l i f e s t y l e SUNDAY, AUGUST 16, 2015 F e a t u r e s

Buzz Lightyear floats above the entrance to the Disney D23 EXPO 2015 held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Disney fans dressed as ‘Tinkerbell’ and ‘Captain Hook’. Anaheim, California. — AFP/AP photos Disney drops hints to fans on ‘Finding Dory,’ ‘Toy Story 4’

eanstalks will grow, animals will walk gists and archaeologists to ensure they accu- about are years down the line, either. from his family into unknown territories. upright, oceans will part, a forgetful fish rately represented the area. They also took Directors Byron Howard and Rich Moore Bwill remember her family, and toys will great pains to characterize what the ocean New spin on dinosaurs were likewise there to preview “Zootopia,” out fall in love in Disney and Pixar Animation’s means to the culture. In the film, it functions as Pixar’s long-delayed “The Good Dinosaur” March 4, which is set in a human-like city popu- upcoming films. The studio previewed its ani- Moana’s spiritual companion. will finally be out on Nov 25. After previewing lated by animals who walk upright, wear mation slate and made a number of announce- Opetaia Foa’i, Grammy-winner Mark the film at the 2013 D23, Pixar removed Bob clothes and hold human jobs. The film centers ments at the fan convention D23 Expo on Mancina, and Tony-winner Lin-Manuel Miranda Peterson as director and pushed its release on bunny cop Judy Hopps (“Once Upon a Friday, with special appearances from some will be handling “Moana’s” music. Johnson said date back over a year, eventually replacing him Time’s” Ginnifer Godwin) who heads to the big voice actors including Ellen DeGeneres and it has been his career dream to be in an animat- with Peter Sohn. The film puts a new spin on city to pursue her law enforcement dreams. Dwayne Johnson. ed Disney movie. “It is my heritage, it is my cul- John Lasseter, the chief creative officer of ture. I am proudly half-Samoan and half-black,” Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios, host- said an excited Johnson. “I’m so deeply con- ed the presentation, where he announced a nected to this movie.” Continuing with the Jack and the Beanstalk adaptation, “Gigantic,” international focus, “Coco,” from director Lee and the title of their Dia de los Muertos film, Unkrich (“Toy Story 3”), will be about a 12-year- “Coco.” It was also revealed that Shakira would old boy living with his big family in Mexico who be both providing an original song for and inadvertently sets off a life-altering chain of voicing a character in “Zootopia.” events. “Gigantic” director Nathan Greno But it wasn’t all new properties on the agen- (“Tangled”) said his film would be the definitive da. Pixar also teased information about “Toy version of the fairy tale - with a few spins, Story 4” and “Finding Dory,” a sequel to the including the addition of a 60-foot tall, 11-year- 2003 film “Finding Nemo.” In the film, out June old girl who Jack meets when he climbs up the 17, 2016, the forgetful Dory (DeGeneres) beanstalk. “Frozen” songwriters Robert Lopez endeavors to track down her family. Director and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, who penned the Andrew Stanton said even though he thought hit “Let It Go,” will be writing the songs. that the story ended with “Nemo,” he realized Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was there as that Dory’s character needed more develop- well to preview the South Pacific-set “Moana,” ment. “I wanted to know that if this charming, A Disney fan takes a selfie at the Pixar Animation display. out Nov. 23, 2016, which follows a high spirited, forgetful fish ever got lost again, that she 16-year-old princess 2000 years ago. As an act would be OK,” he said. the classic boy and his dog tale. Here, the “boy” There she gets entangled with a mischievous of rebellion, she sets sail to a fabled island with Randy Newman closed out the nearly three- is a friendly Apatosaurus named Arlo fox, Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman). The bi-annual the tattooed demi-god Maui (Johnson). hour presentation with a performance of his (Raymond Ochoa) and the “dog” is a feral child convention, now in its fourth year, runs “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” on stage in antici- who walks on all fours. His name is Spot. through Sunday. — AP Great pains pation of “Toy Story 4,” which will be a love sto- Producer Denise Ream said a main goal was Directors Ron Clements and John Musker ry between Woody (Tom Hanks) and Bo Peep to create “a world that feels visceral and immer- A model wears a one-of-a-kind dress made out of more (“The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin”) and Johnson (Annie Potts). Lasseter, who is co-directing, said sive.” They used new technologies to fashion than 300 Tsum Tsum plush commissioned by Disney teased concept footage and spoke about their it’s a very emotional and personal story that’s “majestic landscapes,” including some strikingly Store for D23 Expo. extensive consultation with local anthropolo- inspired by his own wife. Not all the films talked realistic-looking rapids, which sweep Arlo away Lucas says Jar Jar Locarno Film Review: ‘Bombay Velvet’ Binks was inspired

artin Scorsese is thanked in the opening credits of by Goofy “Bombay Velvet,” but that’s far from the last time this Msplashy Bollywood spectacular pays its fter years of criticism of “Star Wars” character Jar respects. As it charts the corrupt historical development of Jar Binks, the space saga’s creator George Lucas into a Western-styled megalopolis, ’s Asurprised fans at a Disney convention Friday garish but engrossing film reflects the transition through bla- with a major reveal-he was inspired by Goofy. Lucas tant hat-tips to Hollywood crime cinema, ranging from Jimmy made the comment as he was welcomed into the club Cagney star vehicles to Scorsese’s own underworld sagas. The of “Disney Legends” along with “Pirates of the result-co-edited, no less, by the latter’s right-hand woman, Caribbean” star Johnny Depp. Thelma Schoonmaker-may lack the charging formal brio of “Not very many people realize that Goofy was the Kashyap’s 2012 Cannes sensation “,” but inspiration for Jar Jar Binks,” Lucas said, sparking laugh- it’s clear why the pic has already achieved substantial interna- ter in the crowd at the convention center in Anaheim, tional distribution. Its Locarno festival date could usher in a California, where the D23 Expo is taking place. “I know second wave of cinephile appreciation. you’ll look at him differently now.” “Our love story will be epic; our life, a smash hit,” our hero Jar Jar Binks-a computer-generated character that informs his paramour toward the end of a sprawling narrative first appears in “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace”-is that has already seen its fair share of drama writ large. It’s a roundly loathed by most fans, who accused Lucas and line perfectly representative of a script that’s bigger on suds others of pandering to younger viewers with a comic than subtlety, and hyper-conscious throughout of its medi- sidekick. “I love Goofy and I love Jar Jar Binks,” said um-its every character living in a movie of their own making. Lucas, who is also the brains behind the “Indiana When another states that “life is not ‘Double Indemnity,’” he’s Jones” franchise, and who sold his Lucasfilm studio to only partially correct: Life, at least as “Bombay Velvet” knows it, Disney for $4 billion. “A lot of what I do” is inspired by simply follows a different frame of genre reference, as Kashyap Disney, Lucas told the crowd. Disney has revived the packs proceedings with unveiled allusions to gangster-cinema “Star Wars” franchise, with four films already in the touchstones. A recurring line of dialogue is appropriated from works. “The Force Awakens”-Episode VII in the saga- “The Roaring Twenties” (itself excerpted on screen), a climactic opens on December 18. A “Star Wars” panel is set to shootout slavishly restages Brian De Palma’s “Scarface,” and so take place Saturday at the D23 Expo. Depp-who is on and so forth. donning the costume and thick black eyeliner of Some may see this as idle pastiche, though it aptly reflects Captain Jack Sparrow for the fifth “Pirates of the the characters’ own painstaking attempts at occidental self- Caribbean” film due out in 2017 — delighted fans with styling: Young street punk Balraj (, grandson of his surprise appearance at the event. “I really don’t golden-age Bollywood idol Raj) is rechristened “Johnny” when know why I’m here,” joked Depp, clad in a retro beige he begins work as a lackey for a sharp-suited local crime lord, jacket. He explained that he does not like the word ‘fan’ ultimately managing the American Art Deco-style jazz club because it implies that “someone is over someone that gives the film its name. (Not for nothing, in this ersatz A screenshot from Anurag Kashyap’s new film ‘Bombay Velvet’. else,” adding: “I would say that you are actually my world of spangly imitation, does “Bombay Velvet” also sound employer.” “Thank you for giving me an opportunity to like a cut-price brand of gin.) adulthood. Over in Goa, meanwhile, honey-voiced Rosie shallow, backlit business. We’re in a world, after all, of plat- do stupid things for a living,” Depp said. — AFP A sizable portion of the film’s heavily knotted plot, mean- () is taken from her family by an abusive sven- inum-plated character types, not actual people. It’s the high- while, revolves around the aggressive urban planning of gali, eventually fleeing to the big city to pursue a singing gloss realization of that world that affords many of the pic’s Mumbai’s city center in the 1960s and 1970s, whereby land career. Through a complicated chain of unsavory circum- most delicious pleasures: “Bombay Velvet” is an extravagant was reclaimed from the sea for an overtly Manhattan-aping stances, with nude photographs a skeleton in at least two canvas for both production designer Sonal Sawant and cos- CBD. characters’ closets, Johnny and Rosie wind up both working at tume designer Niharika Bhasin Khan, one on which even Over a terrific opening credit sequence-an elaborate pro- Bombay Velvet in the mid-1960s-he as a lackey to slick club apparent anachronisms look calculated. Kashyap is besotted duction number dizzyingly julienned by Schoonmaker and owner and criminal kingpin Khambatta (), she as with the iconography and material trappings of Hollywood original editor Prerna Saigal, shot in shimmying, Campari-fil- the club’s resident chantoosie. gangsterism-showroom-fresh cars, gleaming weaponry and tered style by -Kashyap seems less inspired by vin- As handsome knuckleheads and smoky sirens are wont to slyly draped evening gowns, all spattered with blood amid the tage potboilers than he is by the jittery postmodern artifice of do in the movies, the two fall hard and fast for each other. The glitter-but equally attentive to the earthy Eastern remnants of “Chicago.” And if the film turns out to be less of a full-time subsequent course of true love, of course, could hardly run a city still determining its identity. — Reuters tuner than this intro suggests, it’s for no lack of savvy in Amit less smoothly: Blackmail plots, false identity, murder and a few Trivedi and ’s slinky Hindi torch songs: bouts of good old-fashioned cage fighting collide to fill 148 The musical mood board here is no less era-melding than the uneven but undeniably eventful minutes, crescendoing to a “Star Wars” creator, filmmaker George Lucas is cinematic one. bullet-riddled climax. If it’s practically an exercise in minimal- honored with the Disney Legends Award, Friday, Following that punchy salvo, the pic’s establishing reels are ism relative to the five-hour assault of “Gangs of Wasseypur,” Aug 14, 2015, in Anaheim, Calif. Lucas sold his its saggiest, detailing the childhood trials of the principals in Kashyap’s storytelling somehow seems less bullishly con- company, and his iconic “Star Wars” film fran- decade-hopping fashion. Raised rough in the city’s dusty trolled here. It’s also more propulsive than it is moving: chise, to Disney for $4 billion. — AP social fringes, hot-headed Johnny finds a lifelong ally in the Johnny (played by Kapoor less in a Cagney vein than with a more circumspect Chimman (Satyadeep Misra) and develops lunkish hint of prime Stallone) is too dim a protagonist to a taste for bare-knuckle combat that will follow him into wholeheartedly root for, while his romance with Rosie is a