All Asia articles – Page 558
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Iwo Jima tops Japan 's New Year holiday box office
Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima was the box office champion during the New Year's holiday period (Dec 23 - Jan 8) in Japan, passing the $30m (Y36.7bn) mark by the middle of last week and holding the top spot for five weeks. The Warner Bros release only lost its ...
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Yuya Yagira heads cast of Bandage Club adaptation
Yuya Yagira, the winner of the best actor award at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, has been cast in Toei's film adaptation of best-selling Japanese novel The Bandage Club. The film, which started shooting last week, is directed by Yukihiko Tsutsumi, whose credits include Ken Watanabe-starrer Memories Of Tomorrow. Satomi ...
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Volver, Lives, Labyrinth make Oscar shortlist of nine
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has named the nine films that have made it to the shortlist for the best foreign language Oscar.The films, listed in alphabetical order by country, are:Days Of Glory Algeria (dir Rachid Bouchareb)Water Canada (dir Deepa Mehta)After The Wedding Denmark (dir, Susanne Bier)Avenue ...
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China, MPA launch anti-piracy film competition
The Motion Picture Association (MPA) and the organisers of the 14th Beijing Student Film Festival (BSFF) are sponsoring a China-wide contest to select the best student-made short film on the theme 'Respect Copyrights, Stay Away from Piracy'. The contest will challenge students to take a fresh look at the value ...
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Adelaide festival to open with Rowland's Lucky Miles
Michael James Rowland's almost completed debut film Lucky Miles is to open the Adelaide Film Festival on Feb 22 while Rolf de Heer's Dr Plonk is to close the event on March 4. Festival director Katrina Sedgwick also announced today that Australia's newest capital city film festival will this year ...
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Controversial film Water secures release in India
Deepa Mehta's controversial and critically acclaimed Water will finally have an Indian release next month. The news was confirmed by Water's Indian distributor Ravi Chopra of BR Films, which made television show Mahabharata and feature films Baghban and Baabul. 'We have started work on the release strategy and should have ...
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Bali bombings project passes Indonesian censorship
The first Indonesian film to tackle the 2002 Bali bomb blasts, Long Road To Heaven produced by Nia Dinata, has passed local censorship despite its controversial subject matter. Inspired by true events and characters, the picture is a docudrama of the terrorism act and its aftermath. In October 2002, a ...
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Indian box office jumps 40% in 2006
Indian box office revenues increased by 40% last year in what may prove to be a landmark year.Films like Rang De Basanti, Fanaa, Krrish, Kabie Alvida Na Kehna, Phir Hera Pheri, Lage Raho Munnabhai and Dhoom 2 were the frontrunners. The cops-and-robbers action chase film, Dhoom 2, led the pack ...
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Pathfinder, Smokin' Aces hit international markets ahead of US
Fox International launches action adventure Pathfinder in four international territories this weekend in advance of its domestic opening on April 27; meanwhile Universal/UPI opens crime caper Smokin' Aces in the UK ahead of its US opening on Jan 26.The overseas-first opening policy is becoming more prevalent and was used last ...
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Hong Kong - Turtles can fly at Imagi
Once regarded as a surefire bet at the box office, 3D CG animation has become a riskier business, as more studios enter the fray and the novelty of the genre declines with a flood of releases.But long-time media and entertainment executive Douglas Glen had enough confidence in the business model ...
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Chambers heads to New South Wales
Tania Chambers has been named chief executive of the New South Wales Film and Television Office, the government film agency in the Australian state that hosts the most production in the territory. She will relocate to the east coast from the opposite side of the country, once she has stepped ...
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First Berlinale Panorama titles unveiled
New films by Hal Hartley (Fay Grim), Eytan Fox (The Bubble), Korea's Hong Sangsoo (Woman On The Beach), actress Julie Delpy (Two Days in Paris) and actor Antonio Banderas (Summer Rain) are among the titles so far confirmed for more than half of the programme for this year's Panorama at ...
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Arclight sets up Australian production office with US to follow
Sales agent Arclight Films has appointed former Instinct Entertainment producer Nigel Odell to set up a Melbourne-based office to produce and co-finance Australian films. It will establish a US production office in the near future under Harrison Kordestani, who is already based there. Arclight wants to work with bankable Australian ...
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Violin to be played as Korean-Chinese co-production
Korean entertainment company Vision Link Global is developing a $50m co-production entitled Melanie's Violin, based on Chinese author He Ning's novel of the same name, dubbed the 'Asian Schindler's List'. The company, which is headed by former M&A consultant Lee In-hyung, aims to raise 60% of the film's budget through ...
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Australia 's 2006 box-office grosses second highest on record
Australia's gross box office was $675.5m (A$866.609m) last year, a rise of 6% over 2005 and the second-highest year on record according to the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia (MPDAA). The best year to date for earnings was 2004 when $707.2m (A$907.2) was spent on cinema tickets. This figure ...
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Singapore bounces back with 6% box office increase
After a flat 2005, Singapore box office regained growth momentum in 2006 with a 6% year-on-year increase in total box office takings which amounted to $85.18m (S$131.08m) from 341 releases. As with previous years, Hollywood mega blockbusters ruled the box office. The top grossing film was Fox's X-Men: The Last ...
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US studios enjoy 41% box office increase in China
The US studios had a relatively good year in China in 2006, during which the 20 revenue-sharing films released in the country grossed $108.75m (RMB850m), an increase of 41% on the previous year. China 's total box office was $335.5m (RMB2.62bn) last year (see Screendaily, Jan 8) which gives the ...
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Korean admissions up by 15% marking tenth year of growth
Korean cinema admissions increased by 14.6% to 166 million in 2006, marking the tenth year of growth, according to figures released by leading Korean exhibitor CJ CGV. The admissions figure is the third highest in South Korean box office history and also marks the fifth consecutive year over the landmark ...
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Australia's Worthington scores lead role in Cameron's Avatar
Rising Australian star Sam Worthington has been cast in the lead role in the 3D action adventure Avatar, James Cameron's return to fiction film-making that begins shooting in April.Worthington, who won the Australian Film Institute's best lead actor award in 2004 for Somersault, will play an ex-marine who embarks on ...
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Afghanistan bans Toronto-premiered Indian film
The Government of Afganistan has banned the screening of Indian director Kabir Khan's debut feature film Kabul Express. 'The film has some sentences which were very offensive towards one of Afghanistan's ethnicities, namely the Hazara. For this reason it has been banned,' Najib Manalai, Afghanistan's minister of culture adviser, said ...