Tag: distributors

  • Rani and I are Kindred Spirits

    xD

    I ran into this episode of India’s Most Desirable featuring Rani, and watched it through the night. She explains the development of her personality, which resulted in her character in No One Killed Jessica. I find it a bit odd, but okay- I’ll take it.

    What I found most interesting was her relationship with her parents, and the thing she said about having one set of parents in your lifetime really struck a chord with me.

    Then she plays the games- the 2 Truths and 1 Lie game was a bit odd. She does elaborate on one hard to believe truth (a baby switch when she was born), but she totally skims through another one (almost married at 14?) ; I’m not sure if she was joking or not. LOL The fan questions segment was a bit weird, but Rani participates in all good fun.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QvavnYh2s8

  • Tabu Ranked

    Two weeks before the end of the year, I was already done watching all the Rani Mukerji movies I could get my hands on [1], and by Christmas I had already devoured about ten movies with Tabu [1], casting her in my Joan Crawford Indian re-adaptations. So I’m pretty much done watching Tabu’s main basic filmography. I might have two or three more that I want to watch (Prem, Border and Khudam Kasam) that I’ve been able to locate with subtitles, while Kala Pani I haven’t been able to find in a subbed version.

    Her alongside Rani and Vidya Balan are my current top contemporary Indian actresses. I wish the first two were as eager to get lead vehicles (nowadays) instead of supporting… like Tabu in the last decade! Be it a lead or supporting role, though, Tabu remains interesting and slightly girl-empowering.Ghaath and Hu Tu Tu (and to a degree: Aamdani Atthani Kharcha Rupaiyaa) had Tabu in a tux or sporting a short hair with a tomboy-ish attitude, urging people to be revolutionaries (or terrorists, depending on your POV), and doing all those sneaky subtly sex scenes in things like Maqbool (to a degree -though not hidden- in The Namesake), Ghaath, and definitely Astitva.

    I was amazed at how consistently good she was even in poor vehicles like Hawa or Silsiilay. She’s also a straight-forward no bullshit kind of person. Even if you give her the best role to fit her schedule, if she doesn’t like you, she won’t work with you. That means she’ll probably never agree for a Lars Von Trier movie, and that Ang Lee is the best.

    Also, there are two new Tabu movies coming up~ Jai Ho with Salman seems like it can be crap because Stalin (the Telugu movie it’s a remake of) was so, and I’m completely unable to stand Salman Khan except for Maine Pyar Kiya. Then there’s Haider by Vishal Bhardwaj, so that’s -at least- some kind of relief. That has got to be somewhat interesting, even if it turns out not superb.

    *Updated Apr’16*

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  • Vidya arranges books by thickness and other Koffee with Karan bits

    I found this episode of Koffee with Karan extra hilarious… or maybe this is symptomatic of my Indian movie-watching. In any case, if you have not yet met Vidya Balan- please, get acquainted as soon as possible.

    And I just gotten acquainted with Farhan Akhtar in Luck by Chance -literally- just a few hours ago.

    Having said that… Vidya Balan talks about her married life and how she arranges books by their thickness (and her husband by height). I was going to ask “Who DOES that?” but my mother came to mind, and she suggested arranging books by color. So there you go~ As for me? I arrange books by topic or function. In the case of educational books (programming, design, photography, etc) or dictionaries. Fiction (books, plays, collections etc) is divided by West/East content arranged by author… and then I have a comic and graphic novel section mostly arranged by author and genre.

    And Vidya is such a tease. She knows how to push Karan’s buttons.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWnkzKOOXWI

    She also left us with this quote:

    Women like it,need it, want it as much as men do.

    I didn’t know you could actually watch The Dirty Picture subbed online. Thank you, Shemaroo.

    — EDIT Nov 7, 2914 —

    For some reason, StarTV has made the clips private, but you can still watch the episodes on their website.

  • Khamatova for Pepel

    I actually am not sure whether Pepel (Пепел) is a series or a TV movie. It doesn’t seem to be a theatrical film, though. It’s supposed to air on October 27th (so about now) in Ukraine and on the 28th in Russia (through Channel 1). If my reading is okay, this seems to indicate that Pepel is a 12-episode series, and its got the whole historical war mystery setting.

    The show stars Yevgeni Mironov, who also worked with Khamatova in Dostoevsky, as the title character, alongside Vladimir Mashkov, Elena Lyadova, and Sergei Garmash. I’m not sure who Khamatova is supposed to be playing.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDMIQ9FJET8

    I wonder if it will eventually get subtitled.

  • Rani Mukerji Films Ranked

    So tell me, is this impressive for a couple of months watching Indian films or what? I must admit, though, that I’m still not familiar enough with Hindi or any other dialect spoken in films. My level of understanding goes from having a ladki or ladka giving their dil tere liye. And I’m not even sure that’s Hindi or Urdu.

    Also, though most of the films I’ve come across are subtitled, some weren’t properly sync to their video sources. I think that happened to me with Ghulam, Nayak, Yuva, Chalte Chalte and maybe Hum Tum. I can’t even remember any longer. After this, I realized I really really REALLY love Rani Mukerji on screen… say it with her voice “she’s so cute.” And her eyes are so expressive with such on screen charisma. Her dancing doesn’t seem to be at the level of ease as… let’s say- Madhuri Dixit, but she compensate with the acting.

    Though her performance on Hey Ram is barely 10% of the film, I do think it deserves its spot on the Top5 Top6 of her films and everyone should watch it. It’s an amazing movie.

    Fan for life!

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  • The Madhuri Dixit Journey

    I think this is how it’s going to go~

    madhuri-dixit-filmography-watchlist

    … after I’m done with Rani, of course. xD

    There are A LOT of Indian movies, and each star has A LOT of films in their filmographies. This time around, I’ve taken the “most voted” films in IMDb alongside the “best rated” and added a star with personal recommendations I’ve been given to create this list. I don’t even know if I will find all these with subtitles. If I managed to watch 15 or 20 of these, I might even have a Madhuri Dixit Films Ranked list [1][2] XD

  • 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!

  • Yu Aoi Films Ranked *Fancy Edition*

    A long long LONG time ago (actually, about three years ago), I made a rough list of Yu Aoi films I had watched and ranked them on MUBI (then TheAuteurs). Since I’m way too lazy to bother adding films to their database, unless I really REALLY wanted the films to be on their database, I’m just gonna work on the ranking here, like I started with my Russian fandom love Chulpan Khamatova.

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  • Mike Wazowski is Precious in Japanese Dub

    I wasn’t too enamored by Pixar’s Monsters University even though Monsters Inc. is one of my favorites (or maybe BECAUSE I liked that one so much?), but this clip of the Japanese-dubbed version popped up in my YouTube feed, and it’s just tenfold the cuteness that the original audio track was because- well, because Japan is so damn hardcore about their dubbing [2].

    Plus, Disney (and as an extension, Pixar) are the kings of international dubs [1][2].

    And they also do worldwide releases pretty okay. Except when Japan has to wait AGES to get some stuff — but serves them right, when they make us wait for everything they do for ages as well.