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Anil Dharker

http://www.dnaindia.com/opinion/column_colour-of-shame_1359492
Many accusations have been hurled at MF Husain, especially in the recent past. The latest one suggests that he has done something reprehensible by accepting Qatar citizenship. This would be laughable if it weren’t so outrageous. All you have to do is to look at what’s happened in the last 15 years.
Yes, it’s been [...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/08/oscars-2010-kathryn-bigelow-women-in-film
Oscars 2010: is Kathryn Bigelow’s victory a win for women?Kathryn Bigelow is the first woman to win an Oscar for best director. But is Hollywood really changing?
After every Oscar ceremony, observers traditionally attempt to distil a zeitgeisty trend from the proceedings, and the one available here would appear to be obvious. Yesterday, on International Women’s [...]

http://www.boxofficeindia.com/npages.php?page=shownews&articleid=1563&nCat=news
The next two months will see small and medium budget releases and there may be a few box office surprises but all eyes will be on Housefull which is expected to get summer season going at the ticket counters.
The promo which premiered with Karthik Calling Karthik on Friday has seen a good response from [...]

Starring: Farhan Akhtar, Deepika Padukone, Ram Kapoor, Shefali Shah
Director: Vijay Lalwani
The single-most important challenge while attempting a thriller is to keep it engaging till the end. On that count, Karthik Calling Karthik most definitely succeeds. It makes for edge-of-the-seat entertainment and the suspense is maintained throughout. This itself should be as a triumph of sorts [...]

http://www.boxofficeindia.com/npages.php?page=shownews&articleid=1547&nCat=news
My Name Is Khan has dropped over its second weekend with business of around 11 crore nett. This takes the film’s ten day business to 57 crore nett.
The multiplexes in metroes are faring well as well as multiplexes in Muslim centres. Despite the drop over the second weekend the film has emerge a solid hit [...]

Decent article that points at how the film may not have realised its goal of reaching out to an international audience. I also agree with him about Karan Johar’s direction being extremely ‘heavy-handed’ throughout
http://www.mumbaimirror.com/article/54/201002212010022102043622be51ce0/Why-MNIK-can%E2%80%99t-cross-over.html
Karan Johar’s My Name is Khan is uni-dimensional, as it loses the nuances of the fabric of America, especially in its simplistic [...]

Starring: Tabu, Sharman Joshi, Vatsal Sheth, Ayub Khan, Yuvika, Himani Shivpuri
Director: Kedarh Shinde

At a time when most of Bollywood is mostly dominated by large-scale extravaganzas, smallish films exploring a middle class ethos can be charming to watch, if they care to etch their characters with care and depict the ordinariness of life in interesting ways. [...]

http://sandhyai.blogspot.com/2010/02/review-my-name-is-khan.html
What happens when you try to take a leap higher than what one’s legs allow? You obviously fall. With My Name Is Khan, Karan Johar tries his hand at a subject that he is clearly not equipped to handle. But like an overzealous eater who orders too much without judging well his appetite and [...]

Valentine’s Day
Dir: Garry Marshall
Starring: Julia Roberts, Jamie Foxx, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Hector Elizondo and Shirley Maclaine among many others
Rating: **
Valentine’s Day is like one of those dates where you sit through disinterestedly without much caring what comes out of it. And this is not what one expects from a luscious-looking ensemble film that [...]

Shiv Sena attacks cinemas due to screen ‘My Name Is Khan’
Mumbai, Feb 9 (IANS) Shiv Sena activists Tuesday attacked several places that will screen Shah Rukh Khan’s “My Name Is Khan”, barely an hour after Mumbai Police assured full security at the 63 cinemas and multiplexes that will showcase the movie.
Sena mobs attacked [...]

Aamir Khan starrer 3 Idiots, that has gone on to become the biggest hit in Hindi film history, has helped multiplexes recover from the two-month strike last year.
3 Idiots — which takes a critical look at the education system in the country — has already earned more than Rs.382 crore (Rs.3.82 billion/$82 million) worldwide since [...]

Ok, the countdown begins. Twitter is buzzing with reactions for the film. So far one negative response from Sagarika Ghose (CNN-IBN) against several positive ones – though mostly from stars and others of the Kjo-Srk camp. So where is this highly anticipated film heading?
Likely Scenarios

Why is it that Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice enjoys such a place of pride in the history of literary annals? The book has been re-imagined for the screen at least thrice, once as mini-series on BBC, which is still considered the most definitive adaptation of Austen’s classic. Yet, the fascination for it remains and [...]

Starring: Naseeruddin Shah, Vidya Balan, Arshad Warsi
Director: Abhishek Chaubey
Rating: **1/2

There is a cliché about how some filmmakers get so consumed with getting the look of their film right, working towards that perfect camera angle and shot, that many a times the soul of their film is lost. Vishal Bharadwaj, for some time now, has been [...]

Starring: Salman Khan, Mithun Chakraborty, Zarine, Jacky Shroff, Sohail Khan, Puru Rajkumar among others
Director: Anil Sharma
Rating: ***

At a time when Bollywood isn’t willing to look beyond light comedies and frothy romances for box-office and other reasons, Veer is literally a brave departure from that trend. Also, considering that historicals and period dramas turn out to [...]

A bit late in the day, but still…:-)
Music Composers: Shankar-Ehsaan- Loy

If there’s one thing that has been a constant with Karan Johar, it has been his terrific music sense. His has a ready, keen ear for breezy, peppy chart-busters — It’s Time To Disco or Kaal Dhamaal, You are My Soniya, Rock N Rock [...]

This is an interview that my colleague Renu Dhole did a few months back. I has put it up at SS. http://satyamshot.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/on-sanjay-kaks-jashn-e-azadi-director-interview-and-footage/
But now that we are discussing the plight of Kashmiri Pundits and other marginalised sections in India – in the context of MNIK – I thought this would add to the discussion.

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Siddharth, who made a splash with Rang De Basanti, returns with Striker again. He talks to Sandhya Iyer on why he stayed away from Hindi films all this while and how he has enormous hopes from Striker
Siddharth, as the brooding cynic in Rang De Basanti, became an immediate sensation when the film released in [...]

Director: Ken Ghosh
Starring: Shahid Kapoor, Genelia D’Souza
Stars: **

Director Ken Ghosh is best known for some of the wacky music videos he made in the 90s – one of them being the quirky Roop Tera Mastana remix where you had a housewife dancing with a broom in hand. Ghosh has a sense of the ludicrous, which [...]