Why Hollywood kowtows to China | Film. Censors and sensibility … MGM's soon-to-be-released Red Dawn has changed its axis of evil from China to North Korea. Photograph: Allstar/MGM/Sportsphoto Ltd Last week North Korea threatened America with a nuclear strike. This week sees the UK release of Red Dawn, which features a North Korean invasion of the US. An impressive instance of Hollywood's far-sightedness? Not quite. Red Dawn Production year: 2012 Country: USA Cert (UK): 15 Runtime: 93 mins Directors: Dan Bradley Cast: Adrianne Palicki, Chris Hemsworth, Connor Cruise, Isabel Lucas, Josh Hutcherson, Josh Peck, Will Yun Lee, josh hutcherson More on this film Red Dawn is the reboot of a cold war thriller that's much cherished in some quarters.
So, MGM's re-imaginers decided to reallocate Russia's role to the Chinese People's Republic. Unfortunately, the film had already been shot. The world's most populous nation has become the second-largest overseas market for American films. Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith in The Karate Kid. Festival Scope: Festivals on Demand for Film Professionals World Wide. Erik Lundegaard: Are Critically Acclaimed Movies More Popular? They Were Last Year. British cinema's golden age is now | Film.
Compared to theatre, cinema is an entirely portable medium – think what our view of film would be like if all we saw were British movies, with occasional touring productions of foreign work. No Hollywood blockbusters, no Korean ultra-violence, no Iranian minimalism. Nothing old, either – no Italian neorealism, or Czech new wave, or French poetic realism. Imagine what life for the British filmgoer would have been like, say, in 1978 – the highlight of your year would probably have been Death on the Nile, or Watership Down. And let's not forget the dark days of 1999 and 2000, when this paper felt compelled to trash the jaw-dropping wave of terrible British films in the wake of the lottery-fund bonanza.
Fortunately, such a scenario will never come to pass, unless an insanely protectionist government installs a prohibitive quota regime. For those who read the runes, the signs are clear. But most heartening of all is the wealth of activity and depth in all areas of the cinematic spectrum. BSkyB to face no action over TV film monopoly | Media. BSkyB was handed a reprieve by the competition watchdog after a ruling over the broadcaster's stranglehold on pay-TV movies was reversed. Photograph: David Jones/PA BSkyB is to face no action from regulators over its monopoly of UK pay-TV film rights, after the Competition Commission decided that video on demand rivals such as LoveFilm and Netflix provide a vibrant market for consumers. The decision marks a U-turn by the competition regulator, which provisionally determined last August that BSkyB's contracts with the six major Hollywood studios – Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures and Universal Studios – were anti-competitive and needed to be weakened to allow rivals to flourish.
The regulator has decided that as a result, consumers now have more choice. "As a result, Sky Movies no longer provides Sky with the advantage that it used to when competing with other traditional pay-TV platforms, like Virgin Media or BT Vision. " Capital, capital: the Arts Council and the art of economic rebalancing | Culture professionals network | Guardian Professional. James Corden at the National Theatre – three London Southbank institutions receive more in grants than the north and Midlands combined. Photograph: Tristram Kenton Does the arts and culture community, and indeed even this network, need to be saying anything to Arts Council England (ACE) and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) before the second round of capital funding applications due this summer?
When the council announced the results of its first round in March – just over £114m to 26 projects – Max Stafford-Clark was moved to describe the council (in this newspaper) as "absolute vermin", focusing on the dominance of London's "big-hitters" as the largest recipients of this pot of the council's largesse. Its chief executive Alan Davey responded with a defence of the council's geographical reach. Of the £114m provisionally allocated, 47% goes to eight London projects, and the next two highest regional allocations are to the south-east (14%) and south-west (13%). Report from MEDIA Desk UK's Creative Europe seminar » MEDIA UK. Is the Hollywood remake dead? | Film.
Aksel Hennie as Roger Brown in the new adaptation of Headhunters. Photograph: Picselect When producer Scott Rudin optioned the English-language rights on Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo books in early 2010, he'd be forgiven for anticipating a slam-dunk hit. He had a global bestseller and two lead characters likely to attract A-list actors. The only snag was that the material had already yielded film versions in the original Swedish. But these had yet to open in the key English-speaking markets, which would surely be way more excited about a version directed by David Fincher and starring Daniel Craig. Headhunters Production year: 2011 Country: Rest of the world Cert (UK): 15 Runtime: 101 mins Directors: Morten Tyldum Cast: Aksel Hennie, Julie Olgaard, Max Manus, Nikolaj Coster Waldau, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Synnove Macody, Synnove Macody Lund More on this film The question remains: why are these English-language remakes considered necessary in the first place?
Exposed: the hundreds of City millionaires in film tax loophole - Business News - Business. Alain Grisay, chief executive of F&C Asset Management, and Lance Uggla, who runs the financial data firm Markit, are among representatives from big business who are members of the Eclipse 35 film investment partnership loophole, an analysis of the accounts by The Independent has found. Coverage of Eclipse 35, which was ruled against in a tax tribunal this week, has focused on Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, former England boss Sven Goran Eriksson and Nobby Solano, the ex-Newcastle United player. Other football stars including Bolton Wanderers' Jussi Jaaskelainen and the former Ireland international Graham Kavanagh are also named as members in the documents. But it is the vast swathe of City traders, hedge fund managers and private equity advisers which stand out, giving a rare insight into how the financial world's richest players shield their assets from the taxman.
Also appearing is Philippa Rose, sometimes claimed to be the most powerful headhunter in the City. US film industry set for four years of strong growth, predicts report | Film. Stand by for the sound of clinking champagne glasses chiming around the Hollywood hills. A leading accountancy firm has predicted that the US film industry is set for four years of healthy growth, defying predictions of a downturn due to internet piracy and waning DVD sales. Revenue is set to grow from box office returns, internet streaming services, cinema advertising, Blu-ray sales and home video kiosks, not only in the US but across the globe, according to the report by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The upturn is predicted to last until at least 2015. In north America, the film industry is anticipated to generate $50.3bn in four years' time compared to $40.8bn this year, growth of almost 20%. Worldwide profits are expected to leap from $88.8bn to $113.1bn, indicating an even more rapid rate of development.
The report will provide comfort for an industry which has been faced with a number of unforeseen challenges over the past decade. The Hobbit boosts New Zealand film industry | Film. Peter Jackson's two-part fantasy epic The Hobbit helped New Zealand's film industry contribute more than $2.4bn to the country's economy in 2011, according to a new report. Figures released this week by Statistics New Zealand detail a 4% rise over 2010's headline figure. The Hobbit's importance to the Kiwi economy was highlighted in October 2010 when ministers promised to rewrite the country's labour laws and offer a $25m tax break to the Hollywood studio Warner Bros in order to ensure the Lord of the Rings prequel was shot on the same location as its predecessor. Gisella Carr, chief executive of locations marketing agency FilmNZ, told the Hollywood Reporter the boost was not just about Jackson's adaptation of JRR Tolkien's childrens' novel.
"[It's] everyone in the screen industry playing their part, whether they are working on international or domestic production, or both," she said. "We could never have imagined the scale of these figures a generation ago. Www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/DCMS_film_policy_review_report-2012.pdf. Screen International News - Film industry news from UK, US, Europe, Asia and The World. Www.iconoval.fr/publicmedia/original/109/90/fr/tax_incentives_films_france.pdf.pdf. Is not available. Introduction to independent Film Financing. Author: Malcolm Ritchie Joint Managing Director, Qwerty Films Overview Financing independent films is becoming more difficult with banks becoming more cautious about to whom they will lend money, and international sales and television licences both being less lucrative sources for pre-sales than in the past.
There is an increasing reliance on "soft" money from tax shelter funds and public subsidies. In these difficult market conditions, most independent producers are having to give away most of their potential upside from the success of their film simply to get the film financed in the first place. The US studios are also looking for new ways to finance films to feed their distribution slates to keep the production costs off balance sheet and enable them to spread their own resources further. Financiers may be interested in investing in the film for any of a number of reasons. The Main Sources of Finance Top Tips.
Why Hollywood Is Losing the Public Relations War on Piracy (Analysis) Getty Images On Wednesday, to protest President Barack Obama’s decision to withhold unilateral support for a new anti-piracy law, Hollywood has decided to suspend all film productions for a day. In addition, the major TV networks have announced plans to axe all shows that might be critical favorites with small, fervent fan bases, but haven’t mustered enough ratings to make a sizeable profit. Of course, none of the above is really happening. For innovative forms of protest, look elsewhere. Instead, Hollywood is taking the derailment of major new intellectual property laws in stride, stressing the positives – “We welcome the Administration's clear statement that legislation is needed to stop foreign based thieves…” – and probably ignoring its own failings. What happened? For the past year, the entertainment industry relied on its old playbook and clearly underestimated its opponents.
Mistake #1 --Much of the legislation was negotiated behind closed doors. E-mail: eriqgardner@yahoo.com. Quotas and levies. This section is still under construction.Numbers in square brackets after entries link to the list of references. Screen quota A quota was introduced in June 2004 to protect local production, requiring all exhibitors to show at least one local film in each quarter year for each screen. Thus a 16-screen multiplex must show 64 Argentinean films a year. Films may also not be changed midweek, nor taken off if attendance falls to between six and 25 per cent of capacity. Much of the exhibition sector is foreign-owned. Screen quota A quota was introduced in the state of Victoria around 1927, requiring cinemas to screen at least 1,000 ft (one reel) of Australian production in each programme.
Screen quota A quota was introduced on 3 September 1926 to run for two years. A quota of one short Brazilian film for each long foreign film was introduced in 1932. A film fund is created under the revised film law of 1938. Screen quota Finland has never applied a screen quota. See USSR Media law index. Faces of Globalization - Filmmakers in Korea. Cinema restrictions protect local film industries, but may slow globalization. SEOUL, South Korea -- Cha Hyun-kyung has grown up watching Hollywood movies in which a U.S. hero takes revenge on the bad guys or Julia Roberts-style "pretty woman" falls in love with a handsome Caucasian guy. She sometimes got tired of Hollywood blockbusters but had no alternatives because locally made South Korean movies were unpopular and their quality was low. Local cinemas are required to fill 40 percent of their programs with homegrown movies, but filmmakers turned out low-cost productions to meet the quota, while enjoying their licenses to import foreign movies.
But not any more. Cha, a 35-year-old university lecturer in Seoul, is enjoying many homegrown films whose quality she says has sharply improved. "Recently made local films better reflect Korean culture and interest. Some local films have and won critical acclaim and become favorites at international film festivals.