Shamita dances to kids tune

You did a song for Hari Puttar... It is a fun song?
Yes, but let me clarify that it was a promotional video and not part of the movie. The producers came to me after the film was shot. I liked the concept and took it on.

How was the experience shooting with little kids?
I enjoyed every moment. The idea was very cute. And I had to dance with kids. I found it interesting and so took it up. I think it is a fun song.

The media has been terming it an item number.
It is a masti number where I play myself. The song is peppy and Punjabi -- a fun song. To term it an item number is not fine. It is a kids film.

What motivated you to do a kids film?
I have never done a kids film. I wanted to do the song as like I said, the cuteness appealed to me.

How was it working with Zain?
Zain is a good actor. It was fun working with him.

We don't see you much on the silver screen. What is reason for being selective?
I am running my production house now. And it takes up a lot of my time. I do not get much time to do films and besides, I need something that I enjoy to take it up.

It is said that Shilpa Shetty is making a film with you and AkshayKumar in the lead roles?
I wish I get these newsbreaks before you do. No, Shilpa was never making a film with me and Akshay Kumar. These stories are made up by media.

Television. No, I haven't thought about it. I live one day a time. I don't know what the future holds for me. I would like to do a great job at what I have taken on right now. And if in the future, I get
interested then well, it is a matter of that moment.

What do you feel is the USP of Hari Puttar – A Comedy of Terrors?
Why does anyone go to the theatre after buying a ticket? To be entertained. Hari Puttar – A Comedy of Terrors has that entertainment value. It is a fun film and I am sure that is one reason why everyone must see it.

Talking of kids films, one parting question. How does it feel to see
Taare Zameen Par being chosen for the Oscars?
Taare Zameen Par is a film that everybody loved. It is a brilliantly made film. I am very happy it has been chosen for the Oscars. And I am sure it will win.

Tahaan is going global

Since its grand debut at Cannes, ‘Tahaan’ has been invited to participate in a number of esteemed film festivals across the globe. Tahaan has been selected in competition at the prestigious Rome International Film Festival (Oct 22, 2008) in Italy, CineKid International Film Festival (Oct 23,2008) in Amsterdam, Amazonas Film Festival (Nov 11-15, 2008) in Brazil, Dubai International Film Festival (Dec, 2008) in U.A.E, and Stockholm International Film Festival (Mar 2009) in Stockholm.

Tahaan has been invited for official selections at the Pusan International Film Festival (Oct 8, 2008) in South Korea, BFI London International Film Festival (Oct 15-30,2008) in the U.K, and Palm Springs International Film Festival (2009) in the US.

IDream Production’s ‘Tahaan’ directed by internationally acclaimed, award winning director and ace cinematographer Santosh Sivan made it’s global debut at the Cannes Film Market in 2008 to packed houses. Tahaan started its journey at Pusan in 2007 when the script was awarded a coveted place in the prestigious Pusan Promotional Plan, a dynamic project market focused in Asian cinema that provides financers and producers an opportunity to discover top quality projects.

Starring the enthralling, talented and versatile child actor Purav Bhandare, ‘Tahaan’ is a fable-like journey which revolves around an 8 year-old boy’s pursuit of purpose in his little world. Besides a truly spell-binding performance by Purav, the film also boasts of a strong ensemble cast consisting of some of the greatest veterans of Indian cinema such as Anupam Kher, Sarika, Rahul Bose, Victor Banerjee and Rahul Khanna.

Rafoo Chakkar (Comedy)

This one's a comedy that never takes off. Unless you find fine actors like Mita Vashisht and Archana Puran Singh playing 45-year-old brides to twenty-something chokras in order to hang on to their father's fortune. The chopsucky girls are simply in a marriage of convenience and try their best to hold onto their truant dulhas by using their fists, chops and kicks.

Doesn't work, because the aunties deserve better. Maybe, if they had a few funny lines, it might have helped. Or maybe, if the boys did not look as if they had lost their way and landed on the sets, the film would have had a story. But right now, it's time for a Rafoo Chakkar on the part of the viewer.

Welcome to Sajjanpur (comedy)

SHYAM Benegal's been to the Indian village, long years ago. Then, at the helm of the parallel film movement, he had given us films like Ankur , Nishant , showcasing the seamier side of rural India. The films still remain milestones in celluloid history. Benegal goes back to the village once again, this time with a breezy outlook and a buoyant tone. Of course, you do miss the stark realism and the social concerns of his earlier films. But hey, hasn't the national mood changed too? Isn't India several notches higher on the global happiness index. So smile. Sajjanpur's sweet, simple, sylvan bliss, where widows still aren't allowed to be remarried...but that's just a fleeting reference; where superstition, ritualism still rule...but that's funny, not sad; where politics and governance is a messy business...but that's comic business. So what if India's foremost filmmaker who pioneered hard-hitting realism in films is now somewhat soft and flossy; at least he's still around, unlike most of his contemporaries.

Hence, the importance of Welcome to Sajjanpur , a light-hearted sojourn into an archetypal gaon that's on the fringe of modernity. The leader of this pastoral pack is Shreyas Talpade, the educated postman who dreams of being a writer and writes letters instead. And as he pens postcards for the bunch of illiterate villagers, he gives us a peep into their lives. Like a master craftsmen, Benegal not only introduces you to the sundry characters -- the child widow, the abandoned wife, the harried mother, the corrupt neta, the romantic compounder -- he also helps you connect with them. You almost wish the postmaster's love story reaches a happy end, even as you hope the seductive widow finds her soulmate.

It's simple, uncomplicated storytelling that leaves a smile on your face.

Hari Puttar: A Comedy of Terrors (Comedy)

In an industry starved of children's films, any attempt to create a full blown entertainer aimed at the tween audience needs to be lauded. Unlike Hollywood, which treats its young audience very seriously, Bollywood really doesn't have much to boast about in this department. Hence the importance of a film like Hari Puttar which doesn't try to talk to adults through a tween protagonist. It talks to all. The film focuses on the heroics of a ten-year-old hero and is sure to have everyone -- under 10s and over 10s -- chuckling with glee with its generous splattering of slapstick masala and message. For behind all the bluster and pranks, there is the sweet little homily on the great Indian family. A happy family is the antidote to all evils. Amen!

Hari Puttar is a cute Punjabi munda who, like all pre-pubescent kids, feels awkward, out of place and almost neglected in his kingsize family. In a fretful moment, he just wishes they would disappear. And they do. The puttar is left alone with his young cousin, Tuk Tuk (Swini Khara) and hopes to do everything he's not allowed to do. Like, rummaging through his elder brother's possessions, exploring his dad's study, shaving like a man....Until, the intruders arrive. Then, it's a full blown war to save a microchip, that has national importance, from the goons (Saurabh Shukla, Vijay Raaz).

It's here, in the second half, that the film really picks up and evokes peals of laughter, as the bumbling baddies end up bruised, battered and Hari weary. The fulcrum of the zany show is young Zain Khan who manages to create a winsome picture of a strong, yet vulnerable kid, longing for his mom in the midst of the mayhem. Cute.

Name Game: A Tale of Acknowledgment for ‘Despereaux’

As Universal readies “The Tale of Despereaux” for release in December, Sylvain Chomet, the acclaimed director of the Oscar-nominated animated feature “The Triplets of Belleville,” is raising a plaint about its handling of the last issue, if not all four.

In both an e-mail message and a telephone interview this week, Mr. Chomet — who was fired as the director of “Despereaux” more than two years ago — accused both the studio and the film’s producers, Gary Ross and his wife, Allison Thomas, of using his designs and concepts in the movie without acknowledging his contribution. It is a claim the filmmakers strenuously dispute.

Mr. Chomet’s unusually open challenge may simply point to a gulf between European practices, which grant artists enduring “moral rights” in their work, and an American approach that says, in effect, a deal is a deal.

That hard-nosed attitude is especially so in Hollywood, where battles over authorship can be particularly ferocious. Still, it is an unwanted embarrassment for Universal, which is ramping up its efforts in animated features, a genre it has recently left to others. And it offers a glimpse at the tensions that sometimes afflict the business of creating family fun.

The French-born Mr. Chomet, who is working at his studio in Scotland, stopped short of contending that anyone had violated his contractual rights; he acknowledges having been fully paid for his work.

But he expressed outrage at seeing promotional materials for the movie, based on a hugely popular children’s book by Kate DiCamillo, that omitted any mention of him. “I feel utterly disgusted that someone else is going to take credit for all my visuals and concepts on this film,” he said in an e-mail message.

“We’re making a film for kids, a film that has a moral,” Mr. Chomet added in a telephone interview on Friday, “and behind it is such aggressive action about lawyers and legal things — there are no human relationships. I felt like a lemon; they got the juice out of me and threw me away.”

Shakira's 'Barefoot' to focus on poverty worldwide

Shakira said Barefoot, known as Pies Descalzos in her native Colombia, will start focusing on children worldwide later this year.

"We have a model that works. Under less than $2 a day, we can provide a kid with top quality education and the nutrition that they need to be able to function and be able to learn because a kid with an empty stomach cannot learn," said the singer, a multiplatinum superstar known for hits like "Hips Don't Lie."

"So this model that has been so successful in my country, now I want to bring it to other countries in my small way."

Shakira made the comments Wednesday after appearing at Columbia University with Spanish singing sensation Alejandro Sanz and the presidents of Mexico, Argentina, Paraguay, El Salvador and Panama. The event focused on the importance of education, nutrition and health intervention for Latin American children. The singers asked the presidents to adopt an agreement on combating child poverty during the upcoming Iberoamerican Summit in late October.

"The presidents seem very committed and that's what we need. We need all the leaders of Latin America to have a definite commitment toward our children (because) the children of Latin America are waiting for opportunities," said Shakira in an interview after conference.

"Where I come from every child who is born poor will die poor and we have to change this, and this is the moment to do it. We are at the threshold of a new wave of awareness and sensibility toward our children's issues. But early childhood development should be at the top of our priorities and at the top of every president's agenda."

In attendance were Mexican President Felipe Calderon; Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez; the president of Paraguay, Fernado Lugo; El Salvador's president, Tony Saca; and Panamanian President Martin Torrijos. Also on hand was Dominican-born baseball star Sammy Sosa, Panamanian musician Ruben Blades and English rocker Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame, along with Nobel Prize-winning economist James J. Heckman and Luis Alberto Moreno, president of the Inter-American Development Bank.

The event was sponsored by the Earth Institute at Columbia, led by economist Jeffrey Sachs.

Shakira and Sanz are members of Latin America in Solidarity Action (the Spanish acronym is ALAS, or "wings"), a nonprofit coalition founded by Latin American artists, intellectuals and business leaders to promote social communities and early childhood development programs in Latin America.

Earlier this year, ALAS held all-star fundraising concerts in Mexico and Argentina that helped secure $200 million in donations.

"I belong to a generation that is learning new ways to get involved in these issues. We are not a passive generation, we're very proactive," Shakira said. "We want to see all those brutal contrasts in our world disappear, we want to see poverty eliminated because we believe it is possible."

She also talked about the upcoming U.S. presidential election, and urged Latino voters to use their voice and vote.

"I'd like to invite the Latino community to come out and make themselves present during this election because they can really make a difference," she said. "I care deeply about this country and I think everyone does because America's economy is so crucial for the rest of the world. The rest of the world's economy depends on the economy of this country and world peace depends on the policies of this country."

Viggo Mortensen and his shotgun in 'Appaloosa'

As an Old West lawman, Mortensen packs a booming eight-gauge shotgun in "Appaloosa," which reteams him with "A History of Violence" co-star Ed Harris, who also directed and co-wrote the Western.

Fifty inches long and weighing 11 pounds, the eight-gauge initially was a turnoff for Mortensen when shooting began on "Appaloosa."

"When I first had it, I said, `Do you really need it to be an eight-gauge, Ed?"' Mortensen, 49, said in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, where "Appaloosa" premiered in advance of its theatrical release Friday.

"It's not that manageable, it's not going to be accurate at much distance. I said, `I'm not going to shoot that thing off a horse, because I'd get blown off the horse, realistically."'

After a day or two, Mortensen started looking at the eight-gauge as an ally, a handy reminder to bad guys that the law can always outgun them.

At that point, Mortensen started lobbying for a bigger role for the gun, which sent dogs and horses running the first time he shot it outdoors and which rattled the windows and floorboards when he test-fired inside a saloon.

"I said, `Ed, you know, I think I should even have it indoors. Even if I'm being friendly or if I were buying some fruit or getting a haircut, I always have it with me,"' Mortensen said. "It's just an intimidation thing, just like our larger-than-the-other-horses horses are. So once you've seen it fired, you don't need to see it being shot again."

"Viggo handles props great, and he loves detail, so that thing was his baby," said Harris, who compared the eight-gauge to an elephant gun.

Co-star Renee Zellweger said Mortensen and his eight-gauge became inseparable.

"He had it everywhere, all day, every day," Zellweger said. "There's a scene that's not in the film where he carries my luggage out of the diner, the cafe, and he had to figure out a way to open the door, grab the suitcases, close the door, and all the while hold that gun."

Adapted from Robert B. Parker's novel, the film is the story of two old trail buddies, Virgil Cole (Harris) and Everett Hitch (Mortensen), itinerant lawmen who sign on to clean up the town of Appaloosa, where a murderous rancher (Jeremy Irons) runs the show.

Cole and Hitch's efforts are complicated by the arrival of widow Allie French (Zellweger), who begins a capricious romance with Cole.

Harris pitched the story to Mortensen while they were at the Toronto festival in 2005 to promote "A History of Violence," the first of a number of smaller projects Mortensen took on after completing "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and the epic "Hidalgo."

They had been on opposite sides of the law in "A History of Violence," Mortensen a diner owner trying to protect his family and Harris a savage gangster trying to suck Mortensen back into his violent old ways.

"I just really enjoyed working with him," Harris said. "He's a really decent guy, a wonderful actor, a great-looking actor. I thought the two of us could capture this kind of unspoken love, appreciation that these guys have for each other. And his sense of humor. He's got kind of a weird sense of humor I like."

A best-actor Academy Award nominee for 2007's "Eastern Promises," Mortensen follows "Appaloosa" with two more films this fall. In "The Road," adapted from Cormac McCarthy's novel, Mortensen plays a man struggling to survive with his young son in a bleak post-apocalyptic landscape.

In "Good," which also played the Toronto festival, Mortensen stars as a novelist, professor and all-around decent man who is gradually lured into Nazi complicity in 1930s and '40s Germany.

2008 HONORARY MAVERICK AWARD WINNER: KEVIN SMITH!

The Honorary Maverick Award was derived from its symbolic meaning to the Woodstock arts colony, representing an individual whose life and work is based on creativity, independent vision and social activism. Director/screenwriter/ actor/ editor/comic book writer Kevin Smith fits the bill like a glove! One of the most unique voices to emerge during the American independent filmmaking renaissance of the 1990’s, Smith made his first film Clerks, in 1994, for $27,575, based on his experiences as a New Jersey convenience store clerk. It was soon followed by, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Jersey Girl, Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back, Dogma and Clerks II. He is currently preparing a horror film, entitled Red State and an untitled comic book/sci-fi movie.

2008 Woodstock Film Festival full line-up

The Woodstock Film Festival celebrates its ninth year with another outstanding collection of nearly 150 “fiercely independent” films, panels, concerts and special events, Wednesday October 1 through Sunday October 5, 2008.

The exceptionally diverse program takes place in the arts colony of Woodstock and the neighboring towns of Rhinebeck and Rosendale.

Tickets are on sale online and at the new Box Office location at 13 Rock City Road, just across the street from Festival Headquarters at the Colony Café, in the heart of the most famous small town in the world! The full schedule of events will be available on-line at www.woodstockfilmfestival.com.

The 2008 festival presents 44 premiere films, the highest number since the festival began in the year 2000, consisting of 10 world premieres, 4 North American Premieres, 8 National Premieres, 13 East Coast Premieres and 9 New York premieres.

More than 2100 films were submitted from around the world, another record for an event that has become known in independent film circles as one of the foremost regional independent film festivals on the planet.

“Each year brings with it a new crop of extraordinarily talented filmmakers who offer fresh and exciting approaches to filmmaking,” said WFF Executive Director Meira Blaustein, “We are proud to celebrate the work of those who take on issues that effect our lives as they try to illuminate, in their own singular way, what lies in the dark, and what is hidden from our eyes and our hearts.”

Senior WFF Programmer Ryan Werner has been working with WFF for more than seven years and notes that the industry has clearly recognized the festival’s accomplishments:

“Our strategy at Woodstock has always been about attracting quality films, not just scoring premieres, “ said Werner, who is the Vice President of Marketing, at IFC Entertainment. “As it happens, this year we do have more premieres than ever before and they are of superb quality, so I think we are starting to see people realize just how special Woodstock is. It's our most diverse line-up ever, and I think one of our best."

Safeguarding a Japanese Master’s Place in Film

For many critics and cinephiles who came of age in the 1960s and ’70s, Nagisa Oshima, now 76, has long held the mantle of Japan’s greatest living filmmaker. Younger viewers, for the most part, have had to take them at their word since his films are scarcely available on home video and rarely revived for repertory screenings.

With this once-towering figure almost in eclipse, it is hard to overstate the significance of “In the Realm of Oshima,” his first major retrospective in the United States in more than 20 years. The series, which runs from Saturday through Oct. 14 as part of the New York Film Festival, includes all 23 of his fiction features. Its title alludes to “In the Realm of the Senses,” a 1976 hard-core provocation and the one Oshima film whose notoriety survives.

The retrospective, which will travel to about a dozen other North American cities, is a labor of love for its curator, James Quandt of the Cinematheque Ontario, who has worked on it for 10 years, tracking down obscure print sources and negotiating a tangle of rights problems. In the context of an amnesiac film culture, it is also a heroic intervention, a bid to safeguard a master’s place in the canon.

Richard Peña, the program director at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which organized the show jointly with the Cinematheque Ontario, said he realized that a retrospective was long overdue when he taught a seminar at Columbia University a few years ago on “Cruel Story of Youth,” Mr. Oshima’s breakthrough second feature, from 1960, and found that none of his students had heard of the filmmaker.

He added that Mr. Oshima’s reputation had suffered from the increasing timidity of art-house tastes: “For a while there was a kind of hostility to the radical experiments in form that Oshima came to incarnate.”

If Mr. Oshima’s legacy now seems a bit murky, it is partly because he was, by design, a tough filmmaker to pin down. Several thematic threads run through his movies — sex, crime, an alertness to the social and political dimensions of his characters’ transgressions — but there is no stylistic signature. Mr. Oshima swerved between extremes, reshaping familiar genres (family epics, youth films) and inventing new ones (freely mixing modes like documentary realism and avant-garde surrealism), always searching for radical forms to match radical content.

Born into a family with samurai ancestry and socialist leanings, Mr. Oshima studied law at Kyoto University, where he became active in the left-wing student movement. His youthful ideals extended into his film career, and his interest in cinema as a revolutionary tool — along with his gift for acid polemics and his pop touch with political material — earned him repeated comparisons to another ’60s titan, Jean-Luc Godard. (Tired of being called Japan’s answer to Mr. Godard, Mr. Oshima suggested that Mr. Godard be considered the Oshima of France.)

Miracle at St. Anna (2008)

At the beginning of “Miracle at St. Anna” an old man sits in his apartment watching a movie on his black-and-white television set. The film is “The Longest Day,” the sprawling 1962 World War II drama starring John Wayne and nearly every other white movie star of the era, and it provokes a bitter reaction. “We served our country too,” says the viewer, a postal worker and Army veteran named Hector Negron.At the beginning of “Miracle at St. Anna” an old man sits in his apartment watching a movie on his black-and-white television set. The film is “The Longest Day,” the sprawling 1962 World War II drama starring John Wayne and nearly every other white movie star of the era, and it provokes a bitter reaction. “We served our country too,” says the viewer, a postal worker and Army veteran named Hector Negron.

“Miracle at St. Anna,” directed by Spike Lee and based on a novel by James McBride, who wrote the screenplay, exists in part to make the obvious, overdue point that men like Hector (Laz Alonso) — Latino and in particular African-American soldiers — fought as bravely and as hard as the characters in those Hollywood combat epics. But setting the record straight after so many years and so many movies is not necessarily a simple undertaking, and this film sometimes stumbles under its heavy, self-imposed burden of historical significance.

Like the French director Rachid Bouchareb, whose “Days of Glory” followed Arab soldiers fighting for France against the Nazis, Mr. Lee sticks to the sturdy conventions of the infantry movie, adapting old-fashioned techniques to an unfamiliar, neglected story. And the cinematic traditionalism of “Miracle at St. Anna” is perhaps its most satisfying trait. At its best, this is a platoon picture, and if it’s not exactly like the ones Hollywood made in the late ’50s and early ’60s, that’s part of Mr. Lee’s argument: it’s the movie someone should have had the guts or the vision to make back then. Better late than never.

It should not be surprising that “Miracle at St. Anna” is occasionally corny and didactic. Every now and then, the action slows down to make time for a speech or a carefully staged argument about racial injustice. But if you’re tempted to roll your eyes, recall that such speeches — on the subjects of liberty and democracy and the mortal threat to those ideals posed by Hitler and his army — have always been a staple of all but the most hardboiled and cynical World War II movies. And in this one, as in “Days of Glory,” the high-minded talk and theme-announcing scenes illuminate a thorny and crucial paradox, namely that the countries fighting against totalitarian race-hatred had some serious race problems of their own.

Learning to Be the Future of France

The young bodies crowding “The Class,” an artful, intelligent movie about modern French identity and the attempt to transform those bodies into citizens through talk, talk, talk, come in all sizes, shapes and colors. With their cellphones and pouts, these bored, restless junior high students look pretty much like the fidgety progeny of Anytown, U.S.A. One difference being that these African, Arab and Asian Parisians live in a country that insists its citizens have only one cultural identity, even if it is an identity— as France’s smoldering suburbs vividly suggest — many of these same young people don’t feel welcome to share.

“The Class” isn’t directly about civil unrest and French identity as a republican ideal, though these issues run through it like a powerful current, keeping the children and adults (and the filmmaking) on edge. Rather, the director, Laurent Cantet — using a small team and three high-definition video cameras — keeps a steady eye on the children, these anxious, maddening little people flailing and sometimes stalling on the entryway to adulthood. He shows them giggling, arguing, boldly and shyly answering questions. He marks their victories and failures and, with brutal calm, shares some of the other lessons schoolchildren learn on their way to the office, factory, shop, unemployment line and perhaps even prison: sit down, raise your hand, stand up, get in line, keep quiet.

That’s tough stuff, but “The Class” slides its points in at an angle, letting them emerge from the children’s chatter instead of hanging its politics around these tender necks like placards. For audiences accustomed to big-screen pedagogical imperatives soaked in guilt and deep-fried in piety, this makes for an exotic change (though the HBO show “The Wire” covered similar ground) and might sound perilously dry. But “The Class,” which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May and opens the New York Film Festival on Friday night, is as much an emotional experience as a head trip. Mr. Cantet would prefer you to think (he is a French filmmaker, after all), but he’s enough of an entertainer to milk an occasional tear.

Quasi-Reality Bites Back

In some of these, ordinary people play versions of themselves. In others, historical events are reconstructed with uncanny immediacy and fidelity. And there are still others that use highly refined tricks and techniques to strip away the veneer of artifice and immerse the viewer in the syncopated rhythms and rough textures of daily life. One festival selection that is indisputably and self-avowedly a documentary, Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir,” is also a cartoon, using animation to reconstruct nightmarish scenes of actual war as well as the dreams of some of the men who fought it.

The blurring of boundaries between performance and captured fact, or between fiction and whatever its opposite might be, characterizes this festival (which opens on Friday and concludes on Oct. 12) from start to finish. The opening slot, frequently reserved for a picture expected to infuse the high seriousness of the event with a touch of patron-pleasing, show business glamour, belongs to “The Class,” Laurent Cantet’s warm and gritty chronicle of a year in the life of a high school in a tough Paris neighborhood. The film arrives in New York with Cannes’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, as part of its pedigree. (Of the 28 entries in the New York festival, 18 were previously screened last May in Cannes.) It is at once the most formally daring and the most populist opening-night selection in many years.

The main character, a teacher named François, is played by François Bégaudeau, an actual teacher and the author of “Entre les Murs” (“Between the Walls”), the autobiographical novel on which Mr. Cantet based this movie. François’s pupils — young faces of the melting pot that France has, with some reluctance and anxiety, become — are played by nonprofessionals, which is to say by young people pretending to be some version of themselves.

Lakeview Terrace' debuts in top spot at box office

Jackson's tale about a cop terrorizing his new neighbors, released by Sony's Screen Gems banner, led a rush of new wide releases that generally did only so-so business.

"Obviously, as compared to like the summer season, the bar has definitely been lowered in terms of what movies are making," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. "This definitely is a slowdown period, as is typical for this post-summer malaise we always seem to run up against."

Debuting at No. 3 with $8.3 million was Lionsgate's romantic comedy "My Best Friend's Girl," starring Kate Hudson as a woman who comes between best buddies played by Dane Cook and Jason Biggs.

Opening in fourth place with $8 million was MGM's animated comedy "Igor," featuring the voices of John Cusack and Molly Shannon in a story of a hunchbacked lab gofer trying his hand at being a mad scientist.

Couturier Valentino shows softer side in new film

That was when American journalist Matt Tyrnauer first met Valentino Garavani.

Tyrnauer was profiling the fashion designer for U.S. magazine, Vanity Fair but admits he "wasn't a fashion writer" and didn't know what to expect.

But as he settled in with Valentino and Giancarlo Giammetti, his business partner of 50 years, he became enchanted by their relationship -- the heart and soul of Valentino's fashion success.

The idea of filming the spry Italian pair -- Valentino is 76, and Giammetti is five years his junior -- struck him later on when he was writing the article.

"I thought you know what, this could be a movie and it wasn't the fashion element, it was the relationship, it was the love story," Tyrnauer tells CNN at the Venice Film Festival.

This was Tyrnauer's great discovery: Prior to his Vanity Fair profile, little was known about Valentino's relationship with Giammetti.

The friendship between Valentino, fussy as royalty and a stickler for detail and the shrewd and eternally patient Giammetti dates back to 1960, a year after Valentino opened his first fashion house in Rome, Italy.

Soon after, Giammetti dropped out of university to rescue Valentino's business from bankruptcy. In 1962 Valentino made his international debut in Florence, Italy's fashion capital at the time.

"People say Valentino and Giancarlo are like a marriage and I say it's bigger than a marriage," says Tyrnauer, "But I think it's bigger than love, I think it's friendship in the platonic sense and that's the story I wanted to tell.

" ... And they happen to build an enormous fashion empire and change fashion along the way," he continues.

So, Tyrnauer floated the idea of capturing everything in a documentary to the pair. Valentino's response: " ... I say why not."

Thrilled, Tyrnauer rushed to gather a camera crew and headed for Rome.

September 23, 2008 -- Updated 1316 GMT (2116 HKT) * Share this on: Mixx Digg Facebook del.icio.us reddit StumbleUpon MySpace S

"Somehow it mentioned in the article that 'the late Abe Vigoda' was not [there]," Vigoda recalls.

The error was corrected, but the damage had been done. Vigoda's "Barney Miller" character -- the decrepit, downcast Det. Phil Fish -- didn't help the image. Never mind that the real Vigoda was a vigorous man just turning 60 at the time; the question of whether he's shuffled off this mortal coil has followed him around ever since. There's even a Web site devoted to his life-or-death status.

But Vigoda takes the attention with good humor (and occasional appearances on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien"). Now 87, he can look back on a successful career with at least two immortal characters: Fish and the "Godfather" lieutenant, Sal Tessio.

Vigoda was a successful New York stage actor when "Godfather" director Francis Ford Coppola came calling. (Among his credits: Robert Shaw's 1968 play "The Man in the Glass Booth," with F. Murray Abraham.) Though he hadn't read the book -- and was Jewish, not Italian -- he had a presence Coppola liked, and was finally cast as Tessio.

Publisher Who Fought Puritanism, and Won

In its heyday during the 1960s, Grove Press was famous for publishing books nobody else would touch. The Grove list included writers like Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs, Che Guevara and Malcolm X, and the books, with their distinctive black-and-white covers, were reliably ahead of their time and often fascinated by sex.

The same was, and is, true of Grove’s maverick publisher, Barney Rosset, who loved highbrow literature but also brought out a very profitable line of Victorian spanking porn.

On Nov. 19 Mr. Rosset will receive a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation in honor of his many contributions to American publishing, especially his groundbreaking legal battles to print uncensored versions of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer.” He is also the subject of “Obscene,” a documentary by Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O’Connor, which opens on Friday at Cinema Village.

Mr. Ortenberg and Mr. O’Connor are themselves refugees from book publishing, and this is their first film. “Barney was basically my idol, my mentor and my role model for most of my publishing career,” said Mr. Ortenberg, who used to run Thunder’s Mouth Press, publisher of, among other books, “The Outlaw Bible of American Literature.” “I just thought, here was a great story about a major cultural impresario most people don’t know about. It was just dumb beginner’s luck, I guess. I had had a lot of experience with intellectual content, and I knew something about editing, and the movie was small enough that whatever mistakes we made, they didn’t wind up costing huge amounts. We learned as we went along.”

The documentary has a literary rock score — songs by Bob Dylan, the Doors, Warren Zevon and Patti Smith — and includes, in addition to the usual talking heads, some surprising archival footage. There’s an excerpt from Al Goldstein’s old cable television show, “Midnight Blue,” in which Mr. Goldstein quizzes Mr. Rosset about his four marriages and in general interviews him not as a major cultural figure but as a fellow smut peddler. There are clips of Europe that Mr. Rosset filmed as a teenager (his father, unfortunately, instructed him to keep the camera moving constantly), some footage he took during World War II and some poignant home movies of Mr. Rosset cavorting with his family on his Hamptons estate. Mr. Rosset, who made and squandered several fortunes, eventually had to unload the place to cover his losses.

Into the Mennonite World to Explore One Man’s Test of Faith

The sun floods the wide sky in “Silent Light” like a beacon, spilling over the austere land and illuminating its pale, pale people as if from within. A fictional story about everyday rapture in an isolated Mennonite community in northern Mexico — and performed by a cast of mostly Mennonite nonprofessionals — the film was written, directed and somehow willed into unlikely existence by the extravagantly talented Carlos Reygadas, whose immersion in this exotic world feels so deep and true that it seems like an act of faith.

Mr. Reygadas’s faith may be more rooted in his own gifts than in God, but it’s the sheer intensity of this belief — which he confirms with every camera movement — that invests his film with such feeling. This stubborn, passionate intensity is evident in the mesmerizing, transporting opener, in which the seemingly unmoored camera traces a downward arc across a nearly pitch-black night sky dotted with starry pinpricks. Accompanied by an unsettling chorus of animal cries and screams (what’s going on in there?), the camera descends from its cosmic perch into the brightening world and then, as if parting a curtain, moves through some trees onto a clearing that effectively becomes the stage for the ensuing human drama.

If you haven’t fled for the exits (cowards!), you will be hooked, as much in thrall to the harmonious beauty of the images as to the foreignness of their setting. Yet strange as this world initially seems, with its quiet rhythms and obscure German dialect, its conflicts soon prove familiar: Johan (Cornelio Wall Fehr), a farmer with seven towheaded children and a devoted wife, Esther (the Canadian writer Miriam Toews), has fallen in love with another woman, a neighbor, Marianne (Maria Pankratz). Though tormented by the affair, Johan feels that Marianne is his truer match, the woman who will correct the mistake he made by marrying Esther, whom he also loves and from whom he has, with tragic, unintended cruelty, hidden nothing

Fuzzy Renaissance

POOR Miss Piggy. Like most aging stars in Hollywood, that prima donna pig, along with most of her Muppet pals, has struggled to find substantial roles. Almost nobody under the age of 30 remembers “Pigs in Space.” All everyone wants to talk about is this Hannah Montana person. What’s a down-on-her-luck puppet to do?

The Walt Disney Company feels her pain. Since it bought Miss Piggy, Kermit and crew in 2004, executives have struggled to figure out how to put them to work. Efforts in 2005 to rejuvenate the furry creatures created by Jim Henson sputtered as the Muppets got lobbed between corporate divisions, and a new television series — a parody of “America’s Next Top Model” called “America’s Next Muppet” — died in the planning stages.

Now Disney is giving it another go by revving up the full power of its culture-creating engines. Instead of the take-it-slow approach, this time the Muppets are getting the “Hannah Montana” treatment, being blasted into every pop-culture nook and cranny that the company owns or can dream up. The balcony blowhards Statler and Waldorf would be impressed with the ambitiousness of the plan — even if it does come with equally outsize challenges.

“We think there is a Muppet gene in everybody,” said Lylle Breier, a Disney executive who is the new general manager of Muppets Studio.

Disney Channel is presenting new specials — the first ran last month, the second will be shown in October — in which Muppets interact with “High School Musical” stars and the Jonas Brothers, among other teenage wunderkinder. A stream of comic videos is in production for Disney.com, where a new Muppet channel recently made its debut, and viral videos have been unleashed on YouTube. NBC will broadcast a Christmas special in December, and special skits will arrive on certain ABC DVD releases. (One skit with the working title “Desperate Housepigs” is on a coming “Desperate Housewives” DVD.)

A new feature film, still untitled, is planned for 2010, with more in development. Meanwhile the Muppets will work overtime elsewhere, appearing on a new float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, on “Nightline” interviewing political candidates and on various talk shows. More Muppet-theme attractions are being discussed for Disney theme parks.

And then there is the merchandise. Coming soon: Muppet clothing at Urban Outfitters and Limited Too stores; Muppet-theme items like stuffed animals and tote bags, at Macy’s; and a Muppet boutique at the New York flagship of F. A. O. Schwarz.

Disney does not want to create a flash in the pan; it sees the Muppets as a franchise that can sit side by side with, say, Winnie the Pooh. But creating any flash at all is the challenge. With the exception of a guest appearance here and there, the characters have largely been in cold storage for the last three years. And because the Muppets have been without a regular television gig for more than a decade, many children and younger teenagers don’t know them.

Ms. Breier said recent focus groups indicated that some children could not even identify Kermit and Miss Piggy, much less ancillary characters like Fozzie Bear and Gonzo the Great. The wisecracking, irreverent Muppets (a combination of puppets and marionettes) also don’t fit that neatly in the Disney culture, as they differ from most of the company’s bedrock characters in two big ways: Kermit and coterie were primarily created to entertain adults, and they live in the real world. Henson was so insistent that they stand apart from his “Sesame Street” creations in personality and tone that he (misleadingly) titled the 1975 pilot that would boost their careers “The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence.”

Undeterred, Disney expects the Muppets to expand their fan base beyond nostalgic older generations to the age group between 6 and 12 that has powered “Hannah Montana” and “High School Musical” into international blockbusters. But how do you make 50-year-old puppets, even those as beloved to many people as these, relevant in a “Wall-E” world?

The Muppets are hardly moribund, but they do represent one of the most striking examples of franchise fumbling in Hollywood history.

“The Muppet Show” made its debut on CBS stations in 1976, introducing the classic characters Disney owns today. (The Muppet characters that populated the inaugural season of “Saturday Night Live” a year earlier were different.) “The Muppet Show” was full of song-and-dance numbers and skits, often featuring absurdist humor, along with backstage antics. Dancing chickens were thrown in for good measure.

Some of the biggest names in entertainment at the time populated each episode. Rudolf Nureyev and Miss Piggy, clad in towels, sat in a sauna and sang “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”; a bejeweled Elton John performed “Crocodile Rock” with Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, the show’s house band.

Witty, somewhat subversive dialogue and the hilarious-looking Muppets themselves quickly won audiences over. The show, which ran for five seasons, at one point was syndicated in 100 countries. The ubiquitous franchise spawned hit movies (“The Muppet Movie”), hit songs (“The Rainbow Connection”), loads of merchandise and, eventually, an animated series called “Muppet Babies.”

But those glory days are long gone. After Henson’s death from a rare bacterial infection, at 53, in 1990 his five children took control of the company. They set about working on new adventures for the Muppets — but not before dragging them into a nasty court fight with Disney over terms for a Muppet attraction Henson had completed for Walt Disney World. And the franchise’s pop-cultural resonance slipped; the last Muppets movie, “Muppets From Space,” sputtered at the box office in 1999.

In Hollywood, Credit Remains, at Least for a Few Big Names

LOS ANGELES — Hollywood, apparently, is still in the money.

The crisis on Wall Street is roiling companies around the globe, but bank-financed credit is continuing to flow into the movie business, albeit on a much more moderate basis.

On Friday, as government leaders cobbled together a historic rescue of the American financial system, Media Rights Capital, one of Hollywood’s most prominent independent production companies, closed on a $350 million revolving credit fund led by JPMorgan Chase and Comerica. The financing effort began just six weeks ago, said Asif Satchu, co-chief executive of the film company.

“In a credit climate that on its surface has completely shut down, this deal proves that there is money available,” said Marni Wieshofer, a senior vice president of Media Rights Capital. Mr. Satchu added that “banks are still in the business of putting money to work; they’re just making many fewer bets.”

The new financing will be used to expand the production company deeper into film, television and digital projects and will be used in conjunction with the company’s initial $425 million capitalization. Media Rights Capital has helped to finance such films as “Babel,” starring Brad Pitt, and is behind a high-profile digital video collaboration between Seth MacFarlane, the creator of the “Family Guy” television series, and Google.

The deal follows the announcement last week that Steven Spielberg had secured $700 million in credit through JPMorgan to start a new production company in partnership with Reliance Big Entertainment of India.

Movie companies have looked to complex financing deals with private money in the last two years to offset risk and help cover sharply higher production costs. But in recent months that pipeline has slowed to a trickle because of the credit meltdown, with even the likes of Paramount Pictures becoming unable to find acceptable financing terms.

Last week, as the economic crisis escalated, Hollywood started to fret anew. But the Media Rights Capital deal, in partnership with Mr. Spielberg’s money, indicates that film companies considered to be low risk can continue to tap the credit market.

‘THE GODFATHER: THE COPPOLA RESTORATION’

Many of Francis Ford Coppola’s films, including the recent “Youth Without Youth,” have been haunted by the passing of time and an acute awareness of its destructive handiwork — the sense that once a treasured moment has been lost, nothing can be done to recover it.

But now a piece of Mr. Coppola’s own youth, which also happens to be one of the greatest works in American film, has been recovered, and spectacularly so. On Tuesday Paramount Home Entertainment is issuing the three films that make up Mr. Coppola’s “Godfather” saga, miraculously rejuvenated by a team of digital restoration experts under the supervision of the film preservationist Robert A. Harris. Offered both in high-definition Blu-ray and standard DVD editions, Mr. Coppola’s three films seem to have reclaimed the golden glow of their original theatrical screenings — a glow that has been dimmed and all but extinguished over the years through a series of disappointing home video editions.

Michael Moore’s Election-Year Freebie

Mr. Moore at the University of Central Florida in 2004

Instead he is placing the film on the Internet for free viewing, at SlackerUprising.com. Mr. Moore said the unorthodox rollout is a gift to his fans and a rallying cry for the coming election.

“At times there’s nothing wrong with preaching to the choir,” he said in a telephone interview from his office in Traverse City, Mich. Liberals have been “pretty beaten down over the last 28 years.”

“The choir, especially on our side of the political fence, is often fairly dejected,” he observed, “and could use a good song every now and then.”

The song in this analogy is a 100-minute look at Mr. Moore’s tour of college campuses during the fall of 2004. Cameras followed him to 62 cities as he urged young people to vote for John Kerry. The resulting footage sat on the shelf for a few years before Mr. Moore spliced together a version of the film, then titled “Captain Mike Across America,” and showed it at the Toronto International Film Festival a year ago.

After the festival screening Mr. Moore returned to the editing room to give the film “more heft and substance,” he said. It includes exchanges with Mr. Moore’s detractors and their attempts to interrupt his tour, raising free-speech issues and creating some comedic moments. Some critics (including those for The Michigan Daily, at the University of Michigan, and Inside Toronto) have said the film amounts to little more than a “highlight reel” of Mr. Moore’s trip, suggesting that its theatrical prospects were dim. Mr. Moore disputes that, saying that his agent, Ari Emanuel, believed the film could net $20 million to $40 million. (“Sicko” brought in $24.5 million domestically.)

“I prohibited him from contacting any studios to ask them whether they were interested,” Mr. Moore said. “I just said straight up, ‘I want to give this away for free.’ He thought I should have my head examined.”

The Weinstein Company owned the distribution rights to the project, so Mr. Moore bought back the North American rights for an undisclosed amount. “The irony is that I believe people should see movies in theaters,” Mr. Moore said, praising what he called the communal experience. “You get so much more out of it, emotionally, cathartically.”

Perhaps for that reason Mr. Moore said he hoped fans would set up screenings and use the film to raise money for candidates. Visitors to the Web site will be able to stream and download it free, thanks to Mr. Moore’s partnership with Blip.tv, a company distributing online videos; additionally a $10 DVD will be distributed, and free copies can be requested for libraries.

Robert Greenwald — another member of the small fraternity of advocate filmmakers, whose production company specializes in tying video projects to off-line organizing — said a supporter in Alaska was already planning a screening. The film is “quite an adrenaline boost, even though it’s got a sad ending,” he said.

The ending, of course, is the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004. The film notes that voters under the age of 30 were the only demographic that Mr. Kerry won outright. “Unfortunately,” reads a graphic at the end of the film, “their parents voted for Bush.”

Mr. Moore suggested that the 2004 election results were a prelude to the Obama movement, which was “ignited by young people.”

“The road to getting where we want to be has to be filled with a certain amount of failure,” he said, drawing a parallel to the United Auto Workers’ labor movement 70 years ago.

Mr. Moore remains coy about the subject of his next movie, although he said filming was well under way. He has denied rumors that it will be a sequel to “Fahrenheit 9/11,” but he has not quashed reports that his next film will explore what he views as American imperialism. The recent turmoil of the financial markets may be giving him even more material.

Like Its Heroine, a Movie Encounters Savage Treatment ..

IT was known as the "Dakota Fanning rape movie" at the Sundance Film
Festival in 2007. The press screening for "Hounddog" elicited actual
boos, not to mention eviscerating reviews. Even before that,
evangelical groups protested the film after someone involved in its
early financing alleged publicly (and erroneously) that Ms. Fanning
was naked in it.

Few movies recover from such a hostile reception, especially a
low-budget Southern-gothic tale set in 1959 about a 12-year-old
motherless girl obsessed with Elvis Presley who seductively sings for
a teenager in exchange for tickets to a concert of the King's. But
thanks to a radically different cut of the movie and the coffers of a
new independent film company listed on the Nasdaq's over-the-counter
market, "Hounddog" will finally make its way into 22 theaters across
the country on Sept. 19.

Sitting in the Cupcake Café in Clinton this month, the film's
director, Deborah Kampmeier, sipped tea and reflected on the journey
of her film, which cost just under $4 million. "The whole process was
challenging from the beginning," she said. "It's a story about a girl
whose voice and spirit are silenced, and then it's about her
reclaiming her voice on a deeper, truer level. It's very interesting
how the story that I'm trying to tell has been paralleled by the
actual events of the making of the film.

Bridging Generations and Hemispheres

IN Wayne Wang's first feature, "Chan Is Missing" (1982), two taxi
drivers go looking for an absent friend in San Francisco's Chinatown.
As they piece together contradictory testimonials from those who knew
the missing man, what emerges is almost a composite sketch of
Asian-American identity. But the film, which still feels fresh and
insightful after all these years, is a mystery without a solution. Its
conclusion, unencumbered by the foggy rhetoric of identity politics,
is that identity is hard to pin down, up for grabs, something you make
up as you go.

The point applies equally to this versatile director's unpredictable
career. For more than 25 years Mr. Wang, now 59, has reinvented
himself time and again with apparent ease, zigzagging between America
and Asia, big and small movies, safe bets and wild risks, insider and
outsider status.

Breaking Ground With a Gay Movie Hero

As the culture wars rage anew between social conservatives and their liberal counterparts, Hollywood is preparing to break fresh ground by releasing a high-budget epic film in which the lead character - a classic, and classical, action hero - is passionately in love with a man.

In Oliver Stone's three-hour drama, "Alexander," Colin Farrell, as the fourth-century Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great, has a number of tender love scenes with his best friend, Hephaistion, played by a long-haired Jared Leto. In the film, which cost about $155 million to produce, Alexander is also married to Roxane, played by Rosario Dawson, but the marriage takes a back seat to his passion for his boyhood friend.

In decades past, Hollywood hinted at classical homosexuality in major films like 1960's "Spartacus." And it has dealt with the contemporary subject comically in films like "The Birdcage," the 1996 adaptation of the French film "La Cage aux Folles." But the film industry has never risked quite so much on a blockbuster film that depicts a leading man as gay or bisexual.

In breaking with that historical reticence, "Alexander," set for release by Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Brothers studio next Wednesday, may redefine what is acceptable to mass audiences when it comes to heroic portrayals on the silver screen

'Dark Knight' may be tough sell at Oscar time ..

The last time a movie topped a half-billion dollars at the domestic box office, it sailed away with most of the Oscars

That was "Titanic" 11 years back.

This time, it's "The Dark Knight," a critically acclaimed film but a genre picture that will be a tougher sell to Academy Award voters, except for the performance delivered by Heath Ledger.

As Hollywood enters the prestige season, when studios unveil most of their awards contenders, Ledger seems a solid bet for an acting nomination as the maniacal bad guy the Joker.

The role has been classified as one of the best villains in Hollywood history, a remarkable turn by the actor who died in January of an accidental prescription drug overdose.

While "The Dark Knight" also should score well in technical categories, its Oscar prospects are slim for other key awards, among them an acting honor for Christian Bale, reprising his "Batman Begins" lead role with an exceptional delivery as the comic-book superhero.

Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai In

Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan will paired in another
movie together. This one is a remake of Abhimaan, in which his father,
Amitabh Bachchan and mother, Jaya Bhaduri, starred opposite each
other. The movie will be made by Rajiv Menon, who have given us movies
like Sapnay and the Tamil, Kandukonde Kandukonde. Currently the couple
are shooting for Mani Ratnam's Ramayan (Ravana) (2008) and upon it's
completion they will start to work on Dhun (2009) .

Packing Up the Plantation and Finding Distant, Unexpected Connections

Partly a family memoir, partly a historical essay and partly the record of an improbable feat of engineering, Godfrey Cheshire’s documentary “Moving Midway: A Southern Plantation in Transit” tells a fascinating and complicated story of regional identity. Mr. Cheshire, a longtime film critic (and as such an acquaintance of mine), connects his longstanding interest in American popular culture with the lore attached to his ancestral home, a North Carolina plantation called Midway.

Ranbir's most adorable fan!

Bachna Ae Haseeno is a hit not only amongst the youngsters but also people above 30! However given Ranbir's cute Casanova image in the film he has scored more with the ladies and one lady who is absolutely in love with Ranbir is none other than his mother! We spoke to the gorgeous Neetu Singh recently and the proud mother had no qualms in showing off her son's success... example being her caller tune! Jabse Tere Naina used to be Neetuji's caller tune for all this while but now that Bachna Ae Haseeno is Ranbir's latest release one can hear its title track on Neetuji's phone! "You can call me Ranbir's PR", joked Neetuji and continued "I absolutely loved him in Bachna Ae Haseeno! In fact I have seen the film thrice already. Ranbir is as cute as you all are finding him in this film! He is naughty and absolutely notorious."

New York Film Festival plans a China focus

The New York Film Festival has announced plans for its 2009 programme just two weeks before its 2008 edition starts, Reuters reported.
The 47th annual festival will focus on the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China and feature a retrospective of movies made between 1949, when the Communists gained power, and the Cultural Revolution in 1966, revisiting the best-known films from that period as well as works less known outside China.
The programme will include the first major American screening for a collection of about 20 films made in the early years of the country's state-run studio system. The 2008 festival begins on September 26 and runs through October 12.

Sir Paul defiant on Israel show

Sir Paul McCartney has insisted his first show in Israel will go ahead, despite pressure from campaigners who want him to cancel it.
The 65-year-old will perform some of his biggest Beatles and solo hits at the Tel Aviv gig later this month.
But protesters asked him to reconsider over Israel's occupation of the West Bank and its Gaza Strip blockade.
He told newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth: "I refused. I do what I think, and I have many friends who support Israel."
The Israeli government pulled a Beatles concert in 1965 on the grounds it could corrupt the nation's youth.
When asked how the band members felt about the decision, he said it was "a bit insulting".
He added: "The Beatles had a pretty positive influence on the world and only regimes that wanted to control their peoples were afraid of us.

David Lean, Perfectionist of Madness

DAVID LEAN was famous for his perfectionism, and like every director afflicted with that quality he didn’t — couldn’t — make perfect movies. His films betray the anxiety of their making. He also couldn’t make many. He completed just 16 in his long career, a paltry 4 in the 30-plus years that followed the great international success of his wartime epic “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957). That movie ends, after nearly three hours of conflict, peril, courage, violent death and decidedly mixed motives, with a single summarizing word, spoken twice: the word is “madness.”

A No. 1 Film for the Coen Brothers

The top four films at the box office over the weekend were new releases, with “Burn After Reading,” the new comedy from the filmmaker brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney, right, leading the field. Earnings of $19.4 million made for a record opening for a Coen brothers film and a Focus Features release, according to Media by Numbers, a box office tracking firm. Coming in second was “Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys” (LionsGate), written and directed by Mr. Perry, which made $18 million. The police action drama “Righteous Kill” (Overture Films), starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, earned $16.5 million for third place, and “The Women” (Picturehouse), based on both the 1936 play by Clare Boothe Luce and the 1939 film directed by George Cukor, came in fourth with $10.1 million. The only holdover from last week’s Top 5 was “House Bunny” (Columbia), which made $4.3 million over the weekend, good enough for fifth place, and has earned $42.15 million in four weeks.

Aishwarya Rai And Rajnikanth Shooting For Enthiram

Shankar's Robot (Enthiram) (2008) is now Enthiram (2008) (Tamil forRobot). The title of the movie had to be changed since Shahrukh Khan's Red Chillies has already registered the movie name Robot withAssociation of Motion Pictures and TV Programme Producers (AMPTPP) inMumbai . Now that the name has been resolved, the crew left for theUSA last week to start to shot two songs composed by AR Rahman,starting September 8. Other details provided by Producers AyngaranInternational Films Pvt Ltd and Eros International include Mary E Vogtwill design the futuristic outfits, Stan Winston Studio (USA) will dothe animatronics and Yuen Woo Ping is in charge of the stunts. Visualeffects (VFX) will be provided by Hollywood companies ILM, Tippet,Cafe EFX and Centro and Menfond based out of Hong Kong. The moviestars Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Rajnikanth .

Sherlyn Chopra New Album Dard e Sherlyn

Sherlyn Chopra has just released a new album, it's called Dard eSherlyn. The album has caused quite a stir in the music industry withthe racey video and the songs. Special security measures has been inplace for all her promotional events since Sherlyn could come up withthe diamond encrusted bikini top and golden hot pants that have beenworn during the video.

New DVDs: ‘How the West Was Won’

The best reason for buying a Blu-ray player right now is Warner HomeVideo's high-definition version of "How the West Was Won," a film made46 years ago in the highest-definition moving picture medium the worldhad seen: Cinerama. With its three strips of 35-millimeter filmprojected side by side with a slight overlap on a gigantic, curvedscreen, Cinerama offered six times the resolution — which is to say,six times as much visual information — of the standard film of 1952,when it was first used commercially.

Offstage, a Beastie Boy Enters the World of Independent Film

Every day the Beastie Boy known as MCA, who spent years rapping aboutgirls and parties and the five boroughs, goes to work in an office.Sure, it's a cool one: the former headquarters of the Benjamin Moorepaint company, it is a loftlike space filled with surfboards,skateboards, flea market paintings and his fellow Beastie Mike D.'srecords; the attitude is dot-com casual. In this atmosphere of dudes,MCA has become the Boss

An Assassin Arrives to Turn Off the Lights

Of all the shoddy, insipid qualities of "Bangkok Dangerous," the mostegregious is the most fundamental: The film is simply dreadful to lookat. We have at long last reached the nadir of the Malnourished Mood atthe cinema, that sickly palate of grimy greens and blues, ubiquitoussince "The Matrix," employed by thrillers with atmosphericpretensions.

The Revolution Is Dead, Long Live the Revolution

INDEPENDENCE in the movies is a cri de coeur and an occasionallyprofitable branding ploy, but mostly it's a seductive lie. For much ofAmerican movie history it has been shorthand for more aestheticallyadventurous films, bolder in form, freer in spirit and at times moreovertly political than those churned out by the Hollywood studios.Once we were one nation under the movie screen, indivisible, withliberty and Shirley Temple for all, but independent film gave us newways of looking, or so the story goes. Never mind that JohnCassavetes, the patron saint of independent cinema, struggled forattention and dollars for much of his filmmaking career

Bhatts' next, “RAAZ -THE MYSTERY CONTINUES”, confirmed for January 2009

While the mystery is continuing in production and on celluloid, thereis one major clue that has been solved. Yes, the date for thetheatrical release of the next blockbuster thriller from Bollywood –'RAAZ – THE MYSTERY CONTINUES'– is now no more a secret. This spinechilling movie from Vishesh Films is going to hit worldwide screens on23rd January 2009. This is the most anticipated release of 2009, withabsolutely no other film to match up to its theme and style. It'sdefinitely going to be a chilly winter that will keep you shuddering!!'RAAZ – THE MYSTERY CONTINUES' is being directed by Mohit Suri andstars Emraan Hashmi, Kangana Ranaut and Adhyayan Suman.

A coup by SRK [shah rukh khan er chobi dibi]

The "Temptation" tour is captained by none other the king of BollywodShah Rukh Khan and no efforts are being left to go free in order tomake it much gigantic than the just concluded tour led by Big B.And this time SRK has done what was thought as impossible and this isreally a surprise.To increasing the audience pulling power and shooting up the khanpower to truly make "Temptation" a unique affair, guess what SRK hasdone.

For Michelle Williams, It’s All Personal

MICHELLE WILLIAMS has an Academy Award nomination, the open adulationof major filmmakers and a résumé that is striking in its worldlinessand creative ambition. But if her career has seemed to progress almostinconspicuously, it is partly because of its introspective bent —small movies, subtle performances — and partly because it has latelyexisted in the shadow of her personal life.

For Michelle Williams, It’s All Personal

MICHELLE WILLIAMS has an Academy Award nomination, the open adulationof major filmmakers and a résumé that is striking in its worldlinessand creative ambition. But if her career has seemed to progress almostinconspicuously, it is partly because of its introspective bent —small movies, subtle performances — and partly because it has latelyexisted in the shadow of her personal life.

Murky days again for Ram Gopal Varma

Just when we thought that Ram Gopal Varma's lucky stars have startedto shine again after the over whelming success of 'Phoonk', anotherheavyweight problem has surfaced for the maverick film maker to dealwith.Film financier Bharat Shah has filed a complaint against Ramu accusinghim of breach of contract.As a result the Indian Motion Pictures Producer's Association (IMPPA)has forwarded a letter to the film maker asking him for explanation.

Newbie Anant Narayan opposite Deepika in a film

Officially, he may not even be a film old in B-town, but the mediaspeculation and conjecture surrounding this Bollywood newcomer isalready that of an established star. No prizes for guessing this one –we're talking of entertainment journalist turned Bollywood actor AnantNarayan who's in news yet again for allegedly refusing to do a cameoin Nikhil Advani's soon-to-be released Chandni Chowk to China'.Just a day after Anant got back from Beijing, where he was attendingthe 2008 Summer Olympic Games as a proud representative of hiscountry, Anant found himself amidst yet another controversy

Salman Khan to do a show with Wizcraft for Bihar flood relief

Film industry came together to appeal to the public to help the 3million people who suffered from the devastating flood in Bihar.People who attended the press conference were Prakash Jha, ShatrughanSinha, Shekhar Suman, Manoj Bajpai and Neetu Chandra, along with thepolitician Sanjay NirupamPrakash Jha has set up a rescue and relief operation, PUNARWAAS, FloodRelief Mission, Bihar, in collaboration with PRAYAS, headed byShatrughan Sinha, with the help of an NGO working in Bihar.The relief camp —22 RD will provide complete care for 5000 people inthe village Kattaiya.

Savior or Sinner? It Can Be Tough to Tell

In "Babylon A.D." Vin Diesel, the slowest-moving action hero inmovies, travels over land and under water from somewhere in the formerSoviet Union to New York City in the company of a nun (Michelle Yeoh)and a young woman named Aurora (Mélanie Thierry). Aurora is eithersome kind of biological weapon or some kind of messianic figure.I won't say which, though this odd, solemn disaster has made itselfspoiler-proof by refusing to make any sense at all. The onlyexplicable thing about "Babylon A.D." is that it was not screened inadvance for critics. Our judgments, in any case, may be superfluous,since the director, Mathieu Kassovitz, has already publicly describedit as "pure violence and stupidity."

Akriti to connect more with her fans

Akriti Kakar has carved a niche for herself in the highly competitivemusic industry by giving voice to hit songs like "Dil Vich Lagiya Ve"from the movie 'Chup Chup Ke', "Inshaallah" from 'Welcome' and thechart buster "Move Your Body/Freaky Freaky Raat" from 'KismatKonnection".She is going to add another feather to her hat by singing live for thesoon to be aired show of Zee Music titled as Rock Baby Rock.Some of the forthcoming films in which we will be hearing more of thissinger's soulful voice are 'Golmaal Returns', 'Kidnap', 'HelloDarling', 'Cinema' and 'Harry Puttar'.

War May Be Hell, but Hollywood Is Even Worse

Despite what you may have read lately, the biggest target of ridiculein "Tropic Thunder," a flashy, nasty, on-and-off funny and assaultivesendup of the film industry, is not the mentally retarded. Rather, thetrue targets of this extreme comedy's free-flowing contempt are thestars, makers, brokers, miscellaneous supplicants and even die-hardfans of the movies, who are all portrayed as challenged in somefashion: intellectually, ethically, aesthetically, sartorially,chemically, longitudinally, you name it.

Revisiting Coen Country for Odd Men

The sound of hysterical laughter is heard.That line of dialogue and the stage direction that follows could have plausibly been found in many of the 13 major movies created by the Coen brothers: black comedies like "Blood Simple," "Barton Fink" or "Fargo" where invariably something does go horribly wrong. Here, however, the speaker is Joel Coen, and the laughter is provided by Ethan, his younger brother (by three years). They were responding to the question of whether their big night at the Academy Awards last February — four Oscars for "No Country for Old Men," including best picture — changed the brothers' outlook on the film industry, or their place in it, or in any way represented an apotheosis of their 24-year career as darlings of art-house cinema.

The Pool (2007)

In "The Pool," a recurrent image that develops into a symbol of thegap between affluence and poverty shows the waiflike Indianprotagonist, Venkatesh (Venkatesh Chavan), perched in a tree, gazinglongingly at a private swimming pool on the other side of a hedge. Askinny, 18-year-old man-child who longs to dive into the water,Venkatesh ekes out a living cleaning hotel rooms and selling plasticbags on the street with his 11-year-old sidekick, Jhangir (JhangirBadshah). The shimmering pool, in which no one seems to swim, is awindow onto a world he can hardly imagine.

At Movies, Fewer Eyes, Bigger Haul

Fewer people went to the movies this summer than last, confirmingHollywood's fears that this year's slate of pictures would not matchthe crowd pleasers of 2007.But luckily for an industry that cares mostly about the money, higherticket prices and a Batman sequel delivered near-record revenue to themajor studios.