Don trailer

Original 1978 Don trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM5sZKiSgT8

Re-makes of old films are not very common in the bollywood film industry. When viewing both the trailers of the original 1978 film and the 2006 re-make, the first thing one notices is the abundance of new technology and the foreign city landscapes in the new film. While the increasing presence technology could simply be accounted for by the changing of era, using a foreign setting is a noticeable trend in modern indian films. As the world becomes a global village, Indian's along with people from other nations are becoming more aware of foreign locations, allowing directors to use them for settings. 

The media language of the two trailers also differs immensely, with the recent version containing a larger variety of shots ranging from wide shots of the cosmopolitan setting to close ups of hands and objects that create suspense at the beginning of the trailer. It is due to the more complex cinematography and the indication that the film will be packed with pyrotechnics similar to those in a hollywood action feature, that the audience are more likely to be drawn by the 2006 trailer.

Rang de basanti- (Institutional data)

Director:Rakesh Omprakash Mehra

Writers:Renzil D'Silva (screenplay)
Rakesh Omprakash Mehra (screenplay)

Production Companies
ROMP
UTV Motion Pictures

Special Effects
Tata Elxsi Visual Computing Lab

Other Companies
Gaurav Digital sound re-recording
Sony Music soundtrack released by - only 2 other companies invovled, shows it is more of an 'art house' film rather than one targeted at the mass audience.

Revenue:
Opening Weekend
$701,666 (USA) (29 January 2006) (61 Screens)
£221,226 (UK) (29 January 2006) (38 Screens)

Awards:
2007 Nominated BAFTA Film Award:- So international critical(+financial) success
Best Film not in the English Language;
Ronnie Screwvala
Rakesh Omprakash Mehra

Also India's official Entry to the Oscar's for the "Best Foreign Language Film" category in 2007.

Kal ho na ho-03 (institutional data)

Worldwide gross: over Rs 600 million

• top grossing bollywood film worldwide
• top-grossing Bollywood film in the overseas market that year
• second top-grossing movie in India

Crew:
Directed by: Nikhil Advani (associate director of Karan Johar - Kuch kuch....K3G)
Produced by:
Screen play: Karan Johar
Niranjan Iyengar




Production company:
Dharma Productions- single company, established, self-sufficient


Distributors:

Yash Raj Films (2003) (worldwide) (all media) (sales)

Bodega Films (2005) (France) (theatrical)

Cineworx (2004) (Switzerland) (theatrical)

Rapid Eye Movies (2004) (Germany) (theatrical)

Rapid Eye Movies (2005) (Germany) (DVD)

Other companies involved:

Manish Malhotra & Co. costume design

Don- October 06 (institutional data)

Re-make of 1978 film- re-makes = not that common in industry, although re-makes of hollywood inspired films are.

• Director/writer: Farhan Akhtar
• (based on original screenplay)- Javed Akhtar
• Producer: Ritesh Sidhwani
• Music: Shankar Ehsaan Loy

Company credits:

• Production Companies
  Excel Entertainment- once again only one production company (self-sufficient for funding?)
  
• Distributors
  Bharat Entertainment International (2006) (Netherlands) (theatrical)
  Bharat Entertainment International (200?) (Netherlands) (DVD)
  Rapid Eye Movies (2007) (Germany) (theatrical) (subtitled)
• Visual effects: Red Chillies Entertainment- headed by Shahrukh & Gauri Khan

" Founded in 2002 as a film production house, Red Chillies Entertainment has branched itself into other spheres of production, starting from setting up a path breaking Special Effects studio, VFX, which brought Hollywood's slick sophistication to Indian cinema....................Don - The Chase Begins Again, won European accolades for Best Special Effects in 2006

• Sound fx mix team: SoundFirm (Australia)- foreign sound post production facilities used. " Soundfirm, Australia's largest and most highly awarded sound post production company has produced award winning soundtracks for feature film, television drama series and television commercials for over twenty-two years"
• Also used for: Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) ... Adr Recorded At & Mission: Impossible II (2000) ... Adr (as Soundfirm)
• (PSP UMD disc - wider access for audience)
• For their roles in the film, Shahrukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra and Arjun Rampal undertook a special martial arts training programme under the guidance of Shaolin Temple experts.- So lots of time, effort, exptertise spent to get film to international standards, something which older films lacked, lacked facilities, knowledge of techniques and maybe effort of crew who weren't motivated by international competition like they are in the global village of today.

Additional companies- overall 120 companies/ individuals credited and thanked

• Cool Merchant additional equipment: Malaysia
• Film Gear additional equipment: Malaysia
• Superloo portable toilets
• B.R. Tours and Travels transport hire company: Malaysia
• Malaysia Airlines airline transportation (as Malaysian Airlines)
• Malaysian Airports special thanks
• United India Insurance Co. Ltd. (I) insurance: India

Choosing texts

Main text: Kal Ho Na Ho

Supplementary texts: Don
Rang De Basanti

changes in target audience

• The Indian film industry has preferred films that appeal to all segments of the audience rather than narrow target audience groups
• It was believed that aiming for a broad spectrum would maximise box office receipts. However, filmmakers may be moving towards accepting some box-office segmentation, between films that appeal to rural Indians, and films that appeal to urban and overseas audiences

Other factors influencing westernisation of films

• satellite tv- english/american channels available world-wide
• global dominance of hollywood- shows market/audience who like generic hollywood films
• popularity of hollywood stars- emulate?
• Hollywood 20s-50s musicals (differences: Hollywood; musicals set in world of entertainment, tried to make films seem realistic not constructed. Indian; songs in everyday situations, did not try to make it realistic to hide that it is a piece of fiction)
• influences go other way too- musical revival with Moulin Rouge (Baz Lurhmann), The Guru
• Globalisation of english language
• Contemporary mainstream movies also make great use of English. In fact, many movie scripts are first written in English, and then translated into Hindi. Characters may shift from one language to the other to express a certain atmosphere (for example, English in a business setting and Hindi in an informal one).- increasing use of english in professional places, eg. workplace, interviews, educational establishments, english call centres
• marketing/advertising in english, even non-english speakers get the jist
• Over the last years of the twentieth century and beyond, Bollywood progressed in its popularity as it entered the consciousness of Western audiences and producers.- more westernised to impress?
• As Western films and television gain wider distribution in India itself, there is increasing pressure for Bollywood films to attain the same production levels. In particular, in areas such as action and special effects.
• Recent Bollywood films have employed international technicians to improve in these areas, such as Krrish (2006) which has action choreographed by Hong Kong based Tony Ching. - expertise of foreign staff/crew?
• The increasing accessibility to professional action and special effects, coupled with rising film budgets, has seen an explosion in the action and sci-fi genres- most western genres/ least asian genres
• overseas audience(uk, us, canada), non-indian audience nigeria, egypt, arab countries, malaysia, russia

What forms of western culture can be found in the films

• Increasingly more and more dialogue in english
• Even title, trailer text/ narrator voice, credits in english 
• Little representation of indian culture/ religion through:
• Costumes - which are mostly western in contemporary films 
• Narrative elements: less family orientated, more focus on individual life
• Love life focus changed from marriage to relationships outside of marriage
• Less focus on Hinduism, quite a lot of characters in modern films are shown to be from christian families.
• Indian film narratives that are highly 'influenced' by particular hollywood films. e.g. Unfaithful and Murder.
• other films that have only elements of hollywood films e.g matrix style action in 'Main hoon na"  
• more and more sophisticated sfx
• Tendency to film abroad- european countries and us especially, whichever is more popular/
• well-known with population at the time

..so they dance! (reviews and ramblings on Indian cinema)

• With watching Bollywood, comes a definite attitude re-adjustment. Films are films. If you watch Hindi/Tamil/Telugu/whatever Indian language films (with) and continue to carry the notion that films from so-called "West" are somehow magically superior, you might as well stop watching.
• But the ideas of Western film-making's superiority is sadly prevalent even in the minds of some Indians themselves.
• I'm not sure the audiences at large in the "West" would be so accepting of the Indian manner of making films and telling stories. Some people occasionally might get into, thanks to an Indian friend, a visit to the country itself or pushing efforts by us non-Indian filmi fans,but for it to become something more popular in the mainstream,I just don't see it happening.
• I don't really see Indian films becoming like Chinese films here in the West. Action is very much universal, but breaking out into song for a dream sequence? Not quite as universal. Even in musicals made by Hollywood, they take place in a natural and realistic setting, not up on some mountain in Switzerland!
• Another view: there's no particular reason why Hindi films should want to gain popularity in "the west," there's also no particular reason why "the west" should try to embrace them. We don't all have to love (or even vaguely understand) each other's pop culture. We have to recognize that it's out there and that it's meaningful to some people, but it's perfectly okay to prefer the stuff that is created by the culture from which you come.
• different cultures have different values and modes of expression and they're all equally valid.

Interesting articles

This following articles- the first arguing that indian films are becoming increasingly westernised and the second counter-arguing this point- provide basic thought provoking material for a 'World Cinema' research topic.

http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~ra831/group8/prash.htm

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dAJbVl9vQtMC&pg=PA280&lpg=PA280&dq=westernisation+of+indian+films&source=bl&ots=gxjWd05sEV&sig=c7ezPEP38XD3IqhDqspsadBTOuE&hl=en&ei=Zfu0ScuCD8XT-Qadg6H4Ag&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA280,M1

Indian Popular Cinema:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_plssuFIar8C&pg=PA144&lpg=PA144&dq=westernisation+of+indian+films&source=bl&ots=ozsj4dlrr3&sig=6lxktG_qlAH4Jaz9bw8088FJPtY&hl=en&ei=Zfu0ScuCD8XT-Qadg6H4Ag&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#PPA141,M1

BBC articles about an oscar nominated 'tradionally indian' film:

Reviews for an oscar nominated 'traditionally indian' film:

India enters Lagaan for Oscars
The Film Federation of India FFI has chosen an unusual film about a game of cricket as India's entry in the foreign film category for next year's Oscar awards in Hollywood. The film - Lagaan - is set in the nineteenth century and tells the story of a group of peasants who challenge their British colonial oppressors to a game of cricket in order to escape a punitive tax. Lagaan, which includes British actors alongside the Indian star, Aamir Khan, won an award at this year's Locarno film festival in Switzerland. India has been nominating films for the Oscars for two decades but has never won Hollywood's highest honour.
BBC World Servicedated November 3, 2001.



Star ProducerLagaan may have haunting melodies but unlike most Bollywood films, it's not just a song and dance extravaganza. A period drama, the film's rural setting is a departure from the prevailing trend where nine out of 10 movies are urban campus romances.

Bollywood has powerful studios and producers but it's the handful of top stars who call the shots because they draw in the big audiences.

BBC World ServiceBy Sanjeev Srivastava, dated Tuesday June 26, 2001


Mr Khan said he was content with Lagaan's Oscar nomination. "Indian films will now get world-wide exposure", he said. The film's lyricist, Javed Akhtar, shared his disappointment. He said there were five films in the category, "but only one had to win and four had to lose." "Lagaan will now push producers to make good films", Mr Akhtar said
Some Bollywood fans said it was time the industry took a fresh look at Indian film making. "Routine Hindi films with song and dance sequences around the trees should stop now", said Arvind Sharma, a businessman. ''Quality movies must be made so that more Indian films like Lagaan can make it to the top of films in the world'', he said.

BBC World Servicedated Monday March 25, 2002

Benjamin Button homework

1) Review from The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

The critic is extremely negative as is evident from the very first sentence of the review. The critic has obviously found the narrative of the film very uninteresting as he is willing to change the title to the "twee and pointless" case of Benjamin Button. Paul Bradshaw highlights problems with the characterisation of Benjamin whose curious state, according to him, is not portrayed with "any great comic or tragic insight". In fact Bradshaw deems the character as quite boring. He does however commend the special effects used to make the actors look old, while the effects that make them look younger do not gain his approval because they apparently give the actors a robotic look. 'The curious case of Benjamin Button' is compared to another film called 'The Notebook' directed by Nick Cassavetes. The aim of the comparison is to show the film as a soppy, "treacly tale".
The review mentions some interesting points about the weaknesses of the narrative which I perhaps would not have noticed if i watched the film. The fact that the review is written by a film critic at The Guardian- a well known broadsheet newspaper- gives it a lot of credability.


2) Review from the Sky Movies website by Rob Daniel

At the beginning, the critic seems much less opiniated than Paul Bradshaw. The review begins by giving a brief history of director David Fincher's previous movies and how he may have brought some of the aspects of his previous work into his latest film. The fact that the review is from the Sky Movies website, who would no doubt want to persuade people to watch this film on their channel- might explain references to the director's previous films in order to attract fans. It could also be a reason why the review over all is positive, contradicting hugely with the review from The Guardian.
Personally I don't find this review as useful as the previous one since it tends to state things about the narrative of the film rather than commenting on them. Instead of coming to definite opinion on the film the reviewer simply says that "you could do worse than see this...film." There is no information provided about the critic or his position which somewhat lowers the credibility of the critique.


3) Review from Heart 106.2 website by anonymous person

The layout of this review immediately makes it different from the two previous ones. The un-named critic gives the film a rating of 10 out of 10, which summarises their view point in the main body of the text. The critic is full of praise for 'The curious case of Benjamin Button' describing it as "an absolute masterpiece" and persuading readers that they "should make every effort to see" it.
Once again i don't like the fact that the reviw simply offers a brief overview of the story line and then extensively tries to communicate that the film is absolutely brilliant, without explicitly mentioning the features that make it so brilliant (e.g. the narrative, the acting, the cinematogaphy etc...). This could pwrhaps be that unlike the first review from The Guardian, this one is nothing written with the expert insight of a film crtitique.

first posting

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