Fifteen films, including the hit March of the Penguins, will compete for next year's best feature-length documentary Oscar at the 78th annual Academy Awards, organizers have announced.
Of the 15 contenders, five will be picked as nominees for the next year's Oscars when nominations are unveiled just before dawn on Jan. 31, and only one will be awarded the golden statuette when it is handed out on March 5.
The most high-profile of the 15 entrants selected by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences to vie for the award is French director Luc Jacquet's documentary, March of the Penguins.
PHOTO: AP
The moving and anthropomorphic story of the gruelling annual ritual of Emperor Penguins, who walk across a 90km stretch of icy and desolate Antarctica in search of a mate, became a surprise global box office hit.
It has taken US$76.8 million in North America alone and US$26.9 million in the rest of the world.
This year's best actress Oscar-winner, Hilary Swank, and fellow nominee Imelda Staunton are teaming up to star in a new high school drama called Freedom Writers, the industry press said.
PHOTO: AP
Filming on the movie, which is based on a true story that took place at a gang-ridden school in California, is set to begin in Los Angeles next month, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Swank, 31, in March snatched the Academy Award for her role as a boxer in Million Dollar Baby from British star Staunton, who had been nominated as leading actress in the abortion drama Vera Drake.
US funnyman Leslie Nielsen, famed for his role in the Naked Gun movies, and Baywatch babe Carmen Electra will co-star in the third sequel to the spoof horror flick Scary Movie.
The pair will top the cast list of Scary Movie 4 that will parody Night Shayamalan's fright flick The Village, the industry press reported.
Also joining the cast are US daytime television heartthrob Simon Rex.
US actor Matthew McConaughey was named by People magazine this week "the sexiest man alive."
The 36-year-old actor, who starred in A Time to Kill, Amistad and Contact, as well as a series of romantic comedies and action films, has earned the top spot because of his ability to combine "a heaping helping of Texas's finest southern charm with the best of all the heartthrobs who've come before him," the magazine said.
Meanwhile, Robert De Niro is to return to his acting roots by playing a mafia hit man in The Winter of Frankie Machine, Variety has reported.
The movie is based on an as yet unpublished book by Don Winslow about a Mafia hit man who has given up the game to become the proprietor of a bait shop. When he finds out that he's been targeted for a hit, he gets back in the business.
De Niro became a superstar with his role as Vito Corleone in the classic mafia movie The Godfather 2 in 1974.
Actress Sharon Stone has agreed to drop her lawsuit against a plastic surgeon she accused of libel in return for his performing free surgery for children with facial deformities, the doctor's lawyer said. The settlement became final on Monday when Stone filed papers in Los Angeles County Superior Court dismissing her complaint against Dr. Renato Calabria, whom she accused of making false claims that she had had a face-lift, his attorney, Arthur Barens said.
British screen heartthrob Orlando Bloom is also experiencing legal problems after being sued by his former management firm for US$660,000 in commissions allegedly owed for his work, including the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
The Firm Inc sued the 29-year-old Bloom in Los Angeles Superior Court, claiming he breached a verbal contract to pay his former management team 10 percent of his earnings from his hit movies, according to documents seen here Wednesday.
The company claims it substantially negotiated the actor's roles in the recently released romance Elizabethtown, as well as in Ridley Scott's crusade epic Kingdom of Heaven and in Haven.
But, The Firm alleges, Bloom jumped ship in July of this year and has failed to stump up hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions, at least some of which has been diverted to the actor's new management company.
British star Sir Anthony Hopkins will be given a special honor at next year's Golden Globe Awards in Hollywood to mark his lifetime of cinematic achievement, organisers announced this week.
Hopkins, 57, who won the best actor Oscar for his chilling role as deranged but brilliant killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter in 1991's The Silence Of the Lambs, will receive the coveted Cecil DeMille Award at the Jan. 16 Globes ceremony.
Recent recipients of the special award given out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association include last year's honouree, funnyman Robin Williams, Michael Douglas, Gene Hackman, Harrison Ford and Al Pacino.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your