And maybe one day the twain shall meet and produce a decent film.  I’m not holding my breath, though.  The Hindustan Times reports on a recent spate of Bollywood/Hollywood joint ventures.  First up is Mumbai-based Percept Pictures, which recently announced plans to co-produce Ram Gopal Verma’s first “exclusively American” film, entitled Within:

The English-language film will reportedly be set in a Manhattan apartment peopled only by American characters.

Within will obviously be a significant first for RGV, but it is likely to be quickly followed up with Ek, a sweeping espionage thriller featuring Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan with a clutch of Hollywood actors. [link]

A Manhattan apartment peopled only by American characters?  Do they have to pass a citizenship exam to enter the building?  According to Verma, “Within will revolve around the fear factor that is present within each one of us, while Ek will be based on nuclear terrorism.”  I personally had no idea that a “fear factor” was present within me.  I hope it doesn’t make me eat cockroaches or something.  Verma said that casting has yet to be finalized, and did not name the Hollywood actors involved.  Will he be able to land a Hollywood heavyweight like Ali Larter? Continue reading →

SM tipster “Sirc” sent us the Village Voice review of a documentary that has been around for over a year, but seems to finally be opening to a larger audience (Oct 19, 2005 NYC, Nov 11, 2005 LA).  The film is titled ‘Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family.’  From the review:

This well-told doc follows nine years in the lives of a gay couple and the woman they invited to share their relationship. When we meet this happy threesome–Sam, Steven, and Samantha–they’re trying to get pregnant. In winning interviews spliced between suspenseful EPT tests, the assertively bourgeois strivers chat about their setup, their decision to marry, their spa business, their mix-and-match sex (“There’s never a feeling of being left out!”). Actress hopeful Samantha explains how her traditional Indian family absorbed the news.

Ummm.  Wow.  Trinogamy.  I just imagined the sound of several desi parents dropping dead of heart attacks.  Hell, I almost suffered a heart attack when I saw the trailer.  That “horror-movie feeling” descended upon me.  You know, it’s like when you watch a character on-screen with your eyes half covered saying, “Don’t do it.  Don’t go in there.  You are going to get knifed.  Ooooh, they went there.”  The “monkey wrench” in this case is the birth of a baby.  How will it change the dynamic given that only one man is the biological father? In a perfect world without human insecurities a relationship like this could probably work.  There is unfortunately no such perfect world.  I don’t know how it turns out but I am pretty curious.

The filmmaker gives her quick take on the film and its coincidental political overtones:

We began filming “Three of Hearts” in August 1996, the night of Samantha’s 30th birthday party. When I got home from the first night of filming my boyfriend at the time, and later husband David Friedson told me that the senate had passed the Defense of Marriage Act that day, defining marriage for purposes of federal law as the legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife. David pointed out that the love story I had elected to tell was highly political. And as we premiered in Toronto, the whole issue was exploding in San Francisco, Massachusetts and around the country. So even though our film is not overtly political, we take pride in the fact that it does have political overtones.

We thank Sam Cagnina, Samantha Singh and Steven Margolin for their courage in sharing with us eight years of their journey.

The reviews of this film are glowing.  Here is screening info.

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Abhi posted earlier about a new Albert Brooks comedy, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. The trailer is now out (thanks, Kiran). Sheetal Sheth apparently gets jiggy with the actor, who was born during Partition and was last unseen as the voice of the paterfish in Finding Nemo. From the trailer, the movie seems to have a reasonably light touch for the genre.

Congrats, Sheetal — it’s her biggest film yet. Her Indian accent isn’t too bad either, considering the competition. Some second-gen actors make such a hash of it, they’re crying out for an accent coach. (Imagine that dinnertime conversation: ‘You did vat? You paid someone so you could talk like me?’)

Watch the trailer. The movie comes out on January 20th.

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The other day I was reading a rather ho-hum review of the new Steve Martin movie Shopgirl when this sentence caught my eye:

Tweely narrated by Martin (not as Ray), directed with a dose of barbiturates by Anand Tucker, underscored with a plaintive cello and piano, this is among the most noneventful romantic triangles ever committed to celluloid.

It appears that Shopgirl, that seemingly whitest of whitebread romantic dramedies, was directed by an international jetsetter with desi roots:

Tucker, the son of an Indian father and German mother who was born in Thailand, grew up in Hong Kong and has lived in London since he was 18.

Rediff features a recent interview with the director, who is probably best known for directing the art-house hit Hilary and Jackie.  Tucker (his father changed his last name from Thakkar) has also been tapped to direct a big-budget adaptation of The Golden Compass, the first book in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy.

Continue reading →