Category: International

MUMBAI: In order to effectively reduce the global footprint of film services, Deluxe Entertainment Services Group and Technicolor have inked three-year subcontracting agreements. Financial details were not disclosed.

According to the agreement, Technicolor will subcontract its 35mm bulk release printing business to Deluxe in North America, while the latter will subcontract its 35mm print distribution business in the US to Technicolor. Additionally, Deluxe will subcontract its 35mm/16mm color negative processing business to Technicolor in London. 

“Today’s agreement with Technicolor is the result of significant changes in our industry enabled by new digital technologies causing the rapid transition from film to digital,” Deluxe president and CEO Cyril Drabinsky has been quoted to have said. “This agreement will help maintain a high consistency of service for our customers through the remaining life of film,” he added.

Technicolor will begin servicing Deluxe‘s US 35mm release print distribution in September and Deluxe‘s UK 35mm/16mm color negative processing at its Pinewood facility within the week.

Deluxe will stop negative processing services of 35mm/16mm films at both of its facilities in the London area, one in the Soho district and the other in Denham. It will provide 35mm bulk release printing at its Denham and other European facilities.

The steps taken by either side underscore the approaching end of the era where film dominated the theatrical motion picture industry. For nearly a century, Deluxe and Technicolor have been pillars in film services. 

While Technicolor’s film development business dates back to 1914, Deluxe has been processing films since 1915. Today, the bulk of these competing businesses represent a growing range of digital entertainment services including Blu-Ray authoring, digital post-production and digital cinema distribution.
 

MUMBAI: British actress Googie Withers, best known for her role in Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Lady Vanishes has expired. She was 94.
 
Born Georgette Lizette, Withers in the then British India, she was given her lifetime nickname by her Indian nanny. Her family moved back to Britain where she began acting at the age of 12. 

While she was a dancer in a West End Production in London, she was offered work in 1935 as a film extra in The Girl in the Crowd. Soon after starting work, director Michael Powell fired one of the female leads leading to her stepping into the role. 

Withers appeared in dozens of films in the 1930s and 40s, but was probably best known for her role as Blanche in The Lady Vanishes in which she acted opposite Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave.

In 1958, Withers moved to Australia with her husband, Australian actor John McCallum.The couple co-starred in ten popular films together, and lived in Sydney until McCallum died last year when he was 91.
 

MUMBAI: The Sarah Palin documentary The Undefeated opened in 10 theatres over the weekend. It grossed between $60,000 to $75,000 that denotes a per-screen average of $6,000 or $7,500. A screen average below $10,000 is considered mediocre.

The Undefeated, a documentary stitched together with a thousand sound bites is an entirely partisan account of Sarah Palin; it looking like a campaign film.

The Undefeated recalls how Palin lost the last election in which she ran and subsequently stepped down from her job as governor of Alaska before her term was up.

Set to have its theatrical runs next week in select houses nationwide, this will attract media attention.

Distributor ARC Entertainment and Cinedigm Entertainment rushed the documentary into digital-only theaters and relied on social media to market the film.
ARC said theatres in larger markets enjoyed per screen averages of nearly $10,000 on Saturday night.
 

 MUMBAI: After grossing a staggering $168.6 million, Warner Bros.‘ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 notched up the top weekend opening of all time at the domestic box office.

Overseas, the film garnered $307 million thus bringing its worldwide debut to $476 million–the largest on record so far. With this, the film surpassed the $394 million earned by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Deathly Hallows 2 earned $92.1 million on Friday alone, including a record $43.5 million in midnight shows. It grossed another $42.8 million on Saturday, falling by 53 per cent.

Other records set by Deathly Hallows 2 domestically was that it became the only film to have had the largest opening day ever and the largest opening for the franchise. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, incidentally had got in $125 million on its opening day.

The previous record for best weekend opening domestically belonged to Warners‘ The Dark Knight, which grossed $158.4 million in its first three days.

Among the audience, females made up the majority of the audience at 54 per cent while 55 per cent of those buying tickets were over the age of 25.

Deathly Hallows 2 is the first film in the franchise to be released in 3D. It is said that only 4 per cent of the opening gross came from 3D theatres.

 MUMBAI: Steven Spielberg will make his debut appearance at the Comic-Con event in California later this month.

The 64-year-old filmmaker will be part of a panel at the 22 July event where he will discuss his new project The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn , it is said.

Spielberg will also receive the convention‘s Inkpot Award, which is given out annually to professionals in the field of pop culture.

It is interesting to note that Spielberg never participated in the San Diego-based comic book and movie convention that is being held annually since 1970.

MUMBAI: The last film in the Harry Potter franchise, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 had the biggest opening day in Australia. The country was one of the first markets in the world in which the film opened.

The box office figures of the film that have started rolling in have gladdened Warner Bros. Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 smashed opening day figures for the Australian box office when the film took AUS$7.02 million ($7.44 million) in 24 hours, eclipsing previous record holder, Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King by nearly $1.8 million.

“We‘re thrilled to see this powerful response from such a broad range of moviegoers. These incredible results are a testament to the incredible achievement of the filmmakers, cast, and, of course, J.K. Rowling, and should ensure the film series’ place in history for years to come,” said distributor Roadshow Films‘s managing director Joel Pearlman.

Pearlman indicated that the result should help cement the Harry Potter series as the top-grossing film franchise of all time.

 MUMBAI: David Heyman, producer of Harry Potter, is in talks with the people at Summit to make his next fantastical book adaptation: Night Circus, authored by Erin Morgenstern. In all probability, Heyman will be the producer of the project.

The story of Night Circus is set at beginning of the 19th century and tells the story of two young magicians, pawns in an age-old rivalry between their mercurial, illusionist fathers, and the enchanted circus where their competition (and romances) play out.

The material contains stories of children and their parents magic and an enchanted world to great effect with the Potter movies.

Incidentally, Heyman has produced all the eight Potter films in the Potter movie series, the most successful franchise of all time.
 
 

MUMBAI: The Locarno Film Festival, that takes place between 3 and 13 August, has announced the full slate for its 64th edition that would be held in Locarno, Switzerland.

Major American titles like Jon Favreau‘s Cowboys and Aliens, Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Drive, Kevin Smith‘s Red State, J.J. Abrams‘ Super 8 and Will Gluck‘s Friends With Benefits will vie with an eclectic mix of international films.

This includes 14 world premieres in the competitive Concorso internazionale section. Films that would be screened in the latter programme include Mike Cahill‘s Another Earth, Danielle Arbid‘s Beirut Hotel, Nicholas Klotz‘s Low Life, Julia Loktev‘s The Loneliest Planet, Marco Van Geffen‘s Onders On and Mia-Hansen Love‘s Un Amour de Jeunesse.

Said artistic director of the festival Olivier P?re in a statement, “This competition, both open-minded and demanding, brings together several major names in contemporary cinema who have already produced a body of work that has been acclaimed at many festivals – Locarno regulars, and those invited for the first time, as well as young auteurs from all over the world whose talent and skill already prove they are ripe for international competition.”

He also noted that the festival, while “faithful to its origins,” was also looking forward and continues “its adventurous course, always attentive to change in film and the emergence of new talent.”

Those expected to attend this 64th edition include Claudia Cardinale, Ingrid Caven, Kabir Bedi, Guy Bedos, Abel Ferrara, Mike Medavoy, Bruno Ganz, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Claude Goretta, Hitoshi Matsumoto, Kati Outinen, Pierre Richard, Maribel Verdu, Anri Sala, Daniel Brühl and Nicolas Winding Refn.

  MUMBAI: IndiePix Films has acquired the distribution rights of the Anurag Kashyap film That Girl In The Yellow Boots for the North American theatrical, home and digital markets, beginning with its theatrical release in over 20 markets on 2 September.

Yellow Boots features Kalki Koechlin in the lead role of Ruth who comes to Mumbai from London to search for her missing father. The film has attracted attention because of the stark realism of the scenes, abandoning many of the conventions of traditional Indian film. Kashyap was inspired to make the film by the recent story of a German girl who came to India to search for her lost father. 

Announcing the acquisition of distribution rights for this film, Mark DeFrancis said that it was IndiePix’s objective to bring this film to the widest audience ever in the United States for an Indian independent filmmaker.

“Our distribution plans for this film are very aggressive, opening simultaneously with its opening in Mumbai on 2 September. In executing this campaign, we are delighted to be working with Galen Rosenthal, Program Director of the South Asian International Film Festival,”said DeFrancis.

That Girl In the Yellow Boots was invited to play at the Venice festival last year and was a hit with audiences and critics at the Toronto Film Festival later that summer.

MUMBAI: Netflix has raised the rates of unlimited streaming and DVDs by 60 per cent per month, it is understood. The price-hike was accompanied by the introduction of some new DVD-only plans.

Netflix had been offering unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs, one DVD out at a time for $9.99 per month, but on Tuesday it has been raised to $15.98 per month. It is said that Netflix arrived at the price by splitting the offering. Subscribers now can get unlimited streaming only for $7.99 and unlimited DVDs only, one at a time, also for $7.99. The company also said it will offer a two-out-at-a-time DVD only option for $11.99.

Despite the price hike of the combination offering of streaming and DVDs, Netflix was stressing the lower pricing for the DVD-only subscriptions. “By offering our lowest prices ever, we hope to provide great value to our current and future DVDs by mail members,”a Netflix executive has been quoted as having said.

Netflix has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars lately to acquire films and TV shows for streaming. And with Hulu, Amazon.com and others in the bidding mix, streaming rights have the potential to climb higher fairly rapidly.