Bride Prejudice
SBS World Movies, Friday 5 November, 9:35pm

PG, AD
UK, 2004
Genre: Musical, Comedy, Romance
Language: English
Director: Gurinda Chadha
Starring: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Martin Henderson, Nadira Babbar, Nalveen Andrews
What’s it about?
A modern adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic novel, Pride and Prejudice. Mrs Bakshi (Babbar) is looking for suitable husbands for her four daughters. When the rich single gentlemen Balraj (Andrews) and Darcy (Henderson) visit, the Bakshis have high hopes, but circumstances get in the way of romance.

STREAMING AT SBS ON DEMAND:

Bajirao Mastani

M
India, 2015
Genre: War, History, Romance
Language: Hindi
Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Starring: Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra, Tanvi Azmi, Vaibhav Tatwawadi, Mahesh Manjrekar, Milind Soman, Aditya Pancholi, Ayush Tandon, Rudra Soni, Raza Murad, Benjamin Gilani, Anuja Sathe, Yatin Karyekar, Irrfan Khan
What’s it about?
Peshwa Bajirao married to Kashibai, falls in love with Mastani, a warrior princess in distress. They struggle to make their love triumph amid opposition from his conservative family.

Love Aaj Kal

M
India, 2009
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Romance
Language: Hindi
Director: Imtiaz Ali
Starring: Saif Ali Khan, Deepika Padukone, Rishi Kapoor
What’s it about?
Jai (Saif Ali Khan) and Meera (Deepika Padukone) are in deeply love. But when their careers take them in different directions, they decide to break up. Over time they each realise their feelings have endured despite their separation…

Mukkabaaz

M
India, 2017
Genre: Drama, Action
Language: Hindi
Director: Anurag Kashyap
Starring: Rajesh Tailang, Zoya Hussain, Ravi Kishan, Jimmy Shergill, Vineet Kumar Singh

What’s it about?
A sharp social commentary on the multiple battles that a lower caste boxer, Shravan, struggles with to make his mark on the boxing world.

R… Rajkumar

M
India, 2013
Genre: Bollywood
Language: Hindi
Director: Shahid Kapoor
Starring: Prabhu Deva, Sonakshi Sinha
What’s it about?
An aimless youngster is working as a drug runner when he falls a beautiful, educated woman at first sight. In order to win her love, he takes on his former employer, to eliminate the insidious drug cartel.

Umrika

M
India, 2015
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Language: Hindi
Director: Prashant Nair
Starring: Suraj Sharma, Tony Revolori, Prateik Babbar, Smita Tambe, Pramod Pathak, Adil Hussain, Rajesh Tailang, Amit Sial, Mayur More, Sauraseni Maitra
What’s it about?
When a young village boy discovers that his brother, long believed to be in America, has actually gone missing, he begins to invent letters on his behalf to save their mother from heartbreak, all the while searching for him.

Hotel Salvation

PG
India, 2016
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Language: Hindi
Director: Shubhashish Bhutiani
Starring: Adil Hussain, Lalit Behl, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Palomi Ghosh, Navnindra Behl, Anil K Rastogi
What’s it about?
An ominous dream convinces 77-year-old Dayanand Kumar that his end could be near. He takes the news to his son Rajiv, knowing he wants to breathe his last in the holy city of Varanasi and end the cycle of rebirth, by attaining salvation. Being the dutiful son he is, Rajiv is left with no choice but to drop everything and make the journey with his stubborn father. Daya and Rajiv check into Mukti Bhawan (Hotel Salvation) in Varanasi, a guesthouse devoted to people who want to die there. But as the days go by, Rajiv struggles to juggle his responsibilities back home, while Daya starts to bloom in the hotel. Rajiv gives his father a shot at salvation but as family bonds are tested, he finds himself torn, and not knowing what he must do to keep his life together.

Dinner and a Movie: ‘Hotel Salvation’ and aloo pitika

Aligarh

M
India, 2016
Genre: Drama
Language: Hindi
Director: Hansal Mehta
Starring: Sukhesh Arora, Manoj Bajpayee, Balaji Gauri, Sumit Gulati, Dilnaz Irani, Sachin Parikh, K.R. Parmeshwar, Rajkummar Rao, Ishwak Singh, Nutan Surya, Suman Vaidya, Ashish Vidyarthi
What’s it about?
Set in the city of Uttar Pradesh and based on true events, the plot revolves around Dr Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras who taught Marathi at Aligarh Muslim University. He was sacked from his position of Reader and Chair of Modern Indian Languages, on charges of homosexuality. 

Vicky Donor

M
India, 2012
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Language: Hindi
Director: Shoojit Sircar
Starring: Ayushmann Khurrana, Yami Gautam, Annu Kapoor, Dolly Ahluwalia, Kamlesh Gill, Puja Gupta, Inderpal Singh, John Abraham
What’s it about?
When a Bengali woman falls in love with a young Punjabi man, she finds it hard to fathom his past as a sperm donor. 

Visit SBS On Demand to explore more films in the Celebrate Diwali collection. 

It’s surprising how cheesy the new “Dune” looks. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, the adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel seems less like a C.G.I. spectacle than a production still waiting for its backgrounds to be digitally filled in or its sets to be built. David Lynch’s version of “Dune,” from 1984, was a profuse film, teeming with sets and costumes as intricate as they were overwhelming, making extended and startling use of optical effects, and, in general, displaying an urgent will to turn the fantasy worlds of the story, which is set in the year 10191, into physical and visceral experiences. Villeneuve’s interests appear to lie elsewhere. He puts the drama and plot first, avoiding details that could be distractions and appearances that aren’t explained (or explained away) in dialogue or action. The bareness with which he depicts the story doesn’t resemble the shoestring production values of nineteen-fifties sci-fi cheapies, but it instead suggests merely a failure of imagination, an inability to go beyond the ironclad dictates of a script and share with viewers the wonders and terrors of impossible worlds.

Like most fantasies and futuristic science-fiction movies, “Dune” requires a large amount of exposition to set up the rules of its universe. Lynch, in his “Dune,” hardly distinguishes exposition from drama, because he’s as interested in the what as in the why. His film establishes a phantasmagorical and nearly fetishistic relationship to the material world, to even apparently trivial objects as well as to gestures, phrases, inflections. He unifies his cinematic field, lavishing as much attention to detail—and as much time—on relatively undramatic scenes and background elements as on scenes of great moment. By contrast, Villeneuve (who wrote the film with Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth) appears embarrassed by the lengthy exposition that the story requires. Rather than revelling in it, he dispatches the necessary information hastily and dutifully, because he knows all too well where the film is going and why it’s going there.

There’s a nexus of planets under the reign of a shadowy emperor, whose realm runs on a mineral known as spice. Both a hallucinogen and an energy source, spice is mined in the deserts of the planet Arrakis, which has been colonized for that purpose and, at the emperor’s orders, run by the evil House Harkonnen. But the emperor removes the Harkonnens from governing Arrakis and dispatches the benevolent House Atreides and its leader, Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), to take their place—along with his consort, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), and their son, Paul (Timothée Chalamet). But the Harkonnens and their cruel leader, Baron Vladimir (Stellan Skarsgård), aren’t giving up so easily, and this seems to be all according to the emperor’s plan to lure the House Atreides to its destruction.

Arrakis is no empty desert. It’s inhabited by the Fremen, a people who have endured the spice colonies and survived by living underground in elaborate warrens, constructing advanced technology to sustain themselves in difficult conditions. The Harkonnens are ready to exterminate them, whereas the Atreidae want to make common cause with the Fremen and help them. Paul, young and untested, comes to believe that he is the Messiah, the so-called Kwisatz Haderach, whom a religious order of Atreides women, known as the Bene Gesserit, have been trying to breed, from generation to generation, and who will be the savior for both the House Atreides and for the Fremen. What’s more, Paul’s dreams conveniently include, as a special enticement, anticipation of a Fremen woman named Chani (Zendaya), whom he will love.

Some films were made to be broadcast in several parts but nonetheless play seamlessly as a feature—Bruno Dumont’s “Li’l Quinquin,” for instance, which was made for French TV. The new “Dune,” which runs for two and a half hours, is a single film that plays like a collection of episodes in a series—which, in a way, it is, insofar as the movie ends with a cliffhanger, when Paul meets the Fremen and Chani says (more to the audience than to Paul), “This is only the beginning.” The film includes very short scenes of terse dialogue that slot the story together piece by piece while hardly allowing for dramatic development, let alone the characters’ full perspective on the action. Lynch’s version includes “inner voices”—internal monologues, in voice-over, that, despite being brief, are vastly texture-enriching and deftly add a haunting dimension of subjectivity. Unsurprisingly, Lynch also makes ample and frenzied use of Paul’s dreams and other internal visions. In the new film, these visions are mere snippets and flashes, hints and approximations. Paul is put to a terrifying and mortal test by a Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit (played in Lynch’s film by Siân Phillips and in Villeneuve’s by Charlotte Rampling). But, whereas Lynch draws out both the agony of Paul (Kyle MacLachlan) and the specific details of the tortures that he endures, Villeneuve hastily dispatches the same scene and merely winks at Paul’s afflictions. Villeneuve makes “Dune” as if he were his own showrunner, following not the dictates of a domineering producer but his own mandate—to deliver a simplified coming-of-age story and emphasize the cautionary aspect of destructive colonial rapacity and even more destructive Messianic delusion. His images are as rigid and hermetic as the illustrations in a graphic novel. His point of view is without a second level, without physicality, without visceral impact, without an unconscious. The movie’s stripped-down material world correlates with a stripped-down emotional one—narrow, facile, and unambiguous.

The prime terror of life on Arrakis is the threat of attack from gigantic sandworms, which are said to grow up to four hundred and fifty metres long, and can swallow a huge harvesting rig in a single gulp. In Lynch’s film, their arrival is heralded by the eerie spectacle of short bolts of lightning sparking up from the sand. Villeneuve’s conception is monotonously literal—the sand bulges, and the maws of the creatures are shown in quick, devouring motion that’s closer to a disaster scene than to one of gargantuan body horror.

What’s most startling in this “Dune” is where the sense of directorial passion—of effort, of personal commitment—does go. What Villeneuve appears to savor most is knife duels, fiery explosions, knowing gazes (between Paul and his mother, between Paul and Chani), and the pats on the shoulder that the young Paul gets from his father and his mentor, a warrior named Duncan (Jason Momoa). “Dune” ’s cautionary tale of a would-be savior reflects strangely back on the movie’s directorial psychology. Far from the excess, the hectic cruelty, and the extravagance of Lynch’s vision, Villeneuve’s is spare, austere, and almost savior-like in its commitment to a coherent and worthy set of principles. Perhaps the film’s very dullness, its withholding of visual and even dramatic pleasure, is Villeneuve’s version of virtue signalling.

The prime victims of this austerity are the movie’s actors. Villeneuve has assembled a terrific cast of more and less familiar performers, but he’s given them little time and little leeway. Because the pieces of the movie are calculated to fit together in unambiguous arrangements, the performances are reduced to ciphers. Chalamet, whose theatrical specificity is both an art and a liability, is onscreen for much of the film and yet reduced to a mask of his own appearance. Stuck with a script that denies his character variety and complexity, he delivers a performance that never gets to take shape. What he can do with the role in a second installment may be the biggest cliffhanger of all.

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Let’s face facts. The 1999 South Park movie, Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, is one of the best movie musicals ever. And in the 22 years since its release, while its creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have made plenty of South Park, they haven’t made another movie. But that changes later this year, in a weird sort of way.

Last August, Parker and Stone signed a $900 million deal to continue South Park through 2027. Part of the deal involved 14 mysterious new movies that would arrive on the paramount+ streaming service, and now, speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, we know what that means and when they’ll begin to arrive.

The first of these new “made for TV” South Park movies will be released November 25 and it’s called South Park: Post Covid. “It’s the boys dealing with a post-covid world. They’re just trying to get back to normal,” Parker told the trade. “So, it is like our show. We’re just trying to get back to normal.” The second film will then arrive in December, with two more arriving during each of the next six years.

But, unlike the 1999 musical, these are not quite full-length feature films, nor are they regular South Park episodes or even South Park specials. These are brand new films that run about an hour each. “We’re trying to make what’s on paramount+ different from anywhere else,” Stone said. “So hourlong made-for-TV movies is where our head is at. We’ll do two made-for-TV movies every year. They will be big, but they are not quite movie scale.”

“With Viacom, we realized we could make them as long or as short as we needed,” Parker added. “And they then went and called them ‘movies.’ They are the ones who said we are giving them 14 movies in seven years. All I can say is for me, personally, I am 52 years old, I have made three movies in my life. So you do the math.”

Frame this deal and hang it on the wall
Samsung’s 50″ The Frame 4K TV, which pulls double duty as an artwork display and Marvel-watching rectangle, is on sale at Best Buy for Black Friday. Jump on it and get $400 off!

Are you excited for these South Park mini-movies? Are they enough to get you to sign up for paramount+? Let us know below.

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PRATTVILLE — Prattville’s closed movie theater will re-open Friday under new ownership.

The theater was closed by state order early during the pandemic along with other entertainment venues.

AMC Entertainment, one of the largest movie theater operators in the world, has reacquired the theater on Cobbs Ford Road. The theater, formerly named New Vision Theaters Promenade 12, has been renamed AMC CLASSIC Cinema 12. The location was damaged May 4 when an EF-1 tornado struck the city. 

For full title, ticket price and showtime information, go to the AMC CLASSIC Cinema 12 webpage at: https://www.amctheatres.com/movie-theatres/montgomery/amc-classic-cinemas-12.

Safety precautions have been taken for the reopening, said Ryan Noonan. The building has been cleaned and capacity in the theaters has been decreased to allow for social distancing.

Masks will not be required for vaccinated moviegoers. People not fully vaccinated must continue to wear masks in the building. Masks can be purchased for $1

Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Marty Roney at mroney@gannett.com.

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Fox News Flash top entertainment headlines for October 25

Fox News Flash top entertainment and celebrity headlines are here. Check out what clicked this week in entertainment.

The production company behind the embattled movie “Rust” is shutting down production until the investigation into the on-set shooting and death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins is completed, Fox News can confirm.

On Thursday, actor Alec Baldwin accidentally shot two people, killing Hutchins, and injuring “Rust” director Joel Souza when he discharged a prop gun after being told it was “cold” or unloaded, per affidavits. 

The Western movie was filming at Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe, New Mexico and currently, the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department is investigating the incident. 

The production company also confirmed it will be “conducting an internal review of our procedures while production is shut down” and providing mental health services to the cast and crew in light of the tragedy. 

ALEC BALDWIN ‘RUST’ SHOOTING: SEARCH WARRANT DESCRIBES MOMENTS AFTER DISCHARGE: LIVE UPDATES

“The safety of our cast and crew is the top priority of Rust Productions and everyone associated with the company. Though we were not made aware of any official complaints concerning weapon or prop safety on set, we will be conducting an internal review of our procedures while production is shut down. We will continue to cooperate with the Santa Fe authorities in their investigation and offer mental health services to the cast and crew during this tragic time,” the producers said in a statement obtained by Fox News. 

Actor Alec Baldwin said he is cooperating with police about the on-set shooting and death of ‘Rust’ cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
(Fred Hayes/Getty Images for SAGindie  |  AP Photo/Jae C. Hong  |  Photo by Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images for National Geographic)

Reid Russell, a camera operator who was working on the film’s set that day, noted to detectives in a newly released affidavit that Baldwin was very careful when it came to the use of prop firearms while filming prior to the incident. 

ALEC BALDWIN ACCIDENTAL SHOOTING DETAILS EMERGE OFFERING LOOK AT HALYNA HUTCHINS’ FINAL MOMENTS

According to the warrant affidavit, which was obtained by Fox News, Russell actually commended the 63-year-old actor for his conduct during a prior scene that involved discharging a firearm. He noted that the actor observed all the safety protocols and even did an extra check-in with the crew to make sure no one was near him. Specifically, he made sure a child who was on set that day wasn’t anywhere near him when discharging the weapon. 

This aerial photo shows the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Saturday, Oct. 23, 2021. Actor Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun on the set of a Western being filmed at the ranch on Thursday, Oct. 21, killing the cinematographer, officials said. 
(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Unfortunately, Baldwin was reportedly told by assistant director Dave Halls that the gun he was working with when Hutchins was shot was a “cold gun,” a term used when a firearm being worked with on a set is not loaded with any live ammunition. Unfortunately, it seems the gun was in fact loaded. When Baldwin pulled the trigger while working with Souza and Hutchins to set up a shot, it went off resulting in one of the worst on-set tragedies in recent memory. 

In the warrant from the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office, Souza explained that he heard “what sounded like a whip and then a loud pop,” and noticed Hutchins, who he was standing behind at the time, grab her midsection as she stumbled backward. She “was assisted to the ground” by other crew members and Russell recalls Hutchins saying she could not feel her legs. 

ALEC BALDWIN WAS VERY CAREFUL WITH PROP GUNS PRIOR TO ‘RUST’ ACCIDENT, ACCORDING TO CAMERA OPERATOR

Hutchins was immediately attended to by on-site medics and later airlifted to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she was eventually pronounced dead. Souza, who was also injured in the incident, was taken by ambulance to Christus St. Vincent Hospital in Santa Fe where he was treated for a wound near his right shoulder. He has since been released from the hospital.

Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins (left) was killed in the incident while director Joel Souza (right) was injured. He has since left the hospital.
(Photo by Fred Hayes/Getty Images for SAGindie  |  Jim Weber/Santa Fe New Mexican  |  Photo by Jim Spellman/Getty Images)

Souza said three people were handling the gun for the scene. Armorer Hanna Gutierrez Reed reportedly handled prop guns left on a cart outside the structure they were shooting in due to coronavirus restrictions.

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Souza said in the warrant that the cast and crew prepared the scene before lunch and then had their meal away from the shooting location around 12:30 p.m. He was not sure if the gun was checked again when everyone returned from lunch. However, he stated that firearms are supposed to be checked by the armorer followed by the assistant director before handing them to the actor. He said he was not sure if people were checked for live ammunition on their person, but stated that live ammunition should not have been anywhere near the scene.

Fox News’ Tyler McCarthy contributed to this report.

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN

Updated 3:38 PM ET, Wed June 16, 2021

A remake of Square Enix‘s classic RPG Chrono Cross is reportedly in development for multiple platforms.

Chrono Cross, which was released for the original PlayStation in 1999, was one of many unannounced titles listed in an Nvidia database leak in September – a list the company subsequently admitted was real, even if it said the games didn’t necessarily exist.

The following month, VGC reported on claims that PlayStation was set to announce a remake of a “big game” this Christmas, which were made by a musician who said they were involved with its soundtrack.

Folk singer Éabha McMahon, who performs as Ava, told Irish radio station WLR FM that she had recorded an Irish language theme for the game, which had yet to be revealed.

And according to XboxEra co-founder Nick Baker, the remake in question is Chrono Cross Remastered.

“Chrono Cross Remastered, I think, was already on the Nivida leak list, so the game shouldn’t be a surprise – it was on Nvidia’s list. But I was told that that VGC article is about Chrono Cross Remastered,” he said on the latest XboxEra podcast.

“What else I was told—because everyone’s working under the assumption that it’s a PlayStation exclusive—I’ve been told that it’s not. The only word that was used was ‘multiplat’.

“Now, when I hear JRPG and multiplat, I automatically assume PC, PlayStation, Switch, that’s my assumption. That’s not what I was told, that’s just my assumption. All my source said to me was ‘multiplat’. That’s what they said, they told me it wasn’t PlayStation exclusive.”

Baker continued: “But I think there’s confusion because it says that PlayStation is set to announce it, so everyone just works under the assumption that PlayStation is announcing something that would exclusive, which they don’t always do. Pragmata isn’t exclusive, they’ve announced plenty of stuff [that isn’t exclusive].

“But again, I don’t know if Xbox is one of those platforms. I work under the assumption that it’s not because it’s a JRPG.”

During her radio interview, McMahon claimed she worked on the mystery PlayStation game’s soundtrack with composer Michael McGlynn and his daughter, who sang on the track in question.

Related

Less than two weeks before McMahon’s radio appearance, Chrono Cross composer Yasunori Mitsuda tweeted a photo of McGlynn and his daughter preparing to perform music remotely.

McGlynn was the founder of Irish choral group Anúna, of which McMahon used to be a member. The group has previously performed pieces for video games and featured as the Voices of Hell in Diablo III.

His short film Shadows of the Lowlands was also used by Nintendo to promote Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

PlayStation has no events confirmed for Christmas at the time of publication, although the The Game Awards 2021 is set to take place on December 9.