Category: International

MUMBAI: Tyler Perry‘s I Can Do Bad All By Myself turned out to be the seventh consecutive low-cost film that opened successfully when it sold an estimated $24 million worth of tickets in the US and Canada last weekend.

Produced at less than $20 million, the movie tops in the box-office chart of US and Canada.

Perry‘s films appeal primarily to black women on whom not many movies in Hollywood are targeted. I Can Do Bad followed that pattern, with the movie attracting 75 per cent of female ticket buyers and 80 per cent African American, it is understood.

Focus Features‘ quirky animated film 9 got off to a healthy start. 9 marks Focus‘ second offbeat animated film this year, after Coraline released in February that had a solid if not stellar $10.9-million opening weekend.

Inglourious Basterds continues to be at No. 3 on its third weekend with $6.5 million domestically. Overseas, the movie grossed $9.4 million and brought its foreign total to $99 million with several major territories including Italy, Spain, Brazil and Mexico left to go.

Warner Bros.‘ horror movie The Final Destination collected $17.3 million from international markets, bringing its foreign total to $55.3 million and worldwide ticket sales after less than three weeks to an impressive $113.5 million.

Summit Entertainment‘s horror film Sorority Row sold $5.3 million worth of tickets over the weekend while Dark Castle Entertainment‘s thriller Whiteout, which stars Kate Beckinsale and was distributed by Warner Bros, grossed $5.1 million.

Both films were disappointments, although the news was worse for Dark Castle because the production cost of Whiteout was $35 million while Sorority Row cost only $12.5 million.

MUMBAI: Jim Carroll, who chronicled his wild teen years in The Basketball Diaries expired of a heart attack at the age of 60 yesterday.

Carroll‘s most famous work, The Basketball Diaries was published in 1978 in which he wrote of his wild youth as both a basketball star and a drug abuser during his teen years at Manhattan‘s private Trinity school.

The book was made into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio in 1995.

Carroll also worked with rockers from Lou Reed and The Doors to Pearl Jam and Rancid.

Carroll, a fixture on Manhattan‘s downtown punk-rock scene, saw his poetry lauded by icons including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. His work was published in The Paris Review.

MUMBAI

: In a move that confirmed its status as ‘the Mecca of film production in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico has extended its 40 per cent film tax credit until 2019.

Announcing the extension of Law 362, Governor Luis G Fortuno said that investors could also look forward to less red tapism as they went through the process of acquiring credits.

So far this year four films – The Rum Diary, starring Johnny Depp, Stone Of Dreams, Meant To Be, and One Hot Summer – have shot in Puerto Rico, injecting roughly $32.6m into the local economy according to Puerto Rico Film Commission sources.

Warner Bros‘ superhero saga The Losers is being currently shot in a newly launched studio launched DC Entertainment division.

MUMBAI: London will host the world premiere of Disney‘s A Christmas Carol in what is claimed will be the biggest UK 3D screening to date. The film that stars Jim Carey, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins and Robin Wright Penn will premiere at the Odeon and Empire cinemas on Leicester Square and the Odeon West End on 3 November.The premiere is part of an event to kick off London‘s festive season. The Christmas lights on the city‘s Oxford and Regents Streets will be themed around the film, adapted by the classic Charles Dickens‘ novel, and will be switched simultaneously on that night.

The event was announced by London major Boris Johnson in New York, as part of campaign to promote the city to American tourists. Tickets to the premiere will be available to the public with proceeds going to Great Ormond Street Hospital Children‘s Charity.

MUMBAI: Director Samuel Maoz‘s Lebanon set inside a tank stranded inside enemy territory on the first day of the Lebanon War in June 1982 has won the Venice the Golden Lion for Best Film award at the Venice Film Festival.

The director, who based the film on his own experiences, dedicated the award to “people all over the word who come back form the war safe and sound, they work, get married, have children but inside remain stuck in their souls.”

While the Coppa Volpi for best actor went to Colin Firth for his performance in fashion designer Tom Ford‘s directorial debut The Single Man, Russian born actress Ksenia Rappoport got the same for her role in Giuseppe Capotondi‘s The Double Hour.

The Silver Lion for best director was awarded to Iranian born, New York-based director Shirin Neshat for Women Without Men, a film dealing with the condition of women in Iran and the 1953 coup which toppled the democratically elected Mossadegh government.

Todd Solondz was awarded the Osella For Best Screenplay Life During War Time.” This is so much fun – to win a prize it makes you like an eleven year old again nothing‘s – I confess nothing‘s better,” he said from the stage.

Osella won an award for best technical contribution for Jaco Van Dormael‘s Mr. Nobody.

The $100,000 Luigi De Laurentiis Lion of the future award went to the Orizzonti title Clash (Engkwentro) by Filipino director Pepe Diokno while Jasmine Trinca was honoured with the Marcello Mastroianni Award for best young actor or actress for her role in Michele Placido‘s Il Grande Sogno.

MUMBAI: Johnny Depp will star in the forthcoming instalment of Disney‘s blockbuster franchise. Depp will be seen in the role as Capt. Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides that is slated for release in 2011.

Chairman of Walt Disney Studios Richard Cook announced the news to about 5,000 fans on hand for D23, Disney‘s answer to Comic-Con. The first all-things-Disney convention runs through the weekend.

It‘s the fourth in a series.

MUMBAI: The Toronto International Film Festival opened with a British film Creation.

For more than three decades, the Toronto film festival usually opened with a Canadian movie to spotlight the industry within the country. Naturally, its choice of Charles Darwin drama Creation drew ire of local filmmakers.

But the controversy seemed fitting to festival organizers because the film looks at evolutionist Darwin‘s life as he struggles to write his seminal book, ‘On the Origin of Species‘ that inspires debate even today.

Creation stars Paul Bettany as the man whose theory of natural selection gave rise to the idea that humans evolved from a lower order of beings and were not created by God. The story takes place when Darwin is in his mid-40‘s, after he traveled the world exploring and collecting samples of animal life.

MUMBAI: Award-winning writer Larry Gelbart, who wrote films like Tootsie and Oh, God! has expired. He died yesterday after a long battle with cancer. He was 81.

Gelbart, who won a Tony for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum an Emmy for M-A-S-H and was nominated for two Oscars, is best remembered for the long-running TV show about Army doctors during the Korean War.

M-A-S-H debuted on CBS in 1972, when the nation was embroiled in the Vietnam War. By its second season it had caught on and remained one of television‘s top-10 rated shows for a decade until its final episode in 1983.

The show, based on a book and a Robert Altman film by the same name, starred Alan Alda. Gelbart was brought into the project by producer-director Gene Reynolds who worked with him shaping the show.

After writing 97 half-hour episodes and winning an Emmy, Gelbart quit during the show‘s fourth season, showing health grounds.

Interestingly, Gelbart went on to write gags for Bob Hope, Jack Paar, Red Buttons, Jack Carson, Eddie Cantor and Joan Davis.

MUMBAI: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will honour Lauren Bacall, producer-executive John Calley, producer-director Roger Corman and Gordon Willis at the inaugural Governors Awards event on 14 November.

While Calley will receive the Irving G. Thalbergh Memorial Award, Bacall, Corman and Willis will be presented with honorary awards.

For the first time this year the Academy‘s honorary awards will be handed out at the new event in November.

While the awards will be acknowledged during the Oscarcast on 7 March, the show won‘t devote the same amount of time to toasting the honorees on air as in previous years.

The Academy‘s rules allow as many as four honorees per year, although most years the Academy‘s board of governors hasn‘t chosen to single out that many individuals.

MUMBAI: Decks are being cleared for a $525 million financing of up to 15,000 3D cinema (D-Cinema) installations over the next five years in US‘s three biggest film circuits viz Regal, AMC and Cinemark that will add 3D equipment at many of their cinemas.

The 3D add-ons will be considerably cheap, the cost of which will be borne by the theatre chains or in some cases even by the 3D vendors.

The studios previously signed off on so-called virtual print fee deals, which guarantee payments to exhibitors for years after studios cease having true film print costs. But the upfront costs of the conversions are so big that it will require help from Wall Street.

Hence JP Morgan is arranging a $325 million bank syndication and $200 million in equity-based contributions from private-equity firms and the circuits themselves.

The industry‘s rollout of digital and 3D hardware was stalled by the nation‘s economic downturn. Though the syndication will take a couple months to complete, word that the rollout soon can resume, comes as good news for distributors struggling to market 3D releases despite the scarcity of 3D screens.

Originally planned in early 2009, the syndication was first delayed until summer before lingering credit difficulties pushed its launch beyond Labor Day. The funding impasse — which dragged on for the better part of a year — has had studios with 3D releases competing furiously for a paltry base of 3D movie screens, both domestically and abroad.
Things grew so tense that the big three circuits got started on some of the DCIP conversions even before the financing was arranged.

There may now be fewer than 2,000 non-competitive 3D auditoriums in the U.S. and Canada. New installations could push that number to above 2,500 screens by the year‘s end.