Of All the Beachfront Restaurants in India, She Walks Into Mine

Rick's Cafe is to become a bustling beach front restaurant in south India. The Tamil crisis is standing in for the second world war and Humphrey Bogart has been replaced by a rotund Malayalam actor with a thick black mustache.

It seems safe to assume that most viewers of Ezham Mudra, a film by Indian director Rajeev Nath, will be unaware that they are watching Casablanca in disguise. Nath's Asian interpretation starts shooting in Kerala next month, with Suresh Gopi and Mandira Bedi in the roles immortalized by Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. "My film will be a tribute to the original," he told Reuters. "As a student of film, I have watched this great classic 20 times."

Casablanca starred Bogart as a nightclub boss who helps Bergman and her husband escape the Nazis. In Nath's version, the hero is a restaurateur who aids a pair of Tamil Tigers in their fight against the Sri Lankan authorities. But Nath said that his film would not take an overt political stance. "I am not in any way commenting on Tamil militancy, whether it is good or bad," he insisted. "I am only using it as the backdrop to tell my story."

Casablanca has inspired its share of rum homages, with the plot serving as the basis for Barb Wire, starring Pamela Anderson as a scantily clad bounty hunter.

A recent poll by the American Film Institute named Casablanca as the third greatest motion picture ever made. Barb Wire failed to make the chart.