Small MPU – Page 752
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Reviews
Frozen
Dir: Juliet McKoen.UK-Den. 2004. 90minsWintry and melancholic, writer-director Juliet McKoen'sdebut feature is a mood piece, exploring loss and obsession. Despite somestarkly beautiful imagery, it's a strangely cumbersome affair which soon beginsto sink under the weight of its own symbolism.McKoen has an eye for apoetic shot but is dragged down by ...
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News
Oscar Moore winner teams with Secretary director
Oscar Moore prize winnerLindsay Shapero is adapting Tibor Fischer's award-winning novel Under TheFrog for American director/producer Steve Shainberg (Secretary).The film, which is currentlyin development, will be produced by Shainberg and directed by US-basedHungarian director Dezso Magyar.Under the Frog is a black comedy set against the backdrop of theHungarian uprising of ...
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News
German exhibitors angered by window wavering
The German exhibitors association HDF has calledon distributors to honour the six-month window for theatrical releases afterseveral cases of films appearing on DVD/video before six months had elapsed.HDF managing director Andreas Kramer said that'the six month exploitation window for feature films must remain a basicconstant factor. A general reduction will ...
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London Film Festival wraps on a high
Asthe London Film Festival closed last night with a screening of David O.Russell's I Heart Huckabees, the festival organisers were claiming thatthis has been the best attended LFF yet.There were around 150 sell-outs and ticket sales, at over 102,000, were up 3% on last year's figures. LFF artistic director Sandra ...
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Lightning strikes on documentary hit
Los Angeles-based sales and distribution house LightningEntertainment has acquired international rights to What The Bleep Do WeKnow'Bleep centres on a woman's Alice in Wonderland-like journeythrough the molecular portals of life and is a Captured Light presentation of aLord of the Winds Films Production.Marlee Matlin, Elaine Hendrix, Barry Newman and Robert ...
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Zinc, GRB expand alliance
Zinc Entertainment, adivision of Silver Pictures, and GRB Entertainment have expanded their existingalliance by agreeing to co-produce and distribute five television movies overthe next two years.The first two projects, TheForerunner and Body Armor, will be available this year's AFM, where GRB istaking a suite for the first time.All TV movies ...
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News
Echo Bridge enters US distribution
Los Angeles-based independent Echo Bridge Entertainment isentering the domestic distribution market with two titles, the family drama WhenZachary Beaver Came To Town and the Tobe Hooper horror feature Mortuary.Echo Bridge plans to release four to six wide andspeciality titles a year, with managing partners Michael Alexander, DougHamilton, Michael Rosenblatt and ...
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First-look deal puts Focus on Africa
Focus Features has signed a first-look deal with independentproducer Kisha Imani Cameron and her Completion Films.Focus has also announced an initiative to nurture African cinema,with Cameron, currently in post production on HBO Films' Rwandan drama SometimesIn April, serving as aproject consultant.Focus president of production John Lyons and his team will ...
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Romanian studio backs down from DiCaprio boast
Romania's Castel Film Studios has backed down from claims made earlier this week that Leonardo DiCaprio would be appearing in Librium, the sci-fi thriller that is due to shoot in Bucharest this Summer for Dimension Films.Admitting to the same wishful thinking that makes casting credits so non-contractual at film markets, ...
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News
Comic veterans take on animation series
IDT Entertainment's New Arc Films and comic book legendStan Lee, Gill Champion and Arthur Lieberman's POW! Entertainment have signedtwo veteran comic book writers for the first two animated features in asix-title deal.Marv Wolfman will write El Lobo, the story of a physically handicappedheir to a billion-dollar fortune who is protected ...
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News
Insurance group buys Milstein's completion bond outfit
HCC Insurance Holdings haspaid an undisclosed sum to acquire cineFinance, Fred Milstein's LA-based movieunderwriter that also brought Hollywood-style completion bond financing to HongKong and Korean cinema.Based in Houston, HCC is aninternational insurance holding company with offices across the US, and inBermuda, England and Spain. HCC has assets of more than ...
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Celluloid Dreams enjoys AFM sales spree
Powerhouse French sellerCelluloid Dreams has enjoyed a muscular start to the autumn AFM with strongsales in the US and Japan.It closed the last majorterritory on Francois Ozon's Venice competition title 5x2 when it closeda US sale with THINKfilm. The company will open it stateside in spring,2005 "What 5 X 2 ...
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Wild Bunch in the Ascendant
Wild Bunch, the ambitiousFrench sales and distribution group, has begun what it hopes is the beginningof a beautiful friendship with fast-rising US indie producer AscendantPictures. In a last minute dual addition to its autumn AFM slate,Wild Bunch has added the $40m heroic fantasy Outlander and the quirky$10m romantic drama The ...
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News
Universal, Paramount among Domino buyers for Summit
Summit Entertainment isclose to completing its international sales patchwork on Tony Scott's KeiraKnightley-starrer Domino, thetrue life story of actor Laurence Harvey's daughter Domino who abandoned hercareer as a model to turn bounty hunter.Universal Pictures hasbought Latin America and Japan, Paramount Pictures has bought Australia and NewZealand, Entertainment has bought UK ...
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Lions Gate locks up trio for North America
Lions Gate Films has finalized its deal for North American theatrical and pay TV distribution rights to A Good Woman. In separate deals, the noticeably acquisitive indie also secured all North American rights to Uwe Boll's video game horror adaptation Alone InThe Dark as well as to Gianni Amelio's Le ...
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Grudge star Gellar signs to Kapadia's Revolver
Sarah Michelle Gellar, whosestar is on a high after the success of The Grudge, has signed to star in another supernatural thrillercalled Revolver (not to beconfused with Guy Ritchie's film of the same name for EuropaCorp) which isbeing produced by Aaron Ryder's Raygun Pictures for Focus Features' RoguePictures label.The UK's ...
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Paris Hilton goes Bottom's Up for Blue Collar
Paris Hilton is in talks tostar in the satire BottomC;s Up, which actor Paul Walker isproducing with his Blue Collar Films partner Brandon Birtell along with HalfMoon Bay and Cameo FJ Entertainment.The story centres on aseemingly witless Midwestern bartender whose Hollywood connections confoundeveryone he encounters.Walker will take a cameorole in ...
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Paris Hilton goes Bottom's Up for Blue Collar
Paris Hilton is in talks tostar in the satire Bottom's Up,which actor Paul Walker is producing with his Blue Collar Films partner BrandonBirtell along with Half Moon Bay and Cameo FJ Entertainment. Gibraltar International is selling the film at AFM.The story centres on aseemingly witless Midwestern bartender whose Hollywood connections ...
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The Grudge embarks upon wide UK debut
Horror remake The Grudge, which opened in the US through Columbia Pictures, goes out wide through UIP in theUK on Nov 5 on 400 prints in what looks likely to be a muscular debut following its strong Stateside launch.Thepicture also opens in Mexico on the same day and can expect ...
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LGFI handles international sales on Frankenstein
Lions Gate Films International will handle international sales on Frankenstein,which makes its market screening premiere at AFM and stars Thomas Kretschmann, ParkerPosey and Vincent Perez.The project was directed by Marcus Nispel, whose recent creditsinclude the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake.The Mary Shelley adaptation relocates the action to present-dayNew Orleans, where a ...