The winner of last year's best actress Oscar, Million Dollar Baby star Hilary Swank, is to present an Academy Award at this year's ceremony, organizers announced this week.
Double Oscar-winner Swank, 31, is the first celebrity presenter to be announced for this year's edition of cinema's biggest night, which will unfurl in Hollywood on March 5.
Swank won her second Oscar a year ago for her leading role as a female boxer in Clint Eastwood's wrenching drama Million Dollar Baby, which also won the best picture award.
PHOTOS: AP
She walked off with her first Oscar in 2000 for her leading role as a gender-conflicted girl in Boys Don't Cry.
The actress, who last week announced she is separating from her husband of more than eight years, actor Chad Lowe, is now one of Hollywood's hottest properties.
She has recently finished work on horror flick The Reaping and the Los Angeles-set murder mystery The Black Dahlia and is currently shooting the drama Freedom Writers, in which she plays an inspirational teacher.
Swank is the first in a traditionally star-studded parade of Hollywood personalities to be announced as presenters of the golden statuettes this year.
Nominations for the 78th annual Academy Awards will be announced in a pre-dawn ceremony in Beverly Hills on Jan. 31 and the most coveted awards in cinema will be handed out at a glittering ceremony at Hollywood's Kodak Theater on March 5.
Leading representatives of contemporary cinema from around the world have been selected to join the jury of next month's Berlin Film Festival, organizers announced this week.
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Indeed, the jury, which is to be chaired by British actress Charlotte Rampling, draws together eight key figures from the movie business in the US, Europe, Central Europe and Asia.
This includes legendary Hollywood producer Fred Roos and Armin Mueller-Stahl, who is one of Germany leading international stars, with the jury to award the festival's prestigious Golden and Silver bears.
Recognizing the booming worldwide interest in Bollywood movies, the Berlin Film Festival, which is one of the top three international film festivals, has included Indian producer Yash Chopra as jury member. Chopra is one of Bollywood's most prominent producers and directors.
The leading South Korean actress Lee Young-ae, who was one of stars of the thriller Joint Security Area, which was shown in Berlin four years ago, is also joining the jury for the festival, which runs from Feb. 9 until Feb. 18.
It is the first time that a South Korean actress or actor has been selected as a jury member for the Berlinale.
Since the end of the Cold War more than 15 years ago, the Berlinale has moved to help to spearhead the push by international film festivals to showcase movies from Asia.
In the past, the Berlinale has selected leading Asian stars such as Gong Li (鞏俐) and Maggie Cheung (張曼玉) to be jury members.
Also selected for the jury this year is Polish cinematographer Janusz Kaminski. A two-time Oscar-winner, Kaminski has worked extensively with US director Steven Spielberg.
Hollywood movie studios have abandoned the UK as a production base in droves, with their investment falling by almost half in the last two years, according to new figures.
But while fewer films were made in the UK, cinema-going was increasingly popular, with British audiences bucking a global downturn in box office revenues.
Since UK finance minister Gordon Brown put film industry tax breaks under review, Hollywood giants have deserted UK studios such as Pinewood, often for eastern Europe. The amount spent on production in the UK last year declined by 31 percent from 2004 to US$983 million, according to statistics published this week by the UK Film Council.
Even that figure was buoyed by increased investment by British film-makers. Big budget projects such as Stormbreaker, featuring teenage spy Alex Rider, and Sir Richard Eyre's Notes on a Scandal.
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
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located