Indie Actress/Director Adrienne Shelly Dead

Forty-year old Adrienne Shelly, the actress and director who made her name starring in Hal Hartley's "Trust" ad "The Unbelievable Truth" and directed the indie features "Sudden Manhattan" and "I'll Take You There," was found dead of an apparent suicide in her New York City, according to the New York Daily News. indieWIRE columnist Anthony Kaufman offers a personal take on his blog. 
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AFP: London Film Festival Closes with "Babel"

The London Film Festival wrapped up with a gala screening of the new Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu film, "Babel." Actor Gael Garcia Bernal was greeting fans on the red carpet as the two-week festival, which featured over 300 films, closed. Four awards were presented at the gala, including an honor for British director Andrea Arnold, who received the Sutherland Trophy for most original first feature for "Red Road." AFP reports. 
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Short and Feature Docs Nominees Named for 22nd IDA Awards

The International Documentary Association (IDA) has announced its nominees in the features and shorts categories for the 22nd IDA Distinguished Documentary Achievement Awards. The feature docs competing are: "Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?" "Deliver Us From Evil," "Iraq in Fragments," "Showbusiness: A Season to Remember," and "Sierra Leon's Refugee All Stars." The five nominated shorts include: "The Blood of Yingzhou District," "The Diary of Immaculee, Angel's Fire," "The Short History of the Potato Pie & How it Became a Flying Saucer," and "The Wild Sheep, and the Fox and Love." The winners will be announced live for the first time during the IDA Awards Benefit Gala December 8th at the Directors Guild of America in L.A. [Brian Brooks] 
[permalink]   [ filed under Awards Watch, Honors ]

Cruise and Wagner to Relaunch United Artists

MGM's legendary United Artists label will return with Tom Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner at the helm, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. chairman and CEO Harry E. Sloan announced today. In the wake of ending their long relationship with Paramount, Wagner will serve as CEO of the new UA and she and Cruise will maintain a substantial ownership of the unit and control the company's production slate of about four films per year. The output may increase in the future according to an announcement, which added, "The talent friendly studio will be reborn as a place where producers, writers, directors and actors can thrive in a creative environment, developing and producing entertaining film projects. The plan would allow artists throughout the community to pursue their creative visions outside of the traditional studio system." Cruise will star in an produce projects for United Artists but will still be free to work with movies at studios. The move follows the recent rebirth of MGM as a standalone entity; United Artists was last re-envisioned in 2001 when it was relaunched as MGM's specialty division and headed by Bingham Ray. Worldwide marketing and distribution for the new UA will be handled by MGM. In a statement, Cruise said today:

Paula and I are very respectful of the rich history and tradition of United Artists, and we welcome the opportunity to contribute to that legacy by providing a wide range of releases that appeal to all audiences. It's our desire to create an environment where filmmakers can thrive and see their visions realized.

United Artists was founded in 1919 by Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith. [Eugene Hernandez] 
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Magnolia Gets Thai Martial Arts Title, "Dynamite Warrior"

With the American Film Market (AFM) kicking off in Southern California, Magnolia Pictures announced its acquisition of all North American rights to "Dynamite Warrior" (Tabunfire) from Thailand. The film will be released in Thailand next month and Magnolia will distribute the movie in U.S. theaters next summer. The martial arts film, produced by Prachya Pinkaew ("Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior") is described as the story of "a young man riddled with grief and bent on revenge after witnessing his parents' murder by a callous and malicious killer." In the words of an announcement Wednesday:

"The only information Zieng has as to the killer's identity is the tattoo-covered man who is part of an organized group of cattle rustlers. Zieng makes it his mission to stop all cattle rustlers and in the process return each head of cattle back to its rightful owner."

Magnolia head of acquisitions Tom Quinn and head of business affairs Jason Janego negotiated the deal with Gilbert Lim representing Sahamongkolfilm. The two companies previously worked together on "Ong Bak." [Eugene Hernandez] 
[permalink]   [ filed under Acquisitions ]

AFI Fest Set for '06 Event

AFI Fest 2006, the Los Angeles International Film Festival from the American Film Institute, kicks off tonight (Wednesday) in Los Angeles. As Christy Lemire wrote in the Associated Press earlier today, "In a city where people leave to see movies -- and see and be seen -- at film festivals around the world, the American Film Institute is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its own festival." indieWIRE will have dispatches from AFI Fest beginning tomorrow in a special section of indieWIRE.com. 
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EDITORS NOTE: New Movie Reviews from indieWIRE

An announcement from indieWIRE: To more fully cover the large number of releases each week, indieWIRE launches a new approach to film reviews, effective November 1. Continuing our collaboration with critics from Reverse Shot, we will now publish dozens of individual movie reviews each month (with additional pieces from other writers). We're pleased to bring to our readers greater critical coverage of a wider array of movies, and we look forward to our ongoing relationship with Reverse Shot. Get the latest in the indieWIRE Movies section. 
[permalink]   [ filed under Movies ]

IFC Films Takes U.S. Rights to "My Best Friend"

IFC Films has acquired U.S. rights to Toronto International Film Festival gala title "My Best Friend" by French director Patrice Leconte, starring Daniel Auteuil. Auteuil portrays Francois, an arrogant antique dealer who is confronted by the fact that those closest to him do not like him. His business partner bets him a Greek vase that he cannot find a single person that truly calls him a friend, so Francois meets and asks a likable taxi driver, Bruno, to teach him how to be lovable. IFC Entertainment president Jonathan Sehring, and the company's Elizabeth Nastro and Ryan Werner negotiated the deal with Wild Bunch's Carole Baraton on behalf of the film. IFC Plans a theatrical release sometime in 2007. [Brian Brooks] 
[permalink]   [ filed under Acquisitions ]

CBC: Tokyo Film Fest Announces Prize Winners

Canadian Roy Dupuis has captured the best actor prize at the 19th annual Tokyo International Film Festival for his portrayal of hockey legend Maurice Richard in the movie "The Rocket." The festival handed out its awards Sunday night, honouring the art house comedy "Little Miss Sunshine" with two trophies: best directing (Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris) and best performance by an actress to its young lead, Abigail Breslin. The international jury handed the best film prize--worth $100,000 US--to the French detective spoof "OSS 117 Cairo Nest of Spies," starring comedian Jean Dujardin. CBC reports. 
[permalink]   [ filed under Festivals ]

NY Times: From an Idea by Kubrick, a New Film May Be Born

Stanley Kubrick never threw anything away. On the other hand, he didn't have much of a filing system, and when he moved--permanently, it turned out--from Hollywood to London in 1962, a great many things went astray. Among them was the sole copy of a film treatment called "Lunatic at Large," which Mr. Kubrick had commissioned in the late '50s from the noir pulp novelist Jim Thompson. The manuscript remained lost until after Mr. Kubrick's death, in 1999, when his son-in-law, Philip Hobbs, working with an archivist, turned it up, along with a couple of other scripts, and set about trying to make it into a movie. Charles McGrath reports. 
[permalink]   [ filed under People ]

AP: Kazakh anger has yet to ebb over Borat

Borat beware: Accept an invitation by a top Kazakh official to find out what the country is really like and you could be in for a nasty surprise. As British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's movie about his bigoted, English-mangling creation Borat Sagdiyev hits screens in Europe and the United States, the horror and outrage among Kazakhs of all stripes over the way their nation is being misrepresented has not gone away. In "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," the fictional Kazakh journalist travels to the United States to make a documentary and bring his findings back to his homeland. Along the way he falls in love with Pamela Anderson. Mansur Mirovalev reports. 
[permalink]   [ filed under Movies ]

SF Chronicle: American Indians find voices in film

When the American Indian Film Festival opens Friday in San Francisco, it will be 31 autumns old. And like the season it is celebrated in, the festival showcases films that fall from a world warm with history while facing an industry that can be cold and cynical. Opening this year's festival will be "The Velvet Devil," showing at the Lumiere Theatre along with two other films: "Teachings of the Tree People," and "The Battle of Peter LeFarge." Delfin Vigil reports. 
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The Top Ten So Far...

Each week, indieWIRE receives the final weekend numbers for specialty releases in theaters. This is our top ten for the three day weekend so far, with most numbers already in. The top ten is subject to change before the final chart is published tomorrow and the weekly box office column is written. Weekend box office data provided by Rentrak as of Monday, 6:00 p.m. EST. 1. "Babel (Paramount Vantage) $389,351 wknd ($55,622 per scrn) 2. "The Queen" (Miramax) $1,909,139 wknd ($12,560 per scrn) 3. "Shut Up & Sing" (The Weinstein Company) $50,103 wknd ($12,526 per scrn) 4. "Climates" (Zeitgeist) $9,655 wknd ($9,665 per scrn) 5. "Little Children" (New Line Cinema) $199,947 wknd ($6,248 per scrn) 6. "So Much So Fast" (Balcony Releasing) $5,006 wknd ($5,006 per scrn) 7. "Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple" (Seventh Art Releasing) $8,792 wknd ($4,396 per scrn) 8. "Don" (UTV Communications) $483,400 wknd ($4,395 per scrn) 9. "The Last King of Scotland" (Fox Searchlight) $337,618 wknd ($3,554 per scrn) 10. "Romeo & Juliet: Sealed With a Kiss" (Indican Pictures) $80,938 wknd ($3,113 per scrn) 
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Lynch's "Inland Empire" to Debut at IFC Center, December 6th

David Lynch's "Inland Empire" will have its theatrical debut on December 6th in an exclusive two-week NYC theatrical run at IFC Center. Lynch recently announced that he is self-distributing the film in the U.S. Peter Langs at 518 Media is handling the theatrical distribution and the current plan is to lead right into a platform release in a number of cities. An IFC announcement describes the film as:

The latest hallucinatory vision from the iconoclastic director of 'Blue Velvet' and 'Twin Peaks', 'Inland Empire' stars Laura Dern in a tour-de-force performance as, perhaps, an actress cast opposite a womanizing bad-boy actor (Justin Theroux) in a movie directed by Jeremy Irons: a melodramatic tale of infidelity entitled 'On High in Blue Tomorrows'. But her dream role quickly devolves into nightmare, as the line between actor and character becomes hopelessly blurred.

Additional cast members inlude Laura Harring, Grace Zabriskie, Diane Ladd, and Harry Dean Stanton. For more on the film, check out indieWIRE's recent dispatch from the New York Film Festival. Also, In a recent indieWIRE Video clip from a New York Film Festival press conference, Lynch and Dern (joined by Justin Theroux) talked about their new film (via YouTube). Topics included working in digital video, how the project began and an apparent dispute with those who claim that the film was influenced by the work of Bunuel. [Eugene Hernandez] 
[permalink]   [ filed under Movies ]

The Guardian Interview: Juliette Binoche

We have been talking about motherhood for just a few moments when Juliette Binoche starts to cry. She is recounting a documentary that she saw, she thinks in 1998 when she was in London, about an old woman who had survived the sinking of the Titanic. "She was talking about what happened to her when she was a child. She was on the boat, and it sank and there were little boats to save some people, and she was in there and her mother was there with her and all of a sudden..." The words have been tumbling out, but then her voice cracks and she trails away to nothing and, astonishingly, she's in tears. Esther Addley reports. 
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SF360: Stanley Nelson on the Jonestown tragedy

Of the many surreal moments that make up "Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple,," some of the most surprising come courtesy of esteemed left-of-center politicians of the city and country in the '70s. Willie Brown, Jimmy Carter, and George Moscone all courted the Reverend Jim Jones and his supporters. In a few short years, the church leader, who talked the talk of the times--socialism and racial integration--had become a part of the infrastructure of San Francisco. When his group imploded in the jungles of South America Nov. 18, 1978, it took a giant piece of SF's idealism down with it. Susan Gerhard reports. 
[permalink]   [ filed under Movies ]

ThinkFilm Gets "Hip Hop Project"

ThinkFilm will hit the upcoming American Film Market with "The Hip Hop Project," a new film directed by Matt Ruskin. The company has acquired worldwide rights to the movie and will release it next Spring, but plans to unveil it for international buyers at AFM in Santa Monica. Described as, "a powerful and inspiring film about a young man who uses hip hop music as a force for hope, healing and the realization of dreams," the film was produced by Scott K. Rosenberg and executive produced by Bruce Willis and Queen Latifah. It stars Chris "Kazi" Rolle, Diana "Princess" Lemon, and Christopher "Cannon" Mapp, with appearances by Russell Simmons, Bruce Willis, Sway and Doug E. Fresh. The deal was negotiated by Daniel Katz, VP of acquisitions and Richard Rapkowski, VP of business & legal affairs for ThinkFilm with Joe Dapello from Schreck, Rose, Dapello & Adams, LLP on behalf of the filmmakers. In a statement, ThinkFilm's Mark Urman said:

We are extremely impressed by this film, which blends classical themes of salvation and self-discovery, with utterly contemporary sights and sounds. Not since our own 'Born into Brothels' have I seen such a powerful and entertaining story about young people and the redemptive power of art.

For more information, visit the film's website. [Eugene Hernandez] 
[permalink]   [ filed under Acquisitions ]

"Babel" Bows Big in Opening Weekend

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's "Babel" debuted with big numbers on its opening weekend in the United States. The film earned an estimated $365,801 on 7 screens, for a huge per screen average of $52,258, according to figures provided Sunday by distributor Paramount Vantage. "Everybody at Paramount Vantage is very enthused about this exciting film's launch," the company's Rob Schulze said in an email. "This weekend's strong grosses bode well for our future openings." Schulze added that the film will expand to an additional 13 markets on November 3rd, followed by a wide release in some 1,200 U.S. and Canadian locations on November 10th. [Eugene Hernandez] 
[permalink]   [ filed under Biz ]