Having recently released “Power to the People and the Beats: Public Enemy’s Greatest Hits”, to document their immense and far-reaching legacy to the development of hip hop music, how did Public Enemy catalyse the transition of rap music from minority interest to establishment juggernaut?

Public Enemy have released a ‘Best of’ compilation of their music after near on twenty years of beats and rhymes, to consolidate a rich and pertinent legacy to the development of hip hop that helped to kick-start the whole Gangsta Rap sound and, indirectly, the co-option of hip hop by the music industry. In 1987, when Public Enemy’s impact was first heard with a resounding boom-bip, Rap music was a minority interest, either derided or patronised. Their sonic and verbal militancy caused a major shit-storm in the media, engendering the kind of outrage and moral panic that tends to surface on slow news days, and enabled hip hop music to carry the mantle of bête noire that it used so successfully to market itself beyond the urban streets to the callow youth of suburbia.

The concerns of hip hop music have now shifted from politicisation to accumulation; from rebel to label. Chuck D memorably coined rap music as the “Black C-N-N” whereas now it has become the “ghetto QVC” – from radical to superficial in twenty short years, leaving the once mighty PE irrelevant in its wake.

Hip hop music began in New York in the mid-to-late seventies when disco was still at its height and party music was the order of the day. (MC’s rapped over R&B music backdrops to create a feel-good vibe amongst the revellers, the music had many parallels with reggae toasting and indeed, may have been inspired by it). It was an underground, D.I.Y. music that was a world away from the mainstream.

Rappers Delight by the Sugarhill Gang changed everything. Released in 1979, probably as a novelty single, it became a surprise hit and is still a favourite of a lot of people (mostly blokes) who are obsessed with being able to recite it word-for-word throughout its fifteen minute running length. It was fun, funny but, most of all, it was funky and served notice to the hip hop music community that this kind of record could sell. The many early conquistadors of rap and hip hop music came, saw and conquered the shit out of the nascent form, introducing a number of innovations; Grandmaster Flash, Mantronix, Kurtis Blow, Afrika Baambaata, Kool Herc, Sugarhill Records, Whodini, Keith LeBlanc, Stetsasonic, Marley Marl, Eric B & Rakim, LL Cool J, Ice T and Run DMC all pushed hip hop forward in terms of lyrical form, cutting, scratching and sampling at a time when soul music was becoming increasingly mediocre.

The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was another landmark, pushing the lyrical content further than any rap record had done so far. Released in 1982, and sounding like an electro update of Stevie Wonder’s Living for the City, it was a stone cold classic relaying, in forensic detail, the lives of society’s bottom-feeders, tingeing its stories with anger and despair. The delivery of the lyrics was by-and-large less bombastic than other rap records (excepting Melle Mel who could sound dramatic reading out a shopping list) with the rappers preferring to be downbeat, cementing its documentary realism with dense passages of pithy prose (“my son said, daddy I don’t wanna go to school ‘cos the teacher’s a jerk, he must think I’m a fool, and all the kids smoke reefer, I think it’d be cheaper if I just got a job, learned to be a street sweeper”) and still keeping the rhyming right on point. The Message lived up to its title, providing dancefloor beats for the head as well as the feet. hip hop had now begun to carry the torch of the socially conscious agenda of 70′s soul that had been blanded out by disco and bedroom R&B.

So, rap music was considered a novelty that occasionally spiced up the charts but was still expected to die out after having been assimilated. Constantly criticised for its apparent lack of musicality, hip hop continued to break through with minor hits until Run DMC officially staked rap’s ground in the mainstream with the extremely radio-friendly Walk this Way. It’s a record that I can barely stand to hear nowadays, because of its middle-of-the-road commercialism and the fact that it was played to death, but it created the first rap superstars (if you didn’t know who Run DMC were, you needed to check in to the nearest coma ward) and ensured that hip hop would continue to have a voice. That voice would continue to speak to the party hardy, but was also the voice of the street incorporating braggadocio, bedroom entreaties and stories from urban realities.

In 1987 rap found a revolutionary voice that laid the foundations for the golden age of hip hop. Rebel Without a Pause was a milestone, signalling its intent with its opening sample declaring “brothers and sisters, I don’t know what this world is coming to” before slamming into a squealing saxophone break over thunderous ‘funky drummer’ beats. This was the sound of hip hop entering its maturity, refusing to give a shit about mainstream sensibilities, the Public Enemy sound, as produced by the Bomb Squad, had an edge so sharp that it created an instant love-or-hate-it divide; blowing open Pandora’s Box for a whole generation of Black artists. The furious, dissonant mixture of beats and samples was dubbed “music’s worst nightmare” by Hank Shocklee of the Bomb Squad and as such, it played right into the hands of those who would decry Rap for its lack of musicality. Except their opinions didn’t matter anymore; the Bomb Squad’s confrontational sound created a rallying point for the future of Black music.

As shocking as the music was, it was matched by the emceeing of Chuck D; polemical, urgent and declamatory he took no prisoners as he cut a swathe through all the forces that would rail against him. He delivers the Public Enemy manifesto with his authoritative baritone, building thought upon thought and rhymes within rhymes, never looking back, never standing down.

Politically aligning himself with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, the radicalism was there for anyone who would care to listen. It was an untamed new voice full of righteous anger and intelligence that delivered its message in tones reminiscent of Black political leaders from Malcolm X to Stokely Carmichael to Farrakhan himself. Through Chuck D, hip hop had found a political voice that was not only lucid but embraced the radical politics of the, decidedly non-mainstream, Black Power movement.

The album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back followed up the promise of Rebel Without a Pause covering the politics of the Black experience thoughtfully and uncompromisingly with practically every tune a classic. This was their second album – their first, Yo! Bum Rush The Show, released only a year earlier seems almost primitive in comparison, with its beats less furious and bragging emceeing reminiscent of LL Cool J – and is now considered the greatest hip hop album ever. Flavor Flav played the fool to Chuck D’s straight man, delivering off-the-wall material that felt in perfect counterpoint to the harsher realities of Chuck D but was still weird nonetheless, often spouting complete, almost surrealist, nonsense with his own inimitable enunciation – although Flavor Flav is probably as responsible for inspiring as many emcees as Chuck D – oddball rappers abounded in the years after Nation of Millions all the way to Eminem today. – They released the almost perfect Fight the Power in 1989 as part of the soundtrack to Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing – containing what is probably their most famous lyric soundbite – “Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me” – before releasing the much anticipated Fear of a Black Planet. Flav came into his own on this album, delivering top-class tunes such as 911 is a Joke and Can’t Do Nuttin’ For Ya Man, while Chuck D pushed the manifesto message even further with tunes like Burn Hollywood Burn and Welcome to the Terrordome. The Bomb Squad, again, provided beats and samples that were pant-shittingly good.

Following up the work started by Public Enemy, a group emerged in 1988 called Niggaz Wit Attitude (or N.W.A. to give them their less provocative acronym) who displayed their anti-authoritarian rage with the release of their single Fuck Tha Police. This was as incendiary a statement of intent as has ever been delivered in music and N.W.A.’s notoriety was assured. Although they were less politically astute, their tales of urban resentment were still cloaked in Black Power rhetoric, warning of the consequences of creating a large Black underclass whilst revelling in the lurid violence and misogyny of their position. Gangsta rap was born and set out to hijack the mainstream through its explicit and shocking imagery both on wax and on the streets.

Hip hop’s greatest creative period followed, with several hip hop legends-in-the-making beginning their careers. The diversity of acts that came in the wake of Public Enemy was immense with a new act born practically every week. The roll-call of artists coming up out of this period (from 1987 to 1997) included Big Daddy Kane, Young MC, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, The Jungle Brothers, KRS-1, Gang Starr, Naughty By Nature, Cypress Hill, House of Pain, EPMD, Pete Rock, The Pharcyde, Black Moon, Mobb Deep, Jeru The Damaja, The Roots, Xzibit, Outkast and The Wu-Tang Clan. Many of these records were commercially successful and hip hop fashions were changing constantly. The various political agendas of these groups tended to revolve around the notion of Black Power and the disaffected underclass, whereas the more explicitly political groups took the liberal high-ground. The voice of rap was being dissipated amongst a multitude of talented individuals, each with their own take on society and their place therein.

However, the one dominant voice during this time was that of Gangsta Rap with its East Coast-West Coast beefs and explicit lyrics providing the better stories, and which sound-tracked the racial unrest in America that ignited 1992′s LA riots. Its leading exponents were Ice T, Ice Cube and Dr. Dre -the latter two embarking on solo careers, having once been part of N.W.A. – but while the Ices were embroiled in the business of authority baiting, Dr. Dre took his old George Clinton records to put together The Chronic, a hip hop masterpiece, on which the main guest rapper was Snoop Doggy Dogg. The Chronic sold extremely well and created a real anticipation for Snoop Doggy Dogg’s solo project which, when Doggystyle was released in 1993, went stratospheric. The future was here and it was wearing a bubble-perm. In the post Doggystyle years, hip hop gained wider acceptance and progressively wore the mantle of mainstream mediocrity (niggas, bitches, violence, sex and bling).

Public Enemy’s output continued (Apocalypse 91: the Enemy Strikes Black, Greatest Misses, Muse Sick N Hour Mess Age, Chuck D’s masterly solo album The Autobiography of Mistachuck, He Got Game, There’s A Poison Going On, and Revolverlution) but the Bomb Squad were no longer taking complete control over production duties and, while the deeper and bassier production was anticipating the West Coast sound, the edge was being lost as hip hop moved on at breakneck pace. Chuck and Flav were still magnificent but were becoming increasingly irrelevant as the acts that came after them commanded more of the attention. Having put rap at the forefront of innovation, Public Enemy found they were falling behind in terms of a public that was constantly searching for the next new thing; they also lacked the killer tune that might have put them back into the limelight. At the time when hip hop was joining the mainstream, Public Enemy quit their record company and began releasing records independently, thereby leaving them without the money and marketing that might have led to a successful reinvention – their brand of agitation and polemic was no longer useful to an industry that was becoming as apolitical and bland as soul had become in the eighties.

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Written by David D’Alessandro, John Heffernan, Sheldon Turner, directed by David R. Ellis and starring Samuel L. Jackson. The film finished filming principal photography in September of 2005 including five days of additional re-shooting to raise the MPAA film rating system rating from a PG-13 to an R[1]. It is now unofficially the biggest buzzed film of all time with tremors going back as early, as the Blair Witch Project era in 99. Buzzed is the right word and for once, it is not down to cast, crew or script,…and has anyone approaching the phenomenon quite taken aback by the way it all started. SOAP, as it is now known, started as a quirky little film on a plane, post 9/11. It was difficult for any respectable producer to think about green lighting a high-profile project involving planes flying.

Sam was brought into the picture – ‘because of the title’ – and all of sudden, the producers (Craig Berenson, Gary Levinsohn and Don Granger), realized that they were sitting on a good film. The film’s working title was then changed to ‘Pacific Air flight 121′

Perceptive fans – Hollywood insiders? Outsiders? – picked up on this change of name and started writing poems, songs, bloggs, trailers,…to ‘protect’ the title? Revive it? It started a cult followed by many and like the great men once said ‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few’
How and why it started will remain a webmystery. However, the title has now became in Internet-lingo an explanation for fatalistic feelings ranging from ‘c’est la vie’ to “shit happens.” …

Here is one of those poem by SuperMatricks:

Snake On A Plane or SOAP…

Internet aphorism…
Sentence precluded of any serious meaning
If only the very serious…meaning of life….
Over-reaching the foremost tentacles
Down the deep end of the wide web
Cruising like the riding zeitgeist.

For this is the Google age, we enter a new page
Clicking away at every turning point.
We are mere mortals and should not be on a plane
For this is the moment when running from the joint

The only ghost moved on the femme fatale
She, bless her, decided to refuse the rascal

Fixing up and looking sharp
Holding the mirror like a true lady
I unleashed my lyrics in a welcoming park
I have your snake down in my plane.
I never said it would be so easy
Her smile made you feel alive
Is it possible for a snake to be on two different planes?
Was my opening chat-up line…
I could never see the reality sign
Will Hoxton ever, ever, ever be cool again?
And my head never felt so much pain
I could never, never, see, she was a real dame

And she replies: Are you always so sneaky?
Maybe cheeky, never monkey!

She smirked….almost…
Am I in?
At any cost
Magic grin…I am the boss
Think…positive like a butterfly

She gazes…Make a move?
She oozes…should I fade

I start campaigning…for my own party:
Word flowing like a proper arty..

You are the candidate, of my heart…
I’ll fly your colors to the other end of the earth
…..
.
It’s alright I’ll stay on the plane, for the rest of the flight.
She replied
Tough cookie I thought…
Browne sausage she replied
D’you know a Chinese bookie? I uttered
‘My favorite dish’ she smiled

Like I said, the snake was not for turning…hmmm just maybe for fuming
First the snake then the plane…how did it get sooo lame?
She asked.
My cover was blown ‘pff’ confetti-style…
My pride? Down the sink… ‘Sssh’ Linguini style
I’ve been plucking chicken like you all my life.
I’ve been staring at you all the flight
‘Get your snake out of here!’
The plane was still full …of other Snakes…
END.
As published on the official fanblogg: http://www.snakesonablog.com/Soooo.

Green Light

You saw the movie…liked it? Enjoyed the theater or your home cinema…? Not yet! The only problem is you haven’t seen a single frame of the film so far. The problem is the film has started a bizarre internet fever never seen before in the Google age. The problem is chat rooms, news rooms, blogg, super-community website, fansites alike…are full of it. Full of stories about the filming, the press is at it, and the growing legions of fans as well…to the point where they’ve actually been able to reorder the shooting of a few scenes and the addition of dialogues of their choice to satisfy their browsing egos. To add to the insult, I will therefore write the first review of a movie I have never seen!

Before you asked yourself, is he mad? Remember that some even made a movie of how the audition was conducted, without being there! … So let me now do my mo#*#* fu#*#*#** review!

First let’s command the fine and subtle acting genius that is Samuel Lee Jackson the first, who in his inimitable fashion has been able to deliver a performance of the highest caliber for his legions of admiring fans. Second let us remember the premises of the film: There is a plane full of snake, Samuel Lee Jackson has to save the world, and will he do it? Sure he will, but before that he will have to deliver pin-point sharp one-liners, kick some a#*#* and stutter the sentence: Get the mo#*#*#* snakes out of my m#*#*# plane!
All in the name of poetry then….

What started as a movie made for popcorn lovers – The lead should have been younger; Think Fast and Furious – made in September 2005 in Canada, is now the biggest buzzed film of all time with tremors going back as early, as Blair Witch Project era in 99(post web 2.0 then) Sam was brought in and all of sudden, the producers (Craig Berenson, Gary Levinsohn and Don Granger), realized that they were sitting on a good film. The film’s working title was then changed to ‘Pacific Air flight 121′.

erceptive fans – Hollywood insiders? Outsiders? – picked up on this change of name and started writing poems, songs, bloggs, trailers,…to ‘protect’ the title? Revive it? It started a cult followed by many and like the great men once said ‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few’
How and why it started will remain a web-mystery. However, the title has now became in Internet-lingo an explanation speak for fatalistic sentiments that range from c’est la vie to “shit happens.”

Cut to the chase….
Sam is flying a key witness from Hawaii to LA on a plane. He is an FBI agent. Sam obviously enjoy playing law-enforcement character from Jedi knights, to SWAT team leader, to private eye, to simple cop,…His character is coming straight from the Die Hard book of widow and orphan rescuer, but where Nelville Flynn has the edge on John McLane it is in his ability to deliver badaaasss one-liners while remaining ultra-cool. A ‘tour-de-force’ done effortlessly thanks to the quiet and unassuming action-packed direction of David R. Ellis. D.R.E is known to be a surf enthusiast and was in a previous life stunt coordinator on ‘cult’ films like ‘Invasions of the body snatchers’ (1978) or action 2nd unit director on ‘Patriot games’ and ‘Clear and present danger’ (1994), both with Harrison Ford…

Have you said coincidence?
Woody Allen he ain’t. But that’s exactly the point, for he is well too aware of the danger of letting angst-ridden dialogues taking over the film’s subconscious message: ‘Kill all the muthaf#*#*#*#*# snakes’. A few additional characters complete the casting, sometimes as snakes-fodder like -Tyler (Kennan Thompson) and Ashley, a married couple; Cowboy Rick (David Koechner) from Texas; Cash Money, a gangsta rapper, his bodyguards Big Leroy (Keith Dallas) and Two-Ton; Mercedes, Rachel Blanchard as a Paris Hilton look-alike…some air hostesses, puppeteer (Adam Behr)…etc. And of course the snakes, stars of the films hissing their way through the cockpit with evocative names like Scarface or Hannibal with 20 foot long Kong stealing the show.
We leave you with a few lines dropped from the trailer and hope to hear from you soon:

Nelville Flynn: It’s my job to handle life and death situations on a daily basis. It’s what I do, and I’m very good at it. Now you can stand there and be the panicked, angry mob and blame him, me and the government for getting you into this, but if you want to survive tonight, you need to save your energy and start working together.
Or the most memorable one: I’ve had it with these mother fucking snakes on this mother fucking plane!

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Director:
Sam Raimi

Trailers:
Spiderman3 trailer / teaser

Synopsis:
A specimen from the moon gives Spiderman new powers and a black suit, while Spiderman must battle the second Green Goblin, Sandman, Venom, and other dangers. Harry Osborn’s insanity drives him over the edge and transforms him into the Green Goblin. In an effort to destroy Peter Parker he hires Flint Marko to aid him in his quest. Meanwhile Peter must balance his relationship with Mary Jane and the arrival of a new love interest, Gwen Stacy. The final showdown then pits former best friends against each other as a new villain looms on the horizon.

Trivia:
The release date for the film was set before Spiderman 2 (2004) was even released.

John Dykstra, who won an Oscar for his work as visual effects supervisor on Spiderman 2 (2004), had declined to work on the third film. Instead, Dykstra chose to work on Hot Wheels (2007). Scott Stokdyk took over as visual effects supervisor.

Topher Grace left “That ’70s Show” (1998) to star in this movie.

The over 600 latex “web” balloons in the celebration scene had to be hand-painted with a Sharpie marker.

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Roger Corman’s B-movie factory of the sixties and seventies produced a number of leading film talents like Francis Ford Coppola,Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson and James Cameron who have become big cheeses in Hollywood. They’ve each created large niches for themselves and become marquee names whose presence will guarantee a following. Even more regular cheeses like Joe Dante, Peter Bogdanovitch, and Monte Hellman have become known for their idiosyncratic visions and their adherence to signature styles. Graduates from the Corman studios tended to become iconoclasts, probably as a result of Corman’s high concept, high turnover approach forcing directors, writers and actors to think on the run and be brave with their decisions. Fellow Corman graduate, John Sayles has always been different – one of America’s best independent filmmakers, he has worked with genuine skill and clarity as a writer, director, editor, actor and script doctor for nearly 30 years. What separates John Sayles from his peers is his refusal to play out his work in terms of a simple hero/ villain morality, his refusal of the strictures of iconoclasm.

Silver Star, Sayles’ latest release due out in late July, is three films in one: a detective story reminiscent of Chinatown, a satirical look at the political and intellectual credentials of George W. Bush, and an indictment of the weakness of mainstream journalism in pursuing politicians and their paymasters. John takes us through his gallery of shady deal-makers, migrant Mexicans, leftist bloggers, cynics and the disaffected to delineate his vision of what really has gone wrong with the American political system, using an extraordinary cast headed by Danny Huston (who, after his performances in this and Ivansxtc, is as amiable as freshly buttered toast and should be in every American film made from here on in). The film feels like 70’s conspiracy thrillers in the vein of Winter Kills or The Parallax View with an overriding air of pessimism rather than paranoia – the bad guys can’t be caught, nothing really changes by the end of the film and the only victories are relatively minor human ones.

Silver Star flies in the face of prevailing Hollywood wisdom (leftist documentaries aside), being both political and not particularly heroic. Most, if not all, Hollywood films have a very simple structure: present the hero as someone in whom the hopes and ideals of the audience can be vested, introduce and play out a conflict that the hero must overcome, and finally see the conflict resolved. Simple. Except that life is rarely ever that simple, even if information is increasingly skewed to this model; witness the last Gulf War where first we see Bush and Blair as heroes fighting terrorism introducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction wielded by Sadam Hussain (the pre-eminent bad-guy of our times), secondly the exposition of this conflict through various media, and finally ‘shock and awe’ – roll credits. The good guys win, the bad guys are made to suffer, and we, the audience, are invited to cheer. The duplicity of this structure is that you either go with it or you refuse to suspend your disbelief, there is no active engagement with the scenario and no nuances to discuss or modify. John Sayles’ work displays exactly the opposite sensibility drawing on stories that are as much about the society in which they are based as they are about the people that inhabit them. His work tends to act as a social, political and emotional travelogue rather than a straight-line narrative. The films are all about nuance, all about the compromises that exist between individuals and the society in which they live; points of view being drawn richly, sympathetically and non-judgmentally (he mostly eschews didacticism in favour of letting the audience make up its own mind). Community and social mores emerge as lead characters in his stories and, since changing society is as difficult as twisting a melon, his stories tend to have downbeat or open-ended conclusions.

After graduating with a Psychology degree in 1972, Sayles worked in a series of blue collar jobs whilst penning short stories for magazines and working on novels. He eventually found work with Roger Corman as a writer, producing scripts for Piranha, The Lady in Red and Battle Beyond the Stars (all, quite frankly, derivative of other more successful films but fun with a nice line in characterisation), learning the rudiments of film-making along the way. Using the money saved from writing these films, he made his debut as a director with The Return of the Secaucus 7, a warm, dialogue-heavy comedy of character and connections whose story structure was followed three years later by Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill. The film was a critical success but not a commercial one and John went back to his day-job, writing scripts for films such as The Howling and Alligator (both of which are terrific monster movies, The Howling in particular being a witty and postmodernist update of the werewolf myth and just about the best werewolf film ever made) whilst raising money for his second film Lianna, dealing with issues of sexuality and its social and emotional fall-out. His first studio film, Baby It’s You, again showed Sayles’ ability to write wittily and incisively about personal and social issues with a story about a high school romance that falls apart in the post-school years because the social gulf between them is just too wide. Sayles never worked for a studio again because of arguments over the final cut of Baby It’s You.

His independence allowed him to make a string of American film classics exploring the emotional, social and political landscape of America working with a regular cast of actors including David Strathairn, Joe Morton, Chris Cooper and Gordon Clapp. The Brother from Another Planet looked at Harlem through the eyes of a mute alien on the run from bounty hunters, Matewan used a Western scenario to present a complex look at union politics, Eight Men Out presented the story of a sporting scandal in rich and illuminating detail, City of Hope used a multiple narrative to show the workings of a city bathed in compromise and on the edge of despair, Passion Fish showed the often fractious relationship between two very different women and earned a best original screenplay Oscar nomination, Lone Star distilled issues of community and race from an investigation into a 20 year old murder using multiple narrative and gained another Oscar nomination for best screenplay, Men With Guns was filmed entirely in Spanish and uncovered the harsh politics of an unnamed war-torn Latin American country, Limbo is a parable about three people trapped on an island tinged with ideas about the death of community, Sunshine State was another multiple narrative tale about a real estate development in Florida, and Casa de los Babys which was a study of six women who travel to South America in the hope of becoming adoptive mothers. In between films Sayles works as a script doctor, lending his intelligence to films like Apollo 13 and Mimic amongst others.

A john Sayles film has a ‘no bullshit’ guarantee, he strives as he scribes to find the emotional and intellectual truth in his material with dialogue that is pithy, witty and wise (and often all three at the same time). Like Mike Leigh or Ken Loach, his films are heart-felt and humanist, although he tends not to involve caricature as much as Mike Leigh and works on a broader canvas than Ken Loach. Like Robert Altman, Sayles’ technique of using multiple narratives offer the opportunity of looking at a subject in different and sometimes contradictory ways but unlike Altman, whose approach produces a compendium of short stories, Sayles uses it more as a novelist would, to deepen and enrich the story. John Sayles may well be the most politically aware director working in America who has pursued his writing career with a blue collar work ethic. He is a true individual, telling complex stories with precision and, in turn, should be seen as a real icon.

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Bollywood is now India’s biggest calling card in the ever growing business of entertainment. It is the new buzzword and mantra in Diasporic cross cultural worlds and even the average non-Indian has some idea about the glossy wedding songs in Indian films. Bombay makes a staggering 700-800 films a year, an average of 10 feature in the UK and US top tens every ye

ar. Larger than life heroes love, hate, strut and sing across giant screens romancing their lady loves, traipsing across the globe in fantasy sequences. The global entertainment market has flattened borders for the Bollywood film industry as thousands throng to the theatres from Dubai to Jamaica, from London to New Jersey.

Bollywood is technically savvy, its structure grows more corporate, its world brims with talent, its market fetches ever increasing bucks. The industry has grown from its native origins to comfortably vie with films globally. Not all films are about fantasy and romance, family and patriarchy. Some mature filmmakers deal more seriously with the medium and more ambitiously with the genre.

The Rising, directed by Ketan Mehta, is the latest feather in Bollywood’s cap, with all claims to be the biggest Indian film to hit the international scene. Set in 1857, this historical epic unfolds against what the British called the Sepoy Mutiny. In effect it was the first fight for freedom from the exploitation of Britain’s East India Company.

Produced by Kaleidoscope films, The Rising takes another look at colonial history, power politics and the growing awareness of the nation and its people. When history is being revisited by different nations and communities, this film deals with friendship, loyalty, love and leadership set against the backdrop of the bloodiest revolution in human history. This epic saga has the legendary folk hero Mangal Pandey at its nucleus; a man about whom there is very little historical detail. ‘Where history meets proud folklore, that is where heroes are born,’ the opening lines of the film determine the treatment, which swings from realistic documentary feel to the colourful strokes of vintage Bollywood.

The story of a lowly Sepoy and his rise against the British first captured director Ketan Mehta almost 15 years ago. At the time a project on this scale, for a world market was inconceivable in India. Ketan held the project close to his heart until a global market made this possible. Producer Bobby Bedi known for making films of international standards took up the project. The UK Film Council got involved; this is the first Indian film to receive lottery funding for marketing and distribution. The script shifted hands and Farrukh Dhondy (Red Mercury 2005, American Daylight 2004, Exitz 2004) came on board. Aamir Khan, a star known to be choosy about his projects, joined and immediately raised the stature of the project. Bobby claims that his choice of subjects reflects, “a different take on biography,” and that The Rising boasts a -crew “from the Indian and British industry, with a healthy fusion of professional expertise and great team spirit starting from the lead actors, Aamir Khan and Toby Stephens.”

Hailing from a well known producer’s family, Aamir’s acting debut was as a child artist in Yaadon ki Baraat (1973). Starting his adult career with the ‘Indianised’ Romeo and Juliet story in Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988), Aamir played candy floss heroes for a while and had runaway hits to his credit (Dil, Raja Hindustani, Rangeela, Gulam). His performance in Deepa Mehta’s Earth (1998) as the ‘Ice Candy Man’ fetched him rave reviews from critics. He turned into a meticulous producer-actor with the Oscar nominated Lagaan (2002) and his performance propelled him onto the international stage. Lagaan was about a cricket match between poor villagers and the English cantonment officers. In The Rising Aamir plays the lead role of Mangal Pandey, the man who sparked off the Sepoy Mutiny or the first freedom struggle in India. Aamir thus has his own take on the history of colonialism in India.

Trying to locate him for a phone interview was a whirlwind task. Caught in a frenzy of release dates in Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta, Aamir Khan finally called as he drove to Calcutta airport. Aamir talked of his passionate involvement with the character he plays, “Mangal Pandey is a legendary figure, a symbol of freedom for all Indians. He gave his life for what he believed in, freedom from the exploitation and humiliation of the East Indian Company. He was also a volatile character and the film is about the growing awareness of a man and a nation. Little is known about the man Mangal himself so I had a year to research the background, the history (mid nineteenth century) and evolve a look for the character.”

With the first day reports just filtering in, The Rising collected 40% more revenue than any previous Indian film release in the USA. Does Aamir believe that Bollywood has finally come of age? He answered convincingly, “technically we are at par with Hollywood or anywhere else in the world. There’s wonderful talent and creative energy. The film industry is getting a more corporate make over. With Lagaan we tried to make a film which could compete at par with international projects. It was received so well at home and abroad, but Lagaan was more light-hearted, like an Asterix comic. This film is more realistic and darker in tone. With The Rising we have great talent from the UK. It is an international project both in theme and scale of production.”

Authentic sets designed by Nitin Chandrakant Desai recreate the 19th century ‘Company Raj’ era and lend to the epic scale of the film. Cinematographer Himman Dhamija enhances the legendary story with ambitious camera work, but it is the music which really underpins the folk element of the film. Lyricist Javed Akhtar uses popular ballads he heard as a child in Uttar Pradesh to write the theme song Mangal Mangala. A. R. Rahman reigning composer of Tamil and Hindi films and West End and Broadway musicals (Bombay Dreams, Lord of the Rings) scores a stirring ballad which runs as the theme song embodying the stirring and rising of the nation. However, a few of the musical scores appear aesthetic misfits and sit on cracks in the screenplay. Powerful performances redeem the film, Aamir Khan got into character with 18 months of wearing dhotis (a length of cotton fabric woven around the legs) and boots as the Sepoys used to wear in the British army; he also grew his hair long so as to best portray the brooding and iconic Mangal. Toby Stephens delivers a layered Gordon torn between friendship and duty, Rani Mukherji portrays the spirited Heera, a Bengali nautch girl who falls in love with the fiery Pandey and Coral Reed impresses in the small role of Emily, the Colonel’s daughter.

As a stunning cinematic spectacle The Rising will hold its own against past epics Gandhi (Richard Attenborough), The Chess Players (Satyajit Ray) and more recent productions like Four Feathers (Shekhar Kapoor) or even Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. More importantly it is about identity in a global context. The East India Company, belittles the faith of Hindus and Muslims. Mangal rises above his own cast prejudice to call for freedom for the masses. Gordon, a Scottish outsider within his regiment befriends the local Sepoy and falls in love with a Bengali widow. Heera, the slave girl sold to the brothel frequented by the British soldiers and the low caste sweeper, the true subaltern who propels Pandey into self examination and action. Aamir admits, “delving into one’s history makes me more aware of who I am. It helps me to grow as a person and as an actor. Over the past few years in India with the right wing government and the communal tension, each Indian has had to think hard about his identity and ideology. I had never been so sharply aware of my position as a Muslim, part of a minority community. But in the last elections India’s masses have proved again that they believe in democracy and secularism.”

With 94 prints in the UK alone, The Rising is in the top ten charts with considerable mainstream patrons. Both British and Asian viewers get to take stock of their history from an alternative stance. According to Aamir, The Rising is more about the present than the past, “it was the present that interested me more than what happened 150 years ago. The parallels really drew me. Mangal’s story has a contemporary angle to which I could relate. The East India Company exploited the Indians, today it’s the US exploiting poorer markets; the story has reflections in global capitalisation.”

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The bfm IFF is a six day event – with world premieres, European premieres, UK premieres, seminars and culminates with the annual short film awards. It is an industry supported night where bfm recognizes the talent of our own filmmakers. CEN Magazine has pinpointed for you a series of events worthy of attention.

The festival kicks-off ‘big-style’ on Friday the 9th of September at the Institute of Contemporary Arts with the John Singleton directed feature Four Brothers. This will be the UK premiere of a film which boasts a stellar cast of African-American actors including Terrence Dashon-Howard, model-turned-actor Tyrese Gibson, Outkast member Andre 3000 and the UK’s Chiwetel Ejiofor. UK premiere of Constellation: this award-winning film was the audience’s favourite at the Urban World film festival in New York earlier this year.

European premiere of Diary of a Mad Black Woman. The film took the US by storm with box office success making $21.9m in its opening weekend. Forgiveness is about a disgraced ex-apartheid cop, granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, The Golden Blaze which is a feature-length Caribbean animation. Hip Hop Colony is a documentary into the heart of the East African country Kenya, a former British colony, where hip hop has firmly established its roots. Directed by Owen Alik Shahadah 500 Years Later is an award-winning documentary which was filmed in five continents, across 20 countries.

In the short-film section, among others: Seeker which received a runners-up prize in the American Black Film Festival in July is a powerful portrayal of a Nigerian asylum seeker. Morally Speaking which amusingly tackles a sexual act that some men refuse to even talk about let alone perform.

For more information about the festival go to: www.bfmmedia.com

bfm IFF
Features, documentaries, shorts with Q&A’s
9-12 September, 2005
Institute of Contemporary Arts [ICA]
The Mall
London SW1Y 5AH
www.ica.org.uk
Box office: 020 7930 3647

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“I want you to get an interview with Mike Leigh!” The assertion in my editor’s voice told me he wasn’t kidding. I should have realised then that I was in for a rough write, but buoyed by the confidence suddenly bestowed upon me, I naively skipped out of the office, only to be met head on by lightning, thunder and an unholy summer afternoon deluge that instantly killed the spring in my step, reducing not only my soddened sneakers but my enthusiasm for this assignment into an amorphous squelching mass.

After floating down Brick Lane I washed up inside the entrance of a dimly lit bohemian café and slumping onto an overripe leather sofa, not keen to be used as a nappy, I slurped through a strong, bitter cappuccino, murdered some lung cells with a crude roll-up, assessed my thoughts and when my lights finally switched themselves back on, I’d found I’d come up against a brick wall, and a damp one at that. I don’t think being in Brick Lane had any coincidence or connection.

To what extent the sobering rain, coffee and properties of smoked tobacco leaf, helped kick-start the luminous realisation that I hadn’t a chance in HELL of getting an interview with Mike Leigh, based on what knowledge I possessed of this British auteur, I’ll never know.

But I certainly know now. “He doesn’t do interviews and has told us, even, to respect his working methods during this period. In fact, he’s not even working in any of our rehearsal spaces…etc etc,” informed one of the marketing staff at the Royal National Theatre on London’s Southbank, where Leigh will, on the 15th September, present his dramatic piece, a full length play, something he hasn’t done in more than a decade. The natural process is to request a ‘press pack’ but I didn’t feel there was any point. The piece is currently billed as A New Play (working title only) by Mike Leigh, for the Cottesloe stage.

Leigh was once quoted as saying, “As long as I’m making movies I’m very happy to have nothing to do with the theatre. I find it boring and sterile.” What has revived his interest, I wonder. Intrigue arises then for anyone who is familiar with the clandestine modus operandi of this seemingly quiet and demur man, whose award winning films usually bellow with refreshing depth and imagination that belies his seniority of 62 years; films such as Secrets and Lies, Naked and most recently Vera Drake.

Born in Salford, Lancashire in 1943, Leigh was a doctors’ son of Russian origin, whose grandfather, a miniaturist painter had the name, Lieberman who then changed it to Leigh when he emigrated in 1902. The 40′s and 50′s saw Leigh’s interest develop on a diet of Hollywood and British films, then later the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (for acting studies), served his purposes, as well as the Camberwell School of Art, London International School of Film Technique, the Central School of Art and Design and experimental theatre for the BBC in 1970.

We know that the characters of his play will be well rounded, with the creation of an atmosphere that really does exist, with everything to know about the characters and their lives, the key factor to this being extensive research and improvisation.

One can only imagine the rehearsal process Leigh is subjecting his actors to at the moment. The devising of a theatrical piece, any actor will tell you, is demanding, self-sacrificing and soul stripping. Here it could both be a blessing and a curse in the hands of a great director, some say the greatest living British director, and the third greatest of all time after Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell.

The pressure must be inconceivable even for Leigh himself who has to find the strength to establish trusting relationships with each individual cast member, then intuition and navigational dexterity to guide them as a newly formed family back to shore from a monstrous sea of words and ideas laden with the sumptuous treasure of a story to tell. The cast are: John Burgess, Ben Caplan, Allan Corduner, Adam Godley, Caroline Gruber, Nitzan Sharron, Samantha Spiro, Alexis Zegerman

Past treasures include Abigail’s Party, a slice of 70′s suburban boredom, also made for TV starring Alison Steadman. Other plays include A Great Big Shame, Greek Tragedy, Smelling A Rat, Goose Pimples, Stacy, Silent Majority, Babies Grow Old and Bleak Moments. The Royal National Theatre eagerly and protectively awaits the title and production of Mike Leigh’s new play, as do we, excited by the mystery and fascination of it all. Will it cause a tempest, flooding the South Bank venue with honour or derision? Either way, more rain is coming.

And if my story seems to have an aqueous resonance to it, maybe I’m still waterlogged from the elemental deluge I encountered, but if Leigh’s work is anything to go by we are in for a treat like a good fresh bitter cappuccino, something to stir the senses and light up our conscience.

The Play runs at the Cottesloe Theatre until 31st January 2006.

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