The Great New Wonderful – Hollow
I’ve had this DVD on my shelf for almost a month now. Finally couple of nights ago, I decided to give this lesser-known indie flick a chance. With an impressive ensemble cast consisting of Edie Falco, Tony Shaloub, Jim Colbert, and our very own Naseeruddin Shah (and Sharat Saxena), one could expect to see interesting, well developed characters. For a film dealing about the state of average New Yorkers post 9/11, this film was surprisingly hollow. Well, perhaps not so surprising, considering it’s directed by Danny Leiner, more famous “Dude Where’s My Car?” and “Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.” Obviously not a style that comes naturally to Leiner, one gets the feeling someone held a gun to his head and asked him to make this film.
Juggling multiple points of view and multiple stories is always a tricky task. More often than not, only one or two stories really end up being developed, as is the case with “The Great New Wonderful”. The film intentionally attempts to make a case that regardless of whether New Yorkers sufferred a personal loss or not, that their lives have changed into one of uncertainty. A novel argument to make, but painful to watch when character motives are inexplicable, or when multiple stories are being told within an emotional void. It remains a mystery why such a talented cast agreed to be a part of this film that barely seems like it would have been creatively stimulating or beneficial financially.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
the tradition continues…..
All Indian actors get role in most of the dumb hollywood movies…
What else can you expect from someone who made C grade hollywood movies like:
“Dude Where’s My Car?” – About two American punks who have lost their car…story of one night, this movie is really dumb.
“Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.” – about two Asian punks…one Chinese and one Indian…who go on a burger hunt…again story of one night…this movie was even dumber.
Mr.Shah did a role in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen…..now this movie was actually extraordinarily silly/’waste of time’/bad.The movie was a big flop (even Sean Connery admitted that it was a blunder)…..but what was even more extraordinary was seeing Mr.Shah in those maharaja clothes and big beard.