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Goal! The Impossible Dream, a Touchstone Pictures presentation, distributed by Excel Home Videos, couldn’t have scored better! Tonight, the world’s most popular sport kicks off in Munich, and a viewing of Goal! (DVD Rs 599, VCD Rs 299) earlier in the evening (with or without beer) could be the best way to dribble your way to the post at 9:30pm.
The 118-minute docufeature builds up on 10-year-old Santiago Munez crossing the Mexican border into America “with two things with him — his football and a ragged picture of the FIFA World Cup”. Showing the journey from tribulation to triumph, Goal! (starring Kuno Becker, Stephen Dillane, Anna Friel, Alessandro Nivola) is regarded as the most realistic football flick ever made.
It throws in real superstars and real games, and the DVD has special features like Behind the Pitch, The Beauty of the Game, Munez + 10, Golden Moments of the FIFA World Cup, the 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany and even Goal II trailer! A very interesting kick-in is the Happy Mondays music video. The DVD has optional subtitles in Chinese, Bahasa, Thai, Malay, Korean, Spanish and Portuguese (just in case you grew up in the last decade or so of CPM educational policy and never got to learn English!).
Neel Akasher Neeche (Angel; VCD, Rs 199) is a Hemanta-Bela Productions, screenplay and directed by Mrinal Sen. The film is based on a short story, Cheeni Pheriwala, by Padma Vibhushan Mahadevi Varma. A Chinese hawker,Wong Lu, played by Kali Banerjee, leaves his sister back home due to some misunderstanding but loves her dearly. In Calcutta he finds a new ‘sister’ in Manju De, a freedom fighter. The story is set in those restless times of 1930 when Calcutta was aflame in its effort to sever the shackles of the foreign rule. Finally, under the influence of this ‘Swadesi sister’ he too develops a feeling of patriotism and decides to go back to his motherland. An inspiring film with a cast that includes Smriti Biswas and Bikash Ray, it has some very popular songs by Hemanta Mukhopadhyay written by Gouriprasanna Majumdar.