Jane Fonda, John Mills, Kay Walsh, MEET THE FOCKERS
May 22, 2005:
In Delhi, special police forces have been posted at more than a dozen film theaters showing Rahul Rawail’s Hindi-language film Jo Bole So Nihaal / He Who Believes Will Triumph, following two blasts at movie houses in the Indian capital that left 1 dead and 49 injured.
Starring Bollywood muscleman Sunny Deol, the hero of numerous flag-waving Indian films, Jo Bole So Nihaal is the unlikely tale of a kind-hearted Punjabi police officer who is sent to New York to aid the incompetent FBI track a terrorist intent on killing the U.S. president.
According to the Agence France-Presse, the Sikh Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), the highest authority in the Sikh religion, has demanded that Jo Bole So Nihaal be banned on the grounds that both the film’s negative portrayal of a Sikh character and its use of the Sikh religious chant as its title are offensive to Sikhs.
Following protests from the SGPC, Jo Bole So Nihaal was withdrawn from theaters in the heavily Sikh northern Indian state of Punjab last week.
Bollywood films have had their share of ethno-religious controversy in recent months. Earlier this year, the northeastern Indian state of Assam banned Mani Shankar’s Tango Charlie, following widespread protests by the state’s ethnic Bodo population.
Around the same time, Pakistani film star Meera outraged radical Muslims in Pakistan because of a kissing scene in the Indian-made, supernatural thriller Nazar, while radical Catholics in India called for a ban of Vinod Pande’s Sins, which depicts a Roman Catholic priest having an affair with a girl half his age.
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Brief obit: Actress Kay Walsh, leading lady and second lead in numerous British films of the 1940s and 1950s, has died.
Among Walsh’s most important films are In Which We Serve (1942), This Happy Breed (1944), and Oliver Twist (1948), all directed by her then husband David Lean.
Other notable films include Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright (1950), Lease of Life (1954), and Ronald Neame’s The Horse’s Mouth (1958), opposite Alec Guinness.
Kay Walsh was 90.
Apr 23, 2005:
Brief obit: Actor John Mills, 97, has died.
Mills won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role as the village idiot in David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter (1970). Among his other films are Lean’s Great Expectations (1946) and Hobson’s Choice (1954), Ronald Neame’s Tunes of Glory (1960), and Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982).
His daughters, Juliet Mills and Hayley Mills, are also actresses.
Apr 19, 2005:
Actress Jane Fonda remained calm and composed after a man spat tobacco juice in her face at a book signing in Kansas, where Fonda was promoting her autobiography My Life So Far.
The man, Michael A. Smith, 54, of Kansas City, did not like the fact that Fonda had been an anti-Vietnam war protester, later referring to her as a “traitor.” (According to reports, Smith is a Vietnam War veteran.)
After spitting on the 67-year-old actress, Smith tried to flee but was caught by police and charged with disorderly conduct. Fonda, for her part, never left her seat. She wiped her face and went on signing books.
In a statement announced through her publisher, Fonda said, “In spite of the incident, my experience in Kansas City was wonderful and I thank all the warm and supportive people, including so many veterans, who came to welcome me last night.”
Apr 1, 2005:
A recent New York Times article has revealed that the FBI helped arrange chartered flights for dozens of well-connected Saudi nationals in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Among those the FBI helped leave the United States — without being interviewed before their departure and at a time when airplanes were grounded for almost everyone else — were several relatives of Most Wanted Man Osama bin Laden.
In Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore asserts that those flights had taken place, even though the mainstream American media had basically ignored that important bit of information. Moore also alleges in his multiple award-winning documentary that the prominent Saudis were able to leave the country because of the close ties uniting the George W. Bush White House and the Saudi Royal Family.
The New York Times cited newly-released U.S. government records that were obtained by Judicial Watch following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department.
Mar 30, 2005:
Although 34-year-old Bosnian director Ahmed Imamovic’s Go West has yet to be released to the public, it is already causing a sizable amount of controversy in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
According to a BBC report, Imamovic has received death threats and has been attacked by some in the Bosnian press. Religious organizations have also condemned his film. The reason for all the hostility? Go West deals with the Bosnian war as a backdrop for the story of two lovers: one Serbian, one Muslim. Both male.
“Homosexuality is something that has always been hidden in this society. So people don’t know how to react when it comes to the surface. They feel threatened,” says Svetlana Djurkovic, leader of Sarajevo’s gay and lesbian group Q Association.
“We like to joke that it’s a film about Romeo and Romeo — without the Juliet. But we hope the film will encourage people to be more tolerant,” explains Go West’s producer Samir Smajic.
A higher degree of tolerance surely wouldn’t hurt the deeply divided Bosnian society — or most of the planet, for that matter.
Ahmed Imamovic hopes Go West will have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
Mar 27, 2005:
Ahmed Zaki, one of Egypt’s leading actors, has died at the age of 55 in Cairo. Zaki, renowned for his screen portrayals of Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdul Nasser and Anwar Sadat, had been suffering from lung cancer. He had been in a coma for several weeks.
A star for more than two decades, Zaki was born into a poor family in a rural area in the Nile Delta. At the beginning of his career, he played men who represented the yearnings of young and poor rural Egyptians, though it would be in political films that he really made his mark.
Besides his much-discussed incarnations of Nasser and Sadat in, respectively, Nasser 56 (1996) and Ayam El-Sadat / Days of Sadat (2001), Zaki also appeared in several other political films, most recently in Ma’ali al wazir / His Excellency the Minister (2003), in which he played a guilt-ridden, corrupt government official.
Before being taken ill, Zaki was planning to play current Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak on film. His son, Haitham Ahmed Zaki, is set to finish Haleem, in which the older Zaki plays the late Egyptian singer Abdul Haleem Hafez. The younger Zaki will play Haleem Hafez in his early years.
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According to a Los Angeles Times report, Meet the Fockers, starring Ben Stiller, Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, and Barbra Streisand, has become the most successful live-action comedy in history. The craphouse family movie of the year has grossed US$498 million worldwide, $221 million of which outside of the U.S. (and possibly Canadian*) market. (As far as international box-office figures are concerned, it surely doesn’t hurt that the U.S. dollar has lost so much ground against most major foreign currencies in the last couple of years.)
Now, the Los Angeles Times apparently doesn’t consider that Oscar-winning paean to idiocy and conformism, Forrest Gump, a comedy — US$679 million (in 1994-95 US dollars) in worldwide ticket sales. But then again, perhaps they have a point.
But what about Home Alone? True, the Macauley Culkin flick isn’t funny, but neither is Meet the Fockers. In any case, according to several sources Home Alone earned US$533 million worldwide in 1990-91. (Actually, the Times does mention Home Alone, but its report, probably using Box Office Mojo as a source, gives $477 million as the box-office take for that film.)
Note: I tried to find out the actual worldwide box-office gross of Home Alone, but I was out of luck. A librarian at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences told me that Variety only began consistently tracking worldwide box-office revenues in 1996.
* Canada is usually included in the U.S. domestic tally as if it were the 51st state.
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Who’s who in Palestinian cinema
Hany Abu Assad
Lives and works in the Netherlands. Most well-known for this acclaimed film "Paradise Now" which was nominated for and Oscar and won the Golden Globes. Abu-Assad’s work is humorous and engaging.
Tawfiq Abu Wael
Lives and works in Tel Aviv. Abu Wael’s work is quiet, little dialogue and a very strong visual style. His work deals with rural life and patriarchy. One of the most "visual" of the filmmakers.
Annemarie Jacir
Lives and works in Ramallah. The only female working in fiction, her work is controversial, intelligent, with a strong visual and cinematic eye. Her work deals with borders, movement and class.
Michel Khleifi
Lives and works in Belgium. One of the first Palestinian filmmakers, though he has little recent work. His films focus on gender and self-identity.
Rashid Mashrawi
Lives and works between Paris and Ramallah. Raised in Gaza, began working in film production in Tel Aviv. Masharawi, one of the most original of the filmmakers, works in documentary, fiction and art installation/experimental video. He produces work often, always showing diversity and freshness.
Mai Masri.
Lives and works in Beirut. Masri is one of the earliest and most important documentary filmmakers. Honest, passionate and heart-felt. Her work deals with war and the flight of the Palestinian refugees.
Elia Suleiman
Lives and works in Paris. The most well known of all the filmmakers receiving awards from across the globe. His work is intelligent, dark-humored, resembles Jacques Tati at his best. A distinct visual style and has added meaning to the idea of the vignette.
Sameh Zoabi
Lives and works in New York. The "Hollywood" filmmaker of the Palestinian scene. One short film to date which received attention in Cannes. His work is conventional, reflects an American-style of storytelling, and light.