Dil Se Re…

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Jai Ho Rocks America’s Got Talent

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Slumdog Millionaire Triumphant On The Red Carpet

AR Rahman- Oscars 2009

A R Rahman, now know as Mozart Of Madras,  picks up three Oscars  for his work in Danny Boyle’s Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire. Rahman is the third Indian to win an Oscar, after costume designer Bhanu Athaiya for her work in Gandhi in 1983 and director Satyajit Ray in 1992.

“I just want to thank again the whole crew of Slumdog Millionaire, especially Danny Boyle, for giving me such a great opportunity,” he said, while accepting the award.

Slumdog Millionaire took the best-picture Academy Award and seven other Oscars today, including director for Danny Boyle, whose ghetto-to-glory story paralleled the film’s unlikely rise to Hollywood’s summit. It was a big winner at the Golden Globe Awards. It won film of the year and two other awards at the Richard Attenborough Film Awards, voted on by British critics. The movie has British director, producer, writer and studio. Nevertheless India has claimed it as its own perhaps because of the cast, crew, and location.

Here is the script of the film Slumdog Millionaire.

However the film has not been much loved in India. Not only did the film failed to capture the imaginations of Indian film goers; it’s also been dogged by controversy over its name and the treatment of its child stars. Some have called it poverty-porn.

Residents of a Mumbai slum show their displeasure over the name of the hit film Slumdog Millionaire in a protest outside the office the film's co-star, Anil Kapoor.

“If ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ projects India as Third World dirty underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations,” leading actor Amitabh Bachchan said in a posting on his blog  from Paris, France. “Its just that the ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ idea authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a westerner, gets creative global recognition,” he added.”The commercial escapist world of Indian cinema had vociferously battled for years, on the attention paid and the adulation given to the legendary Satyajit Ray… and not a word of appreciation for the entertaining mass-oriented box office blockbusters that were being churned out from Mumbai. “Ray portrayed reality. While, the other – escapism, fantasy and incredulous posturing. Unimpressive for Cannes and Berlin and Venice (film festivals),” he explained.

Smile Pinky: Best Documentary Short Subject

While Slumdog Millionaire won eight  Oscars, it’s not the only film shot in India that was nominated and won. A 40-minute documentary about an eight-year-old girl Pinky Sonkar from Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh, Smile Pinky by American filmmaker Magan Mylan has also been nominated for Best Documentary.

Pinky had stopped smiling, even stopped going to school because she was ashamed of her cleft lip, a deformity 35,000 children are born with in India every year. Then this year, The Smile Train arrived in Pinky’s village and her world changed forever. The story was captured by American filmmaker Magan Mylan for the world in a film he called Smile Pinky. While Pinky was getting ready getting her passport and visa ready to walk on the red carpet, she did not know why. Pinky’s mother could not watch the Oscar ceremony since she does not have access to television set.

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JhatPat Bol: Cinema

Sanjay Dutt Joins Samajwadi Party

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Bright Ray

Satyajit Ray at 5

This was published in India Today in January 1979. The text of the article in India Today :

Bright Ray

As a child, Satyajit Ray, the world famous filmmaker, never once thought that he would make films. He grew up in his ancestral mansion in Calcutta, drawing and painting. He would doodle the long summer afternoons away hoping that his attempted portraits and cartoons would appear in his family’s famous children’s magazine Sandesh. As a Brahmin, his family regarded the cinema and theater as frivolities.

His first boyhood wonder was his father’s printing press. He remembers having been lifted up to look through the ground-glass view finder of the tall halftone camera. He often visited Shantiniketan where he played with Rabindranath Tagore’s grand-daughter.

He has fond memories of the florist’s shop in New Market and stately horse-drawn carriages giving way to automobiles. As a child, all he wanted when he grew up was to be a painter.

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Jhat Pat Bol: Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi

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First Day First Show: Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi

It is a Rs 22 crore movie. Expectations were high for other reasons. One, it was Aditya Chopra’s comeback after eight years of Mohabattein and thirteen years of Dilwale Dulhaniya Lejayenge . Well, that does not come as a surprise. After giving a hit like (DDLJ), one is virtually competing against oneself! Not sure if there is a follow up formula to the ‘love’ formula.

Two, it is a Shahrukh Khan movie. He did have sole responsibility in holding the storyline. In fact it is two Sharukh Khan movies in ONE.

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi Released Today.

Set in Amritsar around the Golden Temple, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, touches everything that is normal, everything that is way of life in ordinary people’s lives, nothing that you do not know or have not seen in your everyday lives. In fact at times it feels that it has been shot close to home.

The movie starts off on a very old and beaten road- groom does not show up, father finds the first possible match for his daughter from the crowd assembled for the ‘other’ wedding. There starts the one sided love affair, the life of a mismatched couple Surinder Sahni (Shahrukh Khan) and Taani (Anushka Sharma).

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JhatPat Bol: Cinema

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What’s All The Racket About The Magic Racquet?

Leander Paes, who has saved India from several Davis Cup disasters and a medal hope at the Beijing Olympic Games in August, is going to play a miracle man who helps school kids in cartoon television series called The Magic Racquet.

Not much has been disclosed about the story line. Paes will play roughly his own age and will sport tennis gear. The story will revolve around a school with three to five central characters between the age group of 6 to 10. There are also plans to include other sporting stars as guests in a few episodes since the objective is to promote sports in general.

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Jaya finds her roots in Bengali Lovesongs

Kolkata is celebrating Jaya Bachchan’s latest in Bengali cinema Lovesongs -Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. However Bengali has been used sparsely in this movie; English being predominant language for the film. Based on the story by the Director itself, the film centers on 64-year-old Mridula Chatterjee (Jaya Bachchan) She is an independent, cheerful, fun-loving widow who runs an NGO for disabled people in Kolkata. The film is woven through Mridula’s unspooling her past which turns into a process of deep introspection and self-discovery, helping her to understand the choices she had to make.

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The Famous Five Are Back With New Jyoti

Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five have undergone a radical 21st-century makeover for a new Disney cartoon series Famous Five: On The Case. The members of the new Famous Five are children of the original five created in 1942 – team leader Julian, Dick, George, Anne and the dog Timmy. They are Jo, Max, Allie and Dylan together with their pet dog, Timmy.

The kids share their parents’ love of adventure and mystery-solving. However unlike their parents they are iPod-wearing children who fight off their enemies using mobile phones and other modern-day gadgets, and uncover plots like a pirate DVD factory, whose owner, a phony environmentalist, has been embedding subliminal messages in the discs to brainwash children.

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Anthony, We Love You

Shekhar Kappor who was in India for preproduction of his new film Paani, had to fly back to USA unexpectedly. He has been asked to direct the movie New York, I Love You that the acclaimed Academy Award winning Director, playwright and screenwriter, Anthony Minghella of The English Patient and Cold Mountain fame, was making before his death last week.

Anthony Minghella died on 18 March 2008 of a hemorrhage in Charing Cross Hospital, London, following an operation the previous week to remove cancer of the tonsils and neck

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Madhubala: Screen to Stamp

Venus of the Indian screen Madhubala is honored by Indian Postal Service: on 18 March 2008 a stamp was released in her memory. After Nargis, Madhubala is the second Indian actress to have a stamp released in her honor.

The Indian Postal Service organized a special two-day event in Mumbai on Indian cinema titled Magic of Film Through Postage Stamps along with a philatelic exhibition titled Mahafilmpex. They also showcased a few landmark movies.

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Padmavati: Performance in Paris

Sanjay Leela Bhansali of Devdas fame got standing ovation at Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. Not for another Bollywood movie, but for an opera-ballet titled Padmavati: Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s adaptation of the 1923 opera-ballet by Albert Roussel, one of the greatest yet least understood masters of twentieth-century French music.

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Barbara Mori and Hrithik Roshan to Fly High in Kites

Producer- Director Rakesh Roshan picks up a little known Hollywood Latin actress, Barbara Mori, for his next film Kites. Of course, all Film Kraft Productions are born with letter ‘K’.

Barbara Mori is of Uruguayan, Japanese, and Mexican heritage. She has only one blockbuster film to her credit- La mujer de mi hermano (2005). Mori was invited to modeling by fashion designer Marcos Toledo; she later became a telenovela actress with TV Azteca. The actress has her own lingerie line, and uses her image to support charitable causes such as the fight against breast cancer in Mexico. Incidentally, recently she presented the 8th Annual Latin Grammy Awards.

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The Name is Rajnikanth, Yet Another Biography

Here is an excerpt of an interview with an ophthalmologist Dr Gayathri Srikanth, author of yet another biography on superstar megastar Rajnikanth. This one is called, ‘The Name is Rajnikanth’.

Why did you zero in on Rajnikanth and not Kamal Haasan for your first book?

I felt he was the obvious choice because he was the superstar, and the hype surrounding Sivaji was so immense. When I searched for him on the Internet, I found out that he grew up motherless as a child, and had a very bad childhood. Later on, he had to work as a coolie, then a bus conductor and lastly became the superstar. I found the stories had so many gaps. But I thought the rags-to-riches story of Rajni was very fascinating. So, I decided to write a biography on Rajnikanth and started my work in March 2007.

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Zindagi Teri Sajna

[March 5 2008: Director Ashu Trikha announced the completion of his film Zindagi Tere Naam with yesteryear’s hit pair Mithun Chakravorty and Ranjeeta, who have been paired after more than two decades.]

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Jutha Akbar

[March 2008: Indians launched global protest against fictional depiction of Jodhaa Akbar in the movie.]

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Cirque du Inde Called Jodhaa Akbar

If Emperor Akbar were to watch Ashutosh Gowariker’s Jodhaa Akbar, he would have said, “Wow man! What opulence, very impressive indeed.” And if Jodhaa and Akbar were to watch Jodhaa Akbar together, they would have definitely fallen in love with each other even if they did not back then. Jodhaa Bai would have told Jodhaa of the story, “Cut that fuss out lady! What else do you need?”

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Jodhaa Akbar Clouded by Controversy

Jodha Akbar, with cost estimated at Rs. 400 million and featuring country’s two biggest stars, was finally premiered all over India this Friday. Its release was postponed twice. However, it did not see acceptance for release from the very state this historic tale is based on: Rajasthan. It was banned from screening in the scheduled 30 cinema halls in Rajasthan, nine of which are in the pink city.

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