Another Jinx Combat. It is amazing

Cherkess

Posted: Thu., Nov. 3, 2011, 2:00pm PT

Azamat Bekov and Sahar Bishara are starcrossed lovers in “Cherkess.”

A Sindika production. Produced by Mohydeen Quandour. Executive producer, Luba Balagova. Directed, written by Mohydeen Quandour.With: Mohamad al Abadi, Mohadeen Komakhov, Azamat Bekov, Sahar Bishara, Ruslan Firov, Mohammad Al Dmoor. (Arabic, Circassian dialogue)A Circassian Romeo and a Bedouin Juliet clandestinely meet at the center of a cross-cultural powder keg in the corny Jordanian costumer "Cherkess." Writer-director Mohydeen Quandour, a Hollywood TV scripter in the '70s, turns the arrival in Jordan of a small band of Russian emigres into a sodbusters-vs.-camelmen saga with a few half-hearted desert-romance twists. Despite much verbal huffing and puffing, rifle waving and scimitar rattling, "Cherkess" proceeds with an astounding lack of action. Quandour's espousal of droning diplomacy over swashbuckling adventure should ensure the pic's inglorious demise on its Nov. 4 bow at Gotham's Quad Cinema.

Pacifism and budgetary restrictions could account for some of this would-be epic's most obvious shortcomings, but nothing really explains the tiny pile of burning wheat that represents the loss of a whole winter's harvest. Thankfully, the lion's share of the thesping goes to standout vets Mohamad al Abadi and Mohadeen Komakhov as a wily sheik and culture-straddling Russian peacekeeper, respectively, leaving the acting-challenged young lovers language-crossed and motionless. Indeed, "Cherkess" boasts little movement of any sort; galloping dramatic events are heralded but rarely shown, with most action transpiring between cuts or entirely offscreen. Camera (color), Nikolay Troukhin; editor, Anas Shabsagh; music, Waleed Al Hasheem; art director, Jamil Awwad. Reviewed on DVD, New York, Nov. 1, 2011. Running time: 114 MIN.Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com

Euro exhibs have digital dilemma

Posted: Sat., Nov. 5, 2011, 4:00am PTEurope's digital cinema rollout is benefiting Hollywood at the expense of European cinema.

At least that's the view of some at the recent European Day hosted by the EU's Media program at the Rome Film Festival.

Fresh figures show that Europe, now in the midst of its main digital rollout, by early next year will see more than half -- about 18,500 -- of its screens become format-ready.

But there are crucial underlying problems, one being that Hollywood seems to be reaping the most benefit from the conversion, at the expense of Euro product and international indie cinema as a whole.

One reason is that, simply put, it's much easier for multiplexes to shoulder the considerable costs of new equipment. Another is that the U.S. majors have had all their product available digitally since 2008. But that is not the case with European indie cinema, which in part is still stuck in a strictly celluloid world.

Over the past three years, the overall market share for U.S. films in Europe has increased from 65% to 68%; European pics' share fell from 28% to 25% during the same period, according to European Audiovisual Observatory analyst Martin Kanzler.

Also, Europe's digital conversion is being driven by 3D pics, most of which from Hollywood.

"If the consequence of digitization is to go for premium content, such as 3D and, arguably, alternative content (soccer, opera, concerts) this will cause a problem for independent distributors and, ultimately, for European films," Kanzler warned.

Meanwhile, economic woes in countries like Greece, Spain and Italy are impacting the conversion process.

Elisabetta Brunella, topper of Euro exhib promotion initiative Media Salles, noted that while Europe's digitalization is swift, the pace is occurring at different speeds within different countries.

Digital screens in Germany this year have been growing by about 60%, but the recent growth rate in Italy has been less than 20%.

The head of Italy's exhibitors, Paolo Protti, lamented that a freeze in government funding for digital cinema conversions is slowing down the process. But he also said that Italo auds are going cold on 3D movies because of higher ticket costs in a difficult economy, as well as a disaffection to the format caused by Hollywood pics that became stereoscopic only in post.

"We are bearing the brunt of films released in 2009 and 2010 that weren't real 3D and disappointed the public," Protti lamented.

Another prominent Italo exhib, Carlo Bernaschi, bemoaned the fact that smaller exhibs that can't afford the move to digital risk being left behind. "In a year's time, the majors will probably stop printing film copies of their movies, and the smaller exhibitors (who have not converted yet) will be cut out and suffer hugely."

Conversely, Kanzler pointed out that at the same time Hollywood is set to soon stop providing exhibitors with 35mm prints, few European producers offer digital master copies.

Europe is still a highly fragmented exhibition market where small movie theaters -- comprising up to three screens -- account for some 64% of all facilities, according to Kanzler; multiplexes boast two-thirds of all European digital screens.

Not having digital prints for European and indie product means that smaller exhibitors will have to support dual distribution for a longer time, which puts them, again, at a competitive disadvantage, Kanzler warned. Contact Nick Vivarelli at nvivarelli@gmail.com

Odyssey ropes 'Hank the Cowdog'

Posted: Sat., Nov. 5, 2011, 2:03pm PTOdyssey Pictures has roped in "Hank the Cowdog," launching pre-production on the feature animation project about a smart-alceck canine who heads security on a Texas ranch.

Odyssey is selling international rights at the American Film Market and plans to complete "Hank" over the next year at a pair of Texas-based facilities -- CAT Studios and ORG Studios.

Odyssey acquired rights last month to "Hank the Cowdog" from Rising Star Studios based on the series of 58 mystery novels and audios written by rancher John R. Erickson. Odyssey CEO John Foster, a fellow Texan, was able to persuade Erickson to make the deal after the latter had spurned multiple offers over the years.

"We hit it off pretty well, partly because we agreed that we'd keep the work in Texas and partly because he met my wife," Foster said. "He began writing the books while he was on cattle drives in the Texas Panhandle."

Erickson began to publish short stories in 1967 while working full-time as a cowboy, farmhand, and ranch manager in Texas and Oklahoma, based on dogs Erickson worked with on the range. The "Hank the Cowdog" series has sold more than 7.5 million copies.

"We've been approached by producers before, but Odyssey impressed us with their understanding of the genre and their solid sales and marketing strategy," Erickson said,

Dallas-based Odyssey is a 22-year-old company focused on co-financing and distribution features. Contact Dave McNary at dave.mcnary@variety.com

AFM sees solid, cautious biz

Posted: Sat., Nov. 5, 2011, 3:53pm PT

'The Words'

'The Words'

The arrival of Daylight Savings Time this morning, bringing an extra hour to the day, could not have come at a better time for buyers and sellers with the American Film Market at its midpoint.

"We're trying to cram as much as possible into the next few days before we leave town," said Christopher Woodrow, topper of New York-based financer Worldview Entertainment. He estimated that he'll have done about 90 meetings in four days before departing Tuesday.

"I'm so glad that we get the extra hour because I will use it get some badly needed sleep," noted Sierra/Affinity CEO Nick Meyer. "Right now, the demand is so strong for good product and it's very competitive."

Though buyers have held off on making announcements during the first four days, many say that plenty of deals are in the works, adding that they've been as active as they were during the Cannes Film Festival. The common theme that emerges -- recognizable casts are what comfort buyers, more than any other factor.

So the solid level of transactions already underway is a promising sign for the market. Some of the key deals so far include:

• Parlay Films saw solid sales for its literary drama "The Words" and financial thriller "Arbitrage" with sales to most European markets.

"The business has been on an upswing since Cannes, but you have to have films that respond to the market conditions," said Parlay Films' Lisa Wilson.

• Exclusive Media began drawing major interest in racing drama "Rush," bringing in Ron Howard on the first day to meet with buyers. "It's fantastic to have someone of Ron's caliber here after we announced this in Toronto," said Exclusive Media sales prexy Alex Walton. "That's something that really impressed buyers from Europe and Asia."

• Stuart Ford's IM Global announced a quartet of projects. It's financing Jason Statham's actioner "Hummingbird" and "Dead Man Down," starring Colin Farrell and Noomi Rapace; co-financing dramatic thriller "Blood," starring Paul Bettany, Brian Cox and Stephen Graham; and coming on to sell Vertigo Films' 3D musical "Walking on Sunshine"

• FilmNation Entertainment has sold the majority of international territories on Steven Soderbergh's "Magic Mike," which recently wrapped production.

• Hannibal Classics set Michael Katleman to direct the action film "Red Squad" with production slated to begin in the first quarter.

• Endgame Entertainment announced an ambitious P&A funding plan.

"Financing is not easy to get these days -- but it's not impossible," said CineTel chief Paul Hertzberg, newly tapped as chairman of the Independent Film & Television Alliance.

Hertzberg said business at AFM has been solidly consistent so far.

Hertzberg also gave props to indie players like Summit and Nu Image/Millennium topper Avi Lerner, for stepping up as the financial crisis eased. He asserted that the indie sector's been adept at developing titles with the key elements -- recognizable stars and themes.

"People want our movies," he declared of the CineTel titles. "We've been in business for 31 years so we tend to be cautious even if that limits our upside."

Indomina Group, which set up an in-house international sales division during Cannes, made a splash at its first AFM with Melissa Leo and Hayden Panettiere joining Nick Stahl and Freddy Rodriguez in dramatic thriller "Over the Wall." Panettiere and Rodriguez met with buyers on Thursday at an Indomina event.

"Getting the cast out there like we did shows that we're competitive in that space," said VP of international sales Catherine Quantschnigg.

"And people need product now so we're getting an excellent response so far," noted Indomina consultant Carole Siller.

Lightning Entertainment held a Saturday event with Stephen Dorff for "Brake" as the action star -- portraying a Secret Service agent in the pic -- pressed the flesh with about 150 buyers at the Viceroy.

"It's really important to show the buyers that Lightning and Stephen are behind this film," said Lightning prexy Robert Beaumont. "I think it's strong enough even without Stephen there to sell, but having him there really makes buyers remember it."

Maya Entertainment, which began a foreign sales business four years ago, came to AFM with a dozen titles. It snapped up domestic rights to action-thriller "La hora cero," the highest grossing local film in Venezuelan history.

Elias Axume, Maya's prexy of international distribution, noted that "Hora" is a bit of a gamble because the cast isn't well-known -- usually a tough sell.

"The market's become very selective," he said. "You can still sell DVDs in Australia, Germany and the U.K. But the key is having the right cast." Contact Dave McNary at dave.mcnary@variety.com

Myriad inks sales on 'Common Man'

Posted: Sat., Nov. 5, 2011, 1:07pm PTMyriad Pictures has signed with Asia Digital Entertainment to distribute action thriller "A Common Man" starring Ben Kingsley and Ben Cross.

Myriad made the announcement Saturday at the American Film Market, where it's selling international markets. Pic recently completed production in Sri Lanka with Chandran Rutnam ("The Road From Elephant Pass") directing from his own script.

Kingsley portrays a man who's planted five bombs in the politically-scarred city of Colombo that are set to explode unless four major terrorists are immediately released from prison. When he calls in his demands to the Deputy Inspector General of the Colombo Police Department (played by Cross), it sets in motion an ideological and deadly confrontation between the truth and duty.

Myriad CEO Kirk D'Amico said early response to has been strong, noting, "Ben Kingsley is a very big star internationally and the film has the right components buyers look for - a big star with a lot of action."

"A Common Man" was produced by Manohan Nanayakkara, B.S. Radha Krishnan and Chandran Rutnam. Executive producers are Paul Mason and Jon Sheinberg. Film's a production of Asia Digital Entertainment.

Kingsley will be seen next in "Hugo" and "The Dictator." Cross recently appeared in "War Inc." Kingsley is represented by CAA and ITG. Cross is represented by manager Jeff Goldberg.

The deal with Myriad Pictures was arranged by Jon Sheinberg of The Movie Machine and Paul Mason. Contact Dave McNary at mailto:dave.mcnary@variety.com?subject=Myriad inks sales on 'Common Man'

Andy Rooney dies at 92

Posted: Sat., Nov. 5, 2011, 7:42am PT

Rooney

Longtime CBS newsman Andy Rooney, who contributed more than 1,000 essays to "60 Minutes," died on Saturday as a result of complications following surgery. He was 92.

Rooney's career at CBS spanned six decades, beginning in in 1949 when he was hired by Arthur Godfrey after telling the radio star he could use some better writing (the encounter took place in an elevator), and ending in October of this year, when he announced that his 1,067th "60 Minutes" essay would be his last.

For more than 30 years, "A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney" aired as a regular feature of the award-winning CBS newsmagazine. Rooney's curmudgeonly and often humorous look at life's minor annoyances earned him three Emmy Awards as well as a devoted fanbase. He made his last regular broadcast on Oct. 2.

"Underneath that gruff exterior was a prickly interior," said longtime colleague Morley Safer, "and deeper down was a sweet and gentle man, a patriot with a love of all things American, like good bourbon, and a delicious hatred for prejudice and hypocrisy." Safer will lead a tribute to Rooney on Sunday, Nov. 6 on "60 Minutes."

Covering topics ranging from paper clips and umbrellas to presidential politics and racism, Rooney established television essays as a viable commercial form. Time magazine once described him as "the most felicitous nonfiction writer in television." Indeed, Rooney won the Writers Guild Award for script of the year six times, at one time more than any other writer in the history of television.

Rooney was born in Albany, N.Y. in 1919. He graduated from Albany High Schoo, attended Colgate University (he wrote for both schools' newspapers) and was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1941 during his junior year. He served in an Artillery unit in England and was a correspondent for The Stars and Stripes for three years. He received the Bronze Star for reporting under fire at the battle of St. Lo.

February 1943, Rooney was one of only eight correspondents who flew along with the Eighth Air Force on the first American bombing raid in Germany. The group of journos, dubbed "the Writing 69th," included United Press scribe Walter Cronkite, who would become Rooney's longtime friend and colleague at CBS News.

Early in Rooney's career, Godfrey's show, "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scounts," became a top-ten hit by 1952; Rooney also wrote for "Arthur Godfrey and his Friends" along with a host of other radio shows, including "The Morning News with Will Rogers, Jr.," where he met Harry Reasoner.

By the mid-1960's, Rooney was an institution at the Eye's news divsision and had begun developing essays for television broadcast, which he produced and reasoner narrated. The Reasoner-Rooney collaboration resulted in specials such as "An Essay on Bridges" (1965), "An Essay on Women" (1967) and "An Essay on Chairs" (1968).

He also spent the sixties producing documentaries for CBS, including "Frank Sinatra: Living with the Legend" narrated by Cronkite, and "Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed," which earned him his first Emmy in 1968.

Rooney and Reasoner left CBS for a short tenure at ABC News, from whence they returned in 1973. He nabbed a Peabody award for "Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington" and appeared on "60 Minutes" several times before being assigned to replace the program's "Point/Counterpoint" seg for the summer of 1978. By the next season, the final few minutes of the popular broadcast was Rooney's alone.

His sour humor immediately hit a chord with audiences who appreciated his wry and honest look at every-day life. Rooney rarely strayed from the format that made him famous, but he made an exception in May 1996 when he did a longer feature on assisted-suicide advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who agreed to appear on "60 Minutes" only if Rooney interviewed him.

Rooney also wrote a regular column for Tribune Media Services, which distributed it to hundreds of newspapers nationwide. He also contributed articles to Esquire, Life, Look, Reader's Digest, Harper's, Playboy and Saturday Review, among other publications.

The prolific author also wrote numerous books, including "The Fortunes of War," "A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney," "Pieces of My Mind," "Word for Word," "Not That You Asked," and "Sweet and Sour."

Controversy followed Rooney throughout his career, and not always for good reason. In 2005, Rooney felt the need to refute a racist essay written anonymously in a poor imitation of his style and disseminated online with Rooney's name attached.

But sometimes the controversy was of Rooney's own making. Rooney's remarks about gay and black people - the former made on the air, the latter to an interviewer he said had misquoted him -earned him a month-long suspension without pay in 1990.

Cronkite defended Rooney against charges of racism, but Rooney continued to stir the pot throughout the last few decades of his career. In a 1992 essay about Native American complaints of insensitivity (there had been a campaign to change the name of the Atlanta Braves), he said "We feel guilty and we'll do what we can for them within reason, but they can't have their country back. Next question." In 2002, he said that women had "no business" working at football games as sideline reporters; in 2007, he wrote a newspaper column saying that all of today's baseball stars are "guys named Rodriguez to me."

Rooney was open to criticism. After a 1994 segment on the death of Kurt Cobain that drew significant viewer ire, he devoted the following week's seg to an apology and to on-air reading of negative feedback from people who had written him to challenge his perspective.

Indeed, self-interest was demonstrably not a part of Rooney's curmudgeonly perspective - in 1990, he blamed CBS's problems with the WGA on chairman Laurence Tisch and dared Tisch to fire him. The most complaints CBS ever received about a Rooney broadcast came in 2004, when he called Mel Gibson and Pat Robertson "wackos" on the air.

To hear Rooney tell it, he was just reporting the facts. "'Andrew,' God said to me - he always calls me Andrew; I like that - 'Andrew, you have the eyes and ears of a lot of people," Rooney said on "60 Minutes." "I wish you'd tell your viewers that both Pat Robertson and Mel Gibson strike Me as wackos. I believe that's one of your current words."

"I think its' fair to say that he was the most popular person ever to appear on '60 Minutes,'" said fellow CBS Newsie Steve Kroft, "and I'm sure Andy would agree with that assessment.

His wife of 62 years, Marguerite, predeceased him in 2004. He is survived by four children: Ellen, a photographer; Brian, an ABC News correspondent; Emily, the host of PBS's Boston public affairs show "Greater Boston; and Martha Fishel, who works for the U.S. National Library of Medicine; along with five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Funeral services will be private. A memorial will be announced at a later date.

Rooney lived in Manhattan. Contact Sam Thielman at sam.thielman@variety.com