Awards and British Filmaking

Awards Season

With the nominations in for both Golden Globes and Oscars, there were definite favorites already lined up in the form of Lincoln, Life of Pi, Argo and Les Miserables, and the die seemed to be cast in terms of who would win what. Now with the winners for Golden Globes already confirmed, it looks as if this year will not be as predictable as it first appeared.

The Awards were hosted by Tina Fey and proved to be a big success for films such as Silver Linings Playbook and Django Unchained which won awards for best screenplay and best actress. As we get closer to the awards front runners are expected to emerge and the competition will definitely heat up with films such as Nebraska and Dallas Buyers Club. More will be posted closer to the time.

Cineworld buys Picturehouse

Cineworlds takeover of Arthouse Cinema chain Picturehouse



Cineworld has snapped up the arthouse cinema chain Picturehouse, owner of the Ritzy cinema in south London and the Phoenix in Oxford, in a deal worth £47.3m.
The deal – which will make Picturehouse's co-founder Lyn Goleby a multimillionaire – unites two very different cinema chains, with Picturehouse's films catering for an older, more high end audience.

The UK cinema market is now dominated by three players – Odeon & UCI, Vue and Cineworld – which control 70% between them. Private equity-owned Vue bought a rival, Apollo, for £20m in May while the financier Guy Hands bought Odeon and UCI in 2004 and merged them to create Britain's biggest operator.
Picturehouse had sales of £30.3m last year and a pretax profit of £2.5m. Bowcock believes the acquisition will create value for Cineworld shareholders. "It's profitable, there is demand for it. The population is getting older and people are spending more money on leisure time."
Cineworld will be able to tap into Picturehouse's purchasing power and vice versa. "For example, Lyn [Goleby] buys alcohol cheaper than we do," said Bowcock.
brow audience while Cineworld's mass-market multiplexes tend to attract 18- to 24-year-olds interested in the latest 3D blockbusters

Star Wars VII to be directed by JJ.Abrams

Star Wars VII Finds its Director


As if re-igniting the Star Trek franchise wasn't enough, JJ Abrams has landed the biggest job in genre cinema of the moment: he’ll direct Star Wars: Episode VII for Disney and Lucasfilm.
Despite playing coy back in November when asked directly by Hollywood Life about the gig (“I am looking forward more than anyone to the next iterations of Star Wars, but I believe I will be going as a paying moviegoer!”) and telling our own Mark Dinning he couldn't possibly do it, Abrams has made a deal to sit in the captain’s chair for the film, as first reported by The Wrap's sources and now confirmed by Lucasfilm and Disney. 

Sci-fi director JJ Abrams will head up the seventh Star Wars film, Lucasfilm owner Walt Disney Co has said. Star Wars creator George Lucas said he was the "ideal choice" to direct the movie - due out in 2015 - adding "the legacy couldn't be in better hands". It will be scripted by Oscar-winning writer Michael Arndt. Abrams, who co-created Lost and directed the Star Trek reboot, said he was "more grateful to George Lucas now than I was as a kid". 

In October, Disney announced it had bought Lucasfilm for $4.05bn (£2.5bn) and was committed to three new films. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who will produce the films, said Abrams was "the perfect director to helm this". "Beyond having such great instincts as a filmmaker, he has an intuitive understanding of this franchise - he understands the essence of the Star Wars experience," she said in a statement. The original Star Wars trilogy - which consists of the original film in 1977, 1980's The Empire Strikes Back and 1983's Return of the Jedi - was always envisioned by Lucas as the central chunk of a nine-movie cycle.

Abrams, who has also directed films including Mission: Impossible III and Super 8, said in a 2009 interview with the Los Angeles Times that, "as a kid, Star Wars was much more my thing than Star Trek was".

BlockBuster and HMV go in to administration

DVD rental firm Blockbuster has become the latest UK High Street firm to go into administration after struggling against online competitors.

The firm launched an online DVD rental operation in 2002, and the company's website, blockbuster.co.uk, claims to send out more discs per customer than other online DVD rental services in the UK. The first Blockbuster store in the UK opened in south London in 1989, and the firm has sought to expand its services in recent years, including with a trade-in facility for pre-owned titles.

However, this online rental market became increasingly crowded with rival services, and now the popularity of streaming films over the internet is growing fast. Blockbuster UK has closed more than 100 outlets in the past few years. Music chain HMV and camera-seller Jessops both went into administration earlier this month.
"Firms like Blockbuster failed to face up to the enormity of the change and altered their business model on the fringes (eg selling second-hand products), rather than coming up with an innovative offering. It is shocking that the board and executive management failed to make bold choices."

HMV's administrator Deloitte is set to axe more than 900 jobs by closing 66 stores over the coming two months.

The shops identified for closure include those in Wood Green, Wandsworth and Bayswater in London, and Burton-upon-Trent, Edinburgh, Wakefield, Wigan, Falkirk, Huddersfield and Chesterfield.
HMV went into administration last month, putting more than 4,000 jobs at risk, although it continues to trade all its 220 stores. The coming closures will see 930 jobs cut.
While HMV remains in administration, its £120m of debt was bought by the restructuring company Hilco for less than £40m last month. This raised the prospect that Hilco, which acquired HMV Canada in 2011, may rescue a slimmed-down version of the UK chain.

27/11/12

Film Industry Blog

1. Film4 - Owned by Channel 4 and started in the mid 90's. Originally called Channel 4 Film, Film4 is a key asset in assisting British Films. They provide support for british independents through financing and exhibition. They specialize in specifically exhibiting independent films on their channel. For example the British Connection Season which screen films such as Kill List and Weekend. 4OD also streams films every day for 30p.

2. BBC Films - The BBC doesn't show adverts during their programmes due to their license fee. They have £20 million set aside specifically for british films like Shank (Mo Ali 2010) which was screened during the day, and BBC iplayer was showing it on catch up.












Film Production - Digital vs Film

Iron Man 3

IRON MAN 3

Realese date: May 3rd
Iron Man 3  will, among other things, set the stage for “Phase Two” of the Marvel Movie Universe (MMU). The Comic-Con footage had plenty of humor, but imminent danger and world-shattering events are also on the table for Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark.

The release of a short trailer in San Diego's Comic Con International in July kicked of the hype and rumors that preceded the release of Marvel films these days. Bloggers have pored over the teaser in intense detail as they vie to glean the tiniest snippets of information about Shane Black's forthcoming movie, and it's fair to say that fan boy interest has reached unprecedented levels for the series. With the teaser trailer released in early October the shots depicting Iron Mans toughest battle yet have got fans desperate for more.

Tony Starks 'sex bunny' has its own twitter account tweeting information of what goes on in Starks house.  https://twitter.com/StarkBunny. This is done to  generate interest, give fans information and clues and utilize word of mouth in a similar way to  Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Rises using wanted posters giving information on the characters on the website. The release of a short trailer in San Diego's Comic Con International in July kicked of the hype and rumors that preceded the release of Marvel films these days. 

The first picture of actual actors on set has finally popped up, showing Chinese actor Wang Xueqi, in character as the villainous scientist Dr Wu, standing beside the superhero himself in a scene set in front of the Chinese capital’s southern city gate of Yongdingmen. 

New Iron Man 3 Still Arrives Online

The image shows Stark, dressed in the famous red and gold suit, battered and bleeding beneath his mask. It's the latest of a number of stills released by  Marvel Studios, as excitement builds around the third instalment.

If there's one thing the world can take from Iron Man 3's trailers and stills so far, it's that our man Tony Stark doesn't have the best time of it after the events of The Avengers. 

7 Jan – After Wang Xueqi, it was reported that actress Fan Bingbing will also be joining the cast of "Iron Man 3".

According to Popular Asians, the 31-year-old Chinese actress once hinted that she will be joining the Hollywood production, but was never officially confirmed. However, the actress has recently negotiated her filming contract and has finally been added to the cast, reportedly playing the boss of Wang Xueqi's Dr Wu.

The Iron Man 3 teaser Marvel Studios ran Sunday night during the Super Bowl and soon-after hit YouTube and iTunes features Air Force One being blown out of the sky. Iron Man (Downey) has to save 13 passengers, though he can only handle four at a time. The bit is lighter than the last teaser we saw, but adds little to our understanding of the story line. At the end of the trailer, however, Marvel leads you to its Iron Man Facebook page where you can digest a far longer, "extended" clip, which also incorporates the Super Bowl (and YouTube-residing) trailer.

The best part of the Facebook trailer, though, is the first few moments where Downey more or less stares at the screen and then says, "That might have been more 'extensive' than 'extended.' " Expect that little clip to end up on the Blu-ray edition.

New Iron Man 3 Posters

The ‘Iron Man 3’ hype-machine has been a testosterone heavy affair so far, so it’s about time we get a look at Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts in the latest character poster for Marvel’s Phase Two kick-off. Take a look below…

OK, so it’s not all about Paltrow here - cradled pretty ominously in her arms is Iron Man’s roughed-up helmet, sporting a noticeable face-length gash.

It fits in nicely with Marvel’s brooding theme on this poster run: kicked off at the Super Bowl with Stark dramatically crashing out of the sky, we then got a things-are-about-to-get-serious-faced Iron Patriot, a sneaky Aldrich Killian and just last week a glimpse at Ben Kingsley’s badass Mandarin.

March 15:
Not to be outdone by other superhero franchises muscling in on its promotional blitz (Tony Stark would never want to be upstaged), Iron Man 3 is continuing to release new items. Chief among them is a competition at the film’s Facebook page, which allows users to unlock looks at the new armours featured in the movie, including the Mark 33 and Mark 40. Check them out below.

 Yes, as the model numbers might suggest, Tony (Robert Downey Jr) has been busy since he fought alongside the Avengers. Haunted by concerns about his own abilities and fearing for the one person he can’t live without – that would be Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts – Stark is unable to sleep and consumed with improving his suits.

The results are a wide variety of different armours including these two, the Enhanced Energy Suit codenamed “Silver Centurion” (even though it’s red and features a triangle-shaped chest piece that would not thrill Joss Whedon – see below) and the daunting Hyper Velocity Suit that looks ready to live up to its codename of “Shotgun.”

March 27:

Just when you thought it wasn’t possible for any more Iron Man 3 content to arrive online, here comes two new suits of armour to prove you oh-so-very-wrong. Yesterday we met Silver Centurion and Shotgun, while today brings the Mark 17 and the Mark 38, courtesy once again of the movie’s Facebook page.

Argo

Argo 

Directed by and starring Ben Affleck, Argo was first shown at the Toronto film festival back in september, this is very appropriate given the role of the canadian government in orchestrating the escape of six american hostages from Tehran in the late 1970's. 

The Film has already received a huge 'Oscars Buzz' since its UK release last friday and has used tweets for its posters rather than critics comments to create a wider buzz for it in terms of appealing to a wider audience. Its budget was relatively large - $44 500,000 (estimated) and in its opening weekend it made $19 458,109 USA (3232 Screens)

The Master

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master was first shown in the Venice Flm Festival in July. It was released in the UK two weeks ago in 1 screen at the Odeon west end cinema in Leicester square. Its has already been tipped for Oscar nominations as well as Argo, due to it being directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, who is described as "someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of film and film technique. This has meant that The Master has been a highly anticipated release by critics and filmgoers as they wait to see this new potential masterpiece from the famous director.