Small MPU – Page 242
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News
Kinowelt divests merchandising business
As part of its announced restructuring process (Screen Daily June 19), troubled Kinowelt Medien has parted company with part of its merchandising operations.Brameier Fanworld, which operated a merchandising franchise chain with 113 Fanworld shops in city centre locations throughout Germany and in which Kinowelt had a 65% majority stake, has ...
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News
Avignon festival awards three international prizes
The Avignon Film Festival, which last year expanded its Franco-US axis to become truly European, closed July 1 with prizes for Spain's Pellet (El Bola), France's Stand-By and How To Kill Your Neighbour's Dog from the US.The festival's prizes gave the winners a stock of Kodak film for future use, ...
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News
Nike launches award for digital sports shorts
Sports giant Nike has become the latest corporate entity to explore the crossover between consumer marketing and film production.The sporting goods manufacturer has launched an annual 'UK Young Directors Awards' in association with London-based short film company Britshorts. The scheme offers an $8,500 (£6,000) award for amateur filmmakers to produce ...
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News
Gareth Jones quits as Alibi chief
Gareth Jones has stepped down as managing director of UK-based international sales and distribution outfit Alibi Films International. Alibi, which will now restructure its business, has no immediate plans for a replacement.Jones, who co-founded the company with partners Roger Holmes and Linda James in June 1999, will continue to work ...
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News
Blockbuster Mexico poised to acquire rival outfit
Blockbuster Mexico is set to pounce on main rival Grupo Videovisa. "We're definitely interested in acquiring some of Videovisa's assets, including sites, outlets or inventory, provided they fit in with our long term strategy," said Diego Cosio, Senior Vice President, Blockbuster Latin America. The beleaguered Videovisa has been placed on ...
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Reviews
Cats & Dogs
Dir: Lawrence Guterman. US. 2001. 87 mins. A comedy featuring realistic-looking, talking versions of humankind's favourite domestic pets sounds like a good way to reach the sometimes elusive family audience. But Cats & Dogs proves - if it still needs proving - that in this genre at least all the ...
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News
Telefilm Canada appoints acting executive director
Telefilm Canada has appointed long-time agency executive Johanne St-Arnauld as acting executive director. She takes over from Francois Macerola, whose term ends July 3.The federal film finance agency has seen two other high-profile departures -- chairman Laurier LaPierre and and Peter Katadotis, Director, Canadian Operations. Arnauld's appointment is seen as ...
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News
Alibi founder Jones quits UK sales outfit
Gareth Jones has stepped down as managing director of UK-based international sales and distribution outfit Alibi Films International. Alibi, which will now restructure its business, has no immediate plans for a replacement.Jones, who co-founded the company with partners Roger Holmes and Linda James in June 1999, will continue to work ...
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News
Toronto gets Last Orders first
Fred Schepisi's Last Orders will makes its world premiere at the 26th Toronto International Film Festival, Sept. 6-15. Based on UK novelist Graham Swift's Booker Prize-winner and starring Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Ray Winstone, David Hemmings and Tom Courtenay, the film is being sold internationally by Winchester Films. ...
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News
British film classification rules set to change
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has revealed plans to change the existing 12-certificate to a new 'advisory' category, bringing the territory into line with the rest of Europe and the US. Coinciding with the current media attention on cuts made to Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in order to ...
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News
US actors, producers inch closer to a new contract
US actors unions and the alliance of movie studios and TV networks resumed talks in Los Angeles yesterday afternoon after negotiators took the morning off to rest from a 17-hour negotiating session which finished on Monday at 2.30am.The two sides returned to the table at 2.30 and while they had ...
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News
Lot 47 confirms digital marketing pioneer as chief
Scott Lipsky has been formallyanointed as chairman and chief executive officer of Lot 47 Films, the NewYork-based independent distributor of such films as Tim Roth's The WarZone, Chunhyang from Korea, Venus Beauty Institute and Claire Denis' controversial Trouble Every Day (pictured left).Lipsky, who co-founded Lot47 in 1999 with his brother ...
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News
Strike's off: new US actors contract agreed
A new three-year theatrical motion picture and TV production agreement has been tentatively agreed by US actors unions Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation Of Television And Radio Artists (AFTRA) on behalf of actors and the Alliance Of Motion Picture And Television Producers (AMPTP).The agreement, announced last night ...
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News
UK cinema industry unites to create marketing body
As part of its remit to develop a sustainable film industry, UK strategy and funding body, The Film Council, has joined the All Industry Marketing for Cinema (AIM) to create a company to promote and market generic cinema-going in the UKThe newly-created Cinema Marketing Agency (CMA) is officially launched next ...
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News
Irish films to suffer from low TV licence increase
In a move which will bitterly disappoint state broadcaster RTE, the Irish government has approved an increase of just $15.50 (IR£14.50) in the annual television license fee, bringing the standard charge from $75 (IR£70) up to $99 (IR£84.50). RTE had lobbied for a $54 increase in the license fee for ...
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News
Japanese Pia film festival prize goes to The Mall
The winner of Grand Prize at the 23rd Pia Festival was Yuki Tanada's Mall, a 76-minute video film about a woman who after witnessing a suicide passes out every time she gets her period. Kazuki Kobayashi's Pellet was awarded the Second Grand Prize, while three films shared the Jury Prize: ...
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News
Boswell For The Defence concludes early
Period legal drama Boswell For The Defence has ground to a halt after producers were unable to secure a final tranche of financing for the $14m film ahead of the scheduled start of photography in the UK next week.Boswell, set up between the UK's Scala Productions, German fund MBP and ...
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News
Tom Sizemore joins up to Fear The X
Fresh from Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down, Tom Sizemore has signed up to play the lead in the Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn's english-language debut, Fear The X, co-written by Hubert Selby Jr. (Last Exit To Brooklyn). Fear The X begins shooting in the US and Rio from November with ...
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News
Shrek laughs all the way to the bank
US mega-hit Shrek took the UK box office by storm at the weekend when it opened with $6.6m (£4.7m) from 470 sites, an average of $14,023 per site. Although this figure included preview figures of $1.3m (£902,736) it wouldn't change its claim to the top spot in the UK chart ...
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News
Karlovy Vary opens 36th festival
Following the sudden cancellation of shooting on Boswell For The Defense, as revealed in Screen Daily yesterday (July 4), both Sir Michael Caine and the film's director Bruce Beresford, have decided not to attend the Karlovy Vary film festival. Caine, who was scheduled to receive an award for Outstanding Artist ...