MUMBAI: Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) will release Michael Haneke‘s Palme d‘Or winner Amour on 9 December for a limited release.
The film will initially open in New York and Los Angeles putting it square in the awards season. The move makes the film eligible for consideration in all the major categories.
Amour revolves around an octogenarian couple whose love is tested as they face mortality.
SPC had lso released Haneke‘s Cache in 2005 and The White Ribbon in 2009.
MUMBAI: Pritish Nandy Communications (PNC) and Daily Multimedia Ltd have come together to release the Rajat Kapoor-directed film Fatso on 4 May.
Starring Ranvir Shorey, Gul Panag, Purab Kohli, Neil Bhoopalam and Gunjan Bakshi, the film takes audiences through an accidental incident that leads to Purab Kohli and the 300 pound protagonist, played by Ranvir Shorey, into exchanging lives between heaven and earth. In short, Fatso is all about love packaged with a calorie count.
The out and out comedy is already a subject of heated discussion overseas, the film having traveled to several international festivals including the South Asian International Film Festival in New York, Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles and Shanghai International Film Festival amongst many others.
Said PNC producer Pritish Nandy, “Fatso is funny, romantic, magical. Rajat Kapoor is at his finest as a director in the charming tradition of Raghu Romeo, Mixed Doubles and Mithya. Comedies rarely make it to top rung international film festivals.”
The film was chosen as recipient of the prestigious Golden Palm Award at the Mexico International Film Festival.
MUMBAI: Contrary to belief that copyright problems arise in India only, it has come to light that such things are prevalent in Hollywood too.
It is being said that The Weinstein Co.(TWC) has sued writer-producer Kevin Williamson over rights to a film project called Shadows.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, TWC claims that it hired Williamson to write and produce Scream 4 in 2009 but a dispute broke out over whether Williamson breached his duties.
According to the suit, TWC settled the matter in 2010 buying Williamson out of his Scream 4 deal. As part of that agreement, TWC claims Williamson agreed to relinquish control over several other projects including Shadows.
But Williamson now claims that he still owns the Shadows property.
MUMBAI: South hero Rana Daggubati will shortly make his debut in international cinema with Aditya Bhattacharya’s A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, being produced by Asif Noor, Aditya Bhattacharya and SunitaTati under the banner of Hyderabad-based Guru Films.
Raakh is the story of a young man, who, after witnessing the public humiliation and abuse of a female friend, vows to avenge her by going after the hoodlums.
Said Bhattacharya, “Rana perfectly fits the role as the scion of a wealthy Hyderabad Industrialist with real-estate ambitions in Los Angeles, who gets brutally sucked into that city‘s underbelly, setting off a chain of events that sucks him into a vortex of violence till he finds an unlikely ally and mentor in an over-the-hill LA Cop and the game changes.”
Though the cast of the film hasn‘t been disclosed yet, it will have an ensemble of Hollywood A-listers.
Daggubati, who shot to fame in Bollywood with Dum Maaro Dum, will soon be seen in Ram Gopal Varma‘s Department.
MUMBAI: Bedabrata Pain‘s film Chittagong will have its world premiere at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) on 10 April.
The film gets to open on the silver screen after a two-year-long arduous journey. The Manoj Bajpai-starrer was supposed to release way back in 2010, but since Ashutosh Gowariker‘s Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey (2010) also revolved around the Chittagong revolution of 1930, the film was delayed.
Said Pain, “Emotionally, both me and Shonali (Shonali Bose co-writer and wife) were in a sad state. Despite having lost our teenage son in an accident, we completed the film before its then-release date. Yet we have had to wait for two years.”
Pain, who is one of the inventors of the active pixel sensor technology that produced the world‘s smallest camera which has been inducted to the US Space Technology Hall of Fame, is now waiting to release his film in India.
Other films that will also be screened at the festival are Abhinay Deo‘s Delhi Belly and Sriram Raghavan‘s Agent Vinod, besides critically acclaimed films like Salim Ahmed‘s Abu Son of Adam (2011), Rajan Khosa‘s Gattu, Karan Gour‘s Kshay and Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni‘s Deool.
MUMBAI: In a bizarre accident, actress, choreographer and dancer Zina Bethune was killed in the early morning hours last Sunday after she left her car along Forest Lawn Drive in Los Angeles to look after an injured animal but was struck by oncoming traffic. She suffered head injuries and died at the scene. Bethune was 66.
Bethune is best known for playing the girl with a past opposite Harvey Keitel in Martin Scorsese’s 1967 Catholic morality tale Who’s That Knocking at My Door.
Earlier, Bethune starred as a na?ve student nurse in the 1962-65 CBS primetime series The Doctors and the Nurses.
At age six, Zina Bethune began her dancing career at George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet and performed with the New York City Ballet, where she starred as Clara in the first televised The Nutcracker.
MUMBAI: Chinese vice president Xi Jinping will endorse the growing ties between his country and Hollywood on Friday when he is scheduled to unveil a joint venture between DreamWorks Animation (DWA) and two state-owned Chinese media groups.
Xi, who is due to visit Los Angeles on the final leg of his US visit will announce the tie-up between Shanghai Media Group, China Media Capital and DWA, according to several people familiar with the situation.
Under the terms of the joint venture, the companies will construct a studio facility in Shanghai with the aim of developing film, television and live stage productions for the fast-growing Chinese media market.
From a long time, Hollywood studios have been eager to find ways into China‘s fast-growing film market and this at a time when they are facing challenges on the domestic front: the decline of DVD sales.
On the other hand, film business is booming in China where new cinemas are being added at a rate of about three screens a day, faster than that in any other country.
China is forecast to be the world‘s biggest cinema market within the next decade and touched $2bn in box-office receipts in 2011, a near $400m increase on 2010.
MUMBAI: Los Angeles-based entertainment and sports agency, Creative Artists Agency, has signed up Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra to represent her in the international market.
CAA represents A-list and emerging stars in movies, television, music, and sports and is often cited as the world‘s leading talent agency.
Priyanka will join a CAA‘s clientele list which boasts of names like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, LeBron James, Oprah Winfrey, Julia Roberts, Steven Spielberg, and Will Smith, among others.
The actress, who was part of commercially successful projects like Don 2 and Agneepath, is also working with international label Universal on her debut album, which is expected to release this year.
MUMBAI: Fox Star Studios is all set to open its 2012 account with Alexander Payne and George Clooney’s The Descendants.
The film will release across India on 26 January.
Directed by Alexander Payne, the film has George Clooney essaying the role of Matt King, a privileged Honolulu attorney from a landowning family who is compelled to reevaluate his marriage and life while his wife lies exhausted in a hospital bed following a boating accident.
With 5 Golden Globe nominations already under its belt and also being chosen as the best film of 2011 by Los Angeles Film Critics Association, The Descendants is expected to blitzkrieg all major film awards this year. The film is also in race for an Oscar nod.
MUMBAi: The Film Independent Board has announced the appointment of senior director Sean Mc Manus and director of artist development Josh Welsh as its co-presidents.
In their new positions, Mc Manus and Welsh will work together to lead the organization and run its year-round programs that nurture independent filmmakers and expand the audience in which their work can be appreciated.
They succeed executive director Dawn Hudson, who left the organisation in June to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences as CEO.
Sean Mc Manus has nearly 20 years of experience building organizations that have come to make a meaningful impact in both the domestic and international film and non-profit worlds.
He joined Film Independent in 1998 as Development Director and was promoted to Senior Director in 2006, overseeing 36 full-time staff members and more than 100 contract employees including management and administration, fund development, marketing and communications, technology, the Film Independent Spirit Awards, Los Angeles Film Festival and the Film Independent at LACMA Film Series.
For the last ten years, Josh Welsh has been responsible for the overall design, strategic planning and implementation of all of Film Independent’s Artist Development programs that include the Filmmaker Labs for Directors, Screenwriters, Producers and Documentarians, Fast Track, and the Grants Program and four years administering Film Independent’s signature diversity program, Project Involve.