Trailer for new Cronenberg thriller.

The film opens in limited release on September 14, and will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Quicktime Trailer,

Not so fast, says Oda to Alliance MPD sale

The takeover of Alliance Atlantis Motion Picture Distribution by U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs will come under review, says Heritage Minister Bev Oda.

She goes on to say that the distribution policy, as it exists currently, will not be changing: only the deal's foreign purchase components will pass under her radar, and only to ensure the existing requirement for Canadian control is met.

If you would like to tell the Honourable Minister that our Canadian content is sacred, and that foreign investment companies should keep their "stinking paws off our culture" (my words, paraphrasing Chuck Heston's - feel free to use your own polite words), please email her at Oda.B@parl.gc.ca

[via the Globe]

Updated: 6AM EST.

The Globe has a follow-up, which includes the responses of several directors and producers:

"If [Heritage] really does it, that will be good. It's easy to say these things, but they can also say they reviewed the MPD-Goldman Sachs deal, and still don't see anything wrong with it. We'll see what happens," David Cronenberg said.

The article notes that the deal "will also be subject to the Investment Canada Act."

Let's hope rational minds will prevail on this one.

Don't forget to send your concerns to the Minister; our thanks to the majors (especially Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, Robert Lantos, Denise Robert, and Paul Gross) for bringing this matter to the attention of Heritage Canada.

[via the Globe: "Oda's words welcomed by film at TV players"]

MPD sold for $193 million

Movie Distribution Income Fund is selling its 49 percent stake in Motion Picture Distribution LP to Edgestone, a private Canadian equity firm affiliated with U.S. equity giant, Goldman Sachs & Company. MPD's collection of over 1200 titles spans nearly half a century, making it the single largest library of Canadian film and television content.

The remaining 51 percent of MPD is controlled by Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc., which is being sold for $2.3 billion to CanWest Global Communications Corp. and Goldman Sachs; both sales provide ample opportunity for MPD to be controlled by a foreign company.

The deal still needs to be approved by Heritage Canada, but, according to Lloyd Wiggins, the chief financial officer of Movie Distribution Income Fund, there is "no suggestion of concern at this point".

Last week, a number of outraged filmmakers and producers (including Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg, and Robert Lantos) expressed dire proclamations about what would happen to the Canadian film industry, should MPD be controlled by a U.S. company.


[via the Globe and Mail]

Updated: Canadian box office, weekend of June 22, 2007

1 Evan Almighty - Universal - $1.51 mil - $1.51 mil
2 Fantastic Four: Rise... - Fox - $1.44 mil - $5.92 mil
3 1408 - Alliance Atlantis - $1.23 mil - $1.23 mil
4 Knocked - Up Universal - $1.06 mil - $9.70 mil
5 Ocean's Thirteen Warner Bros. - $1.01 mil - $7.99 mil
6 Pirates of the Caribbean: AWE - Disney- $868,911 - $23.83 mil
7 Shrek the Third - DreamWorks - $527,857 - $26.41 mil
8 Surf's Up - Columbia - $470,748 - $2.77 mil
9 A Mighty Heart - Paramount Vantage - $352,659 - $352,659
10 Nancy Drew - Warner Bros. $321,533 - $870,657

These are still studio estimates. Actuals are updated later in the evening.

Away From Her : $94,200, 121 theatres, total worldwide: $5,647,671
Fido: $3300, 2 theatres, $105,382 total worldwide
Brand Upon The Brain!, no estimate yet - total worldwide (June 21) $219,203


Updated:

Brand Upon The Brain! #121 in North America. It made just $117, had a -97.7% drop in interest, and is down to 1 theatre. Box office total: $219,347. Next week, it will have dropped off the charts.

FIDO #81 in North America. $3,810, 2 theatres, a -62.7% drop from the following week. Worldwide box office total is now $284,977.

So a bit better, well shy of the 8 or 11 million budget we've heard it has.

Away From Her #27 in North America. $98,348 in 121 theatres, had a -54.3% drop in attendance, and a worldwide box office of $5,672,581.

Go, Polley Go.

[via Tribute and Box Office Mojo ]

For every $10 of culture goods the United States bought from Canada...

On D.B. Scott's and Jon Spencer's wonderful Canadian Magazines blog, they have compiled some nice statistics about the magazine and newspaper trade deficits with the United States.

They also have found some little tid bits from Stats Canada about the trade in culture with the U.S. and the U.K. specific to the film industry .

• For every $10 of culture goods Canadians imported from the United States, $7.61 were spent on writing and published works, $0.85 on film and video, and $0.58 on advertising. The remainder was spread among sound recordings, photography and original art.


• Canada's exports to the United States were more diversified. For every $10 of culture goods the United States bought from Canada, $3.80 were spent on books, newspapers and periodicals and other printed material, $2.68 on film and video, and $1.67 on advertising. Photography, sound recordings and visual arts accounted for the rest.


• In 2006, exports to the United Kingdom dropped by almost $31 million from 2005. The value of exports of video, other printed material, newspapers and periodicals, and photography recorded the largest decline. Exports of culture goods to the United Kingdom nevertheless remained the second largest for the seventh consecutive year. Canada exported mainly books and videos to the United Kingdom.
  
  

[via Canadianmags.blogspot.com]

More on MPD sale

Globe and Mail: Film library at centre of sale.

Fido, Sunday estimates

I wanted to hold out some hope for Fido, the estimated $11,000,0000? (according to Wiki) zombie-comedy made Andrew Currie at Anagram Pictures in Vancouver, but I think like Ted's earlier post, the film is now walking dead theatrically.

Sunday estimates from Fido's two US theatres(ers) (NuArt in L.A. and the Angelika in Soho NYC ) show a 67.7% drop over the weekend with a $3,300 estimate for a $18,500 US total in two weeks.

My understanding is that Lionsgate is handling the US distribution of Fido.

The film is expected to expand with 4 more screens July 6th in San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston, but I would be surprised at all if the film gets much more attention stateside. Such as it is from a Canadian distribution company who's execs are all in L.A. In August the picture opens in France, Japan, and Singapore (hopefully with much success).

$11,000,000 really isn't that much. Besides, there are ways to pay off that debt, cable, DVD special editions, foreign sales, organ harvesting...

MPD sale, Directors, Producers urge Harper to pay attention

Must read Saturday morning news.

From The Globe:

"On the brink of closing one of the biggest deals in the history of Canadian entertainment – the sale of Alliance Atlantis's Motion Picture Distribution arm, also known as MPD, to Manhattan-based investment house Goldman Sachs – many of the most powerful names in Canadian film and TV are claiming that the sale of such a heavyweight distributor to a foreign company could decimate the industry here. And they're demanding Ottawa do something about it.

Directors David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan, actor Paul Gross, producers Robert Lantos, Denise Robert and Kevin Tierney – as well as English and French associations across the industry – are calling on Stephen Harper's government to closely monitor the transaction, in which a U.S. financial player is buying a 51-per-cent stake in MPD, Canada's most powerful distributor."

Not only is this very disturbing, but the article notes "just 20 years ago, movie distributors had a market share in Canada so small that it barely existed. Two decades later, Canadian distributors have carved out a share of the domestic box office that hovers between 25 and 30 per cent."

Atom Egoyan notes in the article: "not upholding the policy [the 1988 foreign distribution policy, which limits foreign ownership of Canadian distributors to 30 per cent.] will reduce Canadian distribution to essentially a handful of boutique companies again. We'll end up with a bunch of new American companies who do nothing but distribute and send money back home, who don't get involved with Canadian films, or do so rarely."

We should all be up in arms. If it gets any worse, Canadian filmmakers should just relocate below the border and hope for the best.

Read the article linked below, it's informative and frightening.

[Globe and Mail - Crisis for Canadian Film]

Review: Brand Upon The Brain! Death By Interlocution

updated 9pm EST, June 22


It is not often I find myself alone in a empty theatre in a city of two-million people, but that’s exactly what happened to me the other night at the Carlton when I saw Brand Upon The Brain! This phenomena had occured to me only once before in my movie going experiences – my wife and I spotted a showing of Monty Python and The Holy Grail at the Rainbow cinemas here in Toronto, and sure enough, we were the only ones their. I think in the case of Python, it wasn’t advertised well, and in the case of Brand Upon The Brain! it was the fact that it was a Canadian film by Guy Maddin that kept the people away.

With good reason too. The film is extremely inaccessible to the general audience. A revisionist silent art film about Guy’s revisionist youth, the film is told in almost entirely in a flash back consisting of grainy, flickering, 8mm step-printed footage, inter-titles, book like chapters, and cutting so rapid the climax of Requiem For A Dream seems slow in comparison. In short, it's pure Guy Maddin on speed.

Coming off the success of 2003s The Saddest Music in the World, Brand Upon The Brain! is somewhat of a leap backward for Guy Maddin in many different ways. Working with longtime writing partner George Toles, Maddin harkens back to his fictional youth. A house painter named “Guy Maddin,” (Erik Steffan Maahs) is called back to Black Notch island, where his mother and father once ran an orphanage in a lighthouse.

Home again, “Guy” remembers his past, a bizarre, unsettling, horrific youth in an orphanage, under the confines of his oppressive, sexually suspicous mother who obsesses about being an infant.

Mother runs a tight ship, constantly punishing Guy's sister for her femininty, and romantic trysts. Mother is always watchful and ever present, from high above, she using the light house search light to spy on her children. Always beckoning though the use of an “aerophone,” a phallic musical horn that carries sound like a telephone, invented by the mad scientist in the basement – Guy’s Father.

Father labours away at the fountain of youth all night, with midnight conjugal visits resulting in his wife becoming a young woman, until “Raging! Aging!” at her children, specifically Sis, she becomes a withered old woman again.

The orphans are imprisoned below in cages, and they have strange holes bored into their heads, holes that match the family ring that Father wears.

“Young Guy” played by Sulivan Brown is to Maddin, what Jean-Pierre Léaud’s Antoine Doinel was to François Truffaut. That’s saying a lot, but I think it is an apt comparison. Sullivan Brown even looks like young Antoine Doinel, and closely resembles Guy Maddin himself.

The strength of the film is from the performances of the youngest actors, primarily Maya Lawson who plays Sis, and Katherine E. Scharhon playing a gender bending Nancy Drew named Wendy Hale. Wendy Hale becomes Chance Hale, her famous detective brother when she falls in love with Sis. She has to solve the mystery of the crimes that Mother and Father are commiting within the orphanage.

So as not to reveal her true identity, Wendy/Chance wears “kissing gloves” and the naughty “undressing gloves,” as Wendy/Chance takes a dominant role in the sexual relationship. It doesn’t hurt that the young women create a sense of tense erotica each time they pick up the “kissing gloves” and “undressing gloves,” standard equipment it seems for a detective.

Young Guy, pinning for Wendy who has suddenly disappeared, becomes enamored in a “Boy Crush” on Chase, but he’s spurned by Chance's love for his sister. The crush will haunt him into manhood.

The young women, who had to disrobe several times (almost everyone in at one point naked – lot’s of full frontal male nudity), come off as deeply charismatic, sensual, graceful and ethereal in their stylized theatric body movements. Their roles could not have been easy without dialogue, but they both carry it with ease.

Kellan Larson, Guy’s twitching, spastic best friend – the poor Neddie, who is almost sacrificed by the insane and naked Savage Tom (who is also locked away) also put in a delightful performance.

I shall not ruin the plot for those who care, but it contains everything that should make this an exciting cult film – satanic rituals, lesbianism, re-animation, science fiction, gothic horror, zombiesm, cannibalism, mystery, musical, Oedipal lust. Brand Upon The Brain! has it all.

What it doesn’t have, is an easily accessible story. Guy Maddin’s insistence of style over substance ensures that the audience is kept at arms length at all times and the film has fleeting dramatic weight. It comes across as a hyper stylized music video, or worse, an amateur experimental German expressionist silent film.

The film is at times can also be exceedingly beautiful. The string score by Jason Staczek is as good as any I’ve heard. The black and white imagery is gorgeous, base ball sized grain bouncing away on the screen. It is also extremely frustrating.

Sound is a major issue in Brand Upon The Brain! The only dialogue non-diagetic presented in way of “interlocuter,” Isabella Rossellini, who’s heavy accent seems out of place here. The folly work too can be grating. Every time Mother beckons through the “aerophon” it reminded me of “Kommienezuspadt” by Tom Waits, without the melody. Just German gibberish for effect.

The poetic inter-titles - “Secrets! Secrets! Secrets!”, “Aging! Raging!!” when ever his young mother played by three actresses Grethen Krich/Cathleen O’Malley/Susan Corzette, turned back into a middle aged woman - are often amusing, “Boy Crush!” for example, when Guy displays homoerotic lust for Chance - but are often lost within the staccato cutting.

Epileptics be aware, this film may make you seize. The images rush past you, and so does the story in haste to keep the running time down. Something that Guy could have learned from the silent era he so loves.

Guy Maddin practically invented the pastische silent cinema style (although I remember in Jules and Jim, Truffaut giving it a go), certainly it made him who he is – a cult Canadian filmmaker. When Emily Haines and the Soft Skeletons went on tour this past year to promote her Knives Don’t Have Your Back, Maddin’s silent era images played prominently in the background.

But in an age when even the Red Hot Chili Peppers can create a convincing silent film – Guy Maddin should be able to do it a thousand time better. Certainly something that adds to the genre, and escalates it to another level.

I have to say that I expected more from Guy Maddin after 2003’s The Saddest Music In The World. Instead we are presented with a regressive step backward in the filmmakers development, not because it is a clever journey into his fictional past, or because it is shot on 8mm, or completely without the hope of commercial success, but because Maddin has failed to be able to tell a story with the mastery as a filmmaker that his experience dictates. Had Madden preserved moments like the last breath of Mother tucked safely away in a bottle, the film would have allowed the viewer to engage in the inventive story.

Perhaps, had I seen the film with the touring orchestra, on stage folly artists, Crispin Glover filling in as interlocuter, a singing “castrato” I would have been immersed in the of event, as opposed to sitting alone with and being assaulted by the film as it is.

All in all, Guy Maddin's originality ensures that you won't seen anything else like it in cinemas this summer, but that also, you would be be hard pressed to find the film playing in your local theatres.


Executive Producers: Jody Shapiro, Philip Wohlstetter, A.J. Epstein.
Producers: Amy Jacobson, Gregg Lachow
Director: Guy Maddin
Writers: Guy Maddin & George Toles
Cast: Gretchen Kritch, Sulivan Brown, Maya Lawson, Katherine E. Scharhon, Todd Moore, Andy Loviska, Kellen Larson, Erik Steffan Maahs, Cathleen O’Malley. Interlocuter: Isabella Rosselini.
Musical score: Jason Staczek.
Cinematography: Benjamin Kasulke
Editor: John Gurdebeke
95 minutes.

*New Canadian Film: The Right Way

Mark Penney, makes his indie debut with The Right Way, shot in around Brampton for $10,000 on digital video.

From The Globe:

Enter twentysomething Canadian director Mark Penney with an old-fashioned, grim Canadian movie that, frame by frame and line by line, has no shot at the box office or even the sparsely attended but de rigueur week at the Carlton cinema. It is screening tonight and tomorrow at Camera Bar in Toronto's west end, which should just about cover the courier cost of sending DVD copies to the press.

It's a shame because, despite its paramount flows, The Right Way marks the birth of a promising young director who can sustain enough darkness and despair for 80 minutes to make early Atom Egoyan look like a lost Wayne and Shuster special. Penney's tale of woe has it all: drugs, suicide, abortion, suburban alienation and abusive parents who tell their children they're too lazy to wipe their own asses.

Mark, send us a copy. We'll review it and send the copy back to you so you can get the word out.

Camera Bar

[Review via The Globe and Mail]

Box Office Quebéc: Semaine du 15 Jui au 21 Jui 2007

1 FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SI... Fox $988, 546 $988,546
2 OCEAN'S THIRTEEN Warner $547,503 $1,377,731
3 PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT ... Buena Vista $333,144 $4,408,454
4 SHREK THE THIRD Paramount $243,199 $5,153,240
5 SURF'S UP Sony $206,970 $430,608
6 ENSEMBLE, C'EST TOUT Christal Films $179,411 $179,411
7 KNOCKED UP Universal $121,166 $660,640
8 NANCY DREW Warner $73,264 $73,264
9 SPIDER-MAN 3 Sony $72,558 $6,903,568
10 HOSTEL 2 Films Seville $66,184 $184,344

ROC

[via Box Office Québec]

New OMDC head, old Toronto Film Commish

Karen Thorne-Stone is moving from the city of Toronto's film board, to the provincial Ontario Media Development Corporation. Previously she was executive director of economic development for the city of Toronto. She starts at the end of July.

[via Playback Magazine]

RIP Fido

From yahoo...

67

-

Fido

Roadside Attractions, Lionsgate

$10,203

$10,203

1

2

Yikes.

Fido deserves better, no matter what I thought of it. 2 screens? Limited promotion? Separate release in Canada? Why did Lionsgate buy it in the first place if they were not going to try and sell it? What a waste...

t

Broadcast Rights? WTF?

I just read this on BoingBoing. You'll have to scroll down a bit. Anyways, they link to this article. Go read both.

From Cory Doctorow's BoingBoing post.

"This week, the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization is holding a critical debate on the "Broadcast Treaty." This treaty would establish a new copyright-like right, but whereas copyright goes to people who make creative works, Broadcast Rights go to companies that broadcast other people's copyrighted works. The Broadcast Right isn't subject to the same fair use limits as copyright, which means that even if copyright lets you record a broadcast for criticism or parody, you will need to separately get an exemption under the Broadcast Right. More gravely, if means that if you license your work under Creative Commons, the people who distribute the files or air the program can overrule your generosity and insist that your fans not copy your work."

Broadcast Rights? Are they serious? The fact that they are scares the crap out of me. We live in dangerous times...

t

Canada is Hollywood's fastest growing market.

Reading Ted's post below led to me Michael Geist's site, where I found this disturbing tid bit -

"According to the Hollywood Reporter, the annual MPA report on all-media sales shows Canada as having the biggest growth of the top 25 countries tracked by the association."

It's a wonder why the MPAA wants Canada to clamp down so hard. We're their only hope of increasing profits.

Read the rest at the link above.

Copyright: I'm Not Sure What to Make of This

I just read this on Slashdot.

As someone who creates Intellectual Property, this should be good news. Right? I'm not so sure. (you can find a link at Slashdot to the published report.)

Only a few days ago I discovered this...

http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net/

A great little documentary. I enthusiastically suggest everyone give it a look see.

In the context of this film, this new Canadian report feel like an iron fist solution.

t

Can we still call him a Canadian?

The Globe and Mail stated that "Canadian screenwriter-director [Paul Haggis] is set to take on his latest project - the screenplay for the next James Bond movie, Variety reported yesterday." Variety, on the other hand reported, and predictably this - "He [director Marc Forster] will soon begin working with scribe Paul Haggis on a draft of the screenplay by Neil Purvis and Robert Wade." They omitted "Canadian." Certainly it doesn't matter to them, but why does it matter to us?

It made me think two things - 1) Can Paul Haggis still be called Canadian?

2) When does someone stop being Canadian?

Is it something to do with how much success in the US of A you get? Take George Strombo, he goes down to L.A. with the "The One," a glitzty US reality show and we hated him, and it failed after four episodes, and he came back, and now we love him.

James Cameron was born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, and he moved to the United States in 1971, but he's still called a Canadian by our media, yet I don't know anyone who would actually call him that - remember Titanic? Biggest movie - ever? Still, Celine Dion wrote that awful music for it. Can we, and do we want to call him a Canadian? Is that too much success?

Wayne Gretzky is the greatest hockey player EVER ( it can't be debated anymore), and when was traded to L.A., we hated him for it. We called him names. Now that he's retired, (but still living in southward) we've come around again. We love him, he's Gretzky. He's the best - ever.

In Gretzky's case, I think it's a matter of raw talent and unmatched skill. We can respect that. Cameron made a sappy love story that made a billion dollars. You can respect that, but, it doesn't sit well with you.

Look at Norman Jewison. He came back after a successful and respected career in Hollywood. He's Canadian. He is also very much the definition of a Hollywood studio director. But, he directed Steve McQueen - the coolest guy ever, not once, but twice. How can we not love him? How can we not say he's Canadian? I might add I went to the Canadian Film Centre, which he founded. I'm biased.

Still, he directed McQueen. Steve McQueen. Twice. You have to respect that.

Back to Paul Haggis. Born in London, Ontario. He's had the most enviably movie streak by anyone in film in a long, long time. He's won two Academy awards, one for best picture, one for best screenplay. Back to back.

He's worked closely with Clint Eastwood, an icon, and a filmmaker that is producing the best work of his entire life during Haggis' watch.

Again, that's Clint Eastwood. The Man Without a Name. Dirty Harry.

And Haggis too, he revitalized James Bond, adapting a classic novel, into something, well, pretty good (it would of been superior had not the service hacks Purvis and Wade touched it - and again? Why?).

But still, James Bond.

In terms of definition of success, that's it.

So, does he have to come back to be Canadian and before will give him the respect he deserves? Try to give it a go here, in our miserable little industry. Or do we just have to hope he suffers down in L.A. so we can bask in schadenfreude.

After all, it's what Canadians do best.

Lantos does distribution

Über Canadian producer Robert Lantos, will now once again have his own in-house distribution platform under his own production company, Serendipity Point Films.

Serendipity Releasing, according to Playback Magazine, will distribute all Serendipity titles (Where The Truth Lies), which previously were distributed by ThinkFilm.

The last time he was in distribution was in 1998, when he merged Alliance Communications, a company he co-founded with rival Atlantis Communications.

[Via Playback Magazine]

Is the format war finally over?

Blockbuster Inc. chose Blu-ray over HD-DVD to stock in it's 1450 stores.

Sony must be jumping up and down. Too bad about that little Wii thorn in their side. I bet that hurts.

[via the Globe]

Updated: Canadian Box Office - Weekend of June 15, 2007

• 1 Fantastic Four... 20th Century Fox $3.10 mil $3.10 mil
• 2 Ocean's Thirteen Warner Bros. $1.71 mil $5.99 mil
• 3 Pirates of the Caribbean... Walt Disney $1.38 mil $22.35 mil
• 4 Knocked Up Universal $1.26 mil $7.71 mil
• 5 Shrek the Third Paramount $833,837 $25.51 mil
• 6 Surf's Up Columbia $682,128 $1.96 mil
• 7 Nancy Drew Warner Bros. $376,974 $376,974
• 8 Spider-Man 3 Columbia $203,812 $30.57 mil
• 9 Eli Roth's Hostel Part II Maple $171,456 $782,212
• 10 Mr. Brooks Odeon $120,396 $1.47 mil

That's it, no more Canadian films in the top ten. Away From Her slipped to No.17 in North America, but it made another $200,000 this weekend, which is really unbelievable when you consider that is what Spider-Man 3 took in Canada over the weekend.

Numbers are not in for Fido yet, but it doesn't appear to be within the top 50 - but it may still have a strong seat count in NY and LA .

We should have numbers for Fido and Brand Upon The Brain by this evening.

UPDATE: 10:30pm EST

Away From Her, actual - dropped to #20. $215,158 this weekend, in 203 theatres. $5,393,043 total.

Fido #65 in North America. $10,203 US in 2 theatres (save average as Oceans 13) $102, 100 total.

Brand Upon The Brain! $5,473 in 7 theatres, dropped from #50 to #76. $213,961 total.


[Via Tribute & Box Office Mojo]