Another Shahrukh interview (OSO promotion)

A lot of the time when I don't post for a long time, I re-start by posting something completely random and short, so this will be no exception ;)

Here's Shahrukh at his flippant best, promoting Om Shanti Om :) It's a 3 part interview embedded as a playlist, so I hope it works right... Part 3 is by far the funniest :)


P.S. I'm expecting to be quiet throughout January as well, but hopefully halfway through February I'll be writing a bit more :)

Sweeney Todd promotion in full throb

Sweeney Todd is receiving a great deal of attention at the moment. There's been a multitude of TV spots and various promotional clips released and the first press screenings have produced some glowing reviews. This post is a selection of what I thought was most interesting :)

A while back now, we got our first proper look at Johnny Depp singing and it was a really effective first look *grin*
Warner Bros followed this up by releasing 9 scenes from the film as well as 3 featurettes and 2 clips with behind the scenes footage. They were first posted on iesb where for a while they were exclusive, but eventually they made their way to other sites (like yahoo) and of course they're all over youtube now (I recommend this playlist for a very full set of Sweeney Todd clips). While all of them are great, here's some of my personal favourites...

This is scene no.4 "The Contest" and it's the first proper look we've had of Sascha Baron Cohen in the film. He plays a rival barber from Italy - Adolfo Pirelli. The clip is a public contest between him and Sweeney (Sweeney cheats apparently):


We also get our first look at Alan Rickman (scene no.3 "You Gandered at my Ward"). The boy on the clip is Jamie Campbell Bower who is said to have gotten the part of young Voldemort in the 6th Harry Potter film.


Here's scene no.6 - "Epiphany", it's terrificly dramatic :)


My favourite featurette is the one about the cast:

One thing that surprised me on this clip (as well as the "You Gandered at my Ward" one) is how much I'm enjoying the bits with Johanna and Anthony. I thought that would be the least interesting bit of the film for me because it sounded like a cliche romance in the plot description, but I love what they've done with it. Somehow putting such pure innocence amongst all these totally perverse characters makes everything even more funny ;) And the actors for Anthony and Johanna are cast so well! Even the voices - they have rather high voices which makes them sound all the more innocent. I love the "So we run away and then all our dreams come true" line lol And it's so well delivered!
I guess the one (and so far only) disappointment for me is Timothy Spall. Anyone who's seen "Secrets & Lies" knows what a terrific actor he is, but so far I don't like what I've seen of his work in Sweeney Todd or even the way he spoke of the character. Johnny Depp has said in interviews that he thinks of Sweeney as a very sensitive character (despite his murderous qualities), Helena Bonham-Carter while she's gone out and said that her character is totally immoral has also said that the main thing that defines her is that she's tragically in love with someone who doesn't love her back and finally Alan Rickman underlines that his character has no idea that he has an appalling set of morals. You can see all three of them concentrating not so much on the perverse appearance that these characters give off, but on what the characters feel. Not so with Timothy Spall, however, and IMO you can see it in those clips. He's clearly concentrating on giving the appearance of being bad - the sly smiles, the intonation that gives away that really what he's saying is false and so on. Honestly, with a script like this, the appearance of "being bad" will come on its own. Even if you pretended what the character is doing is the most moral thing in the world you could not avoid the perverse appearance of the character (in fact, if you did that you would probably give off an even stronger air of perverseness ;-P). So yeah... from what I've seen so far I'm disappointed with Timothy Spall, but hey the film is clearly going to be brilliant anyway :-D And there's always the chance that I've judged him too quickly.

Finally, apart from film clips, you can also listen to a bit more of the music here. I love the lyrics lol

There's been loads of interviews as well.
The Sweeney section in this article is very short, but it has one quote which is to die for:
Depp was nervous about singing because, Burton explains: "It's like casting a porno movie, having people sing. They feel they're being asked to take their clothes off."
This is a video interview with Johnny Depp and Tim Burton which I really recommend (it has Johnny giggling so hard that he almost spits coffee all over himself).
And you can download this Musical Talk podcast episode which has some great interviews with loads of people behind Sweeney Todd.
These are transcripts from the London press junket. They're a lot of fun :)

Film critics are getting excited about the film as well. Tom O'Neil has long predicted the film would be a serious contender for the Academy Awards. Most film critics thought his predictions rather laughable, but the press screenings seem to have changed some minds. The question is will the blood flow (apparently the film is veeeery gory) effect its chances.

Oh, and finally the good news is we have a release date for Poland :) It's the 22nd of February (my visions were much more nightmareish - I was thinking May or something like that).

Tom Cruise film loses out to two Bollywood films in the worldwide box office

Bollywood is still a long way from properly challenging the major Hollywood studios, but for the first time something of the sort has happened (although I think these results require some interpretation ;)).
Generally, trade analysts divide box office results into the US box office and the worldwide box office (worldwide = everybody except the US). This is convenient because films tend to stack up a bit differently in the US, but also because a Hollywood film can earn about a third of its revenue in the US alone. The joke is that United Artists released Lions for Lambs in 45 countries and earned $10.3 million in the worlwide box office this weekend. Whereas Saawariya made $14.4 million and Om Shanti Om $17million in India alone. It is a bit of a blip as Variety calls it because it's Diwali weekend in India and two of the most anticipated films of the season have just released. Hollywood on the other hand is probably having a weaker weekend and it looks like Lions for Lambs is going to be a flop. But considering India's economic growth this is a very strong signal of what is to come and puts my last Hollywood-Bollywood post into perspective I think. India is now becoming a very important market for Hollywood to break into and they're going to do a lot to get there. It's significant that Saawariya was co-produced by a large American studio.

While this result tells us more about India's significance as a market than about any global trends regarding Bollywood films, both films have done very well outside of India too. Om Shanti Om has made 11th place in the US weekend box office which is I think the best result any Bollywood film has made at this point. And look closely at the screen count - Om Shanti Om has been released on 114 screens in the US while its Hollywood rivals have a 2000 or more screen count! And notice the per screen average - it's 3 times that of the other big releases. Clearly there would have been room to give Om Shanti Om a wider release than that!
It's interesting to look at Saawariya's result. It has made 24th place in the US box office which is also an excellent result. And for the first time I think I'm seeing a Bollywood release that has done well in the US and the per screen result is around what other films are collecting. Since Saawariya was co-produced by Sony, it's also Sony doing the distribution in the US and it appears that they've done it properly - released it on as many screens as it needs to be released and also it is I think the first Bollywood film to be released in the US which was submitted to the MPAA for rating (it received a PG).

Both films, but particularly Om Shanti Om has made an impact in other countries as well. Om Shanti Om has made no.7 in the UK box office, just behind the Tom Cruise flick which is at no. 6 and considering all the other numbers (54 vs 404 screens, £9,977 vs £1,629 per screen average) it looks like in the long run Om Shanti Om will be the winner.
It's done well even in Australia where it has made 9th place and as usual I recommend you check out the screen count and average per screen. Sony gave Saawariya a slightly wider release in Australia than Eros was able to give Om Shanti Om, but you can still see Om Shanti Om has done better.

Finally, because as you know I'm addicted to youtube, here are some of the trailers of the films mentioned in this post ;)

So here's the loser of this week, the Tom Cruise starrer - Lions for Lambs:


This is the trailer for Saawariya, the first Bollywood-Hollywood production:


And finally two teasers for Om Shanti Om, the Shahrukh Khan starrer (Shahrukh Khan has beaten Tom Cruise at the worlwide box office buahahaha):



And here's one of the bigger selling points of the film ;)

Take That on tour again

Take That are now doing their second tour since their reunion and this time it's not just round the UK - they're doing many venues in Western Europe also. The good news is that the tour is yet another success, the bad is that Howard Donald has injured himself during one of the shows and Take That are therefore performing as a trio at the moment (though Howard will rejoin them as soon as his health permits it).
The way Take That are trying to make up Howard's absence to the fans is hilarious, however. Here's a clip from a recent show in Rotterdam (and be sure to wait until the end cause that's the best bit ;) ):


A little less recently (though still recently) Take That appeared for the second time on the Jonathan Ross show. See it here:

"Klass" - the Estonian Academy Award candidate

The Warsaw Film Festival came to an end on Sunday. I didn't see many films by my usual standards (9 in 10 days), but I've got a lot going on at the moment.

Mostly I had enjoyable screenings, but few of the films evoked any strong feelings in me. Before I get to the one that hit me so hard that I decided I needed to write a whole post about it so that I could let all those feelings out ;), I just want to give a quick mention to Blackout (the trailer is here) which reminded me yet again of how pathetically underrepresented Filipino cinema is (here's my previous rant from the year before). It's one of the biggest film industries in the world and every time I see a Filipino film (er... this was the third time...) I realize how much I'm missing out on :-/

But lets finally get to the point, I've bottled up my feelings about Klass far too long, don't you think? ;)
Klass is about people getting bullied at school. It's a very violent and naturalistic film, but unlike km - one of the editors on filmweb (to whose review I will not link to because he spoils the ending - not that I think the ending was that unexpected, but I still think it's much better to see the film without knowing it) I didn't think the film was "cheap".
Sure, it's a topic where you can easily just use its sensationalism and concentrate on the victim's sufferings (you're bound to get sympathy from the audience if you're going down the naturalistic route), but I never felt this was the case with Klass.
On the contrary, I thought the way they avoided that happening to the film was very clever. Joosep (the boy who gets bullied by the whole class) may at first seem like the protagonist, but really he's not. First and foremost the film is the story of Kaspar.
Kaspar is a simple guy. He's from a small village and his parents have sent him to live with his grandma in the city, so that he can attend a better college. He has average grades, but is clearly very sporty. At the beginning of the film he bullies Joosep just as badly as the rest of the class (in one of the opening scenes they throw Joosep naked into the girls' locker room). But because of a string of events he ends up defending Joosep and getting bullied himself.
Kaspar is a great protagonist for a couple of reasons. He works well as a character - there's something very simple and straightforward about him, which makes him easy to like even if he's a bit of a jerk at the beginning. He's also a loyal friend which he proves to Joosep (and also a loyal boyfriend, but that's a storyline I don't particularly want to get into in this "review").
Perhaps even more importantly, it's hard to think of him as a victim - he's strong and he can fend for himself. On top of that there's a whole level of dynamics between Kaspar and Andreas (the biggest bully whose lead everyone in class takes). Kaspar admits later on in the film that he didn't like being bossed around by Andreas and already at the beginning of the film we see he's a bit cheekier with Andreas than most of Andreas's classmates would dare to be. I think to call it a rivalry would be simplifying what happens between them, but certainly the whole "bullying dynamics" play out the way they do largely because of the tension between them.
Joosep is a whole different deal. He's a true victim and when I say that I mean that he's easy to bully. It's not that there's anything particularly wrong with him (he's a bit geeky, but nothing that bad), but he gives in easily and he's used to the class treating him that way. Kaspar isn't easy to bully at all. He's not scared of getting into a fight. In fact about halfway through the film, Andreas decides it's not worth trying to crack Kaspar purely by using violence on him. Instead he has Kaspar locked behind some sort of gate in a shed and has the shit beaten out of Joosep and makes Kaspar watch ("See Kaspar - without you it would have been over now."). You can see part of the scene in question below with English subtitles, though it's preceded with a scene of the class playing basketball (this must be one of the most disjointed trailers ever):

Klass (The Class) - Trailer
Uploaded by splatterwelt

It's a bit odd showing scenes out of context like that because I don't think they give a particularly good feel of the film (or at least not why I liked it so much ;) ). Frankly, after watching the first 20min. or so I didn't think the film was that special. I mean yes, it was obvious that it was good, but I wouldn't have devoted a whole post to it ;) It looked just like a piece of well-made realistic cinema, which one can see quite a lot of at film festivals these days. But as it went on it got better and better. It was the level of detail in the characters, the group dynamics and the way the story itself developed. It was all a very careful construct with a beautiful build up to the culmination point. Of course the intensity of the abuse grew throughout the film as well and since it's staged and acted really well, that in itself makes the film more intense as it goes on.

Since I'm in danger of doing some serious gushing now, I better not continue writing ;-P I'll leave you with a teaser trailer for the film:


Lets hope this film gets a distributor in Poland!

It's official - Dumbledore is gay!

Yep, it's true! J.K. Rowling was asked about Dumbledore's love life in New York and now the news is out! :)

Second Sweeney Todd trailer

This is the second trailer and apparently there's still more to come (they're all supposed to emphasize different aspects of the film). This one emphasizes the gore and thriller aspects of the film.
There's a few new shots and lines in there:

I so wish we at least had a Polish date for the release :-/ Still no date is set and judging by the dates on which the film will be released in other countries, I'm expecting the film in Poland in spring 2008 at the earliest :-/

Can Johnny Depp sing?

Naturally, everyone's trying to figure out whether Johnny Depp can sing based on those few seconds in the Sweeney Todd trailer where he's shown doing so. Someone on the imdb forums actually compiled an audio clip of three of the most famous Broadway Sweeney Todds and Johnny Depp singing the exact same lines. It's interesting to hear I think - Johnny's interpretation is very different. He's definitely the weakest singer, but I think his version is the creepiest. Judge for yourself here.

Sweeney Todd trailer - yay!

Finally, the trailer for Sweeney Todd is out!! And it looks as good as I hoped it would :D Check it out:

The MPAA and the BBFC - how the US and UK deal with sex and violence in films

The Venice film festival (which is the oldest film festival in the world and remains one of the most prestigious) came to an end the week before last and it was Ang Lee's Lust, Caution that won it.
While this might seem irrelevant to the topic of this post, I assure you it's not ;) The trailer should give you an idea where I'm going with this:


Anyway, the film has received an NC-17 certificate from the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America). Focus Features, the distributors of "Lust, Caution", have not appealed it or made any cuts for the American release which is very unusual. The NC-17 certificate is usually not regarded as an option even for less commercial films because this means many cinemas will not show it, many DVD rentals and stores will not stock it and many newspapers will not advertise it. While some art house films in the past have gone ahead with this certificate, it's the first time that such a mainstream director and a film that won such an important festival is going to be released as NC-17.

All the talk surrounding this has made me want to take a closer look at the MPAA and how the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) compares. The MPAA has often been accused of double standards (Hollywood films can get away with more than art house or foreign films, sex is treated much more severely than violence).
Perhaps the strangest thing about the MPAA is that nobody knows exactly who rates the films. All the names are kept anonymous. In fact, the whole thing is so fishy that last year a documentary was made about the MPAA in an attempt to shed some light on it (they even hired a private detective to find out who was sitting on the board!). See the trailer for this documentary here.

Apart from being very secretive about their members, the feedback they give to both the filmmakers and the general public about why films received certain ratings is very limitted comparing to what the BBFC does these days. Check out the quote below from one of the MPAA FAQs:
CARA does provide explanations to the submitter of each motion picture of the reasons for the rating assigned to that picture. However, any such discussions concerning a particular motion picture will be only with the submitter and are also considered confidential. Thus, the substance of discussions about a movie being rated by CARA cannot be discussed with the press or anyone else other than, where appropriate, the submitter of the particular motion picture.
Unfortunately, the level of detail given to submitters often isn't enough for their needs. This timeline of MPAA controversies describes many cases, but one stood out to me in particular. In 1983 Brian De Palma edited his "Scarface" three times to get a lower rating, but none of those three cuts passed. Clearly if they had given him the information he needed, the first cut would have passed their requirements (and oh irony, in the end he received the rating he wanted for his original unedited version!).
In contrast, the BBFC lists quite detailed reasons for the rating and cuts made to each film on their website (the older ratings are less detailed, but the more recent ones are usually very much so) and it also invites the public to "make its views known to the Board at any stage of the classification process".

I have two of my own theories about the MPAA (which you can take seriously or laugh at - whatever ;-P). My first is a conspiracy theory - I think they're consciously giving indie and foreign films harsher ratings and that it's one of their methods of ensuring the domination of the big Hollywood flicks on the US market.
Before you roll your eyes at me (actually you probably have already, but before you do it again ;-P), check out how the MPAA is funded. Here's a quote from the FAQ on one of the MPAA's official pages:
The movie rating system is a voluntary system sponsored by the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Association of Theatre Owners
Since you're probably not familiar with these organizations, I'll "translate". You might already be confused how the MPAA can be funded by the MPAA, so maybe I'll start with clarifying that. For whatever reason, when one talks of the American rating system, one talks of the MPAA giving the ratings (that's how imdb has it for example), but actually the ratings are done by a smaller body called CARA (Classification and Rating Administration) which is part of the MPAA. The MPAA itself is an older and bigger body - you can read about it in more detail here, but it's basically a body created to defend the interests of the major American film production companies - you can see the list of MPAA members (the six biggest studios in Hollywood) on their official site.
The National Association of Theatre Owners is an association of all the movie theatres in the US - most of which are part of cinema chains owned by the six companies already mentioned.
This puts the accusations of bias against foreign and independent films in a totally different light, doesn't it? Clearly it is in the interest of the sponsors of the rating system for films made outside of the six big studios to be given harsher treatment. Wikipedia actually says that Miramax had lots of problems with the rating system while they were an independent company, but now that Disney has bought them out, their problems have ceased!

The BBFC is funded in a much more independent way. See the quote below from their policy (avaliable on their official website):
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is an independent, non-governmental body funded through the fees it charges to those who submit films, videos, DVDs and digital games for classification.
On the one hand this means that British distributors have extra costs (unlike in the US, every film in the UK must be rated or else it is illegal to show it to the general public), but clearly it is a system less open to bias.

My other theory is a cultural one - I honestly believe Americans have a different attitude towards sex than we do here in Europe. Just as in India the general attitude towards sex and sexual behaviours seems to be a lot more prudish than in the West (kissing in public is considered obscene and even hand holding can be seen as vulgar), so in the US it seems certain things are a lot more taboo than they are in Europe.
I thought that it was fascinating to compare reactions to Daniel Radcliffe doing a nude scene in Equus (which I covered extensively on this blog ;) - just click on the Equus tag below this post). In the UK it was a big thing, but at no point did I feel there were any moral judgements about it. It was amusing, maybe shocking, but I don't think many people felt that it was somehow morally wrong of him to be doing it. The voices from the US were different though. Just reading through imdb there were many people who felt this amounted to pedophilia and were wondering how his parents could allow him to do such a thing. There were also those who said they would boycott the "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" film. I'm not saying that all the responses from the US were like that, but certainly it did seem to be somehow "a bigger thing" over there.
In this context, I also found it very interesting to read William H. Macy's comment about the reactions to "The Cooler" (this was one of the few art house films that was released with an NC-17 rating):
William H. Macy said that when the film was shown in European film festivals, afterward people mostly discussed the script and the characters, but when the film was shown at American film festivals, people mostly discussed how good Maria Bello looked in her nude scenes.
I think these different attitudes are reflected in not just the decisions of the MPAA and BBFC, but also their guidelines. I did a sort of comparison of the guidelines for each certificate, which you can download here. I wanted to put it straight up in my post, but the formatting I wanted wasn't possible (it's not a big file, don't worry :) ). Most of the guidelines have been just copied and pasted. Pretty much all the MPAA guidelines I found are in that file, but I only put up part of the BBFC guidelines since there were many which couldn't really be compared against anything in the MPAA ones. The full BBFC guidelines are here.

Finally, two random things that I didn't manage to fit anywhere else in this post. Firstly I thought this article was a great read - particularly the list of silly rating reasons (my favourite was "“PG-13 for intense depiction of very bad weather”).
And also I found it amusing to hear about Alfonso Cuaron's protest against what various rating bodies around the world were doing to Y tu mama tambien.

"Om Shanti Om" - Shahrukh's next release

So the marketing campaign for Shahrukh Khan's next film has started!
It's already run into some controversy, as it will release on the 9th of November - the same day as Bhansali's "Saawariya" (which was mentioned in more detail in one of my other posts) and Bhansali is angry with Farah Khan (the director of "Om Shanti Om" and "Main Hoon Naa") because he says she has ridiculed his mother.

So anyway, below is an episode of "Koffee with Karan" with Shahrukh and Farah in which amongst many hilarious answers, you will also see the supposedely offending comment about Bhansali's mother. The interview is in 5 parts - but it's really worth the watch!

Srk in KwK 2007 Teil 1 - MyVideo


Srk in KwK 2007 Teil 2 - MyVideo


Srk in KwK 2007 Teil 3 - MyVideo


Srk in KwK 2007 Teil 4 - MyVideo


Srk in KwK 2007 Teil 5 - MyVideo

And below are some more clips promoting the film.

This is another exclusive trailer (quite similar to the one they showed during Koffee with Karan):


And here's an opportunity to see the 6-pack that SRK and Farah were promising during the interview. Is it just me or is it really weird to see Shahrukh do this sort of thing? lol


Finally a trailer for one of the more romantic songs in the film which for some reason sounds totally like Japanese popular music to me (even though I'm sure it's not ;-P):

Some Indian box-office news (that will probably bore you, but I'm fascinated ;-P)

Last week, the Indian box-office saw possibly the biggest flop of recent times.
Ram Gopal Varma has remade Sholay, the 1975 classic with Amitabh Bachchan in the lead. In the new version Mr Bachchan stars as the villain of the film.
Reviews have been terrible and there's been a general uproar against re-making "Sholay" (it's a bit like doing a remake of "Citizen Kane"). The film has been taken off screens after just one week!
Ram Gopal Varma, though he did seem somewhat shaken by the reactions, took it with his characteristic cynicism:
"The messages have been pretty vocal and direct about their dislike for what I've done. I've been called names and treated to the nastiest comments. But I've enjoyed the backlash, far more than people enjoyed Aag" laughs Ramu.

On the other side of the spectrum, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) has just completed its 615th week in Indian cinemas (that's almost 12 years!) and it's still going really strong. In August when four Yash Raj productions were being shown in Mumbai, it was DDLJ that was the biggest earner! The film is a world phenomenon - no other film in the history of world cinema has played this long since its initial release (it has beaten the previous record holder - "Sholay (1975)" by about 7 years).

And finally, something I'm finding quite shocking is that Chak De! India which I thought would be a god-awful film and worth seeing only for Shahrukh, is not only a blockbuster, but is getting terrific reviews! After the first trailer came out, I was (like many people) convinced it would be horrible, but it's now going strong in its 4th week.
Reviews aside, perhaps the most surprising reaction to the film is that of the Academy (the Academy in the US that gives out the oscars ;-P) who have asked for a copy of the script for their permanent script collection.
Shahrukh has also received surprising reviews for his role as hockey coach. It's not just that they're good (which is rare in itself), but anyone who has watched him knows that "understated" or "restrained" are not adjectives that are usually associated with him.
Check out the first teaser trailer for "Chak De India" below (it promises none of the above, does it? lol):

The theatrical trailer looks a bit better, but is still far from promising the kind of reaction the film has received:

Initial promotion for Tim Burton's "Sweeney Todd"

It's still going to be a long wait before Sweeney Todd comes out (no release date set for Poland yet, but I think we'll be lucky if it comes out any earlier than February 2008). But even though we don't have a trailer yet, the temptation to write about it is too big - I've been extremely excited for this film ever since I first heard about it!
I mean you've got a very gory Broadway musical translated to film with Tim Burton as director - that's got to be interesting in itself, right? But once the plot and cast is put in place it gets better!
It's about Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) who is a barber in 19th century London. He has a wife and a very young daughter, Johanna. And then one day, with the purpose of er... taking the barber's wife for himself, judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) imprisons Benjamin Barker on false accusations. Many years later (by which time the judge is lusting after Johanna, who is now 16), Benjamin Barker comes back as Sweeney Todd and decides to revenge himself on the world for the injustice that has happened to him and proceeds in cutting the throats of all who come his way. He has help in Mrs Lovett (Helena Bonham-Carter) who uses the corpses to make meat pies.
We're also going to get Timothy Spall (he'll be playing some sort of accomplice to judge Turpin) and Sacha Baron Cohen (who will be playing a rival barber).
All of them are going to be doing their own singing which is particularly interesting in that this is supposed to be one of the most difficult Broadway musicals to sing. Some go as far as to call it an operetta rather than a musical.

The poster is out, but more interestingly just recently the first clip of the film was shown to an audience. This was at the Venice festival. Unfortunately, it hasn't surfaced on-line, but hopefully this means we won't have to wait for a trailer too long. The clip (in which Johnny Depp is psychotically singing to a razor) has gotten rave reviews, here's one of them.
And here's Stephen Sondheim (the author of the musical) teaching Guildhall School students the song in question:

It's going to be really fab, isn't it? :-D

Bollywood and Hollywood together - it's happening!

It seems like every 2-3 months is bringing stronger reasons to believe that Bollywood and Hollywood want to have a working relationship!
The first time I posted about this was in February and then again in May.
Well, now it's August and there's loads more to report :)

Hollywood is starting to take the Indian market very seriously. In other words they've realized that there's a billion people in India, that the country's economy is developing very fast, the people of India are veeeery interested in cinema and Hollywood only has about 8% of the market... oooops...
The problem is that the way they've dominated Western markets just isn't going to work in India. In the words of Gareth Wigan, vice chairman of Columbia TriStar - "The importing of American films into India is not filling a gap (...) You're not bringing a dish to a bare table. You're bringing a dish to a table where you have to move a lot of other dishes to fit in, and that's not true in a lot of other countries."
Disney, Warner Bros and Columbia/Sony in particular seem to be seeing this 8% market problem and there's no longer any doubt - they're looking for opportunities!

So a number of things have been happening...
Disney have made a deal with Yash Raj films (which is one of the biggest production companies in Bollywood) to make animated films for Indian audiences.
They've also apparently been in touch with Shahrukh Khan, hoping to invest in his production company - Red Chillies Entertainment. And they're not the only ones either, apparently Sony and Fox are considering the same move!

There's also a number of projects which are essentially Bollywood films, but with some of the money coming from Hollywood.
The first of these to come out is Saawariya, with Columbia/Sony Entertainment behind it. It will be released this November. It's directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali (the director who also did Devdas) and will star Rani Mukherji and Salman Khan. The first teaser trailer is looking absolutely stunning. See it here.
Warner Bros is venturing out into Bollywood with "Made in China", which will be directed by Nikhil Advani (the director of Kal Ho Naa Ho) and will star Akshay Kumar.
Perhaps most excitingly, both of these films will have mainstream American distributors which makes their chances in the international box office much better! :)

But also Bollywood stars are being offered Hollywood movies!
Shilpa Shetty is rumoured to be in talks for the next James Bond movie, as well as possibly starring in a movie with Keanu Reeves. But there have been a number of other Bollywood stars approached for various projects, this article lists most of them.
Less dynamically, but Hollywood producers also seem to be thinking about Bollywood directors for their Hollywood projects. Santosh Sivan (the director of Asoka) has been approached with a script set in a colonial background.

Finally, perhaps less energetically, but Bollywood is making its own attempts at venturing into Hollywood and making use of their talents.
They have roped in a leading Hollywood VFX man into Pixion - a post-production studio in India. David Crawford is behind films like "Titanic", "Spiderman" and "Mission Impossible II"!
UTV is trying to make a big World War II movie with Vishal Bharadwaj (Omkara) as the director, hopefully bringing together Uma Thurman and Hrithik Roshan, but at the moment the project will remain in pre-production for a while yet.
UTV has also ventured into co-production with Fox on a Hollywood film - it will be Shyamalan's next film.

Not bad, huh? :-D

P.S. Not strictly related to the Hollywood-Bollywood issue, but I'll put it in anyway ;-P Danny Boyle's next film is set in India and he's supposed to have met Shahrukh Khan about it.

The Wroclaw Film Festival (19-29 July)

I've been horribly neglecting my blog this past month :-/

There's lot of things to write about, but I'm going to start with my impressions from the Wroclaw film festival cause otherwise I'll totally forget them (that was at the end of last month!).

It was the 7th time this festival took place (the 2nd time that it took place in Wrocław - it's been moving to bigger cities as it's been growing). I've been attending this festival ever since the very first edition when it took place on just 4 screens in Sanok (now it's 14 screens!) and I guess one of the strongest impressions I got this time round is how important this festival has become. It's by far the biggest festival in Poland now (probably the biggest in this part of Europe actually). This year they showed 460 films of which 231 were full length feature films. I don't think there are any audience numbers available but it was definitely well over 100 thousand people.
When 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days opened the festival (it's the Romanian film that won the Cannes film festival this year), it struck me how respectfully the makers of the film were treating this festival and how interested they were in our response to the film. It's very much an international scale festival now!

But lets get to the films... I saw a lot of them obviously ;-P So I'll just cover the ones that got the strongest reactions from me (in no particular order - or rather in more or less the order I watched them).

The story of 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days is a girl in communist Romania trying to get an abortion. But it's actually not about abortion or communism at all. The real topic of the film is women and how little emotional support they have from men. I don't think it paints a saintly picture of women or anything like that. For most of the film they don't tell their men anything of what's bothering them and then when finally the men pressurize them to find out what's wrong it comes out in a way that if I were a man I wouldn't understand either ;-P And I think that's quite a fair portrayal of women (I think many of us are like that). But on the other hand you understand exactly why the women are so guarded. The atmosphere that men create just doesn't allow for that kind of openness and I think the film is an amazing portrayal of male chauvinism and it's awsome that a film like this was directed by a man :)

As my criteria for writing about a film is strong feelings, here's a film I had strong negative feelings about ;-P As the Shadow is an Italian film about an Italian woman (Claudia) who is learning Russian. She develops a crush on her teacher, Borys (a Ukrainian). They sort of end up together (although it's hard to say really) and then he asks a favour of her. His cousin (Olga) from the Ukraine is coming to Italy and as he's going to be out of town for a while, he wants Olga to stay at Claudia's house. Claudia finally agrees reluctantly and then finds that actually Olga is quite a nice guest. One day Olga goes out for the night and doesn't come back.
The director of the film was at the screening and I knew I wouldn't like the film the moment she started talking. She came out and said that she's glad that so many people came to the screening (in the standards of the festival it was actually rather empty) and then started saying that this film has traveled to many important festivals and won many awards (I checked - imdb lists just one festival and award and it's a very obscure one!). The whole way she approached us was with this air of superiority, which particularly struck me because just the day before Cristian Mungiu had been so modest and genuinely interested in how the Polish audience would react (and he was presenting a film that won the Golden Palm!!). I fully expected that the Italian director would approach her topic with the same air as she did her audience and was not disappointed.
I rolled my eyes when during a conversation about alcohol between Claudia and Olga, Olga says that in the Ukraine they drink because they're unhappy or because it's cold. Not to mention the names of the Ukrainian characters - Borys and Olga? er... great... (and guess which part of the Ukraine they were from - yes, you guessed right, Kiev) And that's not the worse part... The film has lots of Russian in it, but the director didn't even bother to make it sound right. Her Borys was an Italian and spoke with such a strong accent that even I heard it (and honestly, my Russian is almost non-existant!). Her Olga was a part Polish, part Italian actress who spoke with a slightly smaller accent, but still one I thought I could hear.
The catalogue description suggested that the point of the film was to de-stereotype Eastern Europeans, but instead the director didn't do even some basic homework on the Ukraine!

I also got to see two of Guy Maddin's films :D I developped an interest in him at previous editions of the festival. He's a Canadian director who is strongly influenced by German expressionist films from the silent era and has such bizzarre storylines that I feel unable to explain or repeat them ;-P They showed Brand Upon the Brain which is one of Maddin's more recent films. I don't feel able to convey to you what the film is like in any other way but by linking to the trailer:

The other Maddin film they showed was a 1992 one called Careful which was just as enjoyable and crazy :)

A hilarious and warm film that I saw was Irina Palm. It's a big European co-production about a middle aged lady who desperately needs money because her grandson is ill and so she starts earning money in the Soho area by wanking men off...

One of the biggest discoveries of the festival for many people was Hal Hartley (there was a full retrospective of his films). He was also present for the entire festival (and apparently doing lots of film watching as well :) ).
They actually had to move his films to a bigger screening room because all the people that were interested weren't managing to get in.
I didn't have particularly strong feelings about him myself, but he's definitely an American (independent) director worth discovering. His films have great dialogues and are very amusing portrayals of American society.

They had a small section of "cinema of dance" at the festival this year. While most of what I sat through was boring enough for me not to continue with that section, the first screening made a huge impression me. It was a a few films by the DV8 Physical Theatre - they're a British dance group and the way they approach both dance and film was fascinating for me.
As this is also something that has to be seen to be explained, here's the trailer for The Cost of Living:

And here's a scene from the film:


Disappointingly, there was only one Bollywood film this year and I'd already seen it on DVD, but it was still awsome to see it on the big screen. Omkara is an adaptation of Shakespeare's "Othello". It's a film where a lot of stars are acting against their image - especially Saif Ali Khan who is the ugly villain with yellow teeth (Saif usually plays cute romantic heroes :D ). Here's the trailer:


Another fun film was I'm a Cyborg, but that's Ok (Park Chan-Wook's latest film). It's a Korean film about a girl who thinks she's a cyborg.

Probably the most political film I watched at the festival was AFR. It's a Danish film made to test freedom of speech (or so the director told us :) ). When the Muslim cartoon issue came about in Denmark, the Danish (right wing) prime minister defended the right of Danish papers to publish such things. So the director of this film decided to test freedom of speech in Denmark and using all sorts of clips from TV, doing his own interviews with politicians (though not being entirely truthful with them about how the material would be used) and using actors to conduct other interviews, he created a film in which the Danish prime minister had been assassinated by his gay lover. He also made the film version of the prime minister an alter-globalist fighting for the rights of Third World countries (which is of course totally against what the right wing Rasmussen believes in). The director of the film was not punished in any way, so in his opinion Denmark passed the test ;)

A really nice Australian film that I saw was Japanese Story which is a sort of romance between an Australian girl and a Japanese businessman.

Something I really recommend people see once it releases is Persepolis. It's an animated film about a girl growing up in Iran and then emigrating to Europe. There's a lot of humour in it, but it's also packed full of Iranian history and culture. Here's a teaser trailer:

Order of the Phoenix publicity in full throb

The new Harry Potter film has now released and the publicity for it is going on in full throb, which means there's loads of great interviews with the Trio (and Daniel Radcliffe in particular) floating around.

Here's a long interview with Daniel Radcliffe from Entertainment Weekly. He talks a lot about Equus in it. My favourite bit from it is:

The publicity photos for the play were extremely provocative, and spread all over the Internet as soon as they were released. What was it like shooting them?
I remember being a little bit hyper that day. At that point, we'd just done the nude scene in rehearsals [for the first time]. And I was basically wanting to get my kit off as much as I possibly could, to try and get used to the idea, and in front of as many strangers as I could. I'd be like, ''Ready now? Is this where I take them off?'' And they'd be like, ''Dan! Hold back! Wait! Just give us 10 minutes, please!''


Daniel Radcliffe on Regis and Kelly:


Daniel Radcliffe on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno:


Daniel Radcliffe on the Late Night with Conan O'Brien (part one):


And here's part two:


Here's the whole Trio on Unscripted. It's a little stiff at the beginning, but gets hilarious by the end :D


And this is a bit of Emma Watson doing publicity on Extra:


And here's a longer interview on the David Letterman show. I was actually shocked at how patronizing Letterman was at the beginning especially. But maybe I'm oversensitive or something. She handled it well at any rate :)


And finally, this is Rupert Grint on the Craig Ferguson show:


Post edited to add another article from Entertainment Weekly. It talks a bit about some on set stuff, for example:
A few hours later, Oldman has nailed his scene, decompressed, and begun bantering naughtily with his castmates. ''Have you noticed,'' he asks Isaacs, ''how long my wand is?'' ''Yes,'' Isaacs volleys back, ''it expands in the warm, doesn't it?'' Radcliffe listens and grins broadly. He asks Oldman for advice on a tough role he's signed on for in Equus, a London revival of Peter Shaffer's 1973 play about a troubled stable boy, for which Radcliffe will appear naked eight times a week. ''You'll have to shave,'' Oldman tells him. Radcliffe's wide eyes open even wider: ''What — down there?'' Oldman nods, eyes closing. ''Especially down there.''

Macaulay Culkin in "Party Monster"

I always love it when someone does something drastically against their image and while I'm not a particular fan of Macaulay Culkin, I'm amazed that he did a film like Party Monster. How much further from his Home Alone image can you go? lol No idea about the quality of the film as a whole, but seeing the clips of him in it is hilarious - check them out, they're below.

J. K. Rowling on the Jonathan Ross show

You can download the interview here. It's fun :D

Why Polish figure skating is fun ;)

Here's a clip from I think an old exhibition in Oświęcim. There's Mariusz Siudek (European and World Championship medalist) skating with Bartosz Domański (or at least I think that's him in the dress ;-P, he was Polish National Champion twice) and eventually a third guy takes the ice, but I don't know much about him.
At any rate - it's fun ;-P

The EU in youtube sex controversy

My ponderings about whether it's possible to put down clear guidelines as to what is obscene seem to be relevant yet again...

Here's the article. The EU put together a short clip of sex scenes from famous European films that were funded by them and it has received a surprising amount of attention with many people terming it "soft porn".
Polish politics make an appearance in the story as well of course *rolls eyes*
A Polish MEP from the conservative League of Polish Families has accused the commission of using "immoral methods" to promote itself.
European Commission spokesman Martin Selmayr said there had been a flood of complaints from Poland about an intimate scene between two men - but refused to accept there was anything controversial about the film.

If you want to make your own mind up about it then see below:

For the other EU European cinema clips see here.

The protests start - more on "Gandhi, My Father"

I'm following up one of my previous posts. While Gandhi, My Father will be out in about a month, we've already got the first attempt to stop its release.

The more I find out about Harilal, Gandhi's oldest son, the more I understand how heavy the material can potentially be. Check out this article and also the short wikipedia article about Harilal.

More Order of the Phoenix promotion

I'm putting it up because whenever Daniel Radcliffe talks about nudity or kissing I giggle (sad, I know).

Here's a news clip from the first press junket which I think was in the UK:


And here's the Japanese press conference (the world premiere was in Japan this year):

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix clips

11 scenes from the new Harry Potter film as well as some cast interviews and backstage clips have been released here.

Some of the best in my opinion are:

• "I see them too"
  It's the first proper glimpse we've had of Luna. It's just 2-3 lines, but she's perfect! (and very funny ;) )
  
• "How long have you worked here?"
  Umbridge is probably also going to be a lot of fun ;) I so love that Snape is like twice taller than her on that clip ;)
  
• "I will attempt to penetrate your mind"
  Occlumency lessons were something I've been really looking forward to seeing and while I'm not sure I entirely like it (and am fully anticipating to hate the worst memory scene), at least the intensity of the scene hasn't fallen below my expectations.
  
• "Hand me the prophecy"
  Now this is something for which my expectations were rather low (probably because I'm not a big fan of the climax of book 5), so I'm positively surprised!

P.S. (edited June 30th) You can also access those clips here

Indian film releases I'm excited about...

So there's Chak de India, the new Shahrukh release in August, which I'm anticipating to be rather awful judging by the trailer (though of course because it's a Shahrukh release I'm still a little excited ;)). The premise of the film is Shahrukh's character coaching a women's field hockey team. The first teaser is below:


But I also think it's high time to introduce the topic of Akshaye Khanna onto this blog (yes, there are in fact Indian actors other than Shahrukh that I'm a fan of lol). Some of you may have seen Akshaye in Dil Chahta Hai. Otherwise he's not a Bollywood star that has gotten much attention before this year really. But recently his career seems to have taken off. His style of acting is rather rare in mainstream terms (I'd say he's usually a very subtle actor even in Western standards) and I think he's quite into experimenting with different things, so with the recent surge of interest in him, he seems to have had some interesting film offers to choose from. The result is that I'm quite excited about a few films with him him attached that are coming up ;)

So firstly, there's Gandhi, My Father which is probably going to release in August and is getting even some international focus. While Gandhi as a character has featured in a huge amount of films, this film seems to be a very unique (and controversial) take on him. You might like to read up on this film a little here. But if you don't - then well basically it's about Gandhi's family and the conflict he had with his son (Akshaye plays the son). They never got on well and apparently Gandhi forbade him to become a lawyer which is what his son really wanted to do. The film tries to paint both Gandhi and his son in grey colors and tells the story of how Gandhi's sacrifice for the nation was very difficult on his family. Below is one of the first trailers for this film:


On a lighter Akshaye Khanna note, there's Naqaab. I don't know when this is going to be released, but I assume probably soon as the trailers have started coming out. I've no idea what this film is about ;-P But it's probably totally crazy, as the directors of it (Abbas-Mustan) are the ones responsible for films such as Baazigar (1993) and Baadshah (1999). The difference is that now they have the special effects to pull off a silly James Bond type movie with James Bondy type effects if they really wanted to ;) Trailer is below:


Finally, on a rumoured Akshaye Khanna note, he may be part of a much talked about and controversial film (I think it's Western financing), which has been in pre-production for a very long time. Even though When Kiran met Karen seems to be appearing in news articles quite a lot considering how early the stages of its production are (for all we know it might not even get made), there's hardly any info about its plot. What mainly gets repeated is that it's a "lesbian flick".

P.S. This month my blog has been rather neglected, the reason is that June is my busiest school period, but now that's almost finished, there's hope I'll improve ;) (though I'll be off-line for about 2-3 weeks in the second half of July - first bit of August).

Experimental Travel

As the summer holidays are approaching, you might want to find out a bit about experimental travel (see the definition on wikipedia).
There are many very creative ideas to follow, for example what is known as Blind Man's Buff Travel:

Hypothesis
Explore and experience a new place without seeing it.

Apparatus
A friend to guide you and a blindfolding mechanism of some kind.

Method
Spend 24 hours blindfolded in a new location.

You will find many more ideas of how to travel the world in an experimental way here. I also recommend looking at the stories of people who followed some of these ideas, which you will find on the home page of the experimental travel website (the four featured experiments).

And I thought Poland had it bad...

This is a short follow-up to my big pornography post. While Polish politicians have been debating about a total ban on pornography, Iran seems to have taken their politic debates muuuuch further. If the proposal passes, anybody involved with the making, distribution (including websites) or production of porn films in Iran could be sentenced to death.

Order of the Phoenix set report

The Harry Potter Lexicon is one of the most amazing Harry Potter sites on-line. It's a total encyclopedia of everything to do with the world in the books, compiled from a huge range of sources. It is so good that J.K.Rowling admits to using it when she needs to check on some small fact somewhere.
Anyway, they've put up the first part of a report from the set of the new film and since it's in their own detailish style I found it a great read :)
Here's a small, random quote which apart from being amusing also relates to a conversation I once had with one of you about the appropriateness of fan fiction about real people:
interviewing Jason Isaacs wearing leather head to toe (Jason, not me) and discovering that he reads fan fiction about himself and gets a huge kick out of the more far-out stuff
I really hope we're going to get the whole interview once the film is out lol

Teletubbies and the profound effect they might be having on Polish children

Apparently Polish officials are worried that Teletubbies promote homosexuality. The reason they think this is because Tinky Winky carries a woman's handbag. They are considering taking the show off public TV if their psychologists confirm these very terrible fears.
(For those who can't read Polish - I swear, I didn't make this up! That is really what the article says!)

A cinema boycott in Poland?

There is a cinema boycott this weekend in Poland (not that I think many people know this ;-P). It is a reaction to the closure of napisy.org - a site which distributed Polish subtitles to films illegally.
They make a couple of valid points. ZAIKS (which is the body that deals with copyright in Poland) indeed charges too much and have often been the cause for rising prices of cinema tickets. I also think that it should be ok to copy your own CDs and DVDs that you have bought legally for your own use (does anybody who owns an mp3 player not do this?). And having people who do nothing more than translate dialogues in films sued and threatened with prison is a bit extreme - it's not them who should be in the first line of fire when it comes to piracy (particularly when they're translating stuff that wasn't even released in Poland although that is of course not always the case). But the people boycotting also seem to fail to see that piracy is stealing. The film industry really needs a lot of money (more than most other industries) to be able to make professional films. Even outside of the USA making a feature film usually costs millions of dollars and that money has to come from somewhere. If everyone pirated films then the film industry would not be possible to sustain at all.

Yes, I'll agree that we need changes in the law (and that goes not just for Poland), but no, piracy is not ok and people should stop pretending it is. I mean if you don't have enough money to buy a book you want to read then you don't just go and steal it, do you? I guess what frustrates me about piracy is not just that people do it (I understand why people do it and even though I'm a lot stricter about it than most, I could find faults with myself as far as this goes). What annoys the hell out of me is that most people do it without any sort of feeling that it's wrong.
Unfortunately, for these reasons I rather take a sarcastic view point on this boycott - people who don't go to the cinema boycotting cinemas... *rolls eyes*

Anyway for those of you who can read Polish you can read more about it here and here.

Some day, I will probably follow up this post with something longer since I've been collecting links on this topic in one of my many draft posts for a while now. But I want to look at copyright in a much broader light than this (including the software industry which faces somewhat different threats than the film industry) and therefore it's going to take me a rather long time to write ;-P

If you think differently about this then I do, let me know :) I'm up for having my opinion on this challenged.

Shahrukh and Saif at the 49th Filmfare Awards

I found these clips from Filmfare Awards 2003-2004 when Shahrukh and Saif were hosting together. It must have quite soon after Kal Ho Naa Ho since they were making references to it all the time (in the film, everytime Kantaben - one of the characters - sees the two of them together it looks as if they're having some sort of romance or something). Anyway, the clips are so silly I had to post them ;)

Random Shahrukh video

Just found this clip and thought it was hilarious, so I'm posting :) It's from one of Shahrukh's live concerts (he's hinted he might be coming to Poland on the next tour he does :) ).

"I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" - the Indian and American film industries working together

Collaborations between the two biggest film industries in the world sound like a very natural thing, but Indian cinema has never been taken seriously enough for it to happen.
Attitudes, however, are changing on many levels (also see my post from February).

For one thing - who'd have thought that tabloid stories from Bollywood would be the subject of a comedy show on mainstream American TV? (the story of a supposed fallout between Shahrukh and Big B is quite old now, but still talked about in India - they've both repeatedely said there's no truth in it, Shahrukh of course in his own unique way)

But there are also some much more serious changes. A fairly recent story is that UTV Motion Pictures and 20th Century Fox are co-producing M. Night Shyamalan’s next film - The Happening. India has been in co-productions before now (though AFAIK quite rarely), but this time we're talking about a major blockbuster.
That's not the end of things for UTV either. There's also talk of an international project which would co-star Uma Thurman and Hrithik Roshan.
The Shyamalan film sounds rather awful - toxic plants... er right... But I'm very curious how the situation between the Indian and American industries is going to develop.

Just to finish this post on a totally random note (and get rid of something that has been in my drafts since February or something like that ;-P), here are two funny clips - one from this year's Academy Awards with Ellen Degeneres as the host and one from the Filmfare Awards which are the most important awards in India (and take place around the same time that the Academy Awards do) - this year they were hosted by Shahrukh.
(if you desperately want to have an explanation for the sudden appearance of these two clips in this post then I suggest you assume that this is just a way of showing some similarities and differences between the two industries ;))





P.S. Unlike my dad I don't expect everyone to know the quote in the title of this post (since the film it comes from was made in 1942). It is from Casablanca which incidently might be remade in India.

Equus review

I'm back from London and saw Equus at the Gielgud Theatre last Saturday. Unlike Ziggy I enjoyed it, so we might have a blog war now *grin* (that is if Ziggy even reads my blog entry of course ;-P).

This was the first time for me to have known the text of a play quite well before seeing any performance of it which was an interesting experience in itself. I guess the biggest surprise for me was how many jokes that I hadn't seen in the text they found and how so many of the dialogues were a lot funnier when performed then when read.
In terms of humour perhaps what surprised me the most was that the scenes in the second act which built up into the culmination point (in which Alan Strang blinds 6 horses) were some of the funniest of the whole play.
The design of the play I think worked great with the text. I particularly liked how they did the horses. The dancers playing them did an awsome job with the movement and the lighting and the masks really created a brilliant effect.

As far as the acting goes, it varied from person to person I guess. I have to partly agree with Ziggy that Daniel Radcliffe wasn't as good as perhaps he could have been, but I'm no where near as harsh!
I think his main limitation is voice projection. More than anybody else on stage he was having to strain his voice which meant that how he could use his voice on stage was very limitted. When you compare to the older generations of actors or even to the girl who played Jill, they sounded pretty much as if they were speaking in a normal tone. It kind of created the impression that Alan was constantly speaking with a raised voice at everyone. Whether that was actually the point - I don't know. At any rate I didn't like it. When reading the text I always pictured Alan as somebody who projects this sense of being calm, but might blow up at any moment. Whereas the Alan Daniel Radcliffe was playing was somebody who was struggling with himself much more visibly. I don't know whether this was deliberate or whether it was his lack of voice training that made it seem so (I rather think the voice was the bigger issue - surely the scene in which Alan and Dysart are sitting, smoking and very calmy talking together wouldn't intentionally be interpretted that way?).
But there were positive things to be said about Daniel Radcliffe as well IMO. I actually thought he did an awsome job in the culmination scene. He really gave it all he had and that's always been something I've respected a lot in actors when they can do that. It takes guts to reveal yourself that way and I don't mean the nudity ;-P I mean yes, it takes guts to do that as well ;) but I'm talking more of what he did emotionally in that scene. I think many actors either have too much of an ego or not enough guts to really be able to do a scene like that, so to me that already commends Daniel Radcliffe a lot. I also think it's great he took such a role in the first place. That in itself tells you that he's really serious about developping himself as an actor. Personally, I think the actors who really try to challenge themselves are the ones who often turn out good work throughout their whole careers rather than just during a phase of it. Even when they have many faults to start with, they often get very far.
But ok, enough about him ;) The other actors in general did a great job as well. I thought Richard Griffiths as Dysart was really good. Perhaps he was the reason why the play somehow felt so much more funny to me in performance than on the page ;) But he really captured the character well I feel.
The horses were all absolutely brilliant, as was the young horseman (just awsome). I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye on Will Kemp now (he played Nugget and the young horseman).
Also Alan's parents were very well played - they actually made a much better impression on me in performance than when I had read them on the page.

Going back to the play itself, unlike Ziggy (;-P) I really loved the culmination point. Both in terms of acting and the choreography of it. Somehow it feels weird to be giving details since it's a major spoiler (even if you're only ever going to read the play), but the way they did it was really beautiful. The nudity was quite amazing in that lighting with that choreography and design and all. The way the horses moved, the sounds they made, the way Alan moved amongst them - really awsome choreography.
Something again that struck me when comparing text to performance was that it was so much more weirder to have Dysart talking to Alan all through that scene. It's such a private moment for Alan that it felt quite bizzarre to me (though I really liked the effect).
Something that struck me rather negatively about the text which I hadn't seen at all when reading was that the division into acts felt very weird. In the first act the scenes and places are all rather mixed up and disjointed. Time passes in a way in which the viewer (or reader) can't really even tell how long Alan has been in the hospital before one thing or another happens. This is not a bad thing by any means. I rather like it actually. It's the contrast between this and the second act which makes it feel wrong. The second act is one tightly knit unit in which you can quite precisely work out how time passes. It almost feels like just one or two scenes, something emphasized further by it being shorter than the first act. It's a silly thing really but somehow it bothered me.

Now I'll go back to Ziggy's post and refute what I don't agree with ;-P
So firstly, Daniel Radcliffe is just 17. Perhaps they could have indeed found an actor over 20 who they could make to look and act like a 17 year old and who would have done a better job, but I very much doubt they could have found a 17 year old who would have managed this. It's a very difficult role and any theatrical performance requires somebody who reaaally knows his craft (unlike film where it is indeed possible to pretty much take somebody off the street if he or she suits the part - in some film styles this is actually desirable!). And whatever one might think of Daniel Radcliffe he has had a huge amount of acting experience for his age - more than most actors have at 20 something. Yes, the lack of theatrical experience is a minus, but you probably wouldn't find many actors that age who would have much more.
As for "being over the top" - I don't really know what is meant by that. All I saw was the voice being raised for the majority of the play. Otherwise I thought he was quite subdued actually...

As for this part of Ziggy's post:
This sad spectacle has been created for two purposes only:

a) To earn bucketloads of cash, because of the Harry Potter's celebrity appearance
b) To give Daniel Radcliffe "credibility" so that he can say "Look I did a play, I'm a real actor now."

The project itself had actually been in the works for quite some time. I think there was even talk of having a big revival of Peter Schaffer's plays, but I'm not sure this has received financial backing.
Kenneth Branagh was originally supposed to direct Equus when the idea for the project first came to light and it was meant to have been ready 1 or 2 years before now. There was gossip that Daniel Radcliffe had been offered the part but that he had declined it based mainly on schedule conflicts and also not feeling old enough to play the part (he would have been about 15-16 then). The play was then supposed to go forward without Daniel Radcliffe.
Eventually, however, Branagh left the project (according to gossip because of artistic differences with the producers), the whole thing was postponed and then Thea Sharrock took over the project. The part was offered to Daniel again and this time he accepted.
In other words - the project has a history much like very many projects...
Yes, of course when you have a name as famous as Daniel Radcliffe attached then it helps a lot with publicity and of course they used it. And yes of course Daniel Radcliffe wanted to show he was capable of things other than Harry Potter, but these were hardly the reasons to make this play! Nobody sat down thought up those two reasons and decided "aha, we shall make this play with Daniel Radcliffe". It just doesn't work that way.
Besides, I don't understand the logic of it being a bad thing for Daniel Radcliffe to want to develop and challenge himself as an actor even if it didn't work out as well as it could have. If he doesn't challenge himself he'll never get better!

As for the comments about the writing - I generally like it and I can give the reasons for it if you like ;) But I'd like to hear what you didn't like ;-P

Shilpa Shetty and scandal

Funnily enough it's not the biggest Bollywood stars like Shahrukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan or Aishwarya Rai who make international headlines because of scandal. It's Shilpa Shetty - a girl who goes with her mother almost everywhere and seems to be one of the most politically correct stars in Bollywood *grin*
For those of you who have been talked into watching some Bollywood movies, you may remember Shilpa from Baazigar. Baazigar (which was made in 1993 and was her debut film) is in fact her biggest hit to date ;-P The trailer for this film is here if any of you want to see it :) (she's the first lady Shahrukh is romancing, the other leading lady as many of you will know is Kajol).

So firstly, as you may or may not know, Shilpa won the UK celebrity Big Brother not too long ago, but what happened to her in the house caused an international incident. Major British politicians such as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown felt it necessary to speak up and the incident provoked a huge discussion about racism in the UK (as well as discussion about whether what happened to Shilpa was racism or just bullying). Perhaps the best way to give you more of an idea about what happened is this video (go forward to the part when she's interviewed and shown clips from what happened if you're bored with the beginning bit):

Part two of the video is here, but I imagine the first clip will be quite enough information.

But now, Shilpa has become part of another international incident. This time it involves Richard Gere, public kissing (on the cheek!) and I guess further food for thought on how different people from different cultures feel about what's appropriate and what's not (which was the topic of this post). Here's a news report on the incident:

The incident has now gone even farther with talk that Richard Gere might be sentenced to prison for "public obscenity".