Category: International

 MUMBAI: This year‘s Raindance Film Festival will open with the UK premiere of the award-winning Another Earth on 28 September.

The film will lead a lineup of over 80 UK premieres that include more than 30 international premiere from over 25 countries. The full lineup will be announced on 6 September.

Said festival director and founder of Raindance, Elliot Grove, “We‘re thrilled that Another Earth will open this year‘s festival.

It‘s an incredible film made by first–time filmmakers on a limited budget and testament to the potential of independent film talent to wow the big studios.”

The 19th Raindance Film Festival will run from 28 September to 9 October in London.

The film will release in the UK this December.

MUMBAI: Bradley Cooper has refused to do Relativity Media‘s remake of The Crow.

Cooper was set to play the lead role of Eric Draven, but a couple of other films like The Silver Linings Playbook and Paradise Lost came up against the filming schedule of The Crow, it is understood.
 
Relativity is now looking for a replacement to Cooper and expects to begin filming in the first quarter of next year.

Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, there has been some turbulence in making of The Crow. The Weinstein Company is suing Relativity Media over the project, asking a judge to prohibit the latter from selling the remake of the 1994 film to any other company.

The original film grossed $50.7 million – an impressive sum for its day.

MUMBAI: In his bid to tackle the subject of slavery, Brad Pitt is working on the screen adaptation of Twelve Years a Slave, an autobiography written in 1853 by Solomon Northup under his Plan B banner.

And to direct the film, Pitt has entrusted Steve McQueen with the responsibility to helm the film. British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor will play the role of Northup.
 
Northup was a married and educated free black man living in New York when two men approached him with a job offer in Washington. When he showed up in D.C., he was kidnapped and put in a slave pen, paving the way to his grueling life under numerous owners.

Northup was able to secure his freedom when a white carpenter from Canada, who didn‘t believe in slavery, was able to smuggle out letters to Northup‘s wife, initiating a court case that saw him set free.
 
Currently, Plan B is in pre-production on the big-budget adaptation of the Max Brooks novel World War Z that is slated for a 21 December release.

MUMBAI: The U.S. Postal Service will honour legendary film director John Huston with a postage stamp. The stamp is likely to be issued next year.

The art on the stamp has been inspired by the 1941 film The Maltese Falcon and depicts Humphrey Bogart holding the statue of the falcon.
 
Huston‘s credits also include the Academy Award nominated films The Asphalt Jungle, Moulin Rouge and Prizzi‘s Honor.

The stamp is part of a four-stamp Great Film Directors series. The Postal Service announced earlier this month that John Ford and Frank Capra are other directors who would be depicted in the series.

MUMBAI: Singapore‘s Shaw Theatres Pte Ltd has decided to install an Imax digital theatre system to its new JCube cinema.

The move will be the second IMAX theatre in the island state after Shaw opened its first in May last.
 
“Our Shaw Theatres Lido IMAX has been a resounding success, with our patrons willing to pay a premium to enjoy their favourite Hollywood films in the superior IMAX platform,” said Shaw Theatres executive vice president Mark Shaw,”We are building on this momentum with a second Imax theatre in our new Shaw Theatres JCube multiplex to offer even more patrons the best moviegoing experience possible.”

The system can run both Imax and Imax 3D presentations.

MUMBAI: Parts of Glasgow is being turned into war-torn ruins for the next two weeks, before the shoot of the Brad Pitt film World War Z commences. A cast and crew of about 1,200 people will be involved in shooting scenes in George Square and other city centre locations.

Although shot in Glasgow, the film is set in Philadelphia, so false shop fronts will be brought in and American cars will take to the city‘s streets.
 
Glasgow City Council said that the film could benefit the city‘s economy by ? 2million. Gordon Matheson, leader of Glasgow City Council said, “We are ready to welcome the World War Z production to Glasgow. There is great anticipation in the city ahead of such a huge film coming here.”

The Glasgow film office has been working with the production over the past few months to help secure locations in the city and co-ordinating arrangements with council departments and other public bodies to ensure minimal impact on normal business and access.

The location manager for World War Z said that Glasgow had been chosen because of its architecture, wide roads and grid layout.

The film is based on Max Brooks‘ 2006 novel World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War, which is set in Philadelphia in the aftermath of a war between humans and zombies.
World War Z is due to release next year.

MUMBAI: Disney has stopped the production of The Lone Ranger, a classic western that was to star Johnny Depp. The abrupt move to kill a project that was set to begin shooting in the fall is said to have arisen amid clashes with producer Jerry Bruckheimer over the budget for the film.
 
Disney‘s ambitious film Lone Ranger was to star Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as the Lone Ranger. The film was to have been directed by Gore Verbinski who had directed the first three editions of Pirates of the Caribbean.
 
The move also raises questions about whether Depp will agree to reprise his starring role in another Pirates film, which is a priority for the studio.

The stoppage of the film is said to be due to budgetary concerns and not creative differences. The studio is said to have given Verbinski a firm budget number but the director didn‘t agree.

While budget numbers for Ranger are hazy, Disney already has a number of expensive projects in hand including John Carte and Oz The Great and Powerful, now under production.

MUMBAI: In an effort to raise money for his documentary‘s (Sarah Palin: You Betcha!,) upcoming North American release campaign, director Nick Broomfield has placed the film on the crowd funding site Kickstarter and sought $30,000.

“This film was made for the American people and Kickstarter now offers them a chance to be a part of the distribution process to directly support the documentary‘s national roll-out,” Broomfield has been quoted to have said. “We need help getting this out so voters gain a true understanding of the person who is asking for their political support,” he added.
 
The film sees Broomfield as he speaks with school friends, family and Republican colleagues of Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska.

Broomfield‘s previous films include Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam and Kurt & Courtney.

In his quest to unveil the “real” Sarah Palin, documentarian Nick Broomfield aims to debut his latest project, Sarah Palin: You Betcha!, at the Toronto International Film Festival with expected distribution to follow in the fall.

Palin has yet to confirm whether or not she intends to run for the Presidency, but recently announced that she would be embarking on a second leg of her One Nation bus tour.

MUMBAI: From over 200 projects submitted in 18 different languages from 30 regions in India, the following twelve were selected to participate in Open Doors, the 2011 Festival del film Locarno‘s co-production lab.

They are Aharbal Falls by Ajay Raina, Ajeeb Aashiq by Natasha Mendonca, Arunoday/Sunrise by Partho Sen Gupta, Burqa Boxers by Alka Raghuram, Char, The Island Within by Sourav Sarangi, Jat Panchayat/The Judgement by Satish Manwar, Lasya/The Gentle Dance by Anup Singh, Samaadhi/The Penance by Sidharth Srinivasan, Sebastian Wants to Remember by Vasant Nath, The Trapper‘s Snare by Shanker Raman, Thread/Le Fil by Lilium Leonard and Vidhvastha/Devastated by Ashish Avikunthak.
 
Among the 12 Indian scripts that competed at the Locarno‘s Open Doors, 2011, the main prize of 50,000 Swiss Francs was shared by the two top winners. Shanker Raman was awarded 30,000 Swiss Francs for his script of The Trapper‘s Snare, Alka Raghuram was awarded 20,000 Swiss Francs for her script of Burqa Boxers, produced by her.

While the Rucha Pathak produced The Trapper‘s Snare is the spiritual journey of 15-year-old Sundaran, his experiences and realisations, and the rite of going into adulthood, Burqa Boxers is about three young Muslim girls learning boxing at a little gym in Kolkata, each one a warrior determined to knock out a few stereotypes.
 
The CNC (Centre National du Cinema et de L‘image Animee awarded a grant of 7,000 Euros to Anup Singh for his script in Lasya (The Gentle Dance) produced by Johannes Rexin. The film, set in Mumbai, a city steadily flooded by raging monsoon rains, in which a beggar child is fatally hit by a truck. Her young mother is determined to fulfill her promise to the child that she will find the father who had deserted them a long time ago.

The grant of 6,000 Euros for development from ARTE was awarded to Char … The Island Within, produced and directed by Sourav Sarangi.
 
The film follows a 14 year old boy who lives near a river that eroded an entire village – his home, his school, green fields and the large banyan tree.
 
Since its inception, Open Doors has showcased projects from Cuba and Argentina, countries in the Mekong, the Maghreb, South-East Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand), the Near and Middle East (Mashrek), Latin America, Greater China and, in 2010, central Asia.
 
India was the country of focus for the Locarno‘s 2011 Open Doors.