BUSINESS
June 30, 2001 | Richard Verrier
Universal Pictures and Paris-based StudioCanal are combining to create a worldwide television and movie production and distribution operation. Vivendi Universal officials say the merger will give the company a broader spectrum of movie offerings. The move is an outgrowth of Vivendi's $40-billion acquisitions of Seagram Co. and most of CanalPlus, the parent company of StudioCanal, in December 2000.
BUSINESS
June 15, 1992 | From Times Staff and Wire Reports
Carolco Makes Changes: Carolco Pictures Inc. announced that it has retained New York investment bankers Allen & Co. as an adviser. Debts have forced Carolco to restructure, despite its success with "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." Carolco Chairman Mario F. Kassar, noting the hiring of Allen & Co. and the continued participation of major investors such as France-based Le Studio Canal Plus, said his company will work "diligently to complete the reorganization plan."
BUSINESS
October 26, 1993
Le Studio Canal Plus, the French pay television giant whose experience in Hollywood hasn't always been on the plus side, named three executives to oversee its reorganized U.S. operations. Olivier Granier, who had been Canal Plus' liaison to Hollywood, was appointed president and chief operating officer of Le Studio Canal Plus (U.S.).
ENTERTAINMENT
October 7, 1994 | KEVIN THOMAS, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Nanni Moretti's "Caro Diario" (Dear Diary) introduces to American audiences the quirky Italian filmmaker whose eight films over the last 18 years have established him as a cult figure in his own country. Although Moretti has an off-the-wall comic sensibility with an anti-Establishment attitude and a graceful style, he is not likely to enjoy the same success in America as many other Italian filmmakers.
ENTERTAINMENT
November 5, 1999 | KEVIN THOMAS, TIMES STAFF WRITER
With "Train of Life," writer-director Radu Mihaileanu came up with a clever premise, but you wish he'd played up its potential more for suspense than for broad ethnic humor. To give him credit, he does end on an unexpected note that casts all that comes before in a different light. But so much of this French-language film is tiresome in its relentless reliance on country-bumpkin humor. The time is the summer of 1941, somewhere in rural Eastern Europe.