Berlin 62 Off and Running

by Alex Deleon

Wed. Feb.9, 2012

The 62nd Berlinale opened this afternoon for early arriving journalists even before the Opening Gala which will be held tonight

with two special press screenings. First up was the rousing Bollywood actioner ¨DON 2, The King Is Back¨ starring The King of

Bollywood himself, Shah Rukh Khan, and this was followed by the much anticipated Angelica Jolie directed Bosnian War drama,

¨Land of Blood and Honey¨ (Zemlja Krvi a Mjod),  in which the actress does not herself appear, but is, in fact, an entirely Bosnian-Serbian

language film with an all Yugoslav cast, and a good one at that. 

The Bollywood film was, to say the least, Way over the Top ''but, if the viewer is willing to suspend all belief in critical faculties,

was lots of fun and especiallly topological  for Berlin audiences, since most of the action is actually set right here in Berlin at many

recognizable Berlin locations. Since I happen to be very partial to Bollywood films -- and especially partial to former Miss World

Priyanka Chopra (who is beautifully miscast in this as a tenacious Interpol policewoman), I  cannot speak for my more discerning colleagues

of the criticism industry, other than to say that I had a good time watching this super-charged comic book and, at the end, felt that it probably

delivered everything that an Indian audience would be expecting of it in terms of thrills, spills, (Shahrukh jumping off of the 37th story of a Berlin

Building!) exotic foreign locations, (French Riviera, Thailand, Malaysia, and Berlin) beautiful woman in revealing backless gowns, and loads of

comic one-liners written by director Farhan Akhtar and huis father, rthe famous Bollywood dialogue master, Javed Akhtar.

Details on this one later, after tomorrow´s Press conference.

As for the Jolie opus, there were mixed reactions by press people who had seen her on the American TV talk show circuit Such as Alber Miklgrom, Minneapolis Festival honcho, who thought the script was terrible and everything else about it was unconvincing, whereas I myself found it gripping,

so overwhelmingly cruel in spots  that I was wondering where Ms. Jolie was ¨coming from¨ (as far as I know she has no direct Bosnian connections)

and was on the verge at walking out at several more appalling points in the action, for example when an infant baby is thrown out of a window jsut for the hell of it ...

More to come -- dont go away ...