Small MPU – Page 1168
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News
Sky Box Office, FilmFour move to digital platform
Satellite broadcaster BSkyB's Sky Box Office pay-per-view movie service and UK broadcaster Channel 4's subscription service FilmFour are going digital.Sky Box Office and the FilmFour service will move exclusively to Sky's digital satellite platform in April. In a statement, the companies cited 'the rapid rate of digital take-up by former ...
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MIP-TV ends on comfortable note
MIP-TV, the spring TV programmes market in Cannes, closed on a modestly positive note yesterday. Market chief, Rene Pires said that some 9,024 delegates had taken part. That was down 11% on last year's figure of 10,104, but was better than he had hoped for given the world's current political ...
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US film organisations stress global free trade
Global trade partnership isa key plank in the United States' free trade and anti-piracy policies,America's trade representative Ambassador Robert Zoellick told filmindustry leaders and other members of the Entertainment Industry Coalition (EIC)today (Mar 27).Speaking in Los Angeles atthe official West Coast launch of the coalition, which was set up to ...
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Reviews
Ned Kelly
Dir: Gregor Jordan. Australia. 2003. 109mins.The lasting iconographic significance of armoured 19th-century outlaw Ned Kelly to Australian culture and mythology can not be underestimated. However, as Gregor Jordan's unromantic recreation insists, the Kelly Gang were 100% Irish, fighting age-old wars against the hated English in a hostile new land. Ned's ...
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Reviews
Dreamcatcher
Dir: Lawrence Kasdan. US. 2003. 134mins. Castle Rock's latest big-screen take on the work of author Stephen King starts out with a spooky psychological intensity that recalls some of the company's most successful King adaptations, like Misery and The Green Mile. Before long, however, Dreamcatcher degenerates into a confusing horror/sci-fi ...
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Ned Kelly has third best local opening in Australia
Ned Kelly grossed $460,000 - the third biggest opening day for an Australian film, behind Moulin Rouge and Crocodile Dundee 2.The massive local campaign has included a blitz-style publicity tour featuring most of the key cast, including star Heath Ledger, a huge number of massive outdoor billboards and a ...
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Reviews
Utopia
Dir: Maria Ripoll. 2003. Spain-France. 105mins.Utopia adds to a growing body of stylish Spanish genre films and, with the right marketing and distributor Hispano Foxfilm behind it, will likely follow in their footsteps to healthy returns at the local box office. That said, it had a downbeat opening weekend, taking ...
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News
French film festival in Los Angeles opens with 24 Hours
The annual CityOf Lights, City Of Angels Film Festival in Los Angeles has unveiled its lineupof 11 new French films which will screen from April 8 to 12. The festival,which is supported by L'ARP, Directors Guild Of America, Film & TVDepartment of the French Embassy, SACEM, Unifrance and Writers Guild ...
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News
Scooby cast sign on for Warner's sequel
Warner Bros hassigned up actors Freddie Prinze Jr, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Matthew Lillard andLinda Cardellini to return in the sequel to Scooby-Doo which is set to start shooting on April14 and to open domestically on March 26, 2004.The filmreunites the team behind the first film - James Gunn, will be ...
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New film investment, distribution company launched in South Korea
Kim Dong-joo, ex-president of Korea Pictures, has announced the launch of an ambitious new investment and distribution company to focus on film and the performing arts. Named Show East, the company has recently began shooting on its first feature Mutt Boy, by the director of Korea's current box-office record ...
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News
Documentaries dominate Guadalajara awards
Documentaries swept the awards at the18th Guadalajara Mexican Film Showcase which ended March 27th, reflecting the sorry state of fiction feature filmmaking in Mexico last year.Best Picture winners (ex aqueo) Marcela Arteaga's Recuerdos and Mercedes Moncada's La Pasion De Maria Elena split a cash prize of $9,300 (100,000 pesos). ...
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Village Roadshow extends Warner co-financing pact
Australia's Village Roadshow Pictures Entertainment (VRPE) and Warner Bros have expanded their two year-old co-financing and co-production agreement which called for 20 pictures between 1998 and 2002, by adding 20 more films over the next five years (2000-2005). The deal extension means that VRPE will have invested more than $1 ...
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News
Istituto Luce re-focuses on documentaries
Italy's 79-year-old state-owned Istituto Luce has decided to re-focus on its original role as Italy's leading maker of documentaries."We want to revitalise our role as a documentary-maker and give it new impetus. We will no longer just make "montage" documentaries, but will produce new ones too," said Istituto Luce ...
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Germany's Constantin Film reports increased sales
Germany's leading independent distributor-producer Constantin Film posted a 3% year-on-year increase in sales to Euros 131.2m "in spite of the continuing crisis on the German media market last year", according to figures for the 2002 fiscal year.Constantin reported that it had reached the targets set at the beginning of 2002 ...
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Italy's Mediaset records increased profits
Mediaset, Silvio Berlusconi's private Italian network, recorded a 45.7% rise in net profits in 2002 to Euros 362m. In 2001, net profits had slipped to Euros 248.4m on the back of losses linked to the company's minority stake in KirchMedia.Overall, however, the group's net financial position on December 31st 2002 ...
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Newcomer wins Denmark's NatFilm Natsvaermer award
At the opening gala for the 14th edition of Denmark's NatFilm Festival newcomer Jannik Johansen received the Natsvaermer Award along with $3,600, which is presented annually to a new talent. The 37 year-old Johansen has written and directed several shorts including A Quiet Death (1997) and Off Track (1999), before ...
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News
Blue Moon wins Grand Prize at Diagonale
Andrea Maria Dusl's feature debut Blue Moon was the winner of this year's Euros 19,000 Grand Prize at the Diagonale Festival of Austrian Cinema which closed in Graz on March 30. Meanwhile, the Diagonale's Euros 10,000 Prize for Innovative Production was shared ex aequo by Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion (for Elsewhere) ...
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Audiences elect Head Of State over Core, Basic
Movie audiences flirted with the idea of a new President over theweekend as the Dreamworks comedy Head Of State opened at number one on an estimated$14m. The poorly reviewed $35m picture stars Chris Rock as an aspiringpolitician who ends up in the White House. It co-stars Bernie Mac and wasco-written ...
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Reviews
Valentin
Dir: Alejandro Agresti. Argentina/Holland. 2002. 82mins.Valentin is an immensely likeable if lightweight addition to the existing host of nostalgic, bittersweet comedies about growing up in a dysfunctional family. Small but perfectly formed, it is keenly pitched at middlebrow art-house audiences and quality broadcasters. Miramax, which is also funding director Alejandro ...
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News
Encuentros Iberoamerican market feels the effects of war
As expected, the war in Iraq had an impact on Encuentros, the first Iberoamerican market (March 21-25) held during Mexico's Guadalajara Film Festival. However, despite several last minute cancellations, the market reported 180 attendees. With a shoestring budget of $120,000, Encuentros had to overcome several problems. Gripes ranged from scarce ...