The continuing rise in film prices at Regal Cinemas should probably be no surprise; everything is going up in price, from food to gas and labor costs, putting pressure on exhibitors as well as the consumer.

That price rise probably accounts for some of the success of the recent Cans Film Festival, which featured free admission with a donation of three cans of food for Marion-Polk Food Share.

Still, it’s a sorry sign of a changing economy when a populist art form that offers escapism in hard times such as the Depression and world wars, is getting priced out of reach.

By contrast, movie rentals are a bargain, not to mention film series.

Cable television brings us many of the movies on the day and date they become available on video, and some movies, such as the recent release “Humboldt County,” are available on demand on cable as soon as they hit theaters. As a whole, it’s fractured our idea of the local movie theater as the ideal and only place to see a movie and undercut the excitement of seeing films when they first come out.

Tags: admission, films, hard time, movie, movie theater, television, theaters

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Two Cuban films will be screened at the 56th Movie Festival of San Sebastian, Spain, in honor to Cuban director Tomas Gutierrez Alea (1928-1996).

Tomas Gutierrez Alea, who was known as “Titon,” is considered one of the most representative filmmakers of Cuba. He was the director of some twenty movies, documentaries and short-feature films.

According to organizers of the Spanish event, the Latin Horizons section covers films that are totally or partially produced in Latin America, and directed by filmmakers from that region. It will also include works about Latin American communities in the rest of the world.

Tags: feature films, filmmakers, films, movie

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An Islamic civil rights group has asked Warner Brothers to change the title of the forthcoming movie “Towelhead,” Reuters reported. The Greater Los Angeles Area Office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said the title should be changed because the term is considered a “racial and religious slur.” The movie, directed by Alan Ball, above, was adapted from Alicia Erian’s novel of the same name.

The book details the life of a 13-year-old Lebanese-American girl. Ms. Erian, who is Arab-American, said that although the title was an ethnic slur, she chose it “to highlight one of the novel’s major themes: racism.” Warner Brothers, which is scheduled to open the film in limited release in New York and Los Angeles on Sept. 12, said it was standing by the filmmakers’ decision to keep the name.

Tags: filmmakers, movie, novel, warner brothers

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From the neurotic apprentice undertaker in “Six Feet Under” to super suck-up Dwight in “The Office,” Rainn Wilson has spent the last decade playing oddball characters who are as irresistible as they are irritating.

So it’s not surprising when Wilson walks into a suite at Birmingham’s Townsend Hotel and, in a very Dwight like display, fiddles with the thermostat and then opens a window, only to close it minutes later because a tour bus is rumbling below.

Wilson was in the Detroit area last month to promote “The Rocker,” a new comedy in which he plays Robert (Fish) Fishman, a heavy metal drummer who is tossed out of his band, Vesuvius, while it’s on the verge of superstardom. It takes Fish almost 20 years to get a second break, this time with a band of high school indie rockers who are far more mature than he is.

“It’s definitely a family comedy with an ’80s John Hughes feel, a little like ‘Uncle Buck,’ ” he says, referring to the 1989 John Candy film. “It’s heartwarming, and sure, it will appeal mostly to teenagers, but parents can also come along for the ride.”

Tags: 80s, edy, fly

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As the sun was sinking on a steamy June evening, set dresser Jerry Adderton finished work on his second location of the day.

He and three other teammates toiled in the musty environs of The Black Bull restaurant on Knox Abbott Drive in Cayce, sprucing up the usual decor with frilly Kmart curtains and crisp, white tablecloths for a scene in the movie “Nailed.”

When a film production like “Nailed” pulls into South Carolina, it’s generally the stars who get the attention in this case, Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Biel. But the state gains more than a few pretty faces. S.C.’s film workers get the sweetest deal of all they get to do the job they love close to home.

From location scouts to extras casting, here are four folks who are making it in Hollywood while keeping their feet in the Carolinas.

Tags: hollywood, movie

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“Some people say I’m a loner. And the truth is, I don’t think that at all ’cause I love people,” Mr. Costner says, his blue jeans and scuffed boots in sharp relief to the floral pattern of a Washington hotel sofa during a recent media tour. “What I’m not afraid to do is go alone.”

“I can’t be talked out of what I think I like,” he says staunchly, as if a line had been drawn in the sand. “Whether it’s friendship or professional direction or whatever.”

It is a life of his choosing, he would say, including a career defined in equal measure by stunning success and profound mediocrity. Such is the fate of an actor who found himself able to green-light multimillion-dollar projects with just a nod and scribbled signature.

Asked whether going alone also means that when failure comes, it comes on his own terms, Mr. Costner balks.

The script had been circulating in Hollywood for a while, getting passed over, he says, because it was perceived as a strictly American movie that wouldn’t play well with foreign audiences.

Mr. Costner says he thinks the film has the potential to be a classic. He has thought that, actually, about all of them.

Tags: elf, failure, hollywood, movie, stunning success

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In an exclusive deal that will give its movies a home on cable TV, the Weinstein Co. has agreed to a seven-year deal to show its films via CBS Corp.’s Showtime Networks Inc.

The move comes nearly three months after Paramount Pictures, Showtime’s corporate cousin at Viacom Inc., spurned the cable channel and formed a cable venture with Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. The move deprived Showtime of its main source of new feature films.

The deal comes almost three years after the Weinstein Co.’s founders, brothers and co-chairmen Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein, started their company after leaving Walt Disney Co.’s Miramax Films. At Weinstein Co., the brothers have yet to generate big hits.

“This is a huge cornerstone for us, and we think the hits are coming,” Bob Weinstein said of the Showtime deal. “A pay-channel deal is the bedrock of the business, and not one company in this business could survive and succeed without one.”

The company has high hopes for its upcoming movies, including the musical “Nine,” starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicole Kidman and Penelope Cruz, tentatively scheduled for December 2009, and the recently announced “Inglorious Bastards,” to be directed by Quentin Tarantino. Bob Weinstein says the Showtime deal also will cover releases from the company’s new animation division.

The agreement, which Showtime says will give it about 95 movies over the seven-year term, also eases pressure on the pay cable network, which would have been without any studio deals for new movies beginning in 2009. Talks between Showtime and its previous studio partners Viacom, MGM and Lionsgate broke down after the network insisted on paying less than the studios were asking for their movies. The three studios walked away and decided to launch their own movie-centric cable network in the fall of 2009.

The network aims to use some of the money it’s saving on movies to make about two additional TV series per year. In part because of buzz-building original shows like “Weeds,” Showtime’s number of subscribers has risen about 8.8% in the past year, according to SNL Kagan.

Tags: aim, disney, feature films, harvey weinstein, launch, lions gate, money, movie, nicole kidman, paramount, paramount pictures, scribe, weinstein co

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A possible Screen Actors Guild strike in the United States is affecting the movie business in Winnipeg.

The last American film production to shoot in the city this year was Wild Cherry, starring Rumer Willis, the daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. It wrapped in May.

Tara Walker, executive director of Onscreen Manitoba, an association representing the Manitoba Motion Picture Industry, attributes the conspicuous lack of white movie trailers on Winnipeg streets to the threat of a SAG strike.

“Without having assurances that they’ll be able to keep those performers performing in a production right throughout it, right to the end, it’s too big a risk for a production company to take,” she told CBC News.

Tags: motion picture, movie, Movie Trailer

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This Friday, the CAPA Summer Movie Series returns to the Ohio Theatre for a 39th year to give local movie lovers a new chance to revisit old favorites or fill some gaps in their personal film education.

Up first on Friday and Saturday, June 7-8, is the series premiere of 1965’s Thunderball, the fourth James Bond film and the first of them to deliver the kind of spectacle now associated with the series. Later, its atomic bomb ransom plot and its bad guy lair with personal shark pool would provide comic inspiration for the first Austin Powers film. Unfortunately, Thunderball also inspired the worst Bond movie, the 1983 remake Never Say Never Again.

Looking ahead, last weekend’s raging fires at Universal Studios has led to a change in next weekend’s scheduled screenings. CAPA’s replaced Thoroughly Modern Millie with another Julie Andrews favorite, 1982’s Victor Victoria.

Tags: atomic bomb, austin powers, capa summer movie series, dth, education, film education, gap, gaps, james bond film, julie andrews, lair, modern millie, movie, never say never again, old favorites, personal film, ransom, saturday june, series premiere, shark pool, summer film school, thunderball, universal studios, victor victoria

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There are few things Samantha Jones, the most fearless of Sex And The City’s four sexual adventurers, wouldn’t do. She discussed size, went swinging and had frequent and energetic sex, with lots and lots of different men.

It’s difficult to imagine Cattrall saying no to anything, because for millions of women she is Samantha, whose life philosophy is to try anything at least once, and several times if it feels good.

“I’m not fearless like Samantha,” she says. “I don’t live in a television capsule. I don’t have lighting everywhere I go and Patricia Field styling me and Michael Patrick King writing bon mots for me.”

That may be true, but in the flesh, Cattrall is striking, funny and appears to be beautifully lit.

She looks radiant in her black strapless jumpsuit, waist cinched with a black patent leather belt. She is also self-assured and chatty, speaking freely about her third divorce, Botox and the nude sushi scene that is one of the comedic highlights of the new Sex And The City movie.

Cattrall is also utterly gracious, despite having spent the day in a round of interviews at London’s elegant Claridge’s hotel, where the four lead actresses, writer and director Michael Patrick King, and costume designer Patricia Field, are all staying for the highly anticipated launch of the movie.

Thousands of fans have queued in Leicester Square from early in the morning just to catch a glimpse of the women who redefined sex and relationships for the noughties, and transformed single women from old maids into fabulous 30-somethings.

All the women confess to being bowled over by the enormous success of the show, but Cattrall understands it: this was the first time single, professional women had seen their lives mirrored in such a stylish, poignant and funny way.

“A lot of people had grown up with sexuality swept to the side or under the carpet,” she says.

Tags: adventurers, black patent leather belt, claridge, costume designer, elf, funny way, launch, life philosophy, movie, new sex, old maids, patent leather belt, patricia field, professional women, several times, sex and relationships, sex and the city, sex and the city movie, sexuality, single women, sushi, television

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