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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2015 l i f e s t y l e M u s i c & M o v i e s Tom Cruise promotes Alibaba’s ‘Rogue Nation’ in China ission: Impossible-Rogue Nation” sales on Taobao Movie topped RMB 1 billion, ed with Mobile Taobao to release online games APG reports that Paramount connected with 30 is already heading for over $156 making “Rogue Nation” the top movie of the related to the movie,” APG said yesterday. merchants and manufacturers to handle pro- “Mmillion (RMB1 billion) at the box month. On that tracking it looks set to topple The Alibaba parent group, which operates duction and sale of authentic merchandize. office in China, where star Tom Cruise has been Skydance’s “Terminator Genisys” which is still online business-to-business marketplaces as APG, bought last year as ChinaVision, a compa- on promotional duty. The Hollywood superstar on release in China and has grossed $177 mil- well as consumer auction and sales sites, has ny that has its own stock market listing in Hong held press conferences and fan events in lion in 15 days. “Alibaba Pictures also cooperat- also been involved, notably in merchandizing. Kong and Singapore, has suffered a few corpo- Beijing, Chengdu and Shanghai this weekend rate stumbles in its first year under Alibaba’s ahead of the film’s release in Chinese theaters ownership. The launch of “Rogue Nation” is today. This is the star’s second promotional tour therefore intended as a showcase for the power in Asia with the picture. He previously stopped of vertical and horizontal integration and big in South Korea in July. But this time is different. data application that the Internet giant can Cruise’s tour of China is in support of the first offer the entertainment industry. For all that Hollywood movie partly financed by Alibaba financial muscle and corporate connections, Pictures Group, the film investment and pro- Alibaba was still unable to secure a better duction arm of e-commerce giant Alibaba. release date for “Rogue Nation.” Releasing on a The film is presented by Paramount Picture Tuesday shortly after a national holiday smacks and Skydance Productions, but mainland of regulatory control designed to tamp down Chinese distribution of revenue-sharing the box office performance of Hollywood imported films remains off limits to Hollywood movies in China. studios. Instead the film is co-distributed by In several non-attributable conversations, Chinese state-owned entities China Film Group distribution sector executives have suggested and Huaxia Distribution. APG and China Movie that after the runaway success of “Furious 7” in Channel have associate producer status. APG the first half of the year, China’s Film Bureau will describes itself as “an official Paramount stretch the rules as far as possible for the rest of Pictures’ promotional partner for the movie in this year to ensure that the market share of China.” Cruise’s tour follows two months of pro- Chinese-made films catches that of Hollywood. mo activities by APG. “Alibaba Pictures lever- “Rogue Nation” will soon have to compete with aged Alibaba Group’s ecosystem and massive two other Hollywood blockbusters, appealing user base to launch an innovative and user-tar- to similar demographics. Regulators have set geted approach toward movie promotion and release dates of Sept. 13 for “Minions” and Sept. merchandising,” it said. 15 for “Pixels.”— Reuters This involved advance ticket sales through Tom Cruise attending the Shanghai pre- Taobao Movie, an app offering online ticketing US actor Tom Cruise, Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson and US director Christopher miere of his latest film ‘Mission: Impossible and seat selection. Taobao is one of Alibaba’s McQuarrie attending the Shanghai premiere of their latest film ‘Mission: Impossible - Rogue - Rogue Nation’. — AFP biggest online marketplaces. APG says that pre- Nation’. — AFP Israeli director Gitai’s new New film aims to capture ‘Human’ experience film dissects Rabin murder hey are fighters, victims, murderers and of who appears on screen and what they say. on some of the world’s thorniest issues, there are survivors whose anonymous yet deeply Arthus-Bertrand focuses on the impact of war, many moments of tenderness. enowned Israeli director Amos Gitai’s new Nobel peace prize. “My goal wasn’t to create a Tpersonal interviews form the backbone of discrimination, family, money especially from A father recounts his instant acceptance of a film on the incitement campaign before personality cult around Rabin, neither to replace a new film from French photographer Yann the point of view of those from the most humble gay son who struggled to come out. A proud Rthe 1995 assassination of prime minister him by an actor,” Gitai, who was born in the Arthus-Bertrand that seeks to capture our expe- origins. Microsoft founder Bill Gates and United man describes his sheer joy at buying his first Yitzhak Rabin revisits a form of Jewish radicalism northern Israeli city of Haifa and has lived in rience on Earth. In the opening moments of Nations Secretary-General Ban-Ki moon were moto scooter. “The film has both utopian and that still poses major risks, he said. The film, France, told AFP. “My focus was on the incite- “Human”-which premieres Saturday at both the among the celebrities interviewed for the proj- naive tendencies, but at the same time I think “Rabin, The Last Day,” premiered yesterday at the ment campaign that led to his murder.” The Venice Film Festival and the United Nations in ect, but both of their contributions ended on the we have made an extremely powerful movie Venice Film Festival just ahead of the 20-year director of films including “Ana Arabia,” “Kadosh,” New York-a convicted killer on Death Row in the cutting room floor. because of what people revealed to us,” Arthus- anniversary of the assassination by a rightwing and “Kippur” added that he “did this movie not United States explains how he learned to love Arthus-Bertrand said little emotion and frank- Bertrand said. — AFP Jewish radical. It also comes at a time of only as a filmmaker but as a citizen.” from the grandmother of one of his victims. renewed attention to such extremism following “She should hate me, but she didn’t,” he said. the July firebombing of a Palestinian home in ‘Hallucinating rabbis’ “She gave me love, she taught me what it was.” the West Bank that killed an 18-month-old boy “The state commission of inquiry that was set Over the course of the sprawling three-hour- along with his mother and father, as well as a up only investigated the operational failures: the plus film we meet a lesbian battling AIDS, a poor string of nationalist hate crimes. big Israeli mess, the bodyguard who looked in farmer whose joy in life is rainfall, a desperate the wrong direction, the driver who forgot to migrant, and many others. The on-screen inter- put the alarm on the roof of the car delaying the views were distilled from more than 2,000 car- evacuation of Rabin by several precious min- ried out with people in 60 countries over the utes,” Gitai said. “They didn’t investigate what three years it took to make the 11-million-euro were the underlying forces that wanted to kill ($12.2 million) movie. Rabin. His murder came at the end of a hate Filmed close up, staring straight into the cam- campaign led by hallucinating rabbis, settlers era with a simple black background, they all who were against the withdrawal from territo- were asked the same questions like: Do you feel ries, and the parliamentary right, led by the free and what is the meaning of life? “I feel like Likud (party), already then headed by Benjamin we are touching upon something essential. Netanyahu, who wanted to destabilize Rabin’s What does it mean to be a human being?” Labor government.” Arthus-Bertrand said in an interview. “How can Amos Gitai The director, wounded during the 1973 Yom we stop hatred, vengeance? How do we want to Kippur war when his helicopter was hit by a change the way we live? These are potentially Gitai has said that “the men that made possi- Syrian missile, obtained minutes from the com- essential questions that we do not pose often ble the killing of our prime minister are still mission of inquiry that were used in making the enough.” Laced between the interviews are the around... I am alarmed by the growing existence film. He also relied on documents, photos and sort of sweeping nature shots Arthus-Bertrand of a violent Jewish religious underground in the videos, particularly from the months before won acclaim for in his “Earth from above” book heart of Israeli secular society.” The 64-year-old Rabin’s assassination, including those showing of aerial photos of some of Earth’s most beauti- French photographer and environmental campaigner Yann Arthus-Bertrand looking on as he director, whose previous films have explored the speeches from politicians such as Netanyahu at ful landscapes. attends a press conference at the Ministry of Ecology, in Paris, as part of the International plas- Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other aspects of rallies against the Oslo accords where Rabin was tic bag-free day. — AFP the Middle East, told AFP in an interview the depicted in a Nazi uniform. “The entire script ‘What people revealed’ November 4, 1995 assassination of Rabin was rests on facts-events or speeches-even if the film In “Human” the camera soars above a football ness poured out in those interviews, unlike “an open wound in Israel’s contemporary histo- is a combination of archives and staged scenes,” match on a high mountain plain, a camel train as those with regular people.

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