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David Cronenberg, Ralph Fiennes to Become BFI Fellows. [Right: Bette Davis.] The list of those who have received a British Film Institute Fellowship since it was first handed out in 1983 is quite extensive. [See below.] BFI Fellows include not only Britishers, but also numerous foreigners who have somehow or other been associated with either the film world or the BFI itself, among them directors (Michelangelo Antonioni, Marcel Carné), producers (John Brabourne, David Puttnam), film executives (Harvey Weinstein, Sidney Bernstein), editors (Thelma Schoonmaker), cinematographers (Jack Cardiff), actors (from Alec Guinness to Bette Davis, from Jean Simmons to Isabelle Huppert), writers (Graham Greene), critics (Dilys Powell), and philanthropists (J. Paul Getty). There are a number of puzzling omissions, however. For instance, the following are a few British actresses who have left an indelible mark on world cinema: Anna Neagle (left out perhaps because she died in 1986), Margaret Lockwood, Julie Andrews, Julie Christie, Lynn Redgrave, and Greer Garson.

Jersey-based investors who put up the money for Planet 51, which Sony released last year, have bought Handmade Films for £6.1 million ($9.3 million). Handmade was selling the Spanish/UK co-production. The company has now delisted from the London Stock Exchange. Wealth manager David Francis is deciding what to do with Handmade, which had been planning remakes of The Long Good Friday set in Miami with director Paul Ws Anderson and a new version of Mona Lisa, directed by Larry Clark. The old management had also been planning a big screen version of Eloise, starring Uma Thurman, but that ended up with the lawyers after Thurman said she hadn’t received her pay-or-play fee. Handmade’s woes have also added to the financial problems of the Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, who had been banking on it turning her kid’s books into TV series.

San Francisco, CA -- Roger Ebert will receive the Mel Novikoff Award at the 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival (April 22 - May 6). The award, named for the pioneering San Francisco art and repertory film exhibitor Mel Novikoff (1922-87), acknowledges an individual or institution whose work has enhanced the filmgoing public's knowledge and appreciation of world cinema. The Novikoff Award will be presented at An Evening with Roger Ebert and Friends, Saturday, May 1 at 5:30 pm at the Castro Theatre. Confirmed guests to date include directors Jason Reitman and Terry Zwigoff, with others to be announced soon.

The program will close with a screening of Julia, touted by Ebert as one of the finest films released in 2009. Erick Zonca's character-driven thriller, starring the fearless Tilda Swinton, barrels straight into the sleazy wasteland of an abrasive alcoholic kidnapper who is in way over her head.

"It's an honor to pay...

It was a home from home for screenwriters visiting Hollywood in the 20s. Now, this elegant cottage has been given a 21st-century overhaul

In Tinsel Town, where impressing friends is as routine as litigation or elective surgery, David Francis threw caution to the wind in 1992 when he bought his first home in a dilapidated pocket of Hollywood. "It was a real ghetto, full of transvestites, graffiti and gang members," says Francis, a novelist and lawyer. "Friends were afraid to visit in case their cars were stolen."

But he turned a blind eye to the seediness because he was taken with the house's history: it was one of a complex of eight houses built in the 20s by Paramount Studios for visiting screenwriters. And he was charmed by the traces of English and French cottage architecture, with fake beams, elegant, panelled windows, a 20ft glass-paned living room ceiling and a rustic...