Small MPU – Page 308
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News
Grade pitches Pinewood, Shepperton merger
Michael Grade and Ridley and Tony Scott are to join forces in running a UK super studio facility combining Pinewood Studios and Shepperton Studios, if current proposals from Grade get the go-ahead.Grade, who became chairman of Pinewood in February after buying the operation from Rank for $93m (£62m), confirmed he ...
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Reviews
Days Of Darkness
Dir. Denys Arcand.Can-Fr. 2007. 115mins.Also called at various stages Age Of Ignorance, Denys Arcand's new movie could also be called The Decline Of The Canadian Empire or alternately The Decline Of The Canadian Male.And Michael Moore should be made to sit through it for as many times as it will ...
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News
Flashpoint acquires remake rights to Hong Kong's Phoenix
LA-based Flashpoint Entertainment has acquired the English-language remake rights to Hong Kong action comedy Enter The Phoenix from JCE Movies. Flashpoint's Andrew R. Tennenbaum, whose credits include The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy, will produce the remake. The original film, produced in 2004 by JCE's Jackie Chan, Albert Yeung ...
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Reviews
The Mourning Forest (Mogari no Mori)
Dir: Naomi Kawase. Japan/France 2007. 98 mins.Naomi Kawase is one of those directors who usethe medium of film to work through their obssessions. In her case,these include fractured families, the aftermath of a loved one's deathor disappearance, rural Japanese traditions, the spiritual luminosityof the elderly and infirm. Luckily for audiences ...
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News
Pirates raids international market with $205.5m opening
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End grossed an estimated $205.5m in the international marketplace this weekend, the biggest standard opening of all time, according to distributor Buena Vista International (BVI).If early estimates putting the film's North American total at $126.5m stand up, At World's End, the third installment of ...
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News
Romanian drama wins Palme d'Or
Cristian Mungiu's difficult-to-swallow but critically-acclaimed Romanian drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks, And 2 Days has won Cannes 60th anniversary Palme d'Or.But Stephen Frears' jury threw some curveballs in their prize-giving. There was no mention of the Coen brothers' lauded No Country For Old Men and another favourite, the heavily-praised The ...
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Reviews
Alexandra (Vishnevskaya)
Dir: Alexander Sokurov. Russia, 2007. 92 minutes.This new effort by Russian auteur Sokurov, an anti-war minimalist 'situation' - calling it a 'tale' would imply more attention to narrative than the film warrants - set and actually shot in the ruins of Grozny, in Chechnya, is very much in the humanist-formalist ...
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Reviews
Ocean's Thirteen
Dir: Steven Soderbergh. US. 2007. 122mins.Thirteen should produce some lucky numbers for Warner Brothers and maintain the muscular box-office momentum in the current summer of threequels. The third entry in the crime caper franchise, Ocean's Thirteen marks a return to form after the self-indulgent tomfoolery of its globe-hopping predecessor, even ...
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Reviews
Promise Me This (Promets-moi)
Dir: Emir Kusturica. Fr-Serb. 2007. 140mins'Never knowingly understated' continues to be the motto of Serbian madcap director Emir Kusturica. All the usual ingredients are present in Promise Me This, the latest knockabout episode of Emir's Balkan Follies - manic overacting, slapstick, wildly cartoonish characters and the usual menagerie of hapless ...
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News
Igel Media launches London-based sales arm
German family entertainment rights trader Igel Media has opened a London-based international sales arm to be headed by current international sales chief Edward Galton.The new division will be responsible for worldwide distribution of Igel product working closely with the company's Hamburg headquarters.Earlier this year Igel and French production studio Xilam ...
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Reviews
The Last Mistress (Une Vieille Maitresse)
Dir: Catherine Breillat. Fr-It. 2007. 114minsSeasoned provocatrice Catherine Breillat puts a predictably louche spin on the costume drama genre in An Old Mistress, her adaptation of an 1851 novel by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly. Well known for her sexually explicit and intellectually confrontational dramas such as Romance and Anatomy Of Hell, ...
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Reviews
Secret Sunshine (Miryang)
Dir: Lee Chang-dong. S Kor. 2007. 133mins.An uncompromising experiment in how much suffering a soul can take, both on screen and in one's cinema seat, Lee Chang-dong's follow-up to the critically-acclaimed Oasis makes for an original but ultimately gruelling two-and-a-quarter hours' viewing. This contemporary, twisted parable of Job is impressive, ...
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News
Quality and diversity ensure it was a Cannes to remember
Special occasions always provoke unrealistic expectations but Cannes rose to the challenge of a landmark 60th festival with a programme that had distinction in abundance.Opening with Wong Kar Wai's underwhelming My Blueberry Nights was still a statement of intent, underlining the belief that auteur-cinema matters and that the festival was ...
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Reviews
We Own The Night
Dir/scr: James Gray. US. 2007. 105mins.A self-conscious evocation of the crime and punishment police thrillers that were once a speciality of Sidney Lumet, We Own The Night is an average B-movie with delusions of grandeur. Transparent plotting and dubious moral grand-standing are the main drawbacks in a film that lacks ...
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Reviews
Calle Santa Fe
Dir: Carmen Castillo. Chile-Fr-Bel. 164mins.Beginning as a reconstruction of the October 1977 police shooting of Chilean underground Marxist leader Miguel Enriquez, Calle Santa Fe is a long but ultimately compelling documentary both celebrates the anti-Pinochet resistance and subjects it to testing questions. These are made all the more incisive and ...
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News
Pirates reaches $156m domestic, $245m international
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End ended the four-day North American holiday weekend with an estimated domestic gross of $156m, a new record for the Memorial Day weekend. And distributor Buena Vista issued a new international figure of $245m (including estimates for Monday), pushing the film's worldwide total ...
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News
Little Film Company takes on rights to Satanas
The Little Film Company has acquired worldwide rights from Dynamo & Rionegro Producciones to Andres Baiz' thriller Satanas. Rodrigo Guerrero (Maria Full Of Grace) produced the film, which stars Damian Alcazar, Marcela Mar and Blas Jaramillo in a story that explores the ripple effect of misguided actions on a group ...
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News
Cannes Grand Prix winner The Mourning Forest to air on Japanese TV
Cannes' newly crowned Grand Prix winner The Mourning Forest (Mogari No Mori) will air on Japanese public broadcaster NHK on May 29, five days before its June 3 theatrical release in Japan. Though the broadcast was planned before the film's win, the great amount of additional press combined with NHK's ...
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News
Declaration calls for revamp of Swiss funding
The Swiss Association of Film Producers (SFP) and French-speaking Switzerland's film trade association ARC have called for sweeping changes to the country's public film funding structure in their "Locarno Declaration", published at last week's Locarno Film Festival.Switzerland's production community was recently hit by the news that the Swiss culture ministry ...