Small MPU – Page 40
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News
Harry Potter now biggest franchise ever
The combined worldwide box office of the five Harry Potter films to date currently exceeds $4.47bn, overtaking box office totals of all 22 James Bond films and the six Star Wars films. Each of the first five Harry Potter films is among the top 20 worldwide releases in history. 'It ...
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Reviews
Across The Universe
Dir: Julie Taymor USA 2007. 129mins.The post-Chicago boom in screen musicals takes a novel twist with Across The Universe, a concept album-style love story set against the social upheavals of the 1960s and largely told through the songs of The Beatles. This ambitious Julie Taymor project veers between the soaring, ...
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News
Venice winner opens Warsaw International Film Festival
Andrzej Jakimowski's Venice Days title Tricks, which received the Europa Cinemas label and Laterna Magica Award in Venice last weekend, will open this year's Warsaw International Film Festival on October 12. The 'touching and intimate look at everyday working class life in the Polish countryside' will be released theatrically in ...
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Reviews
12 (Razgnevannyh Muzhchin)
Dir: Nikita Mikhalkov Russia 2007. 158 mins.Russian maestro Nikita Mikhalkov proves that Sidney Lumet's classic jury drama 12 Angry Men can work in another time and another place in this tasty adaptation, which is tough and passionate enough to survive the occasional lapse into Slavic sentimentality. It's hard to believe ...
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Film Financing Circle announcedfor Abu Dhabi Festival
Organisers of Abu Dhabi 's inaugural Middle East International Film Festival (MEIFF) have announced details of the accompanying Film Financing Circle (FFC), which takes place at the Emirates Palace hotel, the festival centre, October 15-17. 'Since the conception of the festival, I have wanted to offer an arena where global ...
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Reviews
Battle in Seattle
Director/Scr: Stuart Townsend. US, Canada. 2007. 100minsA labour of love for actor turned director Stuart Townsend, Battle In Seattle is an uneven but ultimately impassioned recreation of the riots at the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle . Documentary footage and fictional drama scenes make for initially uneasy bedfellows ...
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News
Kings is Irish entry to Academy Awards
IFTA, The Irish Film and Television Academy has today formally announced that Tom Collins's Kings has been officially selected by an independent IFTA jury as Ireland's submission to the 80th Academy Awards, in the Best Foreign Language Film category.Kings, which is predominantly in the Irish language, stars Colm Meaney, Donal ...
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Reviews
Blood Brothers (Tian Tang Kou)
Dir: Alexi Tan, Taiwan/China/Hong Kong, 2007. 95minsThe closing film at the Venice film festival, Blood Brothers is a dark gangster fable set in 1930s Shanghai - and a stylish but hollow debut for John Woo protege Alexi Tan. For all the film's lush cinematography, spot-on period detail and all-star Asian ...
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News
Britfilms showcases UK cinema for German schools
Film Education UK has joined forces with Germany's educational body Vision Kino and the arthouse cinemas' association AG Kino-Gilde to launch Britfilms, a touring showcase of British cinema aimed at German schoolchildren, with accompanying teacher study guides and teaching materials.The Britfilms tour begins October 18 in Essen's Lichtburg cinema with ...
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Reviews
A Jihad For Love
Dir: Parvez Sharma USA/UK/France/Germany/Australia. 2007. 81minsFilmed over six years in twelve countries, A Jihad For Love compiles personal stories that illuminate the bitter struggles of lesbians andgay men to reconcile their homosexuality with their Muslim faith. The film presents itself as a modest first step in attempting to foster a ...
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News
Run, Fat Boy, Run races to top of UK box office
Simon Pegg ran up another big hit in the UK at the weekend as Entertainment's Run, Fat Boy, Run took the number one slot in its first weekend and generated $4.1m (£2.01m) from 413 sites (including $330,204 of one-day previews).The comedy, which is David Schwimmer's directorial debut, had a site ...
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News
Sydney film fest launches international competition
In June 2008, the Sydney Film Festival will become the first in Australia to have an official FIAPF-approved competition, organisers announced today. The New South Wales state government has committed nearly $1.8m (A$2m) additional funding over the next four years. Twelve features will be in competition, judged by a jury ...
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News
Stockholm Festival reveals early details of 170-film programme
The 18th Stockholm International Film Festival has revealed the first details of what will beits 170-film line-up.Jarret Schaefer's Chapter 27, centring on John Lennon's murderer Mark David Chapman, Driving with my Wife's Lover, the feature debut from Korean director Tai-sik Kim and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the award-winner ...
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Reviews
Before The Rains
Dir: Santosh Sivan US/India. 2007. 98minsA bittersweet journey from blinkered loyalty to rueful independence, Before The Rains captures the crumbling of British rule in 1930s India through a doomed love affair and its tragic consequences. In its more obvious moments it strays perilously close to the conventions of romantic fiction ...
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News
France's Ubi Soft acquires Clancy's Red Storm
French video game developer and distributor Ubi Soft Entertainment is to acquire Tom Clancy's Red Storm Entertainment - which develops video games adapted from the US author's novels - for a reported $45m.Red Storm, which is based in Morrisville, North Carolina, registered revenues of $52m in 1999.Ubi Soft, a leader ...
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Reviews
Chaos (Heya fawda)
Dir: Youssef Chahine France/Egypt 2007. 122 minsVeteran Egyptian director Youssef Chahine serves up a stirring, old-fashioned melodrama with a liberal conscience in his latest film, co-directed with his younger colleague Khaled Youssef. As imbued with the sounds, colours and passions of Cairo as a novel by Naguib Mahfouz, the film ...
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News
Senator Entertainment gets $28m loan
Senator Entertainment's reinvigorated return to the German production and distribution scene has been given an additional boost after the group secured a $28m (Euros 20m) loan agreement with the Berlin branch of the Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank to finance future acquisitions of film rights and film production.Senator announced the deal ...
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Reviews
Lars And The Real Girl
Dir: Craig Gillespie USA 2007. 106 mins.Ryan Gosling, one of the finest actors currently working in American independent cinema, is once again outstanding in this offbeat but exceptionally accomplished film. Starting off as funny and quirky, Lars and the Real Girl gradually becomes a riveting yet never heavy-handed psychological portrait ...
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Reviews
Chaotic Ana
Dir: Julio Medem. Spain, 2007, 120 minutes. Many viewers felt that director Medem's The Lovers of the Arctic Circle was one of the best films of the 1990s. Its mixture of poetic visual and verbal imagery, coupled with a strong dose of mysticism and steamy insights into love and sex, ...
