Archive for Qalandar

Shocking news, and in a city which hadn’t experienced this sort of horror to date.

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Maddy bags 4-film deal with Adlabs
Author: Upala KBR Date: 10 May 2008

Madhavan in Control mere haath mein hai! A still from 13B
Madhavan’s marketing acumen is what has pushed producers Adlabs to sign him on for four more films. Says Saurabh Varma, Chief Marketing Officer Adlabs, “We are impressed with Madhavan’s performance and marketing skills in 13B and are in talks of him signing him for more films.”

What’s Madhavan’s contribution to the film? Varma says, “When you sign a marketing expert who is also the hero of the film, we are shaping up the best talent. He makes an amazing contribution to the team and brings huge energy to the table right from how one can exploit the film through various means and methods to international promotion, internet, TV, radio everything to marketing strategies.”

Madhavan adds, “I like to design all my projects when complete. Once the script is locked with the director, I don’t touch it. It’s important to have a marketing strategy in place as markets are evolving today and aiming at a target audience. I like to get involved in every aspect of marketing. I had done it for Ramji Londonwaley and all my south films. In fact, in the south, I make sure my contracts have my dates divided number of days for shooting and number of days for promotion. I expect other artists to do the same.”

That makes him an Aamir Khan, then. Maddy says, “I have a long way to go before I get compared to him. I have always idolised Aamir the way he’s works and the energy he devotes to all his projects.”

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Outlook
May 05, 2008
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Window Next Door
NAMRATA JOSHI
Three Pakistani films come to India, crossing over many kinds of boundaries

Nomi is fair, blue-eyed and handsome in his designer stubble. The engaging youngster plays pranks on village elders, flirts with his kohl-eyed sweetheart, Salma, and dreams of her prancing around in a sexy ghagra-choli with her dupatta blowing in the wind. The lovers sing mushy songs (Nomi nu Salma naal, Salma nu Nomi naal…Pyaar pyaar pyaar…) in picturesque fields, their attire changing with every beat. Samir is the guy Salma has been betrothed to in childhood. He also sports a fashionable stubble but is a BSc fail, cigarette-smoking, disco-dancing wastrel. He has a bohemian, TV executive girlfriend, who swings her bare midriff better than Esha Deol in Dhoom, dances next to the pool in itsy-bitsy outfits and, much to Samir’s irritation, gets pregnant soon thereafter.

Sounds like a frothy new flick coming soon to a multiplex near you? Only this isn’t Bollywood; it’s yet another Pakistani film, Mohabbatan Sachiyaan, which hits Indian cinema halls next weekend. The differences from a masala Bollywood film are hard to tell, apart from the Punjabi lingo and the unfamiliar faces of the lead players. The lovers are mirror images of Raj and Simran in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jaayenge. In DDLJ the hero called the heroine senorita, while here it’s the villain who calls her that. The eloping-on-the-bike scene is vintage Bobby, and the juxtaposition of rural innocence with degenerate, mechanised, urban relationships is a theme played out in many of our movies.

[Thanks to goodfella for bringing this to my attention…

…and dedicated to JasonTodd and Kash, or, more appropriately in this context, Two Face — Qalandar]

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…or, what I consider the most important bits…

[Inspired by Akshay Shah’s review of Trishul — and dedicated to him, satyam, Ravibhai, ILG, abzee, Arun, and Rocky.]

April 10, 2008
Books of The Times
What Emancipation Didn’t Stop After All
By JANET MASLIN

SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME

By Douglas A. Blackmon

Illustrated. 468 pages. Doubleday. $29.95.
In “Slavery by Another Name” Douglas A. Blackmon eviscerates one of our schoolchildren’s most basic assumptions: that slavery in America ended with the Civil War. Mr. Blackmon unearths shocking evidence that the practice persisted well into the 20th century. And he is not simply referring to the virtual bondage of black sharecroppers unable to extricate themselves economically from farming.

scan18.pdf

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