All articles by Geoffrey Macnab – Page 187
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News
The Moon shines at IDFA
Despite the cloud cast over proceedings by the murder offilmmaker Theo Van Gogh earlier this month, the mood as the 17th InternationalAmsterdam Documentary Festival (IDFA) drew to an end at the weekend was upbeat.Audience figures were up to 120,000 (from 116,000 last year) and moreinternational visitors (2300) were in town ...
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IDFA debates free speech in wake of Van Gogh killing
IDFA, the world's biggest documentary festival, began on Thursday with a rousing address from festival director Ally Derks addressing the recent murder of the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh."Here in the Netherlands, we have been overwhelmed with disbelief," Derks said. Van Gogh's killing has caused a ferocious debate about freedom of ...
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...as 43 projects are presented at IDFA pitching market
Legendary US documentary maker Albert Maysles (Gimme Shelter) is among the 43 filmmakers presenting new projects at the Forum, the "pitching market" which starts today at the Amsterdam Documentary Festival (IDFA).120 commissioning editors representing 63 broadcasters are in attendance at the event.Maysles' project Hand-Held and From The Heart is a ...
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Reviews
A Way Of Life
Dir: AmmaAsante. UK. 2004. 91mins.A bruisingdrama in social realist mode, writer-director Amma Asante's A Way Of Lifetackles racism and anti-Muslim prejudice in a deprived town in South Wales.Asante's protagonists are disaffected teenagers, badly educated, strugglingwith poverty and unemployment, who blame a Turkish neighbour for theirpredicament.The film beginsin brutal fashion, with ...
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News
London Film Festival wraps on a high
Asthe London Film Festival closed last night with a screening of David O.Russell's I Heart Huckabees, the festival organisers were claiming thatthis has been the best attended LFF yet.There were around 150 sell-outs and ticket sales, at over 102,000, were up 3% on last year's figures. LFF artistic director Sandra ...
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Reviews
Frozen
Dir: Juliet McKoen.UK-Den. 2004. 90minsWintry and melancholic, writer-director Juliet McKoen'sdebut feature is a mood piece, exploring loss and obsession. Despite somestarkly beautiful imagery, it's a strangely cumbersome affair which soon beginsto sink under the weight of its own symbolism.McKoen has an eye for apoetic shot but is dragged down by ...
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Direct Cinema 'godfathers' lined up for IDFA fest
FrederickWiseman, Albert Maysles, D.A. Pennebaker, Richard Leacock and Robert Drew, thelegendary 'godfathers' of the Direct Cinema movement, are all toattend the seventeenth IDFA, the world's biggest documentary festival, inAmsterdam next month.They will be taking part in a special debate about thelegacy of Direct Cinema, which revolutionised documentary in the 60s ...
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BAFTA voters prepare for 'mystifying' campaign season
BAFTA voters are preparing for 'mystifying' campaignseason in the UK following the delay in plans to distribute anti-piracy DVDplayers to every BAFTA member.The move has led to predictions in certain quarters thatthe late arrival of the DVD players will cause a repeat of last year's chaosamong film voting members as ...
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Reviews
Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason
Dir: Beeban KidronUK-US-Fr 2004 107minsBridget Jones is back, as fretful and neurotic as ever,in an expertly crafted (if rather soulless) sequel which is likely to hit allthe right buttons for Working Title. Renee Zelwegger again excels as the podgy,thirtysomething London singleton with the ineffably messy love life. She is fedplenty ...
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Reviews
Bullet Boy
Dir: Saul Dibb. UK. 2004.91minsA low-budget blackBritish film with energy and attitude, Bullet Boy is among the moreinvigorating UK movie debuts of recent years. In his first feature, directorSaul Dibb (best known as a documentary maker) uses his north London locationsin eerie, atmospheric fashion and manages to deal with gun ...
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News
UK Film Council chief takes on 'merchants of gloom'
UKFilm Council CEO John Woodward yesterday launched an outspoken attack on the'merchants of gloom' who continually snipe and spread bad news aboutthe British film industry.Woodward, giving a keynote speech at ScreenInternational's UK Film Finance Summit, insisted that the UK industry isperceived throughout the world as 'dynamic, entrepreneurial, internationalin outlook, clever ...
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News
Cassandra joins burgeoning FAME slate
Saul Metzstein (Late Night Shopping) is to direct Cassandra At The Wedding for Film andMusic Entertainment (FAME), the prolific UK-based production outfit run by SamTaylor and Mike Downey. Written by Peter MIlligan, Cassandra is a comedy about two identical female twins whosepersonalities are very different.This will be Metzstein'ssecond film with ...
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Reviews
Butterfly (Hu Die)
Dir: Yan Yan Mak, HongKong. 2004. 124minsA well-crafted butpainfully earnest lesbian coming-of-age drama, Hu Die attempts inunconvincing fashion to combine the personal and the political. Using flashbackand newsreel footage, it makes constant reference to the protests leading up tothe massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989, when students stood up against ...
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News
Joseph joins Udwin's Revolution
Francesca Joseph (TomorrowLa Scala) has been confirmed as director of Mrs Ratcliffe's Revolution,the latest feature from East Is East producer Leslee Udwin.Scripted by Peter Straughan and Bridget O'Connor, the film is a bittersweetcomedy based on the true story of an ardent Marxist from the north of Englandwho takes his family ...
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London Film Festival to launch 'mini-market'
The Times bfi London Film Festival (Oct 20-Nov 4) is set tostage its own, unofficial mini-market.Fortissimo,Celluloid Dreams, Wild Bunch, Bavaria Film and Trust are among theinternational sales agents already confirmed to attend the festival, which willbe organising industry screenings at London's Curzon Soho from Oct 25- 27. Thesales agents, all ...
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Reviews
Bride And Prejudice
Dir: Gurinder Chadha.UK-India-US. 2004 111mins.Bollywood spectacle andBritish comedy of manners collide head on in Gurinder Chadha's Bride AndPrejudice, an entertaining if wildly uneven updating of Jane Austen'snovel.Chadha throws Indian,English and American characters into the mix, cheerfully trading in allavailable national stereotypes as she goes. Much grates. The direction is oftensurprisingly ...
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Chomet readies Tati screenplay for Scottish shoot
Oscar-nominated Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets OfBelleville) is to direct an animatedversion of a screenplay by legendary French comedian Jacques Tati.Called The Illusionist,it will be produced in Edinburgh - where Chomet recently set up shop -by Mark Cousinsof 4Ways Films. Sally Chomet will co-produce through Studio Django.Other partners include Les Films ...
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4Way lines up Western Story
4Way Pictures, the UK-based company co-run by Antonia Bird,Mark Cousins, Robert Carlyle and Irvine Welsh, has announced details of ahandful of new projects.The company has now boarded A Western Story, an epicUS coming-of-age love story scripted by Naomi Wallace (Lawn Dogs). Birdwill direct the film, which will be a UK/US ...
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Reviews
Wimbledon
Richard Loncraine, UK/US 2004, 97 minsRichard Curtis maynot have written Wimbledon but hisinfluence is evident in almost every scene of the film. As in Notting Hill and Four Weddings, a charming but stuttering Brit (in this case, ajourneyman tennis player) falls in love with a tougher, more worldly wiseAmerican. We're ...
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Pinewood confirmed for Malick's New World
In recent years, severalbig-name US auteurs have beaten a path to Britain. Robert Altman shot Gosford Park in the Home Counties. WoodyAllen has recently completed a film in London. Now, Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line, Badlands, Days Of Heaven)is UK-bound.A spokesperson forPinewood Studios has confirmed that Malick has booked ...