Category: International

MUMBAI: According to FilmL.A.-the not-for-profit organisation that issues on-location shooting permits in the city of Los Angeles, unincorporated parts of LA County and other jurisdictions, location filming in and around Los Angeles rose 4.7 per cent in the first quarter of the year, but it was not film or TV but miscellaneous projects such as music videos, industrial videos and student films.

According to FilmL.A., there were 11,604 production days in the quarter, compared to 11,087 during the same period last year (2010). 

But the news was not all that good in the major categories. “The latest data suggest a softness in the industry but not a full loss of momentum,” FilmL.A. said. “Pilot production is up, and we have a couple of big features in production, so we‘re optimistic about a better set of numbers come July,” it added.

Feature production actually declined 5.3 per cent during the quarter, even though there were 10 projects filming on location that were taking advantage of the California Film and Television Tax Credit.

In the television category, production dropped 3.7 per cent for the quarter, led by losses in TV reality (down 6.4%) and TV drama (down 2.6 per cent). TV sitcoms, reflecting a number of single-camera shows in production, saw a 77.3 per cent increase but still accounted for only 360 shooting days, and the production of TV pilots grew by 4.7 per cent.

Meanwhile, commercials increased by 2.4 per cent during the quarter altough FilmL.A. noted that that category appears to be falling from an 18-month surge that delivered a record year-over-year increase last year.
 

MUMBAI: A month before her upcoming film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides hits the screen on 20 May, Penelope Cruz received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 1 April.

Cruz is involved in the following charities: Worldwide (RED) campaign lead by Bono and Bobby Shiver, Artists for Peace and Justice in Haiti (APJ), UNICEF The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). She had the honor of working with Mother Teresa‘s Missionaries of Charity; volunteering in a leprosy clinic in India and she also worked with the Dalai Lama for the House of Tibet in Spain. 

An Academy Award winner, Cruz has proven herself to be one of the most versatile actresses by playing a variety of compelling characters, and most recently, becoming the first actress from Spain to win an Oscar.

First introduced to American audiences in the Spanish films Jamon, Jamon and Belle Epoque in 1998, Cruz starred in her first English language film The Hi-Lo Country for director Stephen Frears. In the following year, Cruz won the Best Actress award at the 13th Annual Goya Awards given by the Spanish Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences for her role in Fernando Trueba‘s The Girl of Your Dreams.

Confirming her status as an international actress, Cruz landed a series of coveted roles. She appeared in Billy Bob Thornton‘s All the Pretty Horses, Fina Torres‘ Woman on Top, Alejandro Amenabar‘s Open Your Eyes and Maria Ripoli‘s Twice Upon a Yesterday.
 

MUMBAI: Tyler Perry is all set to direct Lionsgate‘s Good Deeds in which he‘ll once again work both in front and behind the camera. In addition to directing and writing the original screenplay, Perry will play the title character, Glen Deeds, in the romantic drama about a successful entrepreneur who‘s about to get married when he suddenly finds himself more interested in a down-on-her-luck single mother than his uptown fiance.

The romantic drama, which Perry wrote, centers on an engaged entrepreneur who suddenly becomes more interested in a down-on-her-luck single mother than his uptown fiance.

The film will go on the floors at the end of April in Atlanta.

Meanwhile, Perry‘s latest film for Lionsgate, Madea‘s Big Happy Family, is scheduled to open on 22 April.

MUMBAI: Real estate drama Five Square Meters took away the top prize at Malaga‘s 14th Spanish Film Festival earning the gold Biznaga for best film.

The official jury, led by director Vicente Aranda, also gave the Max Lemcke directed film the best actor award for Fernando Tejero, best supporting actor for Jorge Bosch and the 6,000 euro-best screenplay cash prize to Pablo and Daniel Remon.

Tejero, a regular in Spanish comic productions, received good reviews for his unusual drama outing which focuses on a young couple caught by an unscrupulous builder at the collapse of the real estate market.

Tom Fernandez took the directing award for What‘s a bear for? which also saw Geraldine Chaplin take home the supporting actress award, while Begona Maestre won the lead actress honor for her part in Arriya.

The festival closed on Saturday.
 

MUMBAI: Battle: Los Angeles still reigns the overseas box-office taking the No. 1 spot for the third consecutive weekend pushing its overseas tally past the $100 million mark.

The first-place weekend gross for Sony‘s Battle: Los Angeles was $14.7 million drawn from 5,999 screens in 60 markets.

The weekend‘s No. 1 domestic title, Universal‘s Hop, a family-oriented animation and live action blend, amassed $ 7 million after making its foreign debut in 2,362 locations in 26 offshore markets.

In acknowledgement, Universal attributed Hop‘s anemic gross to the “first warm and sunny weekend of the year, which drew families outside and away from cinemas.” UK. and European market box-office.

The weekend‘s No. 2 domestic title, Summit International‘s Source Code opened overseas drawing $5.6 million from 1,202 screens in seven foreign markets.

Another title to join the $100 million foreign gross club was Paramount‘s No. 4-ranked Rango that generated $8.8 million from 5,295 venues in 55 markets making the overseas gross total to $107.7 million.

A first-place France opening of $2.4 million from 451 locations helped boost Warner Bros.‘ Sucker Punch to the weekend‘s No. 2 overall spot. Director Zack Snyder‘s action-fantasy-thriller grossed $12.4 million from 4,500 screens in 39 markets.

Universal‘s Marr Damon starrer The Adjustment Bureau roped in $4.1 million on the weekend from 2,400 situations in 47 territories.
 

MUMBAI: Pablo Larrain‘s Post Mortem and Paula Markovitch‘s El Premio have shared top honors at the 26th edition of the Guadalajara International Film Festival.

Winner of best Ibero-American picture, Post Mortem is the third feature of the Chilean writer-director. Set against the background of Chile‘s 1973 military coup, the film centers on a twisted love story between a morgue clerk and an aging dancer. 

Funny Balloons handles international sales for the Chile-Mexico-Germany co-production.

El Premio, aka The Prize took away the prize for best Mexican film. The film is the story of a mother and daughter who must go into hiding during Argentina‘s dirty war era.

El Premio had it worldwide premiere at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year where it won two Silver Bears for outstanding artistic achievement in camera work and production design.

The film is Argentine-born writer-director Markovitch‘s first feature. Other awards handed out include the best director award for Fernando Leon de Aranoa‘s Spanish drama Amador and Mexican director Odin Salazar‘s Burros (Donkeys). Los Inadapatados (The Misfits), a comedy featuring segments from four different directors, bagged the audience award.

In the documentary section, Patricio Guzman‘s critically acclaimed Nostalgia de la Luz (Nostalgia for the Light) got an award in the Ibero-American category while director Jacaranda Correa‘s Morir de Pie (Die Standing Up) came out on top among the Mexican documentaries.

For best first fiction work, the juries chose to honour Sergio Teubal‘s dark comedy El Dedo (The Finger) for the Ibero-America section and Iria Gomez‘s Asalto al Cine (The Cinema Hold Up) for the Mexican competition.

MUMBAI: The release of alien attack thriller The Darkest Hour has been postponed to a 23 December release. The film that was to release on 5 August is said to be the first American 3D production to have been shot in Russia.

Produced by Tom Jacobson and Timur Bekmambetov, the Summit Entertainment film directed by Chris Gorak is the story of five young Americans who find themselves stranded in Moscow, fighting to survive after extratrerrestials taking an aim at Earth.

The Darkest Hour stars Olivia Thirlby and Emile Hirsch, along with prominent Russian actors Gosha Kutsenko, Dato Bakhtadze, Nikolai Yefremov and Arthur Smolyaninov.
 

MUMBAI: Arnold Schwarzenegger has revealed his intention of returning back to the silver screen as a cartoon superhero film called The Governator. He will voice the character for an animated television series that may later turn into a film franchise. The series will be a first step on the road to a Hollywood comeback for the 63-year-old former action star, who left political office in January.

The Governator will feature a semi fictional former politician who retires and embarks on a double life as a secret crime-fighter, building a hi-tech bunker called the ‘Arnold Cave‘ under his home in Los Angeles. His enemies will be a dastardly group of super-villains from an organization called Gangsters, Imposters, Racketeers, Liars and Irredeemable Ex-cons – the girlie Men for short.

Stan Lee, the co-creator of Spider-Man, has created the cartoon character and he will incorporate Schwarzenegger‘s real-life wife Maria Shriver and their children.
 

MUMBAI: For the promotion of its new live action/CG-animated film Hop, Universal Pictures has assembled 92 promotional partners and licensees worldwide like Walmart, Burger King, Comcast, Hallmark, the Hershey Company and Kodak.

For the film about Easter Bunny‘s rebellious teenage son, from Illumination Entertainment, the studio has lined up retailers, including Walmart in the US, Target in Australia, El Corte Ingles in Spain, hmv in the UK and Jay Jay‘s in South Africa.

In the US, Walmart has an exclusive partnership, marking the first time the company has used a licensed property to brand a seasonal campaign. Universal‘s exclusive deal with Walmart marks first time that the retailer has used a licensed property to brand a seasonal campaign.

It is also the first time that partners such as Bolthouse Farms and licensees like Lima Sky have been involved in a film. Lima Sky‘s “Doodle Jump: Hop the Movie” app, which was released earlier this month, reached No. 1 in the iTunes App Store Top Free Apps chart in China, Germany, Austria, Russia, Australia and New Zealand. In the U.S., the app reached No. 2 as a Top Free App and it has garnered more than 3.2 million total global downloads since its release.

The total value in global support from partners and licensees equals more than $75 million, including $19 million in domestic television advertising, the studio said.

Comcast and Kodak are both featuring co-branded Hop television spots with custom animation from Rhythm & Hues, the same company that provided the animation for the film.

Hop is the second release from the Illumination Entertainment stable after last year‘s Despicable Me that grossed more than $540 million worldwide.
 

MUMBAI: George Lucas has predicted that filmmaking in 3D will eventually take over, the way color films replaced those in black and white.

Digital technology in general is revolutionizing filmmaking the way sound did in the 1920s, Lucas said. The new digital 3-D craze has had hits and misses but should one day become the big-screen standard over 2-D presentation, he is quoted to have said.

But Lucas, James Cameron and DreamWorks Animation boss Jeffrey Katzenberg were of the unified view that digital filmmaking was only in its infancy and will bring vast improvements to how films are made and seen.

Lucas was speaking at a digital-film panel alongside Cameron and Katzenberg. The hour-long discussion touched on new filmmaking tools, enhancements to theatre sound and how badly presented 3D films can sour audiences on digital 3D films in general.

Such bad 3D experiences generally have resulted when studios took movies shot in only two dimensions and did hasty conversions to give them the illusion of depth so they could charge the extra few dollars that 3D tickets cost.

Cameron, who shot Avatar in 3D and plans to do film its two sequels in 3D too, is converting his blockbuster Titanic to 3D for release next year. Lucas is doing the same with all six of his Star Wars films.