ITV

Category: International

  • Harvey Weinstein mulls leaving MPAA

    Harvey Weinstein mulls leaving MPAA

    MUMBAI: Reacting to Motion Pictures Association of America‘s (MPAA) decision to upload the R rating given to Lee Hirsch‘s documentary Bully, Harvey Weinstein has said that he had no choice but to consider parting ways with the Association.


    Said Weinstein said in a statement, “As of today, The Weinstein Co. is considering a leave of absence for the foreseeable future. We respect the MPAA and their process, but feel this time it has just been a bridge too far.”


    Weinstein said that he is personally going to ask public figures and celebrities around the world–from First Lady Michelle Obama to Lady Gaga to the Duchess of Cambridge to help allow the movie to be seen without any restrictions.
     
    However, it is not clear whether the Weinstein Co. that isn‘t an official member of the MPAA is mulling with the idea of no longer submitting its films to the ratings board.


    The Classification and Ratings Administration has strict rules regarding language, which resulted in Bully, a documentary about schoolyard bullying, getting an R rating.


    Bully was filmed over the course of the 2009/2010 school year and looks at how bullying has touched five kids and their families. The film also documents the responses of teachers and administrators to aggressive behaviours besides capturing a growing movement among parents and youths to change how bullying is handled in schools, in communities and in society as a whole.

  • Fox to have limited release of Ben Zeitlin film

    Fox to have limited release of Ben Zeitlin film

    MUMBAI: Fox Searchlight has decided to give Ben Zeitlin‘s Beasts of the Southern Wild a limited platform release beginning 29 June. The same day, Magnolia Pictures will release Take This Waltz, a film by writer-director Sarah Polley.

    The director‘s debut feature won the narrative grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival last January.

    Written by Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar, the film follows a six-year-old girl in a poor southern Louisiana bayou as she struggles to survive with her father south of the levees as the ice caps melt and the seas rise.

    The film, produced by Michael Gottwald, Dan Janvey and Josh Penn, also won a cinematography award at the Sundance Film Fest where Fox Searchlight purchased the film‘s US rights for around $1 million.

  • ICS honours Ashgar Farhadi film

    ICS honours Ashgar Farhadi film

    MUMBAI: Giving a different touch to the awards season, the International Cinephile Society (ICS) has given top honours to Asghar Farhadi‘s A Separation at its 9th annual awards. The film bagged awards in the best picture, best ensemble, best screenplay and best film not in the English language categories.
     
    Other major winners included Terrence Malick who bagged the award for the best director for The Tree of Life. While the best actor award was bagged by Tom Cullen (Weekend) and Brad Pitt (The Tree of Life), the best actress award went to Anna Paquin and J. Smith-Cameron (both for Margaret).


    Formed in 2003, the International Cinephile Society is an online group made up of approximately 80 accredited journalists, film scholars, historians and other industry professionals who cover film festivals and events on five continents.
     
    The ICS honours the finest in American and international cinema every year.

  • Banderas to play Picasso in 33 Dias

    Banderas to play Picasso in 33 Dias

    MUMBAI: Spanish actor Antonio Banderas will play Pablo Picasso in Carlos Saura‘s film 33 Dias (33 Days). The film, made on a budget of $ 7.9 million, will focus on the painter‘s emotional turmoil while he worked on his masterpiece Guernica.


    33 Dias, produced by Spanish producer Elias Querejeta, refers to the time Picasso spent on the mural, which captured his reaction to the destruction of Basque town of Guernica in 1937 by the Nazi Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War.
     
    In the film, Saura shows how painting Guernica proved near salvation for Picasso at a moment of personal crisis. It also focuses on Picasso‘s relationship with his lover, French artist Dora Maar.


    To be made in French and Spanish, the film will go on floors next summer in Paris and Guernica.

  • Run up to Oscars starts today after ballots are in

    Run up to Oscars starts today after ballots are in

    MUMBAI: With the final ballots due to reach the Academy’s accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the run for the 2011-2012 Oscars will begin after the race for the same that began six months ago will come to an official end tonight at 5 pm PST.


    And with that all the films, the artistes and others in the fraternity will wait with bated breath for the award ceremony due coming Sunday at the Kodak Theatre.


    Since PriceWaterhouseCoopers guards the results, it is very difficult to know how close some contenders came to winning, or how many Academy members participated in the voting process.
     
    History has shown that many Hollywood-area voters wait until the last possible minute to fill out their ballots and then hand-deliver them to the Academy.


    That process could cause some problems this year since the ballots of members who waited until Friday or Saturday last to send off their ballots forgetting that since Monday was President‘s Day, their ballots would not arrive in time to be counted.

  • Warner Bros installs screening room at US Embassy, Paris

    Warner Bros installs screening room at US Embassy, Paris

    MUMBAI: Warner Bros. has installed a renovated screening room at the US Ambassador’s Residence in Paris. The studio installed a digital screening room complete with 3D technology at the residence of current American ambassador to Paris Charles Rivkin.

    “The French film industry has always been considered the gold standard,” Warner Bros. chairman and CEO Barry Meyer has been quoted to have said while on a visit to Paris to inaugurate the renovated screening room.

    “One of the reasons we did this was to help to cement our long relationship with France. It’s not only a gift to the Ambassador and to the U.S. government, but it’s a gift to the French film industry as well,” he added.
     
    The screening room is located in a former ballroom that is said to have hosted both dances and film screenings when it was a German Officers Club during World War II. After the war, the building was leased to the British Royal Air Force Club then to the United States Government who bought it in 1948 and moved the Ambassador’s residence there in 1966.

    Today, the room boasts a state-of-the-art digital projector, custom-made speakers and a screen with built-in 3D technology. Curtain liners were also installed to block out light during daytime screenings. The Ambassador and his team hope the screening room will become a constructive tool to facilitate their public diplomacy efforts in France.

    The Embassy plans to sponsor film series focusing on important themes and invite audiences such as students and young leaders to discover the magic of the movies. First on the agenda is a series of election-themed documentaries ahead of the U.S. presidential race.

  • Ceasar Must Die is best film at Berlinale

    Ceasar Must Die is best film at Berlinale

    MUMBAI: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani‘s Caesar Must Die has bagged the Golden Bear for the best film. The film, a documentary, about criminals performing Shakespeare — was handed the top prize care of a jury led by Mike Leigh.


    The other winners in the main competition was bagged by six other films including Barbara and Tabu. Nikolaj Arcel‘s A Royal Affair was the only winner of multiple awards, it having bagged both the best actor and best screenplay awards.
     
    Outside the official selection, Olivia Silver‘s Arcadia topped the Kplus program while Srdjan Dragojevic‘s Parada won the audience award for best feature in the Panorama.

  • WGA screenplay awards for Allen, Payne films

    WGA screenplay awards for Allen, Payne films

    MUMBAI: The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has presented Midnight in Paris and The Descendants with top screenplay honors.

    With his biggest hit in decades, writer-director Woody Allen earned the Guild‘s prize for original screenplay on Midnight in Paris while director Alexander Payne shared the adapted screenplay honour with co-writers Nat Faxon and Jim Rash.

    The wins boost the prospects for both films to earn the same prizes at next Sunday‘s Academy Awards, where both movies also are in the running for Best Picture.
     
    But it is not that all key Academy Awards contenders were eligible for the honours of the Guild including Oscar best-picture front-runner The Artist since the black-and-white film has no dialogues it being a silent film.

    The Guild‘s prize for Big-Screen documentary writing was bagged by Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega for Better This World.

  • Imax welcomes China’s move to import Hollywood films

    Imax welcomes China’s move to import Hollywood films

    MUMBAI: Imax has welcomed China’s move to import more Hollywood films after recent deal signed by the Chinese vice-president Xi Jinping and Hollywood studios.

    Imax is one of the key beneficiaries of the loosening of policy on foreign media by China.”We are pleased that the new agreement highlights Imax and allows for even greater flexibility to bring Imax films into China within a structure that fosters more growth and collaboration,” Imax CEO Richard Gelfond said in a statement.

    Toronto-based Imax has taken 15 years to slowly build its presence in China, where it currently has in all 217 theatres.

    “We believe this significant development will help us further our network expansion efforts and enable Imax to continue providing Chinese consumers with great films from both Hollywood and China,” Gelfond added.

    The Canadian-based exhibitor has had box office success in China with local language titles like Aftershock and Flying Swords of Dragon Gate.

  • Two films in tug of war for No.1 spot

    Two films in tug of war for No.1 spot

    MUMBAI: In a relatively close race with the Rachel McAdams-Channing Tatum’s The Vow, the Denzel Washington-Ryan Reynolds action film Safe House has grossed $ 24 million in the three-day weekend compared to $23.6 million grossed by the former.


    Universal has estimated that Safe House will earn $28.5 million for the four-day holiday weekend, while Screen Gems and parent company Sony are estimating that The Vow will gross $27.4 million.


    Both films fared well in their second weekends out doing new entires Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and Fox‘s romantic action-comedy This Means War. While the inputs of Safe House fell 40 per cent that of The Vow declined 43 per cent.


    Internationally, Safe House grossed $6 million from 35 markets in its second outing bringing its foreign income to $19.6 million and worldwide total to $97.9 million.


    The Vow, co-produced and co-financed by Spyglass, has earned $85.5 million in its first five days domestically, becoming the highest-grossing Screen Gems title ever at the domestic box office. Overseas, the film grossed $6.8 million in its second weekend from 24 markets for an international cume of $22.8 million and worldwide total of $108.3 million.
     
    Sony‘s Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance grossed $22 million for the three-day weekend to take the No. 3 spot though the film is expected to post a four-day holiday gross of $25.5 million.


    Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, receiving a tepid C+ CinemaScore, was fueled by males, who made up 61% of the audience. Moviegoers under the age of 25 made up 48 percent of the audience. Sony and Hyde Park Entertainment co-produced and co-financed the sequel, which cost $57 million to produce.


    This Means War opened at No. 5 for the three-day weekend grossing an estimated $17.6 million. The romantic drama lost the No. 4 spot to Warner Bros. and New Line‘s sequel Journey 2: The Mysterious Island that grossed $20.1 million for the three-day weekend.