Itunes Bazodee

IF you’re searching for something to do this Saturday, how about curling up with a copy of Bazodee via Itunes. When Bazodee was released in 2016 it created a stir among local audiences. The movie, starring reigning Road March King Machel Montano, is now expanding its reach and will be available on the popular Itunes platform from today.

Itunes might just be the first of many spaces you can find the 2016 movie on. But there are also plans, Montano’s mother, Elizabeth Montano said, to have it on other platforms such as Netflix. The movie is being distributed through international distributor Sarah Finn. Contracts with other platforms, she said, were being worked on.

Montano also said to Newsday, via a phone interview yesterday, that Machel and his team plan to have the movie available online, via his website, for TT and other markets.

If wanted as a keepsake, the movie, Montano added, is also available for purchase as DVD at local CD and DVD shops across the country.

Of the movie, a 2016 Billboard article says, Bazodee “directed by Peabody Award-winning, multiple Emmy nominee Todd Kessler (Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues) and set against the multi-colored masquerade and joyous soca and steelpan sounds intrinsic to Trinidad’s carnival, Bazodee is a Bollywood-influenced musical based on Montano’s songs. Montano’s Lee De Leon, an Afro-Trinidadian soca singer, returns home from London disheartened by his stalled career; he meets Anita Panchouri (Natalie Perera) the daughter of a wealthy Indian businessman (veteran Indian actor Kabir Bedi) who encourages him to continue. Montano rerecorded many of his songs for Bazodee as duets between Lee and Anita, to portray their dizzying love (Bazodee, in Trinidadian parlance) for each other despite her engagement to Bharat (Staz Nair, Game of Thrones) and the existing divisions between segments of Trinidad’s dominant African and Indian populations.”

Actor Chris Smith who played Bud in the movie said one could pre-order the movie, like he did but would only be able to view it from today. For him, this is a possible first for a local movie as the local film industry expands its wings. The movie appearing on this platform is important since it is currently the trend in the entertainment industry, Smith noted.

He said, “A lot more people are foregoing the movie experience to have immediate access to films and other forms of entertainment on their devices. It is more convenient for them. They are willing to invest money in doing that. It makes sense.”

While some of us might wonder if there would be another part to the Lee De Leon (Montano) and Anita Panchouri (Natalie Perera) story, Smith said the cast members have not heard any official word about a sequel.

But, “amongst ourselves, there is a definite need to want to search the characters, to work within the environment that the Bazodee production crew created because it was a unique one for a lot of us, a first time for a few of us to be working at that level of professionalism and production. Among us there has been that want and desire but there has not been anything official or no official discussion toward the actors of a sequel.”

But who knows what Montano has in store. When asked if Machel had another movie in train, Montano said, Machel already had a script for another movie.