Father Geek here just in from an ALL night (Rain Shoot) set visit to the creepy TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE country store with this Thursday's regular edition of the Asia-AICN Column...

Asia-AICN

Hey all, hope you’ve had a great week. We have a pretty packed column for you in this week’s edition, with news on producer Vashu Bhagnani’s next film, “Koi Mil Gaya (Found Someone)”, the new Twins movie “Just One Look”, the US remake of “The Eye”, and reviews from a Korean Film Fest at UC Berkeley. We also have a review of the latest Bollywood release, “Dil Hai Tumhaara (The Heart is Yours)”.

INDIA

- Mega-producer Vashu Bhagnani has announced his next film, which will mark the directorial debut of choreographer Ahmed Khan. There’s no title yet, but Sunny Deol, Sunil Shetty and Sohail Khan have already been “locked” as the main leads in the film. Additional casting remains to be completed, but the film is schedule to start production this winter.

- Director Rakesh Roshan has just completed a major schedule in Canada for his next film, “Koi Mil Gaya (Found Someone)”. The production for the Sci-Fi romance has now shifted to India where a few more scenes remain to be completed. Roshan states that the film will feature a significant amount of FX, with a rather high portion (roughly $2 mil US) going towards the look of an extraterrestrial creature. The budget for the film is roughly $8 mil US, which is really high for a Bollywood production. Most of the FX will be done by a top US company. The film stars Hrithik Roshan and Preity Zinta, and is due out next summer.

- Some new stills have been released from producer Mukesh Bhatt’s “Gunaah (Crime)”. The thrillers stars Bipasha Basu and Dino Morea, after their hit pairing in “Raaz (Secret)”, and is due out next week. Here’s the pics.

The stunning Bipasha Basu: Tooooo Hot

Bipasha and Dino: They're Both Right Here

Dino holding some guy hostage: It Happens Here

DIL HAI TUMHAARA (The Heart is Yours)

Last week’s new release was director Kundan Shah’s followup to 2000’s sleeper hit, “Kya Kehna! (Say Something!)” and also stars Preity Zinta in the lead. And even though this is still very much Preity’s movie, the actress is backed up by a stellar cast that includes Rekha, Mahima Choudhary, Arjun Rampal, and Jimmy Shergill.

Like the earlier film, this new release is also a romantic comedy/drama, set against the backdrops of a local hill station. Rekha stars as the mayor of this small town, who has the burden of raising two daughters, Nimmi (Mahima Choudhary) and Shalu (Preity Zinta), all by herself. However as Shalu is Rekha’s step-daughter, the mayor is extremely partial to the poor girl and favors the elder sister at every step. As if the mother-daughter conflict was not enough for Shalu, she’s also involved in a four-way love quadrangle with her sister and two potential suitors – Dev (Arjun Rampal) and Samir (Jimmy Shergill). The many different stories run parallel to each other (with the usual clichés) until all conflicts are resolved happily at the end.

The story’s main problem is that there isn’t anything here that we haven’t seen before. The mother-daughter conflict as has been done, while the Dev-Shalu-Samir (who’s her best friend) love triangle was done in “Kya Kehna”. Mahima Choudhary’s character was totally unnecessary to the overall film and could have been removed altogether. However, as played out, the film still has a good small-town vibe to it and there are a few laughs. Preity Zinta’s acting is good as usual and it’s good to see the actress get another good role which overpowers all other actors. Rekha is also very good but I do wish her role was expanded just a bit. The two males were standard caricatures and did nothing special, but Arjun Rampal handled some of the comedic scenes rather well.

The direction was ok for a dramedy and pacing was ok but it did drag a bit in the second half. The songs were tolerable and actually helped speed up the films at times, although the last song was totally unnecessary. The cinematography and art design were handled well, with some great looking locations and sets.

In the end, this is a small, coming-of-age type dramedy which will appeal to fans of “Kya Kehna!” or Preity Zinta. The actress is great and helps makes an ordinary film somewhat tolerable. There is nothing really wrong with this story except it’s all been done before. It’s a decent DVD rental but just skip it at the theatres.

The cute and bubbly Preity Zinta makes this movie worthwhile: Click Now

Mahima and Preity look pretty nice together: They are both Here

CHINA / HK

Here’s the latest report from AccSpy:

- Tom Cruise & Paula Wagner's C/W Productions and Paramount have bought the remake rights to this year's HK blockbuster "The Eye" from Peter Chan's Applause Pictures, becoming the fastest Asian film remake deal ever.

- Celestial Pictures have bought the copyrights to many Shaw Brothers films including lots of Chang Cheh's directorial classics. Before the releases of the DVD of such martial arts classics, Celestial will coordinate a Chang Cheh film festival with the HK Film Archive this winter.

- Believe it or not, there are actually more HK films released during September than any HK films released in July and August combined. Last weekend marked the release of “So Close” from Corey Yuen; “If You Care” with Eason Chan as a greedy urban scum going through self-redemption; and the triple-segment horror film "Haunted Office", starring Jordan Chan, Shu Qi and Stephen Fung. On Sept 26, Ekin Cheng and Charlene Choi's romantic comedy "My Wife is Underage" will be released. And next weekend, as Mid-Autumn Holiday comes, two films will be released. The first is "Summer I Love You', starring Richie Yan, Candy Lo and the beautiful Thailand landscape (about a HK icq player mysteriously falling in love with a handicapped man). Also opening on the same weekend is "Just One Look" starring Twins' Charlene Choi and Gillian, the current "It" boy Sean Yu and Sam Lee. Sam Lee will get to become Bruce Lee, Ti Lung and other film stars in sequences integrated with real film footage of 60 and 70's classics. Also appearing in the film will be the footage of "Love Story" and the remake of "Melody Fair" by the Twins, which play a key plotpoint in this 70's retro-romance. These realistic atmosphere-created tricks cost the studios (EEG) $41 mil HKD in copyright fees. Here's some stills from both big releases.

From "Summer I Love You", Candy and Richie: They're Right Here

Let's go outside: Click to See

Let's go out to the ocean: Click

Candy: WOW!

Candy!: Real Sweet

Candy!!: Coooooool!!!

Candy!!!!: YUMMY!!!

Oh and the poster of "Just One Look": Just Click

- After"Just One Look" Sean Yu will appear as the teenage Tony Leung in the highly anticipated action film "Mo Gan Do"(No Shortcuts).

KOREA

Here’s a report from a Korean Film Fest at UC Berkeley. Special thanks goes to Usumcasane.

Hey, Darius. A quick report from the Korean film fest at UC Berkeley... a surprisingly good collection of films for a shoestring film festival like it was.

No Blood, No Tears

This is one the AICN set should enjoy. It's an action movie, kind of... there are some amazing fight scenes in it, most of which are really unusual, but all of which are filmed beautifully. The director (Seung-wan Ryoo (Die Bad)) was on hand to comment on the film afterward (he's all of 29 years old, and he was wearing an Adidas track suit to the festival); he cited his influences as the Hong Kong movies that he watched growing up in the 80's, as well as Bruce Lee films, and the influences are evident in the fight scenes. It's a remarkably smart movie, too, with a collection of not-at-all stock characters. The main character is a female ex-con who's trying to go straight by driving a taxi. She's having a tough time of it, though, because she keeps beating the shit out of guys who try to solicit her for sex, and there are a couple of geriatric thugs who keep chasing her for some money owed by her ex-husband. The plot goes from there, and provides a colorful and unique vision of a criminal underworld.

My Sassy Girl

This romantic comedy blockbuster is hilarious for the first hour. The titular sassy girl (I can only assume that title sounds less totally lame in Korean) spends most of it beating up on her would-be boyfriend ("I'll kill you" is her most-uttered line). Somewhere around the 2/3 mark it degenerates into melodrama, though, so once you've gone five minutes without laughing, switch it off and go watch something else. But the first hour is definitely worth a watch.

Take Care of My Cat

There's no explosions or knife-fights, just a really scary sagging ceiling. So I won't go into much detail for this one, because it's not really standard AICN fare. But it's a superb character drama, and anyone who enjoys quality film even without the knife-fights should look this up and watch it. It's about five female friends trying to survive after high school, and it's a smart, sometimes funny, definitely engaging drama about the prevailing social situation in modern-day Korea. Probably my favorite of the festival.

Waikiki Brothers

Like Take Care of My Cat, but about boys. This one's about a band trying to survive in modern-day Korea, and there are a lot of thematic similarities to Take Care of My Cat. Although there is a knife fight, I still don't recommend it to anyone who only likes movies for the fight scenes. But if you like quality film, check out this frequently-comedic drama about a night-club band undergoing a slow disintegration, as the members beat each other up, drink themselves into unconsciousness, and leave to pursue more glamorous careers in things like bus driving.

We have now reached the end of this week's column. Remember, if you have information regarding any film industry in Asia, please contact our Asia-AICN offices at atshrivas@rogers.com. See you all next week.

Darius25