Two Epic Finnish war movies

Peter

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Have you seen the two movies: "The Good, the Bad..." and "Once upon a Time in the West" ?
Sholay is not a rip off, but there are some similarities.

Btw the "Once upon a time" movie series, "The Good, the ...", "Magnificent Seven" and several other Hollywood movies of that era, were either rip offs of, or heavily influenced by the works of Akira Kurosawa, a Japanese director.
This guy was a giant. And his movies like "Seven Samurai", Rashomon" " Kagemusha", "Yojimbo" are true epics.
A lot of copying is done by Hollywood too, without giving credit were it is due. A recent example is Martin Scorcese's movie "Departed" (starring dicaprio) which is near identical copy of Chinese movie "Infernal Affairs" part 1. No credit was given to the Chinese movie. PS: The Chinese movie was way better; it gets better in parts 2,3.
I have seen Clint Eastwood Westerns like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly,A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. I have also seen Once upon a Time in the West. As for Akira Kurosawa I think I have watched only his Yojimbo after I heard that it was the original idea behind A Fistful of Dollars. I also feel that A Fistful of Dollars had similar scenes from Yojimbo. One cannot call it a complete rip off though. However the last two films were not copied films and had original plot. You can check out the two films and see for yourself.
 

Razor

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I have seen Clint Eastwood Westerns like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly,A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. I have also seen Once upon a Time in the West. As for Akira Kurosawa I think I have watched only his Yojimbo after I heard that it was the original idea behind A Fistful of Dollars. I also feel that A Fistful of Dollars had similar scenes from Yojimbo. One cannot call it a complete rip off though. However the last two films were not copied films and had original plot. You can check out the two films and see for yourself.
Well, if you see in my post I have said "were either rip offs of, or heavily influenced by" and I haven't mentioned "Fistful..." either. :)

Also

PPS: Did you mean "fortunately" or "unfortunately" in your post ?
 

Peter

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Well, if you see in my post I have said "were either rip offs of, or heavily influenced by" and I haven't mentioned "Fistful..." either. :)

Also
PPS: Did you mean "fortunately" or "unfortunately" in your post ?
Fortunately or unfortunately it is all the same. I used to think that Sholay was an original creation and that belief was wrong. The Telegraph film critic Pratim D. Gupta once did a film review on an Indian film and he mentioned the true origin of Sholay and how it was a Curry Western. I googled up on this controversy and found out that this was true. I downloaded the torrents of these films and watched them. I did find similarities. So yeah it is fortunate that I learnt the truth. It is however unfortunate that our film makers shamelessly copy from Hollywood.( Partner and Barfi being other examples)
 
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Razor

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Fortunately or unfortunately it is all the same. I used to think that Sholay was an original creation and that belief was wrong. The Telegraph film critic Pratim D. Gupta once did a film review on an Indian film and he mentioned the true origin of Sholay and how it was a Curry Western. I googled up on this and found out that this was true. I downloaded the torrents of this films and watched them. I did find similarities. So yeah it is fortunate that I learnt the truth. It is however unfortunate that our film makers shamelessly copy from Hollywood.( Partner and Barfi)
Similarity of scenes can not be called a rip of, more like inspiration or tribute.
But I guess it also depends on perspective: If you think it is a rip-off then it is, but others might not agree.
 

Peter

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Similarity of scenes can not be called a rip of, more like inspiration or tribute.
But I guess it also depends on perspective: If you think it is a rip-off then it is, but others might not agree.
This is true. However a lot of critics also said the same. As I have mentioned earlier I did not know of Sholay`s western origin till I came across Pratim D. Gupta`s article. I also did not know of the existence of a Wikpedia article on Sholay.Maybe I have erred in using the word rip off. However one cannot deny the similarities.

Here is what Wikipedia mentions

Initial critical reviews of Sholay were negative. Among contemporary critics, K.L. Amladi of India Today called the film a "dead ember" and "a gravely flawed attempt".[81] Filmfare said that the film was an unsuccessful mincing of Western style with Indian milieu, making it an "imitation western—neither here nor there."[81] Others labelled it as "sound and fury signifying nothing" and a "second-rate take-off" of the 1971 film Mera Gaon Mera Desh.[76] Trade journals and columnists initially called the film a flop.[82] In a 1976 article in the journal Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, author Michael Gallagher praised the technical achievement of the film, but otherwise criticised it stating, "As a spectacle it breaks new ground, but on every other level it is intolerable: formless, incoherent, superficial in human image, and a somewhat nasty piece of violence"
The idea for Sholay began as a four-line snippet which screenwriter pair Salim-Javed told G. P. Sippy and Ramesh Sippy; two other producer/director teams had earlier rejected the idea.[6] Ramesh Sippy liked the concept and hired them to develop it. The original idea of the film involved an army officer who decided to hire two ex-soldiers to avenge the murder of his family. The army officer was later changed to a policeman because Sippy felt that it would be difficult to get permission to shoot scenes depicting army activities. Salim-Javed completed the script in one month, incorporating names and personality traits of their friends and acquaintances.[6]

The film was loosely styled after Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film Seven Samurai,[7] and drew heavily from the conventions of Westerns, especially Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns such as Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), and John Sturges' film The Magnificent Seven (1960).[7][8] Sholay was also influenced by the westerns of Sam Peckinpah, such as The Wild Bunch (1969) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973); and by George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).[9] A scene depicting an attempted train robbery was inspired by a similar scene in North West Frontier (1959),[10] and a scene showing the massacre of Thakur's family has been compared with the massacre of the McBain family in Once Upon a Time in the West.[11] Some plot elements were borrowed from the Indian films Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971) and Khote Sikkay (1973).[6]


The character was also influenced by the villain "El Indio" (played by Gian Maria Volonté) of Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More (1965).
 
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