‘Teasing’ insight to Heart FM

Ruwini Jayawardana

Senesh Dissanayake Bandara’s latest cinematic experience, ‘Heart FM’ will be released to the public at the beginning of next year. This movie, a musical romantic thriller, sets its mark as the first Sri Lankan movie to use a ‘Teaser trailer’ as a part of its pre broadcasting method.

A teaser trailer, or teaser is a short trailer used to advertise an upcoming movie, game or television series. Teasers, unlike typical theatrical trailers, are usually very short in length (between 30-60 seconds) and usually contain little if any actual footage from the film.

They are usually released long in advance of the film they advertise and their purpose is less to tell the audience about a movie’s content than simply to let them know that the movie is coming up in the near future, and to add to the hype of the upcoming release.

Teaser trailers are often made while the film is still in production or being edited and as a result they may feature scenes or alternate versions of scenes that are not in the finished film.

“This method had been practiced in India for some years but it is with ‘Heart FM’ that the ‘Teaser Trailer’ will be brought before the Sri Lankan audience,” explained Jayaratna Galagedara, the media coordinator of E.A.P. Films and theatres (Pvt) Ltd.

“Through this method we hope to an insight to this film with visuals sans dialogue. It will be a new experience to them, a glimpse into the beauty and music of the film to capture the true essence of what ‘Heart FM’

stands for - a touching tale of human experiences, music and romance.”

The advertisement campaign was launched with the release of Giriraj Kaushalya’s Sikuru Hathe on August 16.

Two is company. Three is a crowd. ‘Heart FM’ highlights a love triangle between Rajeev, Shakya and Mandakini.

Rajeev is a DJ at the radio station, Heart FM. He comes across Shakya through ‘Home Delivery’, a song request programmed.

Shakya is the rich and spoilt daughter of a well to do family. Glamorous, irresponsible and stubborn she likes to have things her way despite what the consequences are or who gets hurt in the process. Her target is Rajeev whom she deceives into believing that she is Mandakini. But has she gone too far this time?

Enter Mandakini, Shakya’s elder sister. Young, beautiful and a divorcee, she acts the role of a single parent to her daughter, Rachel. Her figure as a successful businesswoman leads her to Rajeev. And when they do meet...Could love be in the air?

Get set to tune to ‘Heart FM’, the much awaited beat of the year. Produced by Soma Edirisinghe this movie includes celebrities like Kanchana Mendis, Sachini Ayendra, Gayan Wickramathilake, Aruna Liyan, Irangani Serasinghe, Tony Ranasinghe, Chandani Seneviratne, Mahendra Perera and many more.

Hollywood makes anti-war films while conflicts rage

Ewen MacAskill

Tradition overturned as star-studded movies deal with Iraq and Afghanistan

For Americans sitting in cinemas watching the summer’s fun movies, such as The Simpsons and Hairspray, the trailer for Lions for Lambs is jarring and unexpected. It opens with a moody shot of the Washington Memorial, and shifts to a series of quick-fire scenes about President George Bush’s “war on terror”.

Lions for Lambs, scheduled for release in the US on November 9, is not a documentary nor an art house film nor even a Michael Moore-style piece of agitprop.

It is mainstream Hollywood, starring Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, who also directed it. It is one of about a dozen Hollywood films due for release or being made that deal with America divided, the national debate over Iraq and Afghanistan, and other consequences of 9/11.

This is a departure for Hollywood. During the second world war, there were almost no films made other than propaganda ones. The same happened during Vietnam: it was three years after the fall of Saigon before film-makers felt brave enough to make explicit anti-war movies - Mash hid its colours behind humour and a previous war.

Jerry Sherlock, director of the New York Film Academy and executive producer of movies including The Hunt for Red October, welcomed the prospect of movies coming out while wars were being waged.

“I think it is great because films do influence people. I hope that the films coming out influence people. The truth sets us free, after all the bullshit that we get every day in Washington and the airways and Cheney... I am surprised it has taken so long,” he said.

Lions for Lambs interweaves the stories of two American students who end up in Afghanistan, their idealistic professor, a senator and a journalist. The trailer shows Cruise, who plays the senator, in his office on Capitol Hill shouting at the journalist, Streep: “Do you want to win the war on terror? Yes or no? This is the quintessential yes or no question of our time.”

The films are bound to be politically controversial, particularly coming in the run-up to next year’s presidential election. American conservatives, without having seen it, have begun vilifying Lions for Lambs as anti-war propaganda.

Other films on the way include Rendition, with Reese Witherspoon as the wife of an Egyptian chemical engineer spirited away for interrogation by the CIA.

In the Valley of Elah, due for release on September 14, is directed by Paul Haggis, and stars Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon. It is about post-combat stress and is based on a real incident in which a soldier was murdered while on a drinking spree with his comrades on return from Iraq.

That, too, has already run into trouble. Dennis Griffee, national commander of the Iraq War Veterans Organisation, refused to help after learning that Sarandon, an anti-war critic, was involved.

Grace is Gone, due out in October and directed by James Strouse, looks at the impact on a family of the loss of a wife and mother killed in Iraq, while Kimberly Peirce’s Stop Loss, scheduled for release next March, deals with a veteran who refuses to return to Iraq. Redacted, to be released in December, is directed by Brian de Palma and is about US soldiers persecuting an Iraqi family.

The Hurt Locker, on which filming is due to begin this week in Jordan and Kuwait, is written by Mark Boal, who also worked on In the Valley of Elah. The Hurt Locker concentrates on a US army explosives disposal unit in Iraq.

“It’s the first movie about the Iraq war that purports to show the experience of the soldiers,” Boal, a former journalist, told the Hollywood Reporter from location in Jordan. “We wanted to show the kinds of things that soldiers go through that you can’t see on CNN.”

He added: “Most war movies don’t come out until after the war is over. It’s really exciting for me, coming out of the world of journalism, to have a movie come out about a conflict while the conflict is still going on.”

Hollywood is normally averse to risk but it may have decided the public mood is anti-war and unlikely to change. Darrell West, who specialises in politics and the mass media at Brown University, Rhode Island, said: “I think the outpouring of movies reflects the widespread public disenchantment with the war. It took longer with Vietnam.”

One factor that is different from Vietnam is 24-hour news. “The news cycle is definitely faster now than it was 40 years ago, so when bad things happen, they definitely become aware of them very quickly,” Professor West said.

(courtesy: The Guardian)

Cash: Money and fun go hand in hand

CINEMA: Have money, have fun. No money, then earn it to have fun! Because cash is what makes the world go left, right and centre. Left, right and centre - this is how the world of master conman Ajay Devgan also looked like.

As someone who was at the centre of one of the biggest robberies ever that was soon to take place, he had to rope in two young men. The men who would be on his left and right and undertake the job for him - Riteish Deshmukh and Zayed Khan.

But as the saying goes, sometimes the left hand doesn’t know what the one on the right is doing! Same was the case with Riteish and Zayed, as they hardly realised the existence of each other in this masterpiece of a crime that was about to happen.

Existence? But weren’t they buddies once upon a time? Probably yes, but then a girl [Dia Mirza] came in their life which drifted them apart. Both loved her but she loved only one of them. Solution? She walks out of their lives as she can’t tell the other guy that she didn’t love him.

The game begins. But did it end with robbery? Catch the action with English subtitles at the Concord, Dehiwala, Cinemax, Ja-Ela, and Jothi, Ratnapura.

This will be the first time that a Hindi movie is screened at the Concord.

King Khan saves the day

In an exclusive interview, a proud, flag-waving Shah Rukh Khan holds forth on his feelings for India, terrorism, and how the country needs to leave behind the politics of religion

In an interview Shah Rukh Khan was asked a blunt question: is there anything he has done for the country that makes him proud today?

He smiles, unfazed, and answers, “Go to any part of the world and you’ll see that India is associated with Bollywood. That’s my biggest achievement. And the India I see on the world map is a sparkling and happy India, which is moving forward with never-seen-before energy. This is what the new, raring-to-go India is like, and I am proud to be the face of it.”

So a proud-to-be-Indian SRK is not waving the flag just because of the success of his new film, which has a strong patriotic theme running through it. He is already busy making his next for Karan Johar, the working title of which is My Name Is Khan.

This film comes at a time when the Mumbai bomb blasts trials and questions about the Srikrishna Commission report’s implementation have brought issues involving inter-communal relations back to the forefront of public debate.

But Shah Rukh Khan is not someone who is insecure over such issues. Being on top of Bollywood’s charts for close to a decade as the definitive superstar hardly leaves scope for questions of acceptance.

“People have accepted me for what I am, nobody has ever questioned my religion,” he says. And goes on to add, “I am an educated, liberal Muslim, and I am proud to be a Muslim. My wife is Hindu.

My children learn both the religions,” said the superstar. His concern at the global stereotyping in the post 9/11 world, though, comes through when he points out that “people should realise that every Haneef is not a terrorist and that everyone with a Khan surname need not be frisked at the airport.”

But isn’t that on account of the spectre of terrorism and the edgy, even paranoid, reactions to it?

“Nobody supports terrorism,” he is emphatic. “And terrorism recognises no religion. I have read the Quran and nowhere does it encourage the killing of people. Such acts only take us backward. We should take a stand and we should talk against terrorism. Even if we don’t talk against it, we should be completely against it.”

Do incidents of communal disharmony disturb him, make him ask questions?

“That is always the work of a few people. It’s all about acquiring power in the bigger picture. We need to see through all this. One has to understand and feel that the only thing that can stop India from being the greatest superpower in the world, is the misuse of religion.”

Does the superstar wish to play political messiah too?

“No, I am an actor, a people’s person. I have no political aspirations. But we all can try for the formation of a fair social and political structure, from the heart. If we believe we can, we can do it. The power lies within us, the common man,” says the man who is the common man’s hero.

In other words, Chak de, India?

Courtesy: Khaleej Times