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Magazine| Jun 22, 2009

Tribute: Beyond The Fourth Wall

SHAMA ZAIDI ON HABIB TANVIR
During the last few days I have been remembering Habib Tanvir over the years, ever since we first met in 1954. It’s like leafing through an old family album of faded photographs. I knew Habib through his interaction with three people in my family who at various times were important in his life. The first was my eccentric uncle Zulfiqar Bokhari who was the director of the Bombay station of All India Radio (AIR). In 1945 Habib left Aligarh without completing his Masters degree to join the Bombay film industry as an actor. Zulfiqar mamu asked him to work for AIR as a producer and actor. I don’t know whether he learnt anything about radio broadcasting while on the job, but it certainly whetted his appetite for becoming an actor. And like many who were influenced by Zulfiqar mamu, Habib adopted his style of accentuated dialogue delivery, something he was to retain throughout his life. For a while Habib copied mamu’s “afro” hairstyle as well. The radio stint didn’t last too long because Zulfiqar mamu opted for Pakistan in 1947 and went back to his hometown, Lahore. Habib then turned to doing odd jobs, writing for films and advertisement shorts, editing various journals and “struggling” to become an actor.

As a top teen model, Sara Ziff was earning the kind of money her school friends could only dream of. But there was a price to pay. She tells Louise France why she has made a documentary about what really happens behind the cameras.

Read the complete piece HERE

Youtube video on the film:

Some interesting-soundlng “little” films here:

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Sometimes, too much Bollywood can be a bad thing:

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This piece originally appeared in the October 2006 issue of HIMAL; because that site is no longer available, I requested the article from the author so that it could be permanently available here - Qalandar

The heartland values of Bhojpuri cinema

As Bollywood’s Hindi productions spin away to cater to the upper classes and NRIs, Bhojpuri films take the audiences back to an era of family values – where the underdog becomes victorious, and where the ‘masses’ rediscover respect.

By Latika Neelakantan

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(will post some other photos separately)…

I had initially thought all this would be resolved a long long time ago, but seeing as it hasn’t been, I wanted to give my side of things prior to leaving for india and pakistan for a couple of weeks.

First, as Joe DiMaggio supposedly told Paul Simon when he ran into him, I haven’t gone anywhere. What had happened was that I was upset about RKS leaving as a fallout of accusations of bias, hysteria, calls for banning this or that member, conspiracy theories, and the like. There should be no misunderstanding: for me this was NOT about RKS per se (it’s a free world, and who could blame him for wanting a break from all this?!), but about the notion that slander and innuendo could “force out” anyone. IMO this would set a bad precedent. And I didn’t think I could continue until Rohit took a stand in support of the man he had made moderator.

Second, note that the crucial word above is “Rohit”. That is who I was looking to, that is who I was holding responsible. Not any members — because it’s a free forum and everyone has a right to his or her views. Initially I fully expected that Rohit would agree with me, but as days went by with radio silence from his end, I grew dismayed. I recognize NG doesn’t pay anyone’s bills, and one is busy with work, responsibilities etc. However, that is not a sufficient explanation. It simply is not. A few lines could have been written. A gesture of support to the moderator left out to dry ought to have been made. (No one need bother responding on this point, because I am not going to be debating this issue. I feel convinced.) There is plenty of responsibility to go around, but this is an element of it.

Third, shortly after I communicated my perspective to RKS, he approached me about the possibility of me being one of a panel of moderators. I said I didn’t have a problem with that, BUT that I had certain conditions — basically I wanted RKS to also be part of the panel (again because I was concerned that NG not set a precedent whereby any x number of members leads to a modertaor-switch), and I wanted more teeth/power than RKS had (or, than I think RKS had; I do not know the exact arrangement between him and Rohit), because I didn’t want to be accountable to Rohit (otherwise, I quite frankly didn’t see the point). Rohit ultimately seemed ok with this — but then when days and days dragged on without any announcement or resolution, I began to think that perhaps he didn’t like the idea (for instance, I had asked for the power to ban or suspend members; recognizing this is a last last resort, I feel that one can have little authority absent the power to enforce. Shutting down threads because x or y mis-behaves is simply stupid: it in fact gives the power to the person who is misbehaving, and everyone else suffers (a bit like telling the guy holding hostages that you’ll shoot the hostages if he doesn’t surrender!); Rohit might not be comfortable giving me that power — fine, I totally respect that point of view. But then I wouldn’t want to be moderator; there is no element of blackmail/pressure here at all: I have my conditions, shared with the powers-that-be in advance, and now publicly with all of you). I still remain unsure as to what Rohit’s plan is.

A piece from a few years ago, by Vikram Chandra (author of a fantastic novel, Sacred Games; also wrote Mission Kashmir, and is Tanuja Chandra’s brother), that bears on some of the recent NG discussions on Slumdog Millionaire, among others. — Qalandar

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Thanks to goodfella for the shout — qalandar

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Extract:

“…The drama is set in the 17th century as two Jesuit priests face violence and persecution when they travel to Japan to locate their mentor and to spread the gospel of Christianity.

“Silence” is based on the Shusaku Endo novel, which was adapted by Jay Cocks. Scorsese has had the project on his radar for more than a decade.”

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Masochism is a strange phenomenon: it leads some to (by now) hackneyed handcuffs, whips, candlewax etc. But some, such as yours truly, are led to the likes of WAFAA, Rajesh Khanna’s first film in quite a while. Its, um, story centers on Amrit Chopra (Rajesh Khanna), a middle-aged tycoon (with just about blonde hair) married to Beena (variously identified in the media as Laila Khan or Sanaa Khan, or even Pakistani actress Saara Khan). Although the couple apparently had a happy sex life during the first couple of years of their marriage, Amrit’s asthma attacks mean that he is unable to make love to his wife, leaving her extremely unhappy and bitter. And leaving Amrit’s driver extremely happy (especially when Beena’s repeated attempts to get her husband to perform end up with him wheezing and weepy, and Beena running downstairs to the driver’s room).

Ultimately, the truth will out, and Amrit discovers his wife’s infidelity, setting in motion — well we wouldn’t want to give away a spoiler now, would we? Director Rakesh Sawant (Rakhi Sawant’s brother; it’s unclear who the film’s producer is, with reports referring to him as “Krishna Kumar”, or “Shambhu Pandey”) believes WAFAA is a serious exploration of the problems that can arise when there are large age differences within a marriage; the director was apparently irked by the happy portrayals of such relationships in films like Cheeni Kum and Nishabd (raising serious questions about whether Sawant has ever seen Nishabd). Incredibly, Sawant has even been quoted as saying that the film is based on Rajesh Khanna’s own marriage to Dimple Kapadia.

OK, I’ve kept a straight face as long as I can: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha — this film is so incredible it has to be seen. Each and every member of the cast is so uniformly awful (including a couple of kids who only have one dialogue in the film), that it beggars belief, beginning with the man at the top. I won’t say more, out of respect for the phenomenon Khanna once was, but suffice it to say that I hope some financial difficulty lay behind his decision to do this film; I would hate to believe that the man who generated fan hysteria at his peak that was arguably never matched, before or since, decided to do this film for the heck of it. Ms. Khan is stunning, her dialogue delivery and expression so appalling it is consistently comical. Only Sudesh Berry and Tinnu Anand bring some semblance of sanity to these proceedings, playing cops with their usual mediocrity. Sawant might not be completely talentless as a filmmaker, and might just be let down by a crappy set-up here — but since he wrote the script (oh hang it, I’ll give away the spoiler: the twist is loosely borrowed from the 1954 French classic Les Diaboliques (yup, that is the only time you’ll read Clouzot’s and Sawant’s name in the same sentence) he can hardly duck his responsibility. A word about the music: I don’t know who the music director is, but the album features one rather incongruous Indian classical-inspired number that is unquestionably the best thing about this film. Ultimately, although I laughed intermittently throughout the film, watching it was a sad experience indeed — a reminder that the movie business is a rough business indeed.

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I had predicted this in 2005; don’t know if this particular story is true or not but I do see her in politics one day:

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Sorry guys, no full-fledged review. I was going to dedicate my review to Gabber, but after watching it a the New York premiere earlier this evening, I decided I liked Gabber too much to do so.

For months, I’d been saying on NG that the one thing that worried me about Chandni Chowk to China’s box-office prospects was that in recent years, the audience hadn’t taken well to zany, spoofish humor, as demonstrated by the fates of Tashan, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, and Jaaneman. But I wasn’t unduly worried about the quality of the film (after all, I’d quite liked each of the three films mentioned above).

Well folks, I was right on one count and wrong on the other. Having watched the film, I remain unsure about its box office prospects (I hope the film does well, but I can’t say I expect it to do so). But I was wrong in expecting to enjoy this film. Dead wrong.

Chandni Chowk to China is, not to put too delicate a point to it, pretty darn bad. In the first instance, it is unsure about what kind of film it wants to be; unlike a Jaaneman which started out spoofy and ended up sober, or an Om Shanti Om or Tashan which also devoted their second halves to getting serious, Chandni Chowk preserves a schizophrenic identity throughout. It cannot be dismissed as a spoof, as it takes its masala roots and moments (right from amnesia to bichday huay bachchay to backstabbing mentors) quite seriously — and yet just about each and every one of these
moments is rudely interrupted by a farcical moment, a manufactured attempt to evoke laughs, that quite simply spoils the mood. The film never recovers from this, because these two personalities are never integrated into a seamless whole, and the masala moments — the one thing this film had going for them — that seem poised to move the audience come crashing back to earth.

[Dedicated to Arun, who was fool enough to ask for it -- Qalandar]

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[This one's for Gabber; scroll down and you'll see what I mean -- Qalandar]
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My Bollywood Close-Up
Working as an extra in Mumbai’s Film City.
By David Segal
Posted Thursday, Jan. 8, 2009, at 12:54 PM ET

My big Bollywood break came while I was walking down a side street in Mumbai, talking on a cell phone to a man named Imran.
“How many people with you?” he asked.
“Just me.”
“No problem. You got long hair, short hair?”
“No hair,” I said.
“No problem. You how old?
“Forty-four.”
“No problem. OK, meet tomorrow at the Bandra train station, west ticket counter. Eight a.m., work till 8 p.m. Give you food, makeup, costume, transport. Pay 500 rupees. Put you in Bollywood movie, OK?”!
You could call Imran a freelance talent scout for the film indu stry of India, except—as our interview suggests—he’s not looking for talent. He’s looking for white people. Bollywood requires a few dozen Western extras every day, to add vérité to crowd scenes in ostensibly exotic locales. Imran’s job is to find foreigners and chaperon them to Film City, an expansive badlands of rocks and shrubs at the northern edge of this megalopolis, where most of India’s movies are made. I got his phone number through a reporter in Delhi, but usually he finds you, trolling local tourist sites.
Slate V: Escape From Bollywood
Until recently, Imran had an easy job. He and his underlings could meet and enlist as many as 50 extras with a day’s notice, no problem. But that was before Nov. 26, when a group of heavily armed men went on a sadistic, three-day rampage that ended with 163 dead. Since then, the tourism business all across India has essentially flat-lined. During a recent three-week trip through the! country, I saw way more armed guards than Europeans and scarcely any Americans. Every large and pricey hotel now has a private security detail, and you can’t get near the front door until the undercarriage of your car has been checked for bombs and all your luggage has been wanded. The creepy part is that once you’re waved through, it’s often just you and the staff in a huge and empty lobby.
Every corner of the tourist economy is suffering, Imran’s included. “It’s the worst I’ve ever seen it,” he told me.
So, good news, all you laid-off American workers: Bollywood is hiring. If Plans B, C, and D don’t work out here in the United States, remember, there’s a guy in Mumbai who can use you tomorrow. And the day after that, and the day after that. There are, of course, easier ways to earn what amounts to $10.50 for a day’s work. But none of those jobs involves tacky outfits or close proximity to celebrities you’ve never heard of. And it’s hard to imagine another job! that ends with a grown man pouring bottled water on your head and ste rnly instructing, “Just walk normal!” as the camera begins to roll.
The day started at Bandra Station, where I was immediately spotted by a lanky 24-year-old employee of Imran’s named Sikander. He bought me a ticket and we both jumped onto a northbound train that seemed to come straight out of Slumdog Millionaire and which, even on a Saturday morning, was packed with commuters. We got off a few miles north, at Goregaon Station, then hopped in a tiny auto-rickshaw, which took us the last few miles, over a bumpy dirt road. When we reached the entrance to Film City, I was expecting something show-bizzy—some lights, a few signs, anything. Bollywood produces more than 900 movies a year, grossing billions of dollars, and this is the creative epicenter of the business, the home of nearly every back lot. But there’s just two desultory guards and a gate, which was raised without any check of ID’s.
Everything about Bollywood, it turns out, is ramshackle and impr! ovised. The area around the set looked like some bargain lover’s idea of summer camp—a dirt road, a bunch of wood buildings with tin roofs. I was promptly delivered to the costume department, where men speaking Hindi started draping me with a variety of dress shirts, ties, and dated-looking business suits. I’d been pegged immediately as “middle-aged business dork” and ended up in a pink striped shirt, a thin black tie, and a tight suit of green and blue fabric that looked like industrial carpeting. I assumed from my outfit—wrongly, as it happens—that the movie was set in the ’70s.
The only other Westerner to show up was a 26-year-old from Buenos Aires named Maia, whom they put in a colorful frumpy dress with a big red rose in the middle of the neckline. “I look like a clown!” she shouted. “Why do they want me to look like a clown?”
We waited for 45 minutes until we were fetched by a production staffer. He brought us to a massive, two-story structure in the! middle of a field that was covered in a black tarp and draped, here a nd there, with ropes; it looked like a half-hearted Christo. Ushered through a flap opening, we saw a vast sound stage done up to look like the lobby of a luxury hotel with a serious drainage problem. The lobby was under 4 feet of water. Why? We didn’t know. But there were 25 actors already waist-deep in this man-made pond, and they were a bizarre menagerie—a guy dressed like Fu Manchu, a waiter, a bell boy, women in bright purple saris, women in T-shirts, fat guys, thin guys, old men.

“Get in,” said our handler.

I waded into a spot next to a very attractive couple, near the camera floating in the middle of the room, correctly guessing they were the stars. I learned their names afterward. The woman, sporting a tight black body suit, was Katrina Kaif, and among her recent achievements was turning Katrina into the most Googled word in India. The guy was Akshay Kumar, one of the biggest male leads in the business. (”He is basically our Tom Cruise,” a pr! oduction guy told me later.) He wore a pink “Mickey Rat” T-shirt.
Someone handed me a silver briefcase. A brown-haired elderly man beside me said, “Hold tight!” I thought he was giving me an acting tip—you know, my motivation. You’re a businessman, this is your work. Actually, he was terrified that the case was going to fly out of my hands and hit him in the head. For good reason.
“A wave coming,” he said in a thick accent. A wave? “Yes, big wave. Over there.”
For the first time, I noticed a huge wall of aluminum sheeting at a 45 degree angle at the far end of the room. This hotel flood was just getting started! A small fleet of water trucks was parked outside, ready to pump a mini-tsunami into the lobby.