Oscar film award (the great film award)

Academy Award

The Academy Awards (frequently known as the Oscars) are accolades by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)^[1] to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers. The formal ceremony at which the awards are presented is one of the most prominent award ceremonies in the world. It is also the oldest award ceremony in the media, and many other award ceremonies such as the Grammy Awards (for music), Golden Globe Awards (all forms of visual media), Tony Awards (for theatre), and Emmy Awards (for television) are often modeled from the Academy. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences itself was conceived by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio boss Louis B. Mayer.

The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929, at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of the 1927-1928 film season. It was hosted by actor Douglas Fairbanks and director William C. deMille. The 82nd Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best in film for 2009, was held on Sunday, March 7, 2010, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, with actors Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin hosting the ceremony.

History

The first awards were presented on May 16, 1929, at a private brunch at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 26 people.^[3]

The cost of guest tickets for that night's ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other personalities of the filmmaking industry of the time for their works during the 1927-1928 period.

Winners had been announced three months earlier of their triumphs; however that was changed in the second ceremony of the Academy Awards in 1930. Since then and during the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11pm on the night of the awards.^[3] This method was used until the Los Angeles Times announced the winners before the ceremony began; as a result, the Academy has used a sealed envelope to reveal the name of the winners since 1941.^[3] Since 2002, the awards have been broadcast from the Kodak Theatre.

The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performance in The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh. He had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give him the prize earlier; this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. The honored professionals were awarded for all the work done in a certain category for the qualifying period; for example, Emil Jannings received the award for two movies he starred during that period. Since the fourth ceremony, the system changed, and the professionals were honored for a specific performance in a single film. As of the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony held in 2010, a total of 2,789 Oscars have been given for 1,825 awards.^[4] A total of 302 actors have won Oscars in competitive acting categories or been awarded Honorary or Juvenile Awards.

At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27, 1957, the Best Foreign Language Film category was introduced; until then, foreign language films were honored with the Special Achievement Award.

Design

Although there are seven other types of awards presented by the Academy (the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, the Gordon E. Sawyer Award, the Scientific and Engineering Award, the Technical Achievement Award, the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation, and the Student Academy Award), the best known one is the Academy Award of Merit more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. Made of gold-plated britannium on a black metal base, it is 13.5 in (34 cm) tall, weighs 8.5 lb (3.85 kg) and depicts a knight rendered in Art Deco style holding a crusader's sword standing on a reel of film with five spokes. The five spokes each represent the original branches of the Academy: Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers, and Technicians.^[5]

MGM's art director Cedric Gibbons, one of the original Academy members, supervised the design of the award trophy by printing the design on a scroll.^[6] In need of a model for his statuette Gibbons was introduced by his then wife Dolores del Río to Mexican film director and actor Emilio "El Indio" Fernández. Reluctant at first, Fernández was finally convinced to pose nude to create what today is known as the "Oscar". Then, sculptor George Stanley (who also did the Muse Fountain^[7] at the Hollywood Bowl) sculpted Gibbons's design in clay and Sachin Smith cast the statuette in 92.5 percent tin and 7.5 percent copper and then gold-plated it. The only addition to the Oscar since it was created is a minor streamlining of the base. The original Oscar mold was cast in 1928 at the C.W. Shumway & Sons Foundry in Batavia, Illinois, which also contributed to casting the molds for the Vince Lombardi Trophy and Emmy Awards statuettes. Since 1983,^[8] approximately 50 Oscars are made each year in Chicago, Illinois by manufacturer R.S. Owens & Company.^[9]

In support of the American effort in World War II, the statuettes were made of plaster and were traded in for gold ones after the war had ended.^[10]

Naming

The root of the name Oscar is contested. One biography of Bette Davis claims that she named the Oscar after her first husband, band leader Harmon Oscar Nelson;^[11] one of the earliest mentions in print of the term Oscar dates back to a Time magazine article about the 1934 6th Academy Awards^[12] and to Bette Davis's receipt of the award in 1936.^[13] Walt Disney is also quoted as thanking the Academy for his Oscar as early as 1932. Another claimed origin is that the Academy's Executive Secretary, Margaret Herrick, first saw the award in 1931 and made reference to the statuette's reminding her of her "Uncle Oscar" (a nickname for her cousin Oscar Pierce).^[14] Columnist Sidney Skolsky was present during Herrick's naming and seized the name in his byline, "Employees have affectionately dubbed their famous statuette 'Oscar'".^[15] The trophy was officially dubbed the "Oscar" in 1939 by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.^[16] Another legend reports that the Norwegian-American Eleanor Lilleberg, executive secretary to Louis B. Mayer, saw the first statuette and exclaimed,

"It looks like King Oscar II!".^[17] At the end of the day she asked, "What should we do with Oscar, put him in the vault?" and the name stuck. A more recent theory comes from a Peruvian-born Californian residing in Hollywood whose birth name is actually "Oscar". He claims to be the original Oscar after whom the award was named.^[18]

Ownership of Oscar statuettes

Since 1950, the statuettes have been legally encumbered by the requirement that neither winners nor their heirs may sell the statuettes without first offering to sell them back to the Academy for US$1. If a winner refuses to agree to this stipulation, then the Academy keeps the statuette. Academy Awards not protected by this agreement have been sold in

public auctions and private deals for six-figure sums.^[19]

This rule is highly controversial, since while the Oscar is under the ownership of the recipient, it is essentially not on the open market.^[20] The case of Michael Todd's grandson trying to sell Todd's Oscar statuette illustrates that there are many who do not agree with this idea. When Todd's grandson attempted to sell Todd's Oscar statuette to a movie prop collector, the Academy won the legal battle by getting a permanent injunction. Although some Oscar sales transactions have been successful, the buyers have subsequently returned the statuettes to the Academy, which keeps them in its treasury.^[21]

Nomination

Since 2004, Academy Award nomination results have been announced to the public in late January. Prior to 2004, nomination results were announced publicly in early February.

Voters

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), a professional honorary organization, maintains a voting membership of 5,835 as of 2007.^[22]

Actors constitute the largest voting bloc, numbering 1,311 members (22 percent) of the Academy's composition. Votes have been certified by the auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (and its predecessor Price Waterhouse) for the past 73 annual awards ceremonies.^[23]

All AMPAS members must be invited to join by the Board of Governors, on behalf of Academy Branch Executive Committees. Membership eligibility may be achieved by a competitive nomination or a member may submit a name based on other significant contribution to the field of motion pictures.

New membership proposals are considered annually. The Academy does not publicly disclose its membership, although as recently as 2007 press releases have announced the names of those who have been invited to join. The 2007 release also stated that it has just under 6,000 voting members. While the membership had been growing, stricter policies have kept its size steady since then.^[24]

Rules

Today, according to Rules 2 and 3 of the official Academy Awards Rules, a film must open in the previous calendar year, from midnight at the start of January 1 to midnight at the end of December 31, in Los Angeles County, California, to qualify (except for the Best Foreign Language Film).^[25] For example, the 2010 Best Picture winner, The Hurt Locker, was actually first released in 2008, but did not qualify for the 2009 awards as it did not play its Oscar-qualifying run in Los Angeles until mid-2009, thus qualifying for the 2010 awards.

Rule 2 states that a film must be feature-length, defined as a minimum of 40 minutes, except for short subject awards, and it must exist either on a 35 mm or 70 mm film print or in 24 frame/s or 48 frame/s progressive scan digital cinema format with native resolution not less than 1280x720.

Producers must submit an Official Screen Credits online form before the deadline; in case it is not submitted by the defined deadline, the film will be ineligible for Academy Awards in any year. The form includes the production credits for all related categories. Then, each form is checked and put in a Reminder List of Eligible Releases.

In late December ballots and copies of the Reminder List of Eligible Releases are mailed to around 6000 active members. For most categories, members from each of the branches vote to determine the nominees only in their respective categories (i.e. only directors vote for directors, writers for writers, actors for actors, etc.); there are some exceptions though in the case of certain categories, like Foreign Film, Documentary and Animated Feature Film in which movies are selected by special screening committees made up of member from all branches. In the special case of Best Picture, all voting members are eligible to select the nominees for that category. Foreign films must include English subtitles, and each country can only submit one film per year.^[26]

The members of the various branches nominate those in their respective fields while all members may submit nominees for Best Picture. The winners are then determined by a second round of voting in which all members are then allowed to vote in most categories, including Best Picture.^[27]

Telecast

The major awards are presented at a live televised ceremony, most commonly in February or March following the relevant calendar year, and six weeks after the announcement of the nominees. It is the culmination of the film awards season, which usually begins during November or December of the previous year. This is an elaborate extravaganza, with the invited guests walking up the red carpet in the creations of the most prominent fashion designers of the day. Black tie dress is the most common outfit for men, although fashion may dictate not wearing a bow-tie, and musical performers sometimes do not adhere to this. (The artists who recorded the nominees for Best Original Song quite often perform those songs live at the awards ceremony, and the fact that they are performing is often used to promote the television broadcast).

The Academy Awards is televised live across the United States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii), Canada, the United Kingdom, and gathers millions of viewers elsewhere throughout the world.^[28] The 2007 ceremony was watched by more than 40 million Americans.^[29] Other awards ceremonies (such as the Emmys, Golden Globes, and Grammys) are broadcast live in the East Coast but are on tape delay in the West Coast and might not air on the same day outside North America (if the awards are even televised). The Academy has for several years claimed that the award show has up to a billion viewers internationally, but this has so far not been confirmed by any independent sources. The usual extension of this claim is that only the Super Bowl, Olympics Opening Ceremonies, and FIFA World Cup Final draw higher viewership.

The Awards show was first televised on NBC in 1953. NBC continued to broadcast the event until 1960 when the ABC Network took over, televising the festivities through 1970, after which NBC resumed the broadcasts. ABC once again took over broadcast duties in 1976; it is under contract to do so through the year 2014.^[30]

After more than sixty years of being held in late March or early April, the ceremonies were moved up to late February or early March starting in 2004 to help disrupt and shorten the intense lobbying and ad campaigns associated with Oscar season in the film industry. Another reason was because of the growing TV ratings success of the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship, which would cut into the Academy Awards audience. The earlier date is also to the advantage of ABC, as it now usually occurs during the highly profitable and important February sweeps period. (Some years, the ceremony is moved into early March in deference to the Winter Olympics.) Advertising is somewhat restricted, however, as traditionally no movie studios or competitors of official Academy Award sponsors may advertise during the telecast. The Awards show holds the distinction of having won the most Emmys in history, with 38 wins and 167 nominations.^[31]

After many years of being held on Mondays at 9:00 p.m. Eastern/6:00 p.m Pacific, in 1999 the ceremonies were moved to Sundays at 8:30 p.m. Eastern/5:30 p.m. Pacific.^[32] The reasons given for the move were that more viewers would tune in on Sundays, that Los Angeles rush-hour traffic jams could be avoided, and that an earlier start time would allow viewers on the East Coast to go to bed earlier.^[33] For many years the film industry had opposed a Sunday broadcast because it would cut into the weekend box office.^[34]

On March 30, 1981, the awards ceremony was postponed for one day after the shooting of President Ronald Reagan and others in Washington DC.

In 1993 an In Memoriam section was introduced,^[35] honoring those who had made a significant contribution to cinema who had died in the preceding 12 months. This section has led to some criticism for omission of notable persons such as Leonard Schrader and Malcolm Arnold in 2007^[36] and Gene Barry, Farrah Fawcett, Henry Gibson, and Bea Arthur in 2010.^[35] The list of names chosen to be included in the Memoriam segment is compiled by a small committee of the Academy and not the producers of the show.^[37]

Since 2002, celebrities have been seen arriving at the Academy Awards in hybrid vehicles;^[38] during the telecast of the 79th Academy Awards in 2007, Leonardo DiCaprio and former vice president Al Gore announced that ecologically intelligent practices had been integrated into the planning and execution of the Oscar presentation and several related events.^[38][39]

In 2010, the organizers of the Academy Awards announced that winners' acceptance speeches must not run past 45 seconds. This, according to organizer Bill Mechanic, was to ensure the elimination of what he termed "the single most hated thing on the show" - overly long and embarrassing displays of emotion.^[40]

Ratings

Historically, the "Oscarcast" has pulled in a bigger haul when box-office hits are favored to win the Best Picture trophy. More than 57.25 million viewers tuned to the telecast in 1998, the year of Titanic, which generated close to US$600 million at the North American box office pre-Oscars.^[41] The 76th Academy Awards ceremony in which The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (pre-telecast box office earnings of US$368 million) received 11 Awards including Best Picture drew 43.56 million viewers.^[42] The most watched ceremony based on Nielsen ratings to date, however, was the 42nd Academy Awards (Best Picture Midnight Cowboy) which drew a 43.4% household rating on April 7, 1970.^[43]

By contrast, ceremonies honoring films that have not performed well at the box office tend to show weaker ratings. The 78th Academy Awards which awarded low-budgeted, independent film Crash (with a pre-Oscar gross of US$53.4 million) generated an audience of 38.64 million with a household rating of 22.91%.^[44] In 2008, the 80th Academy Awards telecast was watched by 31.76 million viewers on average with an 18.66% household rating, the lowest rated and least watched ceremony to date, in spite of celebrating 80 years of the Academy Awards.^[45] The Best Picture winner of that particular ceremony was another low-budget, independently financed film (No Country for Old Men).

World music day

what is world music day?
The Fête de la Musique, also known as World Music Day, is a world wide music festival that takes place around the summer solstice. On that day, sidewalks, parks, community gardens, stores and more become impromptu musical stages for both amateur and professional musicians to showcase their talents. All concerts and performances are free and open to the public.
The Fête de la Musique began in France in 1982 and has since spread to Belgium, Britain, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Israel, China, India, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Philippines, Romania, Colombia and other countries. New York City held its first festival in 2007. Near us, World Music Day is celebrated in Sacramento, Pasadena, Oakland and Woodside.

First Nepali Movies

When it comes to Nepali films, enthusiasts today remain but a few. The Nepali film industry has always remained over shadowed by the biggest movie industry in the world, our neighbor, Bollywood. Despite foreign competition and lack of local resources, some remarkable breakthroughs have emerged with films like Basanti, Prem Pinda and the internationally acclaimed Caravan, which even earned an Oscar nomination. For this month's Nepal's column, we look at the first films of Nepal that laid the foundation for the cinema sphere Nepal knows today.

It hasn't been long since the world of cinematography in Nepal was first explored. What's ironic is that the first Nepali film was actually made on foreign soil – south of the border, to be precise. The movie was shot and produced by Nepalis residing in India.

Movie: Satya Harischandra
Director, producer and writer: D. B. Pariyar
Release: 14 Sept. 1951

It was a little more than a decade later when the first Nepali film was made in Nepal itself. Bollywood filmmaker Hira Singh Khatri had come to Nepal on late King Mahendra's request to direct the film which was without doubt bias and has also been deemed as Panchayat propaganda since.

Movie: Aama
Director: Hira Singh Khatri
Produced by: Department of Publicity Film Division
Cast: Shiva Shanker, Bhuwan, Uttam Nepali, Indra Lal Shrestha, Bashundhara Bhusal, Hira Singh Khatri and Hari Prasad Rimal
Release: 7 Oct. 1964

Aama took the nation by storm and held her audience captive. The path to commercial movies was, however, paved by Maitighar.

Movie: Maitighar
Director: B. S Thapa
Produced by: Yogendra Jha and Nara Shumsher
Cast: Mala Singha and C.P Lohani
Release: 15 Dec.1966

The film became so popular that the area where its office was came to be known as Maitighar, and the name remains the same till date. A reason for the movie's success was the appearance of eminent Bollywood actress, Mala Sinha, as the female protagonist. She went on to marry her male counterpart in the film, C.P. Lohani, the kind of silver screen relationship that has not been seen since.

When questioned about the current film industry of Nepal, Viplob Pratik, a renowned film critic, comments, "Progress that time naturally brings about can be apparently seen in the industry. However, what is lacking is the all-round knowledge and know-how of the directors and producers, which leads to stagnation. Filmmakers must be generalists and must be knowledgeable in all areas, whether it be films, politics, economy, literature, music or social issues. Storywriters continue to follow traditional trends and complain that the audience is not ready for change. What the industry needs is for the new generation to step up and bring about a revolution!"

The Nepali film industry has run into hard times the last few years. Most good Nepali films are now not on the silver screen but in the memories of the Nepali audience who were lucky enough to have watched them in the years gone by. The last decade has, however, seen an increase of interest amongst individuals to produce independent films and documentaries have gained immense popularity too. Events such as South Asian Film Festival has played a key role in supporting this phenomenon not just in Nepal but in the entire South Asian region as well.

The Witch from Nepal

The Witch from Nepal is an earlier film from Ching Siu-Tung, the director of A Chinese Ghost Story. Anyone expecting this to be a film as rich and satisfying as his later film is bound to be disappointed. Witch is one of those light-headed, mindlessly enjoyable films that Hong Kong is famous for; it's the sort of movie that almost begs you not to think about it too carefully... because if you do, you might be appalled. It's a shame to see Ching apparently trying to live up to the standard set by, say, Alberto de Martino, but we can at least take comfort in the fact that better things followed for Ching and practically everybody else involved.

The film begins with a written and spoken prologue. To paraphrase, it informs us that there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Huo Re Xiao, than are dreamt of in our philosophy. There are supernatural powers, it says, that can't be explained by science (probably because they don't actually exist... but I digress, as usual).

The narrator tells us of a primitive race of people who believe their ruler is a direct descendant of their god, and we're warned that evil things are stirring nearby. And so the movie opens in front of a vast and imposing stone structure, where a reverent crowd has gathered to watch the second swearing-in of President George W. Bush...

No, No! I'm sorry. No more political cheap shots, no matter how tempting they may be. We actually see a reverent crowd bowing before a temple with high stone steps, at the top of which their divine ruler is lying on a divan -- asleep. It's a little disconcerting to see all these people waiting expectantly for their leader to do or say something kingly, while he just lies oblivious (let me reiterate: no more political cheap shots).

Suddenly, an ominous pair of feet comes striding up to the temple. Since the owner of these sinister feet is obviously up to no good, the divine ruler's adoring crowd does what the adoring crowd of every divine ruler does when the going gets difficult: they run.

There is one woman in the crowd who takes a little initiative. She dashes up the stairs to the king, who's just beginning to raise himself from his bed, and whispers something to him -- "We're being attacked!", perhaps; or more likely, "Would it please your Majesty to know that at the present moment this temple, of which you are the Supreme and Anointed Guardian, is under the imminent threat of disturbance by a person or persons possibly bearing ill-will toward Your August Presence...?" or however you convey the obvious to a sleep-addled monarch.

His royal highness goes into the temple, where he confronts an enormous phallic idol. From in front of this idol he takes a sword -- hey! Count the surrogate penises with me, everybody! -- just as the black-clad Bad Guy reaches the foot of the stairs. The Bad Guy, who growls like a cat, whips out a big knobby bone (that's three! Three surrogate penises!) and charges up to meet the king. The king unsheaths his sword and joins the fight... only to get his divinely-descended ass handed to him.

While the king is embarrassing himself in combat with a meowling thug, the girl -- remember the girl? She kind-of got lost amid all the obvious male symbolism -- sneaks up to the idol. Draped around the, er, the shaft of the idol is a necklace with two big stones hanging from it... (Sigh. They're not even trying to be subtle about this). Anyway, the girl sneaks off with the idol's stones while the king and the brute are still going at it. Before the cat man can finish off the king, the girl catches up to him and spirits him away (we don't know how she does this, but if things continue true to form it's probably in the biggest SUV in east Asia). The cat man finds out that the holy testicles are gone and howls in frustration.

(I don't know what the cat man is called, but since the movie is called The Witch from Nepal, I'm willing to bet his name is "Du". Get it? Cat Man Du? Please don't hit me.)

After the credits, we're introduced to Joe and Ida, two tourists from Hong Kong doing touristy things in Nepal. After the usual montage of local attractions, we see Joe sitting alone on the balcony of his luxurious hotel, sketching. A sudden breeze carries one of his drawings off the balcony; when he peers over the railing to see what's become of it, he sees a robed Nepali woman holding it. Her eyes are a little familiar to us... Joe rushes downstairs, whether because of the drawing or the girl it's hard to say. When he gets there, a porter informs him in English that the girl has left the drawing for him. But although it's certainly his paper, the drawing on it isn't his at all. It shows Joe himself in front of a stone temple, fighting an enormous man in black.

Did I mention that Joe is played by a young Chow Yun-Fat? I believe what we have here could be referred to as an omen.

A little while later, Joe and Ida continue the tourist act by going out on elephants to look for rhinoceros. Joe is bewildered when his rhino sketch suddenly turns into the same drawing he'd seen earlier, of himself fighting the goon from the prologue. At that very moment, Joe's elephant panics and runs off at full speed. Joe is at first able to hang on to the howdah, but he soon bashes his head on an overhanging tree branch and is thrown to the ground. When he comes to, he finds his leg is bloody and mangled. Let's not forget that there are rhinos tramping around in the thick reeds -- Joe decides it would be prudent to get up and start moving, hurt leg or no hurt leg.

Unfortunately, Joe then steps out of a clump of reeds and off a ledge. He tumbles into a river, and is swept along by the current until he bashes his head on a log and is rendered unconscious. At this point, I was thinking that with Joe's rotten luck, all he needed was a waterfall; and sure enough, the next time we see poor Joe, he's lying in a pathetic heap at the bottom of a rocky gorge. Nearby, we see a shadowy figure holding a bloody royal sword...

Ida and the tour guides have mounted a full-scale search for Joe in the brushlands. This search consists of a line of elephants galloping through the reeds, while Ida calls Joe's name. That reminds me of the old elephant joke:


Q: What's the grey stuff between an elephant's toes?
A: Chow Yun-Fat!

But amazingly, the elephants don't squish Joe, even though Joe turns up back in the place where he disappeared, rather than at the bottom of some waterfall somewhere. Joe is flown back to a hospital in Hong Kong with no memory of what happened to him.

What Joe does remember is the face of the mysterious girl he saw in Kathmandu. Well -- at least he remembers her eyes, which were the only parts of her face he really saw.

Ida comes to tend to him, but since Joe is action hero Chow Yun-Fat, he's restless and annoyed by his helplessness. In spite of his busted leg, he tries to force himself into recovery. He does things like standing on his bad leg, or trying to use it to lift his hospital tray. Strong, determined and none-too-bright: that's our Joe.

Still, while he's out on the hospital balcony trying to stand on his bad foot, he catches a glimpse of a passing airplane -- and suddenly, he can stand! Well -- for an instant, at least. Then, as the plane rushes by, he becomes an invalid once more and crashes back into his wheelchair. The mysterious girl's face stares up at him from his dropped sketchbook...

It probably won't surprise anyone to know that the passing plane was a Royal Nepali flight, and that the girl from the prologue was hiding in the baggage compartment. Insert your own treatment-of-women-in-South-Asia joke here. As you might expect after a long flight under a pile of luggage, the girl is worn out from the trip. She staggers to the door of the baggage container and falls to the tarmac.

It will probably surprise everyone even less to learn that the girl is then taken off to the same hospital where Joe is recovering. He catches sight of her being wheeled by in a gurney; and again later, as a half-dozen orderlies attempt to restrain her.

That night, the girl breaks into Joe's room (literally -- she smashes through locked doors with ease). First she bows down in front of the sleeping man, and then she starts trying to remove the bandage from his broken leg. Her attempts awaken Joe, and when he sees her, she panics and flees with some completely unnecessary and destructive acrobatics.

Joe feels compelled to follow her. Don't ask me why... I mean, sure, she's cute and all, but a.) Joe already has a very nice girlfriend; b.) the other girl is leaving a nasty trail of destrution in her wake; c.) she tends to make medical judgments she doesn't really seem qualified to make; and d.) she's not much for conversation. Still, he gets in his wheelchair and goes off to look for her. He finds her curled up in (what's left of) her room, and he offers her a hand in friendship.

The girl then spins him around and pushes him and his wheelchair off the third-floor balcony (what is it about Joe and balconies?). As Joe plunges to he ground, the girl jumps off the balcony after him. In complete disregard of the laws of physics, she catches up to him. Physics, evidently in a lenient mood today, relaxes the law of gravity still further and gives the pair an improbably long time to spin together before they hit the ground. Joe's bandages fly off his leg, and he lands on his feet -- thus proving that he is the Pumaman!

No, no; wait. That's a cheesy Alberto de Martino superhero flick. What I meant to suggest was that the divine ruler who got his butt kicked in the prologue seems to have passed his spirit on to Joe, making him some kind of demigod. Being that Joe's played by Chow Yun-Fat, this may something of a step down for him...

The sounds of a crashing wheelchair brings the orderlies out to see what's going on. The girl jumps three stories to the balcony and hides. Joe tries to climb up after her -- what the hell; after all, his leg has just gone from imminent amputation to perfectly-healed... but he's restrained by the nurses.

Ida comes to pick Joe up soon after, since his leg is miraculously whole again. Later, as Joe heads off to a business meeting, he just happens to pass the hospital. Inside, Hong Kong immigrations has come to arrest the Nepali girl. This would obviously be too much of an inconveniencefor her plans, so the girl does her usual acrobatics. Joe sees her swinging from a palm tree, with officials chasing her; so he swings his car around, allowing her to vault in. Unfortunately, the girl's necklace -- the one with the godly stones on it -- gets caught on a branch as she falls.

Joe asks her her name, and she replies -- remember, this is her first line, and we're almost a third of the way through the movie -- "Shiela". Good traditional Nepali name, that (then again, Emily Chu looks about as Nepali as I do). He tries to get more information out of her, and she simply says again: "Sheila". Next, Joe asks her what she has to do with all the strange things that are happening... We're expecting more "Me Tarzan" stuff, but much to his surprise and ours, she says, "You're my new master now. It says so in the Scriptures!" Which is not something she's likely to have picked up in a Cantonese phrasebook.

To show her mystical abilities, Sheila calls forth a smoky spirit from Joe's cigarette. Blue lightning flies out of the electrical outlets in Joe's apartment and joins with the smoky ghost. Then the figure takes Joe by the hand and flows into his body. This proves beyond any reasonable doubt that Joe is the Pumaman!

Or something like that.

The next morning, Sheila nearly sets Joe's apartment on fire when she stuffs his electric stove with kindling and rubs two sticks together. Oh, those wacky Nepalis. After this mild misunderstanding, Joe attempts to teach her about conveniences of the modern world, such as... forks. You know how it is with these East Asian Ruritanians. When they take the Magic Metal Bird to the Land of Hollow Glass Mountains, where colorful dragons carry people in their stomachs along hard, black rivers, the poor slobs have a tendency to be overwhelmed. They may be masters of spiritual kung fu, but show them a battery-operated toothpick and they're on their knees chanting prayers for protection.

Just once I'd like to see the spiritual "primitive" look the "civilized" guy in the eye and say, "Yes, I see it's a fork, and I know what you can do with it. But where I come from, we consider such sharp tools to be barbaric, and use a much better method. Mr. Chow, allow me to introduce you to something we call chopsticks..."

But no. Instead, Sheila bends the fork with her mind.

Why do all these supernaturally-endowed mystics always have to sink to the level of a third-rate stage magician? Why, when they're supposed to have such power, do they always use it imitating the empty theatrics of Uri Geller? Why, for that matter, do people like Geller, who claim to have such mystical powers in real life, waste their supposed talents by bending flatware? Thereby making it "bentware", and of no use to anybody? Could there be a hidden message here?

But while we're on the subject of silly games, Sheila suddenly sees -- or perhaps merely senses -- Ida coming up to Chow's veranda. She grabs her plate and cup and, yes, her fork, and high-tails it out of sight. Not that she or Joe have anything to hide, right? The wry glances Joe keeps shooting toward the lurking Sheila as he speaks to Ida make us wonder what's really on his mind. As though we had to guess.

There is some attempt at comedy as Joe tries to practice his own new telekinetic skills without Ida catching on. It's amazing that she doesn't: every time he tries, he makes a sound like the lowest notes of a busted concertina. But perhaps that's just a sound effect...

Sheila, in the meantime, has gone back to the hospital to search for her lost stones. The attendants spot her and try to capture her. But Joe has been mysteriously drawn back to the hospital, too, and his psychic kung fu turns out to be more sensitive than Sheila's. Joe finds the palm tree, and as he concentrates, the stones on the branch begin to glow. Just then, the attendants catch up with them, so Sheila jumps up several stories as usual. Joe finds much to his surprise that he can do that, too; in a funny moment, he stands there, grinning a "look what I can do" kind of grin while his pursuers get closer and closer. Sheila manages to dislodge him, and they begin a desperate sprint across the hospital roof. Sheila jumps an amazingly long distance to the palm tree, but Joe hesitates (understandably). Sheila manages to find the stones -- but Joe is caught and dragged off to the police station, where a very unhappy Ida comes to bail him out.

Sheila is waiting for Joe at home, but Joe is furious with her. He orders her out of his house and out of his life. Her lower lip trembling, this acolyte of a mystical god-king -- this disciple of Eastern asceticism -- responds to Joe's rejection by setting herself on fire.

Don't you hate girlfriends who overreact like this?

Joe is horrified, and tries unsuccessfully to put her out. He runs toward her, and their bodies collide -- resulting in an explosion that blows out the roof and all the windows, and virtually destroys Joe's house. Oh -- and did I mention it's raining? It's raining. I really hate it when girlfriends overreact like that. Don't worry about the house, though: it fixes itself without explanation a few scenes later.

Anyway (as a gesture of atonement, perhaps), Sheila gives Joe the holy necklace. And that's not all she gives him, if you know what I mean. No more idols, swords or other surrogates: Sheila's about to meet the real thing. From now on, and for the best of reasons, we won't be seeing Sheila with the mark of the virgin on her forehead... it washes off in the rain, never to be seen again. This is what Joe's been after from the start, but before this he didn't have the stones...

But there's a further complication: the cat warrior has just arrived from Nepal. What took him so long, you ask? He came by boat. Anyway, he's in Hong Kong now, and he wants to be the Pumaman.

(By this point, it wasn't Joe's imminent confrontation with the killer cat-person that had me worried. If you think the epic struggle between Good and Evil is harrowing, just wait until Ida runs into Sheila. Which, because Joe's an infatuated twit, she soon does. Did I say we were through with surrogates? I made a mistake. There's one more: Joe himself, for acting like a total dick.)

Yeah. Well. You've probably guessed where this is all going. True to form, the movie arrives pretty spectacularly, but you may end up feeling the journey was a bit of a waste. You've probably figured out how the love triangle is going to resolve itself, too: the way it always works out in movies about callow young men with superpowers. Somebody's going to suffer, and it isn't Joe.

But you may not have anticipated... the zombies. Yes: zombies, and not the usual pasty extras or hopping vampires you might expect from a Hong Kong horror film. There's a brief interlude when the cat guy psychically forces Joe and Ida off the road and into an abandoned Christian cemetery. And then, for a few glorious minutes, it's Fulci time, as rotting corpses rise from the muddy ground. These are zombies straight out of any Italian flick, with rotting limbs and hideous faces, moaning as they wave their arms and shamble after Joe's car. You really have to wonder why the cat guy wastes his time chasing kings with bone clubs when he can do really cool things like summon zombie armies. Since his opponents are so busy bending silverware, perhaps he feels he has to meet them on their terms.

If Joe had been played by an actor less charismatic than Chow Yun-Fat, The Witch from Nepal wouldn't have been nearly as entertaining. The movie's mystical crisis is trivial, and its romance even less substantial. And certainly its condescension towards the Nepali "primitives" is as offensive as the worst Hollywood depiction of the "Heathen Chinee". But any film that has Chow and zombies in it can't possibly go too far wrong, even if neither are used to their full potential.

Manisha koirala

nepali actors wallpaper

REkha thapa


Bipana thapa

Melina manandhar

Rekha thapa sanchita laitel

Aryan sigdel Jharana thapa

Arunima lamsal Nisha

namrata shrestha
Krisma manandhar

Nepali entertainment

History

The making of Nepali films is said to have begun with D. B. Pariyar's Satya Harishchandra, which was the first Nepali language film to be shot. It was produced from Kolkata, India, and was released on September 14, 1951. Aama (meaning mother) was the first film produced in Nepal, and was released on October 7, 1964. It was produced by the Information Department of His Majesty's Government Of Nepal (now Government of Nepal). It was directed by Hira Singh Khatri and the lead actors were Shiva Shankar Manandhar and Bhuwan Thapa, who are regarded as the first actors in the history of the Nepali film industry. The first film to be produced under a private banner was Maitighar (meaning the birth home of a girl), which was released at the end of 1966 by Sumonanjali Films Pvt. Ltd. Although it was a Nepali movie, it had many Indians contributing toward the making of the film. Mala Sinha had the lead role, along with C P Lohani, whom she later married. It had special appearances of Sunil Dutt and comedian Rajendra Nath. Directed by B S Thapa and music scored by Jaidev, a veteran music maestro, it had Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Usha Mangeshkar, and Manna Dey, all of them established Indian singers, doing the playback-singing along with the household names of Nepali music, like Narayan Gopal, Prem Dhoj Pradhan, C P Lohani, and Aruna Lama.
Then the government established the Royal Nepal Film Corporation in 1971. Mann Ko Bandh was the first film produced by the Corporation. Prakesh Thapa was the director of the film. Nati Kaji and Shiva Shankar were the music composers of the songs. Amber Gurung scored the background music. The film premiered in 1973 in Kathmandu. Mann Ko Bandh was followed by Kumari (the first Eastman color Nepali film) in 1977, Sindoor in 1980, and Jeevan Rekha in series. The success of these films opened up avenue for private parties to enter into filmmaking as industrial endeavor.

Present situation
By 2006, as the situation in Nepal calmed down and with Maoists coming into mainstream politics, the Nepali film industry started to return to its previous state. Now, more and more films are being made and released. The production companies and those in the industry are enthusiastic about the country's new situation. The return of peace in the country has opened more venues for the shooting of the films, and the industry is seen to be making good use of this time to revive the image of the industry.

Film Development Board
The Film Development Board (FDB) was established by the Government of Nepal for the development and promotion of the Nepali Film Industry. But recently it has not created an environment of supporting and also the promotion of different aspects of motion-picture production in Nepal. The Board is a liaison to facilitate the conceptualization, making, distribution, and exhibition of Nepali films nationally, it is not able to promote the films in the inter national market and the main thing is that this board is not serious enough to send Nepali films into the international market. It also attempts to bridge the gap between film entrepreneurship and government bureaucracy. However, the Board is bound to take care of interests of the people and support the interest for inspiring films from the common populace. The Board is a balance between the people at large, the government, and the process of filmmaking. It is, therefore, the safeguard of the interests of the people, the watchdog of the government, and the advocate of filmmakers.

Nepal as a location
Due to its vast cultural diversity, geographical situation and its natural beauty, Nepal has been able to portray itself as one of the beautiful shooting location for film makers in the past couple of years. Many movies from India and abroad have been filmed in Nepal.The most internationally acclaimed film was the Academy Award-nominated Caravan, a film by French director Éric Valli.