‘Slumdog Millionaire’ seems to have made India one of the hottest backdrops for projects of top notch international filmmakers.

Even as Danny Boyle is readying to return to Mumbai to produce ‘Bombay Velvet’ to be directed by Anurag Kashyap, legendary Hollywood screenplay writer Paul Schrader has written a film with the city’s infamous underworld as the backdrop. Schrader, writer of all-time classics like ‘Taxi Driver’, ‘Raging Bull’ and ‘American Gigolo’, has tied up with screenwriter Mushtaq Shiekh and producer Anubhav Sinha to make a reportedly $10 million-budgeted cops ‘n’ mafia film titled ‘Xtrme City’. The film has been announced by ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’ fame David Weisman’s Vanishing Cinema LLC in conjunction with Shiekh and Sinha, who have announced a financing deal with Newport Beach real estate entrepreneur Dwight Manley. The cast of the film has not been announced yet, with the announcement only saying that a Bollywood ‘mega-star’ and a Hollywood star will share top billing in the film. Going by Shiekh’s well-known proximity to superstar Shah Rukh Khan, guessing games have already begun whether it will be the King Khan who will be the ‘Bollywood megastar’ in the film. Shiekh has done the screenplays of Khan’s films like ‘Om Shanti Om’, ‘Billu’ and the under-production sci-fi thriller ‘Ra – the One’, apart from writing more than one book on him. To be targeted at both domestic and international markets, ‘Xtrme City’ will be an action thriller set in the “brutal, impenetrable, criminal orbit of Mumbai”, say its makers. The protagonist will be Curtis Hawkley, a former US Ranger, who is forced to return to Mumbai when his father-in-law’s youngest daughter is kidnapped by a powerful underworld don. In order to save the girl he must first find his old friend Raj Rangan, an Indian Special Forces Commando who became a crime world enforcer. After reuniting and saving the girl, the two men are drawn deeper into the ‘bhai’ underworld of Mumbai than they expected. “Xtrme City is cross-cultural entertainment that merges the cinematic traditions of Bollywood and Hollywood,” Schrader said in a statement. “Spending time in India and working with a Bollywood talent like Shiekh has inspired and excited me to make a film accessible and meaningful to both Indian and American cultures,” said the director, who has directed films like ‘Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters’, which was executive produced by Francis Coppola and George Lucas.

Jason Reitman's George Clooney starrer UP IN THE AIR has finally been granted a US release date in an albeit 'limited run.' The flick, which is based on the Walter Kirn novel of the same name, was set to be released on November 13, which would have put it up against Grant Heslov's THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS, which also stars Clooney. Now, UP IN THE AIR will debut just a couple of weeks later on December 4th.

The word is that UP IN THE AIR will expand to a wider release, as word of mouth grows, by the end of the year.

Australian hunk Hugh Jackman is to battle 2000 pound robots in the new Shawn Levy directed film REAL STEEL.

Trade paper Variety says that the film is a 'Rocky-esque tale of a fighter who has to reinvent himself when human boxing becomes obsolete, replaced by 2000 pound human-like robots. Jackman is negotiating to play the ex-fighter, who becomes a Robot Boxing promoter, but whose chances of success are hampered by his access to sub-standard robot parts. That is until he discovers a discarded robot that always seems to win. The ex-fighter has also discovered he's the father of a 13-year old son, and they bond as the robot brawls its way toward the top.'

Sounds kinda cool and a hughe departure for Levy, the man responsible for bringing Steve Martin flicks THE PINK PANTHER and CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN to screens, as well as the Ben Stiller comedy NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM and its sequel, which was released earlier in the year.

A generous sampling of John Ford's early career at 20th Century Fox can be found in "Ford at Fox," the superb 2007 box set that remains the gold standard for classic-film reissues. Warner Home Video also has released a few fine Ford collections, including one devoted to the iconic partnership between Ford and John Wayne. But "Wagon Master" (1950), the film that the director called one of his personal favorites, is only now arriving on DVD.

Ford considered this small-scale project the "purest and simplest" of all his westerns, and it is precisely those qualities that account for its relative invisibility. Some scholars and historians, including Peter Bogdanovich (who can be heard on the commentary track of the new disc from Warner available this week), hail the film as the director's masterpiece, but it's always been easy to miss amid the towering monuments of the Ford canon.

The most laid-back and unpretentious of epics, "Wagon Master" was first released in the shadows of the Wayne-starring frontier-army pictures that came to be known as the cavalry trilogy: "Fort Apache" (1948), "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949) and "Rio Grande" (1950). It was while working with the Mormon extras on "Yellow Ribbon," on location in Monument Valley, that Ford came up with the idea for "Wagon Master," which chronicles the resolute westward journey of a group of Mormon settlers.

Shot quickly and cheaply, mostly around Moab, Utah, the film was something of a family affair. Ford's son Patrick wrote the screenplay with Frank S. Nugent, a regular collaborator; his older brother Francis appears in the ensemble cast; his daughter Barbara worked as an assistant editor.

"Wagon Master" is at once the plainest and the fullest expression of Ford's great theme: the emergence of a community. So committed is the film to the idea of a collective hero that there is no one central character, no leading man or marquee name. Instead of Wayne or Henry Fonda, "Wagon Master" is filled with lesser-known but familiar faces from the Ford stock company. And while some of the usual elements of the genre are accounted for, down to a climactic gunfight, there is not much of a plot.

This most leisurely and lyrical of westerns takes shape mainly as a series of encounters among disparate groups, as they clash, adapt to one another or become integrated into a larger whole.

Fleeing religious persecution, the Mormons, led by the gruffly pragmatic Elder Wiggs (Ward Bond), are headed for the fertile promised land of the San Juan Valley. To help guide his people on this perilous trek, Wiggs recruits a pair of young cowpokes, Travis ( Ben Johnson) and Sandy (Harry Carey Jr.). As they cross deserts, rivers and mountains, the caravan swells. They stop to pick up a troupe of dissolute show people (including Joanne Dru) who have run out of water. The Cleggs, murderous outlaws on the lam, force themselves upon the pilgrims. There is a run-in with a tribe of Indians (peaceful, as it turns out).

In thrusting a ragtag group of outcasts together for a journey through harsh terrain, "Wagon Master" recalls 1939's "Stagecoach," the film that made Wayne a star and turned the western into a respectable genre. (The romantic subplot between the Johnson and Dru characters here also echoes the one between the Wayne and Claire Trevor characters from the earlier film.)

But even more than most westerns, "Wagon Master" resides in the realm of myth. The British critic Lindsay Anderson (who went on to direct "If. . .") likened it to "an avant-garde western," and indeed, the film is almost abstract in its simplicity. This is basically the story of America itself: an allegory of the settlement of the frontier and a meditation on the relationship between civilization and wilderness.

Fittingly, it derives much of its poetic force from cinematographer Bert Glennon's panoramic black-and-white images of man in nature, of the pilgrims making their way -- in wagons, on horseback and on foot -- through the majestic landscape.

Practically a musical, "Wagon Master" is filled with frequent song and dance interludes and accompanied by a steady stream of hymns and ballads, performed by the popular country group the Sons of the Pioneers. The film's open embrace of the most elemental myths is in stark contrast to the darker, deeply ambivalent visions that would soon take over the western, thanks to such filmmakers as Budd Boetticher and Sam Peckinpah, and even Ford himself (in "The Searchers" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"). The last gasp of the classical western, "Wagon Master" is also the pinnacle of the genre's optimistic ideals.

Fan frenzy is already breaking records for "The Twilight Saga: New Moon."
Online ticket sellers MovieTickets and Fandango report that the follow-up to last year's hit from Summit Entertainment, which sold $191.5 million worth of tickets in the U.S. and Canada, is selling out screenings earlier than any other movie to date.
"New Moon" has sold out 50 showtimes of nearly 22,000 offered on Fandango and 13 showtimes of 2,912 offered on MovieTickets. Most of the sold-out shows are at or around midnight Nov. 20, when the movie debuts.
The two websites started selling "New Moon" tickets extraordinarily early -- Aug. 31 for Fandango and Sep. 10 for MovieTickets -- as the theater chains they work with began scheduling screenings in anticipation of a huge first weekend. The first "Twilight" grossed a stellar $36 million on its Friday opening, reflecting pent-up demand among fans of the best-selling books.
For most movies, online ticket sales start about 45 days before they debut.
Though "New Moon" holds the record for selling out screenings the earliest, 20 Century Fox's event film "Avatar" started offering tickets even earlier, on Aug. 21, more than four months before the film's Dec. 18 debut. Neither Fandango nor MovieTickets have yet sold out any "Avatar" shows, although they're currently offering only a tiny fraction of the nearly 25,000 available for "New Moon."
-- Ben Fritz

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Left, right or center, there's two things nearly everybody in Hollywood agrees on: There's no disease that can't be cured by raising enough money and the state of Israel deserves unabashed support.

These days, sympathy for Israel puts the American entertainment industry at odds with much of the European film and academic communities. In those circles, vehement criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians and boycotts of Israeli scholars and artists have become almost fashionable. (In cinematic London, Hamas militants are the new baby seals.) Hollywood has mostly shrugged all this off, until this week, when it decided that an outbreak of anti-Israeli agitation in Toronto was bringing things a little too close to home.

Canadian documentary filmmaker John Greyson pulled his latest movie from this week's Toronto International Film Festival because he said the event's sister-city relationship with Tel Aviv was an implicit endorsement of "the smiling face of Israeli apartheid."

A variety of entertainers -- including David Byrne, Julie Christie, Ken Loach, Jane Fonda, Viggo Mortensen and Wallace Shawn -- published a letter alleging that Toronto had become an agent of the "Israeli propaganda machine."

Some people in Hollywood took these initiatives not as a disagreement with Israeli government policies but as an attempt to isolate and ostracize the Jewish state's vibrant, diverse and independent film community. (If there really is a dirty word in Hollywood, it's "blacklist.")

So former CAA agent Dan Adler, acting under the sponsorship of Los Angeles' Jewish Federation and United Jewish Appeal of Toronto, put together a counter ad that denounced the boycott demands in Thursday's trades.

"We all spent a lot of time talking about the original protest letter, in the sense that it seemed to be going after the wrong target by attacking Israel and its film artists," Adler told The Times' Patrick Goldstein on Wednesday night. "When I sat down at my computer and started asking for people to sign on, all I got was passion and enthusiasm. Everyone said, 'I'm in,' and then, even better, added, 'Can I get you someone else?' "

The signatories do read like a who's who of Hollywood's elite with a cast that runs from the executive suites to the sound stages and cuts across generations. Among those who signed on are Jerry Seinfeld, Seth Rogen, Robert Duvall, Halle Berry, Sacha Baron Cohen, Lisa Kudrow, Lenny Kravitz, Ed Zwick, Jason Alexander, Chazz Palminteri and David Cronenberg, as well as A-list producers and executives Ron Meyer, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Sherry Lansing, Neal Moritz, Jonathan Glickman, Nina Jacobson, Darren Star, Nathan Kahane and Gail Berman.

(There's even a precedent-setting credit for writer-director Michael Tolkin, who "polished" the ad's text. Now, there's something the Writers Guild would like to see catch on.)

In a phone interview, former Paramount head Lansing said she and her husband, director William Friedkin, were upset that the Israeli filmmakers had been singled out for retribution, especially as the community starts the Jewish new year and High Holy Days.

"These are independent filmmakers who are not working as the propaganda machine of the state of Israel," Lansing said. "It's dangerous to -- in any way -- turn the film festival into a political event. We do not want to return to the days of blacklisting."

Media mogul Haim Saban was blunt in his assessment. "The world always had anti-Semites," he said in an e-mail exchange. "It has now and always will, but the people of Israel always have, and always will live and prosper. Sorry Jew haters. You lose."

The criticisms of Israel, especially among European entertainers, has intensified since the Gaza war. However, they argue that they are not against the Jews, as Saban suggests, but merely concerned about the innocent victims caught in the crossfire.

In January, singer Annie Lennox and comedian Alexei Sayle called for an end to the "slaughter and systematic murder" of Arabs in Gaza.

The pair was joined by a panel of public figures, which included Ken Livingstone, Bianca Jagger and George Galloway, in a news conference demanding that Israel stop its "siege."

In posts on her blog and in the Huffington Post, Fonda -- who said she initially signed the Toronto letter because she too was concerned about the loss of innocent lives -- sought to clarify her position. She admitted that she had not read the full text of the complaint before putting her name on it.

"It was the outcry that ensued that caused me to study it more carefully," she said. "It was then that I saw that there were parts of it that I did not agree with. . . ."

She went on: "Some of the words in the protest letter did not come from my heart, words that are unnecessarily inflammatory: The simplistic depiction of Tel Aviv as a city 'built on destroyed Palestinian villages,' for instance, and the omission of any mention of Hamas' 8-month-long rocket and mortar attacks on the town of Sderot and the western Negev to which Israel was responding when it launched its war on Gaza." Fonda added: "By neglecting to do this the letter allowed good people to close their ears and their hearts."

It's hard to believe that even Fonda's well-practiced backpedaling is going to temper the outrage in activist Hollywood, where attacks on Israel in almost any form are a non-starter.

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Tom Cruise's adopted son has landed a role in the remake of the movie that helped propel the late Patrick Swayze to stardom.

Connor Cruise, 14, will join Watchmen star Jeffrey Dean Morgan in Red Dawn.

The original 1984 movie, directed by John Milius, starred Swayze, his future Dirty Dancing partner Jennifer Grey, Charlie Sheen and C. Thomas Howell.

Reports suggest that young Cruise has signed on to play Daryl, the role Darren Dalton played in the first film.

Meanwhile, producers of TV series revamp Melrose Place have confirmed that Cruise will not be a part of their cast.

A representative for the show says, "There’s no truth to it."

Harrison Ford has announced that he'll bring Indiana Jones back to the big screen for a fifth time -- if he's impressed by the film's script.

The veteran action man cracked his whip as the archaeologist hero in the franchise's fourth installment, 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, delighting fans nearly 20 years after 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

And after the global success of the last film, Ford would be delighted to star as the adventurer once again.

He says, "The story for the new Indiana Jones is in the process of taking form. If the script is good, I'll be happy to put the costume on again."

In June, Ford's Indiana Jones co-star and on-screen son Shia LaBeouf confirmed that a new film in the series is in the works, with director Steven Spielberg overseeing the upcoming project.

Demi Moore has paid a touching tribute to late actor Patrick Swayze -- using words from their 1990 movie Ghost.

The Dirty Dancing star passed away on Monday in Los Angeles after losing his two-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

Swayze went public with the illness in early 2008 and underwent regular bouts of chemotherapy as he repeatedly denied tabloid reports he was close to death after learning the cancer had spread to his liver.

Despite his determination to survive, the star's passing has shocked Hollywood and his fans alike, with touching tributes from a number of celebrities.

And his Ghost co-star Moore has now spoken out about the sad news, taking to her Twitter page to quote the pair's characters from the hit film.

She writes, "Patrick you are loved by so many and your light will forever shine in all of our lives. In the words of Sam to Molly. 'It's amazing Molly. The love inside, you take it with you.' I will miss you."

Meanwhile, Moore's husband Ashton Kutcher also took to his page on the site to express his sadness over the star's passing, writing: "RIP P Swayze," and posting a link to the actor performing a Chippendales routine with late comic Chris Farley on Saturday Night Live.

Director Michael Bay has been forced to defend Megan Fox, after a number of crew members working on Transformers branded the actress "dumb" and "ungracious."

Three unnamed workers on the action movie posted an open letter supporting Bay on his official Web site after Fox lashed out at him in a recent interview.

The 23-year-old compared the director to Hitler in an interview with Britain's Wonderland magazine, and told how he had "no social skills" and is "hopelessly awkward."

But some Transformers crew members took exception to the comments, and slammed the actress' own on-set behavior.

They describe "the tedious experience of working with the dumb-as-a-rock Megan Fox," and insist they "had the unbearable time of watching her try to act on set."

They also brand Fox "as ungracious a person as you can fathom," and complain that she refused to thank them when they had "to deal with the awful silly Marilyn Monroe tattoo plastered on her arm that we cover up."

But Bay was unimpressed with the letter -- it was removed from his Web site on Saturday and replaced with a piece from the director himself, defending Fox and insisting her negative comments are part of her "crazy charm."

He writes, "I don’t condone the crew letter to Megan. And I don’t condone Megan’s outlandish quotes. But her crazy quips are part of her crazy charm. The fact of the matter (is) I still love working with her, and I know we still get along. I even expect more crazy quotes from her on Transformers 3."

Source

Johnny Depp has confirmed he's sailing back to the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise by appearing in character at Friday's D23 Expo in Anaheim, California.

The actor was welcomed onstage at the Anaheim Convention Center by Disney boss Dick Cook to help the executive announce plans for the fourth Pirates film, On Stranger Tides.

Depp, who dressed and acted like his eccentric high-seas character Capt. Jack Sparrow, revealed that the new movie is slated for a summer 2011 release.

More than 5,000 fans, who packed the auditorium and the Disney convention, gave both Cook and Depp a standing ovation.

Cook also announced that Depp would play Tonto in an upcoming big-screen adaptation of The Lone Ranger.


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With the Midnight Madness opening screening of Jennifer's Body at the Toronto Film Festival yesterday, The New York Times reports it was impossible not to notice that the women are in charge. In an interesting dovetail, the Risky Business blog notes a curious phenomenon on the other side of the gender divide: There are about a half a dozen films screening at the fest with the word 'Man' in the title -- none of which is directed by a woman.

While still struggling to find their place in the movie industry at large, female filmmakers have managed to occupy some of Toronto's most valuable slots, the NYT notes.

On Thursday Karyn Kusama's Jennifer's Body, from a script by Diablo Cody, had its premiere while Lone Scherfig's An Education also screened and Jane Campion's Bright Star played (albeit with 19 minutes of the film running upside down in one showing).

Also screening in the coming days are Niki Caro's The Vintner's Luck, Rebecca Miller's The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Samantha Morton's The Unloved, Leanne Pooley’s The Topp Twins and Drew Barrymore's Whip It!.

The NYT wonders if this estrogen-fueled lineup is a harbinger of awards recognition to come as the kudo season heats up. Although The Hurt Locker screened last year in Toronto, Kathryn Bigelow has been generating Oscar talk for months.

As the paper notes, back in 2003, Toronto helped that year in general to be known as a good one for women. The Toronto screening of Lost in Translation put Sofia Coppola on the path to a best-director Oscar nomination. That same year Caro, directing Whale Rider; Catherine Hardwicke, directing Thirteen; Patty Jenkins, with Monster; and Shari Springer Berman, with American Splendor, all made a strong impression overall.

Now, about those manly titles. Biz notes that festgoers who want to see A Serious Man might want to make sure they don't end up with A Single Man, Solitary Man or, in a distinction that makes all the difference, Men Who Stare at Goats.

Along with the Coen brothers' Serious Man, Tom Ford's Single Man and Brian Koppelman and David Levien's Solitary Man, there are also screenings planned for Canadian marital comedy Man Vs. Minivan and the India-based romance The Man Beyond the Bridge.

A Serious Man, A Single Man and Solitary Man all premiere within 48 hours of each other at the festival, with A Serious Man and Solitary Man debuting opposite one another Saturday night.

The filmmakers behind the "Man" movies say this burst of machismo can partly be put down to what's happening in the world at large. "With everything that's going on in the world with figures like Bernie Madoff, it would be unnatural not to look at people who held themselves out as great men but who turned out to have feet of clay," said Koppelman.

Almost all of the films, notes Biz, focus on once-proud men brought low or schooled by a crisis. Funny coincidence given all the ladies in the lineup.

 Source

Meryl Streep has already been tipped to pick up the Best Actress Academy Award in 2010 -- because Oscar bosses are unimpressed with other female roles in recent movies.

The Oscar chiefs are allegedly concerned over the lack of stunning performances by actresses this year, and are said to be struggling to find a decent list of nominees.

It means Streep, who received a Best Actress nomination at the 2009 ceremony for Doubt, is the favorite to pick up her third Academy Award next February.

An Oscars insider tells Britain's Daily Express, "It's only just dawning that there's a distinct lack of potentials in the Best Actress category. Not that there have been terrible performances, far from it, it's just that there have been very few good leading roles for women.

"It's been a pretty lackluster year for movies in general but it seems that no one wrote any decent lead roles for women. There are many to choose from when it comes to supporting actresses but very few in the lead. It looks like Meryl Streep may do it again as she has played the lead to acclaim in two films out this year."

Other names suggested for nomination reportedly include Hilary Swank for Amelia, Emily Blunt's portrayal in The Young Victoria, and Penelope Cruz for Broken Embraces. 


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London, July 21 (IANS) The sixth instalment of Harry Potter has given Hollywood studio Warner Bros. its seventh No.1 hit of the year and has pushed the studio's domestic gross past the $1 billion mark.

The success of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" comes on the heals of the studio's recent comedy "The Hangover", which, with more than $235 million in ticket sales thus far, has become the highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever domestically.

Warner Bros. has said in a statement released Sunday that it is the only studio to earn $1 billion annually for nine consecutive years.

Bangalore, Aug 27 (IANS) To give a "fitting" tribute to the King of Pop Michael Jackson on his 51st birthday, a musical carnival is being organised here to celebrate the legendary singer's music.

Christened 'Heavens Can Wait', the musical event will be organised Aug 29 -- the day Jackson would have turned 51, nine weeks after he passed away after suffering a suspected cardiac arrest June 25.

The Score, a magazine on music is the brainchild behind the event. Bangalore and Chennai's popular Bands - Lounge Piranha, Rusty Moe, Slain, Public Issue and E-flat will pay tribute to the musical icon.

Mother Tekla Auditorium, Casa Brigitta on Brunton Road will be the venue.

"Bangalore's love for pop legend MJ is known to all. Thus we want to celebrate Michael Jackson and his music on his first birth anniversary after his sudden death," Alan Hadle, founding member and director of The Score, told IANS.

"It will be a musical salute to the late music legend's talent. There will be no dance at the show. We will also launch our magazine, The Score, on the same stage. Our magazine will carry a cover story on Michael Jackson, covering his entire career graph," added Hadle.

Tickets of the musical gig are prized at Rs.300 and Rs.500, with special discounts.

A portion of the proceeds of the concert will be directed towards funding the Aastha Children's hospital which is part of the Rourkela Childcare Private Ltd.

"A part of the money collected from the show will go to charity. MJ did a lot for the betterment of the world and he loved children, and it is fitting that a part of the money will go to a children's charity," Hadle said.

Giving details on the rock bands which will perform at the show, Hadle said music bands from Bangalore and Chennai will take part in the show.

"Chennai's line-up includes bands like Rusty Moe, E-Flat and Public Issue. They are reputed in their own right and famous for their people-friendly music. City bands like Lounge Piranha and Slain will also perform at the event," he added.

Along with performing Jackson's hit songs, including the humanitarian anthem "Heal the World", rock bands will also perform their own numbers.

The organisers are expecting a huge crowd at the show, as Bangalore has many die-hard Jackson followers.

"We're receiving large number of queries from Bangalore's music lovers. We are for hoping a huge gathering, around 1,000 on the day," said Prathibha Muralidhara, coordinator of the show.