All articles by Sandy George – Page 61
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News
Beautiful Mind puts Crowe at top of Oz actors' earnings list
Actor Russell Crowe's estimated 2001 earnings of $15.4m (A$29m), including from A Beautiful Mind, were not enough to put him at the head of the annual top 50 entertainers list published in the current issue of Australia's Business Review Weekly. Coming third, Crowe, however, easily led the fifteen actors on ...
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News
Beautiful Mind puts Crowe at top of Oz actors' earnings list
Actor Russell Crowe's estimated 2001 earnings of $15.4m (A$29m), including his take from A Beautiful Mind, were not enough to put him at the head of the annual top 50 entertainers list published in the current issue of Australia's Business Review Weekly. Coming third, Crowe, however, easily led the fifteen ...
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News
Bad Eggs smell good to Village Roadshow
While the comedy thriller Bad Eggs does not have a particularly large budget in terms of the norm in Australia, it has attracted the single biggest financial commitment to an independent feature in entertainment conglomerate Village Roadshow's long history. "Mass audiences demand big laughs and we believe that Bad Eggs ...
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News
Technicolor buys Southern Star's Duplitek
The Southern Star Group is expected to net about $26.4m (A$50m) from US-based video, CD, DVD and film print manufacturer Technicolor's acquisition of its duplication subsidiary Duplitek. Technicolour invested $17.4m (A$33m) in Duplitek nearly two years ago in a deal that gave it the right to expand its result minority ...
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News
Aurora beams for Australian script development
Australia has created its own version of development "hothousing" on the back of four feature scripts and their creative teams. The New South Wales Film and Television Office (NSWFTO) examined overseas models including Sundance, Moondance and Equinoxe before putting together its own A$500,000 Aurora programme, which has filmmaker Jane Campion ...
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News
Macquarie, Nine Net launch major production fund
Macquarie Bank and the Nine Network's production subsidiary today (March 21) formally announced a bold plan to entice investors to provide up to $33.2m (A$62.5m) for the production of eight feature films, two TV series and two telemovies. The third partner in the equation is Hoyts Distribution, which will distribute ...
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News
Icon picks up first Oz film for distribution
The Australian office of Icon Film Distribution has picked up local rights on its first Australian film. Paul Goldman is to direct the UK/Australian co-production The Night We Called It A Day which draws on singer Frank Sinatra's notorious 1974 tour of Australia, during which he became very unpopular with ...
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News
Queensland funds Warner Roadshow Studio expansion
Australia's appeal as a location for runaway productions is set to get another boost with Queensland Premier Peter Beattie's decision to grant a $4.3m (A$8m) loan to the Warner Roadshow MovieWorld Studios in order to increase its size by 50%. Once completed, the Gold Coast facility will be one of ...
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Reviews
The Tracker
Dir: Rolf de Heer. Australia. 2002. 98minsThe flood of Australian features with Aboriginal themes financed, coincidentally, two years ago are now finding their way to cinema screens. Philip Noyce's eagerly awaited Rabbit-Proof Fence has chosen to expose Australia's dirty laundry with its portrait of a 1930s government attempting to assimilate ...
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News
Rings tops NZ box office, nears $500m int'l gross
Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The Ring has become the biggest box office earner of all time in its home territory, New Zealand - fittingly the first country where it has done so, but with other nations set to follow shortly. It is due to pass $500m internationally within ...
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News
Amalgamated confirms Oz exhibition revival
Australia's Amalgamated Holdings was the latest company with exhibition interests to confirm that the cinema business has recovered from the doldrums of 18 months ago. The owner of the Greater Union and Birch Carroll and Coyle cinema circuits recorded a 67% growth in net profit after tax to $9m (A$17.5m) ...
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News
Gary Hamilton to leave Oz's Beyond Films
Two names that have been synonymous for 12 years, Beyond Films and Gary Hamilton, are to separate. The founder and general manager of Australia's only consistently active film sales agent will step down from his post at the end of the month."Over the 12 years Gary has been with Beyond ...
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News
Village Roadshow's cinema sell-off boosts profit
Village Roadshow's exhibition arm has been given substantial credit for VRL's net profit after tax of $23.5m (A$45.3m) for the half-year to December 31, up 100% on the previous corresponding period.Only 15 months ago shareholders were told that VRL's unsatisfactory profits of the past two to three years were entirely ...
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News
AusFILM boosts location marketing activity
AusFILM is dramatically stepping up its marketing of Australia to the film world. The conglomerate of private companies and government agencies moves into Fox Studios Australia from March 11 and will triple staff thanks to a near fourfold increase in government funds.There is "considerable scope" to increase the 6% of ...
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News
Lantana, Moulin Rouge bag Oz critics awards
Producer Jan Chapman won the best film award for Lantana at the Film Critics Circle Awards on Feb 22, while Baz Luhrmann took home the best director trophy for Moulin Rouge, making it less of a one-horse race than the Australian Film Institute Awards in November had been. Lantana also ...
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News
Oz pay-TV players call for Hollywood price sanity
Kim Williams, the new chief executive of Australia's dominant pay-TV player Foxtel, has called on the Hollywood studios that supply his industry to stop "pricing us into oblivion."Instead, Williams asked his US film suppliers to work with the Australian pay TV sector to find a new commercial model that replaces ...
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News
NZ's Rialto to enter Australian distribution
New Zealand distributor Rialto Entertainment is to directly distribute into Australia for the first time with the release of the Academy Award nominee for best foreign language film, Danis Tanovic's No Man's Land on April 25, followed mid-year by NZ director Christine Jeff's Rain.Rain has grossed $210,000 (NZ$500,000) in its ...
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News
Oz tax smallprint reveals gov't 'runaway' hopes
With its recent introduction of a new scheme regulating the "refundable tax offset", the Australian government now anticipates that the level of runaway films shooting in Australia will increase to 10 per year within five years and have a total value of $440.3m (A$850m), with $253.8m (A$490m) of this spent ...
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News
New Zealand mourns actor Kevin Smith
New Zealand is mourning the untimely death of local actor Kevin Smith, who died in a Beijing Hospital as the result of a fall. At the time of the accident he had been preparing to return home and begin preparation for Man Of War with Bruce Willis, a role many ...
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News
Byrne and Colosimo go for Take Away
In front of the cameras, when they start to roll this week on the new Australian comedy Take Away, will be a very strong cast including Rose Byrne, who won best actress at the Venice Film Festival in 2000 for her role in The Goddess Of '67. She will be ...