MUMBAI: Where Do We Go Now, a Lebanese film about the struggles of a village in the war-torn country was awarded the People‘s Choice award at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday.
The film, directed by Lebanon-born Nadine Labaki, tells the story of village inhabited by both Muslims and Christians. When a wider inter-religious conflict threatens to seep into the village, its women go to inventive and sometimes extreme ends to prevent violence.
“I‘m running around jumping up and down at the Frankfurt airport,” Labaki said of her win at Toronto in a message read to the awards ceremony‘s audience.
A festival official said Labaki wrote the film in Beirut in 2007 when armed clashes had broken out. Pregnant at the time, she began thinking about what she could do to change the world as a filmmaker.
The film, that debuted at Cannes earlier this year, is already Lebanon‘s official entry into the Foreign Language Film category at for next year‘s Academy Awards.
Category: International
-
Lebanese film wins top award at Toronto fest
-
San Sebastian fest honours Glen Close
MUMBAI: The 59th San Sebastian International Film Festival has honoured actress Glenn Close with the Donostia Lifetime Achievement Award.The award was handed to her by director Rodrigo Garcia.
“It‘s a spectacular career that speaks for itself with some characters that have become historic,” Garcia said in his introduction of Close. After receiving the award, Close has been quoted in a remark, “This is the first lifetime achievement award I‘ver received. And what I am thinking of is the army of people I have collaborated with over the course of my career. They have inspired me, challenged me.”
Calling actors the “alien nation,” Close said that actors make people believe. “Everyone wants to believe something. And we can remind people how connected we are. That, to me, is a priviledge. I pledge to continue to find stories that I hope you will love and characters that you can find a common thread of humanity with.”
Talking to reporters about her work in Rodrigo Garcia‘s film Albert Nobbs, Close recounted how difficult it was to find work as an over-35 woman in Hollywood. Incidentally, the actress has written, produced and starred in the film. -
Academy foreign-language film race hoting up
MUMBAI: The Academy’s foreign-language race is gradually picking up steam with entries from Romania, Morocco and Venezuela to join Greece and Poland this year.
Under Academy rules, each country is allowed to submit a single film; a lengthy screening process narrows the field from several dozen (65 last year) to nine and then two hand-picked committees choose the final five nominees.
Greece had sprung a surprise nominee last year with its entry Dogtooth, and Romania too had a strong entry in 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days that was grossly overlooked.
Last year Greece got the Oscar race’s strangest and most controversial nomination with Dogtooth and the country appears to have gone back to the same well with a film produced by Dogtooth director Yorgos Lanthimos and directed by the film’s producer Tsangari
Greece will get Attenberg directed by Anthin Rachel Tsangari followed by the Moroccan entry Omar Killed Me. While Poland will pitch in with In Darkness, Romania will get Morgen. -
Disney red signals The Lone Ranger
MUMBAI: Walt Disney Studios has stopped the pre-production work on The Lone Ranger that was to star Johnny Depp as Tonto.
While some in the industry say that everyone involved with the film is talking about next steps, while others thing that the move could be the studios ploy to reduce the film’s budget.
All kinds of reasons that Disney would tread is also being attached like the Depp heft, Jerry Bruckheimer‘s producer heft and Gore Verbinski‘s director heft. Verbinski, who is attached to direct The Lone Ranger, directed Depp in Rango and al;o in three Pirates films.
The studio had already announced that The Lone Ranger would release on 21 December next year.
-
Edward Zwick set to direct The Great Wall
MUMBAI: Edward Zwick has been roped in to direct Legendary East‘s debut film The Great Wall.
According to the production house, “The Great Wall reveals the legend behind a great mystery of our age: why this magnificent structure came to be.”
In a written statement, Legendary Entertainment‘s chief creative officer, Jon Jashni, said, “Our partnership with Ed and Marshall is indicative of the creative ambition and financial commitment we are bringing to Legendary East – not next year or next month, but today.”
Jashni said that the film exemplifies the type of globally appealing, commercial movie we intend to have Legendary East become known for.
The film is to be produced by Jashni, Tull, Zwick, Herskovitz and Charles Roven and Alex Gartner of Atlas Entertainment.
Legendary Entertainment launched Legendary East last June to make films for a worldwide audience. The company, based in Hong Kong, has Chinese management and its goal being to develop and produce English language films that tap into the powerful fandom demographic and draw on Legendary‘s Chinese ties.
-
Zurich fest to honour Roman Polanski
MUMBAI: The Zurich Film Festival will honour Roman Polanski with the lifetime achievement award on 27 September. The noted filmmaker could not accept the award in 2009 following his arrest by Swiss police.
“We are especially proud to welcome Roman Polanski this year to receive his award. We have always been tremendous admirers of his work, and we are delighted that we will soon be able to express this to him in person,” Zurich festival directors Karl Spoerri and Nadja Schildknecht said in a statement.
Polanski was arrested at Zurich airport in September 2009 at the instance of the US Justice Department in a 1977 case of having sex with a 13-year-old girl.
The director had fled the US in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with the minor and faced extradition to the US. However, the Swiss government rejected the extradition request in July 2010 and released Polanski from house arrest at his home in Gstaad.
-
Jackson to team with Tarantino again
MUMBAI: Samuel L. Jackson will team up with Quentin Tarantino in the director‘s next project Django Unchained.
Jackson will play Stephen, a house slave and Leonardo DiCaprio‘s right-hand man.
This is for the fifth time that Jackson will be teaming up with Tarantino. They had earlier worked together in Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill Vol. 2 and Inglourious Basterds.
The film is slated to go on the floors next year. -
Christie ties up with Cameron’s Lighstorm Ent
MUMBAI: Christie, that offers world-class projection displays and visualization solutions for any type of content has signed five-year agreement with James Cameron‘s Lightstorm Entertainment to exchange research, testing, development and technical support on the industry‘s new technology.
The initiative has been taken to accelerate the development and adoption of next-generation 3D digital cinema. The cooperation between two of Hollywood‘s digital cinema powerhouses opens up a new chapter on how films will be made and shown in theatres.
“Lightstorm is committed to realizing the potential of 3D and high frame rate technology to f immerse audiences in the world of movie. This alliance promises to spark a new wave of excitement, creativity, and innovation in film-making,” said Christie Entertainment Solutions division vice president Craig Sholder.
Christie will supply the latest Solaria Series of 3D-capable projectors, ongoing access to research and development on 3D, and input into Lightstorm‘s mission-critical engineering related to 3D and high frame rate innovation.
It will also assist in outfitting Cameron‘s new production facilities, including two screening rooms that will serve as virtual production sites for the next two instalments of Avatar. -
Washington, Zemeckis in Paramount’s Flight
MUMBAI: Paramount Pictures has signed Denzel Washington and director Robert Zemeckis for its new film Flight.
Written by John Gatins, the film tells the story of Whip (Washington), a commercial airline pilot who pulls off a heroic feat of flying in a damaged plane, saving 98 lives on a flight carrying 106 people.
The film marks the first time teaming of Washington and Zemeckis, who had earlier directed films like Castaway, Forest Gump, Back To The Future and the live-action and animated classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
The film, being produced by Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald under the Parkes/MacDonald banner, is set to go on the floors this October in Atlanta. -
John Calley expires
MUMBAI: Producer of The Da Vinci Code John Calley died on Tuesday. He was 81. His death was announced by Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Calley – three-time studio chief, confidant of Stanley Kubrick rose to Hollywood‘s highest ranks by making gut-level bets on directors and writers and by gently and quietly steering them.
Stints at leading studios like Warner Brothers, United Artists and Sony gave Calley his A-list status in Hollywood‘s executive ranks, but it was his approach to those jobs that made him stand out.
Like any studio boss, he had his share of failures and purely commercial hits. While The Towering Inferno was a hit, he also directed films like Clockwork Orange (1971), The Exorcist (1973), Chariots of Fire (1981) and As Good as It Gets.
“When he believed in someone, he trusted and supported him,” Mike Nichols, who collaborated with Calley in films like Catch-22 to Closer, said in a statement.John Calley was born on 8 July, 1930, in Jersey City, the son of a car salesman, and, after serving in the Army, worked at 21 as a mail clerk for NBC in New York. After climbing a few rungs on the network‘s ladder, he left to join an advertising firm before giving film producing a try at Filmways, a production company mostly known for TV comedies like The Beverly Hillbillies.
In 1996, Calley took the reins of Sony‘s movie operation and delivered hits like Jerry Maguire with Tom Cruise, but his biggest contribution to the studio involved restoring stability: Columbia, Sony‘s major arm, had four presidents come and go from 1991 to 1996.
He stepped down in 2003 but kept producing films for Sony that included The Da Vinci Code.
Calley‘s survivors include his daughter, Sabrina Calley, and three stepchildren, Emily Zinnemann, David Zinnemann and Will Firth, from his marriage to the actress Meg Tilly that ended in 2002.