Category: International

MUMBAI: Michael Haneke‘s The White Ribbon bagged two awards at the European film awards, one for the director and the other for screenwriter.

Accepting his third award of the evening with his producers Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka, and Andrea Occhipinti on the stage, Haneke said that he was “completely bowled over” by the recognition. “Perhaps it is difficult for me to show my joy,” Haneke averred.

Other popular winners of the evening were Jacques Audiard‘s A Prophet (Une Prophete),that picked up European Actor 2009 for Tahar Rahim and European Film Academy Prox Excellence 2009 for sound design, and Danny Boyle‘s Slumdog Millionaire, which shared the Carlo di Palma European Cinematographer Award for Anthony Dod Mantle with Lars von Trier‘s Antichrist.

The audience of 1,400 gave standing ovations to two masters of European cinema – Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda and Ken Loach -and for French actress Isabelle Huppert.

On accepting the European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award from the hands of football player-turned-actor Eric Cantona, Loach called on Europe‘s politicians to introduce policies to protect European films and promote their circulation since “large areas of Europe” would not be able to see the films being nominated and honour.

MUMBAI: The Hurt Locker claimed the two top honours from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association as president Brent Simon and the group awarded it with the best film prize and the best director award for Kathryn Bigelow.

Jeff Bridges won best actor for Crazy Heartand Seraphine‘s Yolande Moreau was voted best actress, while Mo‘Nique from Precious and Inglourious Basterds‘ Christoph Waltz took supporting actor honours.

Summer Hours and Fantastic Mr Fox earned the foreign-language and animated awards, with the documentary/non-fiction prize ending in a tie between The Beaches Of Agnes and The Cove.

The 35th annual Los Angeles Film Critics Association awards ceremony will take place on January 16. The awards will be dedicated to the French New Wave in commemoration of its 50th anniversary.

MUMBAI: Raja, Teertha and LB Sriram‘s Sontha Ooru directed and produced by P Sunil Kumar Reddy. has been selected for the 14th International Film Festival being held between December 11 and 18 at Trivandrum. 

A total of 20 films from India were selected for screening in this film festival and of them Sontha Ooru is the only Telugu film.

Speaking on the occasion, the producers Y Ravidrababu and K Basireddy said, “We are very happy that our film is being screened in the internationally acclaimed KeralaInternational Film Festival.”

MUMBAI: Avatar was named best picture by the New York Film Critics Online on Sunday.

Kathryn Bigelow was voted best director for The Hurt Locker‘s while Inglorious Basterds took four prizes, including a screenplay award for Quentin Tarantino.

The New York group that will announce its winners today hailed Jeff Bridges as best actor for Crazy Heart and Meryl Streep best actress for Julie & Julia. 

The supporting acting awards went to Chistoph Waltz of Basterds that also picked up the breakthrough performer award and Mo‘Nique for Precious.

Basterds also earned a mention for Robert Richardson‘s cinematography. Marc Webb was recognized for his directorial debut with (500) Days of Summer.

Best film score was Crazy Heart with the award going to Steve Bruton, T-Bone Burnett and Jeffrey Pollack. The British film R was hailed as best ensemble performance.

MUMBAI: Universal Pictures is developing The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde with Justin Haythe penning the script. In all probability, Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn would direct the project titled Jekyll in which Keanu Reeves will play the lead role.

Reeves is currently in the process of developing a split personality for the character he will portray.

Robert Louis Stevenson‘s novella has been translated to the screen and stage dozens of times. Among the adaptations are comedy versions, kids‘ stories (Jekyll And Heidi) and gender-switch tales.

The story has undergone modern iterations as recently as 2007 when the BBC aired a miniseries that set the story in the present as Hyde ran amok in London.

Filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro who has an affinity for Gothic horror as well as creature features, aims to stick more closely to the Stevenson tale. His project is on the back burner, though, as he works on The Hobbit for New Line and MGM, a project that‘s expected to take up the next five years.

Refn‘s indie crime biopic Bronson, starring Tom Hardy, premiered this year at the Sundance Film Festival.

MUMBAI: The American Film Institute (AFI) has announced its ten films of the year. before the awards luncheon in Los Angeles on 15 January.

The honourees in alphabetical order are: Coraline (pictured), The Hangover, The Hurt Locker, The Messenger, Precious: Based On The Novel ‘Push‘ By Sapphire, A Serious Man, A Single Man, Sugar, Up, and Up In The Air.

Said AFI president and CEO Gazzale, “AFI Awards 2009 is the tenth chapter in a century-long programme to honour the artists and their work. This programme celebrates the creative community – not competition – and it is in this spirit that the institute brings America‘s storytellers together to acknowledge their contributions to our nation‘s rich cultural heritage.”
 

MUMBAI: After having secured honours at the Cannes Film Festival, Australian film Samson and Delilah that talks about the plight of many aboriginal communities won the country‘s top film award last Saturday.

The film swept the Australian Film Institute (AFI) awards with its director, Warwick Thornton taking home the award for best direction as well as for best original screenplay.

Thornton had cast two non-actor children Marissa Gibson and Rowan McNamara in the lead roles and both received the AFI‘s young actor award.

Samson and Delilah tells the story of two aboriginal teenagers living in squalor and highlights the desperate state of many Aboriginal communities where glue sniffing, alcohol abuse and violence are common, although it ends on a more hopeful note.

The film has been doing the rounds at international film festivals since it won the Camera d‘Or prize at Cannes earlier this year and last month it took home the top prize at the annual Asia Pacific Screen Awards.

MUMBAI: Peter Webber will no longer direct Ecosse Films‘ film Wuthering Heights.

Speaking to reporters, Webber‘s agent confirmed that the Girl With The Pearl Earring director “is no longer involved with the film” that is set to star Gemma Arterton and Ed Westwick as lovers Cathy and Heathcliffe.

The film is being scripted by Olivia Hetreed, who teamed up with Webber on Girl With a Pearl Earring. Ecosse Films‘ Robert Bernstein is producing with HanWay Films handling worldwide sales.

 
On the other hand, it is learnt that Webber is still directing The Spider‘s House, an adaptation of Paul Bowles‘ novel set in Morocco.

Webber signed on to the project in May this year although it was previously reported that John Maybury who directed Francis Bacon biopic Love Is The Devil will direct the film.

MUMBAI: Fifteen films including Avatar and Angels & Demons have been selected as semi-finalists for the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences‘ achievement in visual effects award.

Other films in the race are Coraline; Disney‘s A Christmas Carol; District 9; G-Force; G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra; Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince; Sherlock Holmes; Star Trek; Terminator Salvation; Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen; 2012; Watchmen and Where The Wild Things Are.

 
The list will come down to seven when members of the Academy‘s visual effects branch will sit and shorten the list in early January.

All the members of the visual effects branch will be invited to view 15-minute excerpts of each of the seven shortlisted films on January 21 and will vote after the screenings to nominate three films for final Oscar consideration.

The nominations will be announced on 2 February.

MUMBAI: The second day of the Dubai Film Festival saw celebrities like Matt Dillon, Christina Ricci and Mandy Moore turning out for the Cinema Against Aids gala that has targeted to raise more than US$1 million (Dh3.67m) for Aids research.

They were joined by the chorus girls from the musical Nine, bringing glamour for a good cause – the Foundation for Aids Research (amfAR).

Dillon, who was hosting the event with Ricci, called Aids “a universal condition”. While the UAE has a policy of repatriating people infected with HIV, the Aids virus, who try to gain residency.

 
Dillon pointed out that his own country had had a 22-year travel ban on visitors with HIV, one that was lifted by President Barack Obama only in October. “There are challenges around the epidemic in every part of the world,” he said.

For Moore, a singer and actress from the US, it was the second time on the red carpet in as many days.

Ricci said that she had a huge respect for amfAR‘s research projects adding.

“I think we have become a little de-sensitized to Aids and really need to keep up awareness of it.”