Small MPU – Page 952
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Natalie Sakai promoted in film acquisitions at IFDC
Natalie Sakai has been promoted to manager of worldwide acquisitions and operations at entertainment consultants IFDC Inc.Sakai joined IFDC Inc in 2007 and continues to work alongside president Jerome Bliah in international film acquisitions.Sakai began her professional career as an assistant to Academy Award winning documentarian Robert Amram.She moved into ...
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Documentaries stir up heat at Tribeca Film Festival
In its short history the Tribeca Film Festival has been slow to trigger buying sprees and sure enough as the event reached the first weekend's halfway mark no major deals had closed.However by Saturday interest had coalesced around Keif Davidson's World Documentary Competition entry Kassim The Dream, which recounts the ...
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Shane Meadows leads UK delegation at Tribeca
BAFTA winner Shane Meadows gave a masterclass to Tribeca Film Festival attendees including graduates of the UK Skillset academies on Saturday [April 26].Meadows, whose latest film Somers Town received its North American premiere here, spoke to an audience that included film-makers from seven UK projects selected under the auspices of ...
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UK documentary The English Surgeon wins top prize at Hot Docs
UK filmmaker Geoffrey Smith's The English Surgeon won the Best International Feature Documentary Award as the 15th annual Hot Docs festival wrapped in Toronto this weekend. Produced by Smith and Rachel Wexler, the film follows renowned British brain surgeon Henry Marsh as he operates on life-threatening brain tumours in the ...
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Baby Mama, Harold & Kumar 2 lead domestic box office
Two new comedies dominated the North American charts as Universal's Baby Mama launched at number one on estimated $18.3m followed by New Line/Warner Bros' Harold And Kumar sequel on $14.6m.Box office was up for the second consecutive weekend as the top 12 titles combined for $91m and climbed 17% against ...
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Sarah Marshall is queen of international with $7m weekend
Universal's Forgetting Sarah Marshall led the international market through UPI thanks to an estimated $7m haul from 1,000 sites in nine territories.The three-day result elevates the comedy's early running total to $9.3m and was driven by an excellent number one UK launch on $4.1m from 393 for producer Judd Apatow's ...
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Summit options sci-fi script Arena by Wagstaff, Howell
Summit Entertainment has optioned the rights to the speculative sci-fi script Arena from first-time writers Toby Wagstaff and Darren Howell.Benderspink will produce along with the writers' manager Jim Thompson, who recently produced War and the hip-hop documentary Diamonds In The Rough.Arena follows a unit of soldiers as they are mysteriously ...
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Little Girl Blue takes top honours at Plzen
An international jury at the 21st Finale Plzen film festival awarded the Golden Kingfisher for Best Film to Alice Nellis' Little Girl Blue. Produced by Jan Sverak, the film tells the story of one fateful day in the life of a middle-aged woman, played by actress and musician Iva Bittova. ...
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Charly wins top award at Crossing Europe
French director Isild de Besco won the main European Competition award for Charly at the fifth Crossing Europe Film Festival. The win is her second in Linz, following Half Price in 2005. The prize, worth $15,660 (Euros 10,000), was presented by a jury comprised of Swiss film critic Catherine Ann ...
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Icelandic comedy among new titles on Bac Films Cannes slate
Bac Films will bring three new projects to the Cannes market this year and also unveil the market premiere screening of Back Soon by Solveig Anspach.The comedy is about a woman in Iceland who's had enough of her pot-selling business and decides to move away with her two sons. Unfortunately, ...
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Icelandic comedy among new titles on Bac Films Cannes slate
Bac Films will bring three new projects to the Cannes market this year and also unveil the market premiere screening of Back Soon by Solveig Anspach. The comedy is about a woman in Iceland who's had enough of her pot-selling business and decides to move away with her two sons. ...
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Fuji TV's Shaolin Girl sells throughout Asia
Katsuyuki Motohiro's martial arts action comedy Shaolin Girl has sold to eight Asian territories, co-producer Fuji TV announced today. Gaga Communications, which is handling international sales on the film, has closed deals with Bill Kong's Edko Films for Hong Kong and Macau, San-Byte Hong Kong Co for Taiwan, Sahamongkol Film ...
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Forbidden Kingdom sets opening day record in China
Echoing its strong first weekend gross in the US, The Forbidden Kingdom achieved a record-breaking opening-day gross in mainland China. The film raked in $2.29m (RMB16m) on Thursday, April 24, surpassing the $2.14m (RMB15m) record set by The Warlords last December, as well as that of Curse Of The Golden ...
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Stream, Telepiu given ultimatum on decoder
The Italian communications watchdog has slapped a second fine and an ultimatum onto rival pay-TV companies Telepiu and Stream for failing to agree on a common decoder. According to Rome daily La Stampa, communications chief Enzo Cheli imposed a fine of $250,000 on top of an existing $150,000 fine and ...
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Chak De India, Om Shanti Om lead IIFA technical awards
Yash Raj Films' Chak De India and Farah Khan's Om Shanti Om are the big winners at this year's International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards in the technical categories. Both films star Shah Rukh Khan. Chak De India bagged five awards including best cinematography (Sudeep Chatterjee), best editing (Amitabh Shukla), ...
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Fortissimo picks up Mendoza's Cannes-bound Serbis
Fortissimo Films has acquired worldwide rights outside of France and the Philippines to Brillante Mendoza's Serbis, the first Filipino film to screen in competition at Cannes in 24 years. The last Filipino film to screen in Cannes competition was the late director Lino Brocka's Bayan Ko: My Own Country. The ...
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Edinburgh unveils new cult section calledUnder the Radar
The 2008 Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) will host a new section celebrating cult film, Under the Radar.'The term 'cult cinema' has become mere marketing-speak in recent years,' EIFF artistic director Hannah McGill said in statement issued to the press. 'With this new section, we want to re-animate the spirit ...
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Babelsberg looking to expand to Tempelhof
Studio Babelsberg has reaffirmed its interest in locating film production facilities at Berlin's historical Tempelhof Airport after a public referendum at the weekend failed to attract enough support to prevent the airport's planned closure this autumn.Speaking to the local newspaper Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten on Monday, Studio Babelsberg president and CEO ...
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Coen brothers' Burn After Reading to open Venice Film Festival
Joel and Ethan Coen's Burn After Reading will open the 65th edition of the Venice Film Festival as a world premiere.The film's classification as a gala or competition screening will be announced at a later date, the Biennale has said.In either case, the follow-up to the Coen Brother's celebrated No ...
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Shochiku to launch video-on-demand service
Japanese major studio Shochiku has announced the launch of a video-on-demand (VoD) service which will stream movies from its library of over 2,000 titles. Dubbed 'Shochiku Online', the service will launch on May 21. Approximately 200 titles are scheduled to become available in the first year, with 10 to 20 ...