May 06, 2008

Blurring Borders in Ramchand Pakistani

In their book Borders and Boundaries, editors Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin write: “As an event of shattering consequence, Partition retains its pre-eminence even today, despite two wars on our borders and wave after wave of communal violence. … Each new eruption of hostility or expression of difference swiftly recalls that bitter and divisive erosion of social relations between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, and each episode of brutality is measured against what was experienced then.”

This statement speaks directly to the premise of Pakistani director Mehreen Jabar’s debut film Ramchand Pakistani, which recently premiered in NY at the Tribeca Film Festival. Based on a series of true events which took place in 2002—during a period where India and Pakistan were on the brink of war—it is the story of one innocent Hindu Dalit family which became a victim of the national hostilities that have permeated Indo-Pak relations since partition. The story begins in a small, dusty border village in on the Pakistan side of the Thar desert. Ramchand (Fazal Hussain) is the willful, naughty son of a Hindu Dalit farmer Shankar (Rashid Farooqi) and his wife Champa (played by Nandita Das). One morning, when Ramchand gets into an argument with his mother, he skips school and goes for a walk in the desert terrain bordering his father’s farm. Without realizing it, he crosses over into Indian territory. His father follows him to bring him back, but it’s too late. Indian patrol officers, suspicious of their motives (“Are you Pakistani spies?”) take both of them into custody.

For the next five years, Ramchand and his father are trapped in a bureaucratic prison system in India, where despite the lack of evidence that they did anything wrong, it is impossible to release them because of a longstanding battle of wills between the Indian and Pakistani governments. The film follows Ramchand’s coming of age in a prison where he and his father share a cell with Indians and Pakistanis, many of whom made the mistake of “crossing over” and have gotten lost in the shuffle.

The prison cell is a metaphor for communal relations – in a tiny space, men of different regions and religions are forced to coexist—and, in the process, come to realize what they have in common—a desire for freedom—far outweighs their differences. In the prison, we have the expected characters—the mad man, the gentle old man, the mullah, the pimp, the pervert, the local politician, as well as the surprising character of the female security officer Kamla (Maria Wasti) who becomes Ramchand’s teacher (and first crush) and learns a little something about her own caste prejudices. These characters make for interesting conflicts and challenges to the young Ramchand and shape his development into a young man whose main goal is survival … just like his mother Champa, who is struggling to go on with her life. The movie switches gracefully between the Pakistani village where Champa’s “life must go on” and the Indian prison, showing us the passage of time, the pain, and the helplessness that this small family must confront.

Director Mehreen Jabar’s father Javed Jabbar is a well-known Pakistani writer and producer. He came up with the idea for this film, after reading a series of newspaper articles about a father and son who were kept in India after an accidental border crossing. What drew Mehreen Jabar to this film? “For one, it was the simplicity of it: a family separated for no fault of their own and forcibly put into a situation where they have to deal with circumstances not of their making,” she says in the director’s statement. “With this simple story came layers upon layers of subtext—about relationships, discrimination and the politics of the region—told not in a propagandist way but rather through the eyes of a child and a woman.”

A memorable soundtrack by Shubha Mudgal and Debajyoti Mishra, both Indian musicians, one of my favorite lead Indian actresses, a largely Pakistani cast, and shooting in Pakistan make this a film whose very collaborative making broke down some of the borders and barriers it speaks of. Nandita Das had to get special permission from the Indian Pakistani (thanks for the correction Chachaji) government to star in this film, for example. The music was recorded in Mumbai. And, the prison set in the film was based on the main jail in the town of Bhuj, Gujarat, close to where the original father and son were held as prisoners. Director Mehreen Jabar and her producer visited this prison and subsequently recreated it on the outskirts of Karachi. “It was the only location in Pakistan other than the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, where the Indian flag flew at full mast for about 3 to 4 weeks,” Jabbar says.

The result is a moving and poetic film which brings an ongoing issue into our line of vision without being overly dramatic or cliched. A quick search of news reports shows that the grim predicament of Indian and Pakistani prisoners is still a reality. See this news of a recent release of two young Pakistani boys from an Indian prison.

Ramchand Pakistani is on its way to the Seattle Film Festival later this month, and hopefully, will arrive at a city near you soon.

Sandhya at 08:38 AM in Film · 48 comment(s) · Direct link

April 23, 2008

Harold and Kumar 2 -- An Early Review

Well, Cicatrix and Sandhya have given us much of quality to chew on today with their posts on Love Marriage, so leave it to the English professor to do a review of a gross-out comedy, the much-anticipated (well, by me) Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. The film opens nationwide this coming Friday, 4/25.

My wife and I saw the film for free — thanks to an invite to a press screening/sneak preview in downtown Philadelphia. (I know the serious journalists in the house must cringe every time a blogger gets thought of as equivalent to “press,” but oh well.)

My first thought is — I wouldn’t be surprised if the film opens at #1 in the U.S. box office over the coming weekend. I’ve been seeing quite a number of ads for the film on TV this past week, suggesting that New Line Cinema thinks the film will open big (bigger, anyway, than Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, four years ago. Bigger than Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in Baby Mama? I’m not sure).

As for the film itself, there my response might be a bit more idiosyncratic.

For one thing, I’m probably a little too old for some of these raunchy jokes. Poop jokes I expect and accept. Gratuitous sexual humor involving female (and sometimes male) frontal nudity — also mostly expected. Homophobic prison fellatio humor… er, not so much.

Really, anyone with a brain goes to a film like this for the commentary on race and ethnicity. The script-writers clearly knew that they needed some “serious” material to justify the rest of the film, and here they went back to some of the great material from the first Harold and Kumar, in some cases ramping up the subversive mockery of ethnic stereotypes a couple of notches. The other folks in the movie theater with us tonight — an ethnically mixed, downtown Philly crowd, with significant numbers of Asian Americans and African Americans — seemed to be having a good time. The ethnic humor and the stuff related to Guantanamo certainly seemed to go over well; it was actually some of the raunch that was too gross for this particular crowd…

The best scene in the film involves the Ku Klux Klan, and the best lines in the film actually went to George W. Bush (who makes a surprise cameo!). Some critics are saying the film is less original than the first Harold and Kumar, but I’m not sure that most mainstream audiences, for whom H&K is more of an underground/cult film, will be bothered. Admittedly, those Sepia Mutiny readers who have seen the first Harold and Kumar three or more times might well find this film to be a bit too predictable…

On the other hand, isn’t Homer’s The Odyssey also predictable? The Harold and Kumar films are, generically, mock epics — complete with stock figures standing in for “Penelope” (the earnest girlfriend waiting for the hero/anti-hero to return home), “Sirens” (here, prostitutes in a whorehouse), the “Scylla and Charybdis” of the War on Terror and Illegal immigration, and indeed a “Cyclops” (literally — the film actually has a Cyclops. I’m not joking). Rob Cordry plays the equivalent of the Greek Poseidon. Ithaca is … Jersey City.

(If you think I’m out of my mind to compare Harold and Kumar to The Odyssey, know this — I recently met a woman who had written a chapter of a sophisticated film studies dissertation on “generic subversion in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.” I may be out of my mind, but at least I’m not the only one.)

Do I recommend the film? Well, only to people who don’t mind some really juvenile gross-out humor mixed in with their ethnic subversion. To all of the self-identified “grown-ups” in the room looking for serious engagement with the assault on civil rights stemming from the War on Terror, or the pernicious fall-out from America’s foreign policy blunders … you might be better off renting something boring meaningful, like, say, The Road to Guantanamo. Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, by contrast begins with poop, pubic hair, and masturbation — and that’s just the first 30 seconds or so.

amardeep at 10:39 PM in Film · 34 comment(s) · Direct link

April 20, 2008

Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles: 2008 line-up

One of the things I miss most about living in Los Angeles is the IFFLA that takes place at the ArcLight in Hollywood every April. There was just something cool about being one of the first desi kids on the block to be able to see some smart films that are typically overshadowed by the usual Bollywood fare. Granted, there are a few flops but for the most part you can be pretty sure that you will walk away satisfied at having seen one or two memorable flicks. This year’s film festival is THIS WEEK, April 22nd to 27th.

As I pursued the line-up I noticed a few films I’d really like to check out if I was still there. The first one reminds me of my childhood vacation in Ahmedabad where I became a feared kite-killer over the course of several months, Under The Ahmedabad Sky. Eventually, my own kite, with dozens of confirmed kills, went down. I learned an important lesson that day. No matter how bad, powerful, or smart I am, there will be someone “more badder” to eventually take me down:

Another film that caught my eye is titled “The Pool.” It won a special jury prize at Sundance last year:

Venkatesh works as a bell-boy (attendant) in one of Goa’s budget hotels. On his way to work everyday with his friend Jhangir, he peeps over the wall of an empty house, staring at the swimming pool and proudly declaring his aspiration to break in and take a swim. Venkatesh’s dream is short-lived as the owners return. The mysterious and dysfunctional relationship between the homeowner and his daughter peaks Venkatesh’s curiosity as he gradually moves closer to them, finding a job as a gardener on the premises. [Link]

A documentary about the partition called The Sky Below also looks interesting. The film-maker Sarah Singh has a blog where she details some of her encounters with the films subjects. I read some of her posts with fascination:

The 1947 Partition of the Northwest region of the Subcontinent ushered in swift and devastating violence for which the aftershocks are still being felt today. The peoples of Pakistan and India while sharing a common culture and history have yet to speak candidly about this volatile period in recent history that divided a nation. Filmmaker Sarah Singh thoroughly explores the personal impact of Partition through first hand accounts by people of many faiths, geographical regions and walks of life that shed new light on the complexities of Partition and its far-reaching impact. [Link]

Finally I found this trailer to a film called The Morning Ritual kind of cute. We all have morning rituals, not like this though:

abhi at 11:03 PM in Film · 11 comment(s) · Direct link

March 12, 2008

Subverting Stereotypes: Hari Kondabolu's "Manoj"

A short film written by comic Hari Kondabolu will be playing with a group of other shorts at the SFIAAFF film festival this weekend (Friday night and Sunday night), and readers in the Bay area might want to check it out. As you may remember, Sepia Mutiny posted on Hari’s aggressive brand of comedy earlier, in this post (also see Smithsonian Diamonds Exhibit — with a rather shocking epithet for the Queen of England).

Here is the short blurb on Manoj:

MANOJ is a short documentary about the life and remarkable success of Indian-born standup comedian, Manoj Krishnamurthy. Manoj’s use of South Asian stereotypes has led to a growing fan base across the United States and has placed him on the edge of greater stardom. However, this begs the following questions: What happens in America when you’ll do whatever it takes for a laugh? What if you don’t care?

The idea of the film is interesting — what if a performer actively and intentionally set out to exploit comic Indian stereotypes for all they’re worth? It reminds me, a bit, of Dave Chappelle’s own dilemma about whether his brand of comedy was subverting old racial humor, or in some sense perpetuating it. It’s also an issue that is in the air when discussing Kal Penn or Russell Peters.

No clips from the film are available online yet, but Hari was nice enough to email me a couple of snips of dialogue to give us a sense of what he’s after in Manoj:

INT. COMEDY UNDERGROUND STAGE- NIGHT

MANOJ KRISHNAMURTHY, an Indian comedian in his mid-30s is performing on stage at the Comedy Underground in Seattle. He is wearing a blue Kurta shirt, and has a beard.

MANOJ: Hello, my name is Manoj, I just flew in from India and boy, are my 8 arms tired!

Manoj waves hands as if he is flying.

Audience laughs.

MANOJ: Thank you. Thank you.

And then from later in the film:

MANOJ: I had a tough time meeting women in India. They just didn’t understand, you know, what I was about and I think part of it was my approach, you know. I used to go up to the ladies and I used to be like, “yeah, so… YOUR FATHER OWES MY FATHER LAND! NOW YOU MUST MARRY ME!”

Audience laughs.

MANOJ: And that wouldn’t work. Uh, you know, I’m a man of a different era, I guess.

It’s realistic that an audience would find these types of jokes quite funny; it’s even fairly realistic to presume that an Indian-American comedian could actually become a star working self-deprecating Indian material. Audiences would likely eat it up, thinking, “it’s ok to laugh at that, because he’s Indian.”

But how would such a performer live with himself? And what does it tell us about the acceptability of racism as a norm?

amardeep at 02:30 PM in Film · 40 comment(s) · Direct link

March 07, 2008

After the Namesake

What do you do once Nam-e-sake is out and the DVD is long since released? Well, if you’re Kal Penn, you make Harold and Kumar Escape from Gitmo (link makes noise if you open it), but what about the rest of the cast?

Well, Mira Nair is bringing Irfan Khan along to a new project entitled (and I kid you not) Kosher Vegetarian:

The Namesake director Mira Nair is making another movie about intercultural relationships, this time between an Indian guy and a Jewish girl, played by Natalie Portman. In sort of a strange twist, Irfan Khan, who played the father in The Namesake, will play Natalie’s Gujarati boyfriend in the film, tentatively titled Kosher Vegetarian. [Link]

Meanwhile Tabu is opening a Bollywood acting school in London, something that sounds like a Kal Penn film in and of itself:

Bollywood stars Anupam Kher, Urmila Matondkar, Tabu and Boman Irani are opening a “Bollywood Acting School” in London, to train students for a career in Indian cinema. [Link]

I’m just picturing a class of very pasty folks diligently practicing the phrase “Arre o samba!” until they get it right. I imagine the fight instructors stand around saying, “No no no, that’s not nearly fake enough. Your punch needs to pass around 3 feet from his face from the proper Dishoom! Dishoom! fighting technique.”

ennis at 01:32 PM in Film · 50 comment(s) · Direct link

March 05, 2008

Kal Penn @ UPenn

This past Sunday I went down to the University of Pennsylvania for a rare, open Q&A session with Kal Penn. As readers may remember from Anna’s earlier post on the subject, Penn is at Penn this spring, teaching a class on representations of Asian Americans in the Media. He’s also shooting episodes of “House” (go, House), and stumping for Obama in his free time, though with that schedule I’m not sure how he has any.

As I understand it, there was initially some controversy about the class — is this going to be a stunt, or a real asset to a the Asian American Studies curriculum?

If it were just about bringing a little glamor to campus, I would be skeptical too. But I think it’s fair to say Penn is both an actor and a careful observer of the representation of Desis in both Hollywood and the Indie film world. If you listen to him talk, it’s clear that he’s thought carefully and self-critically about his experiences and choices (he’s very aware that his role as a home-grown, Muslim-American terrorist on 24 might be seen as “problematic,” for instance — though he still defends the choice to take the role). He’s self-conscious enough to know what a racist representation of a South Asian character is, and call it by that name. But at the same time, he’s open about the fact that minority actors sometimes need to play ball to get an entree in Hollywood.

In response to one of the questions posed by a student at the Q&A Kal Penn effectively acknowledged that this was the dilemma he faced when he auditioned for his first Hollywood movie, “Van Wilder.” Unfortunately, Penn also suggested, in response to another question, that things aren’t all that much better even now, for actors who are just starting out:

“I think things for me personally as an artist have changed dramatically, but I know that overall, that change has been slow and incremental. There is no shortage of truly talented actors of South Asian descent in places like New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London. There are folks who majored in theater, studied film, and are experiencing the same struggles I went through when I was starting out. I think that was my main point: things for me have begun to change, but things for others are perhaps remaining the same.” (Kal Penn, from an email)

For instance, Penn was asked not long ago to do an Indian accent for a small role he had in a big studio film, but the respectful rendition of an Indian accent he attempted on camera was found to be insufficiently comical by the studio. After the film was shot, the studio execs actually asked him to go back and re-dub his lines with a thicker, more comical accent. To his credit, Penn refused to do it — and there wasn’t really anything the studio people could do (the film was destined to flop in any case). As Penn put it in his answer to the question, “They were using racism to hide a bad script. Racism was their marketing strategy.”

(That last comment strikes me as dead on, but still distressing. It’s not that racism or sexism sneaks into scripts by accident — it might be that in some ways studios know this is exactly what they need to sell product…)

Penn pointed out that part of the problem is with the writers and studios that make this stuff — and note that the alternative to unfortunate images of Asians in the media is often the complete erasure of all people of color from the fantasy world presented on TV and in the movies. “Friends” and “Seinfeld” were both shows with all white casts, set, improbably, in New York, one of the most diverse cities in the world. In the Q&A, Penn asked, “How come there are no people of color in their New York City?”

But of course, it’s not totally irrelevant to this that most South Asians in the U.S. are professionally oriented — there aren’t many of us trying to be writers or media people. “We’re too busy trying to be doctors and engineers,” Penn suggested, to think of this as a serious career option. If more of us were in the business there might be fewer characters like Apu (or Taj Mahal Badalandabad), and more characters like Gogol Ganguli.

I also stood up to ask a question myself, about naming — since this is one of the things that some readers at Sepia Mutiny have sometimes grumbled about vis a vis Mr. Kalpen Modi (not to mention, Piyush “Bobby” Jindal…). My question was this: I completely understand why you chose a stage name when you were first starting out. But now that you’ve achieved a measure of success as an actor, have you considered going back to your given name?

Some parts of the answer were expected. For one thing, quite a number of professional actors use stage names. Penn did recount that he had been advised by friends to adopt a more “Anglo-sounding” name when he was first starting out. But he also mentioned something I hadn’t known about before, that “Indian uncles” had suggested that, based on Hindu numerology, it would be good luck for him to try and keep his real first name, but add an extra letter to it. And voila: Kalpen became Kal Penn.

As for whether Kal Penn might ever revert to his given name, not likely — once you started getting credited under one name, he suggested, it’s hard to change it. Still, on several of his recent films, he’s lobbied to get his real name introduced on the credits somewhere, perhaps as production assistant. On “The Namesake,” he was fittingly credited for Nikhil as “Kalpen Modi,” and for Gogol as “Kal Penn.”

amardeep at 01:44 PM in Film, Identity, Issues, Politics, TV · 75 comment(s) · Direct link

February 29, 2008

Another film trailer

There is going to be a new Tarsem Singh movie, The Fall and here the trailer is funny, albeit for somewhat different reasons than The Love Guru:

There is sort of a S&M look here, which might be appealing if one is into that sort of thing… On the other hand, all the leather and stylized violence might also just come across as kind of kitschy and pompous — this is the kind of imagery that’s very, very easy to mock.

amardeep at 11:56 AM in Film · 14 comment(s) · Direct link

Timberlake in a banana hammock? I'm there!

Behold, the trailer for “The Love Guru” (tagline: His karma is huge). I have mixed feelings, because I really lurve Mike Myers; I quote something from Goldmember almost daily. But, as familiar and fun as the shrimp/gnome scene in this trailer is (“Moleee Moleee Moooole”, anyone?) seeing Myers travel around on a pillow, flying carpet-ishtyle made me want to smack someone.

Plot nugget below:

Pitka (Mike Myers) is an American raised by gurus who returns to the USA in order to break into the self-help business. His first challenge: To settle the romantic troubles and subsequent professional skid of star Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) whose wife Prudence (Meagan Good) left him for rival skater Jacques Grande (Justin Timberlake). [wiki]

We should totally do a meetup on June 20th, so we can shriek about what offended us, afterwards. ;)

p.s. Thank you to lion and astrosmurf, for the tip!

anna at 11:55 AM in Film, Humor, Theater · 43 comment(s) · 1 reader(s) linked · Direct link

February 24, 2008

Shekhar's Oscar Shout-out

If you, too, are watching the 8oth Annual Academy Awards, you might have noticed that one of the first people thanked in an acceptance speech was a Desi. The inaugural Oscar of the night went to Alexandra Byrne, who was nominated for Best Costume Design. Byrne won for her work in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which is why she said “Thank you, Shekhar” during her brief, graceful remarks.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is the Academy Award-winning 2007 film sequel to the film Elizabeth. It stars Cate Blanchett and is based on events during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Written by William Nicholson and Michael Hirst and produced by Working Title Films, The Golden Age is directed by Shekhar Kapur. The film has music composed by Craig Armstrong and A. R. Rahman. [wiki]

You may not have caught it, because she said “SHAKer”. I almost didn’t catch it, because I was still swooning over presenter Jennifer Garner’s flawless gown and dimples (I’m a sucker for dimples). The only reason I snapped out of my reverie is because of my crack training here in the bunker, which has given my kundi magical abilities to notice potentially bloggable topics (see what I did there? HA!).

Four years of recording the minutiae of brown everything have passed, but I still perk up and think, “hey!” when I recognize something Sepia, especially when I do so during a program I am watching for the dresses…speaking of which, it’s time for me to get back to the show…SHAKer’s star, Cate Blanchett is taking the stage…

anna at 09:11 PM in Film · 38 comment(s) · Direct link

February 18, 2008

That’s your cousin?

Last week Anna posted about some “controversial” statements made by a British politician with regards to inbreeding within the British Asian (i.e. Muslim) community. Specifically cited was the practice of marrying one’s first cousin. Coincidentally, a friend of mine from L.A. (Amyn Kaderali) has just finished a movie (awaiting distribution) titled “Kissing Cousins.” It is not a documentary but rather a “Relatively Romantic” comedy that tries to make the audience feel just a bit uncomfortable. Here is the trailer:

Amir is the last bachelor in his group of coupled-up friends. When they accuse him of being incapable of having a relationship and replace him as the best man at an upcoming wedding, Amir and his visiting long-lost cousin hatch a plan to prove them wrong. [Link]

Among the cast of actors is the gorgeous Rebecca Hazelwood as the hot cousin, Gerry Bednob, David Alan Grier, and…Urkel (sorry, Jaleel White…respect). Amyn also previously released the short film Call Center. Keep an eye out for Kissing Cousins at upcoming film festivals and let SM readers know how it is.

abhi at 03:41 PM in Film · 46 comment(s) · Direct link

February 15, 2008

Flying high with just one engine

The folks over at Cinematical.com have been taking an early peak at some of the films that will be playing at this year’s SXSW Film Festival in Austin. This one immediately caught my eye as a film that more people need to know about:

FLYING ON ONE ENGINE captures the story of the severely disabled Dr. Dicksheet, a man who has donated his surgical skills to the cause of alleviating suffering among India’s poor. The film both highlights the problems of cleft lip and other congenital deformities, and also tells the dramatic story of a person risking his life to help those in need. Emphasizing Dr. Dicksheet’s frailty, his surgical brilliance, and the spectacular effects of his actions, this film juxtaposes the Nobel Prize nominated surgeon’s godlike status alongside the incredible desperation of the Indian community in which he serves.

The website of The India Project which Dr. Sharadkumar Dicksheet (from Brooklyn) runs is filled with inspirational pictures and stories, so I am glad someone has made a documentary about his work to spread the word. He is an eight-time Nobel Prize nominee and although he is himself hobbled by sickness, his patients think of him as a “God” for the help he brings to their lives.

In 1968, Dr. Dicksheet started his first free surgery camps to give dignity, function and opportunity to these otherwise condemned children of India with congenital facial and eye deformities. Each year Dr. Dicksheet spends five to six months in the poorest regions of India conducting free surgery camps…

To-date, 64000 surgeries have been performed. Each surgery also impacts an average of 10 family members and 90 relatives and friends. Through Dr. Dicksheet’s human spirit and medical intervention, over 5.5 million people in India have been touched by his life changing surgeries…

In 1978, Dr. Dicksheet met with a serious car accident leaving the right side of his body paralyzed. He managed to recuperate within three years. While recuperating, Dr. Dicksheet continued to travel to India to conduct the free medical camps, and completed his fellowship in cosmetic surgery.

Tragedy struck Dr. Dicksheet again in 1982. Dr. Dicksheet was diagnosed with stage four larynx cancer and had to undergo four major operations followed by radiation therapy and given a life expectancy of two years. One of Dr. Dicksheet’s greatest love was singing classical music. But, Dr. Dicksheet did not lose hope. He continued to travel to India to conduct the free medical camps, learned how to talk using oesophageal speech techniques, and studied further in the specialized field of Plastic Surgery. [Link]

If you would like to help the filmmaker finish his work you can donate here and join the Facebook group here. Donations directly to The India Project can be made here.

50% of the film’s profits will go to a charity focused on treating severely deformed children. The documentary will also raise awareness of cleft lip and congenital deformities, and help ensure Dr. Dicksheet’s noble quest continues for years to come. [Link]

abhi at 12:22 AM in Film, Health and Medicine, Non-profits · 24 comment(s) · Direct link

February 14, 2008

Young Padawan

Star Wars fans were excited to learn today that a new animated film based on the the Star Wars Universe will be released this August:

Star Wars: The Clone Wars makes its theatrical debut as an all-new, computer-generated feature film in August 2008, followed by a television series in the fall.

The new adventures in a galaxy far, far away apparently take place between the second and third Star Wars prequel films, similar to the Clone War series of the same name that ran between 2003 and 2005. Returning characters include Anakin Skywalker - who later becomes Darth Vader - along with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Padme Amidala. New heroes also join to battle familiar villains from the Star Wars prequels, such as Darth Sidious, Count Dooku, and General Grievous.

“I felt there were a lot more Star Wars stories left to tell,” said George Lucas, Star Wars creator and executive producer of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. “I was eager to start telling some of them through animation and, at the same time, push the art of animation forward…” [Link]

One of the major points covered in the press release is that a new female Jedi character will be introduced. She will serve as Anakin’s padawan (the way Anakin was Obi-wan’s padawan). The name of this young Jedi (who will of course eventually be hunted down and killed by Vader) is Ahsoka Tano:

… among the familiar characters like Obi-Wan, Anakin and Yoda is a mysterious new Padawan named Ahsoka Tano.

This young Togruta is eager to prove herself as a worthy Padawan to her bold Master, Anakin Skywalker. Able to wield a lightsaber and pilot a spacecraft with great talent, Ahsoka promises to become a worthy Jedi. [Link]

Tano joins a long list of other sci-fi desi characters. Mysterious is right though, because I can’t find much of a backstory on her yet. The name Ahsoka makes it seem like she is Indian (dot not feather) but the name Tano makes it seem like she is Indian (feather not dot). Or maybe, since this all happened a long long time ago, and in a considerably far off galaxy, ethnically ambiguous is ok. For those of you who like bad-ass ambiguously desi chicks, get your tee-shirt here. For those of you who like your animated warriors more traditional, there is always this.

abhi at 11:52 PM in Animation, Comics, Film, TV · 26 comment(s) · Direct link

Lunchtime Viewing: "The Little Terrorist"

Via Chapati Mystery, a fifteen minute short film called “The Little Terrorist,” which was nominated for an Oscar for best short in 2005. If you have fifteen minutes, you can watch it here (the first 30 seconds or so are black; be patient):

The video appears to have been posted by the production company itself, so you can watch in good conscience. According to the film’s website, it was filmed on location in a rural village in Rajasthan on a shoe-string budget.

Also, you may want to go straight to Video.google.com to view it on a slightly larger screen (especially if you want to read the subtitles).

One minor question to consider might be: what dialect are the villagers speaking? Would we simply call it “Rajasthani”?

amardeep at 10:41 AM in Film · 18 comment(s) · Direct link

February 12, 2008

Forget Will Smith, Time For Karva Chauth

In the past, I was somewhat snarky when it came out that Aishwarya Rai, before her marriage to Abhishek Bachchan, agreed to marry a Peepul tree because of her “Manglik” status.

The New York Times had a story recently (thanks, Jamie), which described how Aishwarya Bachchan recently dropped out of a Hollywood project with Will Smith in order to be home in Mumbai to celebrate Karva Chauth.

For those who don’t know, Karva Chauth is a traditional Hindu festival where wives fast for a whole day without food or water as a symbol of their devotion to their husbands. I have many women friends who object to the festival as regressive, though I also know one or two people who do observe it out of a sense of loyalty to tradition. (Perhaps not too surprisingly, the women I know who observe it are NRIs, not ABDs. Are there any ABDs out there who observe Karva Chauth?)

Here is the quote the NYT gives regarding Aish’s decision to return to Mumbai for Karva Chauth:

Ultimately Ms. Bachchan chose to return to Mumbai and starve with a smile. National television channels covered her first Karva Chauth as headline news. Two months later she shrugged off her loss in an interview. “You do what you have to do,” she said. “Feeling torn and thereby unhappy, confused or guilty is not something I want to feel. So you make your choices and go with it. You get some and some you don’t.” (link)

What to say. From what I can tell, everything Aish does outside of her acting seems to reflect a pretty sincere traditionalism. One has to presume she’s observing Karva Chauth because she really wants to, not because anyone put pressure on her to do so. So, if we accept that the festival of Karva Chauth isn’t inherently sexist (and the case can be made that it is), here I’m inclined to give props to Aish for putting tradition over her career. It certainly beats America’s celebrity culture — which has lately just been depressingly bad, what with Britney losing her mind, and Amy Winehouse smoking crack…

On the other hand, the Indian media loves this kind of thing, so it may be that sacrificing a romantic comedy with Will Smith might actually help her Bollywood career — and she can have both. Jodhaa Akbar, anyone?

amardeep at 11:09 AM in Film · 229 comment(s) · Direct link

January 11, 2008

Mira Nair's "The Perez Family" (1995)

I enjoyed looking at some of the influences behind The Namesake last week, and I’ve started to look at some of Mira Nair’s older films — including one that I hadn’t seen before, The Perez Family.

The Perez Family is a film adaptation of a novel by the same name by Christine Bell. It’s the story of a family separated at the time of the Cuban revolution, which has the potential to be reunited because of the Mariel boatlift of 1980. The boatlift brought more than 100,000 Cuban refugees to the United States, with full approval of both Castro and the U.S. government.

My detailed (possibly too detailed?) take on the film is below the fold, but at this point one obvious issue for discussion does come up, which is whether there are points for comparison between Cuban refugees and Indian immigrants from the 1960s and 70s. Cuban Americans are famous for skewing somewhat to the Right; many of the earlier wave were wealthy landowners in Cuba, who had the most to lose in Castro’s Cuba. But perhaps many earlier Indian immigrants are themselves somewhat more conservative than one might expect, perhaps because of the “artifact” of U.S. immigration law up through 1980 — which made it relatively easy for doctors and engineers to come in.

On to the film itself — where some possible parallels between the Cuban and Indian experiences in America might become clearer.

Though Nair’s Perez Family doesn’t always work dramatically (there are some implausible elements in the story, and some of the actors struggle with their Cuban accents), the film does have some very smart moments, and a theme that resonates closely with Nair’s other films, including especially Mississippi Masala and The Namesake. The connection is this: all three are in essence diaspora stories, about the trauma of leaving behind one life, and the excitement and ambivalence entailed in embracing a new culture. As with Mississippi Masala (and even The Namesake, to some extent), the moment of leaving is wrapped up in a historical (and personal) trauma — a trauma named “Idi Amin” in one case, and “Fidel Castro” in another. In all three films (as well as Nair’s adaptation of My Own Country, made for TV), that new country is United States, which is far less transparent to outsiders than Americans like to think.

In The Perez Family, the first film Nair made after the breakthrough critical and commercial success of Mississippi Masala, Nair does throw in some specifically South Asian elements as a running leitmotif in what is otherwise an essentially Cuban diaspora story. The most obvious of these is the immigration official in Miami, played by Ranjit Chowdhry, the actor who was also memorable as “Mundu” in Deepa Mehta’s Fire. As a heavily accented immigrant himself, Chowdhry’s INS official serves as a friend and guide to Marisa Tomei’s Dorita Perez, as she learns how to adapt to American society — a process that begins, of course, with navigating the immigration bureaucracy itself. There is something curious and strange about an Indian immigrant serving as the “model” for the Americanization of a Cuban (“I am going to have to tell you what to do!” he says, at one point), but it works quite well in the film, even when it’s just there for comic relief. It’s Chowdhry’s character who has to reveal to Dorita (Tomei), for instance, that John Wayne, for Dorita the very embodiment of a sexy, heroic America, is in fact dead. It’s also his “hint” that families will get sponsored more quickly than singles that leads Dorita to stick to Juan (Molina), and eventually also contrive a “son” (a street kid) as well as a “father” to move things forward.

There are some highly memorable, symbolism-laden bits of cinematography in the film. The opening shot is a slow pan across a beach in Cuba, pre-revolution. Elegantly dressed men and women in white suits sit at tables, drinking cocktails, as a waiter (again, formally dressed) makes his way through. The music, traditional Cuban Son (the music for the film as a whole is done by the excellent Arturo Sandoval, incidentally), adds an air of “Old Havana” nostalgia. The pan ends on the headlights and grill of a Studebaker-type car — symbolizing, without a single line of dialogue, the way in which the Cuban story was in some sense always about the United States, even before the Cubans left home (i.e., the Revolution was in some sense a reaction against the American economic exploitation of the island…). After the Studebaker, Nair cuts to Alfred Molina, who is watching as his young wife, Carmela, wades into the water with their daughter. She’s leaving — this is a dream sequence — but he’ll be left behind. The film doesn’t provide too much by way of backstory, but there is a hint that Molina’s character, Juan Raul Perez, was a sugar plantation owner who spent 20 years in Castro’s prisons, while his wife and daughter were able to escape to Miami. (Perhaps Christine Bell’s novel spells out in greater detail how they were originally separated. The only lines that makes their way into the dialogue of the film are things like, “I burned my sugar plantation, rather than give it to him [Castro]”; and “I sent her away for the weekend, and it turned into 20 years.”)

The shot of the young Carmela wading into the water is echoed nicely a bit later in the film, as Alfred Molina and Marisa Tomei’s characters, who meet one another on the boatlift to Miami itself, approach Key West. Tomei’s Dorita is thrilled to be reaching the U.S. — she is the kind of immigrant who embraces with gusto the new, while Molina is too traumatized by the past to let go of it — and dives into the water, fully clothed. Molina, again, is left behind, watching.

I won’t say too much about the plot of the film as it goes forward for fear of spoiling it for those readers who might not have seen it. Suffice it to say that it follows the drift of other diasporic/immigrant stories: Juan Perez (Molina) has to find his wife and daughter in Miami after 20 years of separation, overcoming certain obstacles, while also making sense of his new relationship with the sensual, adventurous “Marielita” Dorita (Marisa Tomei’s performance is turned up to “11” in this film; she owns every scene she’s in).

Though it tilts too far into melodrama at times, The Perez Family is worth seeing, especially for Nair fans, who will certainly appreciate the overlaps and parallels with her other films here. (I might also add that fans of Cuban music will enjoy the excellent soundtrack, as will fans of Marisa Tomei, who gives one of her best performances here.)

amardeep at 10:52 AM in Film · 19 comment(s) · Direct link

January 02, 2008

The Art Behind 'The Namesake'

I’ve been watching Mira Nair’s Director’s Commentary on The Namesake DVD, and it’s been surprising to see how much of the film was inspired by other film directors and visual artists’ work. This was a film I liked quite a bit when I first saw it, and it had the unusual distinction of being a film my parents also liked. (I also liked the book, though I know from earlier discussions that a fair number of readers did not.) Watching the Director’s Commentary I realize there was a great deal in Nair’s film I had missed earlier.

Despite the immense amount of craft that went into the making of the film and the strong performances by Irfan Khan and Tabu, I doubt that The Namesake will get much attention come Oscar time. Why not is an endless question; one might point out that the Oscars don’t really award the year’s “best” films so much as the films the major studios feel are at once somewhat “serious” and “commercially viable.”

Still, the nice thing about writing for a blog is, you can pay tribute to the films that caught your attention from a given year, even if no one else agrees with you. (Readers, what desi-related films — produced in India or elsewhere — stood out to you from 2007?)

In the post below, I explore some names from among the large array of people who inspired Nair and collaborated with her as she put together the visual and aural elements of the film. The artists are both Desi (mostly Bengali) and American, though it’s really the former group that leaves the biggest impact on the film.

I hope you enjoy the links below as much as I did assembling them; they make for quite an art history lesson!

Milieu

Like Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake is in a sense a “milieu” film. In the first film, Nair used many members of her own family in the smaller roles; in her adaptation of Lahiri’s novel, it’s Jhumpa Lahiri’s family, for the most part, that gets the bit parts — Jhumpa herself shows up, at one point. Nair does use her niece, who was raised in the U.S., to play Gogol’s sister.

Nair also uses an Indian film critic named Jaganath Guha in one bit part, and the famous historian Partha Chatterjee, in another.

One surprise: I didn’t know that Irfan Khan (who plays Gogol’s father, Ashoke) had actually had a small role in Mira Nair’s earlier film, Salaam, Bombay, when he was just eighteen years old, and a student at the National School of Drama.

Bengali Artists and Filmmakers

At one point Ashima’s father is seen painting while sitting back, with his knees up. This apparently is an homage to Satyajit Ray, who painted in a similar posture. Nair also mentions that the sequence where the relationship between Ashoke and Ashima starts to develop (i.e., after they get married and move to the U.S.) is inspired by Ray’s Apur Sansar (“The World of Apu”).

Nair also uses Bengali actress Supriya Devi in a bit part, as another homage to Bengali art cinema (Supriya Devi acted in a number of Ritwik Ghatak films, including Meghe Dhaka Tara).

Asian Underground Musicians

The film’s music is done by Nitin Sawhney. It’s really pretty, understated music that has some powerful moments. Nair also uses State of Bengal’s “Flight IC 408” at one point as the Ganguli family is en route to India.

Baul Singers

In addition to cutting edge Brit-Asian musicians, Nair brings in traditional Baul singers, Lakhan Das and Bhava Pagla.

Indian photographers and Design Artists

The idea for the changing fonts (where the lettering goes from Bengali calligraphy to Roman) in the opening credits comes from Mumbai-based design-artist, Divya Thakur. In her commentary, Nair calls the idea “brilliant,” and I tend to agree (it produces an interesting visual effect, and the symbolism of a transition from one font to the other parallels the idea of cultural transformation that is at the core of both the novel and Nair’s film).

The photographs of the famous Indian photographers Raghu Rai and Raghubir Singh inspired a number of the Calcutta shots, including the image, early in the film, of Durga being carried on a wagon on the street in the early morning.

The Taj Mahal

The greatest work of art used in Nair’s film is, of course, the Taj Mahal, and Nair films it from some unusual angles. The most interesting might be her use of the interplay of arches and domes (as in, the view of the splendid domes of the Taj through the arches of an auxiliary building).

Western Artists

The look of the paintings used in the opening credits are to some extent inspired by Mark Rothko. Nair says she wanted a “handmade” look, and the paintings do work that way — the texture of the canvas is visible, as are the brush strokes of the paint within the big swaths of color filling up the screen.

Nair used an installation by Diller and Scofidio at JFK (“Travelogues”), which features images relating to travel using a neat optical effect (produced by “lenticulars”).

The visual style of the whole sequence where the Ganguli family is at the beach in winter is inspired by Chris Marker’s art-house classic, La Jetee.

Quite a number of Nair’s shots at the airport were inspired by photographs by Garry Winogrand.

amardeep at 09:49 AM in Film · 65 comment(s) · Direct link

December 16, 2007

Documentary: "I For India"

I recently got a chance to see an excellent documentary called I For India (thanks, Kate!). It’s a kind of family documentary that spans nearly forty years. When Yash Suri moved to England, in 1965, he decided to buy two Super 8 film cameras, two tape recorders, and two projectors. One set he kept, the other he sent to his family in Meerut. He filmed and recorded his family’s life and growth through the 1970s and 80s, his family in India did the same — and they sent each other the tapes, as a way of staying in touch. The result is an amazing archive of what happens to a family when one part of it goes abroad. Yash’s daughter Sandhya Suri assembled and edited the material into a unique 70 minute statement. Here is a brief clip:

(You can also supposedly see a clip from the film at the BBC, though when I tried it I couldn’t get the video to play.)

For me, I For India captured a lot of the strangeness of the diasporic experience, including the parents’ constant and nagging sense of displacement, the parent/child generation gap, and above all, the difficulty in returning home — even when “home” might be all you think about. The Suris aren’t the only family to keep planning to return home, only to keep delaying the plan by a few years (my father, for instance, used to say this for years; eventually, he dropped the plan). In the late 1980s, the family actually did try to move back to Meerut; Suri, a doctor, thought he could set up a clinic there, but it didn’t take. (There’s no ruby slippers; home always changes when you leave it.)

On a purely visual register, it’s interesting just to compare what the Suri family in Darlington, England chooses to film against what the Suri family in Meerut films. In the English footage, you see the nuclear family, various tourist excursions, snow, railroads, the Buckingham Palace guards. In Meerut, the footage Sandhya Suri uses is almost entirely of extended family gatherings. The family in England is effectively alone, which means it is sometimes painfully isolated — but that aloneness also enables them to go off and have certain kinds of adventures. The extended family in India has a very different kind of experience.

Often, in diasporic novels like The Namesake, for instance, the center of the story is the part of the family that leaves — usually because the writer comes from that background herself. What’s unique about I For India is the way the old film footage allows the director to in some sense tell both sides of the story at once: we have the point of view of the family that left (and constantly mourned what it had left behind), but also that of the family that stayed behind (and mourned the loss of the ones who left).

I For India has been reviewed positively by virtually everyone who’s seen it, including The New York Times and The Guardian. One company is distributing it on DVD in the U.S., though it’s very expensive (you might be able to track down a copy from Amazon Canada). If anyone knows of other ways to get access to this film, I’m sure readers will be grateful.

amardeep at 10:58 PM in Film · 77 comment(s) · Direct link

November 19, 2007

Loins / Meetup Wrapup

SF mutineers, together with writer / director Manish Acharya imbibed the Loins of Punjab last night as part of the SF South Asian film festival. Two word summary - it rocked.

Two word summary - it rocked.A crowd numbering several hundred packed the Castro theater in San Francisco for the laugh out loud ride and presented Acharya with a standing ovation and even a little bit of spontaneous singing (“Bole chudiyan… bole kangana…”) for his work. Although, as expected, Desi’s dominated the audience, the movie really resonated with the surprising gora / gori representation and the hispanic lesbian couple I was seated next to laughed most of the time as well. Still, much of the appeal of the genre comes from being in on the joke and the real magic is best experienced if you’re ABCD and perhaps even moreso if you’ve spent time in New Jersey.

Nevertheless, Loins is, by a wide margin, my new title holder for “Best ABCD Comedy.” My previous candidate was the (panned by many) Where’s the Party, Yaar about a group of desi college students in Houston. Both movies transcend the usual “cultural idenity” story line and instead solidly demonstrate a new, hybrid culture that’s neither here nor there but nevertheless confident about where it is and where it’s going. American and desi stereotypes blend fluidly and we’re far from feeling sorry for the folks with one foot on either side.

---

A Universe of Patels

Probably owing to the respective backgrounds of the film makers, WTPY is a bit more “American” in its character portrayals while Loins was far more Desi. Although both Manish Acharya and Benny Mathews of WTPY are 1.5 gen, Benny undoubtedly got most of his material from the Music Masala parties aimed at Houston’s desi young adults - hence, a more overt “hormones gone wild” and, unfortunately a generally less flattering FOB portrayal. By contrast, Loins of Punjab brings in a much broader audience of heroes and heroines sporting both ABD and DBD colors.

Loins, however, is yards ahead of Where’s the Party in the quality of its writing, execution, fit, and finish. Some critics weren’t impressed by the “gimmicky” humor but, as an audience commentor noted, Manish does a fantastic job of making old punchlines fresh and unexpected. I know we’ve seen the hero’s significant other defect and return a million times before… But, in Loins it’s so well executed that even a sophisticated, and sometimes cynical audience in a place like SF was still taken by surprise.

WTPY: ABCDs, FOBs, Boys, Girls, and a Party

The casting was superb and, as Acharya emphasized in Q&A after the flick, character development is the backbone of the movie. Their quirks and interactions had me solidly entertained for its hour and a half duration and I can honestly say that I wish the movie overall was longer. The title leads one to expect more story / character development around the Loin King, for example - a promising angle but one which is unexplored. Jameel Khan’s sleazy event producer made the most of his on-screen time and yet, I still wanted more. Ajay Naidu’s Turbantorious BDG was so well done I had a hard time believing it was really him dancing, rapping and shooting off angrier-than-thou lines. Still, going further down all these avenues while keeping within acceptable bounds for movie length would probably have been impossible and I’m forced to credit Acharya for his restraint.

It is critical to note that while poking fun at character and ethnic quirks (the individual Guju family members captured the panoply of stereotypes so well it’s scary), the comedy was ultimately good natured and uplifting. Yes, we’re often laughing at them but we also all recognize that the world would be a worse place without them. Acharya firmly believes & demonstrates that there are many paths to being a movie hero. And when the foundation for your story is a diaspora as diverse as India and America, it’s a fitting moral.

Straight Outta Da Pindh

Good news for mutineers in other cities - Acharya says that Loins is aiming for limited release in the US in March 2008.

After the movie, a dozen mutineers & I tried to converge on Samovar Tea Lounge for a mini-meetup…. However, the venue turned out to be far more of a restaurant than an alternative to Starbucks and menu’s + white-linen table service tends to be pretty antithetical to the flow of a meetup. So, we ended up rerouting ourselves across the street to Urban Bread for coffee and pastries. Consensus at the table was strongly positive and with many surprised by the negative reaction other mutineers seemed to have to the flick. To each his own, I suppose.

[related - Manish Vij’s Loins of Punjab review & link compendium]

vinod at 02:12 AM in Film · 16 comment(s) · Direct link

November 16, 2007

SF: Movie & a Meetup; Sat Nov 17

Hello SF Mutineers, just a gentle reminder that the SF South Asian Film Festival kicks of today. Our movie + mini-meetup is tomorrow, Saturday, November 17.

The Movie -

2:00 pm, Saturday, November 17th, Castro Theater, San Francisco Admission: $10 Director: Manish Acharya Country: India (2007) Running Time: 88 mins, 35mm, Color Synopsis & Tickets

The Meetup - After the movie, a drink at Samovar Tea Lounge, just a couple blocks around the corner.

View Larger Map

vinod at 12:12 PM in Film, Meetups! · 5 comment(s) · Direct link

November 13, 2007

Shah Rukh's Abs Conquer Global Box Office

Bollywood film Om Shanti Om brought in about $1.8 million at the U.S. box office over the weekend, which puts it at a respectable #11 on the U.S. chart (on only 114 screens). It’s certainly the highest U.S. opening for a Bollywood film I’ve seen in recent years; it may be the highest ever (anyone know for sure?). The film also did very well in India and other markets, coming in ahead of the Tom Cruise war flick, Lions for Lambs, internationally.

Serious cinephiles (and some not-so-serious ones) have reviewed the film and dissected its merits and flaws. But the director, Farah Khan, has essentially credited the film’s success to one thing — Shah Rukh Khan’s exposed torso:

“The entire credit for the film’s success goes to Shah Rukh,” director Farah Khan told Reuters over phone on Sunday. “He is the film’s main attraction and the shirtless song is definitely one of the main reasons for the film’s hit. It is the scene to watch out for.” The bare-chested act by the 42-year-old actor who underwent rigorous training sessions to develop a six-pack, has helped the song “Dard-E-Disco” reach the top of the charts across television channels and FM radio stations. (link)

See the following hard-hitting report from Star News, for a more behind-the-scenes look at Shah Rukh’s abs:

The segment opens in Hindi, but after about 30 seconds there are English subtitles. It’s worth staying at least until Shah Rukh makes that comment about his cleavage (!); there’s also a sneaky little insinuation about Karan Johar there at the end.

amardeep at 12:39 PM in Film · 80 comment(s) · Direct link

November 04, 2007

In search of the great Indian-American gangster flick

I was at this bar on Friday night and as I ordered my drink I noticed that American Gangster (which came out on Friday) was playing on every television in the joint, including the one behind the bartender. Is video piracy really this rampant? Anyways, the rest of the night I tried to not watch so I could see it in its entirety next weekend. Flash forward to Saturday morning. I was sitting on my couch scratching myself and all of a sudden I thought, “What happened to that smokin’ Piper Perabo from the movie Coyote Ugly? I mean, come on! There has got to be a way to get her back into some film. So I looked her up on IMDB and noted that she will be co-starring in a movie called Ashes which comes out next year. And THAT is where this rambling story finally finds its desi angle:

ASHES follows the story of two brothers from the inner city whose lives are unraveling. As one plummets deeper into mental illness, the other, Ashes, copes by throwing himself into the dangerous New York underworld. Ashes is torn between the family he is responsible for, and the community that consumes him. [Link]

Sepia Mutiny is currently trying to determine if the above drug use was prescribed by Doc 420

Click on the above image for the trailer. The film is directed by and stars Ajay Naidu of Office Space fame as the title character. All I can say is that it is about time there is an Indian American Gangsta film. I mean, the Cubans had Scarface, the Italians had The Godfather, African American’s have Denzel in American Gangter mentioned above. Why the hell has it taken THIS long for a story about the Indian American gangster experience that most of our readers have had at least minor brushes with? I know some of our readers will point to Maqbool as good Indian Gangter film but I ask you, if The Godfather had been only about Don Corleone’s time in Sicily would it be as relevant to Italian Americans? I didn’t think so. And so I eagerly await Naidu’s Ashes. It might finally take the “model” out of our minority. Plus Piper Perabo will be in it.

abhi at 10:20 PM in Film, Humor, Musings · 170 comment(s) · Direct link

October 18, 2007

On a Train to Nowhere

Once upon a time, in a land called “college”, I dated a wealthy white boy from Arizona. He was a nice boy, with nice parents who rushed to embrace and accept me. I was young and eager to be embraced. Trouble was, his mom had an odd way of tacking on an explanation (sometimes sotto voce, sometimes not) to anything “cultural” whenever she addressed me. Implicit in every conversation was the assumption that they would refine me, expose me to the better things in life, elevate me somehow. I shrugged it off time and again until the weight of all that well-intentioned condescension finally felt too crushing: for god’s sake, high art to this family meant Monet’s fucking Water Lillies!! They spent gobs of money on interior designer who made them buy a pool table swathed in beige felt!

I would stand there in my thrift or Army-Navy surplus wear and thrill at the fact that I was secretly turning up my unrefined nose at them, a giant thought-balloon screaming “TACKY!!” rising above my head. I didn’t say anything because it was all so deliciously meta. Also? I was a chicken-shit people-pleaser.

So, anyway, it’s been a great many years since I dumped the guy, but seeing Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited brought on some strange flashbacks.

I’m a sucker for cinematography. Great art direction and visual flair can supplant character development, direction, or even plot, as far as I’m concerned. So naturally, I’ve been a rather ardent Wes Anderson fan. His stilted little diorama-like movies were fine by me. I accepted his narcissistic, self-involved characters because I was watching Anderson’s carefully constructed little world, and if the darker/foreign people were always a little goofy, and not really treated all that well by the main characters, well, that’s alright, right? His world, his prerogative, and all that. Besides, the soundtracks were so great!

Until The Darjeeling Limited. The story, in a nutshell, involves three brothers (Owen Wilson, Adrian Brody, Jason Schwartzman) who have lost touch with each other since their father’s death a year ago, and meet up on the Darjeeling Limited train in India. The oldest, Francis Whitman (Wilson) summoned his younger brothers for a “spiritual journey” with the hope of bonding again, as well as another, hidden, agenda. More reviews here.

WARNING: SPOILERS!

Anderson takes the bold (for him) step of pushing his characters (literally) out of his little constructed world (the train) and into the real world (India). But the “real world” is still not even slightly fucking real! It’s Anderson’s cutesy, nostalgia-for-the-colonies, anglophilic, imaginary take on India. It’s like he ran out of colors to paint his scenes with, so he set them India, cause it’s already, you know, “colorful”. It’s like he took criticisms of his previous films to heart, so he set out to make something meaningful, in India, cause it’s so, you know, “spiritual.”

This movie is to India what The Life Aquatic was to oceanography.

A controversial recent article in Slate magazine (memorably subtitled, “That Queasy Feeling You Get When Watching a Wes Anderson Movie”) accused the director of being racist.

Much like that well-intentioned Arizona family I once knew, I don’t think Anderson means to be, at all. And I’m still eager to be embraced: I get that the brothers’ behavior and comments as they travel are supposed to cast them in a bad light, as clueless, careless, egocentric, shallow American asswipes. But the director is far too fond of them for this condemnation to really stick. They get a chance at redemption when, thrown off the train (for bringing aboard a poisonous snake and promptly losing it) in the Indian countryside, they try to save three drowning boys. Two are rescued, but despite much thrashing around in the water, a bloodied Adrian Brody admits, “I couldn’t save mine.” Mine. The word got caught in my ear canal and kept pinging against my ear drum. Mine.

Here’s the Slate writer’s take on it:

They’re invited to the child’s rural village for his funeral (which Anderson cannot resist presenting in slow motion and setting to a Kinks song), where the Whitman clan realize that they need to stick together and see out the rest of their journey. Turns out that a dead Indian boy was all the brothers were missing.

This isn’t just heavy-handed, it’s offensive. In a grisly little bit of developing-world outsourcing, the child does the bothersome work of dying so that the American heroes won’t have to die spiritually.

I want to say that Anderson isn’t this callow, that the writer is over-reacting, that humor or quirkiness or something leavens the scene from such harsh judgment. But I can’t. Adrian Brody and Owen Wilson are captivating actors, and deliver performances that almost transcend the material. Brody’s shocked face and wet eyes almost won me over as he delivered that line. But still. Mine.

Irfan Khan plays the dead boy’s humble-peasant father, and in fewer than five lines, is supposed to convey the sort of parental love that the Whitman boys (who am I kidding. These are men. They should have pulled up their big-boy pants long ago) are so desperately seeking. He manages to pull it off, too. A horrible waste of an amazing actor.

Oh, and I almost forgot about Amara Karan, the Sri Lankan Brit who plays a hot-to-trot “Sweet Lime” stewardess on the train. (Yes, I know. Stewardess on a train. Like I said, his world). The youngest brother has an on-board affair with her, if “affair” means humping in train toilets. I mean, I’m all for liberated South Asian women and all, but NONE of the women I know would consider such a thing for a second. In an Indian train bathroom, no less. She is supposed to be “searching” or something too. I guess. Who knows, since she barges into their cabin to sneak cigarettes, makes cryptic comments about maybe having a boyfriend, and doesn’t seem to mind when Owen Wilson calls her “Sweet Lime” all th time. Mostly she’s there to flash her enormous eyes and sprinkle some sassy-sexy mystique.

Sidenote: A friend attended the casting call for this character two years ago. She gigglingly reported back to me that in the script the stewardess is first seen through a partially open bathroom door, “zipping up her sari”. Thankfully they changed this to a salwar kameez/ kurta pajama like thing in the finished movie.

On top of all this, Anderson’s usual quirks and tics are starting to get stale. Darjeeling uses the same blue and yellow color scheme as The Life Aquatic, includes a bandage unwrapping scene that looks (and functions) exactly like the head-shaving scene in The Royal Tennenbaums, recycles the same Kinks-heavy soundtrack as Rushmore, the Indian stewardess is like the maid from Paraguay in Bottle Rocket, the list goes on. A flashback to the Whitman father’s funeral (actually, the journey to the funeral. They never actually get there, either) plays like it was meant to be slapstick with undercurrents of poignancy, but the actors just look lost.

Waris Ahluwalia plays the train conductor/manager. He’s magnificently stern and imposing. I’d like to think that he provides a foil for the brothers, as someone their age who’s a proper adult. But maybe that’s just me still eager to spin this so I can convince myself that Anderson’s movies are worth watching. A great interview with Ahluwalia here. Moments of awesomeness abound, as when he tackles confronts a turban’n’beard question head on:

When did people start noticing you on street and saying, “Hey, you’re that dude from…”
It started happening after Inside Man. It’s interesting how different people come up to you depending on where you are. In the weirdest places—security guards, delivery guys—it started happening. People on the street being really excited. They’re very sweet about it.

It’s interesting how that happened in your case. People who gawk at movie stars on the street often notice how they differ from their onscreen personas. Physically, at least, you don’t look different from the characters you’ve played.
Tell me what you mean by that.

Just that you wear a turban and have a beard—like in the movies that you’ve appeared in.
Oh yeah.

He also takes on the Slate.com article:

Since you bring it up, can you address the recent Slate magazine article accusing Wes of “fetishizing” India in Darjeeling? He cites several examples, such as the scene when Francis (Owen Wilson) gets his shoes stolen by an Indian boy and remarks, “I love these people.”
[laughs] Really. I didn’t even know about that. Good old Slate. I think that’s the writer projecting his own feelings. We knew that was racist. It’s the character. It’s done to agitate Owen’s character. When you go into a foreign country, you run that risk. Wes treated the country beautifully, in terms of how he shot it. It’s earnest and honest. The films of Satyajit Ray are something that he loves. He got really into it. So why is it fetishistic in a bad way? We all fetishize things. Maybe he did.

It’s good to hear that from you. Obviously, Wes wouldn’t help his case if he tried to defend the charges.
Yeah, he’d be like, “I’m not racist. I have an Indian friend.” It’s like saying, “My friend’s black.” But, you know, I know him. He’s curious about cultures and experiences, and he was drawn in by those films he saw—the magic of them. Everyone has a tendency—not just this writer from Slate, god bless him—we look at everything through our own eyes. Sure, it could be construed as racist. I won’t argue with you there. You can look at anything out of context, and it’s going to be racist. I think there might be racist things in Spike’s movie, but I’m not sure. [laughs] Someone needed a good angle for their story. And that’s a good angle! I commend him on his story. These are good things to explore. That’s fine. It’s an opinion. But he’s talking about someone who I know and have spent a great deal of time with over five years—I know that’s not him.

You probably would’ve realized it by now.
Either that, or I’m just lying to myself.

cicatrix at 04:31 PM in Film · 89 comment(s) · Direct link

September 28, 2007

Shah Jahan Kingsley

Following upon the stunning artistic and commercial success of “The Last Legion” (1, 2, UB40), co-stars Sir Ben and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan have agreed to team up again, this time as Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal. Colin Firth is rumored to be considering the role of Aurangzeb .

My fans will watch me in anything because I am TMBWITW

The casting of Sir Ben is, in my mind, absolutely perfect. Shah Jahan’s marriage to Mumtaz at 19 has become a symbol of eternal love. Sir Ben also is a man who never stopped believing in love, having married his fourth wife at age 63, after the following:

“three failed marriages, four children by two different wives, a long-term live-in lover who was replaced by wife No 3 (also nearly half his age), whom he then jettisoned after discovering her embracing her lover in a photograph on the internet in 2005.” [Link]

Shah Jahan built a giant marble tomb to house his wife’s remains, as if she was a figure from ancient Egypt. Sir Ben feels the same way about wife #4:

“Daniela is like an ancient mythological princess. She has great deep dignity. She moves like an ocean liner…” [Link]

Shah Jahan is known not by his given name (“Prince Khurrum Shihab-ud-din Muhammad”) but by his title Shah Jahan or “King of the World” [wiki]. Krishna Bhanji cuts a regal figure and is also known by his title:

Sir Ben and his Mumtaz

Sir Ben … [insists] that he be addressed as “Sir Ben” at all times. The title was included on his passport and other documentation after he received a knighthood in 2001, and he even signs emails SBK(as in Sir Ben Kingsley). Someone who unwittingly called him “Mr Kingsley” at a party received a stinging rebuke. “He looked at me in disgust,” the guest told the Mail, “then said: ‘You should call me Sir Ben’ and cut me dead.” [Link, rebuttal]

I can’t imagine a better bit of casting.

Related posts: Time for some Ben Kingsley

ennis at 04:09 PM in Film, Humor · 38 comment(s) · Direct link

Wes Anderson Goes to India; I Stay Home

The following two paragraphs from A.O. Scott encapsulate pretty well why I’m not rushing out to see The Darjeeling Limited:

“The Darjeeling Limited” amounts finally to a high-end, high-toned tourist adventure. I don’t mean this dismissively; it would be hypocritical of me to deny the delights of luxury travel to faraway lands. And Mr. Anderson’s eye for local color — the red-orange-yellow end of the spectrum in particular — is meticulous and admiring.

But humanism lies either beyond his grasp or outside the range of his interests. His stated debt to “The River,” Jean Renoir’s film about Indian village life, and his use of music from the films of Satyajit Ray represent both an earnest tribute to those filmmakers and an admission of his own limitations. They were great directors because they extended the capacity of the art form to comprehend the world that exists. He is an intriguing and amusing director because he tirelessly elaborates on a world of his own making. (link)

Are people planning to stand in line for this one? I’m not; after four quirky films (and one amusing AmEx commercial), I’m bored of Wes Anderson’s whole approach to filmmaking, which I call “quirky for quirky’s sake.” It’s not that quirky is always bad; I found Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, for instance, pretty compelling — and that was a damn quirky film. But I often feel like Wes Anderson’s approach to filmmaking is to simply think, “wouldn’t it be funny if the old Indian manservant stabbed Bill Murray with a pen-knife at this point?” And then do it, just for the excitement that comes with absurdity.

And as much as I was intrigued by Anderson’s use of Waris Ahluwalia in The Life Aquatic (he’s credited in Darjeeling Limited as well), the non-speaking part in that film made the striking Ahluwalia into a sort of exotic turbaned curiosity. Ahluwalia’s role in Spike Lee’s Inside Man, though brief, was much more provocative and engaging. Even if audiences didn’t sympathize with Ahluwalia’s character as much as one would have liked, at least that role led to a meaningful reaction.

Incidentally, there is another travel film with India as a destination coming out. Though from the review, Outsourced does seem to flirt a bit with cliches, I’m much more interested in it than I am in Darjeeling at present.

amardeep at 12:22 PM in Film · 38 comment(s) · Direct link

September 21, 2007

Life imitates bolly (updated w/ film)

Gabbar Singh: You have a lot of strength left in your arms, don’t you? Remember what you said to me that day? ‘These aren’t arms, they’re your noose’. Look at you now, the noose has opened! You still have alot of strength in your arms, don’t you? Give me your arms, Thakur.

Gabbar Singh: How do you plan to fight me Thakur? I’ve long cut off, and discarded, your arms.
Thakur Baldev Singh: One uses their feet to crush a snake Gabbar, not the hands. [imdb]

The highest grossing Bollywood film ever, and still one of the best, is the 1975 film Sholay. [Film synopsis.]

As a boy, my favorite part of the film was the (original) ending, where Thakur Baldev Singh confronts his nemesis, the dacoit Gabbar Singh. The Thakur has no arms, Gabbar Singh having cut them earlier, but he still manages to fight and kill Gabbar Singh using just his feet.

It’s perfect bolly. The scene rings true emotionally, but makes little sense as a fight. I mean, who could believe a man with no arms could defeat somebody who was built like Amjad Khan? Clearly I was overly skeptical:

Snelville, Georgia police are investigating whether William Russell Redfern, who has no arms, may have caused the death of his neighbor after head-butting and kicking him in a fight.

… Elliot said the armless man attacked her brother. “They got into a big confrontation, a verbal confrontation and a fist fight and he came after my brother, he came with full force, and head butted him as hard as he could,” said Elliot. [Link, via 3V]

OK, head butting somebody until they have a heart attack lacks the potent symbolism of killing them by “trampling him with spike-soled shoes” but it seems that the movie was more “realistic” than I had thought.

Film clips of the fight on the other side of the fold.

p.s. sadly, that fight scene doesn’t seem to have been posted on youtube, although there are plenty of other Sholay clips. Maybe I’m the only one who thought it was cool.

Update: big penn found the clip! Shivers down my spine. The second clip has the original, bloodier, ending. ANNA, no watching the ending before you see the rest of the movie.

ennis at 03:39 PM in Film · 49 comment(s) · Direct link

What price authenticity?

As brown people we constantly urge greater authenticity in fiction films about brownistan. But authenticity comes at a price, as the producers of The Kite Runner movie have found out as some people are alleging that it may endanger the life of one of the main actors in the film. [SPOILER ALERT]

The novel The Kite Runner was written by an Afghani-American from Fremont about two boys growing up in Kabul: a wealthier child (the protagonist) and his servant who is also his best friend.

The producers of the movie went out of their way to try to make the movie as authentic as possible. They filmed in nearby Kashgar (in China, for security reasons), filmed in the vernacular, and they tried to use mainly local kids.

The problem comes because a critical scene in the novel involves a rape, in particular the rape of the protagonist’s best friend. This made the father of the actor playing the best friend uneasy:

“When I told them I would not let Ahmad Khan take part in this film, they said: ‘We won’t film that scene’,” … [the father] says. [Link]

However, what the producers did was to shoot the scene without showing very much:

Because this key scene was filmed in a non-explicit way, it seems that at the time Ahmad’s father did not even realise it had happened. I called up one of The Kite Runner’s producers, Rebecca Yeldham, in Los Angeles… “The scene contains no nudity. It’s rendered in a very sort of impressionistic way. But it’s also important in being faithful to that story - that there’s no confusions that the attack in the alley that took place on that child was a sexual violation…” [Link]

She also denies that the father was promised that the scene would be removed. Still, even this compromise has touched off a controversy over whether the scene should be included at all, and whether even this indirect shooting of the scene will endanger the safety of the actor involved:

“This scene, in an Afghan context, can be interpreted as a dishonour to one community, to one ethnicity,” … [a local human rights advocate] says. “In a tribal society, people don’t distinguish between fictitious or real things.” That means that a piece of fiction or a joke could be taken with deadly seriousness. [Link]

The actor is also quoted as saying he is afraid he will be shunned by others who believe he has been raped. Advocates for the families say they have been exploited.

The producers think that this is a big misunderstanding, fanned by internet rumours, and that it will all blow over once people see the film:

… she says the fears - which have spread to expatriate Afghans using internet chat rooms - are based on a mistaken belief that the scene in the film is explicit while, in fact, it was filmed discreetly in deference to Afghan feelings.

“We don’t believe the kids’ lives are at risk. We don’t believe we’ve put them in that position,” she says. But the producers’ concerns are such that they have just decided not to release the film in Afghanistan - although DVD versions are bound to circulate there.[Link]

Some of the other actors are asking for the scene to be cut, while the writer has simply said that he is “very concerned.”

It’s hard to see a way out that will make all parties happy. Can you make a film in a society where some people don’t recognize the difference between fiction and reality?

Related posts: The Kite Runner

See also: Save the Kite Runner Boys, a website that claims to be advocating for the children.

ennis at 01:15 PM in Film · 35 comment(s) · Direct link

September 18, 2007

Brave Casting?

This past weekend I ended up seeing the Jodie Foster movie, The Brave One, which co-stars Naveen Andrews of Lost fame. Was the movie any good? Well no, not really, but that is what you get when you ignore the all-powerful tomato meter. The synopsis of the flick is as follows:

For Erica Bain (Jodie Foster), the streets of New York are both her home and her livelihood. She shares the sounds and the stories of her beloved city with her radio audience as the host of the show “Street Walk.”