Category: International

MUMBAI: As part of its National Film Registry, the US Library of Congress will preserve twenty five films with artistic, cultural or historical significance.

Films selected to be part of the library include Saturday Night Fever, McCabe and Mrs Miller, horror classic The Exorcist, All the President‘s Men and Grey Gardens, a documentary about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis‘ eccentric relatives. Another film is 1913‘s Preservation of the Sign Language, a two-minute film of George Veditz, one-time president of the National Association of the Deaf of the United States.

Culling them from suggestions by the National Film Preservation Board and the public James H Billington, the librarian of Congress, chose the films in the registry.

The collection also includes films noted films like The Pink Panther and the 1980 disaster-film spoof titled Flying High – Airplane!, The Bargain, Cry of Jazz, Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, The Empire Strikes Back, The Front Page, It‘s a Gift, Let There Be Light, Lonesome, Make Way For Tomorrow, Newark Athlete, Our Lady of the Sphere, Study of a River, Tarantella, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and A Trip Down Market Street.

The library preserves copies in its cold-storage vaults among millions of other recordings at the Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Virginia.

MUMBAI: Almost a week after coming out from bankruptcy, MGM has decided to have a new headquarter in Beverly Hills.

The studio signed a lease last Sunday for the six-story, 144,000-square-foot Beverly Drive office building that was to be occupied by WME. The new Beverly Drive building, which was completed earlier this year, has had a brief but tumultuous history. Originally, it was to be occupied by the William Morris Agency, but the firm‘s 2009 merger with Endeavor threw a kink into those plans.

The studio will vacate its current headquarters the MGM Tower in Century City. The company had leased around 200,000 square feet at the 35-storey building and had been trying to sublease the offices to other parties, but that plan never came to fruition.

In order to break its lease and leave the 10250 Constellation Blvd. building, the studio will pay a ‘one-time‘ fee to landlord JMB Realty Corp., it is understood.
 

MUMBAI: At the 7th Tokyo International Film Festival Content Market (Tiffcom), recent trade fair in Japan, local film and animation firms secured close to $1 million worth of deals film at).

According to data from the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions, Hubo Productions, a Mandaluyong-based independent production house garnered the most trade inquiries among all 10 Philippine participating companies at the Festival.

Also local subtitling and dubbing company Beginnings at Twenty Plus got a lot of inquiries mostly from companies that it had already done some work for, indirectly.Most of those that inquired about Beginnings at Twenty Plus‘ services discovered that the firms they had outsourced jobs to had tapped the dubbing and subtitling firm to do the work for them. 

The full-length 3D animated film RPG Metanoia, the entry of Star Cinema, Ambient Media and Thaumatrope Animation to the Metro Manila Film Festival also generated a lot of interest among the festival attendees that included network giant Turner Entertainment Networks Asia.

Production companies from China, Malaysia and Thailand also saw the possibility of co-producing the 3D animated flick in their countries. This buyer response made RPG Metanoia the country‘s best-selling offering at Tiffcom.
 

MUMBAI: Oprah Winfrey has topped the annual highest earners list of 2010. For this, the 56-year-old brokered a syndication deal for her talk show, ran her own magazine and readied the launch of her own network.

By this, she sourced in $315 million putting her way ahead of James Cameron who took the No. 2 spot pulling in $210 million. 

Tyler Perry, at No. 3, was way ahead of some of Hollywood‘s most legendary filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer. He banked $125 million in the year from his films Why I Did I Get Married Too? and For Colored Girls.

Musician Beyonce Knowles was the only one to crack the list‘s top 10 by earning $87 million that edged down Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift in the top 20 list.

Holding down the last spot was Judge Judy, whose monetary success is equal to Swift‘s $45 million.

MUMBAI: The Pusan International Film Festival, in a statement, has criticised the Iranian government‘s decision to sentence Jafar Panahi and his fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof.

“We strongly believe that it is nothing but unjustified suppression of one of the greatest filmmakers in the world.”The Pusan International Film Festival is absolutely outraged,” the statement read.

Panahi‘s film The Circle deals with the discrimination of women in Iran, through the eyes of women released from prison. In another film, Offside, the director told a story of girls who have to disguise themselves to watch a football game.

Panahi‘s feature debut film The White Balloon won him a Camera d‘Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. He has also received other prestigious awards such as the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for The Circle and the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for Offside.

MUMBAI: Filmmaker Bud Greenspan, whose inspirational portraits of Olympic athletes became a trademark of the Games, died at his home in New York on Saturday from complications of Parkinson‘s disease. He was 84.

Over the years, Greenspan never lost focus on the most inspirational stories of athletes, even as controversies over politics, performance-enhancing drugs and commercialism increasingly vied for attention.

His best-known work was The Olympiad, the culmination of 10 years of research, more than 3 million feet of rare, archival film, hundreds of interviews and visits to more than 30 nations. The 10-part series he produced was aired in more than 80 countries.

In an interview with ESPN.com a decade ago, Greenspan admitted he took a different approach than most of his colleagues.

“I spend my time on about the 99 per cent of what‘s good about the Olympics and most people spend 100 per cent of their time on the one per cent that‘s negative,” he said. “I‘ve been criticized for seeing things through rose-colored glasses, but the percentages are with me.”

Greenspan received lifetime achievement awards from the DGA and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences as well as a Peabody and the Olympic Order award.

MUMBAI: The modern remake of the 1990 Arnold Schwarzennegar-starrer Total Recall will be shot in Toronto beginning late March next year at the Pinewood Toronto Studios.

The booking follows Pinewood’s North American beach-head receiving a $34.5 million loan from the Canadian government to lure big budget movie and TV shoots in Toronto.

Based on a script by Kurt Wimmer, the film will be directed by Len Wiseman for the Original Film banner. The story of the film portrays a man haunted by a recurring dream of rocketing to Mars.

Pinewood Toronto Studios has recently been home for the shoots of films like Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, The Thing, and Dream House.

MUMBAI: Independent, privately-held motion picture, television, home video, and theatrical production and distribution company MGM Holdings Inc. (MGM) has declared that former Pixar Chief Financial Officer Ann Mather would join the Board of Directors of the newly restructured company.

Mather will serve as the Lead Director of the nine-member Board that comprises of Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, CEOs of MGM and Co-Chairman of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc and its subsidiaries.

Mather’s appointment comes days after the company’s 20 December announcement that their restructuring plan has become effective including exit financing of $500 million.

As Lead Director, Mather will oversee governance of the studio and its operating units and work in tandem with directors Barber and Birnbaum; former CBS Chief Financial Officer Fred Reynolds; former MySpace President Jason Hirschhorn; Christopher Pucillo, the founder of Solus Alternative Asset Management; Patrick H. Daugherty, a partner at Highland Capital Management LP; and Kevin Ulrich, chief executive officer of Anchorage Capital Group LLC.

The final vacancy is expected to be filled within the next several weeks.

MUMBAI: Francois Ozon‘s film Potiche will open the 22nd annual Palm Springs International Film Festival next month. Justin Chadwick‘s First Grader will be the closing-night film.

The films that will have their world premiere at the festival includes Down the Shore,; The Encore of Tony Duran; Fifty-nothing,; documentary The Last Lions; The Rescuers; the doc Rise; Thanks and Wild Horse, Wild Ride.

Films demarcated for the gala screenings are Peter Weir‘s The Way Back, Max Winkler‘s Ceremony, Ferzan Ozpetek‘s Italian farce Loose Cannons and Daniel and Erika Randall Beahm‘s Leading Ladies.

MUMBAI: Christian Bale, who featured in The Fighter will now star in a Chinese film titled Nanjing Heroes, a film about the Nanjing Massacre. Bale will play an American priest called John who helps a great number of Chinese escape certain death.

The $90 million budget film directed by Zhang Yimou is roughly equal to that of John Woo‘s two-part period film Red Cliff that was said to be the most expensive ever Asian-financed movie.

The Nanjing Massacre, when Japanese troops killed thousands of Chinese citizens in what was then the nation‘s capital in 1937, has been the subject of several recent Chinese and co-produced films.

The film will be 40 per cent in English while the rest would be in Mandarin Chinese. Earlier, Sony Pictures Classics distributed Zhang‘s films in the United States but it is not involved at this time.

Zhang‘s highest-grossing film ever was 2002 period war film Hero starring Jet Li roped in almost $54 million in the US. His new film comes at a time when China‘s film business is booming at home and dominant in parts of Asia, but receives little attention elsewhere.

The film will start rolling on 10 January 10.