Category: International

MUMBAI: Anchor Bay will release J Blakeson‘s The Disappearance Of Alice Creed starring Gemma Arterton. The film is said to be a kidnapping thriller.

The Disappearance Of Alice Creed centres on the botched kidnapping of a rich girl. Eddie Marsan and Martin Compston round out the cast.

The film marks Block‘s first acquisition since leaving his post as president of acquisitions and co-productions at Lionsgate in 2008 and setting up his new Los Angeles-based company.
Peter Block is understood to have negotiated the deal for US rights with Cinetic and funnelled the film to Anchor Bay, with whom he has a relationship.

Block, a widely respected genre specialist who has been a key producing executive on the hit Saw franchise, has been busy lining up his intitial slate of films at A Bigger Boat.

He produced Adam Green‘s ski resort thriller Frozen, which will receive its world premiere at Sundance in several weeks, and the upcoming John Carpenter horror tale The Ward starring Amber Heard.

MUMBAI: Chinese authorities have pulled out two films from the Palm Springs International Film Festival ahead of the screening of The Sun Behind The Clouds: Tibet‘s Struggle For Freedom later this week.

The move comes after festival director Darryl Macdonald defied a request by officials not to show the documentary.
The Sun Behind The Clouds: Tibet‘s Struggle For Freedom follows the Dalai Lama over the course of an eventful 12 months that saw the 2008 protests in Tibet, the long march in India, the Beijing Olympics and the breakdown of talks with China.

As a result of the festival‘s decision to go ahead with scheduled screenings on 10 and 12 January, Chinese authorities have withdrawn Lu Chuan‘s Nanking Massacre drama City Of Life And Death and Ye Kai‘s comedy Quick, Quick, Slow from the festival.

“After meeting with representatives from the Chinese government regarding their request to cancel our screenings of The Sun Behind The Clouds: Tibet‘s Struggle for Freedom, we have respectfully declined their request,” Macdonald said.
“I‘m saddened that the Chinese film authorities have chosen to withdraw their films from PSIFF, as the festival is an international cultural event whose mandate is to present a wide cross-section of perspectives and points of view, ” he added.

“That said, we cannot allow the concerns of one country or community to dictate what films we should or should not play, based on their own cultural or political perspective. Freedom of expression is a concept that is integral both to the validity of artistic events, and indeed, to the ethos of this country.”

The City Of Life And Death screenings will be replaced by For A Moment Freedom (Austria-France) that centres on a group of Middle Eastern refugees who have made their way to Turkey to apply for European visas, and Sticky Fingers (Canada-France-Spain), a comedy about six of the world‘s worst gangsters.
 

MUMBAI: In its third weekend, Avatar has turned out to be the second highest grossing worldwide release in history garnering $1.131 billion. Now, it should have little trouble retaining its box-office crown as it sweeps past $ 800 million overseas.

The super hit Fox project currently stands at $760.9 million and has amassed $370.8 million in North America.

The weekend session is definitely going to bring with it good results. Till date the film‘s tally in China stands at $14.4 million after a mere three days of its release there.

While the film has set records everywhere, there have been particularly notable grosses in France ($90.2m), Russia ($62.4m), Germany ($62.9m), the UK ($58.1m), Spain ($51.8m), Australia ($50.2m), South Korea ($49.6m) and Japan ($42.8 m).

Elsewhere, Avatar stands at $24.9m in Mexico, $23,7m in Brazil, $15.7m in India, $14.8m in Taiwan, $10.3m in Holland, $9.7m in Poland, $9.5m in Denmark, $8m in Greece, $7m in Turkey, $6m in Thailand, $5m in Malaysia, and $3.8m in the UAE.

The highest worldwide grossing release remains Cameron‘s Titanic at $1.842 bn.
 

MUMBAI: In 2009, box-office returns in China climbed 44 per cent compared to that of last year to reach $910 million (RMB6.2bn), the highest growth rate in the last six years. In 2008, the growth rate was 27 per cent.

It has been observed that since 2003, the country‘s box-office gross has been continuously growing at an average rate of 30 per cent. China Film Group Corporation spokesperson Weng Li announced the figures after receiving the data during a meeting with officials of State Administration Of Radio Film And Television (SARFT).

Hollywood blockbusters like 2012, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince and Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs performed strongly.

2012 and Transformers claimed the top two spot at the box-office and each broke the RMB400m mark with $67.5m (RMB461.02m) and $63m (RMB430.29m), respectively. Chinese film Founding Of A Republic garnered $61.49m (RMB420m).

Beijing‘s cinema managers attributed box-office growth to the surge in exhibition especially due to multiplexes developed within large shopping malls.

According to Weng there were 4,700 screens including 750 3D screens and 1,800 digital screens at the end of 2009 that showed a climb of 603 screens from 2008.
 

MUMBAI: James Cameron, Lee Daniels, Jason Reitman, Kathryn Bigelow and Quentin Tarantino will vie for top honours of the Directors Guild Of America‘s (DGA).

The best directorial achievement in feature films of 2009 are films like The Hurt Locker, Avatar, Precious, Up In The Air, and Inglourious Basterds respectively.

Said DGA president Taylor Hackford, “The DGA Award is especially meaningful to directors because it is decided solely by their peers – the men and women who have been in the same trenches and know exactly what goes into the crafting of a unique motion picture.”

“The five nominees for this year have each expressed an indelible vision that transported audiences to vivid vistas of cinematic art.”

The DGA Award is traditionally a highly accurate barometer in terms of predicting who will win the best directing Oscar. Only six times since the DGA Awards began in 1948 has the feature film winner not gone on to win the corresponding Academy Award.

The last time it was Rob Marshall in 2002 who won the DGA award for Chicago but lost out in the Oscar race to Roman Polanski for The Pianist.

The winner will be announced on 62nd Annual DGA awards dinner on 30 January in Los Angeles.
 

MUMBAI: An Education tops the pack of films listed for the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) with 17 categories including best film, best director (Lone Scherfig) and best actress for Carey Mulligan.

Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglourious Basterds has been named in 15 categories, Kathryn Bigalow‘s The Hurt Locker is listed in 12 whilst James Cameron‘s 3D blockbuster Avatar is close behind with 11. All three are shortlisted in the best film and best director categories.

Other contenders for best film are District 9, Moon, Precious, The Road, A Serious Man, A Single Man, Star Trek, Up and Up In The Air, as well as two Clint Eastwood films Gran Torino and Invictus.

Eastwood is also shortlisted in the best director category as well as a best actor nod for his performance in Gran Torino.
Andrea Arnold and first time feature director Duncan Jones are amongst the British contenders to be long listed in the best director category for Fish Tank and Moon.

The best actor award category includes Aaron Johnson for his portrayal in Sam Taylor Wood‘s Nowhere Boy, Ben Whishaw in Bright Star, Colin Firth in Tom Ford‘s A Single Man, Andy Serkis in Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll and George Clooney for Up In The Air.

Joining Mulligan in the list for best actress is Meryl Streep with two citations for It‘s Complicated and Julie & Julia, as well as her co-star Amy Adams. Other contenders include Abbie Cornish (Bright Star), Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones) Gabourey Sidibe (Precious) and newcomer Katie Jarvis for Fish Tank.

The official nominations will be announced on 21 January when the awards ceremony will take place at the Royal Opera House in London.

MUMBAI: Warner Bros has acquired the English language remaking rights of CJ Entertainment‘s South Korean hit Sympathy For Mr Vengeance.

Brian Tucker will write the screenplay of the story about two men who set out to avenge the deaths of their beloved women, only to discover that each killed the other‘s lover and in the end only one can have his vengeance.

PThe film is being produced by Bonaventura Pictures‘ Lorenzo Di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian along with CJ Entertainment‘s Miky Lee and Ted Kim and Steven Schneider.

Sympathy For Mr Vengeance was the first in Park Chan-wook‘s now legendary Vengeance Trilogy films. CJ Entertainment is also working on Korean Wedding, an original romantic comedy set up at Lionsgate.
 

MUMBAI: The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences‘ has shortlisted seven films for the visual effects Oscar this year.

The films in alphabetical order are Avatar, District 9, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, Star Trek, Terminator Salvation, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, and 2012.

On 21 January all members of the Academy‘s visual effects branch will be invited to view 15-minute excerpts from each of the seven films. Post this exercise, the members will vote to nominate three films for final Oscar consideration.

The 82nd Academy Awards nominations will be announced on 2 February. The awards ceremony is scheduled on 7 March.

MUMBAI: Icelandic comedy Mr Bjarnfredarson has elbowed out James Cameron‘s Avatar into second place by topping the box-office in the US.

The $1.2 million film based on a popular Icelandic TV series is the story about the lives of an overbearing communist and his former co-workers, took $115,000 in its second weekend at the Icelandic box office (January 1-3), compared to Avatar‘s $111,000.

The film, directed by Ragnar Bragason and produced by local outfit Sagafilm, grossed $104,000 in its opening weekend (26 -28 December) making it the most successful Icelandic film opening to date.

On the other hand, Avatar took $89,700 over the same weekend but grossed $115,000 over its opening weekend (18 – 20 December).

Sympathy For Mr Vengeance was the first in Park Chan-wook‘s Vengeance Trilogy films.
 

MUMBAI: Flying Lessons is to be the opening night film at the 25th Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) that kicks off on 4 February.

With this Flying Lessons becomes the first film shot in the Santa Barbara area to open the festival.

The film is the story of a young woman who abandons her life in Los Angeles, to return to her hometown and estranged mother. The cast also includes Jonathan Tucker, Cary Elwes, Joanna Cassidy and Hal Holbrook. 

Magyar who has produced the film along with Jenny Hinkey has also directed the same from a screenplay by Thomas J. Kuehl who is the co-producer of the film.

Said the director, “I am truly honored and humbled to have my directorial debut premiere as the opening night gala for SBIFF. Not only is Flying Lessons a perfect fit for this festival, but the fact that we shot the entire movie in Santa Ynez Valley, makes it feel like we‘ve come full circle.”