Warrior Women

Il re ha mandato i suoi migliori cavalieri a sconfiggere il drago che assedia il suo castello. Durante la loro epica avventura, incontrano sirene malvagie, donne guerriere in cerca di vendetta e un inarrestabile esercito di morti viventi. Riusciranno a sopravvivere?

Set on the Bihar-Bengal border, where Marwari businessmen — a powerful Hindi-dialect community of entrepreneurs much disliked throughout India — and Rajputs of warrior caste (from Rajasthan) have both settled. The central character of Narsingh (Soumitra Chatterjee), is a disillusioned, frequently drunken Rajput reduced in status to an ill-educated taxi driver. Proud and hot-tempered, with a passion for his 1930s Chrysler, Narsingh is offered work transporting tins of ghee for Sukhanram, a shady merchant, and finds himself drawn against his better judgement into trafficking opium. Having failed in everything honest, he has to decide whether or not he will engage in criminal activity to make money.

Two sisters plot for revenge against the drug-lord who murdered their family and took their home, now being used as a base for their experiments on aphrodisiacs. The older sister becomes a prostitute in order to get close to the gang. Later, she rallies up a gang of female-bikers, in skimpy leather outfits and knee-high boots, they raid the syndicate's hideout - and lose, badly. They are subject to torture of various sorts, fight among themselves, but gather their wits to try, and fight back for escape.

Director Justin Hardy talks about his two-part drama-documentary re-enacting the three great battles of 1066.
Justin Hardy doesn’t have much truck with what he calls “the David Starkey notion” that the most interesting people in English history are our monarchs. “In my view,” he says, “the story of our island’s past is to do with much more common heroes and heroines, accompanied by a few kings and queens who sat on the throne and who were probably very unaware of what was going on around them.”

It might already have been used in many films, but there's always something to having aesthetically pleasing shots of golden wheat fields basking under the yellow sun, setting the tone that this is going to be a very beautifully shot film by cinematographer Zhao Xiaoshi with the visuals getting priority and set to wow, over a period drama set during China's Warring States period some 20 years prior to the Qin dynasty unification of China.
The state of Qin has invaded Zhao, and the Zhao king had ordered all available troops in a call to battle. Zhao's city of Lu Yi rises to the occasion, with the Lord Ju Cong (Wang Xueqi) commanding all men above the age of 12 to bear arms, leaving behind only the women to do chores and keep harvest while awaiting their return. In his absence, Ju Cong's wife Lady Li (Fan Bingbing) is left in charge of the city, and spends her lonely nights longing for the return of her husband, with sequences told in flashbacks to establish and develop this romantic angle.

he Samurai Trilogy, directed by Hiroshi Inagaki and starring the inimitable Toshiro Mifune, was one of Japan’s most successful exports of the 1950s, a rousing, emotionally gripping tale of combat and self-discovery. Based on a novel that’s often called Japan’s Gone with the Wind, this sweeping saga fictionalizes the life of the legendary seventeenth-century swordsman (and writer and artist) Musashi Miyamoto, following him on his path from unruly youth to enlightened warrior. With these three films—1954’s Oscar-winning Musashi Miyamoto, 1955’s Duel at Ichijoji Temple, and 1956’s Duel at Ganryu Island—Inagaki created a passionate epic that’s equal parts tender love story and bloody action.

Historian Bettany Hughes gives her personal take on the diverse cultures of the ancient world in this 2010 documentary series on More 4. The series begins with an examination of Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander the Great in 332 BC to become the world’s first global centre of culture. The programme explores Alexandria’s role as a powerhouse of science and learning, and focuses on the female mathematician, astronomer and philosopher Hypatia, the subject of the feature film Agora, starring Rachel Weisz.

Historian Bettany Hughes gives her personal take on the diverse cultures of the ancient world in this 2010 documentary series on More 4. The series begins with an examination of Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander the Great in 332 BC to become the world’s first global centre of culture. The programme explores Alexandria’s role as a powerhouse of science and learning, and focuses on the female mathematician, astronomer and philosopher Hypatia, the subject of the feature film Agora, starring Rachel Weisz.