News

“We’re so close,” read a letter from Rick to his allies in Sunday’s episode of The Walking Dead. “This can be our last fight.” But if it ain’t over till the fat lady sings, he was starting his victory lap a mite early, considering the fate that befell the “character” in question in “The King, the Widow, and Rick.” And not only was the fat lady headed for a mess of hurt, but two regulars wound up under lock and key — one of them in the buff — another trio was brazenly disobeying orders, and yet another character...

Harvey Weinstein, Iain Canning and Garth Davis discuss Toronto hit which had its European premiere in Zurich on Thursday night [Sept 23].

Following Lion’s well-received Toronto world premiere, executive producer and Us distributor Harvey Weinstein, producer Iain Canning and director Garth Davis discussed the film’s journey ahead of the film’s European premiere at the Zurich Film Festival.

Weinstein told a press conference that he felt a personal connection to the material when he first read the script:

“I was moved by the piece. Twelve years ago I started seeing Georgina [Chapman, now his wife]. She’s involved in fashion, and her inspiration has always been India. Her family had lived there and we named our now 6-year-old daughter India, and Georgina started a school in Delhi to take kids off the street, the Rose Home Shelter. This story was very appealing because of these kids and what happens to them, for me on a personal note,” the executive...

Harvey Weinstein, Iain Canning and Garth Davis discuss Toronto hit which had its European premiere in Zurich on Thursday night [Sept 23].

Following Lion’s well-received Toronto world premiere, executive producer and Us distributor Harvey Weinstein, producer Iain Canning and director Garth Davis discussed the film’s journey ahead of the film’s European premiere at the Zurich Film Festival.

Weinstein told a press conference that he felt a personal connection to the material when he first read the script:

“I was moved by the piece. Twelve years ago I started seeing Georgina [Chapman, now his wife]. She’s involved in fashion, and her inspiration has always been India. Her family had lived there and we named our now 6-year-old daughter India, and Georgina started a school in Delhi to take kids off the street, the Rose Home Shelter. This story was very appealing because of these kids and what happens to them, for me on a personal note,” the executive...

Harvey Weinstein, Iain Canning and Garth Davis discuss Toronto hit which got its European premiere in Zurich on Thursday [23] night.

Following Lion’s well-received Toronto world premiere, executive producer and Us distributor Harvey Weinstein, producer Iain Canning and director Garth Davis discussed the film’s journey ahead of the film’s European premiere at the Zurich Film Festival.

Weinstein told a press conference that he felt a personal connection to the material when he first read the script:

“I was moved by the piece. Twelve years ago I started seeing Georgina [Chapman, now his wife]. She’s involved in fashion, and her inspiration has always been India. Her family had lived there and we named our now 6-year-old daughter India, and Georgina started a school in Delhi to take kids off the street, the Rose Home Shelter. This story was very appealing because of these kids and what happens to them, for me on a personal note,” the executive...

The Toronto hit got its European premiere in Zurich on Thursday [23] night.

Following Lion’s well-received Toronto world premiere, executive producer and Us distributor Harvey Weinstein, producer Iain Canning and director Garth Davis discussed the film’s journey ahead of the film’s European premiere at the Zurich Film Festival.

Weinstein told a press conference that he felt a personal connection to the material when he first read the script:

“I was moved by the piece. Twelve years ago I started seeing Georgina [Chapman, now his wife]. She’s involved in fashion, and her inspiration has always been India. Her family had lived there and we named our now 6-year-old daughter India, and Georgina started a school in Delhi to take kids off the street, the Rose Home Shelter. This story was very appealing because of these kids and what happens to them, for me on a personal note,” the executive producer said.

Weinstein had a strong track record with producers...

Major South Korean investor/distributor Next Entertainment World (New) has launched its own international sales division through subsidiary Contents Panda.

Originally established in 2013 as New’s international business and ancillary rights division, Contents Panda will debut its sales arm at next month’s European Film Market (Efm).

Woody Kim, CEO of New, told ScreenDaily: “We started Contents Panda because we felt a need to prepare for future market potential in distribution. The company started in Iptv and VOD and is now launching into international sales.

“It will start by handling New contents, but we plan to expand to take on diverse films from other companies as well using our sales network and know-how.”

Last October, New received investment of $53m from China’s Huace Film & TV and recently saw a successful Ipo.

Contents Panda will be handling all of New’s films from this year onwards. Sales agent Finecut will continue to handle previously announced titles such as...

Iceland’s Oscar submission takes top prize in Lübeck; Edward Snowden gives video introduction to Citizenfour at Dok Leipzig; arson attack hits Lgbt screening in Kyiv.

Baldvin Baldvin Zophoníasson’s Life In A Fishbowl was the big winner at this year’s Nordic Film Days in Lübeck, taking home the Ndr Film Prize, worth $15,655 (€12,500)

Lead actor Thorsteinn Bachmann accepted the award in person from the five-person jury, which said it was “a touching and hopeful film about seemingly hopeless situations”.

The co-production between Iceland, Finland, Sweden and the Czech Republic is Iceland’s submission for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar and is being handled internationally by Films Boutique.

Special mentions were also given to Hisham Zaman’s Letter To The King (Norway) and J-p Valkeapää’s They Have Escaped (Finland) by the jury comprising actors Victoria Trauttmansdorff and Niklas Osterloh, producer Christoph Thoke, Ndr commissioning editor Diana Schulte-Kellinghaus and Finnish film-maker Kirsi Marie Liimatainen.

Festival-goers voted for...

20) Road Signs

The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.

Peter Drucker

Home Box Office has dodged more bullets than Wyatt Earp at the Ok Corral. Going on the satellite in 1975 turned the company from a regional possibility into a national success; then came “hitting the wall” and the challenge of VCRs in the 1980s; and then there was the late 1990s course correction which turned the service into an original series king; and then there was the struggle of the Chris Albrecht years and the WGA strike.

Today, HBO has its big hits – Game of Thrones and True Blood, and its second tier, buzz-making winners like Girls, The Newsroom, Veep and Treme. Medical dramedy Getting On, and Looking – often described as a gay Sex and the City – show the service hasn’t gotten any shyer about trying to tackle provocative subject matter in risky ways.

The schedule for the fourth day of Comic-Con is now available, and it’s a big day for television panels, including Supernatural, Breaking Bad, Under the Dome, and Doctor Who.

You can find the complete schedule here, but check out below for some of the biggest highlight’s from the convention’s final day. San Diego Comic-Con will run from July 17-21.

10:00am-11:00am, Room 6De, DC Comics Superman: The New 52: The Last Son of Krypton is one of the most recognized pop culture icons of all time, and this year, Superman is set to soar to new heights!

The Dark Knight Rises remains the top film in the country after three weeks in theatrical release.

The batman film, distributed by Warner Bros, took $4.266m in its third weekend across 619 screens for a $6,893 screen average.

However, despite its continued strength, The Dark Knight Rises hasn’t been able to top The Avengers in a three-week comparison with the Batman film on $33.047m and The Avengers on $39.033m.

In their respective opening weekends, The Dark Knight Rises was the fourth highest grossing film of all time in its opening weekend, while the Avengers was eighth. Over the first week tally, The Avengers was third highest grossing film and The Dark Knight Rises was tenth.

The Avengers currently sits at 53.339m all time box office, in third spot behind Titanic in second on 57.650, and Avatar on the massive 115.577m.

In this week’s major releases, dance film Step Up 4: Miami Heat,...

Mad Men has never been about happy endings. Or even happy lives. Things are shit all around. Either you have to deal with it or pretend that everything is rosy. A lot of people prefer the latter, which is pretty much leads us to Don Draper (Jon Hamm), The King of Illusions. In “Mystery Date”, his illusions crash into his reality and things think a dark, nasty turn. And though it may have been (Spoiler Alert!) completely fake, we finally get to see his inner monologue, courtesy of a Sopranos-like fever dream.

One of the biggest illusions during the Mad Men-set era — and in every era — is the illusion that violence solves everything. Particularly violence committed by men. It’s a means to an end that never gets the full results one is looking for. Does it actually do away with a perceived threat? Does it make a man more of a man?...

Acclaimed “The King and the Clown” director Lee Joon Ik returns with “Battlefield Heroes”, the follow up to his hit 2003 debut “Once Upon a Time in a Battlefield”. The film serves up more of the same, continuing the 7th century historical saga which basically plays out like “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” in Korean as an ensemble cast struggle against each other for the right to rule the peninsula. Most of the original stars return, including Jung Jin Young (who also worked with the director on “Sunny” and “The King and the Clown”), Lee Moon Shik (“A Bloody Aria”) and Hwang Jung Min (“The Unjust”) with Ryu Seung Ryong (“Blades of Blood”), Yoon Je Moon (“Mother”), Sun Woo Sun (“Woochi”), and Running Man’s Lee Kwang Soo also appearing. The film takes place eight years after the events of the original, with the kingdom of Shilla continuing the alliance with...

David Fincher's "The Social Network"is emerging as the consensus choice as best film of 2010. Most of the critics' groups have sanctified it, and after its initial impact it has only grown it stature. I think it is an early observer of a trend in our society, where we have learned new ways of thinking of ourselves: As members of a demographic group, as part of a database, as figures in...a social network.

My best films list also appears on my main site, but I am posting it here on the blog so that you can comment on it. In response to the reader protests of recent years, I've returned to the time-honored tradition of ten films arranged in order from one to ten. After that, it's all alphabetical. The notion of objectively ordering works of art seems bizarre to me.

Here are the year's best feature films:...

[See post to watch Flash video]

Synopsis

Sunny (Aaron Kwok) is a clown in a circus act but he aspires to be a top performer just like his dad, The King of Flying Knife. While in Malaysia, Sunny and a few of his circus performer friends go for a treasure hunt, stumbling upon barrels of bio-chemicals left from the war. Upon returning, some of the members are mutating due to inhaling the bio-chemicals but Sunny seems fine from the exposure. They gain extraordinary superhuman powers. The leader of the entertainment outfit Chang Tai Chu (Colin Chou) decides to use this newfound strength to do evil. As there is an increase of crime in the city, the media and the police get involved. Kungfu master Suan Hou (Wu Jing) and policewoman Xin Hua (Zhang Jin Chu) enter the fray, while Angel (Shu Qi), a reporter who is recently demoted, also pursues the case in hopes of rescuing her flagging career.

Synopsis

Sunny (Aaron Kwok) is a clown in a circus act but he aspires to be a top performer just like his dad, The King of Flying Knife. While in Malaysia, Sunny and a few of his circus performer friends go for a treasure hunt, stumbling upon barrels of bio-chemicals left from the war. Upon returning, some of the members are mutating due to inhaling the bio-chemicals but Sunny seems fine from the exposure. They gain extraordinary superhuman powers. The leader of the entertainment outfit Chang Tai Chu (Colin Chou) decides to use this newfound strength to do evil. As there is an increase of crime in the city, the media and the police get involved. Kungfu master Suan Hou (Wu Jing) and policewoman Xin Hua (Zhang Jin Chu) enter the fray, while Angel (Shu Qi), a reporter who is recently demoted, also pursues the case in hopes of rescuing her flagging career.

DVD Playhouse—December 2009

By

Allen Gardner

Public Enemies (Universal) Johnny Depp portrays legendary Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger in co- writer/director Michael Mann’s take on America’s first “Public Enemy Number One.” Like many big studio releases today, Public Enemies has it all: A-list talent before and behind the camera, but lacks a heart or soul that allows its audience to connect with it. Film plays out like a “true crime” TV show with re-enactments of famous events cast with top actors and shot by the best technicians in the business, with little, if any, character or story development to hold it together in between. A real disappointment from one of our finest filmmakers and finest actors. The lone standout: the great character actor Stephen Lang as a hard-eyed lawman who’s seen a lot, but manages to retain a tiny piece of his heart. For a better take on the same subject,...