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All Features articles – Page 492
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Features
United Kingdom - Making his beds
In 2005, "a bit exhausted" by the script development on his new feature, Unmade Beds, writer-director Alexis Dos Santos travelled to his native Argentina to shoot an experimental project.A 17-page storyline and improvised performances from teenage actors turned into the $314,000 (EUR200,000) feature Glue, a Spanish-language naturalistic tale of small-town ...
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Features
Spain - Box office - Biting back at the bootlegs
Whether the problem lies with piracy or mediocre product, Spanish admissions and DVD revenue took a tumble last year as audiences found other ways to fill their leisure time. Although the territory's annual per capita cinema admissions remain higher than in the UK, Italy or Germany, they plunged by 18% ...
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Features
United states - Profit Sharing
Nestled in the bustling West Los Angeles neighbourhood of Westwood lies a company that may well become a friend to stars, directors and producers long after their careers have waned.That is not to say that Content Partners, the 2006 brainchild of accountant and former Brillstein-Grey CFO Steve Blume and longtime ...
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Features
International - Making waves
Germany's Die Welle was the highest non-US entry in the international top 40 this weekend with $3.5m, falling just shy of the top 10.The drama, distributed by Constantin Film, played on 317 screens for a $10,986 screen average, the second highest of the weekend. The film, based on Todd Strasser's ...
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Features
The International view - Indecent proposal
There is a tendency at events of the nature of ShoWest - the largest congregation of family-rated film exhibitors - to offer advice. The agenda is rife with forums that allow one to wax philosophical, from panels with crystal ball premises, to homage and tributes that turn the spotlight on ...
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Features
United Kingdom - For the very first time
When Madonna unveiled Filth & Wisdom on February 13 in the Berlinale's Panorama programme, most critics were fairly harsh but the film's screenings were sold out and the project became one of the festival's talking points - not bad for a first-time director.Even as a household name, Madonna tried to ...
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Features
In Focus - Slate financing - Storm Warning
By its nature, the film industry is predacious, but irresistible to investors. From its earliest days, the film industry has relied successfully on outsiders to spread its capital and mitigate the high risk of producing and distributing movies.Despite all the risks, and well-known stories of investor losses in the past, ...
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Features
Editorial - Screen says Monte carlo and bust
Wall Street's death spiral has claimed its biggest victim so far with the collapse of investment bank Bear Stearns. Like so many other financial institutions engulfed in the mortgage meltdown, Bear Stearns was also a film financer; as is its new owner, JP Morgan Chase. Now the question is, when ...
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Features
United States - Under The Starz Sign
Fate brought US producer Scott Einbinder and German producer and investment banker Ingo Vollkammer together, but everything since then has followed a clear design.The founders of Los Angeles-based Leomax Entertainment and its genre label Indigomotion, both of which are backed through Zurich-based parent company Leomax AG, met through mutual acquaintance ...
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Features
Production - On location - Scene stealer
Iceland boasts some of the most striking landscapes on earth, is equidistant from the US East Coast and continental Europe and offers extreme daylight in summer and extreme darkness in winter. Locations range from Reykjavik's trendy bars to active volcanoes, geothermal hot springs and Europe's largest glacier.More than 30 international ...
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Features
Production - Iceland - White hot
Iceland punches above its weight in the film world, considering the number of film-makers and film-goers per capita in this small, isolated nation. The country's reputation is on the up thanks to increasingly high-profile work from the likes of Baltasar Kormakur, whose acclaimed thriller Jar City was launched in the ...
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Features
Production - The film-makers - Youth movement
NABIL AYOUCHAyouch first came to attention in 2000 with his second feature, Ali Zaoua, Prince Of The Streets, a drama about children in Casablanca which won international prizes from St Louis to Stockholm. The latest title from the film-maker, whose mother is French-Jewish and father is Moroccan-Muslim, is Whatever Lola ...
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Features
In focus - Financing - Filming in hard times
The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer's annual budget has been watched with trepidation by the film industry in recent years. The biggest change was the dramatic overhaul of the tax system that ended the sale-and-leaseback era.But in hindsight Gordon Brown, now the prime minister, made perhaps the most significant gesture ...
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Features
Editorial - Don't rely on the numbers
One of the 60th anniversaries that will go largely unnoticed this year is New Zealand economist Bill Phillips' invention of an economic calculating device called Moniac.The Moniac is an ingenious proto-computer that promised to predict scientifically a nation's economic fortunes. It opened and closed valves that released water into tubes, ...
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Features
Mapp's Direction
Christopher Mapp, managing director of Australia's Omnilab Group, has much resting on The Bank Job, which opened in the UK on February 28 and in the US on March 7. The film is the biggest and most international of several projects the ambitious company has helped finance in the past ...
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Features
International - A French Collection
French comedy Bienvenue Chez Les Ch'tis enjoyed its second weekend at number one, taking an impressive $29.8m from three territories while keeping new entry 10,000 BC at bay.Ch'tis fell a mere 8% over the three-day period and played on 905 screens for a whopping $32,916 screen average, the highest of ...
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Features
The big kick-off
With a tale that echoes their documentary In The Hands Of The Gods, the four young Brits who make up film-making collective Fulwell 73 set out to achieve their dream - and ended up busking their way to success on little more than a wing and a prayer.Brothers Gabe and ...
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Features
Box office: Data - The critical view - Bad moon rising
At this year's Berlinale, I found myself pitching an idea for a script I'll probably never write to an old friend who is now a leading British producer. I felt a bit guilty: this was supposed to be his one non-working lunch of the festival, and there was me turning ...
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Features
United Kingdom - Political Animal
Cinema is about telling human stories and the politics need to be in the back." Those words may come as a surprise from Salford-born director Pete Travis, whose last two feature films are powerful political dramas.In 2004, his debut feature, Omagh, followed a family in the aftermath of the 1998 ...
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Features
International - France plays joker
French films accounted for nearly a quarter of the international top 40 revenue this weekend, spearheaded by a whopping $32.5m opening from top film Bienvenue Chez Les Ch'tis.The comedy, released through Pathe, played on 838 screens and boasted the highest screen average of the year so far with a mammoth ...