'Water' faces tough competition at Oscars : Hollywood News : ApunKaChoice.Com


ApunKaChoice.Com	IndiaExpress.Com CricketZone.Com
Set as Homepage \| Add to favorites

HOME | SCOOP!! & NEWS | HOLLYWOOD

Water

'Water' faces tough competition at Oscars
25th Feb 2007 21.30 IST
By Nikhil Kumar

Just a few hours remain for the world’s biggest showbiz event, the Annual Academy Awards, to begin. Deepa Mehta’s movie Water is nominated in the Best Foreign Language film category.

Although the film is nominated as the Canadian entry, fans and movie buffs in India are waiting with bated breath to know whether the coveted Oscar statuette will be given to the movie that brings to light the plight of widows in the India of 1930s. The movie stars Lisa Ray , John Abraham and Seema Biswas .

However, it wouldn’t be a smooth sail for Water on the big night, because the film faces tough competition from two other entries – Pan’s Labyrinth (from Mexico) and The Lives of Others (from Germany).

Pan’s Labyrinth has a stunning mix of reality and fantasy. The movie, made by writer-director Guillermo Del Toro, is a gothic fairy tale set against the brutal repression of Franco’s Spain in 1944. The film is a cinematic masterpiece and has been nominated in five more Oscar categories: Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Make-Up and Best Art Direction.

The Lives of Others, made by German writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, has already been adjudged best movie by Los Angeles Film Critics Association. The film is a political thriller and a human drama set in the East Berlin in 1984. It depicts the way the Stasi (East Germany’s secret police) tried to control the speech and even thought in GDR before the fall of the Berlin wall.

The other nominees in the Oscar’s Best Foreign Language Film Category are: After the Wedding (from Denmark) and Days of Glory (from Algeria).

After the Wedding is about a Dane who runs an Orphanage in India. He returns to Denmark where he gets involved with his old lover and her family. Days of Glory is about North African soldiers fighting for France in the World War 2.

Deepa Mehta , though optimistic, is quite aware of the tough competition ‘Water’ faces from Pan’s Labyrinth and The Lives of Others. She is pretty happy with the response her movie has got in Canada, US and Europe.

On the Oscar night, she will be accompanied by her daughter Devyani and the film’s cast Lisa Ray and John Abraham. Deepa plans to wear a sari while John plans to wear a traditional Indian dress (Achkan) for the Oscars.

The show will be telecast live in India at 0630 hrs IST on Monday on Star Movies.

Related
Water
Lisa Ray
Seema Biswas
Deepa Mehta