Acclaimed director Mira Nair will next year start filming “Shantaram”, a film based on the bestselling novel by an escaped convict and that stars Johnny Depp and Amitabh Bachchan, an Indian newspaper reported on Friday.The film, an adaptation of Gregory David Roberts’ novel, describes his escape from an Australian prison to Mumbai and his adventures with the city’s powerful mafia.Roberts’ book, an international bestseller, also narrates his subsequent arrest and extradition to Australia and then his coming back to Mumbai, where he has set up a free health service for the poor and also does some teaching.”The official date for the start of the movie version of Shantaram starring Amitabh Bachchan and Johnny Depp has been set for January 19, 2008,” Roberts told the DNA daily.The newspaper also said that Depp might stay with the Bachchans when he visits India for shooting. [Source]

While we’re all getting caught up in a the best fall movie season in eight years (completely unexpected), it’s important to remember that a number of the big December heavy-hitters have yet to screen for anyone: e.g. Mike Nichols’s Charlie Wilson’s War, Marc Forster’s The Kite Runner and Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (check that, it screened last night, and at least one New York City critic believes it’s potential top ten material). Still, these films are going to have to deliver on their hype with interest if they’ve any hope of outshining the excellent likes of Into the Wild, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and American Gangster (and I’m confident Russ is 100% dead-on about No Country for Old Men, too).And what about Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street? Though some folks believe its greatness is a foregone conclusion based on the Stephen Sondheim pedigree (and, to a lesser extent, Johnny Depp in the lead role), does anyone really know what to expect from a Tim Burton musical? Though music has generally been an integral part of his best films (Ed Wood notwithstanding), helming a musical requires a different skill set altogether – one that he hasn’t evinced yet in his twenty-one year career as a feature filmmaker.

Imagine the “Buena Vista Social Club” of Romany music and you get the idea behind “Gypsy Caravan,” Jasmine Dellal’s affectionate portrait of a group of Roma musicians during a 2001 tour of the United States.Comprising five bands from four countries, the Gypsy Caravan tour celebrated the rich, diverse but also eerily consistent musical traditions of the Roma, commonly known as Gypsies, who originated in India and began migrating to Europe and North Africa nearly 1,000 years ago. Today, about 10 million Roma live around the world, often impoverished and stigmatized by the communities surrounding them.That painful history is everywhere evident in the music — both mournful and joyful — that propels “Gypsy Caravan.” We meet the zaftig and beguiling Esma Redzepova, the Macedonian “Queen of the Gypsies,” the lively Romanian bands Taraf de Haidouks and Fanfare Ciocarlia, the Spanish flamenco duo Antonio y Juana, and Maharaja, a group of raga musicians from Rajasthan.Just where Johnny Depp fits in is something viewers will have to discover for themselves. If “Gypsy Caravan” is a tad overlong, it’s easy to see why Dellal had trouble turning the camera off, especially when confronted with a startling and sad plot twist. Viewers are urged to grab an aisle seat, the better to dance when the music moves them — as it surely will. [Source]

Director Tim Burton, whose films include Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow, has been honoured with a career award at the Venice Film Festival.Festival organisers called Burton “one of America’s bravest, most visionary and innovative film-makers”. Burton received the Golden Lion lifetime achievement award from his long-time collaborator, actor Johnny Depp, in a red carpet event. Festival organisers dubbed Wednesday “Tim Burton Day” in his honour.

A 3-D makeover of Tim Burton’s 1993 film “The Nightmare Before Christmas” was to screen Wednesday after the US director accepts the Venice film festival’s career achievement award.Spectators will be issued with special glasses to view the 3-D version, created by Henry Selick, of the hit musical fantasy in which the Pumpkin King of Halloween tries to take over Christmas by kidnapping Santa Claus.Just to make sure the glasses are in working order, an in-your-face jack-o-lantern will leap off the screen as the film begins.Burton, who created the 2005 remake of the fantasy adventure “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” based on the classic Roald Dahl book, scored his first box office hit in 1985 with “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.”"Tim Burton is fantasy in power in the new age of the cinemagraphic art,” says festival director Marco Mueller in programme notes. “The parallel worlds and virtual universes of his films are filled with characters who live outside the rules and outside society.”Reporters had a sneak peek at Burton’s next creation, a film version of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Sweeney Todd,” a Broadway hit in 1979 that enjoyed a revival in Britain in 2004.