Small MPU – Page 915
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News
UK financiers don't see disaster with closed tax loophole
UK film financiers have been striking a philosophical note about yesterday's Budget 2008 government announcement that 'sole traders' who spend fewer than 10 hours a week on film-related activities will no longer be able to offset predicted losses on film investment.Previous UKGovernment clampdowns, whether last year's sudden closure of so-called ...
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News
Tribeca 2008 announces Discovery, Midnight lineups
The Tribeca Film Festival has announced the films in its Discovery and Midnight sections for this year's festival which runs April 23 to May 3 in Manhattan.Discovery features 30 films with 18 world premiers and 11 North American premieres from up-and-coming narrative and documentary directors, while the Midnight section features ...
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Reviews
Stop-Loss
Dir: Kimberly Peirce. US. 2008. 113 mins.Nine years after Boys Don't Cry, Kimberly Peirce finally returns with a second film, but Stop-Loss, a portrait of American men returning from Iraq and the stop-loss policy that keeps sending them back there, is as earnest and heavy-handed as her first film was ...
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News
Enlight Pictures unveilsslate of co-productions, imports
Beijing-based Enlight Pictures, the film sector of Enlight Media Group, has unveiled a slate of four films that it will invest in and distribute in 2008. The company also announced that it plans to expand its business to international co-productions, acquisitions and project development, in addition to its current film ...
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Features
Editorial - Don't rely on the numbers
One of the 60th anniversaries that will go largely unnoticed this year is New Zealand economist Bill Phillips' invention of an economic calculating device called Moniac.The Moniac is an ingenious proto-computer that promised to predict scientifically a nation's economic fortunes. It opened and closed valves that released water into tubes, ...
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Features
In focus - Financing - Filming in hard times
The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer's annual budget has been watched with trepidation by the film industry in recent years. The biggest change was the dramatic overhaul of the tax system that ended the sale-and-leaseback era.But in hindsight Gordon Brown, now the prime minister, made perhaps the most significant gesture ...
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Features
United States - Under The Starz Sign
Fate brought US producer Scott Einbinder and German producer and investment banker Ingo Vollkammer together, but everything since then has followed a clear design.The founders of Los Angeles-based Leomax Entertainment and its genre label Indigomotion, both of which are backed through Zurich-based parent company Leomax AG, met through mutual acquaintance ...
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News
Kimberly Peirce on Stop Loss
Kimberly Peirce was in New York on the day of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks and recalls vividly her emotional devastation at the sight of the towers' collapse.In the tense aftermath, she began reflecting on how her life and the lives of those around her had fundamentally changed.Her grandfather ...
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Reviews
Without A Trace
Dir: Maria Novaro. 2000. Mexico-Spain. 125 mins.Prod cos: Tabasco, Altavista, Tornasol. Domestic dist: Altafilms. Int'l sales: Altavista (52) 5 55 20 45 04. Exec prods: Tita Lombardo, Mariela Besuievsky. Prod: Dulce Kuri. Co-prods: Francisco Gonzalez Compean, Gerardo Herrero. Scr: Novaro. DoP: Serguei Saldivar Tanaka. Prod des: Patrick Pasquier. Ed: Angel ...
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Features
United Kingdom - Political Animal
Cinema is about telling human stories and the politics need to be in the back." Those words may come as a surprise from Salford-born director Pete Travis, whose last two feature films are powerful political dramas.In 2004, his debut feature, Omagh, followed a family in the aftermath of the 1998 ...
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News
Nick Broomfield: Battle Scars
Nick Broomfield adds his voice to the wave of films on modern warfare and terrorism with Battle For Haditha. It is a stirring piece of cinema verite that premiered in Toronto last autumn and will air on March 17 as part of Channel 4's Iraq season in the UK, and ...
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Features
Mapp's Direction
Christopher Mapp, managing director of Australia's Omnilab Group, has much resting on The Bank Job, which opened in the UK on February 28 and in the US on March 7. The film is the biggest and most international of several projects the ambitious company has helped finance in the past ...
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Features
The big kick-off
With a tale that echoes their documentary In The Hands Of The Gods, the four young Brits who make up film-making collective Fulwell 73 set out to achieve their dream - and ended up busking their way to success on little more than a wing and a prayer.Brothers Gabe and ...
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Features
Production - Iceland - White hot
Iceland punches above its weight in the film world, considering the number of film-makers and film-goers per capita in this small, isolated nation. The country's reputation is on the up thanks to increasingly high-profile work from the likes of Baltasar Kormakur, whose acclaimed thriller Jar City was launched in the ...
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Features
Production - On location - Scene stealer
Iceland boasts some of the most striking landscapes on earth, is equidistant from the US East Coast and continental Europe and offers extreme daylight in summer and extreme darkness in winter. Locations range from Reykjavik's trendy bars to active volcanoes, geothermal hot springs and Europe's largest glacier.More than 30 international ...
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News
French production- Cinema Sans Frontieres
France produces 200-plus films a year, more than any other country in Europe. Its output has long been dominated by light-hearted fare, targeted at the local market.However, with the local box office falling in 2007 and exports booming, this is gradually changing as a new breed of French film-makers and ...
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Features
Production - The film-makers - Youth movement
NABIL AYOUCHAyouch first came to attention in 2000 with his second feature, Ali Zaoua, Prince Of The Streets, a drama about children in Casablanca which won international prizes from St Louis to Stockholm. The latest title from the film-maker, whose mother is French-Jewish and father is Moroccan-Muslim, is Whatever Lola ...
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Features
International - A French Collection
French comedy Bienvenue Chez Les Ch'tis enjoyed its second weekend at number one, taking an impressive $29.8m from three territories while keeping new entry 10,000 BC at bay.Ch'tis fell a mere 8% over the three-day period and played on 905 screens for a whopping $32,916 screen average, the highest of ...
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Features
Box office: Data - The critical view - Bad moon rising
At this year's Berlinale, I found myself pitching an idea for a script I'll probably never write to an old friend who is now a leading British producer. I felt a bit guilty: this was supposed to be his one non-working lunch of the festival, and there was me turning ...
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Reviews
Bootmen
Dir: Dein Perry. Australia. 2000. 96 mins.Prod co: Bootmen Productions. Worldwide dist: 20th Century Fox. Exec producer: Dein Perry. Producer: Hilary Linstead. Co-producer: Antonia Barnard. Scr: Steve Worland . DoP: Steve Mason. Prod des: Murray Picknett. Ed: Jane Moran. Composer: Cezary Skubiszewski. Main cast: Adam Garcia, Sam Worthington, Sophie Lee.Australian ...