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| Potter patter: Helena Bonham Carter. |
Oscar nominee Helena Bonham Carter, last seen in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, has joined the all-star cast of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. She will play Bellatrix Lestrange, Sirius Black’s cousin and a Death Eater, who is one of Lord Voldemort’s followers.
Bonham Carter joins a cast of returning Harry Potter veterans, including Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, who are reprising their roles as close-knit teen wizards Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.
The likes of Robbie Coltrane, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon, Gary Oldman, Maggie Smith, Emma Thompson and Julie Walters will also return for the next episode in Potter’s life at Hogwarts. As Bellatrix Lestrange, Bonham Carter is only one of several newcomers to the Harry Potter film franchise. The others include Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge, George Harris as Kingsley Shacklebolt, Natalia Tena as Nymphadora Tonks, Kathryn Hunter as Mrs Figg and 14-year-old actress Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood.
This fifth Harry Potter film is being directed by award-winning British film-maker David Yates (The Girl in the Cafe, Sex Traffic, State of Play) from a screenplay by Michael Goldenberg (Where the Wild Things Are, Peter Pan, Contact). Mira Nair was initially offered to direct the film but she refused and went on to make The Namesake instead.
Warner Bros. has also announced that Nicholas Hooper will compose the film’s score. Hooper had won a BAFTA Award for his work on the Yates-directed TV movie The Young Visiters. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be released in 2007.
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| Music musings: Rituparna Sengupta and Ashmit Patel. |
Aaamaro porano jaha chai..., the popular Tagore song, will be heard as Hamare wadon pe par lag aaye hain... in many non-Bengali speaking households soon.
A commissioner of customs in Mumbai, Indrajit Dasgupta, Tollywood star Rituparna Sengupta and Bollywood actor Ashmit Patel have come together to shoot the music video for the song.
Dasgupta’s album is a collection of 10 Hindi songs based on Rabindrasangeet. The first single, portraying a love story between Rituparna and Ashmit, was shot in the Maharaja’s Palace of Faltan, Satara, over three days.
“It’s my way of promoting Tagore’s songs,” says Dasgupta. “Outside of Bengal people seem to have forgotten the master and if this album manages to make the people enjoy his songs, my work will be done. Many movies have used his songs without giving him due credit, and I think it’s time something is done about it.”
Dasgupta’s earlier tryst with “national” Rabindrasangeet was with Ananda dhara which had Rajesh Khanna in the music video.
The songs in the new album have been selected to portray different facets of the human mood. The lyrics in Hindi have been penned by the likes of Javed Akhtar, Shaheen Iqbal and Rajesh Johri.
It has met with a mixed response in the country but Omkara has all but won away the West. The Vishal Bhardwaj adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello made it to the UK Top 10 charts as well as the US Top 20 charts in its first week.
But what should make the music director-turned-film-maker even happier is the kind of reviews his latest film has received in most of the foreign publications.
Time Out calls it “a largely successful attempt to push the boundaries of commercial Hindi cinema... the result is an earnest visual treat”.
Evening Standard’s Derek Malcom writes: “Here is a Bollywood director (Vishal) who can be compared with some of the greatest figures of Bollywood’s past.”
James Christopher of The Times says: “I’ve never seen the play so perfectly tuned to a time or a place.” The famous Sight and Sound writes: “With Omkara, contemporary Bollywood finally enters the realm of world-class cinema.”
Perhaps the ultimate accolade comes from BBC Asia Network which says: “Words such as ‘fantastic’, ‘marvellous’, ‘great’ cannot sum up the work of art Vishal has shown in his adaptation of Othello.”
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| Wow! World’s Most Amazing Videos. |
AXN is premiering the third season of the World’s Most Amazing Videos that have been caught live. Bringing real life stories of unparalleled courage and survival miraculously caught on tape, the series features “heroes who make the critical difference”.
Hosted by stage, screen and TV veteran Stacy Keach (History X, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, Fat City), World’s Most Amazing Videos will deliver a combination of real and rare footage of “some of the most heart-pounding and unbelievable moments ever captured on film”.
An exploding plane housing 24 sky-divers, high-speed chases, near-death at the jaws of a killer shark, or a daring “roof rope rescue” to save a man who is trapped on the 13th floor window sill of a burning building... The show comes every Monday, 11 pm on AXN.
