Salman film "Bodyguard" breaks SRK's overseas record

Directed by Siddique, 'Bodyguard' stars Salman Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Hazel, Mahesh Manjrekar and Shatrughan Sinha. The movie, releasing on August 31, is the remake of the Malayalam hit, 'Bodyguard'.

Salman Khan-starrer 'Bodyguard' is on a record-breaking spree. After a stupendous opening in the domestic market, the film has surpassed the record of Shah Rukh Khan-starrer 'My Name Is Khan' by earning 194,000 pounds on the first day of screening in Britain.
"My Name is Khan" had collected 191,000 pounds on the opening day in Britain.

The film is also on its way to becoming the highest grosser in the Middle East. It has collected $1.6 million in the first two days, just a little behind the previous highest grosser 'Dabangg' which collected $1.7 million.

"Reliance Entertainment's overseas team is delighted to have delivered one of the biggest overseas hits of the year.'Bodyguard' is poised to be a record-breaking success for Salman Khan in the international markets," Sanjeev Lamba, CEO Reliance Entertainment said in a statement.The film, which also stars Kareena Kapoor in the lead, has earned $3.8 million in the US and is expected to overhaul the $5 million collections of 'Dabangg'.

Source: MSN

Aarakshan Review | Most Awaited Bollywood Movie

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, Manoj Bajpayee, Pateik

Directed by Prakash Jha

Rating: ** ½

Films about social issues are like primetime debates on news channels, opinionated yet inconclusive. And even 'Aarakshan' neither takes a firm stand, nor provides the way forward.

The story is about a college principal, Dr Prabhakar Anand (Amitabh Bachchan) who's the 'mai-baap', godfather, Big B of Bhopal. Every second cop, lawyer, bank manager etc falls at his feet, having graduated from his prestigious STM institute. He also believes that charity begins from one's verandah, since his doubles as a free coaching class for weak students who belong to faint income homes. His favourite mentee, Deepak Kumar (Saif Ali Khan), a backward-class individual who owes his education to Dr. Anand, also helps out with the balcony classes, apart from teaching in STS. Anand's daughter, Poorbi (Deepika Padukone) seizes this opportunity to get flirty with her father's obedient disciple and they sing a song to acknowledge their relationship.

Soon, the Supreme Court announces a quota for OBC students that shakes up the city and subsequently, Deepak becomes touchy about the many pokes at his caste. Now, caste-based distinction is no laughing matter but when he begins most of his lines with "Humare logon ne/ ko", it gets a bit tiresome. He ends up in a silly brawl with a student, Sushant (Prateik), who strongly opposes the quota and gets ousted by Dr Anand. And Dr Anand himself quits the institute, as the board nails him for misquoting in the press, something he's unwilling to retract (even though he doesn't strongly believe in it!). He is replaced by the cunningly commercial, Professor Mithilesh Singh (Manoj Bajpayee), who crushes Anand's self respect and tweaks his ego's nose, between devilish grins and chuckles.

Post interval, we move to the second evil: coaching classes that poach school and college teachers. And Mithilesh Singh is the proud owner of KK coaching classes which has one centre every 3 miles, in any direction in Bhopal. Infact, as a last straw, he manages to even convert Dr Anand's home into one of his branches, through a foolish turn of events.

The film lives up to every filmy stereotype from this point on, as Dr Anand plans to avenge his shattered image. His million-dollar idea: move into milkman's 'tabela', teach underprivileged kids and just about anyone who believes in free lunches, bring KK Classes' stock down. Predictably, Anand's 'tabela' classes does becomes the talk of the town, and some of the cows in the shed almost plan a sequel to 'Cows with guns'. The rest of the story is as dry as fodder.

Bachchan carries this movie throughout, and just like in the film, the distributers and investors of this film should fall at his feet for his contributions. Bajpayee's character is deliciously dark, a fistful of his hair drooping over his forehead isn't. It would be politically incorrect to comment on whether Saif played a flawless 'Dalit' or not, so, short pause, let's move on. Deepika is brilliantly bright and charming but even she has her share of monologues that could put you to snooze. Prateik continues to have a squeaky hormonal voice, comparable to a child who's denied a candy.

Shankar-Ehsan-Loy drum up a mediocre fare for the ears, with 'Acha Lagta Hai' clearly scoring over 'Mauka', which seems right out of the 80s. Prakash Jha has always thrown a mirror at society without caring about how it would be received or whether people are prepared for it. This one, however, seems like a more calculated, pre-meditated, marketable proposition.

Should the underprivileged be uplifted through reservation or will that rob the deserving privileged from claiming their merit? Can we take a call on something so serious with popcorn crunching inside our mouth? I couldn't.

Source: Yahoo Movies

Upcoming Movie: Green Zone

Release date(s):March 12, 2010 (2010-03-12)

Directed by:Paul Greengrass

Produced by:Tim Bevan
Eric Fellner
Lloyd Levin
Paul Greengrass

Written by: Brian Helgeland
Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Book)

Starring:Matt Damon
Greg Kinnear
Brendan Gleeson
Amy Ryan
Khalid Abdalla
Jason Isaacs

Cinematography:Barry Ackroyd

Editing by:Christopher Rouse

Studio :StudioCanal
Relativity Media
Working Title Films

Distributed by:Universal Studios


Country:United States

Language:English

Budget:$100 million

Story:

Green Zone is an action thriller war film written by Brian Helgeland and directed by Paul Greengrass. The film is "credited as having been 'inspired' by"[1] the non-fiction 2006 book Imperial Life in the Emerald City by journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran, which documented life in the Green Zone, Baghdad. The film stars Matt Damon, Amy Ryan, Greg Kinnear, and Brendan Gleeson. Production began in January 2008 in Spain and moved on to Morocco. The film was globally released on March 12, 2010 with releases available from March 10 in some countries. Released in Australia on 11 March 2010.

All the war-zone authenticity in the Arab world cannot salvage the silly Hollywood plot at the heart of "Green Zone," Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass' first collaboration outside the Jason Bourne realm.

Their thriller about the futile search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is a visual and visceral knockout that's utterly deflated by a story as common, coarse and unappetizing as Army field rations.

The movie pales further by arriving in theaters just days after the Academy Awards triumph of the vastly superior Iraq war story "The Hurt Locker," a film many people have yet to see. For the price of a couple of tickets to "Green Zone," you can own the DVD of a truly great war film in "The Hurt Locker." "Green Zone" emulates the let's-build-a-democracy-just-like-ours intent of the U.S. occupation of Iraq in 2003, as chronicled in Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," a book cited in the credits as the inspiration for the movie.

Greengrass and screenwriter Brian Helgeland have taken a setting rich with novel dramatic possibilities and made up a fictional action tale just like any other, with the same lame plot contrivances and the same stiff, artificial characters.

You've got the incorruptible working-class patriot in Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon), who leads a WMD team frustrated that detailed intelligence reports continually fail to turn up any traces of Saddam Hussein's supposed arsenals.

You've got the sniveling, scheming bureaucrat in Pentagon intelligence man Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear) and an internecine clash with his honorable nemesis in CIA man Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson). OK, so the CIA good guy thing is kind of new. You've got the cliched journalist in Wall Street Journal reporter Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan), who seems incapable of piecing together a story unless it's handed to her in a neat folder marked "top secret."

And you've got the Special Forces thug in Lt. Col. Briggs (Jason Isaacs).

We all know now the weapons that prompted the invasion of Iraq did not exist. The filmmakers concoct a simple-minded WMD conspiracy to explain the bad intelligence reports, then lob Miller into the middle of it.

Miller's encounter with well-meaning Iraqi "Freddy" (Khalid Abdalla, who played one of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Greengrass' "United 93") leads him to one of Saddam's top aides, who holds the key to exposing the conspiracy.

Other than Abdalla, who captures a sense of Iraqis' conflicted emotions over Saddam's overthrow and the U.S. occupation, Damon and his co-stars deliver nothing more than serviceable performances. The roles do not call for much more, Ryan in particular stuck trying to make her few shallow lines sound meaningful. The WMD debacle was a colossal intelligence failure that Greengrass and company dilute to a base Hollywood plot device so they can turn the boys loose in Baghdad with all the firepower a big studio budget can muster.

There's barely a story to hold "Green Zone" together, the movie just hurtling through firefights and chases, pausing for breath with the occasional revelation to prod Miller on in his quest.

For pure ambiance, "Green Zone" is a marvel. Though shot in Morocco, Spain and England, the action feels as though it takes place in the heart of Baghdad.

Greengrass, who directed Damon in "The Bourne Ultimatum" and "The Bourne Supremacy," applies similar techniques — darting camera work, quick cutting, haphazard framing — to create the same sense of documentary immediacy in "Green Zone."

How did Hurt Locker beat Avatar at Oscars?

For Hollywood pundits, industry folk and Oscar fans still paying attention on Monday, a major question remained: How did Hurt Locker beat Avatar?

For as much as "The Hurt Locker" was the critics' darling, it had three major strikes against it in its battle against the mighty James Cameron's "Avatar."

First, the box office was paltry — it's taken in just $14.7 million domestically, compared to an amazing $720.6 million for "Avatar." That makes "The Hurt Locker" the lowest-grossing best picture winner since accurate records have been kept.

Second, it had no big acting names, usually an important factor in Oscar victory.

And third, it was about the Iraq war, a subject moviegoers traditionally just don't want to deal with. "Iraq is usually the kiss of death at the Oscars," says Tom O'Neil, blogger for the Los Angeles Times' Envelope, an awards site.

But even with 10 nominees in the running for this year's best picture Oscar, the two films — whose directors were once married — were quickly pitted against each other in the race for Hollywood's highest honor.

How did "The Hurt Locker" win out? Theories abound:

Finally a non-political film about Iraq
Many films about the Iraq war have fallen into a trap of appearing preachy or at least having a strong point of view. Viewers may or may not agree with that view — that still doesn't mean they want to get it at the movies.

But "The Hurt Locker," a story of three technicians on a bomb-defusing team in Baghdad, is at heart an action movie — a documentary-style close-up of the men, their relationships, their missteps and the almost unbearable tension inherent in their exhausting, terrifying, tedious work.

"This isn't that kind of muckraking film aiming to show torture or violation of rules of war," says Robert Sklar, film professor at New York University. "This is a film about men trying to save lives rather than take them. It's also a buddy story. It has classic war-movie themes."

Oscar likes films with an important message
Often the Academy honors big, sweeping films, which "The Hurt Locker" is certainly not. But it also looks for films with a substantial message. "Oscar likes films of importance, with a capital I," says film historian Leonard Maltin. "Often they're big films, but this is a small film that dealt with a really important subject."

Oscar voters don't care about box office
Who says Oscar cares about box office? "The Oscars don't pay attention to that at all, and nor should they," Maltin says. In fact, he adds, they've often been accused of being too elitist, favoring independent movies over big films favored by the broader public.

Yes, they do!
Nonsense, says O'Neil, of The Envelope: "The Academy wants their movies to do well. Then they anoint them." Even last year's "Slumdog Millionaire," which originally almost went straight to DVD, had made $40 million before the nominations, then rode to $70 million by the time of the awards, he says.

It's about the campaigning
All of "Hurt Locker's" technical merit aside, "it would be naive to think Oscar campaigning had nothing to do with it," says O'Neil. He credits Cynthia Swartz, whose public relations firm was given the Oscar campaigning job by Summit, the film's distributor, which was looking for industry respect and had plenty of money to fund the campaign, having already cashed in with the "Twilight" vampire movies.

"It was a very savvy campaign," says O'Neil. "Full force, and highly aggressive."

The woman factor
As compelling as her movie was, director Kathryn Bigelow had a compelling story of her own. This director who specializes not in female-oriented films but in big action thrillers had a real shot at becoming the first woman in Oscar history to win the best director prize, with her film winning best picture, too.

Yet Bigelow tried to downplay that element of her story, saying in interviews that she just wanted to be seen as a filmmaker, not a female one.

"Bigelow refused to capitalize on the woman factor, and to her credit," says Maltin. Everyone else wanted to make it a story but her. Still, you can't deny it had some impact."

The ex factor
Nor did Bigelow have any desire to capitalize on the "Ex Factor" — in case you're way behind on your Oscar gossip, she was married to Cameron from 1989-91. Were there some voters who were secretly rooting for her to leave him in the dust? No way of knowing, and the two seemed amicable through the awards season, with him standing and cheering as she won her Oscar. Still, there's no doubt that the "battle of the exes" (ok, we're done with the puns) added to the hype.