Small MPU – Page 648
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News
Angel swoops on Peter Bech
Danish mini-major Angel Films, which covers production, distribution, international sales and a facility house, has sealed an output deal with local production outfit Peter Bech Film.Angel will handle Nordic distribution on Peter Bech's slate but has not decided whether it will also handle international sales. The two companies previously worked ...
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Reviews
20 Centimetres (20 Centimentros)
Dir/scr: Ramon Salazar.Sp-Fr. 2005. 113mins.A bawdy, picaresque Spanish yarn about a transvestite whoyearns for a sex change operation (she has 20cm she wishes to dispense with -hence the title), Ramon Salazar's second feature carries obvious echoes of theearly work of Pedro Almodovar. There is the same irreverent humour, a sharedfascination ...
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Reviews
What A Wonderful Place (Eize Makom Nifla)
Dir/scr: EyalHalfon. Is-Ger. 2005. 104mins.Eyal Halfon's WhatA Wonderful Place, about the plight of foreign workers in Israel is a grim,angry and uncompromising drama. Three inter-related plots leading to violentfinal clash offer the bitterly ironic conclusion that Israel - or any othersupposedly liberal western country that treats its economic migrants in ...
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News
Higuchi named head of licensing at Constantin
Yoko Higuchi has been promoted to the post ofhead of licensing at Munich-based Constantin Film.She will work closely with Constantin's CEO Fred Kogel onall licensing and sales activities and also oversee international acquisitionsin tandem with Kogel and Herman Weigel.Over the past two years, Higuchi played a key role in theacquisition ...
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News
Kerrigan's Keane pulls out of Edinburgh line-up
Lodge Kerrigan's Keane will no longer bescreening at this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) Aug17-28).The festival cited a conflicting commitment -understood to be a screening at this year's Deauville Festival of British film- as the reason for the move.Replacing it, Edinburgh is to screen the WorldPremiere of Lasse Hallstrom's ...
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News
Shortlist narrows in search for new Locarno director
With less than a week to go beforeLocarno's board makes a decision on the successor to Irene Bignardi as thefestival's artistic director, the news on the festival grapevine is that thechoice will be between two names: Jean Perret, director of the Nyon DocumentaryFilm Festival "Visions du Reel", and Frederic Maire, ...
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News
Oz producers navigate funding Puzzle
Writer/director Mark Forstmann and producers MiriamStein and Tamara Popper go into production on October 31 on Monkey Puzzleafter extensive workshops with a cast of young emerging actors.The coming of age, character-driven drama centres onfive friends who go looking for world's rarest tree. As they descend into theravines and canyons of ...
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News
Dellal readies On A Clear Day follow-ups
British filmmaker Gaby Dellal, whose film On A Clear Dayscreened to an enthusiastic response at the Locarno Film Festival at theweekend, is to team up with producers Dorothy Berwin and Sarah Curtis on asecond project. The new film, again to be scripted by Alex Rose, has theworking title Excess Baggage. ...
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News
London hosts shoot of Pfeiffer/Heckerling project
Principal photography isunderway in London on Amy Heckerling's $27m romantic comedy I Could Never BeYour Woman starring MichellePfeiffer.Paul Rudd and Tracey Ullmanalso star in the story of a successful businesswoman who encounters nothing butstress in her love life.Fred Willard and Mel Smithalso feature in the cast and there are cameos ...
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News
Universal lures Scott for Book Of Leo
Seann William Scott, currently riding high following lastweekend's number one launch of The Dukes Of Hazzard, is being lined up to star in the comedy BookOf Leo for Universal Pictures.The project is being put together by Marc PlattProductions and Scott and Graham Larson's Identity Films, which both have termdeals with ...
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News
Music producer Nicolo launches distribution venture
Grammy Award-winningmusic producer Joe Nicolo has teamed up with a group of entrepreneurs to launch Kindred Media Group.Backed by private equity, the new distribution venturewill handle domestic and international rights on projects and will be headed upby new media entrepreneur Jeffrey D Erb, who founded the business-to-businesstechnology company precision Media, ...
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News
Filmax thrills with Factory
Barcelona-based mini-studio The Filmax Group has closed a string of sales on four English-language titles from its Fantasic Factory sci-fi and terror genre division - Brian Yuzna's Faust, Jack Sholder's Arachnid, Stuart Gordon's Dagon and Yuzna's Beyond Reanimator.StudioCanal has taken French-speaking European rights on the four titles while Helkon has ...
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Reviews
Four Brothers
Dir: John Singleton. US.2005. 109mins.Set against a vastconspiratorial backdrop in which daylight shootouts take place with noimpunity, director John Singleton's Four Brothers is a formulaic andover-the-top crime drama that offers forth a guileless daisy chain of violentincidents with no convincing explication of place or consequence. Despite itsintriguing multi-cultural casting, it's ...
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Reviews
Secuestro Express
Dir/scr: JonathanJakubowicz. Venez-US. 2005. 86mins.The debut feature fromVenezuelan-born 26 year-old Jonathan Jakubowicz, Secuestro Express is abold warts-and-all chronicle of a commonplace kidnapping on the brutal streetsof Caracas. Shot on digital video and filled with the kind of flash kineticenergy which will get him noticed on the world map, the film ...
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Reviews
The Great Raid
Dir: John Dahl. US. 2005.130mins.The inherent messiness ofarmed combat gets a full and solemn workout in director John Dahl's detailed,solidly staged World War II liberation flick The Great Raid, anold-fashioned movie of stark moral clarity that will appeal to hardcore genrefans and flag-waving American patriots, but not likely make a ...
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Reviews
Riviera
Dir/scr:Anne Villaceque. Fr. 2005. 94mins.Emotionaldysfunction, repressed sexuality and Southern sunshine make a potentlydisturbing combination in Riviera, second feature by French directorAnne Villaceque. In her 2000 debut Petite Cherie, Villaceque establishedtroubled female sexuality as her key theme, and she returns to it with avengeance in this subtly intense portrayal of a ...
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News
Italian directors win legal battle over lack of funding
A group of first time directors, known as Gruppo 16/12,who took legal action against the Italian government after being denied publicfunds that had been awarded to their projects, have won their case. Earlier this year, the government told the directors there were insufficientfunds to finance their 20 features which had ...
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Toronto line-up confirms Oscar launchpad status
Confirming its position as the launch padfor Oscar season, the Toronto International Film Festival has added nine worldpremieres to its line-up, many from or starring Academy Award-winningfilmmakers and actors.Among the new titles scheduled to screen at the 30thTIFF are Breakfast On Pluto, fromscreenplay winner and directorial nominee Neil Jordan; The ...
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News
Paris court overturns L'Ex Femme, Warners ruling
The Paris court of appealshas overturned a ruling that prevented the film L'Ex Femme de Ma Viefrom benefiting from French subsidies.France's National CinemaCentre (CNC), responsible for granting subsidies to French and European films,appealed the decision on the film last year. Recent controversy hasfocused on Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement, ...
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Jeremy Thomas readies Royle's Director's Cut
Britishproducer Jeremy Thomas, who picks up the Locarno Film Festival's prestigiousRaimondo Rezzonico award today, has revealed further details of what looks setto be his second film as a director.The Director's Cut is an adaptation of NicholasRoyle's novel. Royle has already written a draft of the screenplay and Thomashopes to shoot ...