Controversial goth-rocker Marilyn Manson is planning to direct and star in a movie about the life of beloved children's author Lewis Carroll, according to Production Weekly on Wednesday. The movie, Phantasmagoria -- The Visions of Lewis Carroll, will see Manson, 37, play the author of Alice in Wonderland and tie Lewis' life into his famous poem, Phantasmagoria. Manson wrote the script with Anthony Silva and will score the music for the film, and is hoping to persuade Angelina Jolie to play the Red Queen. Production is scheduled to begin this summer.
Oscar voters took the lead from bored movie-goers when picking the nominees for this year, shunning studio blockbusters in favor of small-budget films that tackle thorny topics from gay love to race tensions. Following a year of falling cinema ticket sales, only two big-budget movies from Hollywood's powerful studios featured among the six most-nominated films for the 78th annual Academy Awards when contenders were unveiled Tuesday.
Unmoved by flashy special effects and big productions, the 5,856 Oscar voters picked thoughtful, low-budget movies led by gay cowboy tale Brokeback Mountain with eight nods, the race drama Crash, (six nods) the political film Good Night, and Good Luck (six) and the biopic Capote (five).
"When you look at 2005, which overflowed with remakes and sequels, I think that the Academy recognized that the best films came from independent filmmakers not the big studios," said Gitesh Pandya of Boxofficeguru.com.
Only Sony Pictures' Geisha, from Oscar-winning Chicago director Rob Marshall, and Universal's Munich by Steven Spielberg featured in the six most-nominated movies of 2005, scoring six and five nods respectively.
Peter Jackson's epic US$200-million-remake of King Kong was shut out of the major categories, managing only four nods, while Oscar-winner Ron Howard's boxing tale Cinderella Man, also from Universal Studios, got three. "I think this shows a growing divide between the expensive Hollywood films, which make a lot of money, and the artistic lower budget films which are made more from quality," Pandya said.
Japanese filmgoers cooled to Hollywood last year, sending box office revenue down, but domestic productions drew more interest led by animation maestro Hayao Miyazaki's latest, an industry association said. Revenue at the world's second biggest box office slipped 6 percent to US$1.7 billion last year from record-high revenue in 2004, according to Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan.
"US films slumped a bit last year," Isao Matsuoka, chairman of the association, told a press conference this week. "Most of the US films drew smaller audiences than expected, except for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," he said.
Revenue from Japanese films grew 3.4 percent to US$699 million dollars thanks to animation legend Hayao Miyazaki's fantasy Howl's Moving Castle.
By contrast, foreign films dipped 11.7 percent to US$995
million last year with only Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire doing really well. Among foreign films, Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith ranked second, War of the Worlds came in third and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory surpassed expectations by coming in fourth.
Hollywood movie giant Paramount Pictures has finalized its US$1.6 billion purchase of rival DreamWorks SKG, makers of such hits as Shrek and Madagascar, Paramount said on Wednesday. Under the deal, announced in December, the Viacom Inc unit Paramount would acquire DreamWorks studios for the sum that would include cash and the purchase of Dreamworks' debt.
Under the agreement, DreamWorks' famous founders, Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, will remain in their respective roles as producer-director and chairman in the new entity.
Paramount is financing the deal by selling the DreamWorks live-action film library, which the studio claims is worth between US$850 million and US$1 billion. Paramount will however maintain distribution rights to the library.
Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant are set to duet on a musical romantic comedy about a pair of songwriters who fall in love while collaborating on a music project. The film, to be titled Music And Lyrics By, will start shooting at the end of March in New York City.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless