Monika’s Pensieve

It was Shahrukh Khan’s 43rd birthday a few days ago and so there’s been a lot of media coverage in India about that, with even the producers of his next film using his birthday to promote the film (the first promo video was released - that’ll probably be posted sometime later on my blog :)). [...]

{FILM SPOTTING}
The Last Lear (India, 2008)
Polish Distributor: None as of yet, worldwide release was in September 2008
Director: Rituparno Ghosh
Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Preity Zinta, Arjun Rampal
Production House: Planman Motion Pictures
Plot: (from imdb)
An aging Shakespearean actor takes on one of the bard’s most challenging roles.
Trailer

Why it might be worth seeing
The main reason I guess is Amitabh Bachchan [...]

{FILM SPOTTING}
Slumdog Millionaire (UK/France, 2008)
Polish Distributor: Monolith Films (27th February 2009)
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Dev Patel, Irfan Khan, Anil Kapoor
Production House: Celador Films
Plot: (from imdb)
The story of how impoverished Indian teen Jamal Malik became a contestant on the Hindi version of “Who Wants to be A Millionaire?” — an endeavor made without prize money in mind, [...]

{FILM SPOTTING}
As usual I’ve got too many things saved with the intention to write about them later and a lot of these seem to be ideas for “film spotting” posts. I figured these shouldn’t be that difficult to clear up, so you can probably expect a lot of “film spotting” in the coming days :) [...]

{FILM SPOTTING}
The fourth edition of Ticket to Bollywood (a Bollywood mini-festival) will take place in Warsaw in about a month’s time (5th-7th December). Tickets are usually hard to get, so if you’d like to attend some films with me let me know soon :) There’s some general info about what they’re showing here and the [...]

You may remember I once wrote about the nationalist tendencies in Mumbai. At the end I asked who will be targeted next and now we know :] It’s not any particular Bollywood star or even Bollywood itself… This time it’s the Bhojpuri film industry.
The Indian film industry is unlike any other in the world in [...]

{FILM DIARY}
English Babu Desi Mem (India, 1996)
Seen: last night on DVD
Runtime: 170′
Release Date: sometime in 1996 in India and sometime recently on DVD in Poland
Polish Distributor: not even the Polish Bollywood forum knows ;) I saw it on a DVD which was attached to a magazine, but there’s no sign of a Polish distributor on [...]

One of the things that I find most mind-boggling about India (or what I think I know about it anyway) is that every opinion or stance you could possibly conceive of seems to be somehow represented if you look for it hard enough. Things that seemingly contradict will mysteriously manage to function side by side.
Mumbai, [...]

You may remember I “spotted” a Bollywood film called Dostana. The promotion is in full throb and I just came across a spicy interview with one of the lead actors, John Abraham *grin* They talk about nudity, homosexuality and yellow trunks - obviously all very popular topics on my blog ;)

{FILM DIARY}
Film: Milarepa (Bhutan/India 2006)
Seen: 13th September 2008 (in the cinema with Kinga *grin*)
Runtime: 90′
Release Date: 5th of September 2008 in Poland and according to imdb Poland seems to be the only country that released this film in normal distribution *shocked*
Polish Distributor: Manana
Director: Neten Chokling
Cast: Jamyang Lodro
Production House: Shining Moon Productions
Plot: The story of Milarepa [...]