This lighthearted romp through Royal India presents a world of Maharajas, palaces, imperiled art objects, and the foreign collectors who will stop at nothing to possess them. Peggy Ashcroft and Larry Pine star as two rapacious art collectors who come to the decaying Art Deco palace of a young Maharaja (Victor Banerjee) to examine a legendary collection of Indian miniature paintings. While vying with each other to get the pictures away from the royal couple—nicknamed Georgie and Bonnie as children by their Scottish governess—they must also divine the true motives of the Indian curator of the collection (Saeed Jaffrey), who, in league with the Maharaja’s beautiful sister (Aparna Sen), may be working against them. Amidst the backdrop of lavish tourist entertainments, Christmas parties, fireworks, and even an English ghost, a desperate game of palace intrigue will determine the ultimate resting place of the priceless paintings.

Hullabaloo Over Georgie And Bonnie's Pictures (James Ivory 1978).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 23 min
Size: 	1.26 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	708x478 ~> 708x531
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 966 kb/s
BPP: 	0.242
Audio
#1:  	English 1.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s (Mono)

https://nitro.download/view/A33BF14A3C55850/Hullabaloo_Over_Georgie_And_Bonnie’s_Pictures_(James_Ivory_1978).mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post James Ivory – Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie’s Pictures (1978) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
Wazed Ali Shah is the ruler of one of the last independent kingdoms of India. The British, intent on controlling this rich country, have sent general Outram on a secret mission to clear the way for an annexation. While pressure is mounting amidst intrigue and political manoeuvres, Ali Shah composes poems and listens to music, secluded in his palace. The court is of no help, as exemplified by nobles Mir and Mirza, who, ignoring the situation of their country and all their duties towards their families, spend their days playing endless parties of chess.
— IMDb.

1.67GB | 2h 00m | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/40289A388D11C6A/Shatranj_Ke_Khiladi_(The_Chess_Players)_(1977)_–_Satyajit_Ray.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/564F4FCEFF56DCB/Shatranj_Ke_Khiladi_(The_Chess_Players)_(1977)_–_Satyajit_Ray.srt
https://nitro.download/view/5DF2326B7803E0E/Interview_–_Richard_Attenborough.mkv https://nitro.download/view/B0CD9A492BAF8FB/Interview_–_Saeed_Jaffrey.mkv

Language:Urdu,English,Hindi
Subtitles:English

The post Satyajit Ray – Shatranj Ke Khilari AKA The Chess Players (1977) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
‘LAUNDRETTE,’ SOCIAL COMEDY SLEEPER
DON’T be put off by the title, which makes it sound like a failed French farce. ”My Beautiful Laundrette,” written by Hanif Kureishi and directed by Stephen Frears, is the first real sleeper of the year.

The film, which opens today at the Embassy 72d Street Theater, is a rude, wise, vivid social comedy about Pakistani immigrants in London, , particularly about the initially naive, university-age Omar (Gordon Warnecke) and Omar’s extended family of wheeler-dealers and unassimilated layabouts.

”Take my advice,” says Omar’s Uncle Nasser (Saeed Jaffrey) early in the film, ”there’s money in muck.” Omar heeds his uncle and enlists the aid of Johnny (Daniel Day Lewis), a Cockney mate from his school days. Together, Omar and Johnny set out to revitalize ”Churchill’s,” a failing laundromat, owned by Nasser, in a seedy section of London where enthusiastic, hustling immigrants are at odds with alienated, disenfranchised natives.

Like the film itself, the relationship between Omar and Johnny is not quite as simple as it initially seems. Both men are outsiders. In the years since he and Omar were first friends, Johnny has drifted from one jobless limbo to the next. When Omar meets him again, Johnny is affecting a punk haircut and, with his pals, bashing Pakistanis, mostly because there’s nothing better to do.

It gradually becomes clear why Johnny has agreed to give up his street life to join Omar, who, being a Pakistani, isn’t easily explained to his Cockney pals. Johnny is bored with his own aimlessness. He never quite admits it, but he’d like to get ahead in the world. Further, and most important, he’s in love with Omar, something that Omar responds to and, like the hustler he’s becoming, uses to his own advantage.

”My Beautiful Laundrette,” however, is much more than a comedy about a couple of male lovers who go into the laundromat business. It’s about Omar’s father (Roshan Seth), a successful journalist in Pakistan but who in England, where he has raised his son, spends all day in bed drinking vodka and railing against the system. ”Oh, dear,” he might say in his fastidious, upper-class accent, ”the working class is a great disappointment to me.”

It’s also about Uncle Nasser’s most proud possession – his English mistress, Rachel (Shirley Anne Field), a tarty, good-hearted woman who genuinely loves Nasser; Nasser’s furiously jealous Pakistani wife (Charu Bala Choksi), who finally resorts to witchcraft (which works), and Tania (Rita Wolf), Nasser’s pretty daughter who feels neither Pakistani nor English.

Had ”My Beautiful Laundrette” been written by anybody but the London-born Mr. Kureishi, whose father was Pakistani and mother was English, the film would possibly seem racist. He’s merciless to his Pakistani characters, especially to Omar. However, he’s merciless in the way of someone who creates characters so complex they can’t be easily categorized as good or bad.

The film’s most sympathetic as well as most stubbornly faithful characters are English. Johnny is a man of almost unbelievable patience and reserves of decency – qualities that Mr. Lewis realizes in a performance that has both extraordinary technical flash and emotional substance. It’s Mr. Kureishi’s comic paradox that his upper-class Pakistani immigrants have become the exploiters in a land that once exploited them.

Mr. Warnecke, whose first film role this is, is wonderfully insidious as Omar. Also fine are Mr. Jaffrey, recently seen in both ”Gandhi” and ”A Passage to India,” and Mr. Seth, who played Nehru in ”Gandhi.”

Mr. Frears made his theatrical film debut as a director 15 years ago with Albert Finney’s ”Gumshoe,” a cheerful sendup of private-eye movies. Since then he has made only ”The Hit,” which was not a hit, apparently preferring to work in television, for which ”My Beautiful Laundrette” was originally intended. That ”My Beautiful Laundrette” could have been conceived as a film for the small screen describes – better than anything else I can think of – the vast difference between American and English television.

”My Beautiful Laundrette” has the broad scope and the easy pace that one associates with our best theatrical films. It puts its own truth above the fear of possibly offending someone. Without showing off, it has courage as well as artistry. There are moments when key narrative points are obscure, and when characters behave in a way that has been dictated not by plausibility but the effect it will create. Toward the end, it threatens to fly apart.

It doesn’t. ”My Beautiful Laundrette” is a fascinating, eccentric, very personal movie.
Vincent Canby, NY Times, March 7, 1986

1.77GB | 1h 38mn | 960×576 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/863E7F9323CA6F5/Stephen_Frears_-_%281985%29_My_Beautiful_Laundrette.mkv

Language(s):English, Urdu
Subtitles:English

The post Stephen Frears – My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) first appeared on Cinema of the World.