MUMBAI LOVE: Will True Love Prevail over Tradition?

It is often said true love, like gold, must pass the “test of fire”.

This story is not just another love story. This is the love story of two people from two different sides of the world, separated by culture and tradition yet strongly bound by pure and true love for each other.

Here is Nandi, a self-made Indian-Filipino, who believes in his heart that somewhere in this world he will find his soulmate through destiny. His parents, however, still cling to the revered Indian tradition of choosing the right partner for their son. Ella, on the other hand, is a young Filipina businesswoman who sources accessories for a jewelry shop in Makati. Her work brings her to Mumbai, India where she didn’t expect to meet the man of her dreams.

By some magic of fate, the two meet in the majestic city of Mumbai where Nandi and Ella start up a friendship and romance. Nandi takes Ella to the most interesting and colorful places in Mumbai such as the center of arts and culture, the sacred temples and museums and historical sites of Mumbai where Ella begins to fall in love with the people, culture and landscape. Nandi, the young man from India who showed her the magnificent beauty of India has quickly captivated her heart.

However, an emergency in Ella’s home office suddenly happens forcing her to leave for home without even letting Nandi know, not even give him her cellphone number or any contact info, to the latter’s frustration. Not giving up that easily on his quest for his love, Nandi seeks the help of his cousin Romni and both fly to Manila to look for Ella. This time lady luck smiles on Nandi who is able to find Ella in Manila and they start from where they left off in Mumbai.

But their sweet love must face more conflicts such as deeply respected age-old traditions of their different cultures. Will this interracial love prevail in the end or will love give way to tradition?

Mumbai Love is directed by multi-awarded director Benito Bautista and is distributed by Solar Entertainment Corporation.

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FILIPINO ONE FC FIGHTERS DEDICATE DEC. 6 BOUTS TO YOLANDA VICTIMS

Baguio City-based Team Lakay mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters, whose rigorous training has entered the final two weeks, are extra motivated and dedicating their fight to the victims of typhoon Yolanda.

“We are dedicating our fight to the victims of Yolanda. Gusto namin sila mapasaya sa aming laban kaya doble ang aming ensayo ngayon (We want them to be happy with our fight that’s why we are training double time),” declared Honorio “The Rock” Banario, who will be fighting Japanese Koji Oishi in a much-awaited rematch on Dec. 6 at the Mall of Asia (MOA) Arena.

The card, presented by ONE Fighting Championship (ONE FC), Asia’s largest mixed martial arts organization, also features four other Team Lakay fighters, who are out to redeem glory for the country after suffering defeats early this year in the same venue.

Eduard “Landslide” Folayang, the country’s top Lightweight mixed martial artist and former URCC welterweight champion, will battle seasoned Dutch-Indonesian striker Vincent Latoel; Kevin “The Silencer” Belingon will face undefeated Spaniard David Aranda Santacana; and Geje Eustaquio will square off with tough Filipino Eugene Toquero.

The fighters said while they would want to help out in whatever way they could for the typhoon victims, they could not do it now because of the forthcoming fight.

Focus na kami sa laban. Matitindi na ang ensayo at conditioning namin (We are already focused. Our training and conditioning is getting intense),” the soft-spoken Banario said.

Banario, who has an aggressive, all-action style, is bent on getting back his title from Oishi, who shocked the hometown crowd with a knockout win over the Filipino last May at the MOA Arena.

“Wala na ako ibang inisip noon kundi kung kailan kami ulit lalaban (Nothing has occupied my mind after my defeat except to think about when we will fight again),” he added.

Folayang, who already suffered two successive defeats, said he won’t allow to be beaten this time.

“Mas maganda ang training ko ngayon. Nag focus kami sa area na kung saan mahina kami (I have a good training program this time. We focused on an area where we are weak),” said Folayang, the former South East Asian Games gold medalist in wushu. He also won the silver medal in the 2006 Doha Asian Games and bronze medals in both the World Wushu Championship and Busan Asian Games.

Current Malaysian MMA National Featherweight Champion AJ Mansor has said Folayang’s defeats have been caused by his extended international exposure, which enabled opponents to scout and be familiar with his fighting style.

Folayang said he has added more fighting techniques and is being coached on wrestling and grappling. “We are becoming more familiar about wrestling because of our Iranian wrestling coach.”

“My opponent is also good on striking but I can beat him,” he said. Belingon said the fans should expect a good fight from him. “I’m a complete fighter now.”

He said he is aware that his opponent is tough and an undefeated combatant but he is preparing for it.

“Double ang ensayo ko ngayon. Nag dagdag ako ng fight techniques at mayron ako endurance training. Pinag-eensayuhan ko sya ng husto para talunin ko sya (I doubled my training this time. I added on my fight techniques and I have an endurance training. I am training hard to beat),” Belingon stressed.

He said he wants to be the number one bamtamweight contender in order to fight for a title in the future.

Eustaquio said he is a more rounded fighter than Toquero but he is not taking chances.

“I am dedicating my fight to the victims of the typhoon. I will give a good fight,” Eustaquio said.

Keanu Reeves in Tokyo to promote film '47 Ronin,' based on true Japanese story By Yuriko Nagano.

TOKYO (AP) -- The director of the Keanu Reeves 3-D film "47 Ronin" says he hopes his adaptation of a true Japanese story becomes a Hollywood blockbuster.

Film director Carl Rinsch, Reeves and co-stars appeared together in front of a Tokyo audience on Monday.

The film is based on an actual historical event during the Edo Period known as "Chushingura." It involved a lord who was wrongfully put to death and his followers — ronin — who sought revenge.

Rinsch said he took on the film subject and sat down with Keanu Reeves about two years ago. They wondered how they were going to take on a popular Japanese tale and do it justice. Rinsch said they decided to make the story their own, making "it a Hollywood blockbuster and see it through that lens."

"These themes of revenge, loyalty, perseverance, were things we knew from the very beginning were universal," said Rinsch, who is making his directorial feature debut with the film.

Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada stars as the main supporting character, Kuranosuke Oishi, a leader of the men. Sanada said that during the filming Reeves became more and more of a samurai, while the character he played became more "wild" in style.

Sanada said Reeves and himself hoped to depict the friendship of two characters, which transcended borders and social positions, in the film.

Reeves said "47 Ronin" is a story where people "share this journey to reclaim their land, their honor, their way. It was very special to me to be part of it."

Reeves, who grew up attracted to martial arts movies, makes his directorial debut this year with the martial arts action movie "Man of Tai Chi."

Released and distributed by United International Pictures

through Solar Entertainment Corp,

The film "47 Ronin" premiers in Japan on Dec. 6 and opens in Philippine theatres on January 2014.

Jake Gyllenhaal injures hand punching mirror on ‘Night crawler’

The actor, who co-starred in 2005′s Oscar-winning “Brokeback Mountain,” was treated in a hospital emergency room after the accident on the set of “Nightcrawler.”
“While Jake was filming an intense scene .. his character purposefully banged his hand into the mirror. Unfortunately the mirror accidentally broke, and Jake?s hand was badly cut up,” his spokeswoman Mara Buxbaum told AFP.

“He received numerous stitches at the ER and was released a couple hours later. He already returned to set for work,” she added.

In the movie, 32-year-old Gyllenhaal plays a freelance reporter investigating Los Angeles’ tought crime underworld. He has lost a lot of weight to prepare for the role, with some photos showing him looking alarmingly gaunt.

The incident happened on set Wednesday morning, according to a source cited by People magazine, adding that he was in character, at the end of an 18-hour day.

“Jake flipped out,” the source told the celebrity bible. “His character was looking into a mirror during the scene and punched the mirror in anger and broke it, cutting himself so bad he had to be taken to a hospital.”

“The scene was emotionally charged and his character was talking into a mirror and he got so into it, he banged his hands against the mirror and it broke and cut him.”

The unidentified source added: “It was all the scene and not because he was mad about anything else.”

‘Nightcrawler’ is released and distributed by Captive Cinema. Showing 2014!

Director Neil Jordan on Byzantium and Vampire Movies

Neil Jordan Director of Byzantium

Neil Jordan’s body of work is an odd, fascinating beast. On one level, the Irish director’s fablelike films — with their often mystical elements, their vivid photography, and their tormented, passionate characters — are remarkably consistent in tone, style, and themes. On another level, though, the films are a diverse lot, ranging from moody dramas like Mona Lisa and The End of the Affair, to thrillers like The Crying Game and The Good Thief, to big-budget, star-studded epics like Interview With a Vampire and Michael Collins, to fairy tales like The Company of Wolves. He’s even made a couple of exuberant comedies along the way (including High Spirits, which is better than you remember). Now, with his latest, Byzantium, a tale of mother-and-daughter vampires (played by Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan) hiding out in a British seaside town, Jordan has returned to the vampire genre, and the result is one of his strongest, most ambitious and romantic works in years. Jordan talked to us about his new movie, fairy tales, and vampires.

Were you wary of returning to a story of vampires so many years after Interview With a Vampire?
It was really the script that Moira Buffini had written. I hadn’t seen the play, and I was not involved in the development of the script, or the writing of it. But it was strange, because when it was sent to me, I saw that there were so many elements in it that felt familiar to me from other movies that I’d made: It was set in an abandoned seaside town, it was about a mother and daughter, it was about storytelling, and, yes, it was about vampires. Actually, the least attractive thing was that it was about vampires. It’s quite difficult to put a vampire movie out there nowadays.

Neil Jordan Director of Byzantium with Soirse Gemma

But they seem like very different vampires this time around.
I did try to reinvent the rules a little bit. I got rid of the teeth, so now they use their nails. Ultimately, I think vampires — we call them “sucreants” in the film — are really like people who have entered a spell: They endure eternity in some way because of a choice, or something that’s happened to them. That’s why they’re so popular; they come out of the repository of fairy tales. I really did think of these creatures in Byzantium as dark shadows out of some fairy tale.

If I hadn’t seen the writing credit, I could have sworn that you’d written this film as well.
That’s interesting. I felt the dialogue was very specific. Some of it could even be called “clunky,” but I deliberately didn’t want to put my fingers on it. I felt it was important to preserve Moira’s voice, as a woman and as a writer: She had ways of approaching things that I wouldn’t have taken. What I liked about the script was its multifaceted quality — it turns into different things. It’s like a lantern that lets you see different aspects of the story.

There have been so many films in recent years that have attempted to “update” fairy tales: the Snow White films, the Hansel & Gretel film. But in a way, you were already doing that sort of thing 30 years ago, and doing it a lot more artfully, long before it became a fad among filmmakers.
Yeah. I guess I’ve always been obsessed with fairy tales. But it’s easy to see their appeal: They’re so simple and so efficient. As a storyteller and writer, that just appeals to me. There are a lot of archetypes and symbols there, and these are stories that have very deep roots. I think that’s something I always find myself drawn to.

There’s something else I’ve noticed about your films: They’re all about devotion, on some level. That’s very much true of Byzantium as well. And it’s a kind of devotion that can be romantic, or maternal, or spiritual. End of the Affair, it seems to me, matches one character’s romantic devotion with another’s devotion to God. And Byzantium, too, twins one character’s maternal devotion with another’s romantic devotion.
It’s all because I grew up as an Irish Catholic. [Laughs.] It’s a very specific kind of mind-set. It’s like you’re in this strange movie theater showing the same thing all the time. That was the reason I wanted to do Interview With a Vampire: It seemed to me to be about guilt. It was the most wonderful parable about wallowing in guilt that I’d ever come across. But these things are unconscious: I don’t have an agenda. I’m neither a bad Irish Catholic nor a good one. What is weird, though, is to watch a movie I made years ago and see how revealing it is about me. Films are essentially attempts to disguise one’s intentions, or state of mind. It’s amazing, because there have been films I made that felt like they were opportunities to not be personal. But then, years later, it shocks me how revealing it is.

Neil Jordan Director of Byzantium with Soirse Gemma

Can you give me an example of such a film?
Mona Lisa. It turned out to be a film about how men are misunderstood. It shocked me how emotionally revealing it was. Of course, that is what they should be. They should just be full of emotion. Stanley Kubrick once said, “The problem isn’t having a message. The problem is disguising the message.”

Over and over, your films are replete with career-high performances from actors — be they accomplished, established ones like Bob Hoskins in Mona Lisa or Julianne Moore in End of the Affair, or people we don’t ordinarily expect to give standout performances, like Gemma Arterton in Byzantium. Do you work closely with actors? Are you hands-on?
I just like actors. It’s really as simple as that. I like the fact that they don’t have to be themselves. They can live in a world of fantasy. I don’t know how it works. As for how I work with them, I try to make sure the actors understand what the part is. I look for people who have emotional reality to them. Beyond that, I don’t know what I do. To be fair, if you cast a film correctly, you’ve almost nothing to do. If you cast the film slightly off kilter, then you have to work your butt off.

‘BYZANTIUM’ is released and distributed by Captive Cinema.

Keanu Reeves returns to the big screen in 47 Ronin

"47 Ronin" is helmed by visionary director Carl Erik Rinsch ("The Gift"). Inspired by styles as diverse as Miyazaki and Hokusai, Rinsch will bring to life the stunning landscapes and enormous battles that will display the timeless Ronin story to global audiences in a way that's never been seen before.

From ancient Japan's most enduring tale, the epic 3D fantasy-adventure "47 Ronin" is born. Keanu Reeves leads the cast as Kai, an outcast who joins Oishi (Hiroyuki Sanada), the leader of the 47 Ronin. Together they seek vengeance upon the treacherous overlord who killed their master and banished their kind.

To restore honor to their homeland, the warriors embark upon a quest that challenges them with a series of trials that would destroy ordinary warriors.

“47 Ronin” is released and distributed by United International Pictures through Solar Entertainment Corp.

TENDA LAUNCHES THREE NEW ROUTERS IN THE PHILIPPINES

TENDA, a new kid on the block in the wireless distribution system in the Philippines, is set to impress the consumers with its easy-to-install units and reliable data connection of up to 300 Mbps.

The company introduces three new exciting models in the Philippine market-the W3002R, W309R+ and FH303.

According to Charlie Jiang, company sales manager for the Philippines, TENDA is set to win the competition against other wireless solution brands in the market."TENDA's edge against the other routers are, it is easy to set up or install and its parts are made by Broadcom chipset company (famous WIFI chipset maker in the world)," Jiang said.

Jiang explained that TENDA's edge over competitors does not stop at providing quality routers but, extends to after sales services.

W3002R-2

"The guaranty time for TENDA routers in the Philippines is two years since the date when the customers bought it from the authorized dealer's stores," Jiang said.

Jiang added that should customers come across a defective unit, technical support can be easily reached through the hotline.

"If there is any problem about the hardware, the customers just have to consult our dealer’s technicians to solve it, Jiang said.

"If the technician cannot troubleshoot the problem, the dealer will send that unit back to our distributor BELEXIS then our engineers will test the RMA unit first and then try to fix it or replace it in 7-15 days according to the problem," Jiang said.

Jiang promises to bring the finest internet connection experience in the office and at home for TENDA customers.

W3002R

"The purpose of TENDA Philippines company is just to let the Filipinos enjoy surfing the wireless network easier by using our easy set top TENDA router in an affordable price and good service " .Jiang said.

W3002R-1

Sharing the best data experience with W3002R and FH303

W309R+ and FH303 is the perfect combo to heighten the data connection experience that hits 300 Mbps and provides the widest area coverage.

Jiang explained the W3002R is a powerful wireless solution made for home and office use that offers reliable internet connection for faster downloads.

“W3002R is the advanced 300Mbps router with new nice design, high power router, its coverage is two

FH303

times wider than the normal 300Mbps router,” Jiang said.

TENDA-W3002R has detachable antennas that use the universal repeater technology which allows wider area coverage, better performance and enhanced compatibility.

Security issues have also been resolved with the W3002 as it offers multi-level encryption options to prevent unauthorized access to safeguard important data.

FH303, on the other hand, resolves dead spot troubles at home and in the office that slows down fun and work.

FH303-1

As TENDA is committed to customer satisfaction, the FH303 is made to deliver quality internet connectivity with a push of a button.

“FH303 is also a high power router with a button on the rear side , that can adjust the router 's performance mode to be normal signal or high signal mode,: Jiang explained.

“When the router is working in normal signal mode, it also can save the energy ,we call this

as the green energy saving,” he added.

FH303-2

Two rear side buttons can be found on the unit. The first button allows users to adjust wireless signal effectively and conveniently while the second button serves as security lock.

Other features of this model include several filters like bandwidth control, MacAddress clone, remote web management and system log.

“These models belong to the high power router series ,for the high power router with two

antennas , we recommend W3002R while for the high power router with three antennas , we recommend FH303 ,” Jiang said.

FH303 comes in elegant white with three antennas which secures reliable internet connection.

No more dead spots at home with W309R+

One of the highlights of TENDA wireless solution technology is affordability and quality and that is exactly what the W309R+ has to offer.

Customers are in for a great deal with the last, but not the least, on the roster of the newly launched router models with its competitive market price and potent features.

According to Jiang, W309R+ can increase data connectivity at home up to 300 Mbps that can work with broadband internet connection.

”W309R+ is the high power 300 Mbps router with two 9 dBi antennas,” he said.

This model can share with multiple computers considering the limits of a broadband internet connection.

Since not every household has a “techie” member, the W309R+ comes with an easy setup utility that makes it easy for family members to set up the unit.

This affordable model is more than its price worth when it comes with added features like the enhanced wireless distribution system which allows customers to set up a wireless communication between two or more routers in the area.

Despite its ability to connect to several routers, the W309R+ does not compromise the security of data of its users as it is equipped with a multi-level encryption feature.