Kidman to help Australian tourism

Australia is hoping to boost tourism by launching a campaign on the back of Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman's new film, which is set in the Outback.

X-Men star Hugh Jackman will co-star in the movie, titled Australia, which is set on the eve of World War II.

It is being directed by Baz Luhrmann, best known for making Moulin Rouge.

Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson said the film would highlight Australia's "extraordinary natural environment, history and indigenous culture".

The movie's release in November would offer the tourism industry "one of its greatest promotional opportunities in many years", he added.

Tourism slump

Tourism Australia will kick off an international marketing campaign to coincide with the film's release.

The movie is based around an English aristocrat, played by Kidman, who falls in love with Jackman's outback cattleman.

The number of overseas visitors travelling to Australia was down in the first two months of the year, the Reuters news agency reported.

The 1986 film Crocodile Dundee led to a surge of arrivals when its star Paul Hogan fronted an international advertising campaign telling tourists he would "put another shrimp on the barbie". [BBC News]

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Jackie Chan plans Chinese earthquake movie

Hong Kong action hero Jackie Chan said Friday he wanted to make a film about the massive earthquake which hit China this month to raise money for victims.

Chan is best known for blockbusters like the "Rush Hour" series and "Drunken Master" but said the new project would represent a change of tone because he had been so deeply affected by what happened.

The official death toll from the quake, which hit Sichuan province on May 12, is now over 55,000. It is China's worst disaster in a generation.

"Tomorrow we have big meeting with some directors, some scriptwriters -- why? I want to make the movie about the earthquake because there's so many touching stories," an emotional Chan told a press conference in London.

"Every story I've seen just makes me cry... I believe there's so, so many touching stories so tomorrow we're going to have a big meeting to see what happens.

"I want through the movie to show the whole world, I really want to salute the whole army of China, really," he said, without giving further details of who he was referring to.

He added that the movie would "raise money for charity".

Chan has donated 1.5 million dollars (953,000 euros) to help earthquake victims and vowed to help rebuild schools affected by the disaster.

He said there would be charity events in Hong Kong and Chengdu, Sichuan's capital, next month to benefit earthquake victims featuring around 100 Asian artists.

The star stopped off in London after visiting the Cannes film festival in France, where he was promoting "Wushu", a film he produced which tells the story of five friends training in martial arts.

Chan, who is to speak to students at Oxford University later, also spoke of his sadness at protests which disrupted the Olympic torch relay around the world ahead of the Beijing games which take place in August.

"A lot of people misunderstand, politic is politic and Olympic is Olympic and not combine together. Somebody used the wrong way to say something," he said.

"Torch is represent love, peace, there is only sport can bring people together in make the world peace... Taking the violent thing for the peace, you destroy the Olympic spirit. I'm really sad."

Pro-Tibet activists demonstrated in London, Paris and San Francisco to protest against China's crackdown on unrest in the Himalayan region in March.

Chan added that he was "very confident" the Beijing Olympics would "achieve its unprecedented success".

Source: http://news.id.msn.com

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Children of the Prophet

Children of the Prophet offers an intimate insight into the everyday life and the expression of religious practice in contemporary Iran, where the archaic and the post-modern co-exist surprisingly. The film follows four groups of people in Tehran during the Shiite mourning rituals of Moharram, commemorating the death of Imam Hossein, the grandson of Prophet Mohammad. It explores the role of religion in different people’s lives and how traditions are codified, kept alive and transformed to accommodate the needs of modern times.

We follow the protagonists closely with unbiased curiosity. It is their perspective, motivation, expression of faith or doubt, sense of humor and voices that make an otherwise enigmatic, and dramatic mass event palpable and familiar. This utterly personal approach offers a rare and often surprising insight into what is usually obscured by politicized Islam hyped by Islamists and Western media alike.

World Sales:
Autlook Filmsales
Zieglergasse 75/1 1070 Vienna, Austria
Tel: +43 720 55 35 7
Email: welcome@autlookfilms.com
Website: www.autlookfilms.com

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