Imran Jaffery

The brothers W are certainly trying… all that’s missing is a signature picture that can represent the studio in the same way Pulp Fiction or The English Patient did for their old shingle. With Shanghai they just may have that movie.

Italo maestro Giuseppe Tornatore returns to the Croisette in Cannes with the multi-generational epic Baaria. The currently unfinished $30 million Quinta / Medusa co-production will be shopped around to foreign distributors at the market for a 2009 release.

Icon is perhaps too small a word to encompass Patti Smith. Considered the godmother of punk, her beat poet cum rock goddess persona is the thing of legend. Given the subject, you can understand why photographer Steven Sebring would spend 11 years following her as she toured the world; capturing both the performer and the person in the raw -- in her own words.

German novelist/director Doris Doerrie’s latest Nippon-set drama Cherry Blossoms – Hanami has been picked up by Strand Releasing for an Autumn release following the film’s two wins at the Bavarian Film Festival.

The terrorist bombings that rocked London on July 7, 2005 are still a touchy subject for many. 52 souls died that day in a series of coordinated attacks on the public transit system, leaving the city’s commuter and telecom infrastructures in taters – an