Arts & Entertainment
The Fundamental Quandry
The events of 9-11 have changed cinema. These changes have been far ranging, from narrative construction and movement to the aesthetics of urgency.
Once Upon a Time: The Lunch Houses of Bollywood
The ideas of many great Hindi movies germinated in these lunch homes, the stomping grounds of the greatest film-wallahs.
Midnight's Children: Two Authors in Search of a Film
Rushdie and Mehta’s Midnight’s Children promises a doubled up feast for thought and senses before the theater goes dark.
Chumma Chumma De De
Indian society, post-globalisation may be wanting to make that critical, new-age, paradigm shift regarding morality, but still feel distinctly uncomfortable while discussing anything to do with sex.
Classic Hindi Melodies Make a Comeback
Be it in the film world or ad world, old melodies from the 1990s, 1980s and even earlier are striking the right chords with young music enthusiasts, who are loving and lapping up the snazzier and contemporary remixed versions of the tracks.
Celluloid Man: Past Without History
For Nair, the very existence of the past, even in its residual form was more important than constructing a discriminating history of cinema.
Writers Without Borders
This year, the Kumbh Mela of literary gatherings seemed to have morphed into an universe of literary outpourings spawning galaxies of thoughts and clusters of ideas around the academic magnets.
Being a Successful Poet is an Exercise in Obscurity
To some extent. Bombay is a mistress to many a lonely soul, its opiate histories and drunken peripheries have a natural intoxication.
Cartography is all About Imagination
My experience of Pakistan being firsthand gave me confidence to carry on and take any allegation of inferiority head on.
Notes From A Full Life
"From mastering an instrument, we ourselves became instruments of something that possessed us."
Pati Patni Aur Woh
Perhaps more than any other film-maker, Yash Raj Chopra (Dhool Ka Phool to Daag, Kabhie Kabhie, Silsila and his last Jab Tak Hai
Tips From Indian Nautch Dancers
Breaking rules, throwing them in the bin and recycling them and making something else from it” is the way to go.
The Dumbos of Bollywood
Is Bollywood dumb, lazy or plain indifferent to physical or psychological differences and uses them as a convenient soft target for laughs or tears?
Till Marriage Do Us Part
Happy everafter in holy matrimony, maybe. But sexy starlets divorce their fans when they hitch up.
Identity, Architecture, Modernity
Modernity as a concept is not something that should be, or is, exclusively generated in the West, but is also a product of time and place. Why should modernity be exclusively restricted to the standards used in the West?
Bollywood Comes of Age
Suddenly the traditional boy-meets-girl formula, accompanied by the attendant melodramatic hi-jinx, has given way to some semblance of realism in subject, story-telling and performance.
Mofussil India Sizzles
Are these films really the new cinema, worthy of the hype and celebration and the new directors really the new stars and trail-blazers offering pulsating, exciting, no-holds-barred, creative chutzpah that separates the real from the fluff?
Booming Fake Art
Fake works of masters have often been known to put international auction houses on the backfoot.
Ghost Walls Speak
How did archaeologists trace the ghost walls, which curiously is an archaeological term?
Feeling Music with Amjad Ali Khan
“When Amjad Ali Khan performs, he carries with him a deep human spirit, a warm feeling and a sense of caring.”
Bollywood’s Hollywood Fixation
Sure, Bollywood is on the rise, but as a global force that instantly demands and gets respect, awe, admiration and attention, sorry folks, Hollywood is the real thing.
To Hell With Bollywood
Even megastars like Amitabh Bachchan and Salman Khan are rebelling against Bollywood— the word that is.
Desi Ghee Incarnate
The star wrestler-actor Dara Singh embodied all that Indian-style clarified butter or “desi ghee” stands for — not least its potential for good honest home-grown strength and tenacity.
Romance Lost
Frankly, India of the late 1960s was totally unprepared for Rajesh Khanna. The film industry, blown out of its mind, christened him Superstar. Stardust, the new iconoclastic, irreverent and deliciously chatpata new film magazine on the block, baptized him the Phenomenon and sold out its maiden issue within days just via banners enquiring whether Rajesh will/has married his girlfriend (at that time) Anju Mahendru?
Tuning In to Tune Out
Music is the essential stressbuster for many Bollywood stars, trying to cope with erratic shooting schedules, hectic travel and long hours under the arclights, not to mention the unrelenting paparazzi gaze.
The Skinny on Ash’s Fat
Aishwarya’s figure is cause for global distress. The querry “Aishwarya figure”throws up over 4 million results on google.
Is the Sheen Rubbing Off The National Film Awards
“The National Awards, sadly, are no longer what they used to be, with the favoritism, regionalism,politics and quid-pro-quo rampant. However, compared to the scores of others they are still streets ahead.
Canned in Cannes
The awkward fact remains that although Bollywood is the world’s largest movie factory, we don’t register even a hiccup in this gala, global, mega feast. Historically we have been conditioned and programmed to believe that it’s not the winning or losing, but participation that is the key.
India Dances to Latino Beat
Dancers say the popularity of Latino dances lies in the inherent joyousness, the friendships it generates on the floor across cultural divides — and the free-flowing body language, open to improvisations.
Bringing Ganesh Down to Size
Dahibhavkar said that setting the height limit was a unanimous decision of representatives of all Ganeshotsav committees, social and public figures, artists and idol-makers.
IPL v Bollywood Clash of the Titans
The Indian Premier League is no longer perceived as a great threat for film releases.
Slumdog Millionaire Children’s Fairly Tale Ride Chugs On
The dream ride continues for Rubina Rafiq Qureshi and Azharuddin Ismail.
Why Serious Actresses Are Turning Item-Bombs
Possibly shaken up by these flops, she attempted to switch lanes, get adventurous and experiment with masala fare.
Bollywood’s Oscar Curse
Why does the most glamorous, celebrated and venerated award spurn Bollywood, the world’s largest film industry?
Are Rajasthani Celebrity Marriages Jinxed?
What’s with this place that causes celeb couples to embrace fatal attraction? Is it really a royal jinx for the glitterati, hypnotized by the color and romance of this amazing state, only to be doomed in their relationship?
Is Small the New Big in Bollywood?
The idiot screen overwhelms the idiot box, once the spot for cute, sweet, homely, intimate fare.
Goodbye, Mr Gambler
A fan and critic bids farewell to the most enduring — and handsome — of Bollywood’s romantic legends.
Why The Dirty Picture is 2011’s Hottest Pick
The fact that the movie was a thinly-veiled bio of the southern sex-bomb of the 1980s Silk Smitha added solid, lip-smacking spice.
