Umbrella Entertainment and Madman/AV Channel have announced an end to the current distribution arrangement for Umbrella titles, effective 1st August 2005.

Effective immediately, we would like to notify all Umbrella Entertainment website customers that the ordering functions of the www.umbrellaent.com.au website will be inactive. Once all current orders are fulfilled, Madman and the AV Channel will complete its distribution arrangement and hand over to Umbrella?s new distributor.

Any customer orders that have already been placed via the current website, will be fulfilled as per normal.

AV Channel will continue to release a fantastic lineup of titles from the Madman Entertainment group. Please feel free to browse our catalogue and order online from our brand new website, www.madman.com.au.

Dear Customers,

Please be advised THE AV CHANNEL warehouse will be closed on Thursday 30th of June and Friday 1st of July for stocktake.

There will be no stock movements in or out of the warehouse from that point until the warehouse re-opens on Monday 4th of July.

We apologise for any delays that may be experienced due to this necessary closure.

For any further information, please contact your Account Manager.

address: 1 - 35 WELLINGTON STREET, Collingwood Vic 3066
telephone: 03 9419 5444
email: info@avchannel.com.au
web: http://www.avchannel.com.au/

VOLTRON: COLLECTION 5 (MMB132) has been pulled from our June line-up and will now ship with JULY product (20/07/05.)

Unless specifically requested your order will be retained and will ship with your JULY retail releases.

We apologise for any inconvenience that this delay causes and thank you for your ongoing support!

TRANSFORMERS - COLLECTION 6 (SERIES 4) MMB167 has been pulled from our June line-up and will now ship with JULY product (20/07/05.)

Unless specifically requested your order will be retained and will ship with your JULY retail releases.

Madman has chosen to delay this product in order to ensure that a video commentary and 90 minutes of interviews EXCLUSIVE to the Australian release make the final cut.

Madman's goal, as always, is to deliver our customers the best possible product available and we apologise that in this instance, we have needed to temporarily delay the release as a result.

Thank you for your ongoing support!

Madman Entertainment had planned to release two specially-priced Studio Ghibli boxsets in June 2005, one including Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, the other Kiki's Delivery Service and Laputa Castle in the Sky.

It is with much regret that we must cancel these two products from our June line-up of DVD releases.

We hope to be able to release these items late 2005, to coincide with wave three of our Studio Ghibli DVD releases and the national cinematic debut of Hayao Miyazaki's latest cinematic feature "Howl's Moving Castle".

Please review the Madman website or your dealer materials for information on these boxsets' re-scheduled release date.

Apologies to those who were anticipating these releases and had already placed orders.

Sincerely,

The Madman Anime Team

HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE, the latest Studio Ghibli masterpiece by Hayao Miyazaki, the Academy Award winning director of Spirited Away, will have its Australian premiere when it closes the 52nd Sydney Film Festival on June 25th. Other Madman Cinema titles screening at the Festival, which commences June 10th, include the Academy Award nominated South African drama, YESTERDAY, Emir Kusturica's exhuberant LIFE IS A MIRACLE and the bone-crunching wrestling documentary THE SMASHING MACHINE.

Robert Connolly?s new Australian film, THREE DOLLARS enjoyed the highest screen average of any film in the county over the ANZAC Day long weekend.

Playing on 15 screens, with a total box office of $227,747, the film?s screen average of $15,183 was higher than any other title on Australian screens.

Producer, John Maynard was elated with the results, "despite the fine weather and strong competition THREE DOLLARS has been embraced whole heartedly. It looks like THREE DOLLARS has finally broken the back of the 'product drought' in the quality market.?

Exhibitors reported many sold out sessions.

Paul Dravet from the Hayden Orpheum in Cremorne said, ?We opened five quality new films on the weekend and THREE DOLLARS was number one. I can?t even remember the last time an Australian film was our top film, let alone amongst such strong company.?

Mark Sarfarty, Head of Dendy Cinemas said ?It was literally ?turn away? business. We had queues and sell outs at cinemas around the country all weekend. I can?t think of any other Australian film in recent years that has generated such an incredible level of excitement amongst cinema goers.?

Based on Elliot Perlman?s bestselling novel and starring David Wenham, Frances O?Connor and Sarah Wynter, THREE DOLLARS is now showing at selected cinemas and will widen its release in the coming weeks.

Best described as the epic story of an ordinary man, THREE DOLLARS is the comedic and ironic tale of the honest and compassionate Eddie (Wenham) who at the age of 38 finds himself with a wife (O?Connor), a child, a childhood love (Wynter) and three dollars.

Eddie and Tanya fell in love over a turntable spinning Joy Division. They survived their twenties ? and the eighties ? and now Eddie is 38, with a wife, a child, a mortgage and three dollars to his name?

THREE DOLLARS is the story of a good man in bad times and his resilience in the face of circumstances that could break him. As Eddie discovers, it?s amazing how far a little change will get you.

Robert Connolly, the director of the new Australian film, THREE DOLLARS is detailing his experiences online at www.threedollars.net.

****1/2 "absolutely riveting" Margaret Pomerantz, At the Movies

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the Documentary Competition at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival

Madman Cinema releases DIG! in select cinemas nationally next Thursday April 14, with sneak previews this weekend (Fri, Sat, Sun).

DIG! follows the talented underground musicians Anton Newcombe, leader of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Courtney Taylor, head of The Dandy Warhols ? star-crossed friends and bitter rivals. From the moment they met Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor quickly bonded over a desire to not conform to the tastes of the recording industry. Yet the musicians? choices over how to express their creativity and originality in a profit-driven industry eventually put them at irreconcilable odds. Shot over seven years and culled from 1,500 hours of footage, DIG! is about both musicians? love and obsession, gigs and recordings, arrests and death threats, uppers and downers, and their choice between art and industry.

Click on the web link to find out what cinemas DIG! is showing at.

**** "beautifully made?extremely engrossing" David Stratton, At the Movies

Madman Cinema releases YOUNG ADAM in select theatres nationally today.

Starring Ewan McGregor in what many critics are calling his best performance yet, as well as Tilda Swinton, Peter Mullan and Emily Mortimer, YOUNG ADAM is a hauntingly faithful adaptation of the novel of the same by the Scottish Beat writer Alexander Trocchi. One of the most original British films of recent years, it's a moody, sensual thriller that takes place on the canals between Glasgow and Edinburgh during the 1950s.

YOUNG ADAM centres around Joe (McGregor), a rootless young drifter who finds work on a barge owned by the down-to-earth Les (Mullan) and his enigmatic wife Ella (Swinton). One afternoon Joe and Les happen upon the corpse of a young woman floating in the water and suspicions are aroused. Accident? Suicide? Murder?

In the hot new anime series FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST, two brothers discover the dark art of alchemy and its transmuting powers.

These boys can turn any inert substance into something else - instantly. Lead into gold, no problem. But when they attempt to bring their mother back to life, it's entirely another matter. The laws of alchemy strictly forbid transmuting a human life.


Madman Entertainment has transformed sheet aluminium into ultra-collectable boxes to house the 13 volume anime series (2 more tins each holding 4 volumes respectively will come out at a later date). These VERY LIMITED EDITION Fullmetal Cases have already turned the hit prospect of this series into solid sales. Madman's distributor, the AV Channel, has already SOLD ALL of the Collector's Tins - that include Volume 1 and the bonus CD soundtrack - to their retail partners

Stocks of the Fullmetal Package will hit the shelves of your favourite anime destination from 13 April 2005. Get yours before they are all sold out!


The FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST limited edition tin is available from an anime DVD retailer near you!


ABOUT FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST

As children, two brothers Edward and Alphonse used the clandestine science of Alchemy to try the unthinkable - resurrect their dead mother. They failed, unleashing an alchemic reaction that ripped their bodies apart. Four years later, Ed and Al are on a quest to find a philospher's stone rumoured to be able to amplify their alchemical powers and bring their bodies back to normal. And it appears they may have found it.


This is the year's biggest anime debut! FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST is based on the best selling manga by Hiromu Arakawa. The universal appeal of this series lies in the themes of loss, suffering and the journey to redemption, as well as the fast-paced supernatural action. FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST is destined to outstrip HARRY POTTER for sheer brilliance and wizardry.


The anime hails from the animation powerhouse Studio BONES - the name behind such innovative titles as COWBOY BEBOP THE MOVIE and RAXHEPHON - along with Sony's Aniplex animation studio. This creative pedigree together with multiple video game releases and chart-topping theme songs by major label artists such as J-rock supergroup L'Arc en Ciel have positioned Fullmetal Alchemist at the top tier of anime releases in Japan.


WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY

"Entertaining, heart-breaking and thought-provoking. One of-if not the-greatest anime ever." - Anime Insider

"It's not unusual for anime series to veer wildly between comic and dramatic, but Fullmetal Alchemist does so hard and fast enough to leave viewers with whiplash." SCI-FI Magazine


" .this is one anime series you can't afford to miss." NewType Magazine