Global Showbiz Briefs: BIFA To Honor Julie Walters; New Zealand Film Group Picks 10 Best NZ Pics Of All Time; More

Julie Walters Tapped For BIFA’s Richard Harris Award
Julie Walters is to receive the Richard Harris Award at the British Independent Film Awards this coming weekend. The prize was introduced in 2002 to recognize outstanding contribution to British film by an actor. Walters started out in television and broke into film with her BAFTA- and Golden Globe-winning performance in 1983’s Educating Rita. She was also nominated for an Oscar for the film and later received a further Oscar nomination for Stephen Daldry’s Billy Elliot. More recently, she played Ron Weasley’s mother Molly in all of the Harry Potter movies. Among Walters’ other credits are Prick Up Your Ears, Calendar Girls, Becoming Jane and Mamma Mia! She next will be seen in The Harry Hill Movie and in 2014’s live-action Paddington. The BIFAs will be held on December 8 in London.

New Zealand Film Body Picks 10 Best NZ Films Of All Time
A government-backed film body in New Zealand has released its list of the Top 10 New Zealand films of all time. Rather than select any of the Lord Of The Rings movies, NZ On Screen selected Peter Jackson’s 1994 Heavenly Creatures as the director’s entry. The organization recognized that “much dissension will arise from the exclusion of Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. … Although Jackson’s film company WingNut was involved in all productions, they are generally viewed as Hollywood films made in Wellington. For the purposes of this Top 10, it’s sensible to preclude them.” Instead, it said that Heavenly Creatures, which gave Kate Winslet her first big screen role, was “the best film to mark the extraordinary talent of our most commercially successful director.” NZ On Screen is funded by NZ On Air, an independent government funding agency that invests in local content. Along with Heavenly Creatures, the Top 10 also includes: Goodbye Pork Pie (1981), Smash Palace (1981), Utu (1983), Vigil (1984), The Piano (1993), Once Were Warriors (1994), Whale Rider (2002), In My Father’s Den (2004) and Boy (2010). Of the somewhat dark choices, NZ On Screen said: “We are a weird people and we seem to prefer making films about how weird we are. We depict what we know.”

Spain’s Mediapro, 4 Soccer Clubs Fined Over TV Rights Deals
Spain’s CNMC competition commission has fined broadcaster Mediapro and soccer clubs Real Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla and Racing Santander over the violation of rules that regulate the sale of TV rights. Collectively, they were fined €15M ($20.4M) after Mediapro and the sides agreed four-year contracts for TV rights, rather than the three-year contracts allowed by the law. According to Reuters, Mediapro said it and the teams had acted “in good faith” and the contracts complied with Spanish law. It will appeal the ruling. Spain’s La Liga is not beholden to collective bargaining, thus allowing clubs to agree deals individually with broadcasters. Real Madrid and Barcelona are the world’s two richest clubs by income, taking about €700M, or half the total TV revenue, for La Liga.

South Korea Sees Record 115M Admissions In 2013
South Korea has hit a milestone at the box office, with nearly 115 million admissions for domestic films thus far in 2013 – a record for the country. According to Korean Film Biz, 2012 saw Korean movies jump past the 100 million admissions mark for the first time ever. This year, the increased performance was spurred by films like ensemble comedy-drama Miracle In Cell No. 7, which went on to be the third-most successful Korean film of all time. Also faring well were Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer and Han Jae-rim’s period film The Face Reader. Spy thriller The Berlin File, action-comedy Secretly Greatly and thrillers Hide And Seek, The Terror, Live and Cold Eyes all also had strong runs. There are currently eight local films in the Top 10, per BoxOfficeMojo; the two Hollywood pics in the Top 10 are Iron Man 3 and World War Z. Korean Film Biz says that older audiences have become the largest theater-going block – though they term “older” as moviegoers in their 30s and 40s. Upcoming local titles include Way Back Home, The Attorney and The Suspect.