MUMBAI: Shooting of Oliver Stone‘s Wall Street 2 has begun. The film produced by Edward R. Pressman stars Michael Douglas.
Wall Street 2 is a story about money at all costs – and the people who will do anything to get ahead. It captures the reality that from Main Street to Wall Street everyone is intoxicated by the aura of wealth, the perception of power, and the promise of entrée into the most exclusive
The film will release on 23 April, next year.
MUMBAI: The Kansas International Film Festival (KIFF), began Friday at the Glenwood Arts theater in Overland Park.
The festival has always been strongest in its documentary division (one guy with a camera can make a great documentary; fictional films require a lot more money and labor), but this year nonfiction filmmakers have outdone themselves.
Most of the documentaries screening at KIFF have been in the works for several years, meaning they were begun during the Bush administration. These documentaries come in all shapes and colors. Some are overtly irate.
The opening-night film, Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story was admired by all. Revered and despised in equal measure, Moore has built a career on holding some of America’s most cherished values the automobile, the health care system, gun ownership, post-9/11 patriotism up to his satirical light.
MUMBAI: Dick Cook, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios, resigned late Friday following struggles with profitability, creative focus and a shifting relationship with other Disney units.
Cook, who started at the Walt Disney Company 38 years ago as a theme park monorail driver, said in a statement that he had been contemplating a move for some time.
Under Cook, the studio also showed a reluctance to adopt a new focus on companywide franchises. Hit Disney Channel properties and stars, for instance, were not immediately embraced for their feature potential.
No successor has yet been named. Cook’s departure left some megawatt producers with a sudden void. “I’m completely shocked — as is literally everybody I’ve spoken to,” said Scott Rudin, whose production company has a first-look deal with Disney.
“I’ve collaborated with him on so many movies — since “Sister Act” — and have only ever adored him as a friend and as a boss. Dick has single-handedly made possible some of the very best things that have happened to me in my career.”
with “Old Dogs,” a comedy that stars John Travolta and Robin Williams.
MUMBAI: A Los Angeles judge has said that Michael Jackson‘s mother, Katherine Jackson can challenge the administrators of his estate without losing her share in a lucrative family trust, it is gathered.
Attorneys of Jackson’s mother have said that she wants a greater say in the way her son’s estate estimated to be worth about $400 million is administered. It was not immediately known if she would now formally lodge a challenge.
It may be recalled that Jackson appointed his longtime attorney John Branca and music executive John McClain as executors of his estate in a 2002 will. Katherine Jackson‘s attorneys had asked the Court to suggest whether she could make the challenge without violating a “no contest” clause in the family trust.
The family trust provides Katherine Jackson, 79, with 40 percent of the estate, the singer‘s three children with another 40 per cent and children‘s charities with 20 per cent.
According to Friday‘s court documents, Judge Mitchell Beckloff ruled that Katherine Jackson would not violate the no contest trust clause by mounting a challenge.
MUMBAI: Julia Roberts is in New Delhi with the cast and crew to shoot her film, Eat, Pray, Love.
Based on Pushcart Prize winner Elizabeth Gilbert‘s spirituality/travel memoir, Eat, Pray, Love recently wrapped up its shooting schedule in New York after a stint in Italy.
In the film, Roberts plays Gilbert. The shooting, though being kept in wraps, is expected to start soon at an ashram near Gurgaon on the Delhi-Jaipur National Highway 8, close to Delhi‘s Indira Gandhi
International Airport. A few scenes will also be filmed at Pataudi Palace about 60 kilometres from Delhi.
Other actors who are also likely to participate in the shoot will be Oscar nominated Richard Jenkins and Viola Davis, Javier Bardem, Billy Crudup, James Franco and Luca Argentero.
Directed by Ryan Murphy and produced by Columbia Pictures, Brad Pitt‘s Plan B Entertainment and Roberts‘ Red Om Films, Eat, Pray, Love is scheduled to release in 2011.
MUMBAI: A protest over a Toronto International Film Festival spotlight on Tel Aviv cinema has galvanized the globe‘s creative community.
From Cairo to Calgary, artists can often be divided on their Middle East views but most agree on the need to draw the line between cultural expression and political advocacy.
Increasing numbers of Hollywood stars have spoken out for or against the festival‘s critics, who say the Tel Aviv program boosts Israel‘s tarnished image eight months after its devastating bombing raids in the Gaza Strip.
Said the Toronto Declaration, signed earlier this month by 65 artistes, including actresses Jane Fonda and Julie Christie and musicians David Byrne and Harry Belafonte and writers such as Alice Walker and Wallace Shawn, “We protest that TIFF, whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine.”
Since then, 1,500 have added their names to the document, including 60 Israelis. The letter denounces the TIFF focus on Tel Aviv as being subverted by “the Israeli propaganda machine.”
MUMBAI: Next year‘s Oscar awards will have Jacques Audiard‘s A Prophet representing France as its submission for the foreign language Oscar this year. The film, a product of Why Not Productions won the Grand Prize at Cannes this year.
Starring newcomer Tahar Rahim, the film follows a young man as he is taken under the wing of the Corsican mafia during a prison stint. As he rises through the ranks, it becomes clear he has designs on creating his own network.
Cannes‘ festival director Thierry Fremaux along with Florence Malraux, president of the advance on receipts commission of the Centre National du Cinema (CNC), president of the Cesar Academy Alain Terzian; actress Jeanne Moreau, and directors Jean-Jacques Annaud, Costa-Gavras and Regis Wargnier were among members of the selection committee.
The film was released in France by UGC on 26 August. Celluloid Dreams handled sales while Sony Pictures Classics has the US rights.
MUMBAI: Woody Harrelson‘s Defendor that had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival recently, is being sought by Sony Pictures Worldwide (SPW) Acquisitions Group which is in final negotiations to acquire the film.
The film stars Harrelson as a man who is under the delusion that he is a superhero and embarks on a series of adventures to protect a crime-beset city. The film also stars Kat Dennings and Sandra Oh.
The acquisition marks Sony Pictures Worldwide‘s first buy of the festival. SPW is also set to buy all worldwide rights of the film except Canada where the movie is being released by Alliance.
The deal is the third significant U.S. pickup of the festival after the Weinstein Co.‘s purchase of Tom Ford‘s period drama A Single Man and IFC‘s acquisition of Nicolas Winding Refn‘s action-adventure Valhalla Rising.
MUMBAI: The author of Da Vinci Code Dan Brown‘ latest novel
The Lost Symbol has broken one-day sales records.
Readers snapped up over one million hardcover copies across the US, Canada and the United Kingdom soon after it was released on Tuesday.
Amazon.com Inc, the world‘s largest online retailer, called the book its bestselling first-day adult fiction title ever.
Barnes & Noble Inc said The Lost Symbol broke its previous one-day sales record for adult fiction.
The success of the Dan Brown‘s latest is a boost to publisher Knopf Doubleday and booksellers, that have seen sliding sales amidst recession.
Booksellers have anxiously awaited a popular title that will resonate with readers and fuel the same sort of frenzy seen earlier this decade with the latest Harry Potter series.
But the $25 billion domestic book market has wallowed in a slump in recent years.
The Da Vinci Code” sold 80 million copies worldwide. It was made into a film starring Tom Hanks that grossed more than $758 million.
MUMBAI: Singer Chris Brown has begun his 1,400-hour community labour sentence for his assault of girlfriend Rihanna last year.
Pictures on the celebrity website TMZ.com showed Brown in his home state of Virginia wearing a reflective red vest and a red cap stooping to clean up the grounds of a police horse stable.
The singer‘s other duties during his six months of community labour will include graffiti removal, washing cars and roadside cleanup.
Brown has also been slapped with a five-year probation period, a year of domestic violence classes and hefty fines.