Category: International

MUMBAI: Adrian Grenier, who starred in the American TV Show Entourage, will attend the New Zealand International Film Festival where his documentary Teenage Paparazzo will be screened.

Directed by Grenier, Teenage Paparazzo is the story of 12 year old Austin Visschedyk as he earns his pocket money as a paparazzo in LA.

The film takes a twist when Austin suddenly becomes a mini-celebrity in his own right because of his association with Grenier.

Grenier, who gives a fascinating insight into the workings of fame and media, will attend the screening of Teenage Paparazzo in Wellington at the Paramount on 25 July.

The New Zealand International Film Festival begins in Wellington on July 16.
 

MUMBAI: MGM studios has decided to request a sixth postponement of its $250 million principal payment and $200 million-plus in owed interest.

Lenders who hold nearly $4 billion in the debt are expected to agree to the extension though nothing is guaranteed yet. 

The studio will formally request the latest extension a week before the 15 July deadline. That could give the studio at least several additional weeks to bring out financial details of its corporate restructuring.

Meanwhile, speculation continues about whether the studio will sell off its share of rights to co-production partner Warner Bros., whose New Line is overseeing project development. MGM executives would like to hold onto its share of the Hobbit rights as long as possible.

MGM is being run by an office of the CEO, with restructuring specialist Stephen Cooper, film chief Mary Parent and CFO Bedi Singh collaborating as co-CEOs.

MGM owners Providence Equity, TPG Capital, Sony, Comcast, DLJ Merchant and Quadrangle could lose their equity positions in any restructuring, which likely would involve a prepackaged bankruptcy filing.

Before its restructuring talks, MGM had held an auction that drew a handful of underwhelming offers to buy the studio outright.

MUMBAI: Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has claimed that he now has 37.9 per cent stake of Lions Gate Entertainment Corp and is likely set to push for management change.

By this Icahn and the group affiliated to him would trigger the company‘s newly adopted ‘poison pill’ provision that was designed to block the investor‘s hostile takeover attempt.

Icahn, who just had earlier this week disclosed that his hostile $7 per share tender offer had brought him to a 34 per cent stake in the company said that he achieved 37.9 per cent holding by buying shares at the New York stock exchange.

Icahn and his group believe that the more shares they own, the more influence they will have to change the make-up of Lions Gate‘s board of directors and reverse the direction that Lions Gate is now taking.

The board of Lions Gate, the studio that made films like Man Men and Saw has rejected Icahn‘s bid as too cheap. The studio said it adopted a shareholder rights plan in a move to dissuade Icahn.

MUMBAI: A related new actor, Andrew Garfield will play Peter Parker in the upcoming Spider-Man. Tobey Maguire played the protagonist in a trilogy that grossed more than $2.5 billion at the worldwide box office. The Sony Corp unit will release the film in 3D on 3 July.

Born in Los Angeles and raised in Britain, 26-year old Garfield has only one movie to his credit in the UK crime drama Boy A that won for him a Bafta award in 2008.

His upcoming releases include Never Let Me Go and the Facebook movie The Social Network.

Garfield also played small roles in box-office hits as The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus and Lions for Lambs.

Other actors who were reportedly vying for the role include Logan Lerman, Josh Hutcherson, Jamie Bell and Aaron Johnson.
 

MUMBAI: Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan ( of Interview with a Vampire and The Crying Game fame) will head this year‘s jury of the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF).

Jordan, who debuted in TIFF‘s competition in 1985 with The Company of Wolves returns to the festival for the first time after twenty five years.

Also an award-winning novelist, Jordan‘s filmography includes fantasy to unconventional sexuality to Irish politics and history. He won an Academy Award for best original screenplay for The Crying Game which received five other Oscar nominations and picked up many other awards. Jordan has also won awards for Michael Collins, Mona Lisa and The End of the Affair.

The 23rd TIFF will be held from 23 to 31 October this year.

MUMBAI: Meryl Streep is in talks to with director Phyllida Lloyd for a biopic of the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. The film titled Thatcher will have Jim Broadbent playing Margaret Thatcher‘s husband, Denis.

The film is set in 1982 and tracks Thatcher as she tries to save her career in the 17 days preceding the 1982 Falklands War. The 2 1/2-month war was a turning point for the prime minister, who, after the victory, saw her approval ratings double after which she went on to win a second term.

The story of the film was developed by producer Damien Jones along with screenwriter Brian Fillis.

If everything goes well, the role of the ex-prime minister would be the highest-profile character yet tackled by Streep who has bagged Oscar nominations for playing real-life women such as Karen Silkwood, author Susan Orlean and cooking guru Julia Child.

Lloyd, a British theater director known for her work in the opera world, elicited energy and brought out youthfulness in Streep in her feature adaptation of Mamma Mia! that grossed more than $600 million worldwide in 2008.
 

MUMBAI: The Hong Kong government has decided to bestow the Silver Bauhinia Star, a top official honour to veteran director John Woo in recognition of his contributions to Hong Kong and Chinese cinema. The award is named after the semiautonomous territory‘s official flower.

Woo made his name in Hong Kong with his action thrillers before moving to Hollywood, where his credits include Face/Off, Hard Target, Broken Arrow, Mission: Impossible II among others. In 2008, he returned to directing Chinese films with the two-part historical epic Red Cliff and Red Cliff II.

The annual honours were announced by Hong Kong to mark the 13th anniversary of the former British colony‘s return to Chinese rule.

Woo has directed several notable Hong Kong action films, among them, A Better Tomorrow, Hard Boiled, and The Killer. He also created the comic series Seven Brothers published by Virgin Comics.
 

MUMBAI: After the not-so-good reviews the second instalment of Sex And The City received worldwide, producers have shelved all plans for the third part.

All this goes to show that after 12 years, 94 television episodes and two films, lead actresses Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon will be out of work. 

Sex and the City 2 fared disappointingly at the box office, coming in third in the US on its opening weekend and making $37 million compared to the first part that earned $57 million.

Sarah Parker is upset by the reports of Sex and the City being scrapped.

Sex and the City was based on writer Candace Bushnell‘s book by the same name.
 

MUMBAI: As US films stumble at Japan‘s box-office charts, Paramount Pictures has decided to bring out a dubbed version of Ghost. With this move, Paramount Pictures becomes the latest Hollywood studio to launch a local-language production.

The new Ghost, being made in association with Nippon TV and distributor Shochiku will release in Japan this year. 

Ghost was a smash hit in 1990 with its universal tale of a love that knows no boundaries such as real life and the after life. Swayze portrays a murdered man who must warn his loving wife (Demi Moore) that she is in danger, and it is most memorable, perhaps, for its scene of Moore making pottery as Swayze wraps his arms around her while the song Unchained Melody plays in the background.

The studio is also taking to dub more US films such as Shutter Island into Japanese.

Hollywood studios are increasingly eyeing the potential of local-language production, particularly in the $2 billion Japanese market where once-dominant American movies have been outgunned by local films in the past couple of years.

Warner Bros. is already an established player in Japan‘s local-language game and recently saw its animated movie Gintama stay atop the box-office for five weeks in Japan.

Fox International Productions is planning a Japanese remake of the Cary Grant classic An Affair To Remember, it is said.
 

MUMBAI: Czech director Irena Pavlaskova‘s film Earthy Paradise for the Eyes won the FIPRESCI award at the Moscow International Film Festival while Czech actress Vilma Cibulkova who essays a role in the film won the festival‘s best actress award.

“If someone told me 15 years ago that I will play in a film about the Soviet occupation of my own country and that I will be awarded for it at the Moscow film festival, I would not believe it,” Cibulkova said while receiving the award.

The script for the film was written by Tereza Bouckova. Its main heroes are dissidents and Charter 77 human rights manifesto signatories. It was made in co-production with the Czech Television public broadcaster.

Bouckova is a daughter of Czech writer Pavel Kohout.