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Category: Movies

  • Mike Nichols set to receive top AFI honour

    MUMBAI: Director Mike Nichols has been selected to receive the American Film Institute‘s Lifetime Achievement Award. The highest honor will be presented at a tribute, broadcast by TV Land Prime in Los Angeles next summer.

    Nichols has received four best director Academy Award nominations, and won the Oscar in 1968 for directing The Graduate. He was also nominated for a best picture award in 1994 as one of the producers of The Remains of the Day.


    During the course of his career, which he began in the ‘50s when he partnered with Elaine May for a comedy act, he has also won an Emmy, a Tony and a Grammy.


    Nichol‘s film career began with Who‘s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1966. He also made Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, Silkwood, Working Girl, Primary Colors, the HBO film Angels in America, Closer and the most recent Charlie Wilson‘s War.

  • Sasha Grant award goes to Saudi director

    MUMBAI: The Abu Dhabi Film Commission awarded Saudi director Haifaa Al Mansour with the $100,000 Sasha Grant for her film Wajda at the third annual Circle Conference that concluded in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.

    Wajda is a coming-of-age story of an 11-year-old Saudi girl.


    The grant recognizes rising talent in film and television in the Middle East.


    Mansour was chosen from among five finalists, who came to the conference to pitch their projects to a jury of industry leaders in the hope of securing the production-funding prize.


    The runner-up was Annemarie Jacir, who received a trip to the Melbourne International Film Festival for her project When I Saw You as part of a partnership between the ADFC and the MIFF 37 Degrees South Market.

  • Jacko’s while glove fetches ?44k at Hollywood auction

    MUMBAI: At a recent Hollywood auction, Michael Jackson‘s illuminated white glove was sold for a whopping 44,300 pounds. The glove came into prominence after Jacko, as he was popularly known, wore it on his 1984 Victory Tour.

    The glove is said to be “the ultimate piece of Michael Jackson memorabilia”.

    The glove, which was adorned with shining beads and crystal rhinestones, was fitted with 50 tiny lights, powered by a nine-volt battery in the cuff.

    Other big sellers at the auction included a Stormtrooper‘s helmet from a 1983 film Return of the Jedi (51,600 pounds), a figure from Predator and Predator 2 (nearly 30,000 pounds) and an ET puppet (20,300 pounds).

  • Animated Lava Kusa set for release

    MUMBAI: Rayudu Vision Media‘s RVML Animation, along with The Kanipakam Creations, has made a 2D animation film Lava Kusa – The Warrior Twins. Now in its post-production stage, the film is expected to release shortly.

    Made at a cost of Rs 250 million, the film took three years to complete. While RVML Animation is in charge of the animation, the film is produced by R V Sashank for Kanipakam Creations.

    The film is being currently made in Hindi, English and Telugu. It will be dubbed into Tamil, Oriya, Bengali and other Indian languages later.

    Directed by Dhavala Sathyam, Lava Kusa The Warrior Twins is based on Ramayana, where the warrior twins team up to bring a powerful dynasty to their knees. The story is all about the banishment of Sita to the acceptance of Lava and Kusa by Lord Rama.

    Lava and Kusa, who opposed Rama for their mother‘s Sita‘s plight, are well- known for their courage and bravery.

    Giving a shape to the thought, RVML and The Kanipakam creations announced the making of the film in 2006. After a year to prepare the script, 300 animators worked on this project in the RVML studios in Hyderabad and Philippines.

  • Shah Rukh Khan dubs Hindi prologue for Pazhassi Raja

    MUMBAI: Shah Rukh Khan has dubbed the prologue for the Hindi version of the Mammooty-starrer Pazhassi Raja that is being made simultaneously in five languages including Hindi and English.

    Khan joins the bandwagon of the film that already has names like Mammootty, Sarath Kumar, Gyanpeeth award winner M T Vasudevan Nair, T Hariharan, music maestro Ilayaraja and Resool Pookutty associated with it. When the film‘s director T Hariharan approached Khan for the film, he readily agreed to do the prologue without even charging a penny.


    Elaborating on this, Praveen VC, executive producer of the movie says, “Shah Rukh comes from the family of freedom fighters and feels happy to be associated with such project”.

    While the Tamil version of the film was also given its due worth when superstar Kamal Hassan dubbed the prologue, the Malayalam original has Mohanlal introducing Pazhassi Raja to the audiences through a 45-second prologue.

    The film tells the tale about Pazhassi Raja played by Mammootty, a native king of Waynad in Malabar area of Kerala and said to be one of the first freedom fighters who started a guerilla war against the British.


    Apart from Mammootty, the film also stars Sarath Kumar, Manoj K. Jayan, Thilakan, Padmapriya, Kanika and Jagathi Sreekumar in other pivotal roles. The roles of the East India officials have been essayed by Peter Handley Evans and Harry Key among others.

  • Animated film hand-painted by OSU artist to show in Eugene Film fest

    MUMBAI

    : Oregon State University (OSU) professor Shelley Jordon‘s hand-painted animated film Family History” has been chosen as an official selection at the Eugene International Film Festival that is currently on from 8 to 11 October.

    Jordon‘s film explores issues of vulnerability and risk. She created the film by layering more than 500 new images over old ones, creating a painting that became a metaphor for life itself.

    Family History received the Critic‘s Choice Award when it premiered at the Gold Coyote Super Short Film Festival in Marylhurst in May 2009. It has also been selected to be screened this fall at the Sydney Underground Film Festival in Marrickville, Australia, the Radar Hamburg Independent Film Festival in Hamburg, Germany, and the Tacoma Film Festival in Tacoma, Wash.

    Jordon is a professor of art at OSU and has been a recipient of an Oregon Artist‘s Fellowship Award and a Fulbright-Hayes Group Travel Research Grant to Yemen and Tunisia. She has had more than 30 exhibitions nationally and internationally.

    The film was screened yesterday.

  • Pusan Intl film fest opens to grand welcome

    MUMBAI: The Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) opened Thursday. Welcoming the press guests with its opening film, South Korean-produced Good Morning, President, the festival began its nine-day run.

    In the evening, a grand opening ceremony was held at an open theatrethat was attended by famous celebrities, including Josh Hartnett, and Han-ryu, or the Korean wave, stars like Jang Dong-gun and Lee Byung-hun.

    Famous celebrities from China such as Fruit Chen and Terri Kwan, also appeared in the ceremony‘s photo zone, receiving a warm welcome from thousands of South Korean movie-lovers.

    Jia Zhangke, Cui Jian, and Li Bingbing are also scheduled to visit Busan during the festival, with the Li-starred movie to be presented as the closing film.

    This year‘s PIFF, marking its 14th event, is screening a total of 355 films from 70 countries, breaking its last record it set last year, 315 movies from 60 nations.

    Among the participant films, 98 chose to world-premier, or showcase for the first time in the world, at the PIFF, which is also a record-high number.

  • US honours Spielberg with Liberty medal

    MUMBAI: The United States has honoured Steven Spielberg with the Liberty medal, given to those personalities whose actions stand for the founding principles of the country. The filmmaker was marked for “inspiring millions to better understand the abiding call of liberty”.

    Spielberg received the medal, which was first established in 1988, from the hands of former President Bill Clinton in a ceremony.

    “We honour a man today who has always been able to make a simple story and make it scary, make a simple story and make it interesting, and make a simple story and remind us of the greatness in us all,” Clinton was quoted as saying.

    The director had followed his Oscar winning film Schindler‘s List in 1994 by establishing ‘The Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation‘ to produce video and oral histories of Holocaust survivors.

    It is now reported that Spielberg has decided to donate the Liberty Medal‘s 100,000-dollar-cash prize to the foundation.

  • Cinépolis hosts 7th International Morelia Film Festival

    MUMBAI: Cinépolis, the world‘s 5th largest movie theatre circuit, is the official host and co-organiser of the 7th International Morelia Film Festival (FICM), currently being held in Morelia, Mexico till 11 October.

    The International Morelia Film Festival is currently held at Cinépolis theatres in Morelia, a beautiful colonial UNESCO World Heritage city. Morelia is also where Cinépolis was founded and headquartered.


    Founded in 2003, the film festival was introduced to nourish a new generation of Mexican filmmakers, and provide them a vibrant platform to showcase their creative excellence.


    In addition, the festival shares an ongoing partnership with the International Critics Week section of the Cannes Film Festival, which screens a selection from their programmes every year at Morelia.


    Each year the festival attracts leading luminaries from the world of cinema. A meeting place for film lovers in Mexico and around the world on the new creative accomplishments of Mexican filmmakers, FICM is the most-definitive film festival experience in the country.


    Cinepolis supports FICM on the entire cross-section of festival management including managing internal resources as well as aspects such as marketing, advertising, programming and purchasing. It also offers a state-of-the-art environment for projection, sound and operations. The festival is promoted internationally through in-house resources of Cinepolis.


    Once the film festival concludes officially, the participating films will be shown across Cinepolis movie



    halls in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey.


  • Online media accreditation of IFFI starts 12 October

    MUMBAI: The 40th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) will be held in Goa from 23 November to 3 December. The online registration for media accreditation for the same will open from 12 October.

    Media persons can log on to http://pib.nic.in/accreditation and fill in the requisite details to proceed further. Media persons with at least three years professional experience of covering film festivals and who are not below 18 years of age can register themselves.

    An application


    should be recommended by the concerned organisation. All applications must be accompanied with scanned copies of passport size photograph, recommendation letter from Editor/Bureau Chief and at least three clippings pertaining to different years.

    In addition, foreign journalists would be required to scan and upload their J-VISA. For PIOs, a letter from the Head of the Indian Mission as per the format in the form would be required.

    The last date for online registration for accreditation is 15 November. Only online applications will be accepted.