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Post by dancelover on Feb 24, 2017 18:01:00 GMT
Upcoming Films Thread at bollywhat.boards.net/thread/850/rangoon-kangana Meena Iyar for Times Of India: 3.5 stars "... an ambitious attempt ... a triangular love story ... canvass is huge." "Pankaj Kumar's cinematography is excellent." Narrative interesting "in parts." "... romance ... without the fire." [Director] "... Bhardwaj ... delivers, but not entirely. Some frames just hang, some scenes feel tedious." "... haphazard division of war scenes and love games, ..." We have heard of "faint praise" and now Iyar shows us "undercut praise." She does like the acting. "Saif gives ... a razor-sharp quality. Shahid is outstanding. Kangana of course is the piece de resistance. You can believe that two men would cross swords for her." But Iyar finds that the "love scenes ... lack passion." As a parting shot, she quotes dialogue from Saif: "We're actors. We know how to convince people." and then she judges that "That isn't entirely true here." For all that, she gave Rangoon three and a half stars. Dancelover
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Post by dancelover on Feb 25, 2017 16:30:33 GMT
From Box Office India: "... a 'very low' opening day of 4.75 - 5.0 crore net ..." "... not expected to open well due to [weak] promos, music, cast, but still should have" [earned more]. In other words, BOI expected to be disappointed by its opening, but was even more disappointed than it expected. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- From Koimoi: "... First Day of 6.07 crore was registered." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- I NOTE that Koimoi is almost always more generous than Box Office India. Dancelover
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Post by dancelover on Feb 25, 2017 16:58:51 GMT
Surabhi Redkar for Koimoi: only 2 stars. (Koimoi readers give it 3.5)
"Good: 'visual quotient' " (whatever SR means by that). .......... "Kangana powers through the film like a true hero."
Bad: Director's "crowd-pleasing antics" contradict his "ambitions to make ... Shakespearian tragedy" .......... which leaves "a complete mess." .......... "... no masterpiece ... lengthy and forced."
"Kangana does great ... as Julia."
"Saif's Russi ... is a confused businessman ... the weakest." (Quotes rearranged by me)
"Shahid ... does a good job as Nawab ..."
And, like Iyar, Redkar finds "... zero chemistry between Kangana and Shahid."
D
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Post by dancelover on Feb 27, 2017 15:48:28 GMT
More from BOI Saturday: Rangoon has no growth. Friday 5+ crore, Sat 5- crore. "Friday business a kick-in-the-teeth to the actors from the audience. Saturday business a kick-in-the-teeth to the director - means complete rejection of the film."
I NOTE that BOI's opinions are usually harsh.
Sunday: still worse. *Decreased* to 4.5 crore. One need not be a harsh judge to see this as Re-jected. BOI predicts that Rangoon will have repercussions for the actors. They find that it fails comparisons with Kaminey and Haider, both Bhardwaj-Shahid films. In footfalls, K had 68 lakhs, H only 44, now BOI says that R will be lucky to get 22 lakhs of people paying to see it.
Dancelover
PS Monday 1.40 cr - BOI calls this "Epic Crash." Koimoi now agrees. Tuesday 1.25 cr. - D
From Box Office India: "... a 'very low' opening day of 4.75 - 5.0 crore net ..." "... not expected to open well due to [weak] promos, music, cast, but still should have" [earned more]. In other words, BOI expected to be disappointed by its opening, but was even more disappointed than it expected. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- From Koimoi: "... First Day of 6.07 crore was registered." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- I NOTE that Koimoi is almost always more generous than Box Office India. Dancelover
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Post by dancelover on Mar 2, 2017 18:36:15 GMT
RANGOON has drastic & controversial storyline! (I just now read it in the Wikipedia Rangoon article.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Since 1947, there have always been some Indians who feel that it would have better for all India had they won their Independence in war, instead of the British handing it to them and leaving peacefully. India was denied Heroic Founding Stories, as well as a whole lot of death, injuries, and property destruction. Besides, a successful War Of Independence might have prevented Partition, leaving all India Saath-Saath. An alternative possibility, that India might have split into ten parts, or a hundred, can be and is ignored. Most Indians do *not* seem to feel that way, that Gandhi was wrong about Peace being better than War. India's Artistic Communities might have a larger proportion of members that do, than other groups of Indians. War can look so much more Artistic than Peace! Especially the Filmi Communities might feel, and even accept, that Grand Idea.
One Indian who opposed M K Gandhi on this, and wanted to fight for Indian Independence, was Subhas Chandra Bose. So badly did Bose want to fight, that when he learned that another European country had gone to war against Britain, he went to it and offered to join them. Perhaps he did not realize that by offering his services to Germany in 1940, ***he was making an ally of Adolf Hitler!*** On the other hand, perhaps Bose did. He certainly should have! The evidence was there.
In the event, the Nazis found that they could not use Bose. Germany was too far from India, and the Brits controlled the ocean routes. So they sent him on, to Japan. The Rapists Of Nanking did have a use for Bose, as the Political Leader (read: Figurehead) of groups of Indians whom Japan would organize and equip as an "Indian National Army" to assist Japan in its war against Britain. Subhas Chandra Bose was quite willing to do this for his new Japanese friends. The soldiers were recruited from Indians in the "British-Indian Army" whom the Japanese had captured in Singapore and Malaya. They were sent to fight in Burma, and on its border with India. Of course the INA would be fighting on behalf of Japan and the Nazis. Bose, at least, knew this. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vishal Bhardwaj's RANGOON is more than just about this conflict. It Takes Sides. The Side it Takes is that of Subhas Chandra Bose and "his" INA. The heroic Nawab Malik (Shahid) has joined the INA, and returned to India as its agent. He argues INA propaganda, and convinces Rangoon's Protagonist, Julia (Kangana). They both work for Bose's and the INA's Cause, which is throwing the Brits out of India, by Force, in alliance with Japan.
BUT that alliance is with The Rapists of Nanking, of Korea and Manchuria before that, and of half of China afterwards. (They had not reached the other half of China - yet - and they never would, because they lost the Pacific part of the war.) Beyond that, Bose and the INA had allied themselves with Nazi Germany. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It seems that Bhardwaj doesn't mind that. Perhaps Rangoon's crew, and cast, doesn't mind that either. And yet I NOTE that Rangoon's advance publicity says very little about Subhas C. Bose and the Indian National Army. (Actually I don't remember anything about that, but I could easily have missed something.) The publicity I remember is all about Kangana, Saif, Shahid, and their artistry.
Perhaps India's movie-watching public disagrees with Bhardwaj about Bose and the INA. Perhaps they do mind a film that glorifies him and it. Perhaps that is why, now that the First-day Audience has discovered what its Theme is, that Indians are staying away from Rangoon in droves!
Howard "Dancelover" Wilkins
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Post by dancelover on Mar 10, 2017 16:35:54 GMT
From BOI: Rangoon grossed 1.2 crore in its 2nd week, after 19.55 in its first, to finish with 20.75 crore. It is the Biggest Disaster of the Year, and it will take a very bad film [indeed] to be a bigger disaster.
D.
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Post by Andrew-Kenneth on Mar 14, 2017 23:53:25 GMT
RANGOON has drastic & controversial storyline! (I just now read it in the Wikipedia Rangoon article.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (...) Vishal Bhardwaj's RANGOON is more than just about this conflict. It Takes Sides. The Side it Takes is that of Subhas Chandra Bose and "his" INA. The heroic Nawab Malik (Shahid) has joined the INA, and returned to India as its agent. He argues INA propaganda, and convinces Rangoon's Protagonist, Julia (Kangana). They both work for Bose's and the INA's Cause, which is throwing the Brits out of India, by Force, in alliance with Japan. BUT that alliance is with The Rapists of Nanking, of Korea and Manchuria before that, and of half of China afterwards. (They had not reached the other half of China - yet - and they never would, because they lost the Pacific part of the war.) Beyond that, Bose and the INA had allied themselves with Nazi Germany. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It seems that Bhardwaj doesn't mind that. Perhaps Rangoon's crew, and cast, doesn't mind that either. Howard "Dancelover" Wilkins I hope you realise that the japanese were considered heroes all over Asia since 1905 after their navy destroyed the russian fleet at the battle of Tsushima. (for the first time since the middle-ages a non-european country had defeated a european power in major war) I guess Bose thought that in order to achieve his goal of a free India allying himself with Japan was a very good idea after Japan had already succeeded in ending colonial rule in Singapore, Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc... Also it's a mistake to view the british rule in India though the lens of colonial nostalgia. Here's an interesting article about this subject => www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/08/india-britain-empire-railways-myths-gifts(excerpt =>) "The India the British entered was a wealthy, thriving and commercialising society: that was why the East India Company was interested in it in the first place. Far from being backward or underdeveloped, pre-colonial India exported high quality manufactured goods much sought after by Britain’s fashionable society. The British left a society with 16% literacy, a life expectancy of 27 and over 90% living below the poverty line." Here's another on Churchill. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-finest-hour-the-dark-side-of-winston-churchill-2118317.html(excerpt =>) "When Mahatma Gandhi launched his campaign of peaceful resistance, Churchill raged that he "ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back." As the resistance swelled, he announced: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion." This hatred killed. To give just one, major, example, in 1943 a famine broke out in Bengal, caused – as the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has proved – by the imperial policies of the British. Up to 3 million people starved to death while British officials begged Churchill to direct food supplies to the region. He bluntly refused. He raged that it was their own fault for "breeding like rabbits". At other times, he said the plague was "merrily" culling the population. Skeletal, half-dead people were streaming into the cities and dying on the streets, but Churchill – to the astonishment of his staff – had only jeers for them. This rather undermines the claims that Churchill's imperialism was motivated only by an altruistic desire to elevate the putatively lower races." 3 million, that's Nanking times 10.
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Post by dancelover on Mar 15, 2017 15:06:12 GMT
Thank you, Andrew-Kenneth. Since 1905, several things had happened. The Japanese used their army's position in Korea to annex that prosperous country, which China had long recognized as separate and independent. Japan tried to turn Korea into another (but inferior) Japan. They persecuted Koreans in many ways, up to and including murder. Korea still has not forgiven Japan for this. A small but archtypical example is that a Korean who made the 1936 Olympics was forced to compete under a Japanese-type name. In 1931 the Japanese Army stole Manchuria from China, dragging the Japanese government along with them. The new "Manchukuo" was turned into another ersatz Japan, with its Chinese and Manchu residents as virtual slaves. In 1937 came the "Marco Polo Bridge Incident" followed by aggressive war against China until 1945. The Chinese resisted consistently, because they had learned the value of "Japanese Liberation." Japanese ended colonial rule? In Indo-China (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia) they kept the French (Vichy) government in power until 1944, because the French had co-operated with them. In Malaya and Singapore, they replaced British colonial rule ... with their own. I suppose that your "etc" means the Philippines. But I do give you Indonesia. Japan did throw out the Dutch who'd resisted them, and then did set up a (puppet) government of Indonesians that became more and more authoritive, and was formally granted Independence in the last week before Japan surrendered.
Regarding those British newspaper articles you quote, the Brits have often taken pride in confessing to their sins and mistakes. That same Churchill was the Cabinet Minister who made sure that General Dyer, who'd committed the Amritsar massacre (1500 dead) never again had a command in the Royal Army. I have seen more than one cause suggested for the Bengal Famine. One was that Bengal had been getting its food from Burma, which supply was cut off when Japan took Burma. The Brits ought to have found another supply, and are blamable for not doing so - all the Brit officials in India and the India Office, not just Churchill (who seems to be the target of that article). But if we cannot find enough dead Chinese in Nanking to match Bengal, then the rest of China more than made up the difference! (Counting Manchuria, but not Korea.)
However bad the Brits in India were, the Japs and Nazis were a whole order of magnitude worse!
Howard "Dancelover" Wilkins
I hope you realise that the japanese were considered heroes all over Asia since 1905 after their navy destroyed the russian fleet at the battle of Tsushima. (for the first time since the middle-ages a non-european country had defeated a european power in major war) I guess Bose thought that in order to achieve his goal of a free India allying himself with Japan was a very good idea after Japan had already succeeded in ending colonial rule in Singapore, Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc... Also it's a mistake to view the british rule in India though the lens of colonial nostalgia. Here's an interesting article about this subject => www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/08/india-britain-empire-railways-myths-gifts(excerpt =>) "The India the British entered was a wealthy, thriving and commercialising society: that was why the East India Company was interested in it in the first place. Far from being backward or underdeveloped, pre-colonial India exported high quality manufactured goods much sought after by Britain’s fashionable society. The British left a society with 16% literacy, a life expectancy of 27 and over 90% living below the poverty line." Here's another on Churchill. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-finest-hour-the-dark-side-of-winston-churchill-2118317.html(excerpt =>) "When Mahatma Gandhi launched his campaign of peaceful resistance, Churchill raged that he "ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back." As the resistance swelled, he announced: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion." This hatred killed. To give just one, major, example, in 1943 a famine broke out in Bengal, caused – as the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has proved – by the imperial policies of the British. Up to 3 million people starved to death while British officials begged Churchill to direct food supplies to the region. He bluntly refused. He raged that it was their own fault for "breeding like rabbits". At other times, he said the plague was "merrily" culling the population. Skeletal, half-dead people were streaming into the cities and dying on the streets, but Churchill – to the astonishment of his staff – had only jeers for them. This rather undermines the claims that Churchill's imperialism was motivated only by an altruistic desire to elevate the putatively lower races." 3 million, that's Nanking times 10.
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