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Bond Down Under

Parts of the next James Bond film, starring British actor Daniel Craig, will be filmed in Bregenz, western Austria, on the edge of Lake Constance, said a Swiss production company.

Unicorn Media announced it was recruiting 1,500 extras for opera scenes set on a floating theater, a characteristically glamorous backdrop for the spy franchise.

The production company passed applications on to British director Marc Forster's London team, which will in turn choose the extras - set to earn 60 euros ($88) per day - said Unicorn's Leonhard Gmur.

The filming, which began on Jan 3 in London, will move to Bregenz between April 29 and May 10.

Craig, playing agent 007 for the second time, will confront an enemy played by French actor Mathieu Amalric, currently winning rave reviews for his performance in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

The 22nd James Bond, the title of which has not yet been released, is set to open on Nov 7, in theaters around the world.

Pitching new talent

The second China Film Pitch and Catch (CFPC) will kick off during the 11th Shanghai International Film Festival, which will open on June 14 and run for nine days.

CFPC, first launched at last year's Shanghai festival, aims to promote projects to international filmmakers and buyers and encourage international co-productions.

The initiative features both Special Recommendations and One-to-One Individual Meetings. In the Special Recommendations, details of eight Chinese projects will be presented to investors, buyers, filmmakers and media. The One-to-One sessions will promote 32 projects to international investors and producers.

Projects of young Chinese directors are given priority, the festival's organizers say.

Last year's CFPC featured 120 projects, of which 11 are under preliminary preparation and three are in production.

Assembly star joins John Rabe cast

Young actor Yuan Wenkang, who played a supporting role as Wang Jincun in Feng Xiaogang's box office hit Assembly (Jijie Hao), has joined the crew of John Rabe, a Chinese-German production about the Nanjing Massacre.

Yuan will star as Gu, a captured soldier who became Rabe's driver. The German helped set up a safety zone in Nanjing in 1937 and saved tens of thousands of Chinese from Japanese troops.

Florian Gallenberger, 35, is directing the film. His debut feature, I Want To Be, won the Best Short Film Academy Award in 2001. Famed cinematographer Jurgen Jurges has also signed on.

Adapted from Rabe's diary about Nanjing, the film also stars Zhang Jingchu and German actor Ulrich Tukur.

Filming will wrap up in early February.

China Daily-Agencies

(China Daily 01/22/2008 page18)