Category: Watch Movies!

Bollywood Courts Controversy: Tere Bin Laden

By Joe Bendel. “Banned in Pakistan” sounds like a heck of recommendation for a film. Yet, in the case of Abhishek Sharma’s Tere Bin Laden (a bit of wordplay roughly translating to “Without Bin Laden”) it is hard to understand why they bothered. A mildly amusing satire, Tere tweaks the American response to the September 11th terrorist attacks far more than its Al-Qaeda mastermind, but evidently the Pakistani authorities feared any comedic representation of Bin Laden would be provocative.  American audiences can judge for themselves today as Tere opens at select theaters nationwide (see listings here).

In a bit of a departure for Bollywood, Tere is set in Pakistan and stars the Pakistani popstar Ali Zafar as Ali Hassan, an aspiring journalist who dreams of making it big in America. Unfortunately, his departure is delayed by the 9-11 terrorist attack. When his flight finally leaves, his odd behavior (possible only in a slapstick comedy, given the obviously tense circumstances) is misinterpreted as a hijacking attempt. As a result, Hassan is barred from America for life.

Our young protagonist perseveres though, toiling away at a low rent news station, trying to raise cash for a new set of identity papers. Covering a rooster-crowing contest, Hassan spies a poultry breeder named Noora who is the spitting image of Bin Laden — okay, maybe that is a bit daring on the filmmaker’s part.

Peddling a fake bin Laden interview.

However, when the reporter bamboozles the eccentric Noora into making a counterfeit Bin Laden video, made up like his notorious double, the jokes really are not directed at Bin Laden, but primarily at his target -Hassan’s promised land of America. When the bogus tape hits the airwaves shortly thereafter, the American military naturally starts carpet-bombing Afghanistan out of sheer panic. Frankly, this is the sort of satire you can find in any number of American films. Of course, the Bollywood musical numbers are a different story, the best being Zafar’s mellow groover, “Bus Ek Soch.”

Ironically, the most endearing character of Tere is the likably goofy faux Bin Laden, played by Pradhuman Singh, who shows a flare for physical comedy and chicken wrangling. Zafar, who reportedly was once held for ransom by self-described Bin Laden supporters, is also reasonably engaging as Hassan. One can also understand why he might be gun-shy with satirical material that cuts too close to the bone.

The outrageous positions Bin Laden’s double finds himself in (chasing chickens with a grenade super-glued to his hand, for instance) may well help bring the mass murderer’s public image down to earth. If so, Tere could be a force for good. Still the Kumbaya ending, suggesting everyone can come together and work things out if America only reaches out to her enemies, is hardly an accurate reflection of the world as it is.

Ultimately, Tere plays it safe in choosing its targets. That it still found itself deemed “anti-Islam and anti-Pakistan,” with many censors apparently unable to distinguish between Bin Laden and a character clearly impersonating him within the context of the film, is probably more telling than anything in the film itself. For those intrigued by its backstory, Tere opens today (8/6) at the Big Manhattan (formerly ImaginAsian) Cinema for a one week run, with the possibility of extending, and in other theaters nationwide.

Posted on August 6th, 2010 at 3:09pm.

New Hawaii 5-0 Heroes To Fight Terrorism

By Jason Apuzzo. Word comes today from The Wall Street Journal that the new version of CBS’ classic Hawaii Five-O series – see the trailer above – will feature a plotline in which the show’s heroes fight terrorism.  How much of that they do, of course, remains to be seen (is there a lot of terrorism in Hawaii?).

Here’s the Journal:

In the original “Hawaii Five-O,” Jack Lord’s Steve McGarrett is an elite detective—and a bit of a straight arrow—whose arch-nemesis is Chinese communist spy Wo Fat. He’s too busy solving crimes to have much of a personal life.  For the new version of the cop show, writers crafted McGarrett in post-9/11 mode, as a third-generation military man armed with high-tech weapons to fight international terrorism.

So they’re going Jack Bauer this time out.  Interesting.  I’ve been aware for some time that they were rebooting this series, but was not aware until now that there might be an anti-terror subplot worked into the storyline.

I’m a fan of the original show – in fact, as an odd coincidence, I just started watching DVDs of the original series last week.  One of the things that made the original show so interesting – aside from its aggressive, in-your-face photography and editing, memorable score, and Jack Lord’s flinty persona – was the abundant international intrigue in the show.  The core villain of the original series was, indeed, a Chinese communist superspy named Wo Fat, played menacingly by Khigh Dheigh (also famous as the Chinese communist spymaster from The Manchurian Candidate).  The pilot of the series, for example, features Wo Fat immersing American counter-intelligence agents (including, eventually, Jack Lord’s Steve McGarrett character) into a special brain-washing tank, in order to squeeze information out of them.  Wo Fat comes across as a crafty, brilliant adversary – and his rivalry with Jack Lord would eventually extend over the entire twelve seasons of the show.

Fighting the Red Menace: Jack Lord as Steve McGarrett.

And anti-communism was actually an important subtext of the show.  Hawaii Five-O was, to some extent, a refashioning of John Wayne’s film Big Jim McLain – a film which had featured The Duke and sidekick  James Arness battling a communist cell in Hawaii … all while wearing impossibly stylish clothing, and romancing local beauties like Nancy Olsen.  Jack Lord himself had famously played C.I.A. agent Felix Leiter in the original James Bond film Dr. No, and Lord’s first major starring role was in the anti-communist cult classic The Red Menace – so the Red Scare was definitely in the air on this series.

My assumption going in is that this reboot will not come even close to being as good as the original.  That’s a given, for reasons I probably don’t need to elaborate on here.  [Essentially it boils down to this: they botch everything these days.]  The new show obviously won’t have Jack Lord – who played McGarrett as a kind of edgy, 1950s-style company man, always on the brink of going berserk – and above all they won’t have the style, the muted cool of the old series.  But at least they’ll be fighting terrorists, and that’s a plus.  And maybe at some point they’ll bring in a new, 21st century Wo Fat.  Who knows?

The trailer looks plain vanilla, frankly – albeit with a fair amount of hardware.  We’ll keep an eye on all this.

Had the best soundtrack on TV.

[LFM Contributor Steve Greaves chimes in: “As a side note, another ‘impossibly cool’ element that is likely to be missing (or if it is there, will exist in some sullied form) from the new series is the kinetic, iconic and just plain rockin’ opening of the show featuring Mort Stevens’ time-tested Hawaii 5-0 theme music.

“Being a film music composer and buff myself, I have to say that the slammin’ timpani and heavy backbeat that kicked off the stylish and punchy title sequence made for one of most memorable, macho and all around tasty bits of 60’s TV pre-music video era. While the trailer shows signs of keeping the main theme reasonably intact, no doubt the reboot will purloin and abuse the melody, adding the requisite techno elements and Limp Bisquity schlock rock guitar wash that sounds like every action trailer churned out these days. Let’s hope they keep it pure, as the original show’s sonic palette brought a unique character to the series and locales therein.

“For a real treat, travel back in time and take a listen to the original series soundtrack which features classic mid-century TV cue writing and execution at its finest. Naturally, it also makes for great tiki party background fare.”]

Posted on August 6th, 2010 at 12:28pm.

Hollywood Round-up, 8/4


By Jason Apuzzo. • In the buildup to The Expendables, new clips of the film are being released (see above), and Sly Stallone is talking a little bit more freely about the political situation in Hollywood.  Here’s what he says today, in an interview conducting with Aint It Cool News readers:

[I]t’s a minor miracle the last RAMBO would even be released, but I took a gamble there … [for people who] desire to see an action film unfold that wreaks of pride and manly individualism that has unfortunately fallen out of vogue. I believe that everything is a cycle. And once again America will have its cinematic heroes reflect the incredible honor it is to be defending the most extraordinary country the planet has ever known. Just give it time, everything is a cycle.

I sincerely hope he’s right – that these things proceed in cycles.  Suffice it to say that if he’s right about this, then we’re long overdue for a correction toward more pro-American, pro-freedom material.  We’ll see.  Most of the action on the pro-freedom front seems to be coming from independent filmmakers, not from within the Hollywood system.

"Transformers 3"s Rosie Huntington-Whiteley .

• The debate rages on over the merits of 3D cinema.  Today J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon are more or less weighing in against 3D.  What’s interesting here is that nobody was having this debate right after Avatar.  It’s the recent run of crappy 3D conversions that have been causing doubts.  I continue to say: filmmakers should shoot natively in 3D, or not use the technology at all.

• Communist China is apparently eager to have Inception playing in its theaters. It’s no wonder; the film’s basic subject matter is brainwashing!  It doesn’t surprise me in the least that they would be enthusiastically courting this film, and otherwise banning Salt.  In related news, the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein notes the age-difference in critics who love/hate Inception – with older ones hating it.  I guess I’m breaking the mold here, because I’m under 40 and I hated it, too!

• The Jack Ryan reboot Moscow may have a director: Lost’s Jack Bender. In related Cold War movie news, you may not have known that until his recent meltdown Mel Gibson and Lethal Weapon screenwriter Shane Black were apparently collaborating on a picture called Cold Warrior, which would have featured Gibson as “an ex-Cold War spy who comes out of retirement and teams up with a younger agent to stop a Russian terrorism threat.”  There’s also news today that Joel Silver may be trying to lure Gibson back to revive the Lethal Weapon franchise.  I can’t begin to describe what a bad idea that would be.

• Transformers 3‘s Rosie Huntington-Whiteley appears on the cover of LOVE Magazine today. Yowza.  Where does Michael Bay find these actresses?  Oh, right – from the pages of Victoria’s Secret catalogues.

"Mad Men"'s curvy Christina Hendricks in GQ.

• Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells asks a fascinating question today: “[W]hat about the next generation of Hollywood Republicans? Are there any industry righties from among [the] under-35 set? A movement without young blood is no movement at all.” How true!  Boy would I love to answer this question in detail for Mr. Wells, whom I suspect would be fascinated by the answer.  Let’s just say that it’s to the benefit of certain people’s media careers that you never hear about the younger crowd – or about anyone currently involved in actual filmmaking, for that matter. You’ll always here about them here at Libertas, though, because that’s our entire mission: to promote and support pro-freedom filmmaking.  Plus we have great pin-ups.

• And speaking of which, Tron‘s Olivia Wilde, who is quickly establishing herself as a go-to sci fi babe, apparently just shot a nude scene for Jon Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens in which she stands “naked in front of a bonfire in front of 500 Apache warriors.” Hey, this sounds like my kind of film!  Maybe Favreau read this.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Mad Men‘s Christina Hendricks does an interview and photoshoot for this month’s UK GQ. We’re big fans of Mad Men here at LFM (see here), and are pleased to see this retro-curvy bombshell is popping up (and out) everywhere these days …

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.

Posted on August 3rd, 2010 at 1:42pm.

Aint It Cool News Calls Terrorist Satire Four Lions ‘The Comedy of the Year’; Still No U.S. Release

By Jason Apuzzo. As regular LFM readers know, we loved Chris Morris’ striking new comedy about Islamic terrorism, Four Lions (see our glowing Libertas review from when the film unspooled at The LA Film Festival).

Four Lions is currently playing at the 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), and a reviewer for Aint It Cool News had this high praise for it:

The day ended with one of my most highly-anticipated films of MIFF, Chris Morris’s FOUR LIONS. There are so many comedians who operate under the assumption that they are “edgy” because they make lots of forced references to things they think are taboo. Chris Morris is one of the few who actually is, shining a sharp, satirical spotlight on our own hypocrisies.

FOUR LIONS, his first film as director and co-writer, is possibly the bravest skewering of cultural mores since LIFE OF BRIAN. When comedy shows or films proudly proclaim they have no political correctness, it usually means they like making fun of a politician’s obesity. FOUR LIONS genuinely discards political correctness, but in an exceptionally smart way, not allowing a single likable character, refusing to present anyone who (a) plays into our own comfortable stereotyped beliefs, or (b) allaying any white or middle-class guilt by having a “Good Muslim” or a “White Politician Who Actually Does Get It”. There are no safe havens in this film, and this — the story of four suicide bombers trying to attack a London target — is all the better for it. I probably missed about 50% of the jokes because I was laughing at the other ones, which is simply an excuse to see it again.

I don’t mind calling it early: FOUR LIONS is the comedy of the year.

We heartily agree.  Do whatever you can to see this film.  Unfortunately one of the things you won’t be able to do is see it in an American theater, because no company has picked it up for distribution here – even though it was a box office hit in the UK, won the audience award at the LA Film Festival, and was even a hit at Sundance.  And this is shameful, because this is an extraordinary film that people should be given the chance to see.

We will continue to bang the drum for this film here at LFM until it gets its American release.

Posted on August 2nd, 2010 at 12:46pm.

Watch Disco & Atomic War Now!

Watch more free documentaries

By Jason Apuzzo. A film from the recent LA Film Festival that we loved was Disco & Atomic War.  Disco is an extraordinary new Estonian documentary about the so-called ’soft power’ influence of American and Western culture on the minds of Soviet citizens living in Estonia during the Cold War, who were able through clever means to watch Finnish television broadcasts emanating from just over the border. As Disco informs us (in amusing detail), American popular culture – especially in the form of glamorous TV shows like “Dallas,” or movies like Star Wars and even Emmanuelle – was deeply feared by Soviet authorities due to the ideas and expectations such programming planted in the minds of Soviet citizens. This led to amusing co-optings, such as the Soviets creating their own officially sanctioned disco instruction course for TV(!).

You can read the LFM review of Disco and Atomic War from the LA Film Festival, and also read LFM Contributor Joe Bendel’s recent review on Joe’s personal site.

This is documentary filmmaking at its finest, and easily one of the best – and most drily amusing – films I’ve seen this past year.  We want to thank the folks at SnagFilms for making the full-length film available for everyone to see, for free.  Also: special thanks to SnagFilms for following Libertas on Twitter!

Posted on July 30th, 2010 at 1:58pm.