Order of the Phoenix publicity in full throb

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

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

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


Daniel Radcliffe on Regis and Kelly:


Daniel Radcliffe on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno:


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


And here's part two:


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


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


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


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


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

Macaulay Culkin in "Party Monster"

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

J. K. Rowling on the Jonathan Ross show

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

Why Polish figure skating is fun ;)

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

The EU in youtube sex controversy

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

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

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

For the other EU European cinema clips see here.

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

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

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

More Order of the Phoenix promotion

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

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


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

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix clips

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

Some of the best in my opinion are:

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

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

Indian film releases I'm excited about...

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


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

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


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


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

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

Experimental Travel

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

Hypothesis
Explore and experience a new place without seeing it.

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

Method
Spend 24 hours blindfolded in a new location.

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

And I thought Poland had it bad...

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

Order of the Phoenix set report

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

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

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

A cinema boycott in Poland?

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

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

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

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

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

Shahrukh and Saif at the 49th Filmfare Awards

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

Random Shahrukh video

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

Equus review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shilpa Shetty and scandal

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

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

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

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

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

Yet another new Harry Potter trailer

Warner Bros have just released another trailer. This one's for the US market I think (the other one was the international one):

The beginning bit is the same as in the international trailer, but there are changes later through the trailer, but IMO the changes are bad rather than good... I mean it's even more action packed and even more pompous :-/ Of course one wants some action, but in the end what I'm excited about are the characters...