Happytimes!
I’m sure the resemblance between DVD cover for the Weinsteins flop “Nomad,” out July 24, and the hugely successful “300,” released by Warners a week later, is purely coincidental. “Nomad” was the first Kazakh submission for the Academy’s foreign-language Oscar. The Weinsteins, who bankrolled the film’s completion after the Kazakh government’s budget was exhausted by original director Ivan Passer and brought in Sergei Budrov to finish the flick, in their wisdom instead offered a dubbed English-language version of this historical war epic (starring American actors Jay Hernandez and Jason Scott Lee) for its very short-lived American release. For the DVD edition, both the Kazakh and English language tracks of this cross-cultural oddity are available.

