All articles by Melanie Rodier – Page 16
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ITALY 17 May
Eagle Pictures' South Korean horror flick, Phone, opened at number two in Italy,grossing $662,918 on what proved to be a rather lukewarm weekend at the localbox office.Ahn Byung-ki's Phone,which focuses on a twenty-year-old woman who is terrified by the incessantringing of her cell phone in a deserted metro station, opened ...
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Boorman heads Rai Cinemas' English-language drive
Italy's Rai Cinema is liningup a John Boorman Roman epic as part of move to bankroll a slate of Englishlanguage features, and is also backing new Italian projects from Cannesveterans Marco Bellocchio and Pupi Avati.John Boorman is in talks todirect an adaptation of Marguerite Yourcenar's historical novel, Memoirs OfHadrian, a ...
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Italy still struggling to secure summer releases
Despite the Italian industry's sustained efforts, the localbox office summer season has once again failed to properly take-off, withupcoming 2004 summer releases few and far between.The Italian box office will benefit from the day and daterelease of three Hollywood juggernauts before the summer officially kicks in,all of which will be ...
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ITALY 10 May
As the end of Italy's eight-month box office seasonapproaches, distributors unleashed a massive seven new releases last weekend.UIP's monster movie Van Helsing opened with a bang atnumber one at the Italian box office, grossing $3,554,207 from 439 screens foran astounding average of $8,096 per screen.However, none of the other new ...
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ITALY 7 May
Kill Bill Vol.2 shed almost half its earnings in Italy on its secondweekend, as it handed over the box office crown to Eagle Pictures' dance movie Honey, which grossed $1,125,234 from 262 screens for ascreen average of $4,295.BVI's earnings for Quentin Tarantino'saction movie fell a drastic 46%, as it registered ...
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Rai Cinema rocked by political appointments
Franco Scaglia, a former RAI manager, has been named thenew president of RAI Cinema, in a series of controversial politicalappointments at RAI which have led the broadcaster's president, LucianaAnnunziata, to dramatically resign.FrancoScaglia, a writer and former vice-president of the broadcaster's satellitechannel RAI Sat, will replace film director Giuliano Montaldo, who ...
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Italy's Cinecitta and Roma studios in first ever collaboration
Brian De Palma's upcoming movie, The Black Dahlia,will start shooting this summer at Cinecitta Studios and Roma Studios, markingthe first ever collaboration between Italy's two biggest studios.An adaptation of James Ellroy's classic noir novel, TheBlack Dahlia is set in 1940s Los Angeles and tells the story of two copswho investigate ...
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Istituto Luce beefs up its international production slate
Italy's Istituto Luce is beefing up its internationalproduction slate with several high-profile co-productions, including AbelFerrara's Go Go Tales and Brad Mirman's The Shadow Dancer withHarvey Keitel and Giancarlo Giannini.French production outfit, Euro American, has boarded GoGo Tales, a Euros 5m comedy set in a night-club, which is being produced byIstituto ...
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... as new artistic director's vision is approved
The Venice Biennale has cast aside the political turmoil which had whipped up on the Lido shores a couple of weeks ago, to confirm Marco Mueller's four-year contract to head the Venice Film Festival (Sept 1-11,2004) while also approving his new vision for the world's oldest festival.As such, the Biennale ...
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New Italian films tipped for Venice selection
As Venice's newartistic director Marco Mueller steams ahead to gather a high profile line-upfor the 61st edition of the festival, bets are already out on which Italianfilms could potentially make the cut.Among these is thenew film by popular Italian director Carlo Mazzacurati, La Relazione,which is currently shooting and is co-produced ...
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ITALY 28 April
BVI's KillBill Vol. 2 knocked The Passion Of The Christ off the top spot atthe Italian box office last weekend. The Quentin Tarantino picture opened on331 screens, earning $1,811,276 for a solid if unspectacular average of $5,472per screen.Eagle Pictures'Passion registered a further $1,346,435 from 485 screens on its thirdweekend - ...
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Best Of Youth director cooks up Kipling drama
Hot Italian director Marco Tullio Giordana, whose last film, The Best of Youth, won Un Certain Regard last year and has swept all the Italian awards, is currently preparing his next film.A drama named Quando Sei Nato (literally, When You Were Born), it is inspired by Rudyard Kipling's classic adventure ...
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500,000 admissions for Italian film without a distributor
An Italian film without theatrical distribution entitled Il Natale Rubato (The Stolen Christmas) has become a sensation, after it emerged that the self-financed picture has already racked up a massive 500,000 admissions in Italy on an "underground" exhibition circuit.While a recent report revealed that 30 Italian films are currently in ...
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ITALY 20 April
The Passion Of The Christ has grossed a massive $18,859,373 at the Italian box office, less than two weeks after its Easter release. Distributed by Eagle Pictures on 538 screens, Mel Gibson's picture shed 42% of its earnings on its second weekend, but still registered the weekend's highest per screen ...
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Venice reverts to single Golden Lion competition
Venice is reverting back to its single Golden Lioncompetition, cutting back by half the number of films that have screened on theLido in the past three years, newly appointed festival chief Marco Muellerannounced on Thursday.Mueller said the newly streamlined festival will enableindustry professionals and critics to fully focus their attention ...
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Best Of Youth dominates David Di Donatellos
Marco Tullio Giordana'ssix-hour epic The Best of Youthwon the lion's share of David di Donatello awards, Italy's most prestigiousfilm accolade, during a ceremony whose live broadcast on Rai-uno wasdramatically cut short by reports that one of four Italians currently heldhostage in Iraq has been killed.Giordana's drama, whichchronicles the lives of ...
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Italian cinema hit by distribution bottleneck
New research shows that 30 completed Italian films are currently in limbo, still searching for a distributor or simply waiting to be released.Among the Italian market's self-described "frozen" films are Egidio Eronico's Rua Alguem, which stars Charlton Heston and F. Murray Abraham, and Fiorella Infascelli's Il Vestito da Sposa with ...
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Massive marketing push for Passion in Italy
Eagle Pictures' head of marketing, Antonio Adinolfi, has spent Euros 2.5m to publicise Mel Gibson's Passion Of The Christ, which is released in Italy today, Wednesday (April 7).The figure, which is huge compared to the usual marketing budget of Italian indie distributors, has been spent mainly on TV advertisements and ...
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Zeffirelli tipped for presidency role at RAI Cinema
Italian director Franco Zeffirelli is expected to soon be named the new president of Rai Cinema, the film arm of state broadcaster RAI.Zeffirelli was approached, he says, both by RAI CEO Flavio Cattaneo, and by prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who owns Rai Cinema's rival Medusa and Mediaset. "So many people ...
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Best Of Youth sweeps Italian critics' prizes
Marco Tullio Giordana's epic The Best of Youth has swept the Nastri d'Argento awards, winning seven of the prestigious Critics' prizes, including best director, best screenplay and two collective awards for its ensemble cast.The Best Of Youth, which won Un Certain Regard at Cannes last year, is a six hour ...