Small MPU – Page 293

  • News

    Ewald's Epic kicks off The Good Life with busy AFM slate

    2007-10-31T05:00:00Z

    Patrick Ewald's newly launched Epic Pictures Group makes it market debut at AFM with a slate of nine films that includes the Sundance selection The Good Life with Zooey Deschanel and horror tale Blood River from The Devil's Chair director Adam Mason.Former Renegade Worldwide president Ewald set up the finance, ...

  • News

    Fortissimo dives in with Callahan's Against The Current

    2007-10-31T05:00:00Z

    Fortissimo Films has acquired worldwide rights to US drama Against The Current, directed by Peter Callahan and starring Joseph Fiennes. Callahan previously directed 2001 award-winning indie title Last Ball. His new project stars Fiennes as a man coping with grief who sets out to swim the 150 mile-long Lower Hudson ...

  • News

    Voltage to start pre-sales on Romero's Diary sequel

    2007-10-31T05:00:00Z

    Artfire Films and Romero-Grunwald Productions have greenlit a sequel to George A Romero's Dairy Of The Dead hot on the heels of the film's successful premiere in Toronto.Voltage Pictures will commence international pre-sales at AFM. Cinetic Media will handle domestic rights, as it did on Diary. The Weinstein Company snapped ...

  • News

    Grindstone checks into Nordisk's Room 205

    2007-10-31T05:00:00Z

    Grindstone Entertainment Group has acquired all North American rights for Nordisk's ghostly thriller Room 205.Grindstone will be working in partnership with Ghost House Pictures on the release.Neel Ronholt and Mikkel Arndt star in Martin Barnewitz's chiller about a woman's frightening journey into the occult. The film will be dubbed into ...

  • News

    Rhys Meyers to play comic book hero Mandrake for Omega/Baldwin

    2007-10-31T05:00:00Z

    Jonathan Rhys Meyers will star as the eponymous hero of Omega Entertainment/Baldwin Entertainment Group's (BEG) adventure film Mandrake, which Chuck Russell will direct.The film is the first from Omega and BEG's first-look deal to go into production and will shoot in China and the US in early 2008. Omega is ...

  • News

    Wild Bunch takes on Tokyo! triptych, Ferrara doc

    2007-10-31T05:00:00Z

    French powerhouse Wild Bunch is handling sales at AFM on Asian portmanteau picture Tokyo!, featuring three films set in the Japanese capital by auteurs Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-Ho. The film, currently shooting, is available in all territories excluding France, Japan and South Korea.Wild Bunch is also resuming ...

  • News

    Lionsgate UK banks on British films from Donaldson, Ozon

    2007-10-31T05:00:00Z

    Following the company's acquisition of John Maybury's The Edge of Love at Cannes this year,Lionsgate UKhas underlined its continuing commitment to British Film by snapping up two further Brit titles, Roger Donaldson's The Bank Job and Francois Ozon's Angel.The Bank Job was acquired from investment group Omnilab and Arclight Films ...

  • Reviews

    Urbania

    2000-09-08T16:18:00Z

    Dir: Jon Shear. US. 2000. 104 mins.Prod cos: Day-Harris Productions, Commotion Pictures. US dist: Lions Gate Films. Prods: Jon Shear, Stephanie Golden, J Todd Harris. Scr: Shear, Daniel Reitz, from the play Urban Folk Tales by Reitz. DoP: Shane Kelly. Prod des: Karyl Newman. Eds: Randolph K Bricker, Ed Marx. ...

  • News

    Japan's Gaga Films arrives at AFM with co-production ambitions

    2007-10-31T05:00:00Z

    Gaga's production and sales arm, Gaga Films, is attending the AFM with a slate of co-productions, underscoring the Japanese outfit's strategy to become active in pan-Asian as well as international co-productions.Cyborg She, financed by a Japanese production consortium and Korea's Centurion Movie & Knowledge 3rd Investment Fund, is being directed ...

  • News

    Icon, Telepool, Showbox among buyers for Gold Circle's Chilled

    2007-10-31T05:00:00Z

    Mandate International president Helen Lee-Kim has announced major pre-sales on Gold Circle's romantic comedy Chilled In Miami starring Renee Zellweger and Harry Connick Jr.Deals have closed in Australia (Icon), Germany (Telepool), South Korea (Showbox), Taiwan (CMC), Greece (Audiovisual), Poland-Czech-Hungary (SPI), Turkey (Fida), Philippines (Viva), Romania-Bulgaria (Mediapro), Middle East (Gulf), and ...

  • News

    UCLA student wins top prize at Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards

    2007-10-31T06:50:00Z

    UCLA student Jennifer O'Kieffe's dark coming-of-age story Sex And Sylvia Plath has won the 52nd Annual Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards' $15,000 first prize. Second place and $7,500 went to UCLA's Michael Vukadinovich's comedy Buckabee and third place and a $4,000 prize was awarded to UCLA's Mark C Humphrey's satirical comedy ...

  • Reviews

    Southland Tales

    2007-10-31T13:31:00Z

    Dir: Richard Kelly, USA, 2007, 144minsSouthland Tales, re-cut since its world premiere at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, is apocalyptic vaudeville, as politicians, cops, Iraq veterans porn stars and an amnesiac actor scramble to fulfil or forestall conspiracies in Los Angeles, culminating in a world-ending Fourth of July. It's an ...

  • Reviews

    Days and Clouds (Giorni e Nuvole)

    2007-10-31T12:01:00Z

    Dir: Silvio Soldini Italy/Switzerland 2007. 115 mins.The strongest of the five Italian films that received their national premieres at the Rome Film Fest, Days and Clouds (which also played in Toronto and London) is a fine piece of emotional eye-on-the-object filmmaking from homegrown auteur Silvio Soldini and regular screenplay sidekick ...

  • News

    Sales expert Steinman joins CAA

    2007-10-31T12:56:00Z

    Film sales expert and former Sloss Law Office partner Dan Steinman has joined CAA as a film finance expert and sales agent.Based in CAA's New York office, Steinman will support the agency's growth in the film sales arena and its independent film financing business.Over the past three years, CAA has ...

  • News

    German animation is highest entry to Screen's international chart

    2007-10-31T14:56:00Z

    Germany's animated adventure Lissi Und Der Wilde Kaiser was the highest non-US entry into the international top 40 this weekend, taking $6.9m from 905 screens across three territories. For the full chart, click hereThe comedy, released through Constantin Film, opened to number four in the chart and enjoyed a $7,609 ...

  • News

    Lock And Roll up and running

    2007-10-31T15:39:00Z

    T & C Pictures and Sony Music Entertainment Japan has begun shooting in Salt Lake City, Los Angeles and Japan the comedy Lock And Roll Forever.Chris Grismer is directing the story of an all-girl teenage band from a working class industrial city in Japan that travels to America in search ...

  • News

    Radio Free Albemuth starts shoot

    2007-10-31T15:45:00Z

    Principal photography has begun on John Alan Simon's Philip K Dick adaptation Radio Free Albemuth starring Alanis Morissette.Jonathan Scarfe, Shea Whigham, Katheryn Winnick and Hanna Hall also star in the Discovery Productions and Open Pictures story about an extra-terrestrial plot to bring down a corrupt regime through the power of ...

  • News

    Hallam Foe tops BAFTA Scotland nominations

    2007-10-31T16:13:00Z

    Hallam Foe leads the nominations for the 2007 BAFTA Scotland Awards which will be presented in Glasgow on November 18. David Mackenzie's tale of a disturbed teenager coming to terms with the death of his mother has been nominated for Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Actor for Jamie Bell and ...

  • Reviews

    Memento

    2000-09-08T16:23:00Z

    Dir: Christopher Nolan. US. 2000. 113 mins.Prod co: Team Todd. Exec prod co: Newmarket. Backers: Summit Entertainment. Int'l sales: Summit Entertainment, tel: (1) 310 309 840001. Prods: Suzanne Todd, Jennifer Todd. Exec prods: Aaron Ryder, Will Tyrer, Chris Ball. Scr: Christopher Nolan, based on short story by Jonathan Nolan. DoP: ...

  • News

    Hallam Foe tops BAFTA Scotland nominations

    2007-10-31T16:13:00Z

    Hallam Foe leads the nominations for the 2007 BAFTA Scotland Awards which will be presented in Glasgow on November 18. David Mackenzie's tale of a disturbed teenager coming to terms with the death of his mother has been nominated for Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Actor for Jamie Bell and ...