Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Friday, September 05, 2008
Quick update
I haven't (yet) forgotten the existence of my blog... But I'm thinking about moving it and seriously re-organizing it. So please bear with me :) I'll write here when I'm ready.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
New Harry Potter film delayed by 6 months
The 6th installment of Harry Potter was supposed to release in cinemas on the 21st of November, but as you must have gathered by the title of this post - it's not going to :]
The film is ready and the producers are happy with it, but they think they'll earn more money if they release it on the 17th of July. This perhaps would not be so weird if they hadn't already released a trailer that says "November". Clearly this was a last minute decision.
So everyone is speculating what is the *real* reason for Warner Bros moving the dates.
There seems to be a hint of it in what Warner Bros have said:
Like every other studio, we are still feeling the repercussions of the writers strike, which impacted the readiness of scripts for other films — changing the competitive landscape for 2009 and offering new windows of opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of
In other words, because of the writer's strike they have no big hit to put up during the summer (the time of biggest box office earnings), so they decided to make Harry Potter a summer release.
Some are reading even more into this... The next Terminator with Christian Bale was supposed to release May/June. Does this mean Warner Bros think it will be a flop?
Another thought I had is that now that Daniel Radcliffe is doing Equus again (this time on Broadway), he might have had less time to do promotion for the film in autumn. With the first films the promotion for Harry Potter was focused on the whole trio and on quite a bit of the supporting cast too, but more recently Daniel Radcliffe has been doing the majority of it (I think very well - as you know I'm a fan of Daniel Radcliffe doing promotion on talk shows etc. ;-P), so I wonder if Warner Bros freaked out a bit with that too. There's less talk about Harry Potter now that the books have come to an end, so they may feel they need the promotion to be very strong.
Finally, I thought I'd share a silly clip of Harry Potter fan reactions to the date move ;)
The film is ready and the producers are happy with it, but they think they'll earn more money if they release it on the 17th of July. This perhaps would not be so weird if they hadn't already released a trailer that says "November". Clearly this was a last minute decision.
So everyone is speculating what is the *real* reason for Warner Bros moving the dates.
There seems to be a hint of it in what Warner Bros have said:
Like every other studio, we are still feeling the repercussions of the writers strike, which impacted the readiness of scripts for other films — changing the competitive landscape for 2009 and offering new windows of opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of
In other words, because of the writer's strike they have no big hit to put up during the summer (the time of biggest box office earnings), so they decided to make Harry Potter a summer release.
Some are reading even more into this... The next Terminator with Christian Bale was supposed to release May/June. Does this mean Warner Bros think it will be a flop?
Another thought I had is that now that Daniel Radcliffe is doing Equus again (this time on Broadway), he might have had less time to do promotion for the film in autumn. With the first films the promotion for Harry Potter was focused on the whole trio and on quite a bit of the supporting cast too, but more recently Daniel Radcliffe has been doing the majority of it (I think very well - as you know I'm a fan of Daniel Radcliffe doing promotion on talk shows etc. ;-P), so I wonder if Warner Bros freaked out a bit with that too. There's less talk about Harry Potter now that the books have come to an end, so they may feel they need the promotion to be very strong.
Finally, I thought I'd share a silly clip of Harry Potter fan reactions to the date move ;)
Monday, July 14, 2008
The Cinema of North Korea (or rather one North Korean film I happened to see last Thursday)
Just as you enter Muranow, one of my favourite cinemas in Warsaw, there is a sign in big golden letters which says - "Cinema is the most important of all the arts for us" and the quote is signed Vladimir Lenin. Seeing it there has always amused me, which is probably why I remember it.
The reason I bring this up is that as I watched The Schoolgirl's Diary I couldn't stop thinking about the little bit of old Soviet cinema I had seen and that Lenin quote. Essentially that's what the film was, it was like seeing a propaganda film from the socialist realism era, only it was made in 2006 :] Btw, according to wikipedia North Korea, Laos and to some extent Vietnam are the only countries in the world that still use socialist realism principles in art. Even China has pretty much retired that art style.
Anyway, about the film... Artistically I don't think there's much to praise in the The Schoolgirl's Diary (frankly Soviet cinema was much more creative), but as a piece of propaganda it's first rate. It's the story of a girl who is angry with her father. He's a scientist and he works so hard that he neglects the family and yet he has no results to show for it. They live in greater poverty than most families, his work receives no praise and on top of that he's never there. They don't see him for weeks, sometimes even months. Of course in the end he succeeds, the girl realizes she was wrong and the moral of the story is that hard work pays off. For more info on the film please check out the Variety review, the rest of this post is just my rambling :]
I think that after seeing the film I kind of get why a world like that may seem attractive. It's a world where everything is orderly, everyone has their place and everyone believes in the same kind of moral conduct. This makes life very simple and secure - far more so than in our world. In a certain way it's a beautiful world. I can't help but wonder how close they have really come to that ideal. At the same time I am acutely aware that I could never surrender myself to a lifestyle like that. I guess I'm just too spoilt and evil :]
Another random thought I had while watching The Schoolgirl's Diary (I had quite a few of them - that's because the film itself wasn't interesting enough to hold my attention properly ;) ) was what kind of purely commercial films could be made and watched in a world based on the principles underlying the film. Anything that came to mind just didn't fit. Even Sometimes Happy, Sometimes Sad which I always thought was a film so innocent it couldn't possibly offend anyone (unless someone finds it offensive to see sexy men crying rivers every 5 minutes for various ridiculous reasons ;-P) wouldn't be appropriate. That's because the main characters are a very rich family, who didn't have to work hard for their wealth (though they are honest people) and also I think the structure of the film wouldn't go down well. It's not orderly - it has random song numbers inserted all over the place and the story itself is a little random at times. I remember hearing once that most regimes would not allow abstract art. I didn't fully grasp why that was, but now that I saw this film it totally makes sense. I can't actually explain it, but it just does :] It's such an orderly world that everything has to be orderly and abstract art is anything but that.
Finally I wanted to share one more thing, though it's totally random and more about Japan than North Korea, but whatever :] In my recent Japanese pop culture discoveries I came across some bizarre, offensive comedian called Egashira. According to wikipedia he once went to North Korea and made some sort of critical joke about the country and was arrested for it! He's still on Japanese TV AFAIK, so I assume they either got him out somehow or wikipedia is wrong :]
He seems to have really been in North Korea though cause he's showing off some material from a North Korean circus on the clip below:
The reason I bring this up is that as I watched The Schoolgirl's Diary I couldn't stop thinking about the little bit of old Soviet cinema I had seen and that Lenin quote. Essentially that's what the film was, it was like seeing a propaganda film from the socialist realism era, only it was made in 2006 :] Btw, according to wikipedia North Korea, Laos and to some extent Vietnam are the only countries in the world that still use socialist realism principles in art. Even China has pretty much retired that art style.
Anyway, about the film... Artistically I don't think there's much to praise in the The Schoolgirl's Diary (frankly Soviet cinema was much more creative), but as a piece of propaganda it's first rate. It's the story of a girl who is angry with her father. He's a scientist and he works so hard that he neglects the family and yet he has no results to show for it. They live in greater poverty than most families, his work receives no praise and on top of that he's never there. They don't see him for weeks, sometimes even months. Of course in the end he succeeds, the girl realizes she was wrong and the moral of the story is that hard work pays off. For more info on the film please check out the Variety review, the rest of this post is just my rambling :]
I think that after seeing the film I kind of get why a world like that may seem attractive. It's a world where everything is orderly, everyone has their place and everyone believes in the same kind of moral conduct. This makes life very simple and secure - far more so than in our world. In a certain way it's a beautiful world. I can't help but wonder how close they have really come to that ideal. At the same time I am acutely aware that I could never surrender myself to a lifestyle like that. I guess I'm just too spoilt and evil :]
Another random thought I had while watching The Schoolgirl's Diary (I had quite a few of them - that's because the film itself wasn't interesting enough to hold my attention properly ;) ) was what kind of purely commercial films could be made and watched in a world based on the principles underlying the film. Anything that came to mind just didn't fit. Even Sometimes Happy, Sometimes Sad which I always thought was a film so innocent it couldn't possibly offend anyone (unless someone finds it offensive to see sexy men crying rivers every 5 minutes for various ridiculous reasons ;-P) wouldn't be appropriate. That's because the main characters are a very rich family, who didn't have to work hard for their wealth (though they are honest people) and also I think the structure of the film wouldn't go down well. It's not orderly - it has random song numbers inserted all over the place and the story itself is a little random at times. I remember hearing once that most regimes would not allow abstract art. I didn't fully grasp why that was, but now that I saw this film it totally makes sense. I can't actually explain it, but it just does :] It's such an orderly world that everything has to be orderly and abstract art is anything but that.
Finally I wanted to share one more thing, though it's totally random and more about Japan than North Korea, but whatever :] In my recent Japanese pop culture discoveries I came across some bizarre, offensive comedian called Egashira. According to wikipedia he once went to North Korea and made some sort of critical joke about the country and was arrested for it! He's still on Japanese TV AFAIK, so I assume they either got him out somehow or wikipedia is wrong :]
He seems to have really been in North Korea though cause he's showing off some material from a North Korean circus on the clip below:
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Bollywood has been watching too much LOTR...
A huge animation boom is happening in the Indian film industry right now. The Western media have even coined a new term for it - 'Bollymation'. The animation sector is growing so rapidly that India is facing a major skill shortage. According to Variety uptil now India would produce about 5 animated films a year. At the moment there are 92 animated films in production.
The animation boom of course also means a lot more special effects in Hindi feature films. Science fiction and fantasy are genres which require a lot of special effects and have so far been very under-represented in Bollywood. This is now set to change... Normally I would be very excited about this, but for a change I'm rather negative - this is because what Variety writes rings veeeery true:
Critics suggest Indian animators may have a hard time adjusting to original movie productions as they require greater skills, time and capital than subcontract companies focused on TV and advertising work are used to.
"There is no lack of creativity in this country. Every nook and corner has stories and art. There is, however, a lack of imagination, and that comes from not having confidence and being overly dependent on technology alone," says Shailendra Singh, joint managing director of Percept, the company behind "Hanuman."
I mean check out the trailer for the next Amitabh Bachchan release...
Doesn't it remind you of something?
The animation boom of course also means a lot more special effects in Hindi feature films. Science fiction and fantasy are genres which require a lot of special effects and have so far been very under-represented in Bollywood. This is now set to change... Normally I would be very excited about this, but for a change I'm rather negative - this is because what Variety writes rings veeeery true:
Critics suggest Indian animators may have a hard time adjusting to original movie productions as they require greater skills, time and capital than subcontract companies focused on TV and advertising work are used to.
"There is no lack of creativity in this country. Every nook and corner has stories and art. There is, however, a lack of imagination, and that comes from not having confidence and being overly dependent on technology alone," says Shailendra Singh, joint managing director of Percept, the company behind "Hanuman."
I mean check out the trailer for the next Amitabh Bachchan release...
Doesn't it remind you of something?
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Annoying Andreja is fun (aka more Japanese cinema but still no Matsujun)
Being the sadist that I am, I felt compelled to write yet another Japanese cinema post which almost totally ignores Matsumoto Jun's existence. Hopefully Andreja is appropriately annoyed by this - I'll be disappointed if she isn't ;) Actually, even Kinga voiced her displeasure the other day when I told her I was in the middle of writing this post rather than one about Jun ;)
For those of you groaning at the thought of reading more gushing about a certain Japanese actor's face - rest assured, Matsuda Ryuhei doesn't feature much in this post either ;) This time, you will be treated to some Oguri Shun gushing!
As I think only Kinga has any idea who I'm talking about - Oguri Shun is the guy who plays Rui in Hana Yori Dango. That probably didn't help most of you, did it? :] Er... well Andreja should now know who I'm talking about and it's her I want to annoy ;) But just so everyone else isn't left out (and also because introducing him is a good excuse to put in a random video clip), Oguri Shun is another Japanese teen idol kind of star. AFAIK he's best known for his cool and brooding romantic heroes in Hana Yori Dango and Hana Kimi.
As for the random video clip - it's under 40 seconds, all in Japanese, but despite not understanding a word I still find it very amusing (actually there's a lot of clips from Japanese TV that keep my attention despite not understanding anything :] I'm not sure why that is). They're clearly joking about his height. In Japanese standards he's very tall - one source has him at 184cm.
Anyway, my latest study evasion tactic has been browsing the net for random bits of info about Oguri Shun. I thought Shun would be a lot less interesting to investigate than Ryuhei or Jun, but the very existence of this post proves that I was wrong ;)
I had assumed that his filmography would just be filled with brooding romantic hero types and maybe some comedic roles here and there. The most adventurous thing I considered was that he may have done a slasher film or two - he's got the physique for it and the brooding persona would fit in well. All of these (including the slasher bit) were there, but there were some things I hadn't expected and I'm weird enough to be amused by them (especially when there's too much school work to do ;-P). So here goes...
There are more vulnerable, pushover type characters in his filmography than cool, brooding ones
Apparently, the first part he got noticed in was a small part in Great Teacher Onizuka - a very popular Japanese TV series from 1999. Shun played the part of a boy who was bullied by the whole class. He was 16 at the time, but looked around 12 (and in direct contrast to the present day was shorter than most of his co-stars ;)). It's weird seeing him playing a wimp, but it works. From what I can make out (I'm far from having a full idea about his filmography :]) he got to play quite a few vulnerable, sensitive characters after that.
One thing that I'm particularly surprised with is that he's actually a good crier ;) I couldn't picture him doing big, unrestrained crying scenes well - maybe because what I saw of him was rather reserved and restrained (and when I saw him do something less so *cough cough* Gokusen *cough cough* I hated him in it :] ).
I don't think he got to play a cool and brooding kind of character until Hana Yori Dango (2005). This perhaps explains why the gossip is that Shun got the part only thanks to Matsumoto Jun threatening to leave the project if they didn't give the part of Hanazawa Rui to Shun. I always thought it was a bit strange that the producers didn't want Shun for it. If it was quite different to what he had played before it makes much more sense.
A psychological vampire movie
His first cinematic film - Hitsuji No Uta (2002) (and also his first lead - most of his career consists of supporting roles) is also kind of in the vulnerable, sensitive vein, though it has a darker twist.
It's the story of a boy, Kazuna, who is brought up by his uncle and aunt. His parents kept his older sister with them, but gave Kazuna away. He's never told why and doesn't get to see any of his family. When we're introduced to the character he's in his teens and his mum is dead. He's not seen his father or sister since the age of 2.
He starts having strange dreams and then one day he passes out all of a sudden at the sight of blood. He thinks he's just anaemic or something, but of course he's not or we wouldn't have a story ;) His sister (who he meets for the first time in many years) finally tells him the dark family secret. Their family has some sort of practically unheard of hereditary disease. It causes them to have attacks during which they crave other people's blood very, very strongly. The disease is incurable and in the end fatal (the attacks are very weakening), but also dangerous to people around because the cravings can get so strong that the person cannot control them. Kazuna was given away because it was thought he didn't have the disease, but it looks like in his case it just took longer to surface.
The trailer is here:
Usually I would go the legal route to see it, but there is practically no way to see it legally :] I mean no DVD with English subtitles exists. There is a Japanese version without subtitles, but it's been out of print for years. It's hard to find on-line, so if any of you think it sounds interesting you can check it out here.
The bizarre thing about this film is that while it might sound like your regular vampire film, it's so totally not. Usually in a vampire film you get lots of action, blood and gore and of course the sexy female vampires trying to seduce some poor innocent guy to get his blood. This film in contrast is very slow with almost no action at all. The gore is barely there - the scenes in which Kazuna has his cravings are about him trying to restrain himself rather than about him trying to attack somebody. In terms of sex it's more about sexual tension than anything else (and no seductive female vampires either).
The film deals primarily with Kazuna's insecurities. He's very ashamed and scared of the blood cravings to the point of withdrawing from normal life. It's also about the relationship with his sister - two outcasts, who need themselves because nobody else can possibly understand what it's like.
It's a rather strange film as you may imagine... Judging by on-line reviews I seem to be in the minority in liking it, but if it sounds interesting to you at all then I would recommend it :) Shun is really great in it and also, for any Hana Yori Dango fans - you get to see the girl who plays Shigeru in season two as Kazuna's older sister. It's a very different (muuuuch quieter) part and she's really good too :)
He's a stage actor
Apparently Shun loves doing stage work and has done quite a bit of it. Titus Andronicus which he starred in even played in the UK and was very well received there. There's a number of English reviews of the play on-line and all the ones I found were positive both about the play and about Shun. If you want to check some out then here's a selection - Reviews Gate, the Guardian, BBC and a nice one on somebody's blog. For pics see here. The play is very visually spectacular, so the photos are actually really worth seeing - I've certainly become curious about what Japanese theatre is like now. Also you get to see Shun being kissed and groped by a man on those photos, but that might not necessarily be as interesting to you as it is to me ;-P
And now the best part...
It looks like despite his teen idol status he's totally up for taking his clothes off ;) This is partly demonstrated on the poster for Caligula - one of his stage plays (ok, the important parts are photoshopped out with fancy, white, flowy bits, but still...).
However, you may be interested to find out that in the same year he was shooting Hana Yori Dango season one (one of his most popular teen romance roles), he was also shooting this:
The scene is from Neighbour No 13, which I hope to see soon. It sounds like an art house horror movie - I honestly have no idea how that's supposed to work, which is why I really want to see it :]
It's about a guy who was bullied at school in a very extreme manner when he was little. According to the amazon reviews, the bullies even go as far as forcing him to eat excrement, but the worst is when they hold him down and pour acid on his face.
X years later, the main character is a young man and he's working on a construction site only to find that the bully who did all of this to him is in charge of him. The bullying starts all over again and the main character snaps - he develops a dual personality, one personality is very vulnerable and the other is a murdering maniac. The two personalities are played by two actors.
Every now and then the two personalities appear in frame together. Specifically, the inner fight between those personalities is represented in that red room on the clip. Shun is naked because he's the vulnerable one.
When I wrote about Big Bang Love, Juvenile A I said that out of all my friends probably only Ziggy and Kinga might enjoy it. Well, with Neighbour No.13 I get the feeling that I am totally the only one ;) Ziggy is eliminated because in the end it's a violent horror movie - he's too snobbish for that ;-P Kinga is eliminated because it'll probably be too violent for her. So I'm totally alone with this one ;)
Apparently most of the film festivals turned the film down because of the excessive violence. At the same time the people who like gore didn't enjoy the film either because firstly they said it wasn't gory enough and secondly it was a bit too psychological and weird. According to what I read the violence is not *that* heavy in terms of gore levels (some of it even happens out of frame - not something you'd see in your typical exploitative horror film). But emotionally the violence is supposed to be extremely heavy and there's a lot of it.
For me hearing all of this is actually all the more of a turn on, but I think everybody knows by now that my film taste is just weird :] Anyway, the trailer is here:
P.S. If anybody reading this (though I doubt it ;-P) actually wants to see Oguri Shun in his "I'm too cool" mode to compare against the clips I put up then you can check out this fan video (very appropriately the clip author has a Shahrukh avatar *grin*).
For those of you groaning at the thought of reading more gushing about a certain Japanese actor's face - rest assured, Matsuda Ryuhei doesn't feature much in this post either ;) This time, you will be treated to some Oguri Shun gushing!
As I think only Kinga has any idea who I'm talking about - Oguri Shun is the guy who plays Rui in Hana Yori Dango. That probably didn't help most of you, did it? :] Er... well Andreja should now know who I'm talking about and it's her I want to annoy ;) But just so everyone else isn't left out (and also because introducing him is a good excuse to put in a random video clip), Oguri Shun is another Japanese teen idol kind of star. AFAIK he's best known for his cool and brooding romantic heroes in Hana Yori Dango and Hana Kimi.
As for the random video clip - it's under 40 seconds, all in Japanese, but despite not understanding a word I still find it very amusing (actually there's a lot of clips from Japanese TV that keep my attention despite not understanding anything :] I'm not sure why that is). They're clearly joking about his height. In Japanese standards he's very tall - one source has him at 184cm.
Anyway, my latest study evasion tactic has been browsing the net for random bits of info about Oguri Shun. I thought Shun would be a lot less interesting to investigate than Ryuhei or Jun, but the very existence of this post proves that I was wrong ;)
I had assumed that his filmography would just be filled with brooding romantic hero types and maybe some comedic roles here and there. The most adventurous thing I considered was that he may have done a slasher film or two - he's got the physique for it and the brooding persona would fit in well. All of these (including the slasher bit) were there, but there were some things I hadn't expected and I'm weird enough to be amused by them (especially when there's too much school work to do ;-P). So here goes...
There are more vulnerable, pushover type characters in his filmography than cool, brooding ones
Apparently, the first part he got noticed in was a small part in Great Teacher Onizuka - a very popular Japanese TV series from 1999. Shun played the part of a boy who was bullied by the whole class. He was 16 at the time, but looked around 12 (and in direct contrast to the present day was shorter than most of his co-stars ;)). It's weird seeing him playing a wimp, but it works. From what I can make out (I'm far from having a full idea about his filmography :]) he got to play quite a few vulnerable, sensitive characters after that.
One thing that I'm particularly surprised with is that he's actually a good crier ;) I couldn't picture him doing big, unrestrained crying scenes well - maybe because what I saw of him was rather reserved and restrained (and when I saw him do something less so *cough cough* Gokusen *cough cough* I hated him in it :] ).
I don't think he got to play a cool and brooding kind of character until Hana Yori Dango (2005). This perhaps explains why the gossip is that Shun got the part only thanks to Matsumoto Jun threatening to leave the project if they didn't give the part of Hanazawa Rui to Shun. I always thought it was a bit strange that the producers didn't want Shun for it. If it was quite different to what he had played before it makes much more sense.
A psychological vampire movie
His first cinematic film - Hitsuji No Uta (2002) (and also his first lead - most of his career consists of supporting roles) is also kind of in the vulnerable, sensitive vein, though it has a darker twist.
It's the story of a boy, Kazuna, who is brought up by his uncle and aunt. His parents kept his older sister with them, but gave Kazuna away. He's never told why and doesn't get to see any of his family. When we're introduced to the character he's in his teens and his mum is dead. He's not seen his father or sister since the age of 2.
He starts having strange dreams and then one day he passes out all of a sudden at the sight of blood. He thinks he's just anaemic or something, but of course he's not or we wouldn't have a story ;) His sister (who he meets for the first time in many years) finally tells him the dark family secret. Their family has some sort of practically unheard of hereditary disease. It causes them to have attacks during which they crave other people's blood very, very strongly. The disease is incurable and in the end fatal (the attacks are very weakening), but also dangerous to people around because the cravings can get so strong that the person cannot control them. Kazuna was given away because it was thought he didn't have the disease, but it looks like in his case it just took longer to surface.
The trailer is here:
Usually I would go the legal route to see it, but there is practically no way to see it legally :] I mean no DVD with English subtitles exists. There is a Japanese version without subtitles, but it's been out of print for years. It's hard to find on-line, so if any of you think it sounds interesting you can check it out here.
The bizarre thing about this film is that while it might sound like your regular vampire film, it's so totally not. Usually in a vampire film you get lots of action, blood and gore and of course the sexy female vampires trying to seduce some poor innocent guy to get his blood. This film in contrast is very slow with almost no action at all. The gore is barely there - the scenes in which Kazuna has his cravings are about him trying to restrain himself rather than about him trying to attack somebody. In terms of sex it's more about sexual tension than anything else (and no seductive female vampires either).
The film deals primarily with Kazuna's insecurities. He's very ashamed and scared of the blood cravings to the point of withdrawing from normal life. It's also about the relationship with his sister - two outcasts, who need themselves because nobody else can possibly understand what it's like.
It's a rather strange film as you may imagine... Judging by on-line reviews I seem to be in the minority in liking it, but if it sounds interesting to you at all then I would recommend it :) Shun is really great in it and also, for any Hana Yori Dango fans - you get to see the girl who plays Shigeru in season two as Kazuna's older sister. It's a very different (muuuuch quieter) part and she's really good too :)
He's a stage actor
Apparently Shun loves doing stage work and has done quite a bit of it. Titus Andronicus which he starred in even played in the UK and was very well received there. There's a number of English reviews of the play on-line and all the ones I found were positive both about the play and about Shun. If you want to check some out then here's a selection - Reviews Gate, the Guardian, BBC and a nice one on somebody's blog. For pics see here. The play is very visually spectacular, so the photos are actually really worth seeing - I've certainly become curious about what Japanese theatre is like now. Also you get to see Shun being kissed and groped by a man on those photos, but that might not necessarily be as interesting to you as it is to me ;-P
And now the best part...
It looks like despite his teen idol status he's totally up for taking his clothes off ;) This is partly demonstrated on the poster for Caligula - one of his stage plays (ok, the important parts are photoshopped out with fancy, white, flowy bits, but still...).
However, you may be interested to find out that in the same year he was shooting Hana Yori Dango season one (one of his most popular teen romance roles), he was also shooting this:
The scene is from Neighbour No 13, which I hope to see soon. It sounds like an art house horror movie - I honestly have no idea how that's supposed to work, which is why I really want to see it :]
It's about a guy who was bullied at school in a very extreme manner when he was little. According to the amazon reviews, the bullies even go as far as forcing him to eat excrement, but the worst is when they hold him down and pour acid on his face.
X years later, the main character is a young man and he's working on a construction site only to find that the bully who did all of this to him is in charge of him. The bullying starts all over again and the main character snaps - he develops a dual personality, one personality is very vulnerable and the other is a murdering maniac. The two personalities are played by two actors.
Every now and then the two personalities appear in frame together. Specifically, the inner fight between those personalities is represented in that red room on the clip. Shun is naked because he's the vulnerable one.
When I wrote about Big Bang Love, Juvenile A I said that out of all my friends probably only Ziggy and Kinga might enjoy it. Well, with Neighbour No.13 I get the feeling that I am totally the only one ;) Ziggy is eliminated because in the end it's a violent horror movie - he's too snobbish for that ;-P Kinga is eliminated because it'll probably be too violent for her. So I'm totally alone with this one ;)
Apparently most of the film festivals turned the film down because of the excessive violence. At the same time the people who like gore didn't enjoy the film either because firstly they said it wasn't gory enough and secondly it was a bit too psychological and weird. According to what I read the violence is not *that* heavy in terms of gore levels (some of it even happens out of frame - not something you'd see in your typical exploitative horror film). But emotionally the violence is supposed to be extremely heavy and there's a lot of it.
For me hearing all of this is actually all the more of a turn on, but I think everybody knows by now that my film taste is just weird :] Anyway, the trailer is here:
P.S. If anybody reading this (though I doubt it ;-P) actually wants to see Oguri Shun in his "I'm too cool" mode to compare against the clips I put up then you can check out this fan video (very appropriately the clip author has a Shahrukh avatar *grin*).
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
How To Get Back At Film Critics: A tutorial by Ram Gopal Varma ;)
One of the latest trends in Bollywood is blogging. Some of the biggest Bollywood names that are now blogging (much more regularly than I do btw!) are Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan. The latest person to start one is Ram Gopal Varma - one of the more "auteur" directors in Bollywood. While I have blissfully ignored the blogs of Aamir Khan and Mr Bachchan (whenever they write something more unusual the Indian tabloids report it anyway) I think I will seriously have to consider subscribing to Ram Gopal Varma's because his is so hilariously bitchy ;)
Anyway, RGV has just had a new film (Sarkar Raj) released and once again the reviews are bad. His response is hilarious:
The critics have a tendency to be bitchy to ridicule, to make sweeping statement to camouflage their ignorance of cinema with profound sounding lines and the reader for want of an opposing view might get taken in. So as long as the critic or anyone else has a right to review I think I have a right to review the reviews. So read on my review of reviews of SARKAR RAJ in my blog.
He then proceeds in totally taking all the reviews apart, sentence by sentence - it's hilarious ;)
I think my favourite one is when he takes apart the review of Mr Subhash K Jha. Some of the highlights of that one:
1. Sarkar is about the lacerated life of a Thackeray like family with the concept of spatial harmony acquiring a surrealistic meaninglessness because of the disembodied camera movements.
Ans: Does it mean that if the camera movement were embodied (whatever that means??!) it will become meaningful reality?
2. In Sarkar he observed, studied and pondered.
Ans: What did I observe, study and ponder?
3. He drags the uneasy relationship between Subhas Nagre and his kicking, screaming and wailing son into an arena of heightened scenes no exacerbated emotions.
Ans: I am impressed with your English. I would be more impressed if I understood what it means.
(...)
14. Prabhavalkar is a bizarre representation of Gandhism in these troubled times when fathers kill daughters and ministers go to prison.
Ans: Whatever that means.
15. Amit Roy’s cinematography and Sunil Nigvekar’s art are a raga pf rusty browns.
Ans: You want it to be blue or what?
So if you ever make a film and need to get back at the film critics giving you bad reviews, this is the way to do it ;) I'll be curious to see if he gets a response to this from the media lol
Anyway, RGV has just had a new film (Sarkar Raj) released and once again the reviews are bad. His response is hilarious:
The critics have a tendency to be bitchy to ridicule, to make sweeping statement to camouflage their ignorance of cinema with profound sounding lines and the reader for want of an opposing view might get taken in. So as long as the critic or anyone else has a right to review I think I have a right to review the reviews. So read on my review of reviews of SARKAR RAJ in my blog.
He then proceeds in totally taking all the reviews apart, sentence by sentence - it's hilarious ;)
I think my favourite one is when he takes apart the review of Mr Subhash K Jha. Some of the highlights of that one:
1. Sarkar is about the lacerated life of a Thackeray like family with the concept of spatial harmony acquiring a surrealistic meaninglessness because of the disembodied camera movements.
Ans: Does it mean that if the camera movement were embodied (whatever that means??!) it will become meaningful reality?
2. In Sarkar he observed, studied and pondered.
Ans: What did I observe, study and ponder?
3. He drags the uneasy relationship between Subhas Nagre and his kicking, screaming and wailing son into an arena of heightened scenes no exacerbated emotions.
Ans: I am impressed with your English. I would be more impressed if I understood what it means.
(...)
14. Prabhavalkar is a bizarre representation of Gandhism in these troubled times when fathers kill daughters and ministers go to prison.
Ans: Whatever that means.
15. Amit Roy’s cinematography and Sunil Nigvekar’s art are a raga pf rusty browns.
Ans: You want it to be blue or what?
So if you ever make a film and need to get back at the film critics giving you bad reviews, this is the way to do it ;) I'll be curious to see if he gets a response to this from the media lol
Monday, June 09, 2008
A story from Guantanamo Bay: "I didn't know how to pray. I didn't know anything."
Continuing my June trend of posting things as I read them rather than saving them in my drafts with the intention of writing giant posts I don't really have time for, here's another article/video I came across. It's about Murat Kurnaz, who was detained in Guantanamo for 5 years and released without charges. Guantanamo is nothing new (even on this blog), but I found the video really informative and to the point, so have a go at it :)
Sunday, June 08, 2008
“My name is Linus, and I am your God.”
I have this feeling that I'm not going to write anything long or meaningful this month, so I figured that rather than not writing anything for a month I may just as well do a few totally random and very short posts ;-P
So here's proof that computer geekdom is way more interesting than it sounds ;-P Or to be a bit more specific it's 10 quotes by Linus Torvalds - the father of linux. Apart from being an extremely intelligent man, he is of course totally insane (I think one has to be to be the initiator of something like this) and has a very sarcastic wit. This makes reading through his 10 best quotes entertaining regardless of whether you have any idea what he's talking about ;) Enjoy :)
So here's proof that computer geekdom is way more interesting than it sounds ;-P Or to be a bit more specific it's 10 quotes by Linus Torvalds - the father of linux. Apart from being an extremely intelligent man, he is of course totally insane (I think one has to be to be the initiator of something like this) and has a very sarcastic wit. This makes reading through his 10 best quotes entertaining regardless of whether you have any idea what he's talking about ;) Enjoy :)
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
FOLLOW UP: Escaping North Korea
Just thought I'd follow up my previous post on North Korea with a BBC article I came across. It's about the lengths to which North Koreans go to to get out of the country and features some video material to go with the text.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
North Korea: The only thing the government fears is balloons
The Planet Doc Review festival is being held in Warsaw right now. My dad took me out on Monday to see Andrzej Fidyk's Yodok Stories, which is a documentary about North Korean concentration camps. What many people don't realize (or at least I didn't) is that North Korea is running several concentration camps today (I believe the film spoke of the existence of 15) to hold political prisoners and their families. In North Korea, if you are guilty of a crime against the state (which can mean a lot of things - for example putting a newspaper with the photograph of Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, on the floor would be considered such a crime) three generations of your family will be put in a concentration camp.
Andrzej Fidyk is a Polish documentary director (though apparently his next project will be a feature film, so I'll be really excited about that!) who makes very particular sort of films. I first came across him in film school (for those who don't know me that well - I did a two year film course where I specialized in editing and then didn't follow it up with anything much). My history of film teacher showed us Andrzej Fidyk's 1989 film - Defilada. He told us (or at least that's what I remember - I hope I remember right!) that in the late 80s the North Korean government decided to invite eight foreign documentary directors to make a film about their country (they wanted to improve their image abroad), but of course reserving the right to censor the films. Of the 8 films made, only Fidyk's passed the censors and made its way out into the world. Poland of course has a very strong tradition of making films which pass censors, but which say everything that needs to be said anyway and Defilada is a classic example of this (in fact that's why it was shown to us!).
Almost 20 years later a Norwegian human rights body asked Fidyk whether he would be interested in making a film about North Korean concentration camps. So he started to wonder how such a thing could even be done. Naturally, you can't just waltz into a concentration camp and film it and then there's the other issue of how do you make a film on this topic without making it so depressing that nobody would want to watch it.
Finally, he had an idea... You see, North Korea does probably the most spectacular stadium performances in the world. In fact Fidyk's first film about North Korea references this with its title - Defilada means The Parade. You can see a fragment of Defilada which shows a stadium performance below (it's in Polish, if you want to go straight to the bit that shows the performance then it's about half way through the clip):
To see more of Fidyk's Defilada, go here or to see another North Korean parade go here (there are way more on youtube and all of them are just as spectacular!).
So Fidyk decided that he had to find a North Korean spectacle/theatre director amongst the many North Korean refugees in South Korea and talk him into directing a play about North Korean concentration camps. The documentary would focus on the making of the play. Eventually he found a man suitable for the job and after a lot of talks the play evolved into a stage musical (apparently these are very popular in South Korea). The musical is called Yoduk Story - Yodok being the name of one of the concentration camps. It was a huge success in South Korea and has toured the USA too. You can see the trailer for the stage musical below:
What struck me most in what I learnt from the film was how totally isolated North Korea is. The people living by the border may have some idea about what's going on in the outside world, but everybody else is totally cut off from outside information. And anyone who *would* have such information would not share it because their whole family would end up in one of the concentration camps. Furthermore North Korea has NO internet. That was the first thing I checked on-line after seeing the film because I just couldn't believe it. The North Korean domain is .kp and there are exactly two known websites in that domain and both of them are on servers outside of North Korea. In North Korea internet just doesn't exist. So the only way people (mainly the many North Korean refugees living in South Korea) have been trying to give people in North Korea information about the outside world is by sending brochures via helium balloons.
I really recommend the documentary - it's a very important topic and a very well made film too. It will still be showing this Saturday and Sunday at the festival.
Andrzej Fidyk is a Polish documentary director (though apparently his next project will be a feature film, so I'll be really excited about that!) who makes very particular sort of films. I first came across him in film school (for those who don't know me that well - I did a two year film course where I specialized in editing and then didn't follow it up with anything much). My history of film teacher showed us Andrzej Fidyk's 1989 film - Defilada. He told us (or at least that's what I remember - I hope I remember right!) that in the late 80s the North Korean government decided to invite eight foreign documentary directors to make a film about their country (they wanted to improve their image abroad), but of course reserving the right to censor the films. Of the 8 films made, only Fidyk's passed the censors and made its way out into the world. Poland of course has a very strong tradition of making films which pass censors, but which say everything that needs to be said anyway and Defilada is a classic example of this (in fact that's why it was shown to us!).
Almost 20 years later a Norwegian human rights body asked Fidyk whether he would be interested in making a film about North Korean concentration camps. So he started to wonder how such a thing could even be done. Naturally, you can't just waltz into a concentration camp and film it and then there's the other issue of how do you make a film on this topic without making it so depressing that nobody would want to watch it.
Finally, he had an idea... You see, North Korea does probably the most spectacular stadium performances in the world. In fact Fidyk's first film about North Korea references this with its title - Defilada means The Parade. You can see a fragment of Defilada which shows a stadium performance below (it's in Polish, if you want to go straight to the bit that shows the performance then it's about half way through the clip):
To see more of Fidyk's Defilada, go here or to see another North Korean parade go here (there are way more on youtube and all of them are just as spectacular!).
So Fidyk decided that he had to find a North Korean spectacle/theatre director amongst the many North Korean refugees in South Korea and talk him into directing a play about North Korean concentration camps. The documentary would focus on the making of the play. Eventually he found a man suitable for the job and after a lot of talks the play evolved into a stage musical (apparently these are very popular in South Korea). The musical is called Yoduk Story - Yodok being the name of one of the concentration camps. It was a huge success in South Korea and has toured the USA too. You can see the trailer for the stage musical below:
What struck me most in what I learnt from the film was how totally isolated North Korea is. The people living by the border may have some idea about what's going on in the outside world, but everybody else is totally cut off from outside information. And anyone who *would* have such information would not share it because their whole family would end up in one of the concentration camps. Furthermore North Korea has NO internet. That was the first thing I checked on-line after seeing the film because I just couldn't believe it. The North Korean domain is .kp and there are exactly two known websites in that domain and both of them are on servers outside of North Korea. In North Korea internet just doesn't exist. So the only way people (mainly the many North Korean refugees living in South Korea) have been trying to give people in North Korea information about the outside world is by sending brochures via helium balloons.
I really recommend the documentary - it's a very important topic and a very well made film too. It will still be showing this Saturday and Sunday at the festival.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
How To Annoy Andreja: a tutorial ;) (Matsuda Ryuhei once more)
So... if you ever meet my friend Andreja and wish to annoy her (or in fact, it will suffice if you encourage her to read your blog - an actual meeting is not necessary ;)), there is a simple way to do it. All you need to do is write about the wonderful world of Japanese film & TV and choose to focus on someone who is not Matsumoto Jun ;)
I am therefore going to continue to annoy her for the time being, as I'm still rather into Matsuda Ryuhei right now ;)
Anyway, according to Amazon.com I should receive my irresistibly homoerotic and artsy Matsuda Ryuhei DVD on the 27th of May. Of course Amazon.com is totally wrong because I actually received it on the 9th of May. Strangely enough it came via Deutsche Post, to be more specific - from Frankfurt. This would perhaps not be so weird except that it's a region 1 DVD. I have tried to explain to my mum that getting to the bottom of these mysterious workings will help me understand the universe, but unfortunately I don't think she believed me.
Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (the Matsuda Ryuhei film I received in this mysterious manner) is also trying to understand the universe, but I'm not expecting it to help my own personal quest to do so as I rather doubt I will ever understand the film ;) The good news is that I really enjoyed it anyway. I don't feel the inclination to write a proper, linear review (the film doesn't have a proper, linear story so why should it be reviewed that way ;-P), so I'll just be totally random and gush about Ryuhei instead ;-P
The bad news for Andreja is that now that I've seen two Ryuhei films I have concluded that his face is not the only thing that makes him interesting to look at on screen ;) I expect he may be appearing more on this blog if I manage to get hold of some of his other films.
Btw, I am clearly *not* alone in obsessing about his face. Here's a quote from the 'Making Of' feature on the Big Bang Love DVD, it's Ryuhei's co-star - Ando Masanobu (who is also very gushworthy) speaking:
With Ryuhei... since I've worked with him before, we work together well... and we hang out together outside of work. I like Ryu's face, so... even like this time... I've viewed him from various angles. He's maturing more and more, and getting more distinctive. It made me happy to see the sculptured, adult face of Ryu.
But enough about his face - as it happens I've discovered that Matsuda Ryuhei is actually a good actor ;) I kind of expected he might be (if he wasn't, I don't think he'd hold people's attention that well in Gohatto - even with that face ;)), but it's still nice to see it confirmed. Unlike this reviewer I found his part very different to Gohatto. I mean yes, it's similar in that he doesn't have much dialogue and mainly he "just is", but this is the case for all the actors in Big Bang Love - it's that sort of film. Otherwise it's very different to Gohatto. Unlike Sozaburo Kano, Ariyoshi Jun is a very vulnerable character and the whole body language is played like that. It's actually quite amazing how much information about the character Ryuhei can put through just by "being".
A random, but I thought interesting fact about the making of the film is the nude scene. In the special features Takeshi Miike explained that there wasn't any nudity in the script (it's a scene early on in the film when the two main characters are arrested - there's a strip search). But the costume designer strongly felt that there should be nudity there and that it was necessary for the film's artistic integrity. Miike liked her argumentation, but didn't really feel it was right to push the actors into it. The costume designer, however, felt so strongly about it that she started debating it with the cast. Miike had no idea how far the actors would go when they were shooting that scene and was positively surprised when they did strip.
The reason why I found this particularly interesting is that it sounds from this that nudity is a bigger deal in Japan than it is in the West. We are, after all, talking about a director known for making films with very extreme and perverse violence - Ichi, The Killer would certainly qualify as one of the most extreme films I've seen and I've seen a lot of "nasty" stuff. So to hear him express reservations about having his cast do nudity is interesting to say the least.
I've started wondering whether I've ever seen nudity in a Japanese film before and I don't think I have. In fact I only know of one other Japanese film (which I haven't seen) that definitely has nudity in it (full frontal at that) and that's The Realm of the Senses (1976). AFAIK to this day it has not been released in Japan uncut (I don't think it's the only country where that's the case, but still ;-P).
So I need Kinga's expertise here! Is nudity indeed a much bigger taboo in Japan or have I just been watching the "wrong films" and Miike is weird? ;)
In terms of other randomness, at the end of the 'Making Of' feature they asked everybody to say something about what film in general means to them (I actually felt most of the 'Making Of' was boring but that was one of the best bits). Ryuhei's answer is very quotable so I will quote it ;-P
I sometimes think... that all I'm about is acting. I go to movie sets, and there I discover who I am. Movie sets are like mirrors. Things you want to do, places you want to go... you confirm all these things there.
Finally, to totally scare you away from the film, here's a quote from Takashi Miike that made me lol:
Recently I've realized that movies that put me to sleep are good movies. Ones that bore me and put me to sleep. They give you tranquillity. There are things in the world that make you angry and sleepless. So movies that help you sleep are great. So if someone buys the DVD, absent-mindedly watches it, and eventually falls asleep... and between dozing and consciousness, the movie is still going, still flowing... as they enter the world of dreams; I think it's a piece that could be watched like that.
I am therefore going to continue to annoy her for the time being, as I'm still rather into Matsuda Ryuhei right now ;)
Anyway, according to Amazon.com I should receive my irresistibly homoerotic and artsy Matsuda Ryuhei DVD on the 27th of May. Of course Amazon.com is totally wrong because I actually received it on the 9th of May. Strangely enough it came via Deutsche Post, to be more specific - from Frankfurt. This would perhaps not be so weird except that it's a region 1 DVD. I have tried to explain to my mum that getting to the bottom of these mysterious workings will help me understand the universe, but unfortunately I don't think she believed me.
Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (the Matsuda Ryuhei film I received in this mysterious manner) is also trying to understand the universe, but I'm not expecting it to help my own personal quest to do so as I rather doubt I will ever understand the film ;) The good news is that I really enjoyed it anyway. I don't feel the inclination to write a proper, linear review (the film doesn't have a proper, linear story so why should it be reviewed that way ;-P), so I'll just be totally random and gush about Ryuhei instead ;-P
The bad news for Andreja is that now that I've seen two Ryuhei films I have concluded that his face is not the only thing that makes him interesting to look at on screen ;) I expect he may be appearing more on this blog if I manage to get hold of some of his other films.
Btw, I am clearly *not* alone in obsessing about his face. Here's a quote from the 'Making Of' feature on the Big Bang Love DVD, it's Ryuhei's co-star - Ando Masanobu (who is also very gushworthy) speaking:
With Ryuhei... since I've worked with him before, we work together well... and we hang out together outside of work. I like Ryu's face, so... even like this time... I've viewed him from various angles. He's maturing more and more, and getting more distinctive. It made me happy to see the sculptured, adult face of Ryu.
But enough about his face - as it happens I've discovered that Matsuda Ryuhei is actually a good actor ;) I kind of expected he might be (if he wasn't, I don't think he'd hold people's attention that well in Gohatto - even with that face ;)), but it's still nice to see it confirmed. Unlike this reviewer I found his part very different to Gohatto. I mean yes, it's similar in that he doesn't have much dialogue and mainly he "just is", but this is the case for all the actors in Big Bang Love - it's that sort of film. Otherwise it's very different to Gohatto. Unlike Sozaburo Kano, Ariyoshi Jun is a very vulnerable character and the whole body language is played like that. It's actually quite amazing how much information about the character Ryuhei can put through just by "being".
A random, but I thought interesting fact about the making of the film is the nude scene. In the special features Takeshi Miike explained that there wasn't any nudity in the script (it's a scene early on in the film when the two main characters are arrested - there's a strip search). But the costume designer strongly felt that there should be nudity there and that it was necessary for the film's artistic integrity. Miike liked her argumentation, but didn't really feel it was right to push the actors into it. The costume designer, however, felt so strongly about it that she started debating it with the cast. Miike had no idea how far the actors would go when they were shooting that scene and was positively surprised when they did strip.
The reason why I found this particularly interesting is that it sounds from this that nudity is a bigger deal in Japan than it is in the West. We are, after all, talking about a director known for making films with very extreme and perverse violence - Ichi, The Killer would certainly qualify as one of the most extreme films I've seen and I've seen a lot of "nasty" stuff. So to hear him express reservations about having his cast do nudity is interesting to say the least.
I've started wondering whether I've ever seen nudity in a Japanese film before and I don't think I have. In fact I only know of one other Japanese film (which I haven't seen) that definitely has nudity in it (full frontal at that) and that's The Realm of the Senses (1976). AFAIK to this day it has not been released in Japan uncut (I don't think it's the only country where that's the case, but still ;-P).
So I need Kinga's expertise here! Is nudity indeed a much bigger taboo in Japan or have I just been watching the "wrong films" and Miike is weird? ;)
In terms of other randomness, at the end of the 'Making Of' feature they asked everybody to say something about what film in general means to them (I actually felt most of the 'Making Of' was boring but that was one of the best bits). Ryuhei's answer is very quotable so I will quote it ;-P
I sometimes think... that all I'm about is acting. I go to movie sets, and there I discover who I am. Movie sets are like mirrors. Things you want to do, places you want to go... you confirm all these things there.
Finally, to totally scare you away from the film, here's a quote from Takashi Miike that made me lol:
Recently I've realized that movies that put me to sleep are good movies. Ones that bore me and put me to sleep. They give you tranquillity. There are things in the world that make you angry and sleepless. So movies that help you sleep are great. So if someone buys the DVD, absent-mindedly watches it, and eventually falls asleep... and between dozing and consciousness, the movie is still going, still flowing... as they enter the world of dreams; I think it's a piece that could be watched like that.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Matsuda Ryuhei: "I like to play people who constantly want to go out and kill people. They feel more comfortable for me somehow."
Since I've already started gushing about Matsuda Ryuhei on this blog, I figured I may as well do a whole post just about him ;)
The quote in the title is from this site (where you can also read a short bio). I shortened the title quote a bit cause it was just too long, so the full quote (which is somewhat less sensationalistic, but still amusing) is:
I like to play people who play video games all the time, or people who constantly want to go out and kill people. Those kind of roles enable me to pull out deep emotions of anger and grief, feelings I've experienced in the past. They feel more comfortable for me somehow.
There's not much material available about him in English (as is the case with most Japanese stars I think), so that site has pretty much the only English quotes of his that I found (but the title one is quite a gem, don't you think? ;) ).
I find Matsuda Ryuhei quite a curious case - I think largely because of my already mentioned fixation on his looks. This is weird in that he's the only actor I can think of, who I find cute because of his face ;-P (I'm not saying I never find actors cute, it's just that their face usually doesn't have much to do with it ;-P).
But it's not just that. It's the style of his acting too. He's restrained to a ridiculous degree (perhaps part of the reason why he likes and is good at playing the sort of characters he describes ;) ). For most of Gohatto (the only Ryuhei Matsuda film I've seen which actually makes me very ill qualified to write this post, but whatever ;-P) he's just there in a very upright pose, with almost no noticeable change of facial expression. The only time his expression changes is in one of the film's final scenes when he's about to kill someone (he laughs). For a demonstration, check out the trailer of Gohatto below:
Oddly enough, this sort of style works very well for Ryuhei (when Orlando Bloom does upright roles with no facial expression change he doesn't seem to be as lucky ;-P).
AFAIK, Ryuhei has done quite a few roles in that sort of style successfully. The trailer for Blue Spring looks similar, as does this hilarious scene from Izo (which has Ryuhei as a God-like figure ;) ).
But he has done some parts which sound like they're a bit "against type", which are naturally the reason I'm writing this post (they amuse me ;-P).
So there's a film which goes by the title Karaoke Terror (I kid you not), which is about a group of middle-aged karaoke loving women and a group of 20-something year old karaoke loving boys. One day, one of the boys tries to pick up one of the middle-aged women and to his surprise (he thought he was what they dreamed of) is turned down. In revenge he murders one of them in a very gory way, so they murder one of them in an even more gory way and so on (I assume it goes on until there is nobody left). There is a trailer on youtube (the trailer features only karaoke, no terror):
Another film which sounds "against Ryuhei type" is Koi No Mon, which is some sort of oddball, broad comedy and they're even going away from his effeminate looks (he's got facial hair in this ;) ):
The quote in the title is from this site (where you can also read a short bio). I shortened the title quote a bit cause it was just too long, so the full quote (which is somewhat less sensationalistic, but still amusing) is:
I like to play people who play video games all the time, or people who constantly want to go out and kill people. Those kind of roles enable me to pull out deep emotions of anger and grief, feelings I've experienced in the past. They feel more comfortable for me somehow.
There's not much material available about him in English (as is the case with most Japanese stars I think), so that site has pretty much the only English quotes of his that I found (but the title one is quite a gem, don't you think? ;) ).
I find Matsuda Ryuhei quite a curious case - I think largely because of my already mentioned fixation on his looks. This is weird in that he's the only actor I can think of, who I find cute because of his face ;-P (I'm not saying I never find actors cute, it's just that their face usually doesn't have much to do with it ;-P).
But it's not just that. It's the style of his acting too. He's restrained to a ridiculous degree (perhaps part of the reason why he likes and is good at playing the sort of characters he describes ;) ). For most of Gohatto (the only Ryuhei Matsuda film I've seen which actually makes me very ill qualified to write this post, but whatever ;-P) he's just there in a very upright pose, with almost no noticeable change of facial expression. The only time his expression changes is in one of the film's final scenes when he's about to kill someone (he laughs). For a demonstration, check out the trailer of Gohatto below:
Oddly enough, this sort of style works very well for Ryuhei (when Orlando Bloom does upright roles with no facial expression change he doesn't seem to be as lucky ;-P).
AFAIK, Ryuhei has done quite a few roles in that sort of style successfully. The trailer for Blue Spring looks similar, as does this hilarious scene from Izo (which has Ryuhei as a God-like figure ;) ).
But he has done some parts which sound like they're a bit "against type", which are naturally the reason I'm writing this post (they amuse me ;-P).
So there's a film which goes by the title Karaoke Terror (I kid you not), which is about a group of middle-aged karaoke loving women and a group of 20-something year old karaoke loving boys. One day, one of the boys tries to pick up one of the middle-aged women and to his surprise (he thought he was what they dreamed of) is turned down. In revenge he murders one of them in a very gory way, so they murder one of them in an even more gory way and so on (I assume it goes on until there is nobody left). There is a trailer on youtube (the trailer features only karaoke, no terror):
Another film which sounds "against Ryuhei type" is Koi No Mon, which is some sort of oddball, broad comedy and they're even going away from his effeminate looks (he's got facial hair in this ;) ):
Friday, April 25, 2008
My absence, my laptop and my Japanese film phase
As you may have noticed my promised comeback to the internet has not happened ;-P (apologies to anyone still waiting for replies to e-mails, you will have to wait longer ;-P). In fact this month it got so bad that I haven't even been using my RSS reader which has resulted in a total ignorance to current events (and I'm usually totally addicted to my RSS reader!).
If anybody wants an explanation for this behaviour (am I correct in thinking that nobody gives a damn? ;) ) then lets blame it on me having bought a laptop. I've become totally obsessed with it, or should I say obsessed with tweaking it (it's been 2 weeks - I still haven't tweaked it to the state I want it to be in ;-P). Does anybody care that I have a distribution called 'Arch Linux' on it currently? ;-P or that is has a firewire? ;-P oh, and it's an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad R61i and it has a trackpoint, wheee! Anyway, my laptop has become such an important existence in my life that I just had to mention it ;)
In terms of other stuff, I've been slipping in and out of a Japanese film phase for the last few weeks. It started with Japanese TV dramas and Matsumoto Jun (courtesy of Kinga ;) ), but I think it's going to lead me into the territory of cinematic films also. I've revisited what was my favourite Japanese film uptil now - Gohatto - and reminded myself of how much I like Matsuda Ryuhei. This in turn has resulted in me hopefully getting a DVD of a film I haven't yet seen called Big Bang Love, Juvenile A by the end of next month (also starring Matsuda Ryuhei).
Frankly, it seems like the kind of film only me and Ziggy could enjoy (it seems artsy enough for Ziggy's snobbish side to appreciate it and if his snobbish side fails then there's still hope in the homoerotic content ;) ). I do have some hope for Kinga too (after all, she's weird enough to enjoy Peter Greenway films), but I'm fully expecting them to be the only people in my acquaintance, who have a shot at liking it ;-P However, I've been surprised before ;) so I will post a list of reasons why you may be interested in the film even if you are not Ziggy or Kinga ;) (the trailer will for sure scare you off, but you haven't gotten that far into the post yet ;-P):
1) There is Matsuda Ryuhei in it ;) ok, maybe that's not an interesting enough reason for somebody who has no idea who I'm talking about ;-P But I think he's pretty much the only actor I've seen, who is *truly* eye candy to me. Usually I cannot tell whether I find a guy attractive or not just by looking at a photo. I have to see them move, talk, smile and so on and then I can tell you. Matsuda Ryuhei is the only guy I know of who I can just see a photo of and say he's beautiful (perhaps beautiful more in the way that I would find a woman beautiful, but that's still something, right? ;-P). His effeminate looks are probably why he keeps getting cast in homoerotic films (if I'm not mistaken this is his third such film). What is more in this film they've cast him alongside a guy who looks more masculine and rough, so the aesthetics of his looks are going to get even more showcased. If I have gotten you curious about him at all then check out some pics - this is from Gohatto, the only film of his that I've seen and incidently his debut film (he was only 16 at the time) and this is from Big Bang Love which I hope to own on DVD in about one month's time (it was made 2 years ago, so he would have been about 23).
2) You get to see sexy Japanese men naked ;) (you can see a little bit even on the trailer ;-P) Oh, and in case anyone's curious - yes, you get to see Ryuhei in the nude too (not on the trailer though).
3) It's a Takashi Miike film. For some people I guess that will be a turn off rather than a turn on, but I thought it was worth mentioning ;-P Frankly, for me when I initially hear a film is by Takashi Miike it is a bit of a put off (I know him as the master of gore since the only film of his I've seen is Ichi The Killer - which I didn't dislike, but it did nothing to convince me I want to see more). Big Bang Love, however, doesn't seem to be of the gory sort at all (at least none of the reviews or clips seem to indicate this) - so if it's the gore putting you off (as I assume it would be for most people) I think you are safe :) (yes, Kinga - this is largely directed at you ;) ).
4) It looks a bit claustrophobic. For some reason I have a soft spot for films which have a "trapped" sort of atmosphere. I can get through even a bad prison sort of film for this reason (and prison is precisely the setting of this film). So for any other weirdos like me I guess it's worth mentioning.
5) It's homoerotic, but I guess you've gathered that by now ;-P I guess for many people again this would be a put off, but I think there's quite a few people reading this blog who have either a contrary reaction or a neutral one.
6) Aesthetically it looks beautiful (and I'm not just talking about Ryuhei - though he adds to it ;-P).
Having done my best to get anybody other than Ziggy and Kinga interested enough to at least see the trailer (and probably doing the contrary - i.e. putting off even Ziggy and Kinga ;)), here it is:
I imagine that more of my Japanese film phase is to come on this blog as I have yet to gush about Matsumoto Jun ;) (who I actually like more than Matsuda Ryuhei ;-P).
P.S. As Ziggy has been heavily mentioned in this post, you may be interested to learn that he has updated his blog for the first time in about a year ;)
If anybody wants an explanation for this behaviour (am I correct in thinking that nobody gives a damn? ;) ) then lets blame it on me having bought a laptop. I've become totally obsessed with it, or should I say obsessed with tweaking it (it's been 2 weeks - I still haven't tweaked it to the state I want it to be in ;-P). Does anybody care that I have a distribution called 'Arch Linux' on it currently? ;-P or that is has a firewire? ;-P oh, and it's an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad R61i and it has a trackpoint, wheee! Anyway, my laptop has become such an important existence in my life that I just had to mention it ;)
In terms of other stuff, I've been slipping in and out of a Japanese film phase for the last few weeks. It started with Japanese TV dramas and Matsumoto Jun (courtesy of Kinga ;) ), but I think it's going to lead me into the territory of cinematic films also. I've revisited what was my favourite Japanese film uptil now - Gohatto - and reminded myself of how much I like Matsuda Ryuhei. This in turn has resulted in me hopefully getting a DVD of a film I haven't yet seen called Big Bang Love, Juvenile A by the end of next month (also starring Matsuda Ryuhei).
Frankly, it seems like the kind of film only me and Ziggy could enjoy (it seems artsy enough for Ziggy's snobbish side to appreciate it and if his snobbish side fails then there's still hope in the homoerotic content ;) ). I do have some hope for Kinga too (after all, she's weird enough to enjoy Peter Greenway films), but I'm fully expecting them to be the only people in my acquaintance, who have a shot at liking it ;-P However, I've been surprised before ;) so I will post a list of reasons why you may be interested in the film even if you are not Ziggy or Kinga ;) (the trailer will for sure scare you off, but you haven't gotten that far into the post yet ;-P):
1) There is Matsuda Ryuhei in it ;) ok, maybe that's not an interesting enough reason for somebody who has no idea who I'm talking about ;-P But I think he's pretty much the only actor I've seen, who is *truly* eye candy to me. Usually I cannot tell whether I find a guy attractive or not just by looking at a photo. I have to see them move, talk, smile and so on and then I can tell you. Matsuda Ryuhei is the only guy I know of who I can just see a photo of and say he's beautiful (perhaps beautiful more in the way that I would find a woman beautiful, but that's still something, right? ;-P). His effeminate looks are probably why he keeps getting cast in homoerotic films (if I'm not mistaken this is his third such film). What is more in this film they've cast him alongside a guy who looks more masculine and rough, so the aesthetics of his looks are going to get even more showcased. If I have gotten you curious about him at all then check out some pics - this is from Gohatto, the only film of his that I've seen and incidently his debut film (he was only 16 at the time) and this is from Big Bang Love which I hope to own on DVD in about one month's time (it was made 2 years ago, so he would have been about 23).
2) You get to see sexy Japanese men naked ;) (you can see a little bit even on the trailer ;-P) Oh, and in case anyone's curious - yes, you get to see Ryuhei in the nude too (not on the trailer though).
3) It's a Takashi Miike film. For some people I guess that will be a turn off rather than a turn on, but I thought it was worth mentioning ;-P Frankly, for me when I initially hear a film is by Takashi Miike it is a bit of a put off (I know him as the master of gore since the only film of his I've seen is Ichi The Killer - which I didn't dislike, but it did nothing to convince me I want to see more). Big Bang Love, however, doesn't seem to be of the gory sort at all (at least none of the reviews or clips seem to indicate this) - so if it's the gore putting you off (as I assume it would be for most people) I think you are safe :) (yes, Kinga - this is largely directed at you ;) ).
4) It looks a bit claustrophobic. For some reason I have a soft spot for films which have a "trapped" sort of atmosphere. I can get through even a bad prison sort of film for this reason (and prison is precisely the setting of this film). So for any other weirdos like me I guess it's worth mentioning.
5) It's homoerotic, but I guess you've gathered that by now ;-P I guess for many people again this would be a put off, but I think there's quite a few people reading this blog who have either a contrary reaction or a neutral one.
6) Aesthetically it looks beautiful (and I'm not just talking about Ryuhei - though he adds to it ;-P).
Having done my best to get anybody other than Ziggy and Kinga interested enough to at least see the trailer (and probably doing the contrary - i.e. putting off even Ziggy and Kinga ;)), here it is:
I imagine that more of my Japanese film phase is to come on this blog as I have yet to gush about Matsumoto Jun ;) (who I actually like more than Matsuda Ryuhei ;-P).
P.S. As Ziggy has been heavily mentioned in this post, you may be interested to learn that he has updated his blog for the first time in about a year ;)
Sunday, March 30, 2008
I am currently addicted to...
...a totally random Bollywood film clip on youtube. It's from an old Shahrukh film which I haven't seen called Zamana Deewana (1995). From what I understand the story is about the police trying to stop the violence between two rival gangs. Rather than tackle the gangs directly the police have decided to try and make the children of the two gang leaders fall in love.
The clip is a dance number between the children. If I'm not mistaken, at this point the two of them have been captured by the police and handcuffed to each other. They've realized what the police is trying to do, so they pretend to be in love (while hitting and strangling each other when the officers aren't looking) so as to make the police let them go.
I'm not sure why I'm addicted to it... Mid-90s Bollywood is usually not something I get addicted to easily - especially if it's a dance sequence. But somehow I keep turning this one on again and again...
The clip is a dance number between the children. If I'm not mistaken, at this point the two of them have been captured by the police and handcuffed to each other. They've realized what the police is trying to do, so they pretend to be in love (while hitting and strangling each other when the officers aren't looking) so as to make the police let them go.
I'm not sure why I'm addicted to it... Mid-90s Bollywood is usually not something I get addicted to easily - especially if it's a dance sequence. But somehow I keep turning this one on again and again...
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Krazzy 4 - the item boys
Hopefully, this post will mark my proper "comeback to the internet" (yes, maybe I'll even start replying to e-mails soon ;-P). When one doesn't have internet for a long time, one kind of almost gets used to not having it and now that I've finally gotten it back I have no idea how I ever found time for it in the first place. I still haven't gotten through all the news in my RSS reader btw, so I have absolutely no idea what's happening in the world right now ;-P
But anyway, I should probably stop moaning about not having had internet for a month in every post - it's not exactly gripping reading, is it? I'm not sure the rest of my blog is either, but hey - even Bollywood's gotta be more interesting than me not having internet, right? ;)
Publicity for Krazzy 4 is in full throb at the moment. From what I understand it's a comedy about four guys who escaped from a mental institution:
It doesn't have any major stars in the lead parts, but Rakesh Roshan (Hrithik Roshan's dad), who is the producer of the film, put a different "strategy" in play. He got the no.1 and no.2 Bollywood stars (not everyone would agree with the "numbering", but that's the "numbering" I usually hear ;-P) to do item numbers to the same song. To translate that into plain English for people who are perhaps less interested in Bollywood than myself - an item number is usually a song & dance number in which a star who isn't in the rest of the film takes central position. Naturally, the main idea is to make the star look sexy and often the number will have nothing to do with the plot. The ingenuity of Rakesh Roshan in this case is that he got what are possibly the two biggest stars in Bollywood - Shahrukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan to do an item number to the same song (Shahrukh's starts the film off and Hrithik's plays during the closing credits).
Here's the promo for Shahrukh's:
And here's the one for Hrithik's:
It's curious to see Shahrukh take up this sort of "challenge" cause against Hrithik he has to lose ;) Hrithik is so much more the "item boy" type. But I guess he doesn't lose as badly as I thought he might when I first heard of this ;)
And it's kinda interesting (at least IMO ;-P) to compare how the numbers were put together. Hrithik is out there solo and almost entirely in wide shots, while SRK gets a whole troop of dancers and lots of close-ups instead. Good choices for both of them I think - they get to play to their strengths.
But anyway, I should probably stop moaning about not having had internet for a month in every post - it's not exactly gripping reading, is it? I'm not sure the rest of my blog is either, but hey - even Bollywood's gotta be more interesting than me not having internet, right? ;)
Publicity for Krazzy 4 is in full throb at the moment. From what I understand it's a comedy about four guys who escaped from a mental institution:
It doesn't have any major stars in the lead parts, but Rakesh Roshan (Hrithik Roshan's dad), who is the producer of the film, put a different "strategy" in play. He got the no.1 and no.2 Bollywood stars (not everyone would agree with the "numbering", but that's the "numbering" I usually hear ;-P) to do item numbers to the same song. To translate that into plain English for people who are perhaps less interested in Bollywood than myself - an item number is usually a song & dance number in which a star who isn't in the rest of the film takes central position. Naturally, the main idea is to make the star look sexy and often the number will have nothing to do with the plot. The ingenuity of Rakesh Roshan in this case is that he got what are possibly the two biggest stars in Bollywood - Shahrukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan to do an item number to the same song (Shahrukh's starts the film off and Hrithik's plays during the closing credits).
Here's the promo for Shahrukh's:
And here's the one for Hrithik's:
It's curious to see Shahrukh take up this sort of "challenge" cause against Hrithik he has to lose ;) Hrithik is so much more the "item boy" type. But I guess he doesn't lose as badly as I thought he might when I first heard of this ;)
And it's kinda interesting (at least IMO ;-P) to compare how the numbers were put together. Hrithik is out there solo and almost entirely in wide shots, while SRK gets a whole troop of dancers and lots of close-ups instead. Good choices for both of them I think - they get to play to their strengths.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
The Happening
The trailer for Shyamalan's The Happening has been out for a while and it looks like this:
As you may remember "The Happening" is on my list of films to see in 2008 because it's the first time that an Indian production company is co-producing what is essentially a Hollywood film (and I'm weird enough to be excited about that). But I must say the trailer has made me doubt whether I really want to see it ;) It looks dreadful!
As you may remember "The Happening" is on my list of films to see in 2008 because it's the first time that an Indian production company is co-producing what is essentially a Hollywood film (and I'm weird enough to be excited about that). But I must say the trailer has made me doubt whether I really want to see it ;) It looks dreadful!
Film Award season 2008
I finally have internet courtesy of TP S.A. *grin*
So I have to get back to posting... faaaast! There's just too much I want to post ;-P
Anyway, the two biggest film industries in the world had their most commercial award ceremonies last month, on the same day no less (24th February).
You can check out the winners here and here.
I've been following the chances of Katyń at the Academy Awards on this blog, so I guess I should now inform everyone that it lost ;) Polish speaking readers of this blog can check out some speculations about why it lost out on the award (not commercial enough, not universal enough etc. ;-P).
Interestingly, this year the Academy Awards had the lowest TV ratings ever. I think this is a good excuse not to link to any clips from the ceremony ;-P (another good one is that judging by youtube, they're monitoring for clips not to surface ;-P and also the one I did find was boring ;-P)
A clip that I absolutely must link to however is this:
It's Saif and Shahrukh hosting the Filmfare Awards and trust me - you want to see this clip ;) (or at least the beginning of it)
I watched the whole show on youtube and I have to agree that SRK and Saif are the most politically incorrect hosts ever. I think this is their third time hosting, but this year was particularly "bad". Or maybe this is just the first time I followed the Indian tabloids well enough to get most of the subtleties ;) - some of the jabs they were making at films and people were potentially veeeery offensive. If anybody cares they made a few jabs at Hollywood and the Academy Awards too ;) (not that I fully understood them as a lot of them were done in Hindi ;-P)
So I have to get back to posting... faaaast! There's just too much I want to post ;-P
Anyway, the two biggest film industries in the world had their most commercial award ceremonies last month, on the same day no less (24th February).
You can check out the winners here and here.
I've been following the chances of Katyń at the Academy Awards on this blog, so I guess I should now inform everyone that it lost ;) Polish speaking readers of this blog can check out some speculations about why it lost out on the award (not commercial enough, not universal enough etc. ;-P).
Interestingly, this year the Academy Awards had the lowest TV ratings ever. I think this is a good excuse not to link to any clips from the ceremony ;-P (another good one is that judging by youtube, they're monitoring for clips not to surface ;-P and also the one I did find was boring ;-P)
A clip that I absolutely must link to however is this:
It's Saif and Shahrukh hosting the Filmfare Awards and trust me - you want to see this clip ;) (or at least the beginning of it)
I watched the whole show on youtube and I have to agree that SRK and Saif are the most politically incorrect hosts ever. I think this is their third time hosting, but this year was particularly "bad". Or maybe this is just the first time I followed the Indian tabloids well enough to get most of the subtleties ;) - some of the jabs they were making at films and people were potentially veeeery offensive. If anybody cares they made a few jabs at Hollywood and the Academy Awards too ;) (not that I fully understood them as a lot of them were done in Hindi ;-P)
Friday, February 29, 2008
Random update with some Sweeney Todd gushing
Believe it or not, I am still off-line (which is why I'm not writing on this blog at all) - all thanks to Tele2. The way things are going we're probably going to go back to T.P. S.A.
First they said that it would take 2 weeks at most to connect us up and probably less. Then they said they didn't say that, that it always takes 30 days. As the 30 days came to an end they phoned to say that it would take another 30 days. Under pressure from my mum who was being very aggressive with whoever it was that phoned, they admitted that they had fucked up. The courier who came to our house (4 days later than arranged) with the contract apparently got something wrong and because of that we have to sign a different agreement (one that involves paying 80zl for a modem we're not actually going to get) and wait another 30 days. Nice, huh?
Other than that, I saw Sweeney Todd yesterday and was not disappointed *grin* Of course as usual me and Kinga embarassed ourselves by being the only people in the cinema laughing (only that this time we were joined by Andreja, who was laughing even louder than us).
I don't think the film is as gory as the reviews I read made it out to be. A lot of the Hollywood reviewers wrote that the film would have been treated much better by the award ceremonies if it had less gore, but I really don't get what they wanted cut. Yes, the film is somewhat bloody, but to avoid that you have only two options really:
1) Make the throat cutting scenes more realistic with less blood flying all over the place.
2) Alter the plot of the film to include less throat cutting.
IMO neither of these would have been a good idea for the film.
If you did option one then (as Tim Burton himself put it) you're going to make the film a lot more heavy. You lose the humour and actually make the film a whole lot more shocking. On the other hand maybe the reviewers just didn't get the humour - clearly most of the people in the cinema didn't yesterday ;-P I on the other hand thought some of it was hilarious. How can you not laugh at a man singing an emotional song about how beautiful and lovely his daughter is whilst he's busy cutting the throats of his clients?
Option two would interfere with Sweeney's character - there's a point in the plot where he's supposed go crazy with his need for blood. Include less throat cutting and you don't get that through (which would ruin the culmination point of the film).
Anyway, I still stand by recommending this film ;-P Even if you're not that into gore, as long as you don't mind it I think it's fun to see for the acting alone. The whole cast is great - and I don't just mean the star names, but some of the younger, lesser known members of the cast were awesome too. The great thing about the film is that every character, however small the part, is memorable. My one disapointment is Timothy Spall who IMO is a way better actor than what he showed in this film. I don't think the Beadle should have been played as a villain, not really. This just isn't the sort of film where you need to have "I'm a bad person" spelled out about any of the characters - their actions kind of give it away very early in the film ;-P
First they said that it would take 2 weeks at most to connect us up and probably less. Then they said they didn't say that, that it always takes 30 days. As the 30 days came to an end they phoned to say that it would take another 30 days. Under pressure from my mum who was being very aggressive with whoever it was that phoned, they admitted that they had fucked up. The courier who came to our house (4 days later than arranged) with the contract apparently got something wrong and because of that we have to sign a different agreement (one that involves paying 80zl for a modem we're not actually going to get) and wait another 30 days. Nice, huh?
Other than that, I saw Sweeney Todd yesterday and was not disappointed *grin* Of course as usual me and Kinga embarassed ourselves by being the only people in the cinema laughing (only that this time we were joined by Andreja, who was laughing even louder than us).
I don't think the film is as gory as the reviews I read made it out to be. A lot of the Hollywood reviewers wrote that the film would have been treated much better by the award ceremonies if it had less gore, but I really don't get what they wanted cut. Yes, the film is somewhat bloody, but to avoid that you have only two options really:
1) Make the throat cutting scenes more realistic with less blood flying all over the place.
2) Alter the plot of the film to include less throat cutting.
IMO neither of these would have been a good idea for the film.
If you did option one then (as Tim Burton himself put it) you're going to make the film a lot more heavy. You lose the humour and actually make the film a whole lot more shocking. On the other hand maybe the reviewers just didn't get the humour - clearly most of the people in the cinema didn't yesterday ;-P I on the other hand thought some of it was hilarious. How can you not laugh at a man singing an emotional song about how beautiful and lovely his daughter is whilst he's busy cutting the throats of his clients?
Option two would interfere with Sweeney's character - there's a point in the plot where he's supposed go crazy with his need for blood. Include less throat cutting and you don't get that through (which would ruin the culmination point of the film).
Anyway, I still stand by recommending this film ;-P Even if you're not that into gore, as long as you don't mind it I think it's fun to see for the acting alone. The whole cast is great - and I don't just mean the star names, but some of the younger, lesser known members of the cast were awesome too. The great thing about the film is that every character, however small the part, is memorable. My one disapointment is Timothy Spall who IMO is a way better actor than what he showed in this film. I don't think the Beadle should have been played as a villain, not really. This just isn't the sort of film where you need to have "I'm a bad person" spelled out about any of the characters - their actions kind of give it away very early in the film ;-P
Sunday, February 10, 2008
My Internet Access Woes
Annoyingly enough I've been cut off from the internet (I'm expecting the situation to last for another 2 weeks), which is why I've already broken my New Year resolution of writing here regularly once per week ;-P
I do, however, have lots to write about and surprisingly enough a strong inner need to do so (I litterally *need* to start drafting a whole set of new posts, I will not attain any sort of mental peace until I can do so ;-P).
Tony Curtis and old Hollywood films finally seem to have made room for other fixations. In case you're wondering - I'm still in a fairly intense exam period which means I keep getting very strong and random fixations about things unrelated to what I should be doing ;-P (it's not that I don't have these normally, but they've been quite a bit more pronounced these last few weeks ;-P).
A trip to see The Golden Compass has provoked thoughts on the situation of Hollywood internationally (the thoughts have been there for a while, but they've clarified and strengthened quite a bit!). Less clarified, but I also keep thinking about female villains since seeing the film. Of course with my current lack of proper internet access I cannot research either properly and therefore feel ill equipped to even start drafting those posts :-/
Atonement which I saw today (and enjoyed way more than I was expecting to) doesn't quite want to leave me alone either and I'm confident there's a post in that too ;) I kind of have an inkling of where it might go, but I *need* normal, reliable internet access to "get there" grrrrr
I am also discovering a very freaky similarity of mind with Andreja, my Slovenian friend, who is now in Warsaw. We are yet to find an actor or actress about whom our feelings differ significantly. So far any actor or actress that annoys one of us annoys the other too and any actor or actress that one of us likes the other does too. We talked through something like thirty Hollywood actors and actresses and found no real disagreement! We had slight differences of opinion only when one of us had seen very little of an actor's work whilst the other had seen a more significant amount of films starring them. Atonement I think has highlighted it more than anything so far. It was the first time that I saw James McAvoy, who is Andreja's favourite actor at the moment and for me it was love at first sight lol I really want to see more of him. I'm holding my breath now about Andreja's reaction to Shahrukh ;) - she hasn't seen him yet (which I of course intend to remedy ;-P). I do have friends with whom my taste in actors and actresses is largely compatible, but this is bordering on the ridiculous ;)
I do, however, have lots to write about and surprisingly enough a strong inner need to do so (I litterally *need* to start drafting a whole set of new posts, I will not attain any sort of mental peace until I can do so ;-P).
Tony Curtis and old Hollywood films finally seem to have made room for other fixations. In case you're wondering - I'm still in a fairly intense exam period which means I keep getting very strong and random fixations about things unrelated to what I should be doing ;-P (it's not that I don't have these normally, but they've been quite a bit more pronounced these last few weeks ;-P).
A trip to see The Golden Compass has provoked thoughts on the situation of Hollywood internationally (the thoughts have been there for a while, but they've clarified and strengthened quite a bit!). Less clarified, but I also keep thinking about female villains since seeing the film. Of course with my current lack of proper internet access I cannot research either properly and therefore feel ill equipped to even start drafting those posts :-/
Atonement which I saw today (and enjoyed way more than I was expecting to) doesn't quite want to leave me alone either and I'm confident there's a post in that too ;) I kind of have an inkling of where it might go, but I *need* normal, reliable internet access to "get there" grrrrr
I am also discovering a very freaky similarity of mind with Andreja, my Slovenian friend, who is now in Warsaw. We are yet to find an actor or actress about whom our feelings differ significantly. So far any actor or actress that annoys one of us annoys the other too and any actor or actress that one of us likes the other does too. We talked through something like thirty Hollywood actors and actresses and found no real disagreement! We had slight differences of opinion only when one of us had seen very little of an actor's work whilst the other had seen a more significant amount of films starring them. Atonement I think has highlighted it more than anything so far. It was the first time that I saw James McAvoy, who is Andreja's favourite actor at the moment and for me it was love at first sight lol I really want to see more of him. I'm holding my breath now about Andreja's reaction to Shahrukh ;) - she hasn't seen him yet (which I of course intend to remedy ;-P). I do have friends with whom my taste in actors and actresses is largely compatible, but this is bordering on the ridiculous ;)
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
The Boston Strangler and more of my Tony Curtis fixation
I thought my Tony Curtis phase had finally passed, but apparently not ;)
I watched The Boston Strangler (1968) on Saturday. It's based on the true story of a series of murders that took place in Boston in the 1960s. The film takes a lot of liberties with what happened, but as some of its best moments are at the times when it takes the biggest liberties I'm not particularly upset by that ;-P Curtis plays the title role of the murderer and he's quite extraordinary in it. Apparently, he had to lobby very hard to get the part as neither the director nor the studio thought he'd be any good in it (he was a blue eyed, handsome guy who did mostly conventional leads and a lot of comedy). Of course the studio and director were wrong ;) The part is one of Tony Curtis's most acclaimed performances. He doesn't come in until about an hour into the film, but once he's in he pretty much carries the film. Here's the only clip from the film that I found on-line:
Funnily enough I didn't have much trouble picturing him doing a murderer and rapist well, but what took me totally by surprise was what he does in the closing stages of the film. After the character gets caught, he's locked up in a mental institution and interrogated there. What he does in those scenes is amazing. I don't want to spoil the film for anyone, so I won't say exactly what the diagnosis is (the real Albert Desalvo was never diagnosed with anything of the sort by the way), but it's one of the most amazing portrayals of mental illness I've seen - on the one hand very intense, but on the other there's something very simple and straight about the way he does it. Usually when one thinks of acclaimed actors doing mentally ill characters they do it "big". Think people like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind or even Edward Norton in Primal Fear. I'm not saying Tony Curtis did it "small" exactly, but it definitely was "smaller" and "more human". I loved how you could practically understand all the thought processes and feelings that were happening in the character's head during the interrogations. The way it was edited and the dialogue helped a lot of course, but there was just a beautiful clarity and simplicity in what Tony Curtis was doing.
Since I found Tony Curtis in this movie so gushworthy I'm naturally very excited about the prospect of seeing more of his films ;-P I've apparently got around 120 feature films to choose from (in the old days it was quite normal to do around 3-4 films a year and he's been at it since 1949!), but as that's a little too much even for my current level of interest in him I thought I'd make a shorter list for myself ;-P So here's a list of the Tony Curtis titles that caught my eye (including those I've already seen):
Insignificance (1985)
This sounds like some sort of very bizarre and artsy film that will be very difficult to make any sense of ;) Basically Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Senator Joseph McCarthy and Joe DiMaggio meet together in a hotel room. Tony Curtis plays McCarthy.
The only video clip I've come across is here - it's a montage of 5 films by Nicolas Roeg. Unfortunately no Tony in the clip, but the clips of Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe covered in blood look kind of weird and interesting ;-P
Casanova & Co. (1977)
I still haven't made my mind up over whether I actually want to see this one lol Basically, almost all the reviews I've come across describe it as a soft porn movie ;) Now that in itself doesn't scare me off (on the contrary, the idea of Tony Curtis doing a soft porn film seems so funny to me that I automatically want to see it ;-P - especially that he's supposed to be Casanova AND Casanova's look-a-like in the film), but most people write that the film is terrible and also it's supposed to be dubbed over (badly) in German.
Unfortunately I've found no clips on-line of this weird piece of work ;) Had I found any perhaps I would have made up my mind by now ;-P
The Persuaders (1971-1972)
This is the TV series I've already mentioned. The idea of seeing 24 episodes of Tony Curtis flirting with Roger Moore while both of them are playing cool action heroes is too good to pass on ;) I linked to clips in my previous post, but I'll repeat the links ;-P (here's one and here's another one).
The Boston Strangler (1968)
I've basically said all that needs to be said above, haven't I? :)
The Great Race (1965)
This sounds like a comedy with a totally ridiculous sense of humour. The hero (Tony Curtis as the Great Leslie) is always dressed in white and the villain (Jack Lemmon as Professor Fate) is always in black. It features the biggest pie fight ever staged and many other totally ridiculous scenes (for example this one). In fact the only films that I've ever read about or seen which sound anywhere near as ridiculous are Bollywood ones ;)
Spartacus (1960)
This one I've seen. I guess the main interest factor is that it's a Stanley Kubrick film, though I don't think it's one of his best. What it was meant to be would have probably been much more interesting than what it actually is. Still, it's a classic.
I've already mentioned the film on my blog, but as I concentrated on its gay subtexts I didn't link to the trailer which is sadly not homoerotic in the slightest ;-P
Operation Petticoat (1959)
It's a comedy which also stars Cary Grant. It takes place on a submarine during World War II and basically everything keeps going wrong. For example because they don't have enough paint, they're forced to mix red and white and paint the submarine pink (apparently there really was one pink submarine during the war for those reasons!).
Here's a hilarious pig stealing scene from the film.
Some Like It Hot (1959)
I've seen this one ages ago. I really want to re-watch it and I know I used to have a VHS tape of it, but can't find it anywhere grrrrr...
It's a great comedy which has Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon dressed up as girls and Marilyn Monroe is great and really hilarious in this as well (incidentally, I think it's the only Marilyn Monroe film I've seen, I should change that!). Oh and the closing line is unforgettable ;)
The trailer is here.
The Defiant Ones (1958)
This one I've already mentioned and seen. It's a beautiful film :) Already posted this before, but here's the trailer.
Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
This is supposed to be Tony Curtis' first serious dramatic part. He plays a young guy who is prepared to do some very morally repulsive things to achieve success and money in New York.
I love the look of the two clips I found (clip no.1 and clip no.2) - the atmosphere is thick with jazz, New York and degeneration ;)
Houdini (1953)
In this one Curtis plays Harry Houdini and I think this was his first major success. I'm actually convinced I saw this film on TV when I was very, very little.
Here's the clip I found (it gives me a strong deja vu feeling).
I watched The Boston Strangler (1968) on Saturday. It's based on the true story of a series of murders that took place in Boston in the 1960s. The film takes a lot of liberties with what happened, but as some of its best moments are at the times when it takes the biggest liberties I'm not particularly upset by that ;-P Curtis plays the title role of the murderer and he's quite extraordinary in it. Apparently, he had to lobby very hard to get the part as neither the director nor the studio thought he'd be any good in it (he was a blue eyed, handsome guy who did mostly conventional leads and a lot of comedy). Of course the studio and director were wrong ;) The part is one of Tony Curtis's most acclaimed performances. He doesn't come in until about an hour into the film, but once he's in he pretty much carries the film. Here's the only clip from the film that I found on-line:
Funnily enough I didn't have much trouble picturing him doing a murderer and rapist well, but what took me totally by surprise was what he does in the closing stages of the film. After the character gets caught, he's locked up in a mental institution and interrogated there. What he does in those scenes is amazing. I don't want to spoil the film for anyone, so I won't say exactly what the diagnosis is (the real Albert Desalvo was never diagnosed with anything of the sort by the way), but it's one of the most amazing portrayals of mental illness I've seen - on the one hand very intense, but on the other there's something very simple and straight about the way he does it. Usually when one thinks of acclaimed actors doing mentally ill characters they do it "big". Think people like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind or even Edward Norton in Primal Fear. I'm not saying Tony Curtis did it "small" exactly, but it definitely was "smaller" and "more human". I loved how you could practically understand all the thought processes and feelings that were happening in the character's head during the interrogations. The way it was edited and the dialogue helped a lot of course, but there was just a beautiful clarity and simplicity in what Tony Curtis was doing.
Since I found Tony Curtis in this movie so gushworthy I'm naturally very excited about the prospect of seeing more of his films ;-P I've apparently got around 120 feature films to choose from (in the old days it was quite normal to do around 3-4 films a year and he's been at it since 1949!), but as that's a little too much even for my current level of interest in him I thought I'd make a shorter list for myself ;-P So here's a list of the Tony Curtis titles that caught my eye (including those I've already seen):
Insignificance (1985)
This sounds like some sort of very bizarre and artsy film that will be very difficult to make any sense of ;) Basically Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Senator Joseph McCarthy and Joe DiMaggio meet together in a hotel room. Tony Curtis plays McCarthy.
The only video clip I've come across is here - it's a montage of 5 films by Nicolas Roeg. Unfortunately no Tony in the clip, but the clips of Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe covered in blood look kind of weird and interesting ;-P
Casanova & Co. (1977)
I still haven't made my mind up over whether I actually want to see this one lol Basically, almost all the reviews I've come across describe it as a soft porn movie ;) Now that in itself doesn't scare me off (on the contrary, the idea of Tony Curtis doing a soft porn film seems so funny to me that I automatically want to see it ;-P - especially that he's supposed to be Casanova AND Casanova's look-a-like in the film), but most people write that the film is terrible and also it's supposed to be dubbed over (badly) in German.
Unfortunately I've found no clips on-line of this weird piece of work ;) Had I found any perhaps I would have made up my mind by now ;-P
The Persuaders (1971-1972)
This is the TV series I've already mentioned. The idea of seeing 24 episodes of Tony Curtis flirting with Roger Moore while both of them are playing cool action heroes is too good to pass on ;) I linked to clips in my previous post, but I'll repeat the links ;-P (here's one and here's another one).
The Boston Strangler (1968)
I've basically said all that needs to be said above, haven't I? :)
The Great Race (1965)
This sounds like a comedy with a totally ridiculous sense of humour. The hero (Tony Curtis as the Great Leslie) is always dressed in white and the villain (Jack Lemmon as Professor Fate) is always in black. It features the biggest pie fight ever staged and many other totally ridiculous scenes (for example this one). In fact the only films that I've ever read about or seen which sound anywhere near as ridiculous are Bollywood ones ;)
Spartacus (1960)
This one I've seen. I guess the main interest factor is that it's a Stanley Kubrick film, though I don't think it's one of his best. What it was meant to be would have probably been much more interesting than what it actually is. Still, it's a classic.
I've already mentioned the film on my blog, but as I concentrated on its gay subtexts I didn't link to the trailer which is sadly not homoerotic in the slightest ;-P
Operation Petticoat (1959)
It's a comedy which also stars Cary Grant. It takes place on a submarine during World War II and basically everything keeps going wrong. For example because they don't have enough paint, they're forced to mix red and white and paint the submarine pink (apparently there really was one pink submarine during the war for those reasons!).
Here's a hilarious pig stealing scene from the film.
Some Like It Hot (1959)
I've seen this one ages ago. I really want to re-watch it and I know I used to have a VHS tape of it, but can't find it anywhere grrrrr...
It's a great comedy which has Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon dressed up as girls and Marilyn Monroe is great and really hilarious in this as well (incidentally, I think it's the only Marilyn Monroe film I've seen, I should change that!). Oh and the closing line is unforgettable ;)
The trailer is here.
The Defiant Ones (1958)
This one I've already mentioned and seen. It's a beautiful film :) Already posted this before, but here's the trailer.
Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
This is supposed to be Tony Curtis' first serious dramatic part. He plays a young guy who is prepared to do some very morally repulsive things to achieve success and money in New York.
I love the look of the two clips I found (clip no.1 and clip no.2) - the atmosphere is thick with jazz, New York and degeneration ;)
Houdini (1953)
In this one Curtis plays Harry Houdini and I think this was his first major success. I'm actually convinced I saw this film on TV when I was very, very little.
Here's the clip I found (it gives me a strong deja vu feeling).
Monday, January 28, 2008
Katyń nominated for the Academy Awards
I was very stunned when this happened around 2 weeks ago. Katyń had been shortlisted for the nomination, whilst 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days and Persepolis (both of which had had far more attention internationally) were not.
But now that the nominations for best foreign picture have been announced, it's quite obvious what the Academy is doing - politics and war seem to be the main themes they were looking for. Check out the nomination list:
Beaufort (Israel)
A war film which takes place in 2000 as the Israeli army is withdrawing from Lebanon.
The Counterfeiters (Austria)
It takes place in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, based on a true story.
Katyń (Poland)
An account of the events surrounding the 1940 massacre of captured Polish army officers.
Mongol (Kazakhstan)
It's the story of Genghis Khan. It doesn't sound political, but I'm wondering if there might be some themes like that in there. It's certainly a little weird that a famous Russian director had to go to Kazakhstan to get his movie financed. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the fact that Genghis Khan also conquered a lot of Russia...
12 (Russia)
Twelve Russian jurors decide the fate of a young Chechen accused of murdering his adoptive Russian father.
In the company of 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days or Persepolis, I'd say Katyń wouldn't have any chance of winning whatsoever. But in this company I think it has a very large one. Nor am I alone in this feeling - apparently that's how the bookies have it as well.
There's also an interesting article in the Economist weighing Katyń's chances. The main argument they have against it is that it's done from a very Polish point of view and some things in the film might not be clear to foreigners. On the other hand they also write:
Astonishingly, some in Russia are now reviving the lie that the murderers at Katyn were not by the NKVD, but the Nazis. That was maintained during the communist era, but only by punishing savagely those who tried to tell the truth. Last year, as Mr Wajda's film opened in Poland, a commentary in a Russian government newspaper, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, dismissed the evidence of Soviet involvement in Katyn as “unreliable”. An Oscar would be a good answer to that.
But now that the nominations for best foreign picture have been announced, it's quite obvious what the Academy is doing - politics and war seem to be the main themes they were looking for. Check out the nomination list:
Beaufort (Israel)
A war film which takes place in 2000 as the Israeli army is withdrawing from Lebanon.
The Counterfeiters (Austria)
It takes place in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, based on a true story.
Katyń (Poland)
An account of the events surrounding the 1940 massacre of captured Polish army officers.
Mongol (Kazakhstan)
It's the story of Genghis Khan. It doesn't sound political, but I'm wondering if there might be some themes like that in there. It's certainly a little weird that a famous Russian director had to go to Kazakhstan to get his movie financed. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the fact that Genghis Khan also conquered a lot of Russia...
12 (Russia)
Twelve Russian jurors decide the fate of a young Chechen accused of murdering his adoptive Russian father.
In the company of 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days or Persepolis, I'd say Katyń wouldn't have any chance of winning whatsoever. But in this company I think it has a very large one. Nor am I alone in this feeling - apparently that's how the bookies have it as well.
There's also an interesting article in the Economist weighing Katyń's chances. The main argument they have against it is that it's done from a very Polish point of view and some things in the film might not be clear to foreigners. On the other hand they also write:
Astonishingly, some in Russia are now reviving the lie that the murderers at Katyn were not by the NKVD, but the Nazis. That was maintained during the communist era, but only by punishing savagely those who tried to tell the truth. Last year, as Mr Wajda's film opened in Poland, a commentary in a Russian government newspaper, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, dismissed the evidence of Soviet involvement in Katyn as “unreliable”. An Oscar would be a good answer to that.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Another Hollywood star is dead
This time the news is more high profile... Heath Ledger (who is probably best known as the star of Brokeback Mountain) died yesterday, aged 28.
The circumstances of his death are similar to that of Renfro's and the exact cause remains unknown (am I the only one finding the similarities spooky?).
Due to Ledger's involvement in Brokeback Mountain, The Westboro Baptist Church has announced they will picket his funeral.
The circumstances of his death are similar to that of Renfro's and the exact cause remains unknown (am I the only one finding the similarities spooky?).
Due to Ledger's involvement in Brokeback Mountain, The Westboro Baptist Church has announced they will picket his funeral.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Tony Curtis is very absorbing ;)
My Tony Curtis obsession has subsided a little bit, but as no bisexual 60s Hollywood star has taken his place yet, my internet searches still seem to be revolving around him ;-P
So firstly, here's a really nice interview with him in which he talks a lot about gender and sexuality in context of his film career.
I also found a great audio interview (part one and part two) - he's clearly a really good talker.
Thanks to Mr Curtis I have also discovered what I think are the two gayest action heroes ever lol In 1971 he starred alongside Roger Moore in a series called The Persuaders. I've looked around youtube for some clips and as far as I can make out the concept is that the two of them keep flirting with each other all the time ;) See for yourself - here and here. It's really cute ;)
Finally, I've been digging amongst my old video tapes, trying to find something with Tony Curtis and I've re-discovered The Defiant Ones. I'd totally forgotten the film (I'm not sure how I managed to do that as I remember really loving it when I first watched it and it's gotten the same reaction from me this time round too).
It's a film from 1958, but it's aged really well. It's the story of a black man (played beautifully by Sidney Poitier) and a white man on the run from the law. The catch is that they're chained to each other. It was the first Hollywood film that addressed racism so directly (and IMO in much less moralistic tones than what Hollywood does today). The film is much better than the trailer IMO ;-P but you can see the trailer here.
So firstly, here's a really nice interview with him in which he talks a lot about gender and sexuality in context of his film career.
I also found a great audio interview (part one and part two) - he's clearly a really good talker.
Thanks to Mr Curtis I have also discovered what I think are the two gayest action heroes ever lol In 1971 he starred alongside Roger Moore in a series called The Persuaders. I've looked around youtube for some clips and as far as I can make out the concept is that the two of them keep flirting with each other all the time ;) See for yourself - here and here. It's really cute ;)
Finally, I've been digging amongst my old video tapes, trying to find something with Tony Curtis and I've re-discovered The Defiant Ones. I'd totally forgotten the film (I'm not sure how I managed to do that as I remember really loving it when I first watched it and it's gotten the same reaction from me this time round too).
It's a film from 1958, but it's aged really well. It's the story of a black man (played beautifully by Sidney Poitier) and a white man on the run from the law. The catch is that they're chained to each other. It was the first Hollywood film that addressed racism so directly (and IMO in much less moralistic tones than what Hollywood does today). The film is much better than the trailer IMO ;-P but you can see the trailer here.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Brad Renfro dead
He died yesterday, aged 25. I'm a bit stunned...
If you're not sure who I'm talking about then see his imdb page.
If you're not sure who I'm talking about then see his imdb page.
Monday, January 14, 2008
My sudden Hollywood obsession and the quest to find a star that isn't gay ;)
Why is it that whenever one has a lot of schoolwork to do, one always has an irresistible urge to do something else? (or at least that's what happens to me ;-P) I've got something like 4 tests and 2 projects over the next week, but am I studying? Of course not ;-P What am I doing? I'm getting unhealthily obsessed with Hollywood stars from the 50s and 60s. And lets get this straight (pun unintended ;-P) - I've never been a particular fan of old Hollywood movies before! I have sometimes enjoyed older films, but a lot of the time I've watched them because I feel I ought to build on my film history awareness rather than because I really want to see an older film. So why have I suddenly become obsessed with this particular topic? Your guess is as good as mine ;-P
Well ok... I do sort of know how it started - it's because of this blog ;-P I found a very interesting article about Method Acting and I'm drafting a post on it (which of course, as always, is turning out to be extremely long). I started looking for Laurence Olivier quotes on The Method because I knew he had spoken against it and... er... that wasn't a good idea ;)
What followed was that I became totally obsessed with Laurence Olivier for 2-3 days (that has subsided somewhat, I have now turned to Tony Curtis instead and I'm wondering who will be next ;-P).
Worse still, I somehow came across this:
And well... it fascinated me... It had never occurred to me that Stanley Kubrick tried to broach the topic of homosexuality in Spartacus. The reference is so slight that if you're not looking for the subtext you might not notice it - and yet this was enough for the censors to cut it.
It was interesting also that two big stars - Laurence Olivier and Tony Curtis would have wanted to risk such subtext.
The Spartacus scene somehow led me on to other discoveries... In particular I started finding all sorts of rumours that Laurence Olivier might have been bisexual. As that sort of gossip has always amused me I followed it through. At first it seemed like gossip with little foundation, but what started making it much more fishy was the way Joan Plowright (Olivier's third wife) was being quoted and in particular that she had authorized a biography which claimed Olivier had had encounters with men. I finally came across this article which seemed to cover all the incidents that I found mentioned elsewhere. It is from the Daily Mail, so that's hardly a reliable source, but there was one bit in particular that caught my eye:
After Lord Olivier's death on July 11, 1989, aged 82, from neuromuscular disease and cancer, and his interment in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, his official biographer, Terry Coleman, asked Plowright if he had had homosexual affairs. She replied robustly: "If he did, so what?"
Tarquin Olivier, Larry's elder son, 'was hell-bent on censoring' the homosexual revelations in Coleman's book and attempted to pressure Plowright into withdrawing her permission. She refused, privately remarking that "a man who had been to Eton and in the Guards might be expected to be a little more broad-minded".
The article led me on further... For one it mentioned an encounter between Olivier and Marlon Brando. I'm not sure I believe that one, but apparently there are other sources which suggest Brando may have been bisexual.
The article also mentioned an incident in which John Gielgud was caught in a public toilet trying to pick up a guy (he was arrested for it).
Finding it amusing that so many stars of the era seemed to be gay or bisexual I thought I'd try to look for somebody who was straight ;) So I searched for stuff on Charles Laughton - like Olivier and Gielgud he was also a very acclaimed British theatrical actor who'd done a bit of Hollywood. I thought it likely that he wasn't much of a sexual experimentator - I knew he had been married to just one woman his whole life (unlike most of the stars of that time). Well, I was wrong *grin* Laughton's wife, Elsa Lanchaster, had outed her husband as gay in her autobiography and apparently that was the reason for them never having children.
Feeling rather gigglish by this point I went to my dad (who had after all watched Hollywood in those times) and told him about my discoveries. He had also heard about Laughton and Gielgud, though Olivier and Brando surprised him. Having shown him the Spartacus scene, I joked I should check whether Tony Curtis was straight. My dad said he was pretty sure Curtis was straight (and I rather thought so too), but I ended up checking it up anyway just for a laugh. At first it seemed I had finally found somebody who *was* straight though probably promiscuous (6 wives! and his present one is 42 years younger than him!), but lo and behold, I found an interview with him in a gay magazine ;) Here's what he says in it:
Speaking of men and men … well, first, how old were you when you got to Hollywood?
I was 22. That was 1948.
And as beautiful as you were … I mean, you are still good-looking…
Thank you.
But as beautiful as you were, I’m assuming that you…
I had more action than Mount Vesuvius.
So, both men and women put the make on you.
Men, women, children. Animals!
I can’t wait for the headlines–"TONY CURTIS INTO BESTIALITY."
[Laughs] I loved it, too. I loved the affection of everybody around me. I participated where I wanted to, and I didn’t where I didn’t. It wasn’t like I said, "Well, I won’t do this or I won’t do that." I just had a chance to have great wonderful friends of all ethnic backgrounds, all sexual genders, and that’s the joy of being an American, that’s the joy of being alive, where all of your friends can be who-ever they want to be.
I'm not sure how serious he was about the children and animals ;) He clearly has a rather crass sense of humour, but especially in context of what he says after that he seemed fairly serious about the men ;) So yet again my quest to find a straight star had failed ;)
Am I the only person who ends up doing such moronic things rather than study? ;)
Well ok... I do sort of know how it started - it's because of this blog ;-P I found a very interesting article about Method Acting and I'm drafting a post on it (which of course, as always, is turning out to be extremely long). I started looking for Laurence Olivier quotes on The Method because I knew he had spoken against it and... er... that wasn't a good idea ;)
What followed was that I became totally obsessed with Laurence Olivier for 2-3 days (that has subsided somewhat, I have now turned to Tony Curtis instead and I'm wondering who will be next ;-P).
Worse still, I somehow came across this:
And well... it fascinated me... It had never occurred to me that Stanley Kubrick tried to broach the topic of homosexuality in Spartacus. The reference is so slight that if you're not looking for the subtext you might not notice it - and yet this was enough for the censors to cut it.
It was interesting also that two big stars - Laurence Olivier and Tony Curtis would have wanted to risk such subtext.
The Spartacus scene somehow led me on to other discoveries... In particular I started finding all sorts of rumours that Laurence Olivier might have been bisexual. As that sort of gossip has always amused me I followed it through. At first it seemed like gossip with little foundation, but what started making it much more fishy was the way Joan Plowright (Olivier's third wife) was being quoted and in particular that she had authorized a biography which claimed Olivier had had encounters with men. I finally came across this article which seemed to cover all the incidents that I found mentioned elsewhere. It is from the Daily Mail, so that's hardly a reliable source, but there was one bit in particular that caught my eye:
After Lord Olivier's death on July 11, 1989, aged 82, from neuromuscular disease and cancer, and his interment in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, his official biographer, Terry Coleman, asked Plowright if he had had homosexual affairs. She replied robustly: "If he did, so what?"
Tarquin Olivier, Larry's elder son, 'was hell-bent on censoring' the homosexual revelations in Coleman's book and attempted to pressure Plowright into withdrawing her permission. She refused, privately remarking that "a man who had been to Eton and in the Guards might be expected to be a little more broad-minded".
The article led me on further... For one it mentioned an encounter between Olivier and Marlon Brando. I'm not sure I believe that one, but apparently there are other sources which suggest Brando may have been bisexual.
The article also mentioned an incident in which John Gielgud was caught in a public toilet trying to pick up a guy (he was arrested for it).
Finding it amusing that so many stars of the era seemed to be gay or bisexual I thought I'd try to look for somebody who was straight ;) So I searched for stuff on Charles Laughton - like Olivier and Gielgud he was also a very acclaimed British theatrical actor who'd done a bit of Hollywood. I thought it likely that he wasn't much of a sexual experimentator - I knew he had been married to just one woman his whole life (unlike most of the stars of that time). Well, I was wrong *grin* Laughton's wife, Elsa Lanchaster, had outed her husband as gay in her autobiography and apparently that was the reason for them never having children.
Feeling rather gigglish by this point I went to my dad (who had after all watched Hollywood in those times) and told him about my discoveries. He had also heard about Laughton and Gielgud, though Olivier and Brando surprised him. Having shown him the Spartacus scene, I joked I should check whether Tony Curtis was straight. My dad said he was pretty sure Curtis was straight (and I rather thought so too), but I ended up checking it up anyway just for a laugh. At first it seemed I had finally found somebody who *was* straight though probably promiscuous (6 wives! and his present one is 42 years younger than him!), but lo and behold, I found an interview with him in a gay magazine ;) Here's what he says in it:
Speaking of men and men … well, first, how old were you when you got to Hollywood?
I was 22. That was 1948.
And as beautiful as you were … I mean, you are still good-looking…
Thank you.
But as beautiful as you were, I’m assuming that you…
I had more action than Mount Vesuvius.
So, both men and women put the make on you.
Men, women, children. Animals!
I can’t wait for the headlines–"TONY CURTIS INTO BESTIALITY."
[Laughs] I loved it, too. I loved the affection of everybody around me. I participated where I wanted to, and I didn’t where I didn’t. It wasn’t like I said, "Well, I won’t do this or I won’t do that." I just had a chance to have great wonderful friends of all ethnic backgrounds, all sexual genders, and that’s the joy of being an American, that’s the joy of being alive, where all of your friends can be who-ever they want to be.
I'm not sure how serious he was about the children and animals ;) He clearly has a rather crass sense of humour, but especially in context of what he says after that he seemed fairly serious about the men ;) So yet again my quest to find a straight star had failed ;)
Am I the only person who ends up doing such moronic things rather than study? ;)
Friday, January 11, 2008
2007 MEETS 2008 | PART 3: Bollywood 2007
So much for dividing things into parts so as to avoid writing long posts ;-P
I've compiled my lists mainly on the basis of this article. Another interesting article to look at is this one in which they asked a few Indian directors what they thought were the best films of the year.
The release dates given are the Indian ones. The only film amongst these that was released in Poland is The Namesake (and it's one of very few films listed in this post that I've seen).
MOST SUCCESSFUL STARS OF 2007
The two biggest hits of 2007 (Om Shanti Om and Chak De! India) were both delivered by Shah Rukh Khan. Om Shanti Om has now broken all records and become the highest grossing Indian film ever (Shahrukh was also the producer of the film). Chak De! India on the other hand is the first time Shahrukh has been commercially successful in a subdued and restrained role.
However, it is Akshay Kumar who delivered the most hit films this year (Namastey London, Heyy Babyy, Bhool Bhulaiya and Welcome). While it's difficult to determine how much Bollywood stars earn for a film, the Indian media likes to publish who was the highest tax payer in Bollywood in a given year and in 2007 it was Akshay Kumar. It's reported that he had to pay the equivalent of about $6.5mln in taxes and the gossip is that his asking price for a film is now over $5mln, perhaps the highest in Bollywood. Surprisingly enough, Akshay is still not seen as a threat to Shahrukh's dominance in Bollywood.
THE BIGGEST BOX OFFICE SPINNERS OF 2007
So this is the list of the biggest commercial successes of 2007. I tried to keep it shorter than this, but as you see it didn't work out ;-P
Guru
Release Date: 12 January 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQRZHHY2oJM
Director: Mani Ratnam
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Vidya Balan, Mallika Sherawat, Madhavan, Mithun Chakraborty
The story of a villager who rises to become one of the leading businessmen in the country. Not only was it a huge commercial success, but received great reviews from Indian critics (even the more artsy ones).
Namastey London
Release Date: 23 March 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYjLLmuEiqA
Director: Vipul Amrutlal Shah
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif
A guy from Punjab marries a girl from London and for some reason the film's promotion featured a very bizarre song where the guy is dressed as Father Christmas...
Chak De! India
Release Date: 10 August 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvSpW2ZaYxU
Director: Shimit Amin
Cast: Shahrukh Khan
One of the strangest hits of the year... The story of a female field hockey team coached by a guy who has been discriminated against because he's Muslim. There are no song and dance numbers in the film (though some were recorded for promotional purposes).
Chak De! India was the only 2007 film made under the Yash Chopra banner (the biggest production house in Bollywood) that was a hit. The other (more formulaic) films they released underperformed in the box office.
Heyy Babyy
Release Date: 24 August 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AF-IQAMmnI
Director: Sajid Khan
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Vidya Balan, Fardeen Khan, Ritesh Deshmukh, Boman Irani, Anupam Kher, Amrita Arora, Malaika Arora
A couple of guys have to take care of a baby.
Bhool Bhulaiya
Release Date: 12 October 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPRK-ZGDhnk
Director: Priyadarshan
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Vidya Balan, Shiney Ahuja, Amisha Patel
Er... well there's definitely a ghost in the story...
Jab We Met
Release Date: 26 October 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSlkJfCozwA
Director: Imtiaz Ali
Cast: Shahid Kapur, Kareena Kapoor
Its success was a surprise. It seems to be one of those films that gets a large audience thanks to word of mouth. Basically, it's a romance, but it's said to put the DDLJ formula totally upside down.
Om Shanti Om
Release Date: 9 November 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_ostdGo6vc
Director: Farah Khan
Cast: Shahrukh Khan, Arjun Rampal, Kiron Kher, Deepika Padukone
This is a totally unapologetic masala movie, which involves reincarnation and makes fun of 70s and contemporary Bollywood.
Taare Zameen Par
Release Date: 21 December 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQwtyc82AX8
Director: Aamir Khan
Cast: Aamir Khan
About a little boy, who is very unhappy at school and then one day a new art teacher comes along... It's getting great reviews and is said to look at children in a very interesting way. Apparently, there is only one song and dance number in the film.
Welcome
Release Date: 21 December 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gz2orY0IK8
Director: Anees Bazmee
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Mallika Sherawat, Anil Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Malaika Arora
Romance in the mafia with lots of comedy.
2007 INDIE FILMS OF NOTE
One of the oddest things I've discovered about the way the film industry works in India is that to watch an art house film you have to go to a multiplex ;) The big, single hall cinemas tend to go for the most commercial stuff.
So this is a list of the films released in 2007 that ran in Indian multiplexes. There were loads of films like this, these are just the ones that caught my attention (and this is therefore probably the most subjective list in this post). Four out of the seven films on my list faced problems in India because of controversial subject matters.
Parzania
Release Date: 26 January 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epy4hqEI4Ng
Director: Rahul Dholakia
Cast: Naseeruddin Shah
Based on a true story of a Parsi boy, who went missing during the 2002 communal violence in Gujarat. The threats made by Hindu extremists in Gujarat resulted in theatre owners refusing to screen the film. When a man filed a complaint against this he was kidnapped.
Black Friday
Release Date: 9 February 2007
Trailer: http://www.indiaglitz.com/channels/hindi/trailer/7410.html
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Cast: Kay Kay Menon
The film deals with the 1993 Bombay blasts. Its release was delayed by over 2 years because the Indian court ruled that it could not be released before the verdict on the Bombay blasts case was passed.
Water
Release Date: 9 March 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RewNn2r2P3g
Director: Deepa Mehta
Cast: John Abraham, Lisa Ray
The film was actually made with Canadian money, so it's not even close to being Bollywood, but I'm including it on this list anyway ;-P
It's the story of a little girl, who is married off to a much older man (child marriages still happen in India). When she's 8 her husband dies and she has to go through all the customs of being a widow. Deepa Mehta intended to make this film in 2000. They started shooting in India, but Hindu extremists destroyed the sets and production was halted. She finally shot the film 4 years later in Sri Lanka.
The Namesake
Indian Release Date: 23 March 2007
Polish Release Date: 19 October 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sOaA-4Y8tI
Director: Mira Nair
Cast: Irfan Khan, Tabu, Kal Penn
This definitely should not be classified as Bollywood as it's really a US produced film, but it was an important film for Indian audiences this year, so... Basically, it's a serious exploration of emigration and national identity.
Gandhi My Father
Release Date: 3 August 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3yZDHwRRb4
Director: Feroze Khan
Cast: Akshaye Khanna
This is a film that shows Gandhi as a grey figure rather than the white figure he is usually portrayed as. It is based on a play which explores Gandhi's troubled relationship with his eldest son, Harilal. Many of Harilal's decisions (like his marriage and dream of becoming a barrister) were opposed by his father. Harilal was eventually disowned and died an alcoholic.
Naturally, the release of the film in India faced protests.
The Blue Umbrella
Release Date: 10 August 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ-w495xNIU
Director: Vishal Bharadwaj
Cast: Pankaj Kapur, Shriya
It's set in a small village. A little girl gets a beautiful blue umbrella and this creates all sorts of discord.
No Smoking
Release Date: 26 October 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53D_Qs1C6k4
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Cast: John Abraham
It's a little bit as if Anurag Kashyap decided he wanted to mix the Bollywood formula with a David Lynch style film and at the same time play around with the controversial ban of smoking in Indian films (Indian films can now show actors smoking only if the film very obviously states that smoking is wrong). It's the story of a character called K, who is trying to stop smoking and seeks help from people who turn out to be completely insane.
OTHER BIG RELEASES OF 2007
So this is a list of big films that flopped or didn't do as well as anticipated (at least not well enough to put them alongside the biggest hits of 2007).
I decided to have a list like this because many of the films on it sound just as interesting to me as the films I've already listed :) Also 2007 was a year of surprises in terms of what did and didn't do well. A lot of very hyped films performed worse than expected.
Salaam-e-Ishq
Release Date: 25 January 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQYOIalqP-I
Director: Nikhil Advani
Cast: John Abraham, Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Anil Kapoor, Juhi Chawla, Akshaye Khanna, Vidya Balan, Govinda, Isha Koppikar, Ayesha Takia
From what I understand it's lots of love stories with a really huge cast of stars and the director of Kal Ho Naa Ho. Nobody really knows why it flopped, but it did...
Eklavya
Release Date: 16 February 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFEc48n5oRE
Director: Vidhu Vinod Chopra
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Saif Ali Khan, Sanjay Dutt, Vidya Balan, Jackie Shroff, Boman Irani
It's about a majestic fort in contemporary India. The royal family living in it are modern people, but the guard lives as if nothing has changed.
The only thing that was praised in this film was Amitabh Bachchan's performance as the guard. Otherwise the film was panned by both critics and audiences.
This is India's official Academy Award candidate albeit a very controversial one. Personally, I don't understand why they didn't go with Chak De! India - the Academy have already honoured its script, so surely that's a fairly straightforward indication of their tastes?
Nishabd
Release Date: 2 March 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_6VccYqC4g
Director: Ram Gopal Varma
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Jiah Khan
This is a love story between an 18 year old and a 60 year old.
Some say Indian audiences aren't mature enough to deal with such topics and some say it just wasn't a good enough film to pull in the crowds.
Tara Rum Pum
Release Date: 27 April 200
Trailer: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9081324916291040803
Director: Siddharth Anand
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Rani Mukherji
A guy becomes the best formula one racer in the world - he has a loving family, lots of money and success. Then one day he has a serious accident and things go downhill from there.
It's the first Indian film to use animation for part of a song & dance sequence.
The poor performance of the film has been blamed on mainstream Indian audiences not being able to deal with the scenes in the New York slums. Whether that's true or not, its flop was unexpected. It had very big stars and was produced under the Yash Chopra banner (the leading production house in Bollywood).
Cheeni Kum
Release Date: 25 May 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqBjoZD58Ls
Director: R. Balki
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Tabu
This is a romance between a 34 year old and 64 year old with lots of cooking in the background.
It did better than expected, but not well enough to make the hits list.
Jhoom Barabar Jhoom
Release Date: 15 June 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VqEom35TFQ
Director: Shaad Ali
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Preity Zinta, Bobby Deol, Lara Dutta
A guy and a girl fall in love, but they're both engaged to other people.
Yet another film made under the Yash Chopra banner that didn't do as well as expected.
RGV Ki Aag
Release Date: 31 August 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z32UIP2LsX0
Director: Ram Gopal Varma
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgan, Abhishek Bachchan, Urmila Matondkar, Mohanlal
This film is on this list not to try to encourage anybody to watch it (the trailer speaks for itself, right?), but because it's made history. It's the biggest flop ever in Indian cinema. It ran for only a week (and to empty cinemas)!
Even more ironically, it's a remake of Sholay (1975) - one of the biggest hits ever (it ran in Indian cinemas for 5 years!).
Laaga Chunari Mein Daag
Release Date: 12 October 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLddw_8hHIg
Director: Pradeep Sarkar
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Rani Mukherji, Jaya Bachchan, Konkona Sen Sharma, Anupam Kher, Hema Malini
A girl from a small village ends up earning money by prostitution.
Another film made under the Yash Chopra banner that flopped despite big expectations for it. Some try to explain it away with the topic matter (who wants to see a nice, family girl get into the flesh trade?).
Saawariya
Release Date: 9 November 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLt4C8dZr5U
Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Salman Khan, Rani Mukherji, Zohra Segal
It's the first Hollywood-Bollywood co-production ever and although Sony Entertainment say they're happy because they did earn money on it, it performed much worse than expected (the expectations were very high and the press have called it the year's biggest flop barring RGV Ki Aag).
Pretty much everybody who's seen it says it's one of the most aesthetic films ever made, but that it has almost no plot and has an agonisingly slow pace (and for a Bollywood film it's actually quite short - just 142min.).
Aaja Nachle
Release Date: 30 November 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBGG9e0NCeA
Director: Anil Mehta
Cast: Madhuri Dixit, Irfan Khan, Akshaye Khanna, Konkona Sen Sharma
A New York dance instructor goes back to her home village in India to save the local theatre from being demolished.
Yet another 2007 Yash Chopra production that didn't do well.
It's Madhuri Dixit's comeback film. From what's been said Madhuri is great in it, but the story sucks. Some of the press have suggested that Bollywood just doesn't know how to write a story with a 40 year old female lead.
One thing the promos of the film have sold me on is Madhuri's dancing. I never really understood why she's considered the best ever dancer in Bollywood. But of course with the exception of Devdas I've only seen her in the films she made in the 90s with rather boring choreography and cinematography. In Devdas she did seem more impressive to me, but she was wearing costumes that weighed over 10kg, so one could hardly expect her to show her skills to the fullest extent. Fortunately, modern choreo and cinematography has finally opened my eyes ;) Check this out.
THE BIGGEST TABLOID EVENTS
Bollywood would not be Bollywood without the tabloids ;) Naturally there was lots of amusing (and usually totally stupid and untrue) gossip in 2007, but there were two events that seemed to get written about for weeks.
By far the biggest one was the wedding of Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai. The press naturally managed to find a huge amount of angles on this, but one of the most amusing ones was that the Bachchan family made Aishwarya marry a tree for astrological reasons before she could marry Abhishek. This caused outrage amongst Indian feminists totally unnecessarily as Amitabh Bachchan later rubbished the reports.
The other much talked about event was the split up of Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor. Most people were expecting them to tie the knot soon (they'd been going steady for 3 years or something like that). The timing of it was also very strange as it came right before the release of Jab We Met (with everyone expecting it to effect the film negatively, but on the contrary - the film has done much better than expected). Soon after the split up Saif Ali Khan confirmed that he is now dating Kareena.
I've compiled my lists mainly on the basis of this article. Another interesting article to look at is this one in which they asked a few Indian directors what they thought were the best films of the year.
The release dates given are the Indian ones. The only film amongst these that was released in Poland is The Namesake (and it's one of very few films listed in this post that I've seen).
MOST SUCCESSFUL STARS OF 2007
The two biggest hits of 2007 (Om Shanti Om and Chak De! India) were both delivered by Shah Rukh Khan. Om Shanti Om has now broken all records and become the highest grossing Indian film ever (Shahrukh was also the producer of the film). Chak De! India on the other hand is the first time Shahrukh has been commercially successful in a subdued and restrained role.
However, it is Akshay Kumar who delivered the most hit films this year (Namastey London, Heyy Babyy, Bhool Bhulaiya and Welcome). While it's difficult to determine how much Bollywood stars earn for a film, the Indian media likes to publish who was the highest tax payer in Bollywood in a given year and in 2007 it was Akshay Kumar. It's reported that he had to pay the equivalent of about $6.5mln in taxes and the gossip is that his asking price for a film is now over $5mln, perhaps the highest in Bollywood. Surprisingly enough, Akshay is still not seen as a threat to Shahrukh's dominance in Bollywood.
THE BIGGEST BOX OFFICE SPINNERS OF 2007
So this is the list of the biggest commercial successes of 2007. I tried to keep it shorter than this, but as you see it didn't work out ;-P
Guru
Release Date: 12 January 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQRZHHY2oJM
Director: Mani Ratnam
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Vidya Balan, Mallika Sherawat, Madhavan, Mithun Chakraborty
The story of a villager who rises to become one of the leading businessmen in the country. Not only was it a huge commercial success, but received great reviews from Indian critics (even the more artsy ones).
Namastey London
Release Date: 23 March 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYjLLmuEiqA
Director: Vipul Amrutlal Shah
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif
A guy from Punjab marries a girl from London and for some reason the film's promotion featured a very bizarre song where the guy is dressed as Father Christmas...
Chak De! India
Release Date: 10 August 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvSpW2ZaYxU
Director: Shimit Amin
Cast: Shahrukh Khan
One of the strangest hits of the year... The story of a female field hockey team coached by a guy who has been discriminated against because he's Muslim. There are no song and dance numbers in the film (though some were recorded for promotional purposes).
Chak De! India was the only 2007 film made under the Yash Chopra banner (the biggest production house in Bollywood) that was a hit. The other (more formulaic) films they released underperformed in the box office.
Heyy Babyy
Release Date: 24 August 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AF-IQAMmnI
Director: Sajid Khan
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Vidya Balan, Fardeen Khan, Ritesh Deshmukh, Boman Irani, Anupam Kher, Amrita Arora, Malaika Arora
A couple of guys have to take care of a baby.
Bhool Bhulaiya
Release Date: 12 October 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPRK-ZGDhnk
Director: Priyadarshan
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Vidya Balan, Shiney Ahuja, Amisha Patel
Er... well there's definitely a ghost in the story...
Jab We Met
Release Date: 26 October 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSlkJfCozwA
Director: Imtiaz Ali
Cast: Shahid Kapur, Kareena Kapoor
Its success was a surprise. It seems to be one of those films that gets a large audience thanks to word of mouth. Basically, it's a romance, but it's said to put the DDLJ formula totally upside down.
Om Shanti Om
Release Date: 9 November 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_ostdGo6vc
Director: Farah Khan
Cast: Shahrukh Khan, Arjun Rampal, Kiron Kher, Deepika Padukone
This is a totally unapologetic masala movie, which involves reincarnation and makes fun of 70s and contemporary Bollywood.
Taare Zameen Par
Release Date: 21 December 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQwtyc82AX8
Director: Aamir Khan
Cast: Aamir Khan
About a little boy, who is very unhappy at school and then one day a new art teacher comes along... It's getting great reviews and is said to look at children in a very interesting way. Apparently, there is only one song and dance number in the film.
Welcome
Release Date: 21 December 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gz2orY0IK8
Director: Anees Bazmee
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Mallika Sherawat, Anil Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Malaika Arora
Romance in the mafia with lots of comedy.
2007 INDIE FILMS OF NOTE
One of the oddest things I've discovered about the way the film industry works in India is that to watch an art house film you have to go to a multiplex ;) The big, single hall cinemas tend to go for the most commercial stuff.
So this is a list of the films released in 2007 that ran in Indian multiplexes. There were loads of films like this, these are just the ones that caught my attention (and this is therefore probably the most subjective list in this post). Four out of the seven films on my list faced problems in India because of controversial subject matters.
Parzania
Release Date: 26 January 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epy4hqEI4Ng
Director: Rahul Dholakia
Cast: Naseeruddin Shah
Based on a true story of a Parsi boy, who went missing during the 2002 communal violence in Gujarat. The threats made by Hindu extremists in Gujarat resulted in theatre owners refusing to screen the film. When a man filed a complaint against this he was kidnapped.
Black Friday
Release Date: 9 February 2007
Trailer: http://www.indiaglitz.com/channels/hindi/trailer/7410.html
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Cast: Kay Kay Menon
The film deals with the 1993 Bombay blasts. Its release was delayed by over 2 years because the Indian court ruled that it could not be released before the verdict on the Bombay blasts case was passed.
Water
Release Date: 9 March 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RewNn2r2P3g
Director: Deepa Mehta
Cast: John Abraham, Lisa Ray
The film was actually made with Canadian money, so it's not even close to being Bollywood, but I'm including it on this list anyway ;-P
It's the story of a little girl, who is married off to a much older man (child marriages still happen in India). When she's 8 her husband dies and she has to go through all the customs of being a widow. Deepa Mehta intended to make this film in 2000. They started shooting in India, but Hindu extremists destroyed the sets and production was halted. She finally shot the film 4 years later in Sri Lanka.
The Namesake
Indian Release Date: 23 March 2007
Polish Release Date: 19 October 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sOaA-4Y8tI
Director: Mira Nair
Cast: Irfan Khan, Tabu, Kal Penn
This definitely should not be classified as Bollywood as it's really a US produced film, but it was an important film for Indian audiences this year, so... Basically, it's a serious exploration of emigration and national identity.
Gandhi My Father
Release Date: 3 August 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3yZDHwRRb4
Director: Feroze Khan
Cast: Akshaye Khanna
This is a film that shows Gandhi as a grey figure rather than the white figure he is usually portrayed as. It is based on a play which explores Gandhi's troubled relationship with his eldest son, Harilal. Many of Harilal's decisions (like his marriage and dream of becoming a barrister) were opposed by his father. Harilal was eventually disowned and died an alcoholic.
Naturally, the release of the film in India faced protests.
The Blue Umbrella
Release Date: 10 August 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ-w495xNIU
Director: Vishal Bharadwaj
Cast: Pankaj Kapur, Shriya
It's set in a small village. A little girl gets a beautiful blue umbrella and this creates all sorts of discord.
No Smoking
Release Date: 26 October 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53D_Qs1C6k4
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Cast: John Abraham
It's a little bit as if Anurag Kashyap decided he wanted to mix the Bollywood formula with a David Lynch style film and at the same time play around with the controversial ban of smoking in Indian films (Indian films can now show actors smoking only if the film very obviously states that smoking is wrong). It's the story of a character called K, who is trying to stop smoking and seeks help from people who turn out to be completely insane.
OTHER BIG RELEASES OF 2007
So this is a list of big films that flopped or didn't do as well as anticipated (at least not well enough to put them alongside the biggest hits of 2007).
I decided to have a list like this because many of the films on it sound just as interesting to me as the films I've already listed :) Also 2007 was a year of surprises in terms of what did and didn't do well. A lot of very hyped films performed worse than expected.
Salaam-e-Ishq
Release Date: 25 January 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQYOIalqP-I
Director: Nikhil Advani
Cast: John Abraham, Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Anil Kapoor, Juhi Chawla, Akshaye Khanna, Vidya Balan, Govinda, Isha Koppikar, Ayesha Takia
From what I understand it's lots of love stories with a really huge cast of stars and the director of Kal Ho Naa Ho. Nobody really knows why it flopped, but it did...
Eklavya
Release Date: 16 February 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFEc48n5oRE
Director: Vidhu Vinod Chopra
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Saif Ali Khan, Sanjay Dutt, Vidya Balan, Jackie Shroff, Boman Irani
It's about a majestic fort in contemporary India. The royal family living in it are modern people, but the guard lives as if nothing has changed.
The only thing that was praised in this film was Amitabh Bachchan's performance as the guard. Otherwise the film was panned by both critics and audiences.
This is India's official Academy Award candidate albeit a very controversial one. Personally, I don't understand why they didn't go with Chak De! India - the Academy have already honoured its script, so surely that's a fairly straightforward indication of their tastes?
Nishabd
Release Date: 2 March 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_6VccYqC4g
Director: Ram Gopal Varma
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Jiah Khan
This is a love story between an 18 year old and a 60 year old.
Some say Indian audiences aren't mature enough to deal with such topics and some say it just wasn't a good enough film to pull in the crowds.
Tara Rum Pum
Release Date: 27 April 200
Trailer: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9081324916291040803
Director: Siddharth Anand
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Rani Mukherji
A guy becomes the best formula one racer in the world - he has a loving family, lots of money and success. Then one day he has a serious accident and things go downhill from there.
It's the first Indian film to use animation for part of a song & dance sequence.
The poor performance of the film has been blamed on mainstream Indian audiences not being able to deal with the scenes in the New York slums. Whether that's true or not, its flop was unexpected. It had very big stars and was produced under the Yash Chopra banner (the leading production house in Bollywood).
Cheeni Kum
Release Date: 25 May 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqBjoZD58Ls
Director: R. Balki
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Tabu
This is a romance between a 34 year old and 64 year old with lots of cooking in the background.
It did better than expected, but not well enough to make the hits list.
Jhoom Barabar Jhoom
Release Date: 15 June 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VqEom35TFQ
Director: Shaad Ali
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Preity Zinta, Bobby Deol, Lara Dutta
A guy and a girl fall in love, but they're both engaged to other people.
Yet another film made under the Yash Chopra banner that didn't do as well as expected.
RGV Ki Aag
Release Date: 31 August 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z32UIP2LsX0
Director: Ram Gopal Varma
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgan, Abhishek Bachchan, Urmila Matondkar, Mohanlal
This film is on this list not to try to encourage anybody to watch it (the trailer speaks for itself, right?), but because it's made history. It's the biggest flop ever in Indian cinema. It ran for only a week (and to empty cinemas)!
Even more ironically, it's a remake of Sholay (1975) - one of the biggest hits ever (it ran in Indian cinemas for 5 years!).
Laaga Chunari Mein Daag
Release Date: 12 October 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLddw_8hHIg
Director: Pradeep Sarkar
Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Rani Mukherji, Jaya Bachchan, Konkona Sen Sharma, Anupam Kher, Hema Malini
A girl from a small village ends up earning money by prostitution.
Another film made under the Yash Chopra banner that flopped despite big expectations for it. Some try to explain it away with the topic matter (who wants to see a nice, family girl get into the flesh trade?).
Saawariya
Release Date: 9 November 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLt4C8dZr5U
Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Salman Khan, Rani Mukherji, Zohra Segal
It's the first Hollywood-Bollywood co-production ever and although Sony Entertainment say they're happy because they did earn money on it, it performed much worse than expected (the expectations were very high and the press have called it the year's biggest flop barring RGV Ki Aag).
Pretty much everybody who's seen it says it's one of the most aesthetic films ever made, but that it has almost no plot and has an agonisingly slow pace (and for a Bollywood film it's actually quite short - just 142min.).
Aaja Nachle
Release Date: 30 November 2007
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBGG9e0NCeA
Director: Anil Mehta
Cast: Madhuri Dixit, Irfan Khan, Akshaye Khanna, Konkona Sen Sharma
A New York dance instructor goes back to her home village in India to save the local theatre from being demolished.
Yet another 2007 Yash Chopra production that didn't do well.
It's Madhuri Dixit's comeback film. From what's been said Madhuri is great in it, but the story sucks. Some of the press have suggested that Bollywood just doesn't know how to write a story with a 40 year old female lead.
One thing the promos of the film have sold me on is Madhuri's dancing. I never really understood why she's considered the best ever dancer in Bollywood. But of course with the exception of Devdas I've only seen her in the films she made in the 90s with rather boring choreography and cinematography. In Devdas she did seem more impressive to me, but she was wearing costumes that weighed over 10kg, so one could hardly expect her to show her skills to the fullest extent. Fortunately, modern choreo and cinematography has finally opened my eyes ;) Check this out.
THE BIGGEST TABLOID EVENTS
Bollywood would not be Bollywood without the tabloids ;) Naturally there was lots of amusing (and usually totally stupid and untrue) gossip in 2007, but there were two events that seemed to get written about for weeks.
By far the biggest one was the wedding of Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai. The press naturally managed to find a huge amount of angles on this, but one of the most amusing ones was that the Bachchan family made Aishwarya marry a tree for astrological reasons before she could marry Abhishek. This caused outrage amongst Indian feminists totally unnecessarily as Amitabh Bachchan later rubbished the reports.
The other much talked about event was the split up of Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor. Most people were expecting them to tie the knot soon (they'd been going steady for 3 years or something like that). The timing of it was also very strange as it came right before the release of Jab We Met (with everyone expecting it to effect the film negatively, but on the contrary - the film has done much better than expected). Soon after the split up Saif Ali Khan confirmed that he is now dating Kareena.
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