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All articles by Geoffrey Macnab – Page 179
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News
BBC Films' slate includes US-set film by Lynne Ramsay
"We're in very bullishmood. We've got some great films," says head of BBC Films David Thompson. Threemonths ago, it was announced that the Beeb's investment in film production isset to rise from $17m to $26m a year, subject to the favourable settlement ofthe current licence fee negotiations.Here in Cannes, BBC ...
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News
Tartan picks up Invisible Waves from Fortissimo
UK distributor Tartan hastaken UK and Irish rights to Pen-ek Ratanaruang's thriller Invisible Waves fromFortissimo Film Sales.Invisible Waves first lappedup in the main competition in Berlin earlier this year. It also opened theBangkok Film Festival.The film is produced byFortissimo Films' Wouter Barendrecht and Michael J Werner and executiveproduced by Miky ...
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News
Danes and Cubans bed down with Marquez whores
The Danes and the Cubans are getting into bed together on ascreen adaptation of Nobel-prize winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez's mostrecent novel, Memories of My Melancholy Whores."The year I turned 90, I wanted to give myselfthe gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin," begins thenovel, which ...
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News
Moviehouse takes on sales for Jerusalema
London-based salesoutfit Moviehouse Entertainment has boarded the new South African film Jerusalema, by writer-director Ralph Ziman.The film is based on realevents and is set in contemporary Johannesburg. It tells of the rise and fallof a notorious Robin Hood gangster figure Lucky Kunene.Jerusalema began shooting onMay 8 and continues for 10 ...
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News
Shepperton Studios set to host Pullman film
The new UK tax credit looksto have already paid dividends, luring New Line's $150m adaptation of PhilipPullman's His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass away from the Czech Republic to Shepperton Studiosjust outside LondonThe prospect is bound toprovide a major boost to the British studio sector following a lengthy periodof uncertainty ...
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News
London Film Focus will feature a dozen world premieres
A dozen world premieres are among around 40 filmsscreening at this year's London UK Film Focus (LUFF). The third edition of the event runs from June 26-29,attracting distributors from around the world to see UK product. Among the titles likely to pique the curiosity of thebuyers are Life & Lyrics ...
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News
Haneke plans English remake of Funny Games
Revered Austrian auteurMichael Haneke is to take his English-language bow, it was announced in Cannesyesterday. He is remaking his 1997 film Funny Games, but the setting will now be the Hamptons. NaomiWatts is to star.The film is about amiddle-class family on holiday who are terrorised by two young men.Chris Coen ...
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UK financiers gear up to cash flow new tax credit
Nobody yet knows how the UKfilm tax credits (introduced last month) will work in practice, but there isalready evidence of a mini-stampede among British film financiers to cash flowthe new credit. This promises to be a highly lucrative, if short-term,business.One new company, IvanMcTaggart's Meteor Films, is being set up specifically ...
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News
Beyond takes on sales for Broomfield's Ghosts
Beyond Films is to handleworld sales on Ghosts, the newfeature written and directed by renowned British documentary maker NickBroomfield.Ghosts, Broomfield's first dramatic feature since DiamondSkulls, is based on the true storyof the Chinese illegal immigrants who were drowned while picking cockles in aBritish seaside town. The main characters are played ...
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Reviews
The Wind That Shakes The Barley
Dir: Ken Loach. Ire-UK-Ger-It-Sp. 2006.124mins.Given the turbulent events that it portrays, The Wind That Shakes TheBarley is a curiously detached affair. For all the intelligence and craftsmanshipthe director brings to his material, the film conspicuously fails to tug at theemotions in the way that might have been expected. Ken Loach ...
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News
Kasander options Chinese novel K The Art of Love
Prolific Rotterdam-basedproducer Kees Kasander has revealed details of his latest projects. Kasandermay be China-bound after optioning K The Art Of Love, the erotic 1930s-set novel by Hong Ying. He islooking for a Chinese director to helm the project.In Cannes this week, it wasannounced that Kasander will co-produce Kill Kill Faster ...
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News
Bondarchuk Jr to complete his father's And Quiet Flows The Don
Like father, like son. Fyodor Bondarchuk announced yesterday that he iscompleting his late dad's Sergei Bondarchuk's unfinished epic film And QuietFlows The Don.''Actor-director Sergei Bondarchuk, one of the legendary figures inpost-war Soviet cinema, originally shot And Quiet Flows The Don in 1992, twoyears before his death. An English-language adaptation of ...
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News
Weinsteins ring in Bell love story
The Weinstein Co will produce produce $20m love story,Alec & May - the US-set story ofthe Scottish inventor of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell.The project, developed by the UK's Headline Pictures,follows the romance between Bell, then a 28-year-old teacher and a 16-year-olddeaf girl."The telephone was the direct consequence of theirrelationship," ...
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News
Roeg's IFS adds London To Brighton to Cannes slate
Luc Roeg's Independent FilmSales (IFS) announced in Cannes that it will handle sales on London To Brighton,a British thriller about a runaway girl caught up in an undergroundprostitution ring. Vertigo will be releasing the film (currently in post-production)in the UK following its debut at an autumn festival later in the ...
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News
Intandem on board for sales of new Carry On film
Bawdy British comedyfranchise Carry On is beingrevived. Here in Cannes, London-based Intandem Films is introducing buyers to CarryOn London, the 32nd and latestinstalment in the long-running series that began way back in 1958 with CarryOn Sergeant.The film, now inpre-production, is being produced by Chris Chrisafis and directed by PeterRichardson. Shane ...
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Reviews
An Inconvenient Truth
Dir: Davis Guggenheim. US. 2006.98mins"I'm Al Gore. I used to be the next president of theUnited States... I don't find that particularly funny," former vice-presidentAl Gore declares early on in Davis Guggenheim's fascinating documentary,bounding on stage before one of his multi-media lectures about global warming.Gore is a contradictoryfigure, aloof and ...
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News
Act, Knatchbull acquire UK distributor Artificial Eye
In a further shake-up to the UK distribution market,Artificial Eye Film Company, for 30 years the UK's leading distributor of arthouse and foreign language films, has been acquired byAct Entertainment Group, owner of Curzon Cinemas, andKnatchbull Communications Group.Terms of the acquisition were not released.The deal comes just as Artificial Eye ...
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News
StudioCanal deal will help Optimum become bigger
Furtherdetails have emerged of how UK distributorOptimum Releasing is going to expand following its acquisition by French major,StudioCanal. Optimum'smanaging director Will Clarke refused to say how much StudioCanalpaid for the company he founded in 1999, but rival distributors werespeculating that it could have been as much as $31.7m (Euros 25m). ...
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News
Optimum deal marks shift in UK distribution
Studio Canal's acquisition of Optimum, just a few months after Lionsgate's takeover of Redbus,marks a major shift for the UK indie distributionbusiness. Not so long ago, it was a side of the industry that waswidely seen as over-stretched, cash-strapped and scrambling to stay afloat. Distributors were invariably to be heard ...
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Reviews
Confetti
Dir: Debbie Isitt. UK.2006. 100mins.A good-natured but uneven farce, Debbie Isitt's Confettipokes fun at the marriage industry, using a mockumentarystructure borrowed from Christopher Guest's BestIn Show - but with engaged couples instead of dogsin the limelight. Meanwhile, the deadpan humour and low-key acting style aredistinctively British, with a cast that ...