Category: International

MUMBAI: Raking in $ 315 million from her media empire, talk show queen Oprah Winfrey has emerged as the highest earning female in Hollywood in the Forbes list. The TV mogul toppled singing sensations like Beyonce Knowles, Lady Gaga and Madonna to top the rich list.

She had earned a whopping amount from her own chat show and magazine between June 2009 and June 2010. Winfrey, 56, earned enough money compared to other stars in the top five put together. 

Beyonce grabbed the second place with USD 89 million, Britney Spears came third banking $ 65 million, fourth place went to Gaga who has earned $ 64 million and Madonna ranked fifth with $ 59.9 million.

Miley Cyrus and country star Taylor Swift also made it to the top 10 with TV host Judge Judy ranking 10th.

MUMBAI: Jon Favreau will direct Disney‘s upcoming project centered around the Disneyland theme park Magic Kingdom, that will see attractions and characters come to life. The film is to be produced by Marc Abraham and Eric Newman of Strike Entertainment.

The deal is a development pact for Favreau and the studio that is now looking out for a writer to reshape the original script by Ron Moore, Battlestar Galactica showrunner.

Among Favreau‘s other projects in development are Me and My Monster and Johnny Zero, both set up at Columbia.

Disney has already turned theme park attractions into films such as Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion.
 

MUMBAI: Yoshinobu Nishizaki, producer and co-creator of the original Space Battleship Yamato anime, died in a boating accident on Sunday off the Ogasawara Islands, south of Tokyo.

Nishizaki, 75, fell from the boat – the 485-ton Yamato – as it was anchored just outside a port on Chichi Island, while getting ready to swim. He was rescued by a Coast Guard boat but was pronounced dead two hours later.
 
It is not the first time Nishizaki has been in trouble in the ocean. In the late 1990s, after his production company went bankrupt and he was on bail for possession of multiple illegal substances, he reportedly smuggled an assault rifle, grenade launcher and other weapons and ammunition from the Philippines on a cruiser he owned.

He was arrested again in 1999 on drugs and firearms charges, later handing in weapons and munitions, including 30 Howitzer shells, to police.

Nishizaki created the first Yamato TV series with animator Leiji Matsumoto.
 

MUMBAI: Next year’s Golden Globe Awards will see veteran Robert De Niro being honoured with the Cecil B DeMille Award for lifetime achievement. The actor will receive the honour at the ceremony on 16 January.

The veteran has been earlier nominated for eight Golden Globe Awards in both the comedy and drama categories. He won once for Raging Bull besides winning two Academy Awards (for Raging Bull and The Godfather: Part II) and also the Kennedy Center Honor.

De Niro is also being hailed for his contributions as a director, a producer through his Tribeca Productions and also as a co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival, created to help revitalise lower Manhattan in New York after the September 11 2001 World Trade Center attacks.

Previous DeMille winners include Barbra Streisand, Al Pacino, Michael Douglas, Steven Spielberg and last year‘s recipient, De Niro‘s longstanding friend and director Martin Scorsese. Ricky Gervais is to return as the ceremony‘s host.
 

MUMBAI: The 18th Damascus International Film Festival will kick off on 12 November. The seven-day festival includes 14 cinematographic events, the most prominent of which is the Turkish cinema event.

The festival will include 222 feature-length films, 24 of which will enter the official competition, in addition to 92 short films, with the participation of more than 160 actors, directors and producers from 46 Arab and foreign countries. 

The feature film competition including 24 films consists of Vladimir Menshov (Russia), Anamaria Bonaiuto (Italy), Anamaria Marinca (Romania), Helma Sanders-Brahams (Germany), Jacques Fieschi (France), Kerem Ayan (Turkey), Moufida Tlatli (Tunisia), Najdat Anzour (Syria), Nicole Guillemet (USA), Sandra Nashaat (Egypt), Ward El Khal (Lebanon) and Mahmoud Abdelwahed (Syria).

The short film competition including 92 films consists of Raymon Butros (Syria), Alice Kharoubi (France), Marzia Tedeschi (Italy), Olivier Gicart (Belgium) and Pernille Munk Skydsgaard (Denmark).

Syrian Enana Dance Group will perform several dance pieces are taken from the most prominent international and Syrian films at the opening ceremony of the festival.

Other events and activities such as the round table activity which focuses on the role of the Arab film festivals in developing film production and promotion are also included.
 

MUMBAI: Actress Jane Russell, the movie sex symbol of the 1940s and 1950s, was honoured on Monday at the 25th Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival at Cinema Paradiso.

Russell was given the festival‘s Lifetime Achievement Award for her work. Among her most famous roles is a screen pairing with Mitchum, her co-star in both His Kind of Woman and Macao, a Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parson described ‘as the hottest combination that ever hit the screen‘. 

Discovered by millionaire Howard Hughes while working as a receptionist; Russell called Marilyn Monroe a friend and played leading lady to Clark Gable, Robert Mitchum and Bob Hope.

She broke into Hollywood in 1943 with a splash in the Western The Outlaw, a mild R-rated movie about the love life of Billy the Kid directed by Hughes. It‘s part of Hollywood lore that Hughes created the underwire bra for Russell, who needed extra support in a scene where she appears laying on a haystack.

MUMBAI: In order to avert a situation that would have narrowed into a strike, the kind that had paralysed the American entertainment industry for over 100 days two years ago in 2008, Hollywood actors‘ unions and major studios reached a new, three-year contract.

The deal, that provided a six-per cent pay raise and a 10 per cent increase in contributions to the unions‘ health and pension plans, comes into effect from 1 July. 

The understanding, though, came about after six weeks of negotiations between the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP).

“The deals offer increases in benefit contributions, wages and other areas critical to working performers while being responsive to the current challenges facing feature film and television producers,” the AMPTP said in a statement.

In 2008, the inability of actors and producers to clinch a deal led actors to work without a contract for a year. It followed a strike by the screenwriters that became the country‘s entertainment industry‘s most damaging dispute in 20 years.

“Strengthening the pension and health plans was our top priority in these negotiations — making such a significant gain in that area was a vital achievement,” said SAG president Ken Howard. “We had to make some difficult decisions, but working together, we?ve reached a deal that will protect our essential pension and health benefits for years to come,” he added.
 

MUMBAI: The Weinstein Co. has announced its decision to make Apollo 18, a sci-fi thriller that would be directed by Timur Bekmambetov, the Wanted director.

Set to be shot documentary style, the film unearths lost footage from Apollo 18‘s undocumented and covert mission to the moon, revealing disturbing new evidence of other life forms.

The film that has screenplay by Brian Miller would be produced by Bekmambetov and Michele Wolkoff, president of development for Bekmambetov Projects Ltd. (BPL).

The film is slated to begin production this December and would be released in March next year.

Bekmambetov‘s “found footage” movie deal comes a week after Heat Vision revealed that disaster-movie maestro Roland Emmerich was working on his own secret “found footage” film.
 

MUMBAI: This year‘s Cannes Film Festival award winner Javier Bardem for Biutiful, will be honoured with the International Star Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival‘s awards gala on 8 January next year.

Said Palm Springs International Film Society board chairman Harold Matzner, “Having honed his skills in a family of film actors, Bardem brings a stinging intensity to his performances. He riveted audiences with his portrayal in No Country for Old Men and continues to raise the bar in his latest film Biutiful. Javier Bardem now ranks among the cinematic elite.”

Bardem is currently working on a Terrence Malick‘s new untitled film.

MUMBAI: Los Angeles-based production, sales and finance company Unified Pictures has entered into a three-picture deal with Canadian production and finance house Bron Studios. The deal will begin with A Million Reasons, a comedy film written and directed by Michael A. Nickles.

While Unified will handle production and foreign sales of all three films, Bron will co-produce and finance the films.

The film follows a young man on a desperate quest to unlock a memory, an obsession, which turns his life upside-down in surprising ways.

The film, produced by Unified Pictures founder Keith Kjarval and Bron Studios chief Aaron L. Gilbert.

The two entities first teamed together with Industrial Entertainment to finance and produce Janie Jones starring Abigail Breslin, Alessandro Nivola and Elizabeth Shue that was screened at this year‘s Toronto International Film Festival.