All articles by Sandy George – Page 52
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News
NEW ZEALAND
Older women definitely got their own back against the starlets in New Zealand when Calendar Girls opened in top position in its first official weekend in the charts. The film took NZ$332,452 from 38 screens for BVI, which was double the gross of the other major opener, 20th Century Fox's ...
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Australian critics single out four films
The same four films - Alexandra's Project, Gettin' Square, Japanese Story and Swimming Upstream - have been nominated in the best film, best director and best editing categories of the annual awards of the Film Critics Circle of Australia. All four films were also nominated for their screenplays, alongside Black ...
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Feature producers to benefit from Enterprise Australia
Several feature film producers are among the 16 selected to participate in the inaugural Enterprise Australia, the Australian version of the workshop which UK management consultants Olsberg SPI have already conducted in Europe. It is aimed at equipping Australian producers with the business skills to make their companies globally competitive ...
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News
AUSTRALIA
Australia's weekend chart was based on five days instead of the usual four because half of the country was treated to a holiday Monday. Cinema attendance was also high because of welcome wet weather and continuing school holidays.The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen did quite extraordinary business for 20th Century Fox ...
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News
NEW ZEALAND
Local film The Locals grossed NZ$62,060 from 22 screens, giving it a screen average of NZ$2,821, in its opening four days in its home market of New Zealand. This put the debut feature of short filmmaker and commercials director Greg Page in tenth spot. Distributor Essential came on board early ...
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News
AUSTRALIA
Japanese Story took A$411,629 from 40 screens for Palace in its opening four-day weekend despite the arrival of sunny weather in most cities, school holidays, Jewish New Year and the AFL grand final. The result put it in ninth position but everything above was on about 200 to 400 screens. ...
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News
NEW ZEALAND
Sequels rule OK. Or maybe not. Someone must have decided to nominate the weekend as a haven for sequels because UIP's Lara Croft Tomb Raider - The Cradle Of Life, Fox's Legally Blonde 2 and UIP's Rugrats Go Wild all opened. But none of the brands were strong enough to ...
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News
AUSTRALIA
The very strong screen average of A$11,206 for the opening weekend of Columbia TriStar's Bad Boys II wasn't quite enough to push BVI's Pirates Of The Caribbean off the top of the mast. The Boys grossed A$3,059,117 and the Pirates grossed A$3,476,680, but it was only Pirates' second weekend and ...
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Spooked draws Murphy back to New Zealand
Geoff Murphy is back on home soil to direct the thriller Spooked, his first New Zealand film since leaving for LA 15 years ago. Don Reynolds and Merata Mita, both of whom he worked with on Kiwi films during the 1980s, are two of the film's producers. Spooked goes into ...
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News
NEW ZEALAND
Finding Nemo showed good resilience in its second weekend against the launch of BVI stable-mate Pirates Of The Carribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl. The swashbuckler stole the top spot but there was little between them. Speaking of resilience, local picture Whale Rider (also handled by BVI) is still ...
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News
AUSTRALIA
Pirates Of The Carribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl proved as big a draw in Australia this weekend as it has around the world. The adventure film sailed into the lead for BVI scoring an impressive screen average of A$13,732 from its whopping 377 screen count.James Cameron's 3-D ...
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News
UK Film Council boards New Zealand's Father's Den
Writer/director Brad McGann's debut film In My Father's Den has become the first New Zealand film to receive funding from the UK Film Council, which is financing the mystery alongside the New Zealand Film Commission and the UK's Visionview.New Zealand producer Trevor Haysom (Crush), from T.H.E. Film, teamed with UK ...
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Swimfan director's next gets Australian FCC approval
Film Finance Corporation Australia (FFC) has approved investment in four new features. They are Mozart Maulers, the third film by director John Polson (Swimfan), Three Dollars, Robert Connolly's second film as a director after The Bank, debut writer/director Anna Reeves' The Oyster Farmer, and You And Your Stupid Mate, which ...
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News
New Zealand set for arthouse exhibition boost
US exhibitor Reading Cinemas is to open a local version of its Angelica Film Center in New Zealand's capital Wellington.The Angelika Film Center is an iconic six screen arthouse multiplex in downtown New York.The news comes as Reading's Australian and New Zealand subsidiary prepares to open a new cinema complex ...
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News
Arclight to sell Fat Pizza worldwide
Arclight has picked up all international sales rights except Australia, New Zealand, Greece and Singapore on Fat Pizza, the highest grossing local comedy in Australia this year.A politically incorrect comedy adaptation of a cult SBS television series, Fat Pizza took many observers by surprise when it opened in the second ...
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Perfect Creature takes shape for Arclight
Arclight Films has picked up international rights on a vampire horror film being produced by Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring and Whale Rider producer Tim Sanders and directed by Glenn Standring (The Irrefutable Truth About Demons).Called Perfect Creature, the film will be sold by Arclight's genre ...
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Placid Lake makes ripples in Oz
Tony McNamara's The Rage In Placid Lake is gathering critical plaudits in Australia.The Australian film was the most popular feature at the recently wrapped 52nd Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) and its script has just won both the adapted feature film category and the top prize at the Australian Writers ...
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Oz exhibitors rally round Gibson's Passion
Australian exhibitors appear to be rallying behind Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion.The film, about the last hours of Jesus, has been attacked in the US by some religious organisations. Four minutes footage from The Passion screened at the Australian International Movie Convention this week; the full length film is ...
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Another Oz studio planned
A major new studio facility is set to be built in Australia - the fourth in the country. Paul Hathaway, a business consultant and engineer, and his property developer brother Michael Hathway, are confident they will have all the necessary final approvals by the end of this year to construct ...