Category: International

MUMBAI: Hong Kong born Roger Garcia is the new executive director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society (HKIFFC).

Garcia, a former director of the festival, film producer, film critic and writer, will manage the society‘s three flagship events: the Hong Kong International Film Festival, the Hong Kong Asia Film Financing Forum and the Asian Film Awards.

Garcia‘s work with the Hong Kong International Film Festival started in the late 1970s soon after its inception, where he developed the programming of contemporary and classic Hong Kong cinema and Asian cinema and was involved in introducing the festival‘s bi-lingual publications to present Hong Kong cinema to the world.

Apart from his contribution to promoting arts and culture in Hong Kong, he was also the first Director of the Filmmakers‘ Development Lab for the Korean Film Council from 2005-2008.

He also held positions under the Cultural Services Division, Recreation and Culture Department and Home Affairs Department of the Hong Kong Government to advance and develop the arts and cultural sector in Hong Kong, as well as to promote overseas investments in the region as regional director, North America at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in New York.

As a film producer, Garcia was behind Columbia Tristar‘s Mark Wahlberg vehicle The Big Hit and Filipino director Raymond Red‘s Himpapawid.
 

MUMBAI: With the box-office success of both The Expendables and The Last Exorcism, the debt rating of Lionsgate has risen from stable to positive.

The Vancouver-based mini-studio‘s recent debt reduction, courtesy of a July senior subordinated notes-to-equity conversion has activist shareholder Carl Icahn in a sense of quandry.

“While Moody‘s remains cautious regarding the inherent and significant volatility of the theatrical production business and the negative cash flow in recent years, the company‘s growing investment in both film, and particularly the upfront investment in television programming, is expected to generate improving operating profits and free cash flow over the next few years,” said rating agency Moody, which rates Lionsgate debt at B2 in a statement.

The ratings agency also agreed to the uncertainty surrounding Lionsgate from its high-profile fight with Icahn and added, “A material change in the direction of the company that does not balance the interests of both equity and debt holders and that increases credit risk, could cause a reversal of the positive outlook or put downward pressure on the rating.”

MUMBAI: The Venice film festival opens today with Black Swan starring Natalie Portman as a ballet dancer in New York.

Festival director Marco Mueller has opted for youth in his choice of directors of the twenty three competition films and hopes that the presence of Hollywood mavericks could make up for the expected shortage of A-list celebrities this year.

Jury president Quentin Tarantino, who will decide as to who walks away with the coveted Golden Lion award at the closing ceremony on 11 September said that his time on the picturesque island would be more work than play.

Venice, the world‘s oldest film festival and one of its most prestigious, has long been looking over its shoulder at Canadian rival Toronto, with which it overlaps and which is seen as cheaper and more business-focused than the Italian event.
 

MUMBAI: Saving Grace star Holly Hunter will lead the jury for the upcoming Stockholm International Film Festival. She will head up the panel selected to choose the winner of the festival‘s top award, the Bronze Horse.

The event will also honour filmmaker Gus Van Sant who directed Milk, Elephant and Paranoid Park. 

“I am honoured to be serving as this year‘s jury president at the Stockholm International Film Festival. I‘m especially excited that this year‘s festival is celebrating the extraordinary achievements of filmmaker Gus Van Sant,” Hunter said.

The event, that will screen more than 20 films will go underway on 18 November.
 

MUMBAI: Director David Ellis, who helmed Snakes on a Plane and two parts of the Final Destination and producer Mike Fleiss are finalising their cast for the horror film Shark Night 3D.

The story of the film revolves around seven men and women who spend a weekend at a lake house in Louisiana‘s Gulf area. When their vacation quickly becomes a nightmare of hellish shark attacks, unheard of in freshwater lakes, they soon discover that the sharks are part of a sick, greedy plan on the part of several locals.
In the star cast of the film are Sinqua Walls, Chris Carmack, Alyssa Diaz and Joel David Moore.

While Walls plays a Tulane University linebacker with plans on marrying his college sweetheart Diaz, Carmack is the ex-boyfriend of the female lead. Moore provides the comic relief as a socially awkward man who fancies himself a young Brad Pitt.

The movie is scheduled for an early September roll in Louisana.

MUMBAI: Italian-American actress and director Isabella Rossellini will preside over the Jury of the 61st Berlin International Film Festival to be held from 10 to 20 February next year.

“It‘s fantastic that Isabella Rossellini will be the President of the Berlinale Jury in 2011,” says the festival‘s director Dieter Kosslick. 

Rossellini, one of the most renowned actresses in international cinema has also become a distinguished producer and director. The daughter of Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and of Italian director Roberto Rossellini, she first started her career as a fashion designer and journalist.

Her acting debut came in 1976, when she appeared with her mother in Vincente Minelli‘s A Matter Of Time. She then went on to do films by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Norman Mailer, Robert Zemeckis, Joel Schumacher, John Schlesinger, Peter Weir, Abel Ferrara, Stanley Tucci, Guy Maddin, Peter Greenaway and many others.

She acquired international fame in David Lynch‘s films Blue Velvet (1986) and Wild at Heart (1990).

In addition to her career in cinema, Isabella Rossellini was also a top cosmetics model in the ‘80s onward.

MUMBAI: The Expendables and The Last Airbender are neck-to-neck as far as No.1 at the overseas box-office is concerned.

M. Night Shyamalan‘s 3D adaptation of the Nickelodeon TV series grossed an estimated $18 million from a number of 5,843 venues in 51 locations for an overseas total of $120 million. 

Paramount‘s Airbender opened at No. 1 in Mexico with $4 million from 812 spots, while its first China round roped in $2.6 million from 1,500 locations. Weekend estimates puts Expendables‘ weekend tally roughly at $18 million while Expendables is playing in a total of 32 markets via various local distributors with only a handful of major territories reporting so far. Its overall haul is estimated at $75 million.

The Milennium Films /Nu Image Films super-octane action vehicle The Expendables directed by and co-starring Sylvester Stallone with Jason Stratham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts and Mickey Rourke, opened in Germany, Norway and Thailand in the latest round. The film stands on the No. 2 position in Germany with an estimated intake of $3.2 million from 525 sites.

20th Century Fox‘s overseas introduction of a “special edition” of Avatar at 1,046 screens in 14 markets grossed $4.26 million more than enough to push director James Cameron‘s sci fi blockbuster walk past the $2 billion foreign-gross mark.

MUMBAI: To promote cross-cultural awareness, the University of Texas-Pan American will be the first university in the UT System to show the Global Lens Film Series. With films from all over the world, the series offers a window into different traditions and rich cultural lessons.

Starting 9 September with Becloud (Vaho), a Mexican film directed by Alejandro Gerber Bicecci, the series films will be screened admission-free at the Student Union Theatre, and will be open to the public and UTPA community.

“This would be the best venue to see something on the big screen that I know of in the whole Valley, for a constant menu of foreign films, and well done films too,” said media and marketing librarian Virginia Gause. “Just because people come here from many countries doesn‘t mean the general public understands all these various cultures,”

Based in San Francisco, the Global Film Initiative is a non-profit film distributor created in 2002 by Susan Weeks Coulter, a former Peace Corps volunteer who decided to start the organization after the events on 9/11.

MUMBAI: Well-known Japanese animation director Satoshi Kon better known for Tokyo Godfathers and Millennium Actress among other award winning films expired d of pancreatic cancer at the age of 46 last Tuesday.

Considered one of Japan‘s most exciting animation film directors, oKon was born in 1963 on the island of Hokkaido and debuted as a comic book artiste when he was 23 while still an art student at Musashino Art University near Tokyo. He began making animated films about 1990, establishing a style that blurred the boundaries of reality and fantasy.

In his Oscar-nominated 2003 film Tokyo Godfathers, Kon featured three homeless people instead of three cowboys, breaking with the clean and ritzy image of the Japanese capital.

The 2006 film Paprika based on a novel by popular writer Yasutaka Tsutsui, used breathtaking cutting-edge animation and won a prize at the Brussels anime festival in 2007.

Kon was working on his first children‘s film The Dreaming Machine at the time of his death.
 

MUMBAI: This year, cinema hall operators have come up with the biggest year-over-year price increase ever though the movie going attendance remained unchanged compared to last year.

Average admission costs have been up more than 40 cents, or 5 per cent this year while the National Association of Theatre Owners said attendance was down by less than 1 per cent compared to 2009.
 

Experts are of the view that high 3D prices was an important factor in the dismal performance of recent box-office fare of films like Piranha 3D.

Analyst Richard Greenfield has argued that “consumer 3D fatigue is already starting to show given the abusive ticket prices that exhibitors are charging for poor 3D content.” He also criticised studios for a lack of quality product. “Hollywood is putting out bad 3D movies,” he said, citing that the recent Cats and Dogs sequel in 3D was priced $3-$5 above that of Inception.