Category: International

MUMBAI: Leonardo DiCaprio starrer Inception opened big with $60.4 million intake at the box-office and top spotted the weekend box-office in the US.

Strong reviews helped “Inception,” which stars DiCaprio as leader of a team that normally breaks into people‘s dreams to steal their secrets.

The Warner Bros. film about a team that sneaks into people‘s dreams becomes DiCaprio‘s biggest opening weekend topping his previous best of $41.1 million of Shutter Island.

But Inception fell far short of director Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight that had opened in the same weekend two years ago and grossed $158.4 million.

Warner Bros. has carved out a niche with this particular mid-July weekend. The studio followed The Dark Knight with a $77.8 million opening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince over the same weekend last year.

The final Harry Potter film debuts on the same weekend next summer while Warner plans to release Nolan‘s third film Batman over the same weekend two years from now.

MUMBAI: Award-winning documentary Fowl Play has been chosen to be the official selection at the New York International Film Festival.

The film, that exposes the truths behind modern egg production, was recently given the honour of being screened at the festival on 25 July.

Talking about the film, New York International Film Festival executive artistic director, Anoo Cottoor said, “Two thumbs up!! Wow! Wow & Wow! A must see documentary! A very, very powerful documentary! Big congratulations to Mercy For Animals for making this compelling documentary and getting the word out.”

The film will be screened as part of the festival for which tickets are available for $15 online that also includes admission to the after party.

MUMBAI: The opening film at the 35th Toronto International Film Festival scheduled to be held between 9 to 19 September will be the world premiere of Score: A Hockey Musical that stars Olivia Newton-John and Nelly Furtado.

The film has been helmed by Canadian writer/director Michael McGowan. This coming-of-age story follows a 17-year-old who is scouted and signed to a junior league team and expectedly becomes an instant star of the ice rink.

The cast also includes Stephen McHattie and newcomer Noah Reid as the hockey player.

MUMBAI: The key reason for the Swiss decision to deny Polanski‘s extradition to the United States was the refusal of the US Justice Department to show them the transcripts of testimony by Polanski‘s original prosecutor regarding the director‘s sex case 33 years ago.

The Swiss government was rebuffed by the Department when it asked for sealed transcripts in the Roman Polanski extradition case, it is understood.

However a spokeswoman of the Los Angeles County district attorney‘s office said that they were never notified of the Swiss request.

MUMBAI: A short silent comedy named A Thief Catcher in which Charlie Chaplin made a brief cameo as a buffoon Keystone cop has been found.

The 10-minute 1914 film suddenly turned up late last year at an antiques sale in Taylor, Mich. After buying the same film historian Paul Gierucki thought that he was buying just another Keystone Studios comedy and didn‘t watch the 16mm print for months.

Then, in March this year, he saw Chaplin spring up onto the screen and slap some hooligans in the film starring Ford Sterling, Mack Swain and Edgar Kennedy. Chaplin can be seen on screen for a mere three minutes.

In doubt, Gierucki asked his friend and fellow film collector Richard Roberts and emailed Roberts a still image from the film. Once they saw the character‘s mannerisms, they were sure that it was Chaplin playing a two-bit part in one of his earliest films.

The first public screening of the film, since 1914, will be held this Saturday at a comedy film festival in Arlington, Va.

Gierucki and Roberts are part of a group called the Silent Comedy Mafia that organizes the annual Slapsticon festival at the Rosslyn Spectrum Theatre outside Washington.

The festival that began on Thursday features as many as 120 films over four days with live musical accompaniment for the silent flicks.

MUMBAI: Manhattan Film Festival has filed suit in New York Supreme Court against the Tribeca Film Festival and the Tribeca Cinemas alleging that the defendants practiced unfair competition by misappropriating the Manhattan Film Festival‘s Virtual Film Festival concept. 

In 2010, the Tribeca Film Festival launched Tribeca Film Festival Virtual. The virtual festival included real-time chat with fellow film enthusiasts, live filmmaker Q&A‘s, live festival events, and online streaming of a sample of TFF selections. Also included was a web-based competition with the slogan The people have spoken.

Originally known as the Independent Features Film Festival, the Manhattan Film Festival was the first film festival in which film selection is done online via a web-based competition.

The festival was the vision of two independent filmmakers and originally housed at the Tribeca Cinemas. In 2008, Philip Nelson, president and founder of the Manhattan Film Festival, envisioned the first and only Virtual Film Festival.

The lawsuit alleges that personnel of the Tribeca Film Festival and the Tribeca Cinemas were present when Nelson‘s groundbreaking vision was laid out point by point at the Tribeca Cinemas as well as by email as part of his business dealings with Tribeca Cinemas.

MUMBAI: Two Michael Moore has lined up two films to open his sixth annual Traverse City Film Festival. They are Focus‘ The Kids Are All Right, a lesbian family dramedy and Weinstein Co.‘s Nowhere Boy that gives an inside look at John Lennon‘s childhood.

Moore had originally launched the festival to bring films that had limited distribution. This year‘s event runs from 27 July to 1 August.

Although Kids, which opened in seven theatres last weekend, will expand its reach throughout the country, Boy wouldn‘t be released till October.

Along with, the festival will pay tribute to the Beatles by screening A Hard Day‘s Night and Help! (1965).

In continuation with the theme of music, the festival will offer the documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, a chronicle of the heavy metal band; Radu ,The Concert, a film about a former conductor of the Bolshoi orchestra and the 1928 silent film The Last Command accompanied by the Alloy Orchestra.

The lineup also includes Sabina Guzzanti‘s Draquila — Italy Trembles; Flip Remunda and Vit Kusak‘s Czech Peace; a salute to Cuban film and two 3D titles, Cane Toads: The Conquest and the concert documentary U2 3D.

Sony Pictures Classics co-head Michael Barker and Tom Bernard have been tapped as honorees.

MUMBAI: Toy Story 3 made a bow in Japan roping in over 977 million yen ($11.2 million) from about 650,000 admissions in the last weekend edging out Bayside Shakedown off the top spot after only one weekend. The figures give the film the second-biggest opening of the year behind Alice in Wonderland.

Only two animated films, both Hayao Miyazaki productions from Studio Ghibli, Howl‘s Moving Castle and Spirited Away have ever recorded bigger openings in Japan.

The Borrower Arrietty, the latest Studio Ghibli production based on the English children‘s book The Borrowers will release next weekend, on 17 July. The film is the directorial debut of Ghibli animator Hiromasa Yonebayashi.

MUMBAI: The victim in director Roman Polanski‘s 1977 sex crime case, Samantha Geimer has said that she hoped the matter would now be closed after Switzerland refused to extradite Polanski to face the sentencing he fled in 1978 and freed him after months of house arrest.

It may be recalled that Geimer, who was 13 in 1977 when Polanski gave her drugs and champagne and had sex with her has repeatedly asked for the case to be dropped.

“I am satisfied with this decision and I hope that the district attorney will now close the case and get it over once and for all,” Geimer, 40 and now a mother of three has said.

But Polanski‘s US legal team called for a full inquiry into allegations of judicial misconduct three decades ago.

“That evidence was not insignificant and the failure to produce it (to the Swiss) was neither accidental nor a ‘technicality‘ as some have said,” Polanski‘s Los Angeles defence team said in a statement. They called for a thorough investigation by a “fair and impartial third party” of the misconduct allegations and said the results should be made public.

Polanski‘s wife, French actress and singer Emmanuelle Seigner, said in an interview with the newspaper Liberation that the Swiss decision was a huge relief.
 

MUMBAI: The Swiss government‘s reported decision not to extradite film director Roman Polanski has the US government disappointed. In spite of the decision, a state department spokesman said that it would continue to seek Polanski‘s arrest on charges he had sex with an underage girl in 1977.

Freeing the director,the Swiss justice ministry said the US had not made a convincing argument for Polanski‘s extradition and hence he was being freed. Yesterday Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf announced that “the measures taken to restrict the freedom of Polanski had been lifted.

Polanski has reportedly left his chalet in the Alpine resort of Gstaad where he was held under house arrest for eight months.

The Swiss justice ministry said that the US had failed to disprove Polanski‘s argument that he fled before sentencing in 1978 because he believed the judge would renege on a plea agreement.

Polanski was originally charged with six offences including rape and sodomy over the 1977 case. In 1978, he pleaded guilty to unlawful sex following a plea bargain. He then served 42 days in prison. The director was taken into custody in Switzerland in September while collecting a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich Film Festival.

Polanski, whose films include Rosemary‘s Baby and The Pianist, was moved from prison and placed under house arrest in early December.