Oldboy.

[Ravi]

http://www.twitchfilm.net/archives/004169.html

November 16, 2005
올드보이 (Oldboy) Makers Plan Vengeance on 'Zinda'
(Posted In Action Asia Film News Rumors )

You've read already a few reports on Twitch about the 'Indian Oldboy', Sanjay Gupta's latest film Zinda. And anybody even marginally acquainted with that world knows in Bollywood the words 'homage', 'remake' and 'rip-off' are often interchangeable, good faith or not. The outline - a man facing 14 years of captivity for no known reason, then spending the next four days looking for the culprit - sounds exactly like a certain Oh Dae-Soo's fate, held captive for 15 years, released, and looking for his enemy for the following 5 days.

But it seems some people in Chungmuro are taking it seriously. 올드보이 (Oldboy) Producers Show East talked with the press today, saying that the only remake rights contract they ever signed was with Universal in the US, and with no one else, including India. The company announced that after looking at the finished product they will make their decision, which might have legal ramifications, if the film is as similar to Park Chan-Wook's hit as it's been claimed.

A PR from Show East announced: "We're looking at the similarities between the two films, but since we don't have a final product we can judge, we'll just have to investigate a little more into what kind of relation the films will have. Since we never experienced something like this, we couldn't really set up a concrete plan. But if we find out there's indeed a strong similarity between the two, it looks like we'll have to talk with our lawyers."

Director of the 'Indian Reservoir Dogs' Kaante, Sanjay Gupta is known as one of the most stylish filmmakers in Bollywood, but his latest project might finally get him into trouble for underestimating the often very subtle difference between 'homage' and 'rip-off'.

[Ravi]

http://www.kaijushakedown.com/2006/01/zinda_review.html

January 17, 2006

ZINDA REVIEW


ZINDA was 2 hours of a high school production of OLDBOY. ZINDA, for those of you who just tuned in, is Bollywood's remake of Korea's OLDBOY that stars Sanjay Dutt and has the critics panting and the original producers of OLDBOY seeing red. The producers say they are pursuing their legal options, the critics say ZINDA is stylish and powerful, but what is ZINDA really? Don't get up - I've already seen it for you.

It's not like Bollywood remakes are ever as good as the originals so what did I expect? But feel a little sorry for me when I tell you that sitting through ZINDA was sufficient punishment for any sins I may have committed in a previous life. ZINDA was 2 hours of a high school production of OLDBOY, and not the high school production done by the talented and exciting kids at Phillips Exeter Academy, but more like the one done by these kids up  there on the right. It was shoddy, dispiriting and dismal.

Shot-for-shot this was an inferior remake of OLDBOY with every bit of conviction, story-telling brio, heart or soul scrubbed away and nothing but soulless hucksterism left in its place. Sanjay Gupta directs with the committment and attention to detail of a man who has a cab waiting for him downstairs and who still hasn't taken a shower and needed to be at the airport five minutes ago. Bringing all of his sub-hack skills to the table, Gupta manages to tell the entire story of OLDBOY but miss the point entirely. I'm not a big fan of OLDBOY in the first place, so for me this was like having rabid weasels stuffed down my shirt: painful and irritating.

So what are the differences? First of all, Gupta seemed to feel that samurai sword fighting was an essential piece of the movie that Park Chan-Wook had missed. I have mixed feelings about this. Maybe it could work - SAMURAI OLDBOY? - but since ZINDA featured actors who wielded samurai swords the way bored 8 year olds on Halloween wield their lightsabers after an exhausting night out dressed as Anakin Skywalker I guess the jury is still out on that one. On the other hand, the scene of Sanjay Dutt teaching himself samurai skills off the television made me laugh, and laugh, and I still smile a little on the inside when I think about it.

The abduction of Sanjay is handled very differently from OLDBOY. Gupta feels it's important to start off with Sanjay drunk, like Choi Min-Shik in OLDBOY, but then he needs to show us that actually Sanjay, for complicated reasons we never really learn, is merely pretending to be drunk. To me this made him even more obnoxious and gives drunk people a bad name. Then, after some truly excruciating scenes with Sanjay's best pal, Sanjay is abducted (we later learn that he is knocked unconscious after being shot with a crossbow by a guy in a party boat) but he is abducted in true Bollywood style. No subtlety here: his wife is running out to the dock where Sanjay is painting to tell him that she's pregnant when suddenly...he's gone. She has taken her eyes off of him for exactly 3 seconds of screen time but poof! He's gone. Vanished. Truly, Sanjay Dutt is the ninja.

Sanjay Dutt's wig at a young ageAnother change that baffled me was that the hatch in Sanjay's door where he's imprisoned is larger than it was in OLDBOY. Did Gupta feel that we needed to see more of Sanjay's face? Maybe he's right, but I'd like to weigh in right now with a hearty: no. In fact, I feel like a step in the right direction might have been to see less of Sanjay in ZINDA. Sanjay sleepwalks through this movie with all the intensity of a man who was just awakened rudely from a particularly satisfying nap. His kung fu fighting skills are out of the Chuck Norris School of Hitting and the poor guy can barely lift his leg above his knee when he delivers a devastating karate kick. Putting him in an action movie at this age was an act of extreme perversity (he visibly gets exhausted during the one-take hammer fight in the hallway - which lacks the point of the original) and as if that wasn't bad enough he's saddled with a wig that looks like it might wake up at any moment and scamper off into the woods.

All of the sexual content of OLDBOY is missing which largely robs the movie of its purpose and ZINDA has, of course, a happy ending. OLDBOY had a happy ending too...for pervs, but ZINDA comes to a genuinely happy conclusion. However, the most painful facet of the multi-faceted torture that is ZINDA (and trust me, it was hard to pick just one) is the cinematography. In a misguided attempt to give the movie style everything was shot in a blue haze that looks like a film printing accident. If the movie was art directed well, or lit well maybe this blue haze would look sharp and exciting, but as it is it just starves your eyes. By the second hour I was feeling like Sanjay Dutt: forced to wear a silly wig and live for 14 years on fried shrimp dumplings.

Zinda comes back from the lab To lower the lights and bring out the emotion stool, like Judy Garland at a concert in Las Vegas, ZINDA does make me very, very sad. Bollywood has always made its fair share of garbage like this, make no mistake about it. But rarely has the junk gotten this much praise. Is Bollywood abandoning what made it special (gorgeous musical numbers, a gift for family melodrama, huge rambling movies that allows epic stories plenty of time to unfold) in order to churn out soulless knock-offs from overseas? Everyone who's praising ZINDA is parading their ignorance on an international stage. It's only because India is such an insular film community (which is mostly a good thing) that a movie this bad, and this obviously a rip-off from another country, could garner any attention at all.

It's a sad day for Bollywood, and I'm going to have to go watch TEESRI MANZIL again to make myself feel better. You can let yourself out, can't you? And shut the lights off, too. It's over.

[MacGuffin]

Oldboy, New DVDs
Park Chanwook's revenge epic returns in a three-disc set.

On November 14, 2006, Tartan Video's Asia Extreme label will release the Oldboy Collector's Edition on DVD. The set features three discs and more than 350 minutes of bonus material, as well as an exclusive film cell from the 35mm reel and the first volume of the Old Boy graphic novel on which the film is based. The set will be available for the MSRP of $39.92.

The three-disc Oldboy Collector's Edition will feature the following extras:

Disc One
Feature film
Director commentary
Director and cinematographer commentary
Director and cast commentary

Disc Two
Five behind-the-scenes documentaries: "Making the Film - The Cast," "Production Design," "The Music Score," "CGI Documentary," and "Flashback"
Cast & crew interviews
10 deleted scenes with optional commentary
Featurette: "Le Grand Prix at Cannes"

Disc Three
The Autobiography of Oldboy - a video diary from each of the 69 shooting days

Included in the metal case that comes with the DVDs is a special collector's edition card featuring an actual film cell from the theatrical 35mm print, as well as the first volume of the Old Boy graphic novel upon which the movie is based. The DVD is also presented in anamorphic widescreen, and features three audio options: Korean Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, Korean DTS 5.1 Surround Sound, and English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. Check out the box artwork for the Oldboy Collector's Edition DVD below:

[pete]

phillip exeter kids were exciting?

[SiliasRuby]

Good thing I haven't bought it yet.

[Ravi]

I guess that's the same contents as the giant purple box?

[essbe]

Sanjay Gupta is notorious for making horrid, monochromatic "remakes" of international masterpieces.

[last days of gerry the elephant]

Time to sell off my single disc copy.