Category: International

MUMBAI: For its seventh edition, the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) will feature diverse genres, geographies and subjects to offer a powerful range of biopics, horror, adventure, comedy and drama.

This year’s festival will be highlighted with the screening of Academy Award-winning British director Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours that will be the opening film of the festival on 12 December. 

The film is about a solo mountain climber who is forced to make tough decisions after being trapped under a boulder in Utah is among this year’s highlights. The Oscar-tipped film will open the festival.

Swedish mystery psycho-thriller Corridor, about a medical student whose peaceful life becomes jeopardized when he meets the girl upstairs and Mexican director Alejandro González I?árritu and the Javier Bardem-starrer Biutiful would also be screened.

The festival closes on 19 December.
 

MUMBAI: The Los Angeles Animation Festival, to be held between to 7 December at Cinefamily‘s Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles, will honour animator Will Vinton by screening his 25-year ago film The Adventures of Mark Twain. The festival lineup also includes a programme devoted to the filmmaker‘s short films.

An innovator in the world of stop motion and 3D animation, Vinton will be on hand for an awards presentation and will answer questions on his works. 

Vinton, who has received five Oscar nominations, received the Academy Award for best short animated film for Closed Mondays in 1975.

MUMBAI: Titanic star Leonardo DiCaprio will produce and star in Legacy of Secrecy, a feature film supposedly inspired by the assassination of former US president John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

The film is based on the eponymous novel written by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann that includes a series of secret information, extracted from an FBI file, recently included in US National Archives.

The film will have DiCaprio play Jack Van Laningham, an FBI informant who is a friend of Carlos Marcello, Mafia boss, which the American press, said he would have recognized that he was involved in the assassination of the American president in 1963.

The film will be released in cinemas in 2013, the year that marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the late US president.

DiCaprio had recently announced that he will produce a film about the famous creator of James Bond, Ian Fleming who had a life as interesting as a character.
 

MUMBAI: Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is planning to return to acting. Schwarzenegger‘s tenure as governor will come to an end in January next year.

Said Schwarzenegger, “It could be that fighting climate change would be the main thing. It could also be that it would be one of five things that I would do. It could be showbusiness. It could be business in general.” 

Schwarzenegger had successful careers in films, politics and bodybuilding and thinks he has thrived in each of these areas because he knows where his strengths lie.

“My whole life I was always very ambitious but I was smart enough to always look, what is my talent, what do I have to offer the world? Then you go with that,” he quipped.

Along with considering a return to acting, Schwarzenegger is launching a global war on climate change and admitted while it is difficult to interest people in environmental issues.
 

MUMBAI: Angelina Jolie has been turned into a comic book heroine in a graphic novel called ‘Female Force: Angelina Jolie‘.

The novel written by Brent Sprecher, tells the story of Jolie‘s rise to fame as well as her experiences raising six children and serving as a goodwill ambassador for the UN. 

‘I learned a great deal about her struggles and triumphs as an award-winning actress, mother and humanitarian,‘ said Sprecher.

The comic hits shelves in January.
 

MUMBAI: A film Late December by the Tunisian director Moez Kamoun will be part of the 34th edition of International Film Festival in Cairo due to be held from 30 November to 9 December.

Tunisian producer and director Ibrahim Letaief will also take part in this edition, as a jury member of the Arab film competition alongside Egyptian, Syrian and Saudi Arabian members.

As many as 135 films from 69 countries including 12 Arab countries will take part in this year’s edition. Sixteen films from Egypt, Hungary, India, Russia, Greece, Bulgaria, Italy, Philippines, Argentina, Turkey, Switzerland, Slovenia, France, Romania Ireland, and Tunisia will take part in the official competition.

Many celebrities have been invited to the event including Richard Gere, South Korean actress Yun Jung Hee and Irrfan Khan and Celina Jaitley from India.
 

MUMBAI: Hollywood actor turned producer and executive William Self who transformed 20th Century Fox into a top television supplier of the 1960s expire after suffering a heart attack recently. He was 89.

At Fox for fifteen years, Self headed groundbreaking series like Peyton Place, the first primetime soap opera; Batman, the first series based on a comic book to air in primetime, Julia, the first weekly series to star an African-American woman and M*A*S*H.

He also produced the pilot for The Twilight Zone in the late 1950s during the first of his two stints at CBS, and his company produced The Shootist (1976), John Wayne‘s final film.

A native of Dayton, Ohio, Self appeared as an actor in more than two dozen films from 1949-53, including I Was a Male War Bride (1949), Operation Pacific (1951), The Thing From Another World (1951) and Pat and Mike (1952). Along the way, he forged a friendship with Spencer Tracy.

Self then turned to production and made more than 200 episodes of Schlitz Playhouse of Stars as well as The Frank Sinatra Show in 1957. He later joined CBS as a program executive, then moved to Fox.

Other notable Fox series under his watch were Daniel Boone, Twelve O‘Clock High, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Green Hornet, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, Land of the Giants and Room 222.

Self was eventually named president of 20th Century Fox Television and then vice-president of 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

He exited Fox in 1975 to partner with Mike Frankovich. Their short-lived arrangement produced The Shootist as well as From Noon Till Three (1976), starring Charles Bronson.
Self is survived by his daughter Barbara; son Edwin; sister Jean; four grandchildren; and six great grandchildren.
 

MUMBAI: The annual CineAsia trade show will honour Lotte Cinemas with the DLP Cinema Marketing Achievement Award on 9 December at Hong Kong.

Seoul-based Lotte Cinema, that currently operates 62 multiplexes with 462 screens and 162 3D systems is in the midst of an expansion beyond the South Korean market.

The company has launched three multiplexes in Vietnam and its first China location, in the northeastern city of Shenyang, is scheduled to be open at the end of this year In 2011, it will expand its multiplex business with 17 new domestic locations and 14 foreign locations.
 
As China‘s box office boom continues, jumping over 80% in the first half of this year, the rapidly expanding exhibition sector sees a rush of new players coming into the market to compete.

To stay ahead, Lotte, in 2009, introduced the world‘s first robot cinema usher, called Ciromi, and gave its customer base a ticket-booking Smartphone application.

From their cinemas‘ free Wi-fi Internet zones, to their 13.1-channel sound systems and 4D auditoriums Lotte Cinemas is pioneering change in Korea‘s multiplex industry.
 

MUMBAI: Robert De Niro has instituted a new 25,000 annual award, the Robert De Niro Sr. Prize that will honour American artists for achievement in painting.

The prize will be administered by the Tribeca Film Institute said the Tribeca Film Institute co-chairman De Niro. He was joined by Megan Fox Kelly and Jeffrey Hoffeld, advisors to the estate.

A committee of distinguished individuals in the art world will be appointed annually to nominate and select three finalists and the prize recipient.

The estate will also host a group exhibition for the finalists at which the winner will be announced.

De Niro will fund the prize, which is among the first to celebrate and shine a light on midcareer artists. The first prize will be awarded in 2011.

MUMBAI: A documentary titled The Slumdog Children of Mumbai commissioned by UK‘s Channel 4 about the lives of children who live in Mumbai slums was among the honorees at the Rory Peck Awards in London recently. The documentary was made along with Oscar-winner Slumdog Millionaire.

The film lapped up the Sony Professional Impact Award that honours freelance camerawork in either news or current affairs that raises humanitarian issues and whose broadcast has had an international impact or contributed to a change in perception or policy.

Shot over three months through the Monsoon, the film follows the lives of four children: 7-year-old Deepa, who lives next to an open dump and runs barefoot through traffic selling flowers to help support her family; 11-year-old Salaam, who, a few weeks after running away from his abusive stepmother, lives outside the main railway station; and twins Hussan and Hussein, also 11, who risk cholera and infection fishing for scraps in a filthy canal so they can earn money to eat.

According to the director Nick Read, “The documentary was designed to be a complement to Slumdog Millionaire and a counterpoint to the movie.”

Rory Peck Awards, the annual international competition honours the skill, courage and enterprise of freelance news and current affairs cameramen and camerawomen.