Small MPU – Page 253
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News
Venice selection expansion hailed as double treat
The programming innovations revealed for the 58th Venice Film Festival - which this year heralds the advent of an additional competition line-up known as The Cinema Of The Present - have been greeted with generally favourable industry reactions.Many have praised the inclusion of more innovative and 'fringe' titles into the ...
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Big budget films boost Italian industry confidence
With a total of 12 Italian films showing in various sections of this year's Venice film festival, and a raft of big budget films in the pipeline from the likes of Roberto Benigni and Franco Zeffirelli, the Italian film industry is feeling more positive than usual.After last year's bleak patch, ...
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News
Sony Classics grabs Sverak's Dark Blue World
Sony Pictures Classics has picked up Jan Sverak's Czech language WWII aerial drama Dark Blue World for theatrical release in North America, Australia and the UK. The deal brings the total number of territories to which the film has been sold all rights to 23, including Japan, Italy (Medusa) and ...
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News
Deauville announces additional titles
Joel Coen's The Man Who Wasn't There, toplining Billy Bob Thornton and Frances McDormand and Woody Allen's The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion, featuring Dan Aykroyd, Helen Hunt and Charlize Theron are among a raft of titles which have been added to Deauville's 2001 line-up.Both the Coen brothers (whose debut ...
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News
Traumwerk and Promark unite for TV series
Das Werk's production subsidiaries Traumwerk Filmproduktion and Promark Entertainment are banding together under the label Promark International to develop English-language TV 'events' and mini-series productions for the international market. The joint venture will be co-ordinated from Los Angeles by Promark's Jon Kramer and from Traumwerk's new Berlin office by former ...
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News
Oldenburg festival launches $99 Specials
The Oldenburg Film Festival (September 5-9) has launched a new short film programme in co-operation with the Slamdance Film Festival and based on its "$ 99 Specials" initiative which was a new feature last January. Twelve of the hottest young German filmmakers will each be provided with a budget of ...
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Reviews
Rush Hour 2
Dir: Brett Ratner. US. 2001. 87 min.Neither terribly exciting asan actioner, nor sufficiently funny as a comedy, Rush Hour 2 re-teams the odd couple of the first film, theendlessly bickering Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, placing them in the most routineand movie-ish situations imaginable. Coldly calculated, but still rather flat,the ...
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Reviews
The Princess Diaries
Dir: Garry Marshall. US.2001. 115 mins.Shot on the same soundstage that was used for Mary Poppins, the Disney comedy that catapulted Julie Andrews to international stardom, The Princess Diaries is an enjoyable fairy tale that in its mores andmessage is not that different from that Andrews' 1964 Oscar-winning picture. This ...
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News
Locarno competition favours debut directors
In her first year as Locarno International Film Festival's new artistic director, Irene Bignardi has shown strong commitment to fresh and young cinema. Almost in diametric opposition to the Cannes festival's latest edition, which displayed the work of veteran auteurs, such as Manuel de Oliveira, Shohei Imamura, Jacques Rivette and ...
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News
Swiss film industry on an upswing
Switzerland has seen cinema admissions soar by 6.4% in the first half of 2001 to 8.78m, with local productions accounting for a 4.1% market share in the first six months, compared with 4.6% in 2000 as a whole.However, of the 100-plus Swiss films released in the first half of 2001, ...
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News
'Father of Korean cinema' starts 98th film
Following the worldwide success of his previous feature Chunhyang, Veteran Korean director Im Kwon-taek has started production of his 98th film. Titled Chwi-hwa-seon in Korean, the film chronicles the true story of 19th century painter Jang Seung-eop, whose free lifestyle and eccentric personality earned him as much fame as his ...
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News
Apes start taking over the planet again
20th Century Fox's Planet Of The Apes re-imagining, under the direction of Tim Burton, opened day and date in Japan, Hong Kong and Thailand to massive box office figures.Even while it was smashing numerous records over the three-day weekend (Friday 27 July-Sunday 29) in North America, Apes was showing muscular ...
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News
Telemontecarlo's future questioned after takeover
As Italian tyre and cable manufacturer Pirelli, backed by the Benetton retail empire, took over Telecom Italia, Europe's fifth-biggest telecom group, this weekend, the future of the telecom's financially beleaguered TV station, Telemontecarlo, was again called into question.Just two months ago, Italy's highest appeals court cleared Telecom Italia and multimedia ...
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News
India's Zee TV to enter film production
Following the success of its maiden venture Gadar/I>, India's leading satellite television operator Zee TV has plans to enter film production as a backward integration policy for its networks. The company has announced plans to produce five $5m films a year. At present, the company has two movies in production ...
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News
Germany's Das Werk expands international network
German postproduction group Das Werk has taken a 25% stake in the Belgian high-end video and film post-production company ACE Digital House, as part of its creation of an international network of postproduction companies. A cash payment of Euro 1.5m (20%) was supplemented with 5% in Das Werk shares. Over ...
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News
RTL sees share value slide after profit warning
Shares in RTL crashed today after the broadcasting giant joined the long list of companies warning of ad-related slowdowns.The pan-European broadcaster issued a profits warning forecasting that earnings before interest, tax and depreciation will fall by 10%-15% this year, hurt by falling advertising markets. The thinly traded shares tumbled from ...
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News
Hollywood studios go bananas over internet piracy
Twentieth Century Fox has sent letters to internet service providers (ISPs) asking them to disable the accounts of people showing Planet Of The Apes (pictured left) on the world wide web.The Fox move is one of the most visible to date as Hollywood studios become more aggressive in their drive ...
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News
Hindi film Dattak to open at Toronto
Dattak, a Hindi feature film by well-known and award-winning director Gul Bahar Singh for the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), will be screened at the Toronto Film Festival. The film, about a guilt-ridden young non-resident Indian "adopting" an old man because he had abandoned his own father, stars A K ...
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News
Miramax picks up Carolina for the US
Miramax Films has finalised a deal for US rights on Marleen Gorris' Carolina, which started shooting last week after being postponed from the spring.The story of a Southern girl trying to make it in Hollywood is the first feature from the alliance between US producer Martin Bregman and UK sales ...
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News
Kinowelt looks for partners in bail-out bid
The RTL Group has been named by a German newspaper as a possible strategic partner to bail out debt-ridden Kinowelt Medien. In addition, Munich-based Sueddeutsche Zeitung quoted a Kinowelt spokesman as saying that the company was "currently in talks with various possible strategic partners" and "first results" of the negotiations ...