Oh, dear. Are they fixing what isn’t broken?

His recent hit film starring the Bachchans was an ode to one of his favourite films, The Godfather. Now, filmmaker Ramu is all set to remake one of India’s cult hits – Sholay. “More than The Godfather, Sholay is my favourite film. I entered movies because of the film and owe my career to it. I remember having seen the film 27 times. With Godfather, I did not exactly do a remake. But now, I want to remake Sholay in all its essence,” the filmmaker said soon after procuring the rights for the remake from the Sippys.

Well, she-it…I’ve seen The Sound of Music 92 times, but I’m not about to re-cast the family Von Trapp… 😉

There’s a reason why I loathe cover songs, they almost never measure up to the original. Aside from Dinosaur Jr’s explosive rendition of “Just like heaven“, I can do without remakes, thank you very much. Movies are no different. Sabrina? Pffft. But what do I know? Why buck a trend?

Reworking older hits seems to be the order of the day. After yesteryear hits like Devdas and Parineeta being remade, plans are on to remake films like Don, Teesri Manzil and Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam.

How do you replace a legend? You don’t. (Or can’t, in my snarky opinion):

…he is unlikely to cast Abhishek Bachchan for Amitabh’s role. “The casting is still open. I do not plan to work with any direct descendant of the Bachchans and the Deols for this movie,” he says.

Well, now that THAT’S decided…book ’em, Dhann-o. Or perhaps just say “no”. To remakes, 😉 that is:

As for the setting of the film, he said, “The new Sholay will be set in contemporary Mumbai and the two heroes will be fighting against Samba, the underworld don. And Basanti will be the city’s first woman cab driver and her cab will be called Dhanno!”

The film will be called Ram Gopal Varma ka Sholay. He signed off saying, “People might say this is the height of arrogance. They might even think I’ve lost my head after my recent success.”

I don’t know about arrogance, but I’d vote for quixotic. What say you, SMers? And has anyone seen the brown Godfather? Continue reading →

Marginal Revolution (tongue-in-cheek-ly) wants to know–

Conservatives love to rant about the evils of Hollywood. Too much sex and violence. Inappropriate for the family. Religion gets short shrift. Fair enough, a lot of Hollywood fare isn’t fit for the 13 and under crowd. Here’s my question: why aren’t conservative media critics rushing en masse to sing the praises of Bollywood films? Michael Medved, where are you?

Consider the following Bollywood film conventions:

1. No sex. If you’re lucky, you might see some wet sari.

2. The films often revolve around finding a wonderful spouse and getting married.

3. The bigger the wedding, the better…

Read the rest. 😉 Continue reading →

The Mistress of Spices and Deepa Mehta’s trilogy finale will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September (thanks, DesiDancer). Mehta’s filming was blocked by protests, but that’s just Water under the bridge:

Filming on Water in India had to be abandoned five years ago after protests over the pic’s subject. It concerns an 8-year-old child bride, sent to an ashram after her husband’s death, who forces the other widows to question their culture and faith. Pic stars Lisa Ray and John Abraham. The Hindi- and English-language film eventually was shot in Sri Lanka under the name River Moon, a moniker selected for its cheesiness, producer David Hamilton said. An “anti-publicist” was hired to keep word of it out of the media…

Now they say desi artists are picking cheesy titles? Here’s one: Mistress of Spices is exoticism buzzword bingo. And Padma Lakshmi’s cookbook title, Easy Exotic, is exactly the two things which desi women don’t want to be known for.

Also making its world premiere will be Mistress of Spices about an Indian woman (Aishwarya Rai) running a spice shop in San Francisco whose magic fails her when she falls in love. Pic is from Paul Mayeda Berges and Gurinder Chadha, the team behind Bend It Like Beckham…

How’s the art film actor with washboard abs doing? Everybody says he’s fine:

Indian filmmaker Buddhadev Dasgupta’s Kaalpurush will world premiere. [The] pic, starring Rahul Bose, follows a man struggling to come to terms with the memory of his powerful father…

I’m still a little upset that some hypersensitive individuals dared to criticize the Lord of the Rings as being “too white.” In my opinion that is just like saying that the Ramyana is “too brown.” In order to head off a future discussion along these lines I felt as if we should get it all out of our systems now. With that in mind I wanted to point out that the upcoming film The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe WILL have minorities in it, and YES, they will be beasts. Narniafans.com reports:

…several short Indian actors have been casted by Indian based casting director Sameer Bhardwaj for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Bhardwaj had earlier also helped in casting for The Lord of the Rings. The role of these actors is currently unknown, although speculation would lead us to believe that it is for many of the Talking Beast roles in the Chronicles of Narnia.

Well isn’t life a bitch? The casting director is Indian, and we’re still bound to get complaints. Not to fear though. Minorities have yet another chance in a Bhardwaj project (from last year): Continue reading →

Just who is Rambo? From Wikipedia:

The first movie begins with the titular character – John Rambo, played by Sylvester Stallone – returning from the Vietnam War and searching for an old Army buddy. After discovering that his friend had died of cancer, and being escorted to the town limits by the local sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy) who “doesn’t like his type”, Rambo defiantly walks back into town. Sheriff Teasle arrests Rambo, and brings him to the station where he can be “cleaned up”. During a forced shower with firehose, where he is beaten, Rambo has a wartime flashback of his experience as a POW in Vietnam. Temporarily losing touch with reality, Rambo escapes from prison and hides in the local mountains.

So basically we have a guy with a lot of guns who has lost touch with reality and fled to the mountains (see here for example). Hmmm, where to send him next? Well why not have him shoot some Muslim terrorists, and film it partly in India? From Rediff.com (tip from Punjabi Boy):

The shooting for Rambo IV, also titled Holy Wars, is scheduled to begin in Sofia, Bulgaria, in January 2006.

Filming also scheduled in the US and — you better believe it — India!

…an early draft of Holy Wars, freely viewable online, revolves around a different race-situation, one which Stallone has been alluding to ever since 9/11 happened.

John Rambo, a committed family man, is an environmentalist working at the UN headquarters in New York. Suddenly, the UN HQ is besieged by Islamic terrorists. The sadistic fundamentalists are holding the world to ransom. There isn’t a better man to go after the bad guys than Rambo, but the tale sees a twist because he knows his Afghani-adopted son is part of the terrorist squad.

What the F%ck! The John Rambo I have grown to love could never be a “family man” and an environmentalist working at that sissy U.N. What is this crap? But it gets worse. Who will play Rambo’s adopted Afghani son if the filmmakers have their way? I’ll give you a hint. He has six fingers.

Rambo’s Afghani-American stepson (or his Afghani-adopted son, going by the draft we read) is slated to be played by — hold your breath — Hrithik Roshan!

The treatment note describes the character as similar to Altaf in Mission Kashmir, and calls him ‘in many ways, the Rambo for the twenty-first century.’

Talking about Hrithik, it mentions a resemblance between him and Stallone himself, and talks about how the young Indian stud currently has all the staying power needed to make the first truly big crossover Indian-American film.

Taking things into perspective, it’s important to remember than nothing has been signed yet — there have been no official announcements regarding the cast of the film, with the obvious exception of the inevitable leading man, Sly himself.

Continue reading →