Dir. Gurinder Chadha
B-
As you might have guessed, “Bride and Prejudice” is based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” with both an updated and ethnic twist. We start out not in 19th century England but in 21st century India, the main romantic complication being between Lalita Bakshi (Aishwarya Rai) and the eligible, rich, arrogant American Will Darcy (Martin Henderson)—who runs into immediate conflict with Lalita because he’s, well, rich, arrogant, and American. Did you guess that love would triumph? Did I mention it’s also a musical? More streamlined “Bollywood-lite” than true Bollywood, but nonetheless pleasantly charming, as you’d expect from the folks who also made “Bend It Like Beckham.” —Gillian G Gaar
Dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan A- |
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Winner of the Grand Prix and Best Actor prizes at Cannes in 2003, the Turkish film “Distant” finally has its Seattle premiere this month. Writer-director-cinematographer Nuri Bilge Ceylan composes lovely, wide-angle shots of Istanbul and the Marmara Sea in winter. The colors are fetchingly washed-out, as if the landscape and the figures in it have been drained of vitality. Ceylan’s scrutinizing camera captures two distant cousins who become roommates for a time—Mahmut (Muzaffer ÷zdemir), a sunken-faced sad sack who ekes out a bourgeois existence as a photographer and Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak) , a grotesque, disturbingly simple factory worker. The men have nothing in common, except an apparent passion for cigarettes. Ceylan’s images and his use of sound design perfectly delineate the banal wreckage of these lives. There’s the mournful jazz trumpet that accompanies Mahmut’s solitary excursions to a bar and the spectacular pan across a capsized freighter. But the ship, which is partially submerged at one end, and chafing a snow-covered embankment, is telling. —NP Thompson
“Distant” screens at the Northwest Film Forum January 28-February 3.
Dir. Robert Stone C+ |
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This documentary, which played SIFF last year, chronicles the rise of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Some of the most interesting sequences detail their activities before the group kidnapped, terrorized, and raped Patty Hearst in the interests of advancing their cause. One wishes for a bit more analysis, more coverage of the court battles that followed Hearst’s capture, and really delving into the question of whether Hearst truly embraced the SLA’s antics or merely went along on the pretext of saving her own skin. —Gillian G Gaar