Category: International

MUMBAI: At a grand prize gala in Stockholm as the XXI Stockholm International Film Festival came to an end, American director Debra Granik received the 7-kg Bronze Horse Prize for this year‘s Best Film Winter‘s Bone.

“Through her heroine, the director paints an original portrait of a matriarchy who, by turns, warns, punishes, and ultimately offers an unlikely deliverance. The story and performances worked together to realize an uncompromised vision,” a jury of the film festival said in a statement.

Winter‘s Bone won the Best Actress Award for Jennifer Lawrence for her performance in the film while the Best Actor Prize went to George Pistereanu for his performance in the Romanian-Swedish film If I want to whistle, I whistle.

The 34-year-old Vietnamese director Phang Dang Di won the Best First Feature and best cinematography award for his best debut film Bi, Do not Be Afraid that revolves around a troubled generation of accommodation in Hanoi.

Earlier during the festival that began on 17 November, the Stockholm Visionary Award was presented to director Gus Van Sant while the Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Harriet Andersson.

The Stockholm International Film Festival, that was launched in 1990 with just 45 films is today one of the leading competitive film festivals in Europe with 180 films.
 

MUMBAI: For the second weekend in a row, Harry Potter reigned the worldwide box-office for a second weekend, but the heroic wizard had to face a scare from a hairy princess in North America. After two weekends the worldwide total stands at about $610 million.

The foreign total stands at $389.2 million. Top markets include Britain with $53.5 million, Germany with $37 million, Japan with $35 million, and Australia with $25 million.The seventh film in the franchise, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 roped in $163.5 million that included a haul of $50.3 million in the United States and Canada. France came out best from among the foreign markets where the film opened at No. 1 with $19.1 million, the country‘s best start of any film so far in the year. 

The previous film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince had earned $201 million during the same 10-day span in July last year.

But the fearless schoolboy almost lost his North American crown to Rapunzel, the hirsute heroine in the new Walt Disney Co 3D cartoon Tangled that earned $49.1 million for the three days of the last weekend.

Along with three other films, Tangled opened last Wednesday, giving the film a five-day total of $69 million while trade insiders had predicted a five-day haul of about $40 million.

Internationally, the Disney film earned $13.8 million after opening at No. 1 in six of seven markets led by Russia with $7.5 million haul.
 

MUMBAI: The air pistol that James Bond star Sean Connery held in a promotional poster of the 1963 classic From Russia With Love has fetched USD 436,000 in an auction.

The weapon that recently went on sale at Christie‘s auction house in London was expected to fetch between USD 30,000 to USD 40,000, collected ten times its asking price, it is reported.

Another James Bond pistol that appeared in the 1974 film The Man With The Golden Gun, sold for USD 30,000 at the Popular Culture: Film and Entertainment sale.

On the other hand, a Darth Vader costume that was expected to fetch up to USD 400,000 failed to sell. The costume was used in the second Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back.

Other items put up for auction included a dinosaur model from the 1933 King Kong film and a metal box containing the glowing red eye of the computer HAL from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

MUMBAI: Vietnamese-French director Tran Anh Hung, who directed the upcoming film Norwegian Wood based on a book by author Haruki Murakami, has said that it took him four years to win the Japanese author‘s approval to adapt his novel.

Hung said that Murakami was initially protective of the love story that has sold more than 10 million copies in Japan and 2.6 million abroad in 36 languages.

The film set in Tokyo in the late ‘60s is about a university student who is torn between two women, the girlfriend of his best friend who committed suicide and a self-confident and independent woman.

The film is scheduled to open in Japan and 36 other countries in December.

MUMBAI: The Korean Film Festival in China 2010went underway in Beijing on Thursday with the screening of films by directors like Kim Ki-duk and Park Chan-wook.

It is the largest retrospective of Korean cinema ever held in China and coincides with mounting tensions between Beijing and Seoul over North Korea.

The most unusual title at the festival for China‘s usually middle-of-the-road cinema fare is probably the Lee Young Ae-starrer Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. The film made in 2005 is about a woman taking up a torturous revenge after she‘s released from prison for a murder she did not commit.

The Korean film retrospective‘s earliest title is director Han Hyung-mo‘s 1956 drama Madame Freedom and Kim Sung-oo‘s Chinese film My Ex-wife‘s Wedding that premiered at the Pusan International Film Festival in October.

Kim will also host a master class for Chinese festival-goers.

MUMBAI: Films on puppetry, cartoons and female wizardry will feature in the race for a British Academy children‘s feature film at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts award. The Children‘s awards are a sought after nod for those in the business of entertaining youngsters.

Organizers of said Monday, the winner of this year‘s best film title would go to one from Fantastic Mr. Fox, Nanny McPhee and The Big Bang, Up and Toy Story 3.

The BAFTA children‘s awards will be presented by former BAFTA winner and children‘s television presenter Barney Harwood at a ceremony held on 28 November in London.

The nods celebrate children‘s media including television, film, video games and online and this year have added a comedy award and performer nomination category.
 

MUMBAI: Academy Award-winner Nicole Kidman will receive this year‘s Cinema Vanguard Award during the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Executive Director Roger Durling has announced .

Kidman, who is being recognized for “forging her own path-taking artistic risks and making a significant and unique contribution to film,” stars in the upcoming film Rabbit Hole, which she also co-produced.

Previous winners of the Cinema Vanguard Award include Stanley Tucci, Peter Sarsgaard, Kristen Scott Thomas, and Ryan Gosling.
 

MUMBAI: Aarif Rahman, a 23-year-old singer-songwriter who made his acting debut in Echoes has been signed to play the young Bruce Lee in the Bruce Lee biopic Bruce Lee, My Brother.

The film relates the early life story of him who put Hong Kong action films on the map, its director Raymond Yip has said. The film pieces together the superstar‘s childhood as related by his four surviving siblings, Phoebe, Agnes, Peter and Robert.

Said Yip, “The Lee family supplied us with all the details and the tidbits of their family life.So we took great care to be loyal to the truth and avoid anything that felt fake, which made it rather difficult for us in terms of creating the structure of the script. But the Lee family was very pleased with the result, especially with how close it was to what actually happened.”

The biopic took years to put on the screen because of the difficult task of finding a young actor to play the role of the iconic megastar. “We‘ve been on the lookout for a possible candidate all over China since 2008, but no one could capture the Hong Kong spirit of the young Bruce Lee till we met Rahman,” Yip explained.

But when writer-director team of Alex Law and Mabel Cheung, invited the film‘s producer, Manfred Wong, to a screening of their opus Echoes of the Rainbow, the search was over. We chose Rahman to play the young Lee. The Hong Kong-born Rahman, of Malay-Arab-Chinese ancestry, will have to shoulder any potential sequels for the Bruce Lee life story, said Yip.

The film that started rolling in March is scheduled for a 25 November release in Hong Kong.

MUMBAI: Russia’s Trust bank has roped in Bruce Willis to campaign for it in the country. This was evident when Moscow streets were flooded with pictures of the Die Hard with the phrase “Trust is just like me, but a bank.”

Trust said Willis‘s character reflects the bank‘s values in terms of “trust and dignity.” Willis replaces the bank‘s previous frontman, Russian weightlifter Vladimir Turchinsky who expired last year. 

Willis, 55 will front the campaign for at least a year, the bank said in a statement.

“The Moscow call immediately raised their (Willis‘s agents) interest,” Dmitry Chukseyev, who was involved in negotiations with the star‘s agents and serves as Trust‘s vice-president for communications.

However, details on the cost of the deal with Willis has not been disclosed.
 

MUMBAI: Greek film Dogtooth has won the Kingfisher Award, the top award at the 21st Ljubljana International Film Festival (LIFFe) that took place in the capital of Slovenia between 10 and 20 November.

The festival, that screened 117 films in eleven days had a jury that included American film distributor Frank Stavic and Slovenian writer and director Goran Vojinovic. They described Dogtooth as creating “a uniquely depressing atmosphere”.

The film portrays a horrific family drama where the father keeps his children imprisoned in their home with the help and consent of his wife. The children consider this as normal since they have never known what freedom is. The plot of the film could be considered as an allegory of modern society where words tend to change meanings resulting in dramatic consequences.