By Martin I. Petrov
‘Put your headphones on and wait for my sign. We need to press play at the same moment to be synchronised and dance.’ Two loners, each holding their own music player surrender to the melancholic sound only they can hear among the trees in a silent forest. Only a split second is enough for one to venture into Yiorgos Lanthimos’ nostalgic ode to solitude.
The loners, this is how we call them. Ordinary singles, in the not so distant future, ar...
Improvised and fun! Thank you Andrez Cruzarios
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By Liza Foreman
The 70th Venice Film Festival came to a close Saturday night with a raft of prizes awarded here on the Lido by a jury headed by Bernardo Bertolucci.
The main prize, the Golden Lion, went to Sacro Gra by Gianfranco Rosi, while Best Director went to one of the hottest titles from the festival, Miss Violence, and director Alexandros Avranas.
The Grand Jury prize prize went to Tsai Ming-liang for Stray Dogs which had been tipped by critics to win prizes here despite...
Salvador Litvak based his film on Ward Hill Lamon's memoirs. This outstanding first-hand account describes the unique bound uniting Abraham Lincoln to his bodyguard, U.S. Marshal Ward Hill Lamon.
Despite encountering many obstacles during the process, Salvador Litvak took up the challenge of shooting an epic film on Lincoln on a very low budget, and conquered!
Clearly inspired by Lincoln's strength and determination, Salvador Litvak gave a new meaning to ...
By Liza Foreman
DreamWorks Studios has concluded a further ten key partnership deals with leading independent distribution companies overseas, through its sales partner, Mister Smith Entertainment.
Mister Smith represents DreamWorks Studios' films for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
See full story at: http://lizaonfilm.blogspot.com/2013/02/dreamworks-finds-friends-overseas.html
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By Liza Foreman
And in more Berlinale news, Johnny Depp is confirmed to star in Cross Creek's crime thriller "Black Mass," as Boston’s most notorious gangster, Whitey Bulger. Sales for the film will begin at the European Film Market.
The film will be to co-produced and co-financed with Exclusive Media, and directed by Barry Levinson. "Black Mass" will be released by Universal Pictures in the U.S. through Cross Creek’s d...
By Liza Foreman
The Cohen Media Group has announced plans to restore scores of classic films from its Cohen Film Collection which includes hundreds of cinematic gems, which will be restored and enhanced by the company as part of the project.
Formerly The Rohauer Library, the collection includes more than 700 films - from Hollywood classics to foreign masterpieces and seminal avant-garde works.
See full story at:
http://lizaonfilm.blogspot.com/2013/02/cohen-media-group-to-restore-hollywo...
By Liza Foreman
Collaborations between fashion designers and filmmakers are on the increase. Witness the recent Banana Republic “Anna Karenina” collection, or the design of costumes for “The Great Gatsby” which was aided by Miuccia Prada.
Now Sony and Snoopy are taking the development to a new level, with a New York Fashion Week show presenting a collection in honor of the release of “The Smurfs 2” movie which is due out in July.
For full story go ...
By Liza Foreman
Fox searchlight has set an April 5, 2013 release date for "Trance," it was announced on Tuesday. Directed by Danny Boyle, the story follows Simon (James McAvoy), a fine art auctioneer, who teams up with a criminal gang to steal a Goya painting worth millions of dollars. But after suffering a blow to the head during the heist he awakens to discover he has no memory of where he hid the painting. When physical threats and torture fail to produce...
By Liza Foreman
“From Up on Poppy Hill,” the latest production from Studio Ghibli, will be released in Los Angeles and New York on March 15, 2013, and will expand its run on March 29.
Written by the legendary studio's founder, Hayao Miyazaki, and directed by Goro Miyazaki, “From Up on Poppy Hill” marks the first creative collaboration between father and son.
The setting is Yokohama in 1963, and the filmmakers bring to life the bustling seaside town, with it...
By Liza Foreman
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios has secured the feature film rights to Jojo Moyes bestselling novel “Me Before You” it was announced today by Jonathan Glickman, MGM’s President, Motion Picture Group.
“Me Before You” tells the story of two very different characters: Lou, a small town girl caught between dead-end jobs and Will, a high-profile, successful man who becomes wheelchair bound following an accident. Will has decided his life is not...
By Liza Foreman
Julia Garner has joined the cast of Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s "Sin City: A Dame To Kill For," which is now filming in Austin at Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios. Garner, an up-and-comer whose credits include "Martha Marcy May Marlene" and "The Perks Of Being A Wallflower," will play a young stripper opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Johnny in the follow-up to 2005′s "Sin City," adapted from Miller’s ow...
By Liza Foreman
New Regency and Gore Verbinski’s Blind Wink are joining forces on the feature film “Pyongyang,” about outsourcing run amok when a young animator sent to North Korea is accused of spying.
The film will reteam director/producer Gore Verbinski and writer Steve Conrad (“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”) for the adaptation of Guy Delisle’s graphic novel “Pyongyang.” Verbinski is currently in post-production on “The Lone Ranger,&r...
By Liza Foreman
Magnolia Pictures has picked up North American right to Blackfish at Sundance.
The film follows the notorious killer whale Tilikum, who was responsible for three human deaths. Through these incidents, Blackfish examines the consequences of keeping intelligent mammals in captivity.
Blackfish premiered as part of Sundance's U.S. Documentary Competition category.
Within days of the Sundance Film Festival beginning this year, a flurry of deals ...
By Liza Foreman
Fox Searchlight Pictures Presidents Stephen Gilula and Nancy Utley announced Wednesday that the company will re-release director Benh Zeitlin’s Academy-Award nominated film "Beasts of the Southern Wild" in select cities for a special return engagement on Friday, January 18.
Nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director, the film’s return to theatres marks the one-year anniversary of its...
By Liza Foreman
London-based HanWay Films has taken on world sales for the Sundance-bound feature "Houston" by Bastian Günther (World Dramatic Competition). The film charts the epic melt-down of a German headhunter whose desperate pursuit of a Texas oil exec is hampered by booze, jetlag and a questionable sidekick.
The film is Günther’s second feature, following "Autopilots," which premiered at the Berlinale Film Festival in 2007. The f...
By Liza Foreman
QED International has appointed John Hegeman President of Worldwide Marketing and Acquisitions. In his newly created role, Hegeman will report to QED CEO Bill Block and be responsible for global marketing and acquisitions, as well as all genre productions.
Hegeman is a leading expert in global marketing across multiple platforms and his hire reunites him with Block with whom he previously worked at Artisan Entertainment as President of Worldwide Marketing. There, the ...
By Liza Foreman
As conventional wisdom would have it, for a film to even get an Oscar nomination, it would first have to make at least $5 million to $10 million at the box office and be released on three-hundred-plus screens. Remember all of those lavish campaigns by Oscar kingpin Harvey Weinstein?
Well, how things have changed. Consider “The Invisible War,” the first acquisition for the digital powerhouse Cinedigm, which was nominated earlier this week for an Academy Award in th...
By Liza Foreman
Loretta Young was considered to be one of the most fashionable stars of her time. “Glamour is something you can’t bear to be without once you are used to it,” she once said. And then: "Every best-dressed woman keeps some of her gowns for years. She's learned that fashion-wisdom is compounded of knowledge, taste, confidence and poise."
Now on display at The Hollywood Museum in Los Angeles is a selection from her wardrobe, including...
By Liza Foreman
Herewith the nominations for the 85th Academy Awards, which were announced today (Thursday, January 10) by this year's Oscar host, Seth MacFarlane, and actress Emma Stone.
MacFarlane and Stone announced the nominees at a 5:38 a.m. PT live news conference attended by more than 400 international media representatives.
Academy members from each of the branches vote to determine the nominees in their respective categories – actors nominate actors, film editors no...
By Liza Foreman
Robin Williams is set to star in Dito Montiel’s (“A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints”) “Boulevard,” the producers announced on Wednesday.
Camellia Entertainment is in pre-production on the feature film, which is an intimate drama about marriage and lies. Williams will play Nolan Mack, a devoted husband in a marriage of convenience until a run-in with a guarded young man forces Nolan to come to terms with his own secrets.
Up-and-coming actor...
Posted by Liza Foreman
The British Academy Film Award (BAFTA) nominations for 2012 are as follows:
Lincoln receives ten nominations. Les Misérables and Life of Pi are each nominated in nine categories; Skyfall has eight nominations, Argo has seven nominations and Anna Karenina has six. Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty are each nominated five times.
The Master and Amour have four nominations. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Silver Linings Playbook have each been nominated t...
By Liza Foreman
Halle Berry has passed on Jerry Bruckheimer’s upcoming television conspiracy drama “Hostages,” leaving the producers to figure out their next step.
Jeffrey Nachmanoff is writing and directing the drama for Jerry Bruckheimer Television and Warner Bros. TV. The project landed at CBS in October with a pilot production commitment.
“Hostages” is based on an Israeli format which centers on a family caught in the middle of a political conspiracy ...
By Liza Foreman
Michael Bay has signed Irish actor Jack Reynor to star in "Transformers 4," Bay announced on his website www.michaelbay.com on Tuesday.
“I just hired a great new actor for Transformers 4 to star against Mark Wahlberg. Jack Reynor, he is an Irish kid that came to America with 30 bucks in his pocket. Pretty ballsy. Seriously who does that? Anyway I spotted him in a great little Irish movie WHAT RICHARD DID. This kid is the ...
By Liza Foreman
Indie pop star sami.the.great has launched a Kickstarter campaign to help raise funds for her first fully-fledged solo tour.
"I want to do something that is a little more interesting both musically and visually,” she said. “I plan on creating a set using programs and instruments that will let me fill the spaces with sounds that a band may have filled, totally on my own.”
For the tour, the artist will also work with the animator Preston Spurlock to ...
