Well its week number 2 for Asia-AICN and Father Geek is a happy camper.
We here at our Austin Headquarters really want our branch offices to catch on and welcome with open arms the peoples of their respective regions to the wonderful world of AINT-IT-COOL-NEWS. Now if I could only find an editor/reporter for a regular Wednesday column called something like AICN-downunder then we'd really be set to cover the whole wide world of film making. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's Darius 25 and issue #2 of Asia-AICN...
Asia-AICN #2
Hey guys, before I get to my review of the movie Gang and the news, I
would like to give a few pointers to the Non-Indian audience interested in
watching these movies. First of all, the titles that I mention here are the
English titles of the movies. I will provide the translation of the movies,
but if you want to rent or buy these movies, you will have to know the name
of it. Eg. If you want to buy a movie called Satya (it means the truth and
it is also an Indian name), you would have to go into a store and ask for
Satya, not The Truth. The movies are spelled in English EXACTLY as I have
written it, so you might find that will help you a little bit. Now, where
are these movies located ? You could either buy them over the internet, or
find them in Indian stores. Every major city in North America eg. NY, LA,
Chicago, Toronto, etc. has an Indian district and they should have some
video stores there. Also, a lot of movies are bootlegs or illegally made
videotapes and DVDs so make sure you're renting an authentic tape or disc
:) The legal distributors of Indian movies in North America are either Eros
Entertainment or Video Sound. For the internet, the best place to buy
movies are from either Eros Entertainment , or Video Sound . Also, make sure that especially on the DVDs,
English subtitles are provided. Almost all of the legal DVDs have english
subtitles but the illegal ones, I am not really sure. Ask before you buy,
just in case.
Now, here's the latest news on Bollywood:
Hey guys, before I get to my review of the movie Gang and the news, I
would like to give a few pointers to the Non-Indian audience interested in
watching these movies. First of all, the titles that I mention here are the
English titles of the movies. I will provide the translation of the movies,
but if you want to rent or buy these movies, you will have to know the name
of it. Eg. If you want to buy a movie called Satya (it means the truth and
it is also an Indian name), you would have to go into a store and ask for
Satya, not The Truth. The movies are spelled in English EXACTLY as I have
written it, so you might find that will help you a little bit. Now, where
are these movies located ? You could either buy them over the internet, or
find them in Indian stores. Every major city in North America eg. NY, LA,
Chicago, Toronto, etc. has an Indian district and they should have some
video stores there. Also, a lot of movies are bootlegs or illegally made
videotapes and DVDs so make sure you're renting an authentic tape or disc
:) The legal distributors of Indian movies in North America are either Eros
Entertainment or Video Sound. For the internet, the best place to buy
movies are from either Eros Entertainment , or Video Sound . Also, make sure that especially on the DVDs,
English subtitles are provided. Almost all of the legal DVDs have english
subtitles but the illegal ones, I am not really sure. Ask before you buy,
just in case.
Now, here's the latest news on Bollywood:
Now, here's the latest news on Bollywood:
- There will be an Indian version of the game show "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire ?" which will start airing in June. The show will be hosted by Indian superstar Amitabh Bachchan and its top prize will be 10 million rupees (roughly $230 000 US).
- Speaking of Amitabh Bachchan, there is word that he may team up with director Subhash Ghai in a film called Devaa (translated as God, but it is also a common name in India). This film was supposed to be made in the 80s when Bachchan was at his peak, but it didn't go into production because of script problems.
- Shah Rukh Khan's next film will be the long awaited Josh (translated as Rush as in Adrenaline Rush) and it will be released in June. This is the first time he will star opposite Aishwarya Rai and they will play siblings in the film. Supposedly, it is a loose remake of West Side Story. Chandrachur Singh, Sharad Kapoor, and Priya Gill co-star.
- The shooting for the film Har Dil Jo Pyar Karega (Every Heart That Loves) is now complete and is now heading to post-production. The film stars Salman Khan, Rani Mukherjee, and Preity Zinta and is directed by Raj Kanwar.
- Actor Ajay Devgan's production Company, Devgan Films' next production will star Devgan himself, along with Sanjay Dutt and Abhishek Bachchan. The film has yet to be titled.
- Speaking of Sanjay Dutt, he has formed his own production company titled White Feather Films with his partners being director Sanjay Gupta and producer Bobby Anand. Their first film will be a big budget multi-starrer directed by Gupta. It will supposedly star Dutt, Amitabh Bachchan, Manoj Bajpai, Kumar Gaurav, Akshaye Khanna, Sunil Shetty and Aditya Pancholi. If this goes through, this cast will be almost as big as the dream cast for Steven Soderbergh's Oceans'11. The film has yet to be titled.
- This one's from Netribution in UK (Special thanks to Euro-AICN for providing this to me): Bollywood and Brideshead relocate to Scotland
Another major Bollywood movie is to be located in Scotland. Pyar Ishq Aur Mohabbat (translated as Love, Love and Love) will shoot in locations in Ayrshire, Glasgow and central Scotland locations, the latest Bollywood feature to use Scotland as an exotic background to woo Indian cinema¹s huge audiences.
Well, the Bollywood news part is over now. This week there was one new film released on Friday, April 21. It is called Dil Hi Dil Mein (Within the Heart). I will NOT be watching this movie simply because the trailers of this looks horrible. The story is a "remake" (RIP-OFF) of You've Got Mail. The producers say that it is loosely inspired by the Tom Hanks movie, but it really looks like a cheap version of the movie. Now, I know that a lot of the movies in Bollywood copy the stories of American movies, but since I loved You've Got Mail, I will not watch something that is simply made just to con audiences that have not seen the original.
Anyway, I did see the movie Gang (no translation needed), which I told you about last week. The movie is about four friends, Gangu (Jackie Shroff), Abdul (Nana Patekar), Nihal (Kumar Gaurav) and Gary (Javed Jaffrey) who are tired of working odd-jobs in order to support their families. They decide turn to various illegal activities such as robbery, and theft and eventually move up the ranks of the Bombay underworld. The film focuses on their rise and then their downfall.
Ok, the story has been told before, and this is not a film that will captivate audience and teach them something that they don't already own. However, we sort of need movies like this especially for the Indian audience. While I know that the movies tend to exaggerate things, there is a lot of crime everywhere. In India, in most cities, especially the slums, the gangs are everywhere. I will be flamed for this, but the streets are pretty violent and corruption is everywhere. There are tonnes of gangs everywhere, and even though they won't be all becoming dons, all of their individual crimes sum up to be A LOT. The life that people live in India and other third world countries (no-offence) are very different than in the countries where law and order are effectively able to control the amount of crime(up to a point of course, cause crime exists everywhere). Now, I am not trying to say that the police officers are not as good in the 3rd world countries as in Europe or South America. But there is more poverty there, and their quality of living is way below the standards of our quality of living. All of this leads to a higher amount of crime in the society. People here don't have to worry about terrorists running around the street but in Kashmir (a northern state in India, along the India-Pakistan border), people do have to worry about it. Again, terrorism is only from the way you look at it - they may be terrorists to us, but freedom fighters to others. Back to film though, the director, Mazhar Khan, has attempted to give the audience another look at the causes of crimes that are occurring in India, and the deadly consequences of it. I feel that he has succeeded in his goals, where others might feel that it is just another bloody action movie with a bad story and no good acting.
That leads into the acting. Is it any good ? Actually, the four heroes/villains of our story are very good. It was nice to see that the role of Abdul was not given as much importance as the other three. The actor who plays Nana Patekar, is said to be a real hog when it comes to scenes and dialogues. In most of his movies, he is always on the screen, and always has the best dialogues aswell. Even though he is a very good actor, it was good to see that relatively smaller actors such as Javed Jaffrey had the same or a somewhat bigger role than him. Also, this film is also a comeback of sorts for actor Kumar Gaurav, who was a very popular star in the 80s, before he faded away into oblivion. Good to see him in a great role and I also respect the fact that he shed his pretty-boy image to take on the role of Nihal, who eventually becomes the most villainous of the four friends. But the real star of this movie is Jackie Shroff. He is the person who drives this movie, the real heart and soul. He represents the morality of the group. Sometimes he is good and wants to live a peaceful life, other times he is ferociously vicious, with a shotgun in one hand and a semi-automatic in the other. He just ROCKS!! (By the way, if you want a bloody action movie - this movie is for you. The last 20-30 minutes are pure bloodshed!!)
The songs - are they any good ? They are, of what is here, anyway. I think there was a total of three songs in the movie. Nothing great to talk about, but the music was not harmful to the ears. The presentation of the songs were ok, without any embarrassing dancing or outrageous costumes.
The movie is not without its flaws though. This movie has been making for the last 10 years (Last week I accidentally put in 6 years instead of 10). There are continuity problems - the actors have aged over the years, especially Jackie Shroff. In the beginning he looks young, then old, then young again, etc. Some actors (esp. the girl who plays Gary's sister) have REALLY changed and it shows!! The acting by some of the supporting actors including some of the bad guys are way too over the top. For example when the main villain is introduced, parts of his face are hidden in the dark to give him a mysterious quality, just like Marlon Brando (as Col. Kurtz) in Apocalypse Now. I was expecting the main villain to be somebody famous but when they showed his full face, I said who the f-k is this ?? Also, some of the comedy parts in the starting (esp. by Javed Jaffrey) could have been edited out, because they sort of changed the overall tone of the movie. Many Indian movies put comedy-reliefs in their movies so the audience would not be depressed or shocked throughout the movie. I found this to be a little annoying.
Overall, I found the movie to be very good. It was thought-provoking, yet entertaining at the same time. After a lot of bad movies lately, this was a pleasant surprise and proves that Indian movies are not all song and dance romantic comedies. Some people may get turned off by the amount of violence, but overall most people will like it.
Crash Davis our reporter in Indonesia sent Asia-AICN the following report this week...
Crash here.
As I live in Indonesia, I was particularly interested in this story I found recently in a newspaper in Asia (The Straits Times). You probably won't put it on the site (not 'hollywood' enough), but if you do... It's about this film called "The Unburied Poet". It has an extreme political movement to it, because it concerns Aceh, a province of Indonesia which has been having a lot of trouble lately.
If you haven't read in the newspapers, Aceh is going through political turmoil because the people desperately want independence from Indonesia, as they have for an extremely long time. Thousands have died over the last decade struggling for independence.
The movie concerns the writer Ibrahim Kadir (who plays himself). It was shot in black and white, for about1.5 billion rupiah ($332,000). It is set in the 1960s, at which time hundreds of thousands of people were killed for being suspected communists. It's based on a true story, and it follows what happened to these suspected communists after the Indonesian Communist Party was blamed for an attempted coup on the Government of 1965.
It focuses on Ibrahim Kadir, the Acehnese poet who spend 22 days waiting for his execution in a prison camp. When no evidence was found against him, he began forced work as the "jail's assistant" in which he had to tie prisoner's hands behind their backs and cover their heads with sacks before they were executed. He was the only survivor of the prison. It is estimated that 500,000 people were killed.
The director, Garin Nugroho, says it contains a political message about where it is set - Aceh. The director said to Reuters: "This movie is aimed at reconciliation. And the first step towards reconciliation is to disclose the event and not to cover it up. Every nation has political trauma and historical wounds. I just want to open up the wounds without any revenge. Aceh has all kinds of elements. Although the movie was set in the 1960s, the audience is free to interpret the themes and relate it to what's happening in Aceh right now."
This is an interesting story because Indonesia has only recently become politically free. Until a couple of years ago, movies were censored by the government for being overly political. This is part of what has lead to the decline of the Indonesian film industry. So this movie is not only a bold political statement, but it represents a new move in attempting to restructure a viable film industry. I'm not sure how good it is; it's only been shown on a few screens around the country. But no matter what, it still is something to examine as a bold political statement.
If you use this, I'm Crash Davis
