Category: International

MUMBAI: Rob Marshall‘s musical film Nine will open the 6th Dubai International Film Festival on 9 December.

The Indian Cinema gala will be the world premiere of Yash Raj Film‘s Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year, starring Ranbir Kapoor will be premiered at the festival.

The festival‘s Arabian Nights strand will open with the world premiere of Ali F Mostafa‘s City of Life. The film stars Alexandra Maria Lara, Sonu Sood, Saoud Al Ka‘abi, Yassin Alsaman and Jason Flemming.

Rodrigo Garcia‘s drama Mother and Child, Alain Monne‘s Cartagena will open the festival‘s special focus on France.
The festival will close on 15 December with James Cameron‘s 3D epic Avatar.

The competition programme also includes two films from India that wiil also have their world premiere here – Subramania Shiva‘s Yogi and Shyam Benegal‘s Well Done Abba.

China has one entry in Jian Wenli‘s Lan. Japan‘s Lost Paradise in Toyko, directed by Kazuya Shiraishi happens to be the final entry.

MUMBAI: Helen Mirren will receive the 21stPalm Springs International Film Festival‘s Career Achievement Award on 5 January.

Mirren won the Oscar for The Queen in 2007 and picked up an Indie Spirit lead actress nomination on 1 December for her role as Sofya Tolstoy opposite Christopher Plummer in The Last Station.

Said festival chairman Harold Matzner, “Mirren is one of the most outstanding actresses of her generation and she delivers another fine performance in The Last Station.” 

Mirren‘s other films include The Long Good Friday, The Madness Of King George, Gosford Park, Excalibur, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover and upcoming projects such as Brighton Rock, Love Ranch, The Debtand The Tempest.

The festival will go on till 18 January.

MUMBAI: Johnny Depp will be honoured with the career achievement award at the Bahamas International Film Festival later this month.

Sean Connery will present the award during the event that runs from 10 to 17 December.

“We are proud of Depp‘s remarkable achievements and the great contributions he has made in all walks of life,” Bahamas Minister Of Tourism, Minister Vincent Vanderpool Wallace said.

“We are glad this prestigious award and tribute is going to almost one of our own,” he added.
 

MUMBAI: Leading Spanish distributor DeaPlaneta has acquired Spanish rights of Robert Luketic‘s Killers and How To Make Love To An Englishman.

Other films include Gary Mckendry‘s thriller The Killer Elite, Chuck Russell‘s $70m 3D film Arabian Nights and How To Make Love To An Englishman.

The Spanish distributor also picked up Robert Luketic‘s action comedy Killers from Mandate Pictures.

MUMBAI: The Twilight Saga: New Moon got off to a flying start overseas, opening at the number one position in France grossing $4.4m from 751 screens and drawing 488,000 on its first day.

Reports from Australia say that the film was the highest grossing midnight screening since Star Wars: Episode 3‘s $1.2m in May 2005, fetching $1.6m from 466 by the end of its first day.

In Italy the film grossed $2.7m from 625 last Wednesday, making the film the third highest Wednesday launch ever behind Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix.

Spain generated $2.2m from 652 screens in what was also the third highest Wednesday launch, trailing only Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix and Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince.
 

MUMBAI: Director of Monsters vs. Aliens Peter Ramsey is set to direct The Guardians, (working title) for DreamWorks Animation SKG.

The Guardians is based on The Guardians of Childhood, a series of children‘s books by William Joyce. Pulitzer Prize winning writer David Lindsay-Abaire has signed on to write the script.

In addition to directing Monsters vs. Aliens: Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space, Ramsey served as Head of Story on DreamWorks Animation‘s Monsters vs. Aliens and has served as a storyboard artist on a number of live action feature films. Lindsay-Abaire was most recently nominated for a Tony Award for his book and lyrics for Shrek The Musical.

The Guardians will be produced by Christina Steinberg and Nancy Bernstein and executive produced by Michael Siegel, Joyce‘s manager. DreamWorks Animation acquired the property from Reel FX where the characters and the world of The Guardians of Childhood were developed in a partnership with William Joyce. Joyce will also serve as co-director.

MUMBAI: Nicholas Ray‘s restored version of the experimental film We Can‘t Go Home Again will be premiered at the 68th Venice film festival in 2011.

The film, which for the past 30 years has remained on the shelf of a film depository, has been specially restored for the festival.
 

MUMBAI: Lee Daniel‘s Precious will close the 2009 Bahamas International Film Festival (BIFF) that will be on from 10 to 17 December.

Winner of three awards at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, including the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, Lee Daniels‘s Precious based on the novel Push by Sapphire is a vibrant, honest and resoundingly hopeful film about the human capacity to grow and overcome.

Set in Harlem in 1987, the film tells the story of Claireece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), a sixteen-year-old African-American girl born into a life no one would want. She‘s pregnant for the second time by her absent father; at home, she must wait hand and foot on her mother (Mo‘Nique), a poisonously angry woman who abuses her emotionally and physically. School is a place of chaos, and Precious has reached the ninth grade with good marks and an awful secret: she can neither read nor write. 

The girl may sometimes be down, but she is never out. Beneath her impassive expression is a watchful, curious young woman with an inchoate but unshakeable sense that other possibilities exist for her.

Threatened with expulsion, Precious is offered the chance to transfer to an alternative school, Each One/Teach One. Precious doesn‘t know the meaning of “alternative,” but her instincts tell her this is the chance she has been waiting for. In the literacy workshop taught by the patient yet firm Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), Precious begins a journey that will lead her from darkness, pain and powerlessness to light, love and self determination.

MUMBAI: Lixin Fan‘s Last Train Home annexed the main prize at the 22nd International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). The festival closed on 28 November 28.

The film, that won the VPRO IDFA Award for best feature documentary, is the tale about the gruelling journey undertaken each year by migrant Chinese workers returning to their family homes in remote and impoverished rural villages.

On the other hand, Dutch director John Appel‘s The Player won the inaugural IDFA Award for best Dutch documentary.

A special jury award went to the US documentary, The Most Dangerous Man In America. The documentary is set in the early 70s and tells the story of Daniel Ellsberg, a young analyst in the US Department of Defence, who turned against the Vietnam War and leaked top secret 7000 page document to The New York Times by the Pentagon Papers.

Other winners included Louie Psihoyos‘ The Cove and Ross McDonnell and Carter Gunn‘s Colony that won The First Appearance Award.

Veteran US documentary maker Fred Wiseman picked up the festival‘s first Living Legend award.

MUMBAI: The London Critics‘ Circle (LFCC) has voted Francis Ford Coppola‘s Apocalypse Now as the best film in the last 30 years.

The film, that has won a slew of awards and nominations since its release in 1979, was chosen as the clear favourite in the poll.

Apocalypse Now ranked way ahead of Schindler‘s List, The Lives of Others, Unforgiven and Brokeback Mountain.

LFCC chairman Jason Solomons praised the Coppola‘s film as a “worthy winner,” going by its anti-war message that is relevant even today as it was 30 years ago.

The 30th annual London Film Critics‘ Circle Awards will take place on 18 February and benefit the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).