ITV

Category: Movies

  • Editor David Edward Blewitt expires

    MUMBAI: Emmy-winner and Oscar-nominated film editor, David Edward Blewitt expired at the age of 81 on 8 July of complications from Parkinson‘s disease.


    His silver screen credits include Ghostbusters (1984) and The Buddy Holly Story (1978). He was nominated for the Academy Award for the 1980 film The Competition.


    On the television front, Blewitt worked on such series and specials as Bob Hope: The First 90 Years for which he won an Emmy in 1993, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.


    Having worked for more than 40 years, Blewitt earned a career achievement award in 2005 from the American Cinema Editors. He was nominated for five ACE Eddie Awards, winning them twice.


    Blewitt leaves behind his wife, Annie, daughter Risa Bastien, son-in-law Steve Bastien and grand daughter Annabel.

  • Venus’ ‘Bullet Train’ takes cue from ‘Speed’

    MUMBAI: Venus Records & Tapes is readying to launch Bullet Train and has got Ajay Devgn to play the role of a terrorist.


    The movie, directed by Priyadarshan, is inspired from the popular Hollywood 1994 thriller Speed in which a bomb is placed in a speeding bus.


    The crew has secured permission from authorities to shoot at one of the London Tube stations and inside a train. 


    Besides Devgn, Sameera Reddy and Tusshar Kapoor will also essay the role of terrorists. Manoj Bajpai, popularly known to play negative roles, will, for a change, do a positive role as the engineer trying to control the train‘s speed.


    The film will also feature Suniel Shetty in an important role. It will go on the floors from 1 September in London.
     

  • Dunno Y…Na Jaane Kyun to screen at IFFI, London

    MUMBAI: After winning an award at the Kashish Mumbai International Queer Film Festival, Dunno Y…Na Jaane Kyun has been selected for screening at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in August in London.


    The film is going to be premiered along with Aamir Khan‘s Peepli [Live] and Vishal Bharadwaj‘s Ishqiya. 


    Dunno Y… portrays gay relationship with all sensitivity the subject deserves.


    The film marks the comeback of Zeenat Aman who stars along with Helen who plays her daughter-in-law and Kapil Sharma,Yuvraaj Parashar, Maradona Rebello and Rituparna Sengupta.


    The Sanjay Sharma film would be sharing the stage with filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra for his retrospection of work.
     

  • Amitabh Bachchan to play Rabindranath Tagore

    MUMBAI: Amitabh Bachchan will play Rabindranath Tagore in a biopic temporarily titled Sound of Silence.


    The film is being made to coincide with the 150th birth anniversary of the Nobel Laureate poet.


    The English film to be directed by Ujjwal Chatterjee will have screenplay by noted lyricist Javed Akhtar. The film will focus on the last 20 years of Tagore‘s life.


    Confirming that he will write the screenplay and the dialogues, Akhtar said that the film will be based on a story to be prepared jointly by scholars William Radice and Nilanjan Bandyopadhyay. “This is an extremely serious project and I will start writing the screenplay and dialogues after I get the research material from scholars working at archives in Santiniketan and elsewhere. I will have to study each detail carefully because I will be handling an icon like Tagore,” Akhtar added.
     

  • Reliance MediaWorks acquires Today’s Special for North America

    MUMBAI: Reliance MediaWorks has acquired North American rights of culinary comedy, Today‘s Special, that stars Aasif Mandvi and features Indian actress and cookbook author Madhur Jaffrey.


    Directed by David Kaplan, the English-language film, written by Mandvi and Jonathan Bines, is based on Mandvi‘s play Sakina‘s Restaurant in which the actor plays a chef who dreams of opening an upscale Manhattan eatery but is forced to take over his family‘s tandoori restaurant in the Little India neighborhood of Jackson Heights in Queens.


    The film was produced by Nimitt Mankad‘s Inimitable as the company‘s first feature and Lillian LaSalle‘s Sweet 180. The movie also stars Naseeruddin Shah, Jess Weixler, Kevin Corrigan and Dean Winters.


    Reliance, which has been making inroads into the US market with films like Raavan and 3 Idiots, will release Today‘s Special nationwide on 8 October.


    Today‘s Special premiered last fall at the London Film Festival, was the opening-night film at the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival and won audience prizes at fests in Palm Springs and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
     

  • Toy Story 3 is number one in Hong Kong

    MUMBAI: In just the first seven days of its opening on 15 July, Toy Story 3 has broken all records to emerge as the highest-grossing animated feature in Hong Kong roping in an equivalent to US$4.82 million. 


    The third instalment of the successful franchise overtook Toy Story 2 in the number one spot on the list of highest-grossing animated film in one-eighth of the time. The sequel had grossed HK$35.7 million during its two-month run in 2000, according to the Hong Kong Motion Picture Industry Association. The original film featuring Woody and Buzz Lightyear, released in Hong Kong in 1996, grossed HK$16.8 million in a little more than a month.


    The animation powerhouse‘s 2005 superhero caper The Incredibles is in third place with a gross of HK$33.8 million while last year‘s stereoscopic 3D animation Up secured HK$33.3 million and is now in the fourth spot.


    The only non-Pixar animation in the top five was 20th century Fox‘s 2009 stereoscopic 3D threequel Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

  • Icahn threatens to sue Lions Gate

    MUMBAI: A day after Lions Gate Entertainment made a defensive move that endangers the investor‘s long-running crusade to take over the studio, Carl Icahn has threatened to sue it.


    Last Tuesday, as part of a complex debt-for-equity swap, Lions Gate issued new shares to its second-largest shareholder, Mark Rachesky that increased his holdings to around 29 per cent from 20 per cent. The action diluted the equity of all shareholders, including Icahn, whose stake fell to just over 33 per cent from nearly 38 per cent.


    Rachesky, a former employee of Icahn‘s, is on Lions Gate‘s board.


    Icahn has contended that the stock deal violates an agreement he and Lions Gate made for a 10-day truce that ended at midnight last Monday. Although Lions Gate announced the stock deal on Tuesday after the expiration of the agreement, Icahn and his lawyers said that they were going to look at whether the company had agreed to the debt-for-equity swap with Rachesky during the detente.


    In a letter to Icahn dated 9 July outlining the truce, Lions Gate vice chairman Michael Burns had said that during the 10-day period, his studio would not “issue, agree to issue or authorize or propose the issuance of any securities to … any member of its board of directors or their affiliates.”


    “Not only has Lions Gate‘s board diluted the company‘s shareholders in an attempt to entrench themselves, but it has violated the agreement it made with us, which among other things prohibited Lions Gate from issuing stock during this period,” commented Icahn.


    Icahn said that he also intends to litigate against Lions Gate‘s recently adopted “poison pill,” which would make it difficult for him to accumulate more shares. The investor successfully persuaded regulators in Canada, where the company is legally based, to throw out a previous poison pill.
     

  • Two-day Ang Lee retrospective in New Delhi from 23 July

    MUMBAI: The Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre, New Delhi, in association with the Directorate of Film Festivals, will be hosting a Retrospective Film Festival of director Ang Lee from 23 to 25 July at Siri Fort Auditorium, New Delhi. Thereafter, the movies will be showcased in Pune and Kolkata.


    The five films that will be screened on the occasion are Fine Line, Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. This festival traces Ang Lee‘s journey starting from his first college.


    Out of the five films that will be showcased, four have been produced by international producer Hus Li-Kong who will also be the chief guest at the inauguration ceremony in Delhi.


    Ang Lee attributes his success to him and feels that without Hsu he would not have been where he is today. Lee, who would not be attending, will be sending his message on a DVD that will be screened for viewers at the inauguration.


    Ang Lee is a symbol of Taiwan‘s creativity. He is one of the seven directors to win the Oscar, the Golden Globe, Director‘s Guild and BAFTA for the same movie, Brokeback Mountain, that released in 2005.


    His films have been well received by audiences not only in Taiwan but all over the world, because of the striking diversity, as well as Lee‘s recurring themes of alienation, marginalisation, and repression.


    Taiwani Ambassador Wenchyi Ong said, “India is a land of film lovers and Taiwan‘s film industry is already well-known in the international arena for having a large number of talented and creative individuals. Our films, I Can‘t Live Without You and Wall, won the Golden Peacock Award at IFFI in 2007 and 2009 and I do hope that through Ang Lee‘s retrospective, Indians will be able to connect to one of Taiwan‘s most loved directors and his heart warming films.”
     

  • Guangzhou Jin Yi Film and Television orders 8 Imax screens for China

    MUMBAI: Eight more super-sized Imax screens have been ordered by Chinese exhibitor Guangzhou Jin Yi Film and Television for the Chinese market.


    The exhibitor, which launched in 2004 by launching six multiplex theatres in the Guangdong province with Warner Bros. International Cinemas as the majority partner, has tripled the size of its Imax rollout to total 2 screens. 


    The first Imax digital theatre will launch by December this year followed by another five in 2011, four in 2012, one in 2013 and the last in 2014.


    “We chose to add Imax locations based on the rapidly growing demand for The Imax Experience in cities throughout China, and the proven business model of Imax‘s digital projection system,” Shirley Ye, general manager of Guangzhou Jinyi Film and Television Investment Group, said in a statement.


    Since partnering with Warner Bros. in 2004, Jinyi Film & Television has opened 27 theatres in China, with another 100 theatres in backlog.
     

  • George Clooney to receive Bob Hope award

    MUMBAI: This year Emmy Awards will honour George Clooney for his humanitarian effort and will present the 49-year-old actor with its Bob Hope Humanitarian Award next month.


    The Bob Hope Humanitarian Award was established in 2002.


    Clooney is being honored for the ‘Hope for Haiti‘ TV special, which has been nominated for an Emmy award. This is in addition to his efforts to raise funds for victims of Hurricane Katrina and raise awareness about genocide in Darfur.


    John Shaffner, chairman and chief executive of the TV academy, said Clooney was ‘an obvious choice‘ for the award because he used the power of television to move people to act.


    Clooney is the fourth recipient of the honour and will receive the award at the Emmy ceremony on 29 August.