Small MPU – Page 248
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News
Digital Watermarking Alliance formed to promote content protection
Twelve companies including Cinea and Philips Electronics haveformed the Digital Watermarking Alliance (DWA) to promote content protectionwithin the industry.'Digital watermarking is enjoying a steady resurgence ofinterest now that the media industry is finding more and more applications forit throughout the content lifecycle - from creation through toproduction, packaging, distribution, and ...
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Mehta's Water gets Canada's vote for Oscar
Deepa Mehta's Water has been selected as Canada's entry for the foreign-languageOscar at the 79th Academy Awards. Starring H.T.J. Sarala, LisaRay, John Abraham and Seema Biswas and produced by David Hamilton, the film wasdistributed in the US by Fox Searchlight Pictures and in Canada by MongrelMedia. Celluloid Dreams was the ...
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UK actors join Gilliam's Quixote cast
The UK's Miranda Richardson, Christopher Eccleston and Bill Paterson have joined the cast of Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Gilliam's office confirmed on Monday.The actors join Johnny Depp, Vanessa Paradis and Jean Rochefort in the $30m plus production, which is to start shooting in Spain and the ...
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Austria submits You Bet Your Life for Oscar consideration
Antonin Svoboda'sdirectorial debut You Bet Your Life(Spiele Leben) has been submittedas Austria's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 2007Oscars.Starring Georg Friedrichand Brigitte Minichmayr, You Bet Your Life is the story of a gambler who quite literally begins to gamble his lifeaway and was shown at last ...
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IFP announces prizes as Independent Film Week ends
Scott Teems' I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down and Sean Patrick McCarthy's Pansy tied for the IFP Market EmergingNarrative Screenplay Award as the IFP Market and Independent Film Week ended inNew York today.In other prizes, the Fledgling Fund Award for Emerging Latino Filmmakerswent to Vivien Lesnick Weisman's ...
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Myriad closes Italy, Spain, Mexico and Brazil on 10 Items
Myriad Pictures has closed major territory sales on BradSilberling's comedy 10 Items Or Less following the North American deal with THINKFilm concludedjust before Toronto.President of distribution Ann Dubinet announced that rights havegone to Italy (DNC), Spain (Manga), Mexico (Azteca), and Brazil (Imagem).Sales also concluded in Portugal (LNK), Greece (Prooptiki),Iceland (Myndform), ...
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Damon, Horwitz, Bleiberg join IFTA executive committee
Several new members have bolstered the Independent Film &Television Alliance (IFTA) executive ranks following the body's annual generalmeeting in Los Angeles [Thursday].Joining the seven-person executive committee are: Mark Damon ofForesight Unlimited as vice chairman; Lewis Horwitz of Horwitz EntertainmentFinancial Services as vice chairman, finance; Ehud Bleiberg of BleibergEntertainment as chairman, ...
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Leondis signs to direct animated Igor for Exodus, TWC
Animation veteran Tony Leondis is attached to direct Exodus Film Group'sCG-animated feature comedy Igor, which is set to go into production in the first quarter of 2007.The Weinstein Company (TWC) will handle the North American releaseand sold most international rights at Cannes earlier this year.Igorfollows the escapades of a mad ...
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Wexler to receive career achievement award from IDA
Haskell Wexler will receive the 2006 International DocumentaryAssociation's (IDA) Career Achievement Award at the IDA DistinguishedDocumentary Achievement Awards in Los Angeles on Dec 8.Wexler won cinematography Oscars for Who's Afraid of VirginiaWoolf' in 1967 and BoundFor Glory in 1977, andhas been nominated on three other occasions for One Flew Over ...
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News
MGM takes North America on Pleasure Of Your Company
MGMhas bought North American rights to Michael Ian Black's romantic comedy ThePleasure of Your Company, whichreceived its world premiere in Toronto recently.This is MGM's second acquisition in two weeks as it seeks toexpand its own slate. The company moved in on Werner Herzog's Vietnam POW dramaRescue Dawn shortlybefore Toronto kicked ...
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Studios roll out big guns for autumn as summer titles fade
Pirates of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest will be hoping for an 11thweekend at the top as Buena Vista International (BVI) looks for strong holds inthe picture's second weekend in Italy.Dead Man's Chest now ranks as the fourth biggest international release in historyafter it overtook Harry Potter And The Chamber ...
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Switzerland selects Murer's Vitus as Oscar pick
Switzerland has chosen its foreign-language Oscar candidate,Fredi M. Murer's Vitus. The veteran film-maker'sdrama is about a wunderkind dreaming of flying and having a normal childhood. The seven-person nationaljury said it made its decision based on "the film's quality, itscommercial success in Switzerland (so far 200,000 admissions), itsparticipation in more than ...
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News
Initial Entertainment plans Queen Victoria film
In the wake of The Queen, another film about theBritish Royal Family is in the pipeline. In London this week with MartinScorsese's $120m The Departed (whichhe produced for Warner Bros), Initial Entertainment Group producer Graham Kinghas revealed that he is planning a new feature about the early years of QueenVictoria."Julian ...
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UK's Millennium takes three from UGC
France's UGC has sold a trio of titles headed by Regis Wargnier's East-West to UK independent distributor Millennium Film Distributors.East-West, starring Catherine Deneuve and Sandrine Bonnaire, joins Le Libertin, a comedy with Vincent Perez and Fanny Ardant, and Claude Miller's La Chambre Des Magiciennes.Rive, who operates both Millennium and Gala ...
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News
Rome Festival sets 16 films for children's competition
The new Rome Film Fest (Oct 13-21)has announced its Alice in the City sidebar for children and young adults.The 16 feature films incompetition include Doug Atchison's spelling-bee drama Akeelah And The Bee, Jeremy Brock's UK coming-of-age story Driving Lessons and Michel Ocelot's animated fable Azur et Asmar. The selection alsoincludes ...
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Reviews
Amazing Grace
Dir. Michael AptedUK 2006 111mins.A historical drama about the efforts of 18th-centuryBritish parliamentarian William Wilberforce to legislate an end to the slavetrade in Britain, Amazing Grace is aworthy but ultimately flat chronology. It will suffer by comparison with recentUK TV production such as Bleak Houseand Elizabeth I while US theatricalprospects ...
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Reviews
The Last Winter
Dir: Larry Fessenden. US-Ice. 2006. 106mins.The fourth feature from idiosyncratic American independentdirector Larry Fessenden, The Last Winter expertly conflates the psychological dread fundamentalto the horror genre, broadening it out into a deeper, existential malaise aboutthe disintegration of civilisation.A story about the madness thatengulfs a disparate group at a remote Alaskan ...
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Reviews
Flyboys
Dir: Tony Bill. US. 2006.138mins.Impressively staged and expansive in scope, World WarOne aviation feature Flyboys isrooted in the true story of those young American men who volunteered as fighterpilots for the French prior to their country's entry into the war. It alsosuccessfully captures how aeroplanes, these newinventions of the sky, ...
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Reviews
Mon Meilleur Ami
Dir: Patrice Leconte. Fr. 2006. 94mins.Patrice Leconte, whosebelated second sequel to his breakthrough 1978 smash Les Bronzes was France's biggest homegrownblockbuster this year, stays in similar territory for his follow-up Mon Meilleur Ami.In fact, this broad high-concept comedy of the Dinner Game or Apres Vous variety could have been a ...
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Reviews
Ghosts
Dir: Nick Broomfield. UK.2006. 96mins.Labelled as fiction but closer in spirit to thedocumentaries he is best known for, Nick Broomfield's Ghosts initially looks like a milder version of Michael Winterbottom's Berlin winner In This World. But then this San Sebastian opener seems to segueinto Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation, with ...