Oprah Winfrey will voice the character of Eudora in the hand-drawn Disney-animated movie “The Princess and the Frog,” the studio announced Wednesday.

The popular talk show host will play the mother of the main character, Tiana, in the film, which is set in New Orleans and slated for release on Christmas in 2009.

The Pixar and Disney animation studios’ chief creative officer, John Lasseter, broke the news at a star-studded event at Kodak Theatre in Hollywood meant to show off the upcoming lineup at The Walt Disney Co.

(The Canadian Press)

No one ever said the meek shall inherit the movie industry. But as Hollywood’s blockbuster films continue to soar critically and rewrite box-office records in 2008, the American independent sector is on life support.

The factors that were meant to boost independents - including new private equity investment, the relative accessibility of digital filmmaking and studio investment through specialty arms - have done nothing of the sort.

The festival circuit this year has yet to identify an art-house or independent break-out hit. David Stratton describes last week’s Venice film festival as “the most disappointing program in many years“.

(The Australian)

Natalie Portman has explained why she had turned her hand to directing, saying there was not always acting work which fulfilled a creative need.

Portman was discussing her short film Eve at the Venice Film Festival, which marks her directorial debut.

The movie stars Lauren Bacall - and Portman said it was “rare” to see someone with the actress’s experience and wisdom on screen.

Such was the clamour to see Portman’s work when it opened the short films section of the festival on Monday that hundreds of people queued round the block.

(Press Association)

Film buyers will be able to access hundreds of new films at the touch of a button, just one aspect of the Dubai Film Market, an initiative of the fifth Dubai International Film Festival. 

Cinetech will make its Middle East debut later this year, enabling industry buyers to watch and shortlist films, contact filmmakers and producers.

The system is a digital, closed network, film library that will  include feature films, documentaries, shorts and TV content. Users will be able to browse and search through more than 200 films by logging into the  screens at private booths located at the festival. 

The Dubai Film Market will run concurrently to the fest, which will take place Dec. 11-18. 

(Hollywood Reporter)

Pop singer Madonna has presented I Am Because We Are, her documentary about Malawi orphans, at the Traverse City film festival in northern Michigan.

The musician turned film producer was met at the screening by director and fellow Michigan native, Michael Moore.

Madonna, who was born in Bay City in 1958, said it was “great bringing my movie to a place that I feel familiar“.

(BBC)

Jackie Earle Haley steps inside of the Night Owl’s spaceship, walking gingerly past the pilot’s seats toward the control panel, touching the blinking gauges and dials.

“It’s still a little hard to believe,” the balding, bespectacled actor says, “that I’m playing a superhero.”

But if this year’s Comic-Con convention, which wrapped up Sunday, has demonstrated anything, it’s that comic-book and superhero movies are not what they used to be.

If anything, they’re the opposite.

Gone are the lantern-jawed heroes whose raison d’être was to save mankind from villains threatening to wipe out the populace.

Instead, the anti-hero rules. He drinks heavily. He has problems performing in bed. He’s as likely to kill an innocent as an evildoer. Often, he doesn’t care that much for people.

(USA Today)

There was a time when Zack Snyder could walk through the Comic-Con convention of comic book devotees, picking through Watchmen graphic stories undisturbed like any other geek.

No more.

Snyder has become a member of the convention’s nerd royalty: a small corps of filmmakers who have won the grudging respect of this often haughty crowd.

(USA Today)

With action heroes and sci-fi themes populating the fall TV schedule, studios are planning to increase the presence of their television properties at Comic-Con International.

The July 24-27 fandom mecca in San Diego will feature more than two dozen sessions promoting upcoming TV series. The events including panels for such shows as Fox’s “Fringe” and “Dollhouse,” NBC’s “My Own Worst Enemy” and ABC’s “Life on Mars.”

A few years ago, 20th Television didn’t have an organized presence at the event. This year, the News Corp-owned studio will have a booth on the show floor for the first time as well as panels for at least eight series.

(Reuters)

With India’s entertainment billionaires seemingly blessed with limitless pockets, Bollywood is flexing its movie muscle, taking on Hollywood in unexpected corners of the globe and buying up theatres worldwide.

“Bollywood now has the muscle and (Indian) corporates have big money,” prominent Indian filmmaker Jagmohan Mundra told AFP.

Mundra said Bollywood companies began the bid to buy into Hollywood cinemas and distribution networks after Indian films failed to get a wide showing in the West.

The slew of major entertainment deals announced this week at Cannes, the world’s biggest film market, underlined Indian cinema expansionism.

(AFP)

On Wednesday morning festivalgoers — or at least the hordes of journalists who stumble into the Salle Lumière every day at 8:30 after a few hours’ sleep and a hasty café au lait — were given a bit of a break. In a departure, there was no competition press screening on the schedule, which provided some of us with an opportunity to glance at the trades, have a second café au lait and rest our eyes in anticipation of a long night of revolutionary struggle.

Starting at 6:30 in the evening there would be two almost simultaneous screenings of “Che,” Steven Soderbergh’s nearly four-and-a-half-hour exploration of the life of Ernesto Guevara, the asthmatic Argentine doctor who became a leader of Castro’s revolution and, posthumously, a boon to the T-shirt vendors of the world.

(New York Times)