Russian actor Alexey Serebryakov has stirred controversy for comments he made in a recent interview, saying Russia's "national idea is brutal power, arrogance and rudeness." The star of 2014 Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated film Leviathan, and the current BBC/AMC series McMafia, has received criticism from…

EXCLUSIVE – Ben Pugh and Rory Aitken’s UK-based production and management entity 42 is poised for the big time with new projects lined up with Working Title, IM Global, the BBC and ITV. In little over two years the duo, along with founding partners Kate Buckley and Josh Varney,  have established their company as one…

Busy on another story, I just got beaten to the punch by Variety on news that Fox acquired Leviathan, a film that Ruairi Robinson will direct, based on a short film we wrote about previously. But the story was a bit incomplete. Fox bought a spec script (not a pitch) by Fight Club scribe Jim Uhls, not a pitch as our…

Proving again that no man is a prophet in his own land, much heralded Russian film Leviathan, a Golden Globe winner and an Academy Award nominee, missed out on the top prize in its homeland. At the annual Golden Eagle film awards, which recognize the Russian movies of 2014, the best film trophy went to Sunstroke by…

Although the devaluation of Russia’s ruble has been playing havoc with balance sheets over the past several months, the market remains a robust one for Hollywood. Is that status in danger — again? The studios dodged a bullet at the end of last year when a plan for imposing quotas that would have cut the current number…

Sony Pictures Classics hit an all-time company record this morning, collecting 18 Oscar nominations, outstripping their 2010 high when the label counted 13 nods.  Unlike some other arthouse distributors that have either fallen in love with day-and-date VOD strategies or took their niche titles too wide (only to watch…

The Academy started with a record 83 submissions for the Foreign Language Oscar this year, whittling that down to a shortlist of nine in December. Today we are left with five nominees: Damián Szifrón's Wild Tales (Argentina); Zaza Urushadze's Tangerines (Estonia) Abderrahmane Sissako's Timbuktu (Mauritania); Paweł…

Andrey Zvyagintsev and Alexander Rodnyansky, the director and producer of Leviathan, accepted the Golden Globe tonight for Best Foreign Language film, another in a long list of prizes the movie has amassed since debuting in Cannes and scooping Best Screenplay honors there. A treatise on corruption at the State level…

The juried award winners were announced for the 26th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival with Sony Pictures Classics Russian title Leviathan, about a man who battles a local corrupt mayor in a coastal town on the Barents Sea, taking the top Fipresci Prize. The film, which is short listed in the Oscar…

Kim Jong-un could not contain a gaggle of indie theater owners including those in the Art House Convergence, Tim League and others to unleash The Interview as the Christmas holiday weekend opened. The much talked about hacking scandal that lead to the film’s demise, then resurgence, is clearly the week’s big news…

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released the shortlist of nine films that will advance to the next stage in the Foreign Language Film Oscar race. As was widely expected Pawel Pawlikowski's 60s-set Polish drama Ida, fresh off of five European Film Awards, is in. Also turning up unsurprisingly are…

As the unveiling of the Foreign Language Oscar shortlist approaches, it’s time for my annual look at the films that have a shot at making the cut. For the first time, we are splitting the preview into three parts — and listing the films in no particular order. But as with each year, I don’t envy the committees that…