Director Sydney Pollack’s new film The Interpreter, which opened this weekend, is the first film ever to be allowed access to the halls of the United Nations in New York. The film stars Nicole Kidman’s character who, while performing her job as an interpreter for a fictional African nation, overhears a murder plot. The current United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, like his predecessors, was very sensitive about the image of the U.N. and wanted to make sure it was portrayed in a positive light and not maligned. He therefore appointed his trusted deputy, and author, Shashi Tharoor to interpret the script (and modify it if necessary). Rediff.com reports:

…Pollack could not take a no: the script demanded that much of film had to be shot inside the UN. He must have been aware that recreating the interiors of UN on a soundstage would cost nothing less than $5 million. And for a film budgeted at about $50 million, it would have been a burden.

‘I started calling anybody and everybody that I knew who had any connections and eventually, I was able to arrange a meeting with (UN Secretary General) Kofi Annan,’ he recalls in the production notes of the movie that opens on April 22.

The film has already opened in a handful of countries including Britain, Spain and Australia where it is shaping into a sizeable hit.

Pollack says he had no idea that the key to arranging the make-or-break meeting would be the novelist and movie buff Shashi Tharoor, who is also the under secretary-general for communications and public information at the UN. Tharoor was at once sympathetic to Pollack.

Tharoor says he felt the ban was ‘not terribly wise.’ The UN ‘is an institution we need to demystify a little bit,’ he says in the production notes. ‘We are an organisation of governments but we work for the peoples of the world, and I think it is important to make the UN more accessible to those people.’

Before Annan gave his approval, he asked Tharoor to consult the heads of the General Assembly and Security Council. Once they gave their assent, Pollack received the first-ever access to shoot at the General Assembly and other UN interiors. The Interpreter then became the first film to be shot inside the UN buildings, which are over five decades old.

An NPR interview with Pollack where he discusses the approval process and Tharoor’s involvement can be found here. Continue reading →

Arun Nayar has former/future wives in more countries than some people visit in a lifetime (thanks, Vinod):

Supermodel Elizabeth Hurley’s flamboyant Indian boyfriend Arun Nayar is seeking a divorce from his Italian wife on the grounds that she treated him cruelly, a lawyer said. Nayar, from Bombay, is claiming that his wife Valentina Pedroni put him through “mental torture” during their marital life…Nayar and Hurley, meanwhile, have been romantically involved for nearly three years and are often seen at parties and fundraisers in Britain and the United States. Hurley, mother of three-year-old Damian by former movie producer Steve Bing, is reported to be learning Hindi to impress Nayar, whose family runs a textile export business. [AFP/Yahoo!]

Hurley also tries to impress Nayar by adhering to a little-known passage in the Bhagavad Gita, which states women who date Indian men must inexplicably wear saris to celebrity fundraisers (see right photo, it’s our weekly gratuitous pic of an attractive broad).

Sepia Mutiny explanation of previous paragraph
We haven’t posted any photos of beautiful women this week, so we were due. This was an opening, albeit a weak one, and I took it. I don’t regret this decision. And don’t judge me, jerk. I can barely read at a third-grade level, so pictures are all I have.

AFP/Yahoo!: Liz Hurley’s Indian beau seeks divorce from “cruel” Italian wife

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I’m almost embarrassed to admit I saw an advance screening of A Lot Like Love, a new Ashton Kutcher – Amanda Peet romantic comedy opening tomorrow. It was far better than most Kutcher flicks. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I missed a good chunk of the beginning because, ahem, previews don’t start two hours late like red-carpet premieres where the desi lead fails to turn up.)

Presumably I got the pass, which came via a desi arts list, because a desi plays a main character. Kal Penn plays Jeeter, Ashton Kutcher’s dot-com coworker in avant-garde lenses, and does a great job: he’s charismatic and fluent, drives a hot car, picks up cute women and offers Kutcher tips. It’s as if the Van Wilder roles had been reversed, and indeed this would’ve been a much better movie with Penn in the lead.

The story resembles Boys and Girls, a wooden Freddie Prinze Jr. – Claire Forlani collaboration which, like Golden Gate, I liked mainly for its Berkeley backdrop. Kutcher plays Ollie, a dot-com type who’s inarticulate, obsessed with work and toys with his female fling like a yo-yo. You can never truly suspend disbelief with these movies because, hello, Peet and Forlani are gorgeous.

The script was written with diversity in mind: a major deaf character is played unremarkably, there’s a black priest, the movie uses the ‘burbs rather than New York. And it’s even kind to those in persistent vegetative states. Dumping on Ashton Kutcher’s thespian handicaps is all too easy, so I’ll just say this: Kutcher is the true heir to the Terry Schiavo school of acting. Kutcher makes Keanu Reeves look like Ben Kingsley. Kutcher alternates between two expressions, blank and blank. Kutcher speaks in two tones, dumb and stammering. Kutcher is the latest in a long line of brainless, cardboard male leads such as Dermot Mulroney in, oh, just about everything. Kutcher’s acting never rose above That ’70s Show, and that goes for Topher Grace too. Ok, I’ll stop now.

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Vaporwarya Rai is endlessly rumored to be in talks for this movie or that. Bond girl, anyone?

But one particular missed opportunity is quite funny: the director of the Will Smith romantic comedy Hitch says Rai was to play the college girlfriend. And since Smith produced the film, he probably had a hand in it. Said the director:

I want to see Aishwarya Rai because she was almost in my film… There was a time when she was going to play the college girlfriend, which was originally a much bigger part. I think we were all keen on she doing it. But we had a demanding schedule which she couldn’t work out. That was the hitch on Hitch.

That’s the girlfriend with whom a Steve Urkel-like, ’80s version of Will Smith makes all his early romantic blunders, like being too clingy too early and blurting ‘I love you.’ He later finds her making out with another guy in a parked car. ‘What did I do wrong?’ he repeats pathetically, slumping against the glass. The Other Guy takes pity on him: ‘You’re doin’ it right now!’

Wussy Will would’ve been an improvement over Two-Fisted Khan.

NPR’s “Day to Day” interviews actor Amitabh Bachchan about his career and the Bollywood film industry:

In a tribute later this month, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will bill Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan as “the Biggest Film Star in the World.” Madeleine Brand speaks with the performer, a major star in Indian cinema, about earning the superlative celebrity moniker.

NPR: Amitabh Bachchan, ‘the biggest film star in the word’ (Real Audio and Windows Media)
Previous post: Brief film updates

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Night of Henna claims to be the first-ever Pakistani-American film, which if true would be remarkably overdue (thanks, Turbanhead). It looks to be more arranged marriage with bad accents yadda yadda. Will she marry a desi, or will she stay with her white beau? It’s what we all struggled with — back in the days of Motley Crue.

Pooja Kumar, the print ad model for Bombay Dreams, stars. Craig Marker, from the most excellent Neil LaBute play The Shape of Things, co-stars, as does male model Suhail Tayeb. DJ Cheb-i-Sabbah did the soundtrack, which is promising; he does a soulful take on ‘Kaise Kaise.’

Watch the trailer. Here are showtimes. The film plays NYC’s Imaginasian starting Apr. 22.