UK sales outfit Screenbound has added five titles to its EFM slate, including documentaries about The Rocky Horror Picture Show and an autistic teenager’s search for mythical creature Bigfoot.
Sane Inside Insanity is directed and produced by Andreas Zerr and marks the 50th anniversary of the cult classic musical film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, taking an in-depth look at the cultural phenomenon and fandom. It features stars of the film Christopher Biggins, Barry Bostwick, Sky du Mont, Patricia Quinn and Nell Campbell.
My Bigfoot Life follows a 14-year-old autistic teenager, dedicated to finding Bigfoot, along with experts from the US.
Sane Inside Insanity is directed and produced by Andreas Zerr and marks the 50th anniversary of the cult classic musical film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, taking an in-depth look at the cultural phenomenon and fandom. It features stars of the film Christopher Biggins, Barry Bostwick, Sky du Mont, Patricia Quinn and Nell Campbell.
My Bigfoot Life follows a 14-year-old autistic teenager, dedicated to finding Bigfoot, along with experts from the US.
- 2/7/2025
- ScreenDaily
Berlin -- Telco giant Deutsche Telekom has taken aim at Rupert Murdoch's struggling Germany pay TV operation Sky Deutschland, saying Telekom's near-term goal is to replace Sky as Germany's top pay TV company.
Telekom boss Rene Obermann said Wednesday that he planned to knock out Sky by 2015. Obermann's target by then is 5 million German customers for Telekom's Iptv offerings.
To compare, Sky has just 2.47 million direct customers in Germany. By the company's own admission, Sky needs at least 2.8 million-3 million subscribers to be profitable. News Corp. is Sky's largest shareholder with a 45.42% stake in the company. Murdoch has poured money into Sky but so far hasn't seen a turnaround.
Obermann said Wednesday that he plans to invest about €10 billion ($14 billion) over the next three years in Germany, largely by upgrading Telekom's fiber-optic networks and investing in new mobile communications technologies. Much of this will go to promoting Telekom's Iptv...
Telekom boss Rene Obermann said Wednesday that he planned to knock out Sky by 2015. Obermann's target by then is 5 million German customers for Telekom's Iptv offerings.
To compare, Sky has just 2.47 million direct customers in Germany. By the company's own admission, Sky needs at least 2.8 million-3 million subscribers to be profitable. News Corp. is Sky's largest shareholder with a 45.42% stake in the company. Murdoch has poured money into Sky but so far hasn't seen a turnaround.
Obermann said Wednesday that he plans to invest about €10 billion ($14 billion) over the next three years in Germany, largely by upgrading Telekom's fiber-optic networks and investing in new mobile communications technologies. Much of this will go to promoting Telekom's Iptv...
- 3/17/2010
- by By Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Manitou's Shoe
"Manitou's Shoe" was Germany's blockbuster hit of 2001. This comic riff on American Westerns, created by radio and TV comic Michael "Bully" Herbig, single-handedly caused a substantial rise in the German boxoffice last year. The Berlin International Film Festival presented the film to international critics and buyers before its American Film Market bow.
This is a somewhat stripped-down version of Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles". The comedy earns several good laughs but revisits the same comic well too often to earn a place alongside Brooks' raunchy spoof. Comedies are always the most difficult kind of film to travel beyond native borders. By dealing with a well-known, albeit seldom-seen, movie genre, "Manitou's Shoe" can crack jokes that all moviegoers will understand. But North Americans are unlikely to accept cowboys and Indians, even comic ones, speaking German. So probably the film's best chance for domestic distribution is on video or possibly a dubbed theatrical version.
The "Blazing Strudel" spoof gets off to a fast start with lifts from Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns, anachronistic gags and bad puns -- well, possibly good puns because who can tell the difference? But the jokes wear increasingly thin as Herbig finds no way to expand the parody beyond that of a two-dimensional skit.
Performing two roles, that of an Apache warrior and his gay brother, Herbig is a live wire who encourages the rest of the cast to rise to his energy level. Musical numbers that make good use of Herbig and his co-stars -- Christian Tramitz, Sky Dumont and Marie Baumer -- enliven the campy enterprise. Technical credits are OK though heavily influenced by Herbig's TV background.
MANITOU'S SHOE
HerbX Film in association with
Constantin Film and Seven Pictures
Producer: Michael "Bully" Herbig, Michael Wolf
Director: Michael "Bully" Herbig
Screenwriters: Michael "Bully" Herbig, Alfons Biedermann, Rick Kavanian, Murmel Clausen
Director of photography: Stephen Schuh
Production designer: Claus Kottmann
Music: Ralf Wengenmayr
Costume designer: Dina Daigeler
Editor: Alexander Dittner
Color/stereo
Cast:
Abahachi/Winnetouch: Michael "Bully" Herbig
Ranger: Christian Tramitz
Santa Maria: Sky Dumont
Uschi: Marie Baumer
Hombre: Hilmi Sozer
Dimitri: Rick Kavanian
Running time -- 83 minutes
No MPAA rating...
This is a somewhat stripped-down version of Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles". The comedy earns several good laughs but revisits the same comic well too often to earn a place alongside Brooks' raunchy spoof. Comedies are always the most difficult kind of film to travel beyond native borders. By dealing with a well-known, albeit seldom-seen, movie genre, "Manitou's Shoe" can crack jokes that all moviegoers will understand. But North Americans are unlikely to accept cowboys and Indians, even comic ones, speaking German. So probably the film's best chance for domestic distribution is on video or possibly a dubbed theatrical version.
The "Blazing Strudel" spoof gets off to a fast start with lifts from Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns, anachronistic gags and bad puns -- well, possibly good puns because who can tell the difference? But the jokes wear increasingly thin as Herbig finds no way to expand the parody beyond that of a two-dimensional skit.
Performing two roles, that of an Apache warrior and his gay brother, Herbig is a live wire who encourages the rest of the cast to rise to his energy level. Musical numbers that make good use of Herbig and his co-stars -- Christian Tramitz, Sky Dumont and Marie Baumer -- enliven the campy enterprise. Technical credits are OK though heavily influenced by Herbig's TV background.
MANITOU'S SHOE
HerbX Film in association with
Constantin Film and Seven Pictures
Producer: Michael "Bully" Herbig, Michael Wolf
Director: Michael "Bully" Herbig
Screenwriters: Michael "Bully" Herbig, Alfons Biedermann, Rick Kavanian, Murmel Clausen
Director of photography: Stephen Schuh
Production designer: Claus Kottmann
Music: Ralf Wengenmayr
Costume designer: Dina Daigeler
Editor: Alexander Dittner
Color/stereo
Cast:
Abahachi/Winnetouch: Michael "Bully" Herbig
Ranger: Christian Tramitz
Santa Maria: Sky Dumont
Uschi: Marie Baumer
Hombre: Hilmi Sozer
Dimitri: Rick Kavanian
Running time -- 83 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 2/21/2002
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Film review: 'Eyes Wide Shut'
The late Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" is one last daring and unique cinematic achievement in an incomparable 13-film career that's sadly over too soon. After only one viewing, the film generates a range of reactions and impressions -- from puzzlement to fascination with the puzzle.
Destined like all his films to be discussed and dissected by the multitude of fans and pundits, Kubrick's final work is challenging and richly rewarding. Big domestic and international boxoffice numbers are a certainty.
It almost goes without saying that the years-in-the-making Warner Bros. release is a risky, demanding film for summer 1999 audiences gorged on fast-food movies. Although comparable only in their using Hollywood stars to help create major works with personal visions, "Eyes" opens almost the same weekend as the similarly R-rated "Saving Private Ryan", which was last year's boxoffice champ -- and there wasn't a single naked woman in it.
While no shots are fired in anger or axes swung or bones thrown, "Eyes" is unmistakably a Kubrick creation. Alas, it will be immediately known as the season's most fleshy offering, starting with the first brief shot of Nicole Kidman. It's also her real-life husband Tom Cruise's first appearance on film since "Jerry Maguire" three Christmases ago.
This potent combination of stars, subject matter and master filmmaker, with the story "inspired" by Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 short novel "Traumnovelle", results in a powerful drama. The unusual plot centers on a successful Manhattan doctor and his young wife who come close to breaking up during a lost weekend of damaging revelations, betrayals and fantastic encounters with sad and strange denizens of the city's erotic subculture.
To dispell one possible misconception about the film: There may be lots of nudity, but there's not much sex. There is an orgy scene -- with 65 seconds of various copulating couples obscured by digitally inserted partygoers to get an R-rating -- but it comes and goes quickly with an hour still to go in the film (not at the end, as has been erroneously reported).
The unclothed female form more than the sexual act is the focus of Kubrick's somewhat unnerving eroticism. There is the fleeting warmth of the early embraces between Bill Harford (Cruise) and his spouse Alice (Kidman) in the short sequence that Kubrick released months ago as a teaser. Later, they lounge in bed partially clothed and get stoned, but the lazy mood is shattered when talk turns to a party they attended where both flirted dangerously with strangers.
"Eyes" opens with Bill and Alice preparing for that party, held in the mansion of Ziegler (Sydney Pollack). They leave a 7-year-old daughter with a babysitter and appear untroubledly in love. But separated from Bill at the posh gathering, Alice has a few drinks and dances in the arms of a seductive older man (Sky Dumont).
She really lets herself go in these remarkable scenes, approaching but not giving into temptation. Bill is likewise almost swept away by the attentions of two young women before he's summoned by Ziegler to handle a difficult situation. Professionally detached at first in the host's cavernous bathroom, Bill treats a naked party guest (Julienne Davis) who has collapsed after shooting drugs.
In their talk after the fact, when Bill is too casual in his acknowledgement of his wife's sexual allure and his too-proud lack of jealousy, Alice angrily deconstructs his statements and then relates a story of an affair she almost had. Bill is shocked and imagines in pornographic black-and-white fantasies, several times through the rest of the film, her passionate trysts with a strange man. But before things get worse between them, work weirdly intervenes and he leaves.
"Eyes" then becomes Bill's unpredictable odyssey through a nocturnal world of sex-hungry souls, like the grieving woman (Marie Richardson) who loves the dashing doctor but is engaged to another (Thomas Gibson). On his way home, Bill is threatened by anti-gay thugs for no reason and then follows a prostitute (Vinessa Shaw) to her place. Maybe he wants to cheat on Alice, to have adventures, but Bill is on the road again before anything serious happens.
Through an old med-school friend (Todd Field), now a piano player, Bill finds out about a secret orgy and begs to go along. In a sense of anticipation, even his after-hours search for a costume reveals that the teenage daughter (Leelee Sobieski) of the shop owner (Rade Sherbedgia) is a shameless flirt. Nothing compares to his crashing the decadent, almost medieval gathering of ceremonial orgygoers in a country dwelling he reaches by cab.
Remaining faithful in many ways to Schnitzler's original book, Kubrick and screenwriter Frederic Raphael make a few key departures, but the idea of a group of many people who meet for anonymous sexual encounters is central to both. Bill, in an elegant Venetian mask and cloak, is approached by a nearly naked woman with a voluptuous body and headdress, her features hidden as well. She seems to know immediately that he doesn't belong and warns him to leave, but he is smitten by her.
Bill's refusal to go has unexpected consequences, and later he'll literally linger over the corpse of his waking dream of erotic fulfillment. Set during the Christmas season, the film ends on an uneasy but hopeful note. If there is a sense of emotional detachment from the characters in the latter parts of the film, the residual effect of "Eyes" is anything but a numbed mind. Once again, Kubrick invites the viewer to react naturally and then think about the experience. It works.
The performances are unformly inspired, particularly Kidman's. Her baring of body and soul on screen is nothing less than convincing, while Cruise has an even harder task: playing the personality-deficient Bill with star-stiffling restraint.
As one has come to expect from Kubrick, technical aspects of the film are superb. Filmed at Pinewood Studios, with terrific recreations of New York street exteriors and luxury townhouses, "Eyes" exudes artistry in every frame. Lighting cameraman Larry Smith and Kubrick make the most mundane nightclub scene a visual feast, while the soundtrack features many styles of music and a magical score by Jocelyn Pook.
EYES WIDE SHUT
Warner Bros.
Producer-director: Stanley Kubrick
Screenwriters: Stanley Kubrick, Frederic Raphael
Based on the novel "Traumnovelle" by: Arthur Schnitzler
Executive producer: Jan Harlan
Co-producer: Brian W. Cook
Lighting cameraman: Larry Smith
Production designers: Les Tomkins, Roy Walker
Editor: Nigel Galt
Costume designer: Marit Allen
Music: Jocelyn Pook
Casting: Denise Chamian, Leon Vitali
Color/stereo
Cast:
Dr. William Harford: Tom Cruise
Alice Harford: Nicole Kidman
Victor Ziegler: Sydney Pollack
Marion: Marie Richardson
Mandy: Julienne Davis
Domino: Vinessa Shaw
Nick Nightingale: Todd Field
Milich: Rade Sherbedgia
Sandor Szavost: Sky Dumont
Running time -- 159 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Destined like all his films to be discussed and dissected by the multitude of fans and pundits, Kubrick's final work is challenging and richly rewarding. Big domestic and international boxoffice numbers are a certainty.
It almost goes without saying that the years-in-the-making Warner Bros. release is a risky, demanding film for summer 1999 audiences gorged on fast-food movies. Although comparable only in their using Hollywood stars to help create major works with personal visions, "Eyes" opens almost the same weekend as the similarly R-rated "Saving Private Ryan", which was last year's boxoffice champ -- and there wasn't a single naked woman in it.
While no shots are fired in anger or axes swung or bones thrown, "Eyes" is unmistakably a Kubrick creation. Alas, it will be immediately known as the season's most fleshy offering, starting with the first brief shot of Nicole Kidman. It's also her real-life husband Tom Cruise's first appearance on film since "Jerry Maguire" three Christmases ago.
This potent combination of stars, subject matter and master filmmaker, with the story "inspired" by Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 short novel "Traumnovelle", results in a powerful drama. The unusual plot centers on a successful Manhattan doctor and his young wife who come close to breaking up during a lost weekend of damaging revelations, betrayals and fantastic encounters with sad and strange denizens of the city's erotic subculture.
To dispell one possible misconception about the film: There may be lots of nudity, but there's not much sex. There is an orgy scene -- with 65 seconds of various copulating couples obscured by digitally inserted partygoers to get an R-rating -- but it comes and goes quickly with an hour still to go in the film (not at the end, as has been erroneously reported).
The unclothed female form more than the sexual act is the focus of Kubrick's somewhat unnerving eroticism. There is the fleeting warmth of the early embraces between Bill Harford (Cruise) and his spouse Alice (Kidman) in the short sequence that Kubrick released months ago as a teaser. Later, they lounge in bed partially clothed and get stoned, but the lazy mood is shattered when talk turns to a party they attended where both flirted dangerously with strangers.
"Eyes" opens with Bill and Alice preparing for that party, held in the mansion of Ziegler (Sydney Pollack). They leave a 7-year-old daughter with a babysitter and appear untroubledly in love. But separated from Bill at the posh gathering, Alice has a few drinks and dances in the arms of a seductive older man (Sky Dumont).
She really lets herself go in these remarkable scenes, approaching but not giving into temptation. Bill is likewise almost swept away by the attentions of two young women before he's summoned by Ziegler to handle a difficult situation. Professionally detached at first in the host's cavernous bathroom, Bill treats a naked party guest (Julienne Davis) who has collapsed after shooting drugs.
In their talk after the fact, when Bill is too casual in his acknowledgement of his wife's sexual allure and his too-proud lack of jealousy, Alice angrily deconstructs his statements and then relates a story of an affair she almost had. Bill is shocked and imagines in pornographic black-and-white fantasies, several times through the rest of the film, her passionate trysts with a strange man. But before things get worse between them, work weirdly intervenes and he leaves.
"Eyes" then becomes Bill's unpredictable odyssey through a nocturnal world of sex-hungry souls, like the grieving woman (Marie Richardson) who loves the dashing doctor but is engaged to another (Thomas Gibson). On his way home, Bill is threatened by anti-gay thugs for no reason and then follows a prostitute (Vinessa Shaw) to her place. Maybe he wants to cheat on Alice, to have adventures, but Bill is on the road again before anything serious happens.
Through an old med-school friend (Todd Field), now a piano player, Bill finds out about a secret orgy and begs to go along. In a sense of anticipation, even his after-hours search for a costume reveals that the teenage daughter (Leelee Sobieski) of the shop owner (Rade Sherbedgia) is a shameless flirt. Nothing compares to his crashing the decadent, almost medieval gathering of ceremonial orgygoers in a country dwelling he reaches by cab.
Remaining faithful in many ways to Schnitzler's original book, Kubrick and screenwriter Frederic Raphael make a few key departures, but the idea of a group of many people who meet for anonymous sexual encounters is central to both. Bill, in an elegant Venetian mask and cloak, is approached by a nearly naked woman with a voluptuous body and headdress, her features hidden as well. She seems to know immediately that he doesn't belong and warns him to leave, but he is smitten by her.
Bill's refusal to go has unexpected consequences, and later he'll literally linger over the corpse of his waking dream of erotic fulfillment. Set during the Christmas season, the film ends on an uneasy but hopeful note. If there is a sense of emotional detachment from the characters in the latter parts of the film, the residual effect of "Eyes" is anything but a numbed mind. Once again, Kubrick invites the viewer to react naturally and then think about the experience. It works.
The performances are unformly inspired, particularly Kidman's. Her baring of body and soul on screen is nothing less than convincing, while Cruise has an even harder task: playing the personality-deficient Bill with star-stiffling restraint.
As one has come to expect from Kubrick, technical aspects of the film are superb. Filmed at Pinewood Studios, with terrific recreations of New York street exteriors and luxury townhouses, "Eyes" exudes artistry in every frame. Lighting cameraman Larry Smith and Kubrick make the most mundane nightclub scene a visual feast, while the soundtrack features many styles of music and a magical score by Jocelyn Pook.
EYES WIDE SHUT
Warner Bros.
Producer-director: Stanley Kubrick
Screenwriters: Stanley Kubrick, Frederic Raphael
Based on the novel "Traumnovelle" by: Arthur Schnitzler
Executive producer: Jan Harlan
Co-producer: Brian W. Cook
Lighting cameraman: Larry Smith
Production designers: Les Tomkins, Roy Walker
Editor: Nigel Galt
Costume designer: Marit Allen
Music: Jocelyn Pook
Casting: Denise Chamian, Leon Vitali
Color/stereo
Cast:
Dr. William Harford: Tom Cruise
Alice Harford: Nicole Kidman
Victor Ziegler: Sydney Pollack
Marion: Marie Richardson
Mandy: Julienne Davis
Domino: Vinessa Shaw
Nick Nightingale: Todd Field
Milich: Rade Sherbedgia
Sandor Szavost: Sky Dumont
Running time -- 159 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 7/12/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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