has taken on world rights for and will executive produce supernatural action thriller Mortis Rex.The film will mark the directorial debut of Peter Briggs, who was one of the writers on Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy and has been a writer-for-hire for studio films.The $25m project will shoot ...
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News
HanWay sees Afterlife with Gurinder Chadha
HanWay Films is starting worldwide sales here at the AFM on Gurinder Chadha's next film, It's A Wonderful Afterlife. The family comedy will start shooting in February 2009.Chadha bills the project as My Big Fat Greek Wedding meets Shaun Of The Dead. The film is set in multi-cultural London, where ...
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NewsMarket preview: American Film Market
Across the US, the buzzwords in store windows and nightly newscasts are slashed prices, bargains andcost-cutting. Yet the rallying cry ahead of this year’s American Film Market (AFM), which runs November5-12, is ‘bigger is better’.
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News
Profile: Film Movement
With many old-school distributors worrying how new technologies could eat into their theatrical models, it is safe to say a company like Film Movement has all its bases covered.The New York-based firm launched in early 2003 with the unique proposition of distributing one arthouse film per month on DVD to ...
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Profile: Nick Fraser, editor of BBC's Storyville
The economy of docs is more fragile than it was five years ago,' says Nick Fraser, one of the world's key players in the field as the editor of the BBC's Storyville, the public broadcaster's renowned international documentary strand. 'The promise has been fulfilled in the quality of titles but ...
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Features
AFM buzz - The UK
Following a quiet Cannes, the UK had a particularly strong Toronto with 22 features in the programme. The AFM will be the first official market for many of the Toronto premieres. They include the documentary Sounds Like Teen Spirit: A Popumentary for Intandem, The Secret Of Moonacre for Velvet Octopus, ...
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Features
Denmark - Madsen burns bright
Ole Christian Madsen, director of Danish smash Flame & Citron, is modest about the remarkable success of his Second World War epic which has grossed more than $9m at the local box office, and is the most popular Danish film for 10 years."I'm surprised it did so well in Denmark," ...
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News
In Focus: How To Lose Friends & Alienate People.
Journalist Toby Young has a reputation for being an obnoxious cad with few likeable qualities - this is a man who brought a stripper to the office on Bring Your Daughter To Work Day. So reinventing Young for a big-screen version of his memoirs How To Lose Friends & Alienate ...
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Features
Australia - Blind Ambition
Matthew Newton has a passion for stories about male relationships. Three Blind Mice, which he wrote, directed and starred in, follows three young Australian navy officers who have one last night in Sydney before going to Iraq. It won a special commendation when it premiered at the Sydney Film Festival ...
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Features
United Kingdom - Spirit of the ages
Jamie J Johnson, a former Screen International Star of Tomorrow, had an unusual tour of Europe making his debut feature documentary, Sounds Like Teen Spirit: A Popumentary, which had its world premiere in Toronto.The film, about several contestants in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, took Johnson to Romania, Belarus, Ukraine, ...
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News
High Point takes on Pieter van Hees' debut horror Left Bank
High Point Films has taken on world rights outside of Benelux to Pieter van Hees' debut feature Left Bank.The psychological horror film, in the vein of Rosemary's Baby and The Wicker Man, is about a young athlete who moves into her new boyfriend's disturbing apartment block.The film showed in Edinburgh, ...
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News
Vue to host one-night Arctic Monkeys film screening
Vue and other independent cinemas in the UK will host a special one-night presentation on Oct 14 of Arctic Monkey At The Apollo, a Warp Films Production presented by Warp Films, Domino and Bang Bang.Vue will host the night in 33 venues across the UK, alongside other cinemas including the ...