Category: International

MUMBAI: Philippine director Brillante Mendoza won the Muhr Africa/Asia Award as the 6th Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) drew to a close on 16 December.

Mendoza bagged the award for Lola, his tale of two grandmothers dealing with the consequences of murder, Iran‘s Mohammad Rasoulof took the special jury prize for San Sebastian title White Meadows.

Michel Khlefi‘s won the Muhr Arab Award for Zindeeq, a bleak drama about a Palestinian film-maker returning to a devastated Ramallah in 1948. It received a mixed response from local film critics, the jury, led by Algerian director Ahmed Rachedi, described the drama as “a very inspiring work”.

Meanwhile, one of the festival‘s standout titles Harragas besides winning a special jury prize, also took the FIPRESCI prize and the Human Rights Film Network Award.

MUMBAI: Sony Pictures Entertainment is all set to close a deal to make a English-language remake Millennium Series that is based on the late Swedish writer Stieg Larsson‘s crime novels.

Scott Rudin was instrumental in securing the rights and is attached to produce alongside Ole Sondberg and Soren Staermose of Yellow Bird Films, the company behind the Swedish Millennium films.

The first film in that series was the smash hit The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (pictured), which went on to gross more than $100m in Europe alone and is being released in North America through Music Box. The second two entries are The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet‘s Nest.

Yellow Bird‘s Mikael Wallen and Anni Fernandez will serve as executive producers on the English-language productions, which centre on the unique crime-solving pair Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist and investigator and Lisbeth Salander, a punk computer hacker with a photographic memory.

MUMBAI: Veteran film historian, critic and filmmaker Ron Holloway died in Berlin on Wednesday morning at the age of 76.

Hailing from IIlinois, Holloway came to Paris at the end of the 1960s as a Rockefeller Fellow on a two-year grant and completed a doctoral thesis on The Religious Dimension in the Cinema with particular reference to the films of Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman and Robert Bresson at the University of Hamburg.

He had just completed his dissertation when an offer came from Variety to serve as the US trade paper‘s correspondent for Germany and Eastern Europe. He and his wife Dorothea Moritz moved to Berlin in 1976 after Ron was invited by the newly appointed Berlinale festival director Wolf Donner to become a member of the Berlinale selection committee with responsibility for Russia. In addition, he played an instrumental role in the setting up of the German Films sidebar which Donner launched in 1977 to spotlight certain types of cnema which had been neglected beforehand.

In 2007, Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick recognised the Holloways‘ special contribution to the festival over 30 years by presenting them with the Berlinale Camera Award.

Holloway directed two documentaries on the filmmakers Elem Klimov and Sergei Paradjanov as well as two TV features about film – Made in Germany and Sundance for public broadcaster ZDF. He was also a co-founder of the Chicago Center for Film Study and the Cleveland Cinematheque.

MUMBAI: Sony Pictures Classics‘ The Last Station will open the 21st Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) on 7 January and, ten days later, New Films International‘s The Lightkeepers will close the event.

Helen Mirren, who was nominated for a dramatic actress Golden Globe for her portrayal of Sofya Tolstoy in The Last Station will receive the Career Achievement Award at the awards gala on 5 January.

The Lightkeepers is a romantic comedy set in 1912 Cape Cod that stars Richard Dreyfuss, Blythe Danner, Tom Wisdom, Bruce Dern and Mamie Gummer.

Other films to be shown at the festival includes Michael Haneke‘s The White Ribbon, Giuseppe Tornatore‘s Baaria, Andre Téchiné‘s The Girl On The Train, Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s Air Doll, Carlos Carrera‘s Backyard, Rachid Bouchareb‘s London River and Ken Loach‘s Looking For Eric.

There are world premieres for Dark Resonance from Bangladesh, the US-Japan-Bahamas entry Dumbstruck. Expecting Mary, Is it Just Me? and Shoot The Hero from the US, the UK-Canada title The Making Of Plus One With Kate, Cate and George: The Story Of A Hollywood Nobody, and Paulista from Brazil.

MUMBAI: Steven Spielberg‘s DreamWorks Studios has acquired filming rights of Michael Morpurgo’s 1982 novel War Horse.

Spielberg will produce the film alongside Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy and Revel Guest. Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) has been signed to adapt the novel to the silver screen.

The novel revolves around the story of a boy and his horse and, even though they become separated when he goes off to fight in World War I, they still share a connection.

“From the moment I read ‘War Horse‘ I knew this was a film I wanted DreamWorks to make,” said Spielberg. “Its heart and its message provide a story that can be felt in every country.”

War Horse has been previously adapted by Nick Stafford, who wrote the stage version of the piece that has been a hit for the Royal National Theatre. This Olivier Award winning production continues to run at the West End‘s New London Theatre till today.

MUMBAI: Though James Cameron‘s science fiction epic Avatar may be the stand out 3D film in 2009, this year has seen a continued rise of 3D‘s popularity.

Nielsen EDI‘s latest report on 3D releases in the UK highlights the growth of the sector in terms of outright grosses, 3D percentage gross and the number of releases.

Warner Bros‘ Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince stands at number one as the highest-grossing 3D release on ?50.6m to date in the UK, although the wizard‘s adventure 3D element was confining to the opening sequence of the IMAX version that generated ?1.6m or 3.2 per cent of the total gross.

A clearer illustration of the 3D spread is provided by the animations that were released this year. Back in March DreamWork‘s Monsters Vs. Aliens took ?21.3m with 44 per cent coming from 3D screens followed by Fox International‘s Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs ,the opening of which grossed ?34.9m. Released on 9 October, Walt Disney/Pixar‘s Up continued the trend with 3D screen providing 60.5 per cent of the film‘s current ?34.2m tally.

The widest point of release for 3D films noticeably increased in the second half of the year in the run up to the Avatar launch. Ice Age 3‘s 3D screen count stood at 240 on release, followed by Pixar‘s 1995 classic Toy Story with 251screens ( 3D screens), Up with 266 screens and Disney‘s A Christmas Carol with 281 screens, the largest 3D release to date.

MUMBAI: Jason Reitman‘s Up In The Air emerged as the frontrunner with six nominations followed by Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglorious Basterds, Rob Marshall‘s Nine and James Cameron‘s Avatar with four apiece when the nominations for the 67th Golden Globe awards were announced yesterday.

The Hurt Locker will vie for best drama with Up In The Air, Inglourious Basterds, Precious and Avatar.

Nine competes for the musical or comedy award against 500 Days Of Summer, The Hangover, It‘s Complicated and Julie & Julia.

Kathryn Bigelow got a best director nomination along with James Cameron for Avatar, Tarantino, Reitman and Clint Eastwood for Invictus. The first two have also been nominated for screenplay.

The dramatic actors category features heavyweight contenders Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart, George Clooney for Up In The Air, Colin Firth for A Single Man and Morgan Freeman for Invictus, with Brothers‘ Tobey Maguire filling the fifth spot, possibly at the expense of The Hurt Locker‘s Jeremy Renner.

Matt Damon was nominations twice, one for best comedy or musical actor for The Informant! and the other as supporting actor for Invictus with favourite Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds.

Two actresses – Meryl Streep and Sandra Bullock have been nominated twice for acting awards. Streep dominates the musical or comedy category with It‘s Complicated and Julie & Julia, while Bullock rounds off her best ever year at the box-office with a musical or comedy nod for The Proposal and dramatic recognition for The Blind Side.

British stars overshadow the dramatic actress category with Helen Mirren for The Last Station, breakout Carey Mulligan for An Education and Emily Blunt for The Young Victoria all up against Bullock and Gabourey Sidibe for Precious.

Going by the studios, films from The Weinstein Company and Relativity Media drew 12 nominations apiece, followed by Universal and Paramount on seven.

The 67th Golden Globes ceremony is scheduled to take place in Los Angeles on 17 January.

MUMBAI: Martin Scorsese‘s Shutter Island and Roman Polanski‘s The Ghost Writer are among the seven titles that will participate in the competition section of the upcoming 60th Berlin International Film Festival.

Scorsese‘s Shutter Island stars DiCaprio as a US marshall in pursuit of a murderess who has escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane. Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Williams and Ben Kinsley also star in the Paramount Pictures film, which is based on the novel by Dennis Lehane.

Polanski‘s The Ghost Writer, which the director is reported to have completed from prison in Switzerland, is an adaptation of Robert Harris‘ novel The Ghost and stars Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan. Summit Entertainment have already acquired the US rights to the film.

A total of 26 films have been selected for the section with the remaining entries to be announced in January.

“The Competition of the 60th anniversary Berlinale will be marked by a mix of styles and genres, by exciting newcomers and renowned directors,” says festival director Dieter Kosslick.

MUMBAI: After a deal that Rentrak Corporation has entered into with Nielsen EDI, creating a box-office data service offering real-time measurement of theatrical box-office ticket sales across 90 per cent of the globe would become very easy.

The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2010 subject to consultation with employee representative bodies and other regulatory requirements in certain jurisdictions.

Nielsen EDI parent, The Nielsen Company, will also enter into a long-term data licence agreement with Rentrak for continued access to certain box-office sales information for certain of its existing products and services that currently use or feature such data.

Nielsen EDI will be integrated into Rentrak‘s AMI division and its Box-Office Essentials business that currently captures theatrical box-office results from more than 50,000 theatre screens in 14 countries.

The transaction will allow the new company to provide box-office data for North America, the UK, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia and Spain, to name a few.

MUMBAI: Summit International‘s New Moon held on to the overseas crown in what will almost certainly be its last weekend in charge ahead of the global launch of Avatar, adding an estimated $23.2m from 8,735 sites in 66 territories.

The film‘s international performance so far stands at $360.1m. Interestingly, New Moon‘s global tally has reached $627.5m.

New Moon has grossed $41.5m in the UK, $34.9m in France, $30.4m in Germany, $30.3m in Australia, $28.4m in Spain, $22.6m in Brazil, $17.9m in Russia, $16.9m in Mexico, and $2.5m in Japan. China is yet to receive the film.

Sony Pictures Releasing International‘s smash 2012 ranked second overall after adding a further $20m from 8,540 in 77 markets, elevating the running total to a formidable $556m.

The film‘s highlights included: $2.1m in Japan from 609 for $30.7m after four weekends; $1.6m in South Korea from 266 for $32m after five; $1.5m in France from 526 for $42.1m after five; $1.5m in Germany from 637 for $35m after five; and $1.4m in Brazil from 532 for $21.6m after five. China remains the biggest territory for the film with an extraordinary $65.4m running total. The UK has generated $30.7m, Australia $16.9m, Spain $21.5m, and Mexico $17.9m. All results mentioned here except Japan are after five weekends.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs added $2.2m from 1,190 in 30 for $72.1m and Zombieland grossed $2.2m from 717 in 31 for $17.7m.

The Stepfather released in Mexico and the UK on $100,000 from 151 screens and $65,000 from 92, respectively. Armored opened in Spain on $45,500 from 140.

The Princess And The Frog, the number one release in North America this weekend, released in ten day-and-date territories on a very promising $7m from 1,486 screens.

Up crossed $400m as a number one hold in the second weekend in Japan and a further $5.6m from 663 screens pushed the tally there to $16m and the international running total to $401.4m. This puts Up as the third biggest Pixar release and only the fifth title this calendar year to cross $400m overseas.