Category: International

MUMBAI: With a $43.3 million opening weekend, How to Train Your Dragon took the No. 1 spot. Distributed by Paramount, the DreamWorks Animation adventure, however, came second to the studio‘s Monsters vs. Aliens that opened with a collection of $59.3 million over the same weekend last year.

The film featuring the voices of Jay Baruchel and America Ferrera out-performed some recent animated movies like Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs that opened with haul of $30.3 million last September.

With an intake of with $17.3 million, Disney‘s Alice in Wonderland that could not be unsettled from its No. 1 spot for the last three weeks, slipped to second place, collecting a domestic total of $293.1 million and its worldwide haul of $656 million.

On the third spot was John Cusack‘s comedy Hot Tub Time Machine that had a lukewarm No. 3 debut of $13.7 million. Released by MGM, the movie has Cusack as part of a group of losers hurled back by a time-traveling hot tub to the 1980s, where they have a chance to set their lives right.
Interestingly, How to Train Your Dragon pulled in 68 per cent of its revenue from 3-D presentation.

After a phenomenal 15-week run, Avatar lost most of its remaining 3-D theatres to How to Train Your Dragon. The James Cameron‘s blockbuster fell out of the top 10 grossing $2 million to finish at No. 11.

Clash of the Titans, another 3D release, is to release this Friday.

MUMBAI: Thousands of people turned out in Maui, Hawaii, for the auditions of junior artistes in the Adam Sandler-Jennifer Aniston movie Just Go With It.

Said Maui Film Commissioner Benita Brazier, “more than 3,000 people showed up Saturday at the Kihei Charter School to apply to be extras in the film.” 

It may be noted that officials attached to the production wanted hundreds of people to act as resort patrons, sitting around a pool, enjoying a luau and eating in restaurants.

Most of the selected junior artistes would be paid $100 for 10 hours of work, but those cast in special roles such as hula dancers and bikini girls will get more.

The movie is scheduled to go on the floors next month for four to six weeks in Wailea.

MUMBAI: The declination of Lions Gate Entertainment to submit a new bid indicates that the company seems to have dropped out of the bidding process for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). A public statement to this effect has however not been issued.

Neither has Time Warner nor another bidder, Access Industries, run by the billionaire Len Blavatnik has bid more than $1.5 billion. It is said that MGM asked its lenders on Wednesday for more time to reorganise its debts as it considered the takeover bids. But MGM‘s creditors are unlikely to be happy with any proposal under $2 billion. 

Lions Gate has come under pressure from Carl C. Icahn, an activist shareholder, to abandon any bid for MGM. Icahn, who already owns 18.9 per cent of Lions Gate, has however gone ahead and bid for the studio.

Both Lions Gate and Icahn have been engaged in a war of words last week after the former rejected his offer of $6 a share as inadequate.

MUMBAI: The 2010 Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF), beginning 30 March, will celebrate the 70th anniversary of Bruce Lee. The festival will go up to 6 April.

The Bruce Lee tribute will include nine of his films like The Kid (1950), The Orphan (1960).

The program also will include a few Cantonese films, such as The Thunderstorm (1957) and the kung fu classic Enter The Dragon (1973).

“Bruce Lee‘s legacy continues to inspire filmmakers and audiences around the world,” said Hong Kong International Film Festival Society executive director Shaw Soo-wei.
“The HKIFF is proudly committed to supporting Hong Kong film talent of the past and present who pave the way for new filmmakers to establish themselves globally,” Shaw said in a statement.

Lee‘s work continues to drive worldwide interest in Hong Kong action cinema, his films having influenced all areas of popular culture including fitness, music, sport, dance and video games. Not only that, his films drove the martial arts film industry into the mainstream, putting Hong Kong cinema on the world map.

The Bruce Lee exhibition and tribute will be officially opened at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre on 30 March by Lee‘s daughter, Shannon Lee Keasler and Linda Lee Cadwell, wife of the late Bruce Lee.
 

MUMBAI: Orson Welles is set to appear posthumously in a film. A rare recording, recently discovered has the filmmaker narrating a children‘s Christmas novel, is being used as the basis of a film.

The film is being produced by Drac Studios, known as a special effects and makeup studio for movies like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It has now moved into full-fledged production.

Drac is developing Christmas Tails, a 3D live-action/CG hybrid film to be directed by Todd Tucker and narrated by Welles who expired in 1985.

Said Drac president Harvey Lowry, “It‘s a movie about how Santa‘s dog saves Christmas, but on one level, this a story about the discovery of Orson‘s lost tapes. This is a substantial find. It‘s something that a filmmaker dreams of.”

More than 25 years ago, author Robert X. Leed self-published a book titled Christmas Tails and in 1985 got his friend, the legendary Welles, to narrate it making five reel-to-reel recordings.

The filmmaker passed away a few months later, and apart from Leed making the occasional copy of a reel to pass along with his book, the recordings stayed on a shelf in a closet of his Las Vegas home.

MUMBAI: Ridley Scott‘s Robin Hood that stars Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett will be the opening-night film of the Festival de Cannes on 12 May.

The film, which also stars Max Von Sydow, Lea Seydoux and William Hurt, will be released in France on the day it screens at the festival while in the rest of the world, it will release on 14 May.

The film written by Brian Helgeland portrays the beginnings of the Robin Hood legend.

Scott is a familiar face at the festival, having been to the Riviera in 1977 with prize winner The Duellists and in 1991 with Thelma and Louise.

The festival will end on 23 May.

MUMBAI: Robert Culp, best known for playing a secret agent alongside Bill Cosby in the 1960s cloak-and-dagger hit I Spy died on Wednesday after having a fall when he was on his routine morning walk. He was 79.

Culp, who also starred with Natalie Wood, Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice was pronounced dead at a Los Angeles hospital where he was rushed after the fall.

Culp, born in Oakland, California earned his first major television role in the late 1950s Western Trackdown in which he played a Texas Ranger.

But his most famous TV role was that of Kelly Robinson, a secret agent with a double life traveling the world as a top-seeded professional tennis player in I Spy. Culp was also nominated for a Golden Globe for the film which was shot on location in Hong Kong, Acapulco and Tokyo.

MUMBAI: First it was Avatar then Alice In Wonderland. The success of these two 3D animated films has resulted in a craze among Hollywood studios to convert big films from 2D to 3D.

Director James Cameron believes that the studios are rushing to take advantage of the public‘s appetite for 3D films, but using computers to convert standard 2D films to 3D, instead of filming in 3D “gives audiences a cheaper-looking film and could do more harm than good if audiences get turned off.”

“The problem is these decisions should be made by filmmakers, they shouldn‘t be made by studios, because if it was up to studios they‘re going to sacrifice quality for lower cost,” Cameron has reportedly said.

Shot in 3D, Avatar has gone on to become the top-grossing movie of all-time with a gross of $2.7 billion at the box-office.

Cameron is not the only filmmaker questioning studios‘ headlong rush to convert films to 3D,Transformers maker Michael Bay has questioned the move too.

Studios are rapidly converting now that Walt Disney Co has seen its 3-D conversion “Alice in Wonderland” sell more than $570 million in tickets since its March 5 debut.

On April 2, Warner Bros, a division of Time Warner Inc, will release its action movie Clash of the Titans as another 2D to 3D conversion.

MUMBAI: Warners will allow Blockbuster to rent its films the day they are made available on DVD giving the chain a lucrative four-week head start over Netflix and Redbox.

The pact includes three of the four distribution methods Blockbuster engages in: on-demand digital delivery, its by-mail subscription service and the old-fashioned method of renting to consumers who walk into their dwindling store locations.

Blockbuster‘s dollar-kiosks also will rent new releases from Warners — and every other studio — the same day the DVD hits stores.

When Redbox and Netflix agreed to the 28-day moratorium, they did so to ensure a steady flow of product at a reasonable cost. In Blockbuster‘s case, insiders said its deal with Warners was expiring, so an extension — with modifications — was in order.

It is said that the arrangement that extends to the end of the calendar year also doubles Blockbuster‘s in-store inventory of Warners titles.
 

MUMBAI: The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival will open on 29 April with Babies a French documentary by Thomas Balmes at Toronto it is understood.

The documentary made by Focus Features revolves around four babies – in Mongolia, Namibia, San Francisco and Tokyo – as they take their first steps.

The opening night will also see the Canadian premiere of Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn‘s Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, a portrait of the popular Canadian rock band Rush.

The festival will also screen Steven Soderbergh‘s documentary And Everything is Going Fine which premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival and Alex Gibney‘s Casino Jack and the United States of Money, a portrait of jailed Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The festival will also screen 12th & Delaware, Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing‘s report from the front line of the US abortion debate and Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, an all-access portrait of the American comedy legend by filmmakers Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg.

Space Tourists, a look at super-rich space travelers by Swiss director Christian Frei, and Josh Fox‘s Gasland a probe into the current U.S. natural gas drilling boom will also be screened.

The Toronto festival will have in all 166 documentaries from 41 countries in its 11-day run till 9 May.