The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz
The Malaysian Insider :: Showbiz |
| The Oscars selects Pharrell and Zimmer for music team Posted: 10 Dec 2011 02:54 AM PST  Pharrell Williams will share the job of music consultant for the 84th Academy Awards ceremony with composer Hans Zimmer. – AFP/Getty Images The Oscars' producers Brian Grazer and Don Mischer announced on December 8 that the two musicians, who have worked on numerous film soundtracks, would both handle duties for the show. This will be the first time the composers have worked on the Oscar show. "This is an exciting and prestigious collaboration that promises to take the audience on a musical journey," said film producer Grazer (Da Vinci Code, 8 Mile, Frost/Nixon) and television producer Mischer (Super Bowl half-time shows, Summer Olympics) in a press statement. Oscar- and Grammy-winning composer Zimmer (The Lion King) has scored films including Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, Madagascar, The Da Vinci Code, The Dark Knight, and Sherlock Holmes. In 2011 his credits included Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Rango and Kung Fu Panda 2. Williams, a former rapper known as Pharrell, is a producer, singer-songwriter and three-time Grammy winner. He has worked with Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, Snoop Dogg, Beyonce, and more. His music has appeared on film soundtracks for Charlie's Angels, Knocked Up and Despicable Me. Zimmer and Williams previously collaborated together on the launch of UJAM, an online music-making app that allows anyone to create professional-sounding music. The Academy Awards ceremony occurs at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood and is televised live on ABC-TV and in more than 200 countries worldwide. – AFP Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| France eyes bigger Asian movie audience Posted: 10 Dec 2011 01:18 AM PST  French actress Carole Bouquet (3rd-R) speaks with UniFrance chairman Antoine de Clermont-Tonnerre (C) during a press conference for the French Film Festival in Singapore on December 7, 2011. UniFrance said it hopes Asians will soon be more familiar with French movies, its actors and actresses. – AFP pic The film body uniFrance said it intends to beef up the distribution and marketing channels in the region so that Asians will be more familiar with French movies, its actors and actresses. The move to expand its share of the Asia movie audience is a reflection of the region's growing economic prosperity, said Antoine de Clermont-Tonnerre, the president of uniFrance. "We feel that in this region which is expanding very rapidly, we have to be more present and have more physical links with the distributors, physical links of the French artistes, directors, actors with the public here," he said. It will not be easy to match up to Hollywood's vast marketing and distribution channels but Clermont-Tonnerre said this is an area that the French film industry needs to work on. "The weakness of European cinema is that we don't have the huge machine of promotion, of distribution that the major (US) companies have. They have people in all parts of the world promoting their films," he said. "The dominance of the American cinema is dominance of their distribution network and we are far from having the same power so we are obliged to work within our means, which are much smaller." French films currently make up one per cent of the Asian market excluding China – where strict quotas for foreign films are in place – and India, where Bollywood shows reign supreme. Hollywood flicks largely dominate cinemas in other Asian countries. "Our market share here is very small, is around one per cent... but if we were able to reach one and a half per cent we already would be happy," said Clermont-Tonnerre who was in Singapore for a French film festival. "(This is) opposite to the average number around the world, where we are regularly between two and four per cent. So it means that we still have to improve our positions here." French director Gilles Paquet-Brenner, who was also in town for the French film festival, said it would not be easy to overcome Hollywood whose animation and action-packed flicks regularly top box offices around Asia. "Hollywood has it all. We have to face that. It's not a war or anything but they won and they won for a long time... A market like this, that is so Hollywood, it's probably way more difficult to penetrate," he said. But Paquet-Brenner – director of the critically acclaimed "Sarah's Key" – said language still presented the biggest challenge for the French movie industry in Asia. "The obstacle is language. People are so used to Hollywood movies, so they're used to the actors, they're used to the language," he said. "People are used to it and you have to sometimes break this pattern and show people that something else exists." Tan Bee Thiam, film lecturer at the Nanyang Technological University, said the French need to step up their marketing efforts in the region if they want more Asians to watch their movies. "I think a lot of what would be needed is marketing, where you get the stars over, where you sell and promote and publicize. It is always that versus the Hollywood marketing muscle," he said. "So I think if they are able to do so and they have the budget to do that kind of work, they are already making very charming films which should not be hard at all to connect." Tan, who is also a well-known local filmmaker and critic, said he would like to see more "popular, mainstream" films from France instead of "artistic films" commonly screened at film festivals that attract a much smaller niche audience. "There have been popular films from France, from Germany and other places that are more slick... that are fronted with beautiful actors. So I think we sometimes don't see enough of what is popular and what is mainstream from those countries," he said. – AFP Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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