Ra,One

Dated released : OCTOBER 26, 2011

Quality : DVDRip

Info : IMDbPro

Genre : Sci Fi / INDIA

Cast : Shahrukh Khan as G.One , Kareena Kapoor , Arjun Rampal as Ra.One , Shahana Goswami , Satish Shah , Dalip Tahil , Tom Wu .

Salaam Bombay!, a Cinematic Masterpiece

I've just seen (twice) and reviewed Mira Nair's first feature film, Salaam Bombay! - made in 1988 after she had made five documentaries.

There are many amazing things about this movie: only three professional actors, and 24 street kids, who couldn't even read the script. Shot entirely on location in the brothel district of Bombay, with several scenes inside a real brothel, several inside a real "orphanage", really a prison for children, several in street crowds where its obvious that Nair had little if any control of the crowds.

A giant critical success, and Nair took the profits from the film and opened three centers to help street kids, which has now grown to 17. Cinema for social change: she also got better treatment for orphans in India. That alone places this a rank above nearly all other popular cinema.

My reviews are posted at the two review sites:
1000 Dvds to See (the original review site, now close to 400 reviews of movies, tv miniseries/shows, concerts)
1000 Great Films (the new site just for films, new interface, no ads yet!)

Recent Film Favorites 3-31-09

Here are some of the best films I've seen recently:

Good Bye, Lenin! (2003) - German comedy about the fall of the wall and the GDR, German reunification, becomes a poignant tale of a son's love for his socialist mom, who is in a coma when the big events occur so her kids try to hide the news from her when she awakens!



Ballad of a Soldier (1959) - one of the first Russian films to reach the U.S. is a beautiful black and white travel film, of a train ride home for a teenage Russian soldier to visit his mother on their prairie farm on a special 'hero's furlough'

The Emperor and the Assassin (1998) - another monster-sized Chinese historical epic, about the king of Qin in 220 B.C., almost Shakespearean tale involving three kingdoms and wars of unification, and an inside assassination plot

Gadjo Dilo (1997) - passionate Romanian film about a young French man with gypsy ancestors in Romania who's made a journey there to find a singer of a song his father loved; Rona Hartner is dazzling as a singer-dancer and won two int'l awards for her role


Ashes of Time Redux (2007) - terrific Chinese (Hong Kong) director Wong Kar-Wai remade his 1994 samurai film; it's a cinematic treat, painterly, poetic, hallucinogenic. Wong is a master and uses film like paint

Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy, Working in Time (2003) - amazing documentary by Thomas Riedelscheimer follows Scottish artist, sculptor, and environmental artist as he creates pieces in nature with natural found materials

UPDATE: I just saw Slumdog Millionaire on dvd, and reviewed it. Terrific film, a bit brutal in places, definitely not for younger viewers. Great directing, style, story, music - and Freida Pinto is dazzling.

The River, a Portrait of Indian Culture

[Note: I don't usually review individual films here but at "1000 DVDs" and "1000 Great Films", but this blog is always seeking more films about or from India, so I'm also posting this here, as we have many fans from India]

The French master Jean Renoir discovered Ms. Rumer Godden's novel about living in India, The River, but couldn't find anyone to back the film as the story lacked the usual action elements of most western films about Asia. Eventually Kenneth McEldowney, a florist tycoon, who also loved the book, backed the film but they didn't have enough capital to hire big Hollywood actors (Renoir wanted Brando as the lead, but ended up with a non-actor war veteran who had actually lost a leg). The cast is actually part professional, part amateur. The book and film are really not about a strong plot (it centers on a young teenage girl's awkward coming of age), but are more like a documentary film on life along the Ganges, the river culture and lives along its banks; that and colonialist Britons trying to co-exist while basically occupying a foreign nation.

This was Renoir's first film in English, and first color film, released in 1951. As the son of the famous French impressionist painter, Auguste, he really laid on some beautiful, rich early Technicolor. Martin Scorsese was moved by this film at age 9 in the theater, and led the restoration effort, completed in 2004. The Criterion dvd edition is gorgeous. This is really the film's star, the glorious cinematography of a beautiful and colorful slice of Hindu culture. There are things westerners may learn about Indian culture from this film, such as the beautiful Festival of Lights. Renoir's own son Claude was director of cinematography, and though some of the techniques look a little dated, and the acting a little forced at times, this was the first color film shot in India, and as such, the movie takes on a more important societal role than mere entertainment.

For me the highlight of the Criterion dvd is the documentary done by the BBC, An Indian Affair, in which they returned to India with an 88 year old Rumer Godden to visit the locales where she grew up and that she hadn't seen in over half a century. Her own story is an amazing one, and she understood India better than any other western author. She apparently had an influence on Indian author Ruth Prawar Jhabvala as well, as it appears that a variation of Godden's own story was written by Jvabvala into her prize-winning novel Heat and Dust. This documentary is as well filmed as the Renoir movie, and the dvd also features interfiews with Scorsese, Renoir, and producer McEldowney.

Part travelogue, part novel of a British girl's growing pains in a foreign land, The River remains an important early western look at the beauty and culture of India.