Air canada film in leading hotels of the world website

The Second Annual Air Canada enRoute Student Film Festival Announces
Sponsors – Ford Returns as Presenting Sponsor

– Screening and Awards Gala takes place November 5th in Toronto –

MONTREAL, Oct. 1 /CNW Telbec/ – The Second Annual Air Canada enRoute
Student Film Festival today announced its sponsors for its upcoming awards
gala to be held November 5th in Toronto. Ford Motor company returns as this
year’s presenting sponsor. Other returning sponsors are Krups, Playback
magazine, the Director’s Guild of Canada, Metropolitan Hotels and Cineplex
Entertainment. New sponsors this year include The Spoke Club, Palm Springs
International Film Festival, Bullet Digital and pre-screening partners Ouat
Media.
The student who wins in the Best Film category will take home a brand new
2009 Ford Focus vehicle and an Air Canada, all-inclusive roundtrip for two to
the Palm Springs International Film Festival in January. The Festival was
launched in 1990 by Sonny Bono and features a stellar line-up of more than
200 films from 60 countries, special events and gala receptions.
Pre-gala screenings for the Air Canada enRoute Student Film Festival are
being held at the Scotiabank Theatre (Cineplex) in downtown Toronto on
November 5th. The films are being chosen by the festival’s jury members: Dan
Aykroyd, Wendy Crewson, Colm Feore, Arsinée Khanjian and Andrea Martin,
Canadian Film Directors Patricia Rozema, Rob Stewart, Yves Simoneau and
Toronto International Film Festival CEO Noah Cowan. Winners will be announced
the same evening at the Awards Gala hosted by The Spoke Club.
Air Canada passengers can view the selected short films on the main
screen televisions and personal seatback entertainment systems. The films can
also be viewed online at http://www.enroutefilm.com. The Festival is produced by
Spafax Canada.

enRoute, Air Canada’s in-flight magazine, celebrates Canadian achievement
in film, music, design and cultural innovation. The monthly magazine has
received numerous awards including Best Travel Magazine at the 2007 North
American Travel Journalists’ Association Awards. Every month enRoute profiles
the student films being showcased in-flight.

Montreal-based Air Canada provides scheduled and charter air
transportation for passengers and cargo to more than 170 destinations on five
continents. Canada’s flag carrier is the 14th largest commercial airline in
the world and serves 34 million customers annually with a fleet consisting of
335 aircraft. Air Canada is a founding member of Star Alliance, providing the
world’s most comprehensive air transportation network for Canadian domestic,
transborder and international travel. Air Canada aircraft offer customers
individualized seatback in-flight entertainment systems with hundreds of hours
of digital audio-visual entertainment. As well, customers can collect Aeroplan
miles for future awards through Canada’s leading loyalty program.

For further information: Marsha Mowers, Vision/Co, (416) 341-2474 x270,
marsham@visioncompanies.com; Isabelle Arthur, Communications, Air Canada,
(514) 422-5788, isabelle.arthur@aircanada.ca

Film weekend seattle in religulous review

With a scorching $27,204 per-theatre-average, Saul Dibb’s “The
Duchess” found 2008’s second highest specialty average (behind
arguable inclusion “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl”) and gave the
competitive fall season a royal beginning. In 7 locations, the
Paramount Vantage release grossed $190,426. A slew of other, lower-
profile films also found decent numbers, including a Texas screening
of Chris Eska’s “August Evening,” the debut of Stuart Townsend’s
“Battle in Seattle” and the second weekend of yoga doc “Enlighten Up!”

After a generally favorable screening at the Toronto International
Film Festival, Saul Dibb’s “The Duchess” found itself high atop the iW
BOT this weekend. The Keira Knightley-Ralph Fiennes starrer, a
dramatized chronicle of the life of 18th century aristocrat Georgiana,
Duchess of Devonshire, scored the second-highest iW BOT debut in 2008
(after Patricia Rozema’s “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl”). The film
grossed $190,426 on 7 screens for a whopping average of $27,204.

The film found itself only moderately under the opening averages of
two of the most successful recent royal accounts, Stephen Frears’ 2006
“The Queen,” which averaged $40,671 on 3 runs in its debut weekend,
and Shekhar Kapur’s 1998 “Elizabeth,” which averaged $30,570 on 9
runs. It far surpassed Kapur’s 2008 follow-up, “Elizabeth: The Golden
Age,” which averaged $3,075 last October on a perhaps incomparable
2,001 theaters.

“We were very pleased with the grosses from this past weekend,” said
“Duchess” distributor Paramount Vantage’s Senior Vice-President Kevin
Grayson in an interview with indieWIRE. “The film showed very good
success at our core theatres on both coasts with strong per screen
averages at all our locations.” The film played particularly well with
women, as Grayson had expected, and will slowly find more theaters in
the coming weeks. “We are expanding our initial runs [in New York, Los
Angeles and Toronto] as well as introducing the film into the top 20
markets in a limited fashion,” he said. “That combined with Keira’s
strong cross over ability, good word of mouth and solid reviews we
feel we are on the right road to reach and exceed our goals.”

However, it might increasingly become a rocky road for “The Duchess”
to maintain this weekend’s success. The next two weekends alone see
the openings of potential specialty powerhouses like Jonathan Demme’s
“Rachel Getting Married,” Larry Charles’ “Religulous” and Fernando
Meirelles’s “Blindness.”

Though without the backing of a “Duchess”-like studio subsidiary, a
wealth of other films crowded the iW BOT’s top slots with less-
dramatic but certainly promising numbers. Redwood Palms release of
“Battle in Seattle” opened on 8 screens and found a decent $46,903
gross. Stuart Townsend’s fictionalized account of the 1999 riots to
stop a World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle averaged $5,863,
from a $9,718 high at New York’s Angelika Film Center to a $2,188 low
at Minneapolis’ Uptown Theatre. “Seattle” will battle the box office
at 11 additional theaters this upcoming weekend, including in Chicago,
Boston and Detroit.

“Seattle” ranked behind two iW BOT underdogs. Maya Releasing’s “August
Evening,” which opened to a disappointing $3,296 at New York’s Village
East Cinema two weekends ago, managed $11,033 from its debut weekend
at San Antonio’s Santikos Bijou Theatre. Directed by Texas native
Chris Eska, “Evening” won the John Cassavetes Award at the 2007 Gotham
Awards, and now has a cumulative gross of $15,576. It opens in Los
Angeles this Friday.
Just behind “Evening” was the surprising second weekend of Kate
Churchill’s yoga documentary, “Enlighten Up!,” which grossed an
impressive $8,598 in its sole run at the Kendall Square Cinema in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. That takes “Enlighten”‘s total up to $20,397
after two weekends. And while one must consider that the screenings
did include actual free yoga classes led before select screenings,
there is still something to be said for such grassroots marketing.

Finally, in what might be one of the year’s biggest – and most
expected – specialty disasters, Empire Film Group opened long-shelved
2007 Sundance entry “Hounddog,” best known for its Dakota Fanning rape
scene, on 11 screens. It averaged $1,249.