Dreamachine

Hanway Films - financiers of the best film of 2006, Terry Gilliam's Tideland - and Celluloid Dreams - financiers of the best film of 2007 so far, Garth Jennings' Son of Rambow - have merged.

Variety announce that the new company will be called Dreamachine and have a library of 500 films. It will be run by Hengameh Panahi and Jeremy Thomas. Thomas will continue to produce films independently through The Recorded Picture Company, but these will then be handle by Dreamachine.

Upcoming films from the new super sales entity include Tom Kalin's Savage Grace, Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark and Johnnie To's Triangle, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Todd Haynes' I'm Not There. Hopefully there'll be even more of this calibre to come now they've pooled dollars.

Looks like Cannes this year is going to be dominated by this wonderful new beast.

Persepolis, NY

The New York Times yesterday carried a nice piece on Persepolis, the animated movie adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's comic strip. The film is directed by Satrapi and Vincent Parronaud and, in the original French, features vocal turns from Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darieux and Chiara Mastroianni.

Of her collaboration with Parronaud, Satrapi says "“We’re like the Coen brothers. We’re very complementary. I would have made much more of a Bergman movie. But I don’t want something that a couple of intellectuals in Paris and New York will watch and nobody else.”