Enthiran (Robot), Anjaana Anjaani, Dabangg (ongoing) and all other box office insanity!

last week’s thread

My Review of MACHETE (English, 2010)

I’m a HUGE fan of Robert Rodriguez and Tarantino’s brand of homage cinema. Rodriguez has done a series of homage films which can only be termed as “Mexploitation” (Blaxploitation but with Mexicans), however MACHETE takes it to another level.

Read the rest from HERE

Tony Curtis passes away..

LINK

Tony Curtis, a classically handsome movie star who earned an Oscar nomination as an escaped convict in Stanley Kramer’s 1958 movie “The Defiant Ones,” but whose public preferred him in comic roles in films like “Some Like It Hot” (1959) and “The Great Race” (1965), died Wednesday of a cardiac arrest in his Las Vegas area home. He was 85.

Red trailers

Shahrukh interview

LINK

Last week, the Mumbai police asked cine stars to appeal to people to maintain communal harmony as the Babri verdict approaches. You’ve spoken earlier – after Emraan Hashmi’s press conference on not getting a house in Mumbai – and you’d said that you have a point of view, but you’re defensive about expressing it because a) it’s always misinterpreted, and b) the media doesn’t take a stand. Today, if approached for bytes on communal harmony, are you willing to go beyond the one-liners?

Perhaps we should not be taken very seriously because we are film stars. You don’t go to every engineer or doctor to take his viewpoint on communal harmony. The contrary argument to this is – oh, but you guys are public figures! My contrary argument is, we are public figures to the extent that we are entertainers. Beyond that, if there is an issue that I want to talk about, it may be personal, it may be women’s education, I’ll say it. You don’t have to take it seriously, but if I felt it, I said it. If somebody takes it seriously, wonderful.

Arthur Penn passes away..

LINK

Arthur Penn, the stage, television and motion picture director whose revolutionary treatment of sex and violence in the 1967 film “Bonnie and Clyde” transformed the American film industry, died Tuesday night, the day after he turned 88. His death was confirmed by Evan Bell, a friend and accountant for Mr. Penn for 25 years. No other details were immediately provided.

Jhoota Hi Sahi trailers (updated)

Dabangg & the sadness of ‘light’ masala…

All masala cinema that counts can really be traced back to Amitabh Bachchan’s seminal interventions. Whether in the ‘North’ or in the ‘South’ all commercial cinema in this genre or more appropriately ‘super’-genre marks the influence of his signature. There is however in Southern cinema also the very important mediation of Rajnikant. If Bachchan’s own peak career involves a movement from the dramatic intensity of the angry young man to the picaresque triumphs of the Desai persona Rajnikant’s historical trajectory has involved a privileging of the latter dynamic to create his own uniquely impish brand of the masala hero. Contemporary Southern masala often reflects both sides of the divide though barring Vikram who mostly belongs to the more silent mode of Bachchan’s career other stars have generally chosen to err on the Rajnikant side of the equation. But the latter can be weakly misread as merely a museum of the iconic and the gestural (sadly Rajni himself is reduced to the latter these days). A whole moral component that is as central to Rajnikant’s masala persona as it is to both movements of the Bachchan intervention is often missing in these latter day films. Many films strive to recreate that epic resonance and hence rely on cathartic narratives but vastly more are content to simply offer up the masala hero as a kind of Leone-inspired avatar who is just the sum of his gestures and lines. In short there is the guilty pleasure of the genre without the moral balance or the cathartic costs of the same. This guise of masala cinema is perhaps appropriate for an age and an economically dominant ‘multiplex’ audience that is not easily inspired by lofty causes or revolutionary ends and often does not even desire systemic critique.

Ray’s ‘Sikkim’ finally unearthed!

LINK

Sikkim’s Journey

1970: The last Chogyal of Sikkim, Palden Thondup Namgyal, commissions the documentary
1971: Satyajit Ray shoots, finishes it
1973: CBFC certifies it as “U”
1975: Sikkim merges with India. Hope Cooke move to America with a print.

* The film gets banned in India; original negative goes missing

1994: Hope Cooke print found in the Heffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Rhode Island
2000: A damaged print is found in Gangtok. Rights handed over to Art and Culture Trust of Sikkim.
2002: Print sent for restoration to the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts & Sciences

* CBFC grants it “U” certificate; technically ban ceases to exist

September 22, 2010: Restored print arrives in Gangtok after eight years

Superstar Rajnikant! (Slate)

thanks to Tyler..
LINK

Jackie Chan is the highest-paid actor in Asia, and that makes sense. Besides producing, directing, and starring in his own action movies since 1980, he’s earned millions in Hollywood with blockbusters like Rush Hour and The Karate Kid. But the No. 2 spot goes to someone who doesn’t make any sense at all. The second-highest-paid actor in Asia is a balding, middle-aged man with a paunch, hailing from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and sporting the kind of moustache that went out of style in 1986. This is Rajinikanth, and he is no mere actor—he is a force of nature. If a tiger had sex with a tornado and then their tiger-nado baby got married to an earthquake, their offspring would be Rajinikanth. Or, as his films are contractually obligated to credit him, “SUPERSTAR Rajinikanth!”

Partner 2!

LINK

After much turmoil, David Dhawan’s Partner 2 is back on track. You heard it. Salman Khan and Govinda will play the leads. David Dhawan will direct the film and Sohail Khan will produce it. And the most interesting bit is that this news coincides with the huge box-office success of Dabangg.

Sachin to finally appear in a film?

LINK

Ajay Jadeja, Vinod Kambli, Sunil Gavaskar, Salil Ankola, Syed Kirmani and Sandeep Patil — they all have done it before. Now, Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar is reportedly set to splash paint on his face for a role in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Ferrari Ki Sawari, a film to be directed by Rajesh Mapuskar.

Rahman’s ‘tweaked’ Commonwealth Games anthem (earlier post updated)

Protagonist with disabilities….

You are my hero

‘Imperfect’ roles have become dearer to the masses, a challenge for actors

By Ruma Malia

In the 70s, it was the angry young man. Then came the marginalised rebel in Hero (Jackie Shroff) and Ghayal (Sunny Deol). Fast forward to 2000, the candy-floss charmer stole the dulhania and our hearts. Cut to the present and we have the hero who impresses audiences with his ‘imperfections’.

Rom-com of the season, Anjaana Anjaani sees Ranbir Kapoor attempting suicide out of sheer depression before switching to his chic lover-boy charm. He is now gearing up to play a hearing and speech impaired hero in Anurag Basu’s Silence. Joining him in the race to ‘imperfection’ is Hrithik Roshan. Despite his rugged charm and sculpted torso, Kites failed to do well and the athletic actor has opted for a paraplegic’s part in his next movie Guzaarish, restricting a lot of action to the wheelchair.

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Tamil Pulp fiction (Hindu)

LINK

The stories are devoured by Tamil readers and many of the writers are household names. The outstanding feature of pulp fiction is the democracy it creates with fans ranging from auto-drivers to aristocrats, housewives to office-goers. In these novels published at a rapid rate, the exotic and the everyday mingle to produce a potent cocktail. Crime, the supernatural, romance and sex parade through these pages inviting readers to dive into an enjoyable world letting go rigid notions of classical and popular literature.

Of Bears and Bulls (Abzee on Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps)

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
Dir- Oliver Stone
Cast- Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Josh Brolin, Carey Mulligan, Susan Sarandon, Eli Wallach and Frank Langella

Rating- ****

Not everyday can a sequel arrive 23 years after the original and still seem perfectly timed in its relevance. Oliver Stone, facing a phase of diminishing returns in his career this past decade, places his bets rather boldly on taking forward the story of one of his most iconic creations: the Michael Douglas essayed Gordon Gekko character from 1987’s Wall Street- the slick, suave and unscrupulous investor whose arbitrage and inside trading mechanics made him the unofficial yet undisputed Guru of the financial world… a character that has since that film assumed a position in everyday conversations at B-schools. So it is with some surprise then that the first time we hear Gekko (Douglas reprising his Academy Award winning role) speak in this film, he is posing a rejoinder to his own famous ‘Greed Is Good’ remark from that earlier film, by asking us the question, “Is greed good?”

Anjaana Anjaani trailers (updated)

Dus Tola trailer

thanks to Aajkaarjun..

Shahrukh interview

A somewhat different and actually a genuine SRK interview
LINK

You’ve been posting messages about your dad today (Sep 19) … nostalgia?
Haan yaar… I just suddenly realized today, I woke up and I’d forgotten what date it was, I just looked at the newspaper and then realized it… Actually, before that, at night, strangely, my son came to me – my wife is at the hospital, she’s staying there – and he came to me and said, ‘papa, I want to give a hug.’ So I asked, ‘why?’ And he said, ‘just like that, papa… I think, I love you’. I found it very touching.

Dabangg (ongoing) & still the rest of the ‘non’ box office!

last week’s thread