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All articles by Geoffrey Macnab – Page 189
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News
Sokurov's Sun to shine with The Works
In advance of what looks bound to be the busiest Berlinalefor British sales companies in recent memory, London-based The Works hasannounced it is handling international sales on Alexander Sokurov'sBerlin competition entry, The Sun. Set in occupied Japan at the end of the Second World War,the film examines the events surrounding ...
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Hanks options Cold Feet writer's Understudy
Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman's Playtone Productions hassnapped up film rights to The Understudy, the second novel from Britishwriter David Nicholls who is best known for his work on hit TV series ColdFeet. The Understudy is a romantic comedy about a failedactor and Nicholls is to write the screenplay himself. ...
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Fellowes to adapt best-selling novel Snobs
Oscar-winning British writerJulian Fellowes (Gosford Park) is to adapt his best-selling novel Snobsfor UK television - having been commissioned by the BBC's Gareth Neame.The novel, published lastyear, is a comedy about a middle-class woman on the make, trying to gatecrashinto high society circles. It is likely to be made into ...
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Random Harvest teams with Hammer, Winston on horror deal
In a move underliningthe growing market for quality, low-budget horror, British production andfinancing outfit Random Harvest is starting a new Enterprise InvestmentScheme (EIS) Company, Harvest PicturesIII, with Hammer Films and LA-based Stan Winston Productions.Harvest Pictures IIIwill back new horror films from Hammer, Stan Winston and Four Horsemen Films(Random Harvest's genre ...
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2004: A taxing year in the UK
It has been a taxing year. The Treasury's February'bombshell' outlawing tax partnerships such as Ingenious'Inside Track and Grosvenor Park's First Choice knocked a hole through thefinancing of many productions.In the wake of that decision, the emphasis was on damagelimitation. Though few could work out how the government's much-vaunted20% tax credits ...
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Marrakech mulls film market launch
The Marrakech International Film Festival is likely to setup its own market, artistic-director Bruno Barde has told ScreenDaily.com."We will organise a small market for theArabic countries," Barde said, but declined to give further details ofwhat form such a market might take.Put together in frantic haste in a littleunder three months, ...
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Alexander doesn't fit Hollywood formula, says Stone
Despite Alexander's failure to conquer the US,writer-director Oliver Stone was in bullish mood at the Marrakech Festival,where his three hour sword and sandal epic was presented earlier this week.Stone told the press that the film would nothave been possible to finance or shoot in the US. 'The script was just ...
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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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News
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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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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News
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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News
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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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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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 ...