Irvin Kershner, who directed the Star Wars sequel “The Empire Strikes Back” and the James Bond film “Never Say Never Again,” has died at age 87. Kershner died Saturday at his Los Angeles home following a 3½-year battle with lung cancer, said longtime friend and Hollywood publicist Dick Guttman.
A Los Angeles judge today ruled against the food company Dole, and awarded $200,000 in attorneys fees and costs as punishment for filing a defamation lawsuit against the filmmakers behind the documentary Bananas!*.
The Bahamas International Film Festival (BIFF) announced that Academy Award® winner Alan Arkin ( Little Miss Sunshine, ) will be honored with the prestigious Career Achievement Award at this year’s Film Festival, taking place December 1-5 in Nassau. Arkin will be on hand for the tribute, with the special award presentation coming from actress Abigail Breslin, who received an Oscar® nomination for Best Supporting Actress starring alongside Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine.
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival, January 27 – February 6, will open the 2011 Festival with the film SARAH’S KEY. Already receiving critical acclaim across the world, the French film will make its U.S. premiere at the Santa Barbara Festival’s opening night event. The film stars Kristin Scott Thomas and is directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, both of whom are scheduled to be in attendance. Opening night will take place at the Arlington Theatre on Thursday, January 27, 2011.
Oscar-nominated director and screenwriter Mario Monicelli, considered one of the fathers of the Italian comedy of the 1940s-1960s, died Monday after jumping from a fifth-story hospital window, the hospital said. He was 95.
James Franco and Anne Hathaway will serve as co-hosts of the 83rd Academy Awards®, Oscar telecast producers Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer announced today. Both have previously appeared on the telecast but not in hosting capacities.
French director Bertrand Tavernier’s ‘The Princess of Montpensier’ will be the closing film at the 41st International Film festival of India (IFFI) on December 2nd. The film which competed at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival is a French period romance drama and focuses on a young woman who is forced into marriage while in love with another man.
The 51st Thessaloniki International Film Festival will open on December 3rd with Danny Boyle’s “127 hours”. Boyle’s follow-up to his Oscar winning film “Slumdog Millionaire” is based on the book by Aron Ralston and tells the heroic adventures of the young climber Aron Ralston played in the film by James Franco.
Leonard Retel Helmrich’s Position Among the Stars, the film that opened the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, won both the VPRO IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary and the Dioraphte IDFA Award for Dutch Documentary. This is the first time ever at IDFA that a director has won the award for feature-length documentary twice: Retel Helmrich also won in 2004 with The Shape of the Moon.
The Dubai International Film Festival named American film icon and international social and political activist Sean Penn as its Western honoree for 2010. Penn, whose career spans nearly three decades, more than 45 films and notable successes as producer, director, actor and screenwriter, will accept the DIFF Lifetime Achievement Award at the Festival’s opening ceremony on December 12, 2010.
Winter’s Bone by Debra Granik was the big winner at the Stockholm International Film Festival Award taking the prizes for Best Film, Fipresci – The International Film Critics Prize for Best Film, and lead actress, Jennifer Lawrence, taking the best prize for Best Actress.
