• Twilight fans are gearing up for the film’s opening. While insider-chic has Inception the summer’s hottest film (or maybe Toy Story 3?), this film is probably going to blow them all away. And it will still be reported as a ‘surprise’ as Hollywood slowly figures out that females go to the movies, too.
By Jason Apuzzo. A new Bollywood film called Tere bin Laden (Without You, Laden) that satirizes Osama bin Laden, is apparently set for release next month (on July 16th) according to the AFP.
Tere Bin Laden is a tongue-in-cheek comedy about an ambitious young news reporter from Pakistan who is desperate to migrate to the US in pursuit of the American dream. His repeated attempts to immigrate are shot down as his visa is always rejected. But when things couldn’t look worse he comes across an Osama bin laden look alike. Ali then hatches a scheme to produce a fake Osama video and sell it to news channels as a breakthrough scoop! Unfortunately there are serious ramifications as the White House gets involved and dispatches an overzealous secret agent on Ali Zafar’s trail.
Satire is an extremely potent weapon, and it isn’t really surprising that current Bollywood filmmakers would feel comfortable going into this comedic territory due to the dire, ongoing threat of Islamic terrorism to Indian society (as grimly evidenced by the 2008 Mumbai attacks). As Arun Venugopal wrote in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, Bollywood has been cranking out movies of various sorts on the subject of terrorism for the past several years – Kurbaan (2009), Black and White (2008) A Wednesday! (2008), My Name is Khan (2010) and Aamir (2008), just to name a few – while filmmakers in the West have been cowering under dark clouds of political correctness. And as we’ve been covering here at LFM, extremely funny hit indie films like The Infidel (see the LFM review), Four Lions and the award-winning web series Living With the Infidels have recently been ripping away the veil that’s been hovering over this subject … while Hollywood dithers, still trying to figure out what is politically ‘safe’ to say about terrorism.
We wish the filmmakers well with this new project. The film’s trailer is below.
"Burnt by the Sun 2": a troubling sign of resurgent Russian nationalism?
By Govindini Murty. Variety announced on June 22nd that Nikita Mikhalkov, one of Russia’s leading filmmakers, will be honored with a Crystal Globe for “Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema” at the upcoming Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Czechoslovakia (taking place July 2-10, 2010). This news item caught my attention because Mikhalkov, the Academy Award-winning director of Burnt By the Sun, has been getting a lot of attention in Europe lately for his strongly Russian nationalist and Slavophilic views. Mikhalkov’s recent film Burnt By the Sun 2: Exodus aroused controversy in Europe this past spring because it was partially financed by the Russian government and received an extensive marketing campaign from them (including a red-carpet premiere with thousands of guests at the Kremlin), and allegedly contains pro-Russian nationalist propaganda. Burnt By the Sun 2 is the most expensive Russian film ever made with a budget of $55 million dollars, and yet it flopped at the Russian box office, making only $2.5 million dollars its opening weekend – in large part due to public controversy over Mikhalkov’s close ties to Vladimir Putin and the current Russian regime.
Nonetheless, the Cannes Film Festival screened Burnt by the Sun 2 this past May, and now the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is giving Mikhalkov its foremost award for his body of work. Nikita Mikhalkov is undeniably a talented actor, director, and producer with an accomplished cinematic oevre. However, given Mikhalkov’s controversial political statements (such as his open letter in 2007 asking Putin not to step down after his term of office expired), and the strongly Russian nationalist content of his recent films, it’s interesting that Karlovy Vary – one of Europe’s premiere film festivals – would be honoring him this year. There has been little discussion in America of Burnt By the Sun 2 or of other Mikhalkov films like 1612 and The Barber of Siberia (in part because they have not been released here), but they are important nonetheless as evidence of a resurgent nationalism in the Russian cinema that may have political repercussions for America and the rest of the world.
Nikita Mikhalkov comes from a noted Russian artistic family. His father wrote the lyrics to both the Soviet and Russian national anthems, his mother was a poetess, and his brother Andrei Konchalovsky is an acclaimed director of such films as Siberiade and The Inner Circle. Mikhalkov has acted in and directed films since the 1960s, with his breakthrough film coming in 1974 with At Home Among Strangers (an ostern, or “eastern” that was the Soviet answer to the popular American westerns). Mikhalkov’s biggest success, though, has been Burnt By the Sun (1994), which won both the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the Grand Prize at Cannes. Burnt By the Sun tells the story of a loyal Soviet colonel in the 1930s who was falsely accused of treachery by Stalin and condemned to death. The film received acclaim in the West for being one of the few films made in post-Soviet Russia to criticize the horrors of communism.
Mikhalkov with Putin on the set of "Burnt by the Sun 2."
Mikhalkov followed this courageous defense of democratic freedom, though, by turning toward Russian nationalism. His 1998 film The Barber of Siberia was a patriotic historical epic in which Mikhalkov himself played Tsar Alexander III. Some saw this as preparation for a run by Mikhalkov for political office. His Wikipedia biography notes: “The film received the Russia State Prize and spawned rumours about Mikhalkov’s presidential ambitions.”
In 2007 Mikhalkov produced 1612, a patriotic historical epic commissioned by the Kremlin and partially funded by oligarch Viktor Vekselberg (best known in the West for buying up Russian imperial Faberge eggs so they could be repatriated to Russia). Directed by Vladimir Khotinenko, the film was intended to commemorate the victory in 1612 of Russian forces over Polish-Lithuanian invaders who’d wrought havoc in Russia during a period known as “The Time of Troubles” (that took place in the interregnum between the end of the Rurik dynasty in 1598 and the beginning of the Romanov dynasty in 1613 under Tsar Michael Romanov). The Kremlin commissioned the historical film in order to mark the creation of a new national holiday on November 4th. (And in the best Russian imperial style, 1612 was celebrated in Moscow with a lavish red-carpet premiere – complete with Russian models in white leather handing out birch-flavored vodka to guests.) However, many saw the film as an obvious allegory of modern Russia’s own “Time of Troubles” in the 1990s after the fall of Communism, which was ended by the tsar-like rise of Vladimir Putin in 2000. As Chris Baldwin reports in this Reuters article: Continue reading A Dangerous New Nationalism in Russian Cinema?
By Jason Apuzzo. • A new poster is out for The Social Network, the new David Fincher movie starring Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake about the co-founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. Can Fincher make this interesting – or will this just be Adventureland meets Wall Street?
• A new trailer is out for Predators, the reboot for that faltering series. The new film stars Laurence Fishburne and … Adrien Brody? Adrien Brody?
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … forget Inception – this summer’s most anticipated film (by me) is clearly Piranha 3D … and that film also has a new poster out today. Think of this film as a Pixar movie for adults. Piranha 3D has a great cast featuring Jessica Szohr, Steven R. McQueen (grandson of Steve McQueen!), Elisabeth Shue, Jerry O’Connell, Ving Rhames, Richard Dreyfuss (quasi-reprising his role from Jaws), Christopher Lloyd … and a bevy of lovely, endangered female beachgoers such as the ones shown on your right.
Freedom isn’t free. Everyone should be concerned about beach safety, without which American men – and especially women – are unable to enjoy weekend recreational swimming and sunbathing. We’d like to thank the makers of Piranha 3D for highlighting the sacrifices that sometimes need to be made in order to keep America’s beaches safe and secure.
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …
By Jason Apuzzo. LFM contributor Joe Bendel recently reviewed the controversial and award-winning documentary 1428, which is currently showing at The Los Angeles Film Festival. 1428 depicts the botched and inhumane handling of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake by the Chinese communist regime.
Now comes word that another recent documentary about the Chinese government’s appalling mismanagement of a deadly earthquake – in this case, the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake that killed over 200,000 people – has been made available for free (in 12 parts) on YouTube. The title of this documentary from director Wang Libo is Buried (2009), and amazingly the film was one of the prizewinners of the 2009 Beijing Documentary Film Festival.
Joe Bendel writes in his review of Buried that the film “methodically assembles a damning indictment of the Chinese government … Unless Wang fabricated Buried out of whole cloth, he presents an airtight case of government negligence and craven bureaucratic cya-ing.”
We encourage LFM readers to check out this extraordinarily courageous film from Wang Libo.
IN ADDITION … we wanted LFM readers to get a chance to see the Oscar nominated short China’s Unnatural Disaster, that was shown earlier this year on HBO. This utterly heartbreaking documentary film gives you a sense of what life is like under China’s brutal regime. You will see, for example, a parent’s official letter of ‘compensation’ after the Sichuan earthquake from the Chinese government: $317 for each dead child. It turns out, however, that even this ‘compensation’ is tied to a pledge to “obey the law and maintain social order.” Those willing to cooperate with the government (i.e., keep their mouths shut and stop complaining) have their ‘compensation’ packages upped to $8,800 per dead child.
Btw, I’m so glad Obama bowed to Chinese President Hu Jintao, aren’t you?
• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Rotten Tomatoes is featuring a behind-the-scenes early first look at Centurion, the new sword-and-sandles film starring former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko. Ancient Rome gets such a bad name these days – it’s nice to see the Romans finally get a little love thrown their way on the big screen.
And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.
