Category: International

MUMBAI: DreamWorks Animation will produce its first Bollywood-style animated film, the studio has announced. The film will be produced by Lisa Stewart and Chris Chase.

The animated musical, in which two monkeys become unlikely heroes and save the world from an ancient demon, will be written by Gurinder Chadha and Paul Berges, who collaborated on Bend It Like Beckham.

It will be directed by Kevin Lima, who had earlier directed films including A Goofy Movie, Tarzan, 102 Dalmatians and Enchanted.

The film is the studio‘s first attempt to learn from Bollywood its distinctive style of filming with glamorous dancing and singing scenes.
 

MUMBAI: Johnny Depp‘s production house Infinitium Nihil, in association with Walt Disney Studios is developing an adaptation of Paul Reverse‘s The Night Stalker.

The Night Stalker is based on the 1972 ABC-TV film that turned into the series Kolchak: he Night Stalker that was about a newspaper reporter in Chicago who investigated mysterious deaths often finding a supernatural connection.

The film in question is based on the colonial figure and his famous midnight ride – recently bought to light again after former Alaska governor Sarah Palin mis-stated the basics of the Rivere story.

Depp and Disney have been a profitable team; their most recent collaboration being Pirates of the Carribbean: On Stranger Tides grossing more that $ 1 billion worldwide as did Alice In Woderland.

Depp is also doing The Lone Ranger for Disney. He is also to do the fifth edition of Pirates.
 
 

MUMBAI: Film subjects of the happenings in the Middle East never fail to deliver intense ideas for Hollywood blockbuster productions specially films based on terrorism plots or regional wars. 

They have all topped international box offices for their exposure to real-life drama in recent years. Like for instance, Green Zone in 2010, an American war thriller which documented life in Baghdad‘s international zone for US troops or for that matter 9/11 in 2002 that detailed the 11 September attacks in New York City by Al Qaeda terrorists.

But this time, a new Hollywood action thriller Shadow Runner, based on the assassination of a leading Hamas leader in Dubai that took place last year, is set to take centre stage. 

Reports from the US suggest that the new film by Sony Pictures has been inspired by the murder of Mahmoud Al Mabhouh, a Hamas kingpin who was killed by a hit squad while staying at a hotel in Dubai in January last year. 

The gang had used fake passports to gain access to the emirate and was caught on closed circuit television. The footage was broadcast internationally as part of an investigation by Dubai police.

Iranian scriptwriter Hossein Amini is developing the plot for the action thriller. The film will star up-and-coming Australian actor Chris Hemsworth, who was last seen in the superhero film Thor.

“We think the story is a terrific action thriller for Chris Hemsworth and we know this project is in great hands,” Hannah Minghella, one of the producers behind the project, has been quoted to have said. 

Shadow Runner is scheduled for release in 2014.

MUMBAI: Rare films from around the globe marked the 16th annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival (SFSFF) in the last weekend.

The festival, that had wide-ranging featuring films from Sweden, Japan, Germany, Italy, England, and Russia, was marked by the world premiere of a newly-restored Douglas Fairbanks film from 1918, Mr. Fix-It that was written and directed by Allan Dwan. Another world premiere was a restoration of Lois Weber‘s Shoes from 1916. 

It also came to light that it was only through the determination and research of Cole Johnson and David Gerstein that two early Disney animated shorts were discovered hiding in plain sight at the Museum of Modern Art.

When British distributor Wardour Films acquired them in the early-talkie era they retitled Goldilocks and the Three Bears as The Peroxide Kid and Jack the Giant Killer became The K.O. Kid. 

As he did at the recent TCM Classic Film Festival, Disney scholar J.B. Kaufman presented these and all of Walt‘s other early Kansas City animated shorts in an entertaining program co-sponsored by San Francisco‘s Walt Disney Family Museum.

Then on Sunday, film historian Kevin Brownlow gave a fascinating illustrated lecture about his lifelong fascination with Napoleon and traced his herculean efforts to piece the neglected film back together.

Every year, the SFSFF invites a contemporary filmmaker who appreciates silent films to participate as well. This year, it was the chance of Alexander Payne, the talented and articulate writer-director (Election, About Schmidt, Sideways) who delivered a speech about his introduction to silent films as a boy and his ongoing admiration for them.