All articles by Patrick Frater – Page 40
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News
Venice to host amfAR AIDS benefit
The Venice festival (Aug 29 - Sept 8) will once again be home to an amfAR spectacular raising money for AIDS research. Stars expected to attend include Shirley Bassey, Milla Jovovich and the evening's host Lauren Bacall. It will be co-chaired by Paolo Bulgari, Lady Helen Taylor, Venice festival director ...
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News
Consumer-driven communications spending will drive industry growth
Veronis Suhler Stevenson, the venerable media merchant bank, forecasts that communications spending will begin to recover in the second half of this year and continue at an annual rate of 5.5% until 2006. Veronis Suhler Stevenson's annual Communications Industry Forecast (CIF) describes the worst recession for the US media industry ...
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News
Saban Entertainment offers top price in Kirch Media auction
Saban Entertainment, the US television production and distribution group, is understood to have submitted the highest bid of around Euros2.6bn for the assets of the insolvent KirchMedia.French broadcaster TF1 is understood to have put in the next richest bid, worth Euros2.2bn, according to German finance magazine Focus. The consortium bid ...
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News
Ormieres to shine for Moonstone
Noted French producer Jean-Luc Ormieres has been appointed artistic director of Moonstone International, the Edinburgh-based training programme. Ormieres, whose credits include Chantal Akerman's A Couch In New York, Stijn Coninx's Daens and Ferzan Ozpetek's Ignorant Fairies (Le Fate Ignoranti), succeeds John McGrath, who died suddenly in January.Moonstone currently runs two ...
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News
Michelle Yeoh's Touch passed untouched
Peter Pau's The Touch, starring and produced by Michelle Yeoh, has been passed uncut by the China's national censor the Film Bureau. The move means that the film has cleared the last hurdle in its bid to secure a day-and-date release in mainland China and other parts of Asia. The ...
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News
Fox 2000 takes remake rights to Denmark's Catch That Girl
Denmark's Nimbus Film has sold English-language remake rights on its children's film Catch That Girl (Klatretosen) to Fox 2000.The Hans Fabian Wullenveber-directed film, which appeared in the Kinderfest arm of this year's Berlin Festival, is the story of a 13 year-old girl who robs a bank in order to save ...
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News
Belgium ratifies new film tax shelter scheme
Belgium is to become the latest European country attempting to use tax as a way of boosting film production, following the government ratification of a new tax shelter over the weekend.The new measures will allow film investors to set off Euros 750,000 of corporation tax, provided that their total tax ...
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News
Scorsese, Kiarostami to preside over Cannes' Cinefondation
Directors Martin Scorsese and Abbas Kiarostami have agreed to be honorary presidents of the Cannes Festival's Cinefondation. As such they will preside over the twice yearly "Residence" internship, which helps young film-makers prepare for their first or second feature film.The festival said: "they wished to show their attachment to the ...
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News
Vivendi Universal sued, Canal Plus Group to be broken up
Against the background of French newspaper reports suggesting that its Canal Plus division will now be broken up, Vivendi Universal and former chairman Jean-Marie Messier are to be sued by a group of US investors. The investors, operating under the banner Rosenbaum Partners, bought shares between February and July of ...
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News
Brother wins top prizes at PiFan
Clearly there was no World Cup animosity. German film Getting My Brother Laid (aka Mein Bruder Der Vampir) was the big winner at the 6th edition of the Pucheon International Festival of Fantastic Film (PiFan) in South Korea. The film, which won Sven Taddicken the best new director prize at ...
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News
Puchon's porno challenge to censorship laws
The line between erotic art and simple pornography has often troubled programmers of film festivals. But for the selectors at this week's Puchon International Festival of Fantastic Film (PiFan) (July 11-20) the idea was to pretend that they were having a serious discussion about censorship while in fact showing a ...
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News
Mirovision opens arty theatre in Seoul
Film sales and distribution company Mirovision this week became the latest outfit to move into the expanding Korean exhibition market. This week it opened its first cinema, the Insa Arts Theatre.Acquired on a long-term lease and located in the middle of the Insadong entertainment and tourist area, the theatre is ...
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News
The Eye is eyed up for remake treatment
Danny and Oxide Pang's chiller The Eye could be the next Asian picture lined up for Hollywood remake treatment.Under a deal brokered by Roy Lee of Vertigo Entertainment, remake rights are to be acquired by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner's Cruise/Wagner company with a view to the film being made ...
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Belt-tightening squeezes pre-Mifed screenings
The pre-Mifed screenings in London this October look set to be a smaller affair than in previous years. Many film sellers, including some based in London, have decided to set up stall only once this autumn - in Milan.The various London organisers are faced with what comes close to a ...
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News
Benelux's Paradiso expands into video via Laurus acquisition
Growing Benelux distributor Paradiso is to move into video releasing following the take-over of well-established outfit Laurus Entertainment.Laurus, headed by Hans Goosens, has been in business for ten years covering the rental and retail sectors in The Netherlands and Flemish-speaking Belgium.The acquisition means that within the dominant part of the ...
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News
Korea's Shinabro gets $50m for acquisition and production drive
Korean distribution company Shinabro Entertainment has secured a $50m cash pool for acquisition of rights to Hollywood movies and a drive into Korean production.The funding comes from Isoo Venture Capital, part of the giant Isoo Chemical group. The five-year, non-exclusive deal sees Isoo put up financing for the acquisition of ...
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News
Vivendi subject to accounting probe as it secures Euros 1bn loan
Vivendi Universal confirmed today (July 10) that it has obtained a Euros 1bn unsecured credit line from a group of international banks. But there are more problems for the group as the stockmarket opened a preliminary investigation into its accounting practices.The widely expected credit move is likely to be followed ...
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Reviews
Champion
Dir: Kwak Kyung-taek. Korea. 2002. 117minsLike its hero, Kim Deuk-gu, who tried to become Korea's first boxing world supremo, Champion gives a very worthy account of itself, but ultimately fails to deliver a knock-out punch. With sumptuous looks and a determinedly physical central performance by Friend star Yoo Oh-sun, the ...
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Messier leaves Vivendi in denial, Fourtou appointed
Jean-Rene Fourtou, the former head of France's largest chemicals firm, was last night voted in as chairman and chief executive of Vivendi Universal. He replaces the Jean-Marie Messier, architect of the company's transition from water group into media mogul, but whose dash for growth cost the firm billions of Euro. ...
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News
BBC approved for ITV Digital rescue
State broadcaster BBC, which has frequently been criticised for its costly embrace of digital services, has won the licence to run channels on the UK's collapsed ITV Digital platform.The award, made by the Independent Television Commission today (July 4), is said to give the digital terrestrial (DTT) platform the best ...