Sense and sensitivity

Kaveree Bamzai
These are disconcerting times. The other day I took an auto with my elder son, yet to turn 11. He whispered that the driver was wearing a headscarf. “So?” I asked. “He’s a Muslim,” he said in an agonised voice.

Every day, in every way, Muslims are being seen as the other. A discourse once restricted to Pravin Togadia is now every urban parent’s nightmare.

In a world where students as young as 10 are learning to live with weekly school visits by bomb disposal squads and children younger than that are learning that tiffin boxes can be time bombs, the “us versus them” is no longer an issue of people like them. It is a question staring people like us. In the face. At point-blank range.

The Voice Of India

A demure woman in a white sari still manages to capture the attention of the nation every time she sings or even speaks. She connects us to much that we hold dear in our musical tradition with a humility that is as remarkable as the genius from which it springs.
HARSH V. PANT ON LATA MANGESHKAR

Lata Mangeshkar, the greatest Indian songstress of all times, celebrated her 80th birthday on September 28. Every singer for the past six decades has been singing in the space, the vast terra infirma, charted by Lata’s voice. Listen to Ayega Aanewaala: Its freshness never abates; to listen it, even today, is to feel present at the birth of something new. Beginning of a journey. Beginning of the Indian film music as we have come to know and love. If Lata had given us nothing more, that would be enough.

Today when the wider soundscape of India is chaotically rich with experimental music, indie-rock shows soaked in hipster attitude, pop idols cavorting on HD monitors in malls, innumerable winners emerging from the ceaseless reality singing competitions, a demure woman in a white sari still manages to capture the attention of the nation every time she sings or even speaks. She connects us to much that we hold dear in our musical tradition with a humility that is as remarkable as the genius from which it springs.

Rot at the heart of Bollywood’s dazzle

Neelesh Misra, Hindustan Times
Mumbai, October 03, 2008

Not too far from where plush make-up vans for actors rented for Rs 10,000 a day choke movie sets in Film City, a minor issue was brought up last month: junior artistes — those who play minor roles or make up the numbers in crowd scenes — were scrounging for changing rooms and toilets.

Bollywood is on strike after thousands of workers stayed away on Tuesday, demanding better wages. Leaders of two main producers’ bodies — with 10,000 members — met workers’ leaders on Thursday, with no progress.

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Mimicry act starts around 1.10 minute mark

The real reel story is out: Kat is queen but comedy is king

New Delhi, September 24 Singh is Kinng rules, Jodhaa Akbar limps. But it’s Aamir who’s rewriting the rules of Bollywood, not Akshay — and not even SRK. Kat is queen, but Ash hasn’t quite gone away yet. And the future belongs a little more to Ranbir than to girlfriend Deepika — though Shahid has a definite Kismat Konnection here.
An all-India survey by research organisation C fore for the fifty-seventh anniversary issue of Screen shows nearly 2 out of 5 moviegoers between the ages of 18 and 35 enjoy mindless comedies the most. Romantic and action films are next: favourites with 34% and 16% respectively. Overall, new-generation multiplex flicks are overwhelming winners (73%) over Eighties’ arthouse cinema (27%).

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[Dedicated to all the girls in SB]

The Truth About Shopaholics
By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Staff Writer

The stereotypical shopaholic darting from store to store to pick up anything and everything while racking up a hefty credit-card bill is anything but stereotypical. They come in all shapes and sizes.

New research reveals while some super-shoppers spend to boost self-esteem and band-aid other perceived internal deficits, others’ carts are driven by plain-old materialism. Whatever the motivation, however, researchers mostly agree that buying behaviors can range from frivolous fun to serious addiction.

And, it seems, over-shopping is on the rise.

It’s all a MYTH
Men don’t cry. Men don’t read women’s magazines. lies, damned lies

Boys don’t cry:

Saif Ali Khan sobbed in Salaam Namaste, making Priety Zinta burst into peals of laughter.

Tough Men Don’t Dance:
Busted long, long ago, when a surprised Scarlett ’Hara in Gone With the Wind exclaims: “Oh, you waltz so well, Captain Butler. Most big men don’t, you know.”

Strugglers of Bollywood

18 Sep 2008, 1341 hrs IST, Vasundhara Sanger,TIMESOFINDIA.COM

MUMBAI: Before gaining iconic status, Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) used to have a small time shop in Delhi, Akshay Kumar was a cook in Bangkok and Vidya Balan featured in small ads. These are the examples that inspire thousands of aspiring actors who throng to Mumbai in pursuit of money and fame in Bollywood.

In reality, it’s only five percent of those who see their dreams reaching the level they set for themselves. Yet, braving all odds majority of the pack, labelled as “strugglers” in Bollywood parlance, continues to dream of becoming the next Amitabh Bachchan or SRK.

Stocks tumble amid new Wall Street landscape
By TIM PARADIS, AP Business Writer
6 minutes ago

NEW YORK - A stunning makeover of the Wall Street landscape sent stocks falling precipitously Monday, with the Dow Jones industrials losing 500 points in their worst slide since the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Investors recoiled after a shakeup of the financial industry that took out two storied names: Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co.

The pullback, which erased about $700 billion in shareholder wealth, occurred across much of the globe as investors absorbed Lehman’s bankruptcy filing and what was essentially a forced sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America for $50 billion in stock. While those companies’ situations had reached some resolution, the market remained anxious about American International Group Inc., which is seeking funding to shore up its balance sheet. A faltering of the world’s largest insurance company likely would have implications far beyond that of Lehman, already the largest U.S. bankruptcy in terms of assets.

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From pariah to pasha, a film journalist’s story
14 Sep 2008, 0322 hrs IST, Meena Iyer,TNN

Until very recently, it was terribly infra dig to be a film scribe. And one doesn’t have to be Einstein to figure why anyone associated with Tinselville was treated like an outcaste. “Back in the 1970s, it was always the filmis and the rest of the world,” says veteran film magazine editor Bharathi Pradhan. Naturally, the film journalist, someone who eked out a living following the lives of “men and women who danced and sang for their supper” was termed a bimbo and a parasite. “At social functions or on a flight, if I mentioned that I was a film journo, people would turn their faces from me as if I suffered from bad breath,” recalls a veteran film scribe who now works with a national daily. “Today, people follow me around asking if I know about A’s love life and whether B is gay.”

“Film news was treated with disdain,” says Gopal Panday, a well known Bollywood publicist from the 70s to the 90s. He recalls how mainstream papers would grudgingly let a film clip appear as a footnote in some remote corner of the paper. Another journalist recalls how it took Smita Patil’s sudden and untimely death for cinema to make it to the front page of newspapers. She died on December 13, 1986, in a time when front pages were weighted with politics, economics and international affairs.

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This post is dedicated to Rocky.

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Boy, oh boy!

Shubhra Gupta

August has been the saving of Bollywood. Both Singh Is Kinng, and Bachna Ae Haseeno have trumped the box office. With the success of Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na in July, it’s turning out to be a buoyant autumn for the Hindi film industry.

With the Rs 38 crore (figures put out by producer Vipul Shah) it raked in on its first weekend, Singh Is Kinng is being touted as the biggest opening in Bollywood for the current year. While that’s only as good as the next film which out-grosses Kinng, there’s no denying the sway Akki aka Akshay Kumar has over his fans. After last year’s triumphant march, when three of his films became big hits — Namaste London, Heyy Baby and Welcome, he’s turned into an unstoppable hit machine.

Scripting terror
9 Sep 2008, 0000 hrs IST, JYOTHI PRABHAKAR ,TNN

It came to the fore when the Ahmedabad blasts were compared to the film Contract, released only a short while before bombs tore through the Gujarat capital in uncanny resemblance to the plot of the movie.

The growing prevalence of terrorism as a theme in Bollywood films is perhaps, as filmmakers say, a response to its growing awareness in our lives, but they also argue that both, the treatment and depiction of terrorism, have undergone a marked change in films. With the makers of the most recent terror flicks – commercial and otherwise – explaining how things are different now, DT decodes the trend.

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Aamir-SRK swap roles
By Anand Vaishnav . Sep 05, 2008

In the early 90s when Bollywood was going through a crisis thanks to ageing heroes and shoddy action flicks, three actors (who shared a common last name) burst onto the screen and redefined trends forever. While Salman Khan has always been doing his own thing, Aamir and Shah Rukh successfully pushed boundaries and gave Bollywood some of its most memorable films.

For many years Aamir Khan was considered to be the serious, selective actor while SRK was always admired for his marketing genius. One was the method actor the other was the superstar. And this was the case for more than a decade. Both have given Bollywood some of its biggest hits but as SRK himself said “Aamir will be remembered for his films but mine will always make more money”.

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Bollywood divas never had it so good
Abhilasha Ojha / New Delhi September 03, 2008, 5:31 IST

FILMS: As film budgets get bigger, fees touch the million dollar mark.

In her heyday about ten years ago, Madhuri Dixit charged Rs 20 lakh per film. It was a sizeable amount and Dixit was a star not all producers could afford. Only topnotch production houses had pockets deep enough to sign her.

The next generation of filmdom women — Kajol, Preity Zinta, Urmila Matondkar and others — raised the bar to thrice the amount and producers gasped in awe when Aishwarya Rai demanded and got Rs 1 crore a couple of years ago.

Katrina: Bollywood’s new queen?
[For hardikg in SB]

Indo-Asian News Service

Wednesday, September 3, 2008: (New Delhi):

British-born actress Katrina Kaif has delivered six back-to-back hits, bagged several brand endorsements and is now a highly sought after heroine - all the qualities needed to be crowned the reigning actress in Bollywood, say film critics.