Category: Films

  • Sridevi’s Comeback at the IIFA 2013

    After watching Fanaa a few weeks ago, I thought I might continue the Indian adventure with Tabu. Then, I watched Devdas — still unimpressed with Aishwarya Rai’s acting prowess and totally committed to watching Indian films because I can write hers and Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s names without googling now HUZZAH! — and was struck by Madhuri Dixit (no googling!) and her amazing “hooker with a heart of gold.” In fact, my favorite scene in Devdas is probably her dance duo with Aishwarya. And Bhansali’s films are still such a beauty to see. Sighs.

    Then, when I thought I might head the Madhuri Dixit road, I watch English Vinglish and get struck by Sridevi (no google!). My first shock, of course, was realizing that I had knocked off ten years of her age right off the bat. Then while reading her wiki page (this is why it’s important to have a good Wiki page, fans), it hit me like a bucket full of cold water~

    Sridevi was a successful child star, a sex symbol… and is possibly positioning herself as a MILF — my own observation here. Apparently English Vinglish was quite a hit, marking her comeback after 15 years off the screen.

    I don’t think there’s ANYONE in the world of movies (or entertainment) that has been able to achieved this. I can’t think of a single actress (or maybe actor) who started out as a child, grew to be the actress made of dreams, moved on to becoming a sensible adult, apparently a great mother, and make a comeback to take all that’s “cinematically” hers.

    The performance is okay (by Kpop standards, anyway), but Sridevi is totally charming in this show for the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA). I think the IIFA cameras shoot a quick reaction from Madhuri during the number, just as they showed Sridevi on Madhuri’s own performance (which rocked my socks) [1]. I could do with less Deepika reaction shots, though.

    So… I am at a conundrum. Who should I go for first? Sridevi or Madhuri? And since both have sooooo many films, where do I start?

  • Ayumi Ito for Shanghai Love Fragrance

    I remember the first time I got to watch Swallowtail Butterfly and found it interesting that Ayumi Ito spoke a couple of lines in Mandarin. Later I was surprised she was in the cast of The Go Master; it just seemed like Ayumi Ito had maybe some interest in working outside Japan. Interestingly, she’s also the one Japanese actress working in Kpop music videos [1], and I know for certain she speaks pretty good English.

    Then again, Japan doesn’t seem to like its actresses trying to work in other markets [eg. Rinko Kikuchi, Koyuki xD]. I wonder if she hasn’t considered working in the US or Europe, or maybe they don’t consider her Japanese enough or hot enough. After all, US and European casting seems to be so random at times.

    Anyway, while googling a photo of Ito for the previous post, I ended up running into this short film she did back in 2005 directed by someone called Nomura Yasuo (野村泰夫) titled Shanghai Lian Xiang (上海恋香) or translated to Shanghai Love Fragrance… or possibly referring to the smell of incense. The short that lasts 50ish minutes sees a Japanese young woman (I don’t think they mention her name) that arrives to Shanghai to deliver her grandmother’s ashes to the bay because she had spent the 1930s in the Japanese concession of the city. In there she met a young Chinese man and fell in love… and it’s all melancholy and sadness due to the events of the time.

    [iframe height=380 width=580 src=”https://player.youku.com/embed/XNzkyMjg4NTY=” ]

    There’s no much info except for this page.

    Ito plays both characters of the woman and the young version of her grandmother, with dialog in different levels of Mandarin and Japanese. It gets a little confusing when you have to read Japanese for big chunks of Mandarin, and Chinese characters for most chunks of Japanese dialog xD But I think you get the point across.

    You gotta get your Ayumi Ito fix any way you can.

    There’s also a song that plays throughout~

    春天来了树发芽
    冬天来了飘雪花
    你等的人等来了吗
    我还在等我还在等
    我还在等他
    千山越过到你家
    万水越过到我的家
    你找的人找到了吗
    我在寻找我在寻找
    我在寻找他
    夏天来了花儿美
    秋天到了云追月
    你等的人等来了吗
    我还在等我还在等
    我还在等他

  • Kuch Kuch Hota Hai Re-Imagined by Shunji Iwai

    I finally re-watched my BR copy of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai — Kajol’s eye makeup close-up in THAT scene on a big screen is stunning — my third time overall since I began watching Bollywood films and the best 9 hours of my life.

    While watching KKHH last night, right after catching the trailer for Japan’s remake of Love Actually, it made me think what the world of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai would be like through the eyes of Shunji Iwai. Of course that would mean several cultural changes and cuts for length. I’m uncertain on whether I would place the main characters as college students or last years of high school… or even whether the school years should be taking place in the late 90s.

    ayumi-ito-shugo-oshinari

    What I was more focused on is the characteristics of the actors and their characters. For Kajol’s Anjali, I knew I needed someone who could be one of the boys but at the same time should be physically interesting, and I immediately thought of Ayumi Ito. Her boyish aura is best shown by her character in SOLANIN — her squishing the beer can is burnt in my mind — while having a sort of rough exterior. I know a lot of people who don’t mind Ayumi Ito, but I also know of some of these people who… given the time… were taken by her. So I don’t have any doubt in her talent.

    Next up — I know SRK’s role is pivotal because Rahul is the epitome of the Bollywood heartthrob dufus, but I’m taking it down a notch. I’m not very knowledgeable about Japan’s heartthrobs, but I don’t want someone who would be too pretty to make guys nervous nor a guy that’s more of a guys’ guy. I thought Shugo Oshinari would be a nice middle point.
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  • Going Down the Van Movie-going Memories~

    I was finally doing some room cleaning, and ran into this plastic bag that had a whole bunch of the tickets of movies I caught while living/staying in Van. The results? Of course, I spent over two hours trying to make out some of the fade tickets, arranged them and put them in order of attendance.

    movie-tickets-vancouver

    The first movie that I caught there was Hulk at what used to be Tinseltown Cinemark. The first two columns cover my first year of studies. My maximum number of movies a month was 9 flicks in January 2004 (Cold Mountain, Big Fish, Peter Pan, 21 Grams, Along Came Polly, Monster, Butterfly Effect, The Cooler and Ginger Snaps 2), April 2004 (Hellboy, The Delicate Art of Parking, Kill Bill, Connie and Carla, Home on the Range, The Punisher, Dogville (twice) and Man on Fire), followed by July 2006 (Devil Wears Prada, The Omen,The Lake House, The King, PotC 2, Lady in the Water, Strangers with Candy, and an unidentified movie that’s already faded) with 8 flicks.

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  • Let the Drum Beat Roll – Dholi Taro Dhol Baaje

    This is my first (proper) Aishwarya Rai movie, and though I wasn’t blown away or bothered by her acting (maybe yet); Sanjay Leela Bhansali more than over-compensates for his direction. While watching Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, I just kept thinking “this has got to be the most artistic movie to ever have a fart joke in.” It’s a pretty gorgeous movie to watch.

    While watching the performance for Dholi Taro Dhol Baaje [lyrics + translation], my brain just went “OMG, this is a beautiful sequence.” Then again, so was my reaction while watching Black. And so it was with Khamoshi: The Musical. Can you tell I’ve been taken by his directing?

    And the music in this was awesome. Is it really true that they spent two years working on it? Coz with IMDb, you never really know these things for sure.

    Think this already deserves an India tag.

    I just checked Amazon (and other online sources), and there doesn’t seem to be HD releases of his movies, though. It pains me so much.

  • Garegin Nzhdeh Trailer

    A couple of months back, a trailer for a movie called Garegin Nzhdeh (Гарегин Нжде, it sounds like “neshdeh” when I hear it) was released, about the life of the — thinker and revolutionary — Armenian hero general Garegin Nzhdeh and his military path, including his less famous personal life.

    I’m unsure as to what Chulpan Khamatova’s character is supposed to be, the second trailer makes it seem like she’s his wife. I guess I’m gonna have to wait a long time for it, since I have no idea how long it takes for Russian movies to generally come out on DVD. Let alone English subtitles.

    But it looks pretty decent.

    I also found a Making Of available without subs.

  • Top Flicks About Chicks

    I really can’t remember exactly when I started out the Top Flicks About Chicks list on MUBI, but it must have been around the same time I wrote how Chick Flicks was a doomed genre in regards of critics. So it might be almost 4 years… and I’ve finally reached 300 titles in the list!!!

    A Chick Flick should center on little girls, girls, young women and women… as students, as neighbors, as friends, as daughters, as granddaughters, as sisters, as mothers, as lovers. They are simply women. With that alone, we can tell all sort of other stories that have little to do with romantic comedies.

    The purpose of the list, of course, was to encompass an array of female character — not only in the binary sense, since the list also includes men/boys who identify as women/girls… and viceversa — of various cultural, ethnic, social backgrounds. Not favoring one genre over the other, not valuing dramas over comedies… just simple stories about different women.

    Though I’m sure the list could be longer, that’s 300 feature length films out of the 2896 (counting shorts) currently rated on the site- that’s roughly 10% so I suppose the list could expand to up to 500 or maybe 1000 once I reach 5000 or 10000 rated films on the site.

    top-flicks-about-chicks
    1. Treeless Mountain 2. Welcome to the Dollhouse 3. Juliana 4. Labyrinth 5. Fuckin’ Amal 6. Mirrormask 7. Gun Hill Road 8. Pariah 9. Bend it like Beckham 10. Swing Girls 11. The Land of the Deaf 12. Sunny 13. Whip It 14. Stoker 15. Maria Full of Grace 16. Breaking the Waves 17. My Marlon and Brando 18. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days 19. Dil Bole Hadippa! 20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 21. Kotoko 22. Violeta Went to Heaven 23. Skin 24. Raise the Red Lantern 25. Incendies

    I picked 25 of the 300 films to illustrate some of the variety (I hope it’s AS varied as I intend the list to be), though I ran out of picks and couldn’t include any of the ‘older’ female characters. If I could pick 5 more, they’d be: Lemon Tree, Frozen River, Late Bloomers, Mother, For 80 Days.

  • Bhangra Bistar – Dil Bole Hadippa

    When women play tomboy girls or girls who have to pretend to be boys on screen is hardly believable, mainly because mainstream actresses are normally TOO pretty and productions wouldn’t bump the masculinity to make them look less like girls — at least that USED to happen in a film like Queen Christina (and Morocco, though I don’t think Marlene Dietrich intends to play tomboy as much as play Dietrich on that) [1].

    Actresses like Bynes in She’s the Man [1] didn’t exactly hit the mark, though it could come close to Ella Chen’s level in Hana Kimi [1]. However, the other adaptations of the same manga series- the Japanese version of Hana Kimi with Horikita Maki [1] or the most recent Korean version To the Beautiful You with f(x)’s Sulli [1] suffer from similar problems. Same could be said for Zhao Wei- maybe I could overlook her role in Red Cliff [1][2], but I definitely CAN’T overlook her prettyfied self in Mulan [1].

    In general, though, Taiwan and China leave me very surprised with the gender-bending… intended or unintended. It’s countless the times that I’ve asked myself whether I was seeing or listening to a boy or a girl. It doesn’t help that most names (without characters) look very gender-neutral.

    ANYWAY, I’ve gone way off topic here. The main thing in this post is supposed to be Rani Mukerji, whom I saw for the very first time in Dil Bole Hadippa. Though it’s a pretty decent film, I’ve come to appreciate it more now for Rani- especially for her mannerisms in the Bhangra Bistar number. Though the number is before she gets to pretend to be a guy, her character works as a performer at a moving acting troop, with the lack of a leading man… she’s made to play the part.

    And she does it perfectly.

    I usually very hard to please on these issues, but Mukerji sells me the role of ‘the dude’ in this one. She pulls it off better than Ella or Bynes, though all of them get to be funny while doing so.

    You can even see a bit of the shooting of this part of the film [1].

    There’s also an official upload, but quality is not as good and they only include the musical numbers without context.

  • The Man from Sheredar with English Subtitles

    I was looking for Chulpan Khamatova news (she’s gonna be acting and co-producing a film on the life of writer Vladimir Mayakovsky, if you must know), and ran into news about this short documentary for the Sheredar Foundation [Facebook][Twitter][VK.com] titled The Man from Sheredar (Человек из Шередаря), and it’s got to do with charity work.

    I haven’t watched the whole thing (just ran into the subtitled version), but it seems to deal with children with severe illnesses and the rehabilitation they get through this charity fund, which allows over 100 children to get the help they need.

    The Vimeo version available is HD but lacks subtitles.

    The documentary is also competing at this year’s Kazan International Festival of Muslim Cinema in the category of Documentary, so I don’t know if there’s a longer cut of the film available since it’s not considered Short-length.

  • The Event, Sobytie

    This is one of the last movies I saw with Chulpan Khamatova in — titled The Event or Sobytie (Событие), it’s supposed to be a stage play or something by Vladmir Nabokov, but somehow it’s dramatically shot by Andrey Eshpay, who has directed Khamatova in Deti Arbata (Дети Арбата, aka. Children of the Arbat… or The Children of Arbat Street) as well as Mnogotochie (Многоточие, Ellipsis).

    I haven’t been able to watch all of Deti Arbata because it’s got no subtitles AT ALL, but the first episode seemed kinda good. Mnogotochie is supposed to be good, but it’s also sans-subtitles and I fell asleep. Also, Khamatova doesn’t play such a big role in that film, so maybe my bias made it possible for me to sit through Sobytie and enjoy it A LOT with or without subtitles.

    It’s a really quite gorgeous piece of cinematic theatricality.

    On the split YouTube uploads, it’s not as evident… but you could try to see for yourself. It’s dramatic as Russian theater can only seem to be, and Khamatova sports some very drastic style that actually… suits her really great!

    I have a thing for Khamatova’s hair style changes for roles. It’s crazy, she’s nuts. I’ve never seen anyone sport the hair she’s sport in the history of the worldwide arts EVER. She really REALLY must love her characters. xD

    If any Russian-knowing kind person stumbles upon this post, would anyone care to help me work out subtitles for it? You guys, where do you hang out for subtitles? So many films left without subtitles!