Teri Meri Kahaani: Recensione

[Blog] Recensione di Teri Meri Kahaani (2012), la nuova commedia romantica del regista di Hum Tum e Fanaa. Con Priyanka Chopra e Shahid Kapoor.

Salman Khan: Why should I remain a bachelor

Set di Ek Tha Tiger, Dublino

Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa da Salman Khan a Afsana Ahmed, pubblicata ieri da Hindustan Times. Why should I remain a bachelor:

'Today, you’re more successful than ever. Are you working twice as hard, or has this happened by chance?

In the past, I had a knee-jerk approach to work and it showed on screen. I was doing movies for the wrong reasons - trying to juggle dates, do too many guest appearances, take up projects under pressure or for emotional reasons. But now there’s a method to my madness. I have heard people say, "Salman has changed, he’s lost it," and stuff like that. But it doesn’t affect me. Today, I am doing movies only for my fans and I am enjoying every bit of it. They are happy and so am I.

Isn’t it showing on screen? There seems to be a Salman Khan mania in the country. Are you proud?

It feels nice to be loved, but let me tell you there are 10 times more better looking, stylish and talented guys than me. So there’s no solid reason for me to be proud! I don’t think I have done anything extraordinary to change people’s lives. (...) This is show business; there is nothing to take credit for. Have I gone to the moon or invented a cure for cancer?. Like most of you, I also have a job. (...)

But people are scared of you, Salman. Why?

That’s just a myth. I think people just give me my space. In fact, those who are supposedly scared of me have taken the maximum liberties with me. Like the media, for instance, who have pitilessly attacked me without finding accurate proof or giving me a chance to clear my stand. For 20 long years I haven’t reacted, because I was wounded. And the same people come to me for interviews. So, where’s the question of fear?

Are you scared of ever losing the fan following you have now?

If the adulation has not affected me now, how will it affect me at all? There are people who take their onscreen image seriously. Luckily, I don’t. Rajesh Khanna is the classic case of a superstar forgotten until he passed away... I have never seen or heard of such unparalleled adulation as his. I was happy to witness a sea of humanity descend on his funeral. But I wish it had all happened when he was alive! He would have been very happy! Love and respect should be accorded in your lifetime. Honestly, I wouldn’t want such pandemonium when I am dead and gone! It’s no use then, because I won’t be able to see or feel the love'. 

Local Kung Fu: locandina e trailer

Confesso: l'esilarante trailer di Local Kung Fu mi ha conquistato, ed ormai soffro di compulsione da visione ripetuta (bisogna essere senza cuore per non innamorarsene al primo fotogramma). Il film in lingua assamese, scritto, diretto e interpretato da Kenny Basumatary, è una commedia realizzata con un budget di soli 2.000 dollari.

Sotto le Stelle del Cinema 2012

L'edizione 2012 della rassegna Sotto le Stelle del Cinema si svolge a Bologna dal 19 giugno al 30 luglio. Il 28 luglio è in cartellone Bollywood - The greatest love story ever told, documentario diretto da Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra e Jeff Zimbalist. L'articolo Sabato in piazza Maggiore torna Bollywood, pubblicato ieri da Il Resto del Carlino, riporta un'interessante presentazione di Tejaswini Ganti, autrice di alcuni volumi dedicati al cinema hindi (Bollywood: a guidebook to popular Hindi cinema, Producing Bollywood: inside the contemporary Hindi film industry): 

'Il termine ‘Bollywood’ nasce dall’unione di ‘Bombay’ e ‘Hollywood’ e contrassegna una parte della cinematografia indiana in lingua hindi che ha base produttiva, appunto, a Mumbai (ex Bombay). È una delle industrie cinematografiche più ricche e fiorenti al mondo, che nulla ha da invidiare alla quasi omonima statunitense quanto a vastità di pubblico e di mercato. Eppure assai poco conosciamo di Bollywood e dei suoi film, che molto raramente riescono a trovare uno spazio all’interno della nostra distribuzione. Si tratta di un cinema di matrice fortemente popolare, e profondamente legato alla tradizione cultuale indiana, ascrivibile nella sua totalità al genere musical, con numeri danzati e cantati che scandiscono imponenti narrazioni incentrate su intrecci amorosi e melodrammatici.

Uno spettacolo travolgente e variopinto che il documentario di Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra e Jeff Zimbalist traduce sullo schermo attraverso un montaggio di sequenze che attraversa l’intera storia del cinema bollywoodiano, il meglio dalle origini a oggi, dal bianco e nero al colore, con interviste a registi e alle acclamatissime star. Per far comprendere le radici storiche e culturali di questo cinema e i motivi del suo incredibile successo.

Le canzoni sono utilizzate come veicolo primario per rappresentare la fantasia, il desiderio, la passione. Una situazione ricorrente che è divenuta un cliché è quella dei personaggi che cantano e ballano sotto la pioggia. La pioggia è sempre stata investita di un significato erotico nella mitologia, nella musica classica e nella letteratura indiana, in quanto associata alla fertilità e alla rinascita. Utilizzate in molti film nel corso degli anni, queste sequenze spesso estremamente erotiche - con gli abiti bagnati aderenti ai corpi - sono parte di un elaborato sistema di allusioni, piuttosto che di rappresentazione esplicita della sessualità e dell’intimità fisica, in quanto i registi devono farsi largo tra il conservatorismo del pubblico e i limiti rappresentativi imposti dallo stato attraverso i codici di censura. Oltre a esprimere emozioni intense e intimità fisica, le canzoni sono frequentemente utilizzate per favorire il passaggio del tempo o per evocare i ricordi: i bambini possono diventare adulti nel corso di una canzone, un personaggio può essere trasportato in un’epoca precedente. Le canzoni possono contribuire alla caratterizzazione quando sono usate per introdurre gli attori principali in un film. Ma sono anche un modo per esprimersi in maniera indiretta, grazie al quale i personaggi possono comunicare pensieri e desideri che sarebbe inappropriato manifestare esplicitamente. Per esempio, un uomo può cantare il tradimento della sua amante dinnanzi a lei e al marito in un’occasione pubblica senza che il marito sospetti di nulla. 

L’espressione più comune con cui la stampa indiana descrive le sequenze con canzoni coreografate è “correre intorno agli alberi”. Questa frase è usata incessantemente in riferimento alle canzoni d’amore dei film in cui la coppia protagonista si mette a cantare in ambienti pittoreschi come giardini, prati, e foreste, lontani dalla reale ambientazione del film, spesso con continui cambi di costume, e a volte con decine di ballerini sullo sfondo. Questa propensione per i paesaggi silvestri, pastorali, così commentata e ridicolizzata, ha un’origine molto funzionale: nei primi anni del sonoro, prima delle tecniche del cantato in playback e del doppiaggio, quando il suono era registrato direttamente sul set, il modo più semplice per nascondere musicisti e microfoni era usare cespugli e alberi come mimetizzazione'.

Amitabh Bachchan tedoforo alle Olimpiadi di Londra 2012

A Southwark questa mattina Amitabh Bachchan ha portato la fiaccola olimpica. Ma non tutti si sono congratulati con Big B. Uno degli sponsor dei Giochi è la Dow Chemical Co., attuale proprietaria della Union Carbide Corp., la compagnia responsabile del disastro chimico avvenuto a Bhopal nel 1984. In India celebrità e cittadini comuni hanno chiesto di annullare la partecipazione della squadra indiana alle Olimpiadi. Oggi gli attivisti di Bhopal hanno organizzato dei giochi speciali a cui hanno partecipato centinaia di sopravvissuti e di bambini affetti da gravi patologie nati dopo la tragedia, tragedia nella quale 15.000 persone persero la vita e 500.000 rimasero intossicate.

Bhopal, 26 luglio 2012

Aggiornamento del 28 luglio 2012 - Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa da Amitabh Bachchan ad Ashis Ray, pubblicata oggi da The Times of India. I am deeply honoured:

'What did carrying the torch mean to you?

The Olympics is the ultimate sporting event. And to be asked to be a part of it is a huge honour. I don’t know why I was chosen. It feels wonderful that Great Britain, the hosts of the Olympics, has chosen people from different communities, different parts of the world. It shows the spirit of the Olympics, where it preaches the coming together of caste, creed, religion, colour, nations to compete in a friendly atmosphere. And just to be a part of it is a moment of great pride. (...)

Today, you are not merely a filmstar, but a legendary Indian. Do the issues that confront India make you think about the way India is progressing?

We are just normal human beings. And just because we happen to be in a profession where you are loaded with the title of a celebrity doesn’t mean we are acquainted or equipped or knowledgeable enough to be able to answer some of these questions. But somehow it is just because you are a celebrity it is assumed you will have this great solutions to some of the greatest problems the country is facing. I would just say I am an aware citizen of my country. Yes, what develops in the country affects all of us and we have our opinions. I just feel that expressing it is not what I would like to do because I am not knowledgeable enough. (...)

Hindi cinema has grown bigger. Today, it is as big abroad as it is in India. How do you see it get better as the years go by? 

I don’t like this word (Bollywood) which describes the Indian film industry. Cinema was almost looked upon as infra dig, parents used to go and vet a film before we were allowed to get inside a theatre. Cinema in general was held as an institution where children from good families were not looked as being associated with. But look at the change that has happened now. I don’t know if this is good for the country or not; but it’s almost become a part of our culture. There are more people who know about the Indian film industry. So, that bodes well. The West was very cynical about our quality of cinema. We made very escapist fare. But one of the points the West did not recognise was that cinema as a medium of entertainment for the common man. I do see Indian cinema progressing very well; gradually, our talent is being recognised, whether in Great Britain or Hollywood, in festivals in Cannes, London, Venice. So, I think we are on the right path'.

Yomics

In India il mercato editoriale del fumetto è, tanto per cambiare, in notevole espansione. Da qualche anno le grosse produzioni bollywoodiane utilizzano il fumetto quale veicolo promozionale, e versioni grafiche delle pellicole di maggior successo vengono talvolta incluse nei cofanetti di dvd. Oggi Yash Raj Films ha lanciato il suo catalogo di graphic novel sotto il nuovo marchio Yomics. Sono già acquistabili i volumi dedicati a Dhoom e ad Ek Tha Tiger. In preparazione quello ispirato a Hum Tum (il cui protagonista era proprio un fumettista). Il progetto è affidato a Uday Chopra.

Toronto International Film Festival 2012

L'edizione 2012 del Toronto International Film Festival si svolgerà dal 6 al 16 settembre 2012. In cartellone English Vinglish e Il fondamentalista riluttante. Da segnalare la prima mondiale de I figli della mezzanotte, il nuovo lavoro di Deepa Mehta tratto dal romanzo omonimo di Salman Rushdie. Rushdie, che ha firmato la sceneggiatura, ha dichiarato: 'We met with a number of Bollywood titans, to whom I had to "narrate" the film in their homes and even in their stretch limousines; but we agreed, in the end, to avoid casting those Bombay ultra-stars who were unfamiliar with working as part of an ensemble cast. Instead, we chose wonderful actors, highly acclaimed wherever Indian films are seen, who left their egos at home and gave us their all'. Lo scrittore si riferisce al ricco cast di cui fanno parte Shabana Azmi, Seema Biswas, Rahul Bose, Shahana Goswami, Rajat Kapoor, Soha Ali Khan, Anupam Kher, Ronit Roy, Darsheel Safary e Siddharth. La colonna sonora è composta da Nitin Sawhney. La pellicola, di produzione internazionale, dovrebbe essere distribuita in ottobre. Via Twitter, Deepa Mehta mi ha gentilmente assicurato che potremo ammirare il film su grande schermo anche in Italia.

Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival 2012

La 16esima edizione del Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival si svolge dal 19 al 29 luglio 2012 a Bucheon, Corea del Sud. Vi segnalo i titoli indiani in cartellone: Ra.One, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Rockstar, Delhi Belly e Om Shanti Om. 

Aggiornamento del 17 giugno 2022: dal 2015, l'evento si chiama Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival.

Bejawada : Recensione

[Blog] Recensione di Bejawada (2011), action movie in lingua telugu diretto da Vivek Krishna e prodotto da Ram Gopal Varma. Con Naga Chaitanya e Amala Paul.

Mostra del Cinema di Venezia 2012

La 69esima edizione della Mostra del Cinema di Venezia si svolgerà dal 29 agosto all'8 settembre 2012. Il fondamentalista riluttante, di Mira Nair, tratto dall'omonimo romanzo di Mohsin Hamid (pubblicato in Italia da Giulio Einaudi editore), inaugurerà fuori concorso la manifestazione. Nel cast Shabana Azmi e Om Puri. Il montaggio è curato da Shimit Amin. La colonna sonora include un brano inedito composto da Peter Gabriel. All'adattamento cinematografico ha collaborato lo stesso Hamid. Mira Nair aveva vinto il Leone d'oro nel 2001 con Monsoon wedding. 

Alberto Barbera, direttore del festival, ha dichiarato: 'La Mostra di Venezia è lieta di ospitare nella serata d’apertura un film che propone numerosi spunti di riflessione. È una scelta che sottolinea il ruolo crescente della creatività femminile in tutti gli ambiti della cultura e della società contemporanea. Mira Nair ha realizzato un’esemplare trasposizione cinematografica di un romanzo che affronta il tema, di grande attualità, dei fondamentalismi di ogni ispirazione e natura. Con sensibilità, acutezza e notevole senso dello spettacolo, la regista persegue una difficile scelta di campo, ispirata da profonde motivazioni etiche e morali che, pur scegliendo di confrontarsi con la realtà, ne rifiutano i compromessi e le aberrazioni'. 

Shekhar Kapur sarà il presidente di giuria della sezione Premio Venezia Opera Prima Luigi De Laurentiis. Nel comunicato ufficiale si legge: 'Shekhar Kapur non è soltanto il cineasta indiano di maggior prestigio internazionale - conquistato in virtù dei successi bollywoodiani che hanno caratterizzato la prima parte della sua carriera e, in seguito, per aver diretto alcune grandi produzioni inglesi e americane - ma anche un raffinato intellettuale umanista attento alle problematiche sociali, alle trasformazioni indotte dalla diffusione dei nuovi media e all’esplorazione della confluenza di tecnologie innovative e inediti contenuti'.

Aggiornamento del 29 agosto 2012:  video ufficiale della sessione fotografica e della conferenza stampa per Il fondamentalista riluttante.

Vedi anche Mohsin Hamid: Taking a hermit to a party and letting him dance, 29 agosto 2012

Mira Nair, Riz Ahmed e Kate Hudson - Venezia, 2012

Venezia, 2012

Venezia, 2012

Venezia, 2012

Shekhar Kapur - Venezia, 2012

Shekhar Kapur, Isabella Ferrari e Ali Aydin

Mumbai Film Festival 2012

La 14esima edizione del Mumbai Film Festival si svolgerà dal 18 al 25 ottobre 2012. È prevista una sezione Celebration of Italian Cinema, organizzata da Asiatica Film Mediale sotto l'egida dell'ambasciata italiana in India e con il contributo del regista Italo Spinelli. In cartellone 30 titoli italiani - fra cui alcuni in edizione restaurata - distribuiti dal 1913 ad oggi.

Nitin Sawhney: The lodger

Se siete a Londra in vacanza, vi suggerisco un evento di sicuro interesse: il 21 luglio 2012 al Barbican verrà proiettata in prima mondiale l'edizione restaurata de Il pensionante (The lodger), film muto del 1927 diretto da Alfred Hitchcock. Per l'occasione, il talentuoso musicista Nitin Sawhney ha sfornato una colonna sonora nuova di zecca, che verrà eseguita dal vivo dalla London Symphony Orchestra. Nitin ha composto le colonne sonore di diverse pellicole, fra cui Split wide open, Il destino nel nome - The namesake e I figli della mezzanotte. Fra gli album, vi consiglio lo splendido Prophesy del 2001 (un assaggio da leccarsi anche le dita dei piedi: Moonrise).

Numero Unos - A survey of the top hit films: 1980s

Vi segnalo l'articolo Numero Unos - A survey of the top hit films: 1980s, di Rajiv Vijayakar, pubblicato ieri da Bollywood Hungama: 

'The Top Guns

It was a toss between 1985's Ram Teri Ganga Maili and 1989's Maine Pyar Kiya as ten topmost grossers of the entire decade. The ten Numero Uno hits were:

1980 - Qurbani, directed by Feroz Khan - an action drama that was also a love triangle

1981 - Ek Duuje Ke Liye (K. Balachander) - a love story

1982 - Vidhaata (Subhash Ghai) - a crime drama inspired by Godfather

1983 - Hero (Subhash Ghai) - a love story against the backdrop of crime

1984 - Aaj Ki Awaz (Ravi Chopra) - a political thriller

1985 - Ram Teri Ganga Maili (Raj Kapoor) - a love triangle that was a social comment as well as an allegory

1986 - Nagina (Harmesh Malhotra) - a supernatural drama (...)

1987 - Hukumat (Anil Sharma) - an anti-terrorist thriller

1988 - Tezaab (N. Chandra) - also a love story against the backdrop of crime and

1989 - Maine Pyar Kiya (Sooraj Barjatya) - a musical love story

A decade of change

The '80s was a decade of change; generally perceived as shifts of a retrograde nature, though that is not completely fair. The exit or fading of giant singers (including Mohammed Rafi and Kishore Kumar who passed away at their peaks), many of the lyricists and most of the legendary composers ganged up with factors like extreme social degeneration, political shenanigans in the country resulting in major angst and frustration along with an increase in violence and insurgency in many parts of the country. Significantly, while the love story Ek Duuje Ke Liye ended with violence and tragedy, Qurbani, Hero, Nagina and Tezaab were all romances against the backdrop of crime!

The third angle of this lethal triangle was the emergence of revolutionary new technology whose flipside became more dominant - like video piracy, audio piracy and the use of stereophonic sound to inculcate alien musical trends like disco, frenetic beats and a certain disregard for lyrics. Legal and illegal watching of films at home saw movie producers catering to the lowest common denominator of audience that could not afford to buy video players and formed the majority of the reduced theatre-going audience. And the anger towards the system resulted in violence-studded political thrillers galore.

Terrorism too reared its ugly head in certain states, adding to increased on-screen violence reflected in the first three anti-terrorist dramas - Karma, which missed the 1986 top slot because of its huge budget vis-à-vis Nagina, Mr. India (made with a comic-book tenor) and Hukumat (which actually topped 1987's films!). In fact, the '80s go down in history as the decade when four adult-certified films topped the years, whether because of sex (Ram Teri Ganga Maili), violence (Aaj Ki Awaz, Hukumat) or the supernatural element (Nagina)! Adult films automatically curtail a big chunk of viewers, but this was really an amazing and mysterious paradox!

Top names

It is a tangy coincidence indeed that Raj Kapoor's swan song Ram Teri Ganga Maili vied for top slot with Sooraj Barjatya's debut film Maine Pyar Kiya, which was almost a rehash of Kapoor's Bobby, the biggest hit of 1973. Maine Pyar Kiya, however, had its share of triumphs. (...) It was the first solo lead of Salman Khan, the man who was to become Numero Uno 20 years after his superstardom began with this film! Maine Pyar Kiya also completed the process of the return to the movie halls of up market audiences. This had begun with 1988's biggest hits Tezaab and Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak and was consolidated before Maine Pyar Kiya in 1989 by Ram Lakhan, Tridev and Chandni, the other top hits of the year. In fact, Subhash Ghai's Ram Lakhan lost the Numero Uno slot just two weeks before the year ended because of the release of this Barjatya whopper! (...)

Shifts in tastes and trends

Qurbani proved categorically that the audience was now open to fresh areas in cinema. It had the first combo of an NRI composer - Biddu - and Pakistani pop crooner based in London - Nazia Hassan stepping in for a specialized song - Indian cinema's first modern club number 'Aap Jaisa Koi'. This 'trend' of musical infiltration is endemic in today's times, but unlike today's tunesmiths, Kalyanji-Anandji matched the 'outside' chartbuster with four of their own, including another club song with even greater staying power, 'Laila Ho Laila'. (...) Choreography too saw a mix of traditional and new styles and a new generation of stars came in with an influx of star-sons. Kamal Haasan, (...) Sanjay Dutt, (...) Jackie Shroff, (...) Sridevi, Madhuri Dixit, Anil Kapoor, (...) and Salman Khan featured in the top hits. (...) Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla narrowly missed the bus when their QSQT came in second to Tezaab in 1988. (...)

'Vital' statistics

Subhash Ghai was the only director to have two Numero Uno toppers (Vidhaata and Hero in consecutive roles) in this decade, narrowly missing a third film (Ram Lakhan). Both his films had Shammi Kapoor and Sanjeev Kumar as character artistes, and Shammi, with his role in Hukumat, actually had the highest score among all male artistes - three films! (...) But the stage, as indicated by Tezaab and especially Maine Pyar Kiya, was set for a sweeping change in the '90s'.

Vedi anche Numero Unos - A survey of the top hit films: 1950s. Il testo raccoglie i link a tutti gli articoli della serie.

Baadshah: le riprese in Italia

La troupe del film telugu Baadshah in questi giorni è a Milano per girare alcune sequenze. Ieri il set era stato allestito in Piazza Duomo, oggi presso il polo fieristico di Rho. Le riprese nel capoluogo lombardo dovrebbero proseguire sino a venerdì. La pellicola è diretta da Sreenu Vaitla e interpretata da Jr NTR e Kajal Aggarwal.

Aggiornamento del 15 giugno 2022: video del brano Sairo Sairo.  

Polo fieristico Rho

Polo fieristico Rho

Big ND Studios

[Blog]  La seconda tappa nell'esplorazione dei più famosi studi cinematografici indiani è Karjat, in Maharashtra, località in cui si trovano i Big ND Studios, immensa distesa di set cinematografici voluta da N.C. Desai.

Paglu 2: le riprese in Italia

La troupe del film bengali Paglu 2 nei giorni scorsi era in Italia per girare alcune sequenze. Il 9 luglio i set sono stati allestiti in Valle d'Aosta (Teatro romano di Aosta, Castello Reale di Sarre, frazione Buic di La Thuile, passo del Piccolo San Bernardo), il 10 luglio a Torino (Piazza San Carlo), il 12 luglio a Vigevano (Piazza Ducale). La pellicola è diretta da Sujit Mondal, e interpretata da Dev e Koel Mallick. 

Aggiornamento del 23 agosto 2012: video dei brani Khuda Jaane e Paglu 2.

Vedi anche Paglu: le riprese in Italia

La Thuile

La Thuile

Khuda Jaane

Vigevano

Vigevano

Vigevano

Vigevano

Vigevano

Vigevano

Vigevano

RIP Page 3

Vi segnalo il divertente articolo RIP Page 3, di Yashica Dutt, pubblicato oggi da Brunch. Il fenomeno della mondanità e delle celebrità che arricchivano la terza pagina dei quotidiani nacque in India verso la fine degli anni novanta, a seguito della liberalizzazione economica, della cessazione dell'austerità per una fascia della popolazione, del desiderio di godere (e di mostrare) la propria ricchezza. Ma una decina d'anni dopo la scena cambiò radicalmente: le star del cinema e gli stilosi animatori di quella mondanità preferirono prendere le distanze dalla terza pagina, ormai ceduta a pagamento dai quotidiani. Chiunque possedesse un gruzzolo ingente e l'ambizione di apparire sulla terza pagina, poteva acquistarne uno spazio. Inoltre l'avvento di internet e la distribuzione di un nugolo di periodici dedicati alla cronaca mondana (Hello!, Ok!, People, Hi! Blitz) moltiplicarono l'offerta, contribuendo ad appannare lo smalto di esclusività della terza pagina dei quotidiani. Anche l'atteggiamento nei confronti della stampa è mutato: le feste con celebrità di primo piano continuano ad essere organizzate, pare in numero minore, ma i giornalisti non vengono invitati, a meno che non vi sia l'esigenza di pubblicizzare qualcosa. L'articolo insegna anche come scrivere un pezzo di cronaca mondana, come organizzare un evento, e come diventare un personaggio da terza pagina. Bene. Ognuno vuole essere famoso, e se Facebook non basta ad autopromuoversi, ecco la democratizzazione della terza pagina. Felici?

'Back in the late 2000s, when I started out as a reporter, I loved the idea of Page 3. I thought I’d get to meet rich, stylish people, talk about their intensely exciting lifestyles and be a fly-on-the-wall as pulsating gossip was created right in front of me. But I was wrong. Page 3 had died at least half a decade before that. I realised this soon after countless encounters with Page 3 people: All of them wanted to land a role in a Bollywood movie. Middle-aged women with faux blonde hair insisted on squashing rolls of saggy shoulder fat into tight animal print dresses. Rich men with zero conversation skills clutched their whiskies and looked for girls. Everyone looked for the photographers. The truth was that Page 3’s golden days had long been over. Those who had once lived and died to party didn’t want to be seen doing that any more. Now everything was Page 3 material: birthday parties, mundan ceremonies, dog funerals. The real Page 3 was gone.

Ghost of Page 3 past

But it wasn’t always so. In fact, when it started in the late ’90s, the third page was the place to be seen. A photograph there meant you had arrived on the social scene. (...) So what if you couldn’t party like them, you could at least see what it looked like. ‘Them’ meant celebrities. (...) Page 3 emerged at the end of the ’90s, when the fruits of liberalisation were just getting ripe. Indians were coming out of their phase of austerity and subtly beginning to enjoy their wealth. That was the sentiment that city supplements captured, much like the film magazines that captured the lives of movie stars. (...) [It was the beginning] of a new social order, where being seen on the circuit was a good thing. Often, this kind of visibility advanced careers. (...)

Ghost of Page 3 present

As the private parties moved to clubs and then disappeared entirely from the media glare (unless there was something - a brand, a restaurant, a clothing line, a movie, a new store - to peddle), so did the party people. They were replaced by a new crop of desperate, do-anything-for-a-photo-op wannabes who had realised what Page 3 was worth. “You open the page and see how many people you recognise. Everyone is a designer these days. Random people are featured, who don’t deserve any attention,” says a society journalist. And if earlier, style was the divine guidance, now that too has been thrown out with the bath water. Runny, over-done makeup, tight-fitting clothes that are 10 years too old, Russian and Uzbek girls who don’t have second names are the cache of Page 3 today. (...) Page 3 has, if you like, become ‘democratised.’ (...) That negates the ‘niche club’ idea that Page 3 was initially based on.

Money talks, loudly

Hard to believe now, but there were days when Page 3 dictated the readership of a newspaper. Till certain publications (...) introduced a policy where you could buy a few columns of space on Page 3 and so let the whole world see your wife’s birthday party, friend’s wedding anniversary, son’s graduation dinner... Just like your own Facebook page, only more expensive. Once money entered the picture, everything turned rancid. Would the real A-listers want to be featured on that kind of page? No, says a socialite who didn’t wish to be named. “If you do accidentally get featured one day, then you become the laughing stock of all your peers. You don’t want to look like your life is so sad that you need to pay people to showcase it.” But there are plenty of people out there who are still keen to become Page 3 celebrities. The best way to do so is to organise a Page 3 party of your own. (...) It doesn’t matter if you don’t know anyone. “You can hire a PR agency, which will get someone who does ‘guest relations’. (...) These people will charge you around `10,000-20,000 per guest to fill your party with regulars,” says a Page 3 photographer on condition of anonymity. (...)

Who killed page 3?

Like any trend that loses its charm once it goes mainstream, Page 3 too became infra dig once the exclusivity went. (...) Once ‘socialite’ became a dirty word and it became necessary for everyone to find a day job that wasn’t partying, Page 3 started gathering negative connotations. And after director Madhur Bhandarkar’s clichéd representation of society in his movie, Page 3, things became worse. (...) With the arrival of many party-centric blogs like Miss Malini and High Heel Confidential, and magazines like Hello!, OK!, People and Hi! Blitz, Page 3 doesn’t have the same equity it did earlier and the fact that you can buy it (in some publications) doesn’t help either. (...) However, any mention of Page 3 parties of the past does come attached with the folklore of the glitzy, amazing booze-headedness of the bashes that made them so awesome and attendance worthy. (...)

Press-ed Out

As Page 3 changed within a decade, so did the attitude of party hosts and partygoers to the press, which has gone from friendliness to suspicion. That’s also because back then, there were only a few magazines, newspapers and TV channels. Today there are literally hundreds, and they are far more aggressive. Once upon a time, no one, be it an A-list designer or an industrialist, (...) would think twice about inviting the press, even for allegedly ‘private occasions’. But today, the really private A-list parties are out of bounds for the press. Only when the concerned people want publicity for a new project or any other specific reason do they invite the press. (...)

So, what now?

While Page 3 looks worse than roadkill, with parties splattered all over, this is as close to death as the page can get. Though some journalists feel that as long as there are celebrations, or as long as there are occasions when people will need publicity for their products or their work (till the end of time, that!), Page 3 will continue. Others believe that the real Page 3 has degenerated. It has now become the home ground for those hungry for their 15 seconds of fame. But once they do get famous, will they too distance themselves from Page 3?'.

Makarand Sathe: The man who tried to remember

Vi segnalo la recensione di The man who tried to remember, di Makarand Sathe, recensione firmata da Suparna Banerjee e pubblicata ieri da Hindustan Times. Il romanzo, originariamente in lingua marathi, sembra davvero intrigante:

'Makarand Sathe’s new novel (...) traces the journey of an ageing public intellectual, Achyut Athavale, from a state of power and stardom through societal imposition of madness on him to a kind of nirvana that allows him to serenely “take each day as it comes” in an upscale mental hospital from which he may never get out. Starting out with the protagonist’s reaction to his new room in the hospital, the novel loops back and forth to reveal the sequence of events leading from his obsession with remembering and communicating, through his unintended murder of a fellow inmate to his acquittal on grounds of a perceived mental breakdown. The pivotal situation in the novel is a Kafkaesque one, of a man frantically trying to prove himself guilty of murder in the face of vociferous public assertions of his unstable mental condition and therefore of his innocence. The acquittal thus dramatises the defeat of the individual before the collective.

Indeed, much of the novel is concerned with showing how ‘reality’ is constructed by collective beliefs and ritualistic praxes - that everything from social institutions to people’s lives to the language through which all experience is ordered and expressed have no ontological purity but is part of the semiotics of social existence. (...) Technically, the novel blends in elements of the modernist stream-of-consciousness with a postmodern absurdist play on language to create a fictional idiom that embodies the author’s social constructionist view of life. Identity becomes a major theme as the protagonist struggles to hold on to his reputation and self-perception as an intelligent, articulate individual even as well-meaning admirers from across the world join forces to prove the opposite in order to save him from being convicted of pre-planned murder. That salvation for someone could mean saving a long-held self-image rather than saving his life is one of the cardinal points made by the novel, as is the implied assertion of the publicly constructed nature of normalcy and sanity. The power of the majority, however, is subverted by the quiet resignation with which Athavale accepts his asylum-life. (...)

The reader’s growing awareness of the madness in what is collectively perceived as reason is balanced by an equivalent perception of the reason in Athavale’s apparent madness. The upshot is that the reader gains an uneasy but morally salutary sense of the fallibility of human constructions, including that of reason itself. The book, despite its philosophical richness, is almost never dull but enlivened with a lively wit that brings out the absurdity - the inconclusive, unending interplay of competing meanings - inherent to language and social praxes. A little more conventional ‘action’ and humour would have further enhanced its readabilty'.

Numero Unos - A survey of the top hit films: 1970s

Vi segnalo l'articolo Numero Unos - A survey of the top hit films: 1970s, di Rajiv Vijayakar, pubblicato da Bollywood Hungama il 9 luglio 2012. È la volta dei leggendari anni settanta. Superfluo specificarlo: Sholay è il film dei film, Amitabh Bachchan è Dio, e il mito dell'angry young man è duro a morire. 

'The Top Guns

The '70s saw trends shifting to action and crime, and not as believed because of Amitabh Bachchan, who merely consolidated the genre in 1973. At the peak of the Rajesh Khanna wave itself, we saw the slick crime drama, Vijay Anand's Johny Mera Naam, Dev Anand's career-biggest hit as actor, as the first topper of this decade, trouncing two more crime dramas, Khanna's own Sachaa Jhutha and Dharmendra's Jeevan Mrityu. The remaining nine years' toppers were:

1971 - M.A. Thirumugam's Haathi Mere Saathi, a film about a man's relationship with animals, which trounced the action drama Mera Gaon Mera Desh

1972 - Ramesh Sippy's Seeta Aur Geeta, a romantic comedy, which beat Pakeezah and the crime comedy Victoria No. 203

1973 - Raj Kapoor's Bobby, a teenage love story

1974 - Manoj Kumar's Roti Kapada Aur Makaan, a social

1975 - Ramesh Sippy's Sholay, an action drama

1976 - Madan Mohla's Dus Numbri, a crime story

1977 - Manmohan Desai's Amar Akbar Anthony, an entertainer with everything from crime to romance and family drama and music

1978 - Prakash Mehra's Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, a love story with a social base and a backdrop of crime, and

1979 - K. Viswanath's Sargam, a musical romance.

Vox Populi, Vox Deii!

Escapist entertainment escalated in the '70s as a stress-buster from harsh socio-political realities that included frustration with the system, corruption, unemployment and even the first signs of inflation, and bang in the middle of the Rajesh Khanna wave, a new Raja of Romance arrived - Rishi Kapoor, who was the solo hero of the only two classic musical romances that topped the BO: Bobby and Sargam. In a tangy irony, Kapoor annexed Khanna's short-lived position as the romantic icon, and the Phenomenon (as Khanna was called) in turn married Dimple Kapadia (who was Bobby on screen!) in real life some months prior to the release of Raj Kapoor's blockbuster! Rishi Kapoor also acted in the multi-star Amar Akbar Anthony. Rajesh Khanna's sole claim to a Numero Uno position came in Haathi Mere Saathi, the children-centric entertainer that is the nearest Hindi cinema ever has got to a Walt Disney feature.

Amitabh Bachchan, the new superstar, came in with Roti Kapada Aur Makaan, Sholay, Amar Akbar Anthony and Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, the four multi-star films that highlighted the biggest trend of the '70s - of the audiences' overwhelming preference for films in which they could watching many stars instead of a single lead pair for the price of one ticket! Ironically, Bachchan missed a spectacular feat of having the biggest hits (albeit mostly multi-star bonanzas) for six consecutive years from 1973 to 1978 because, firstly, Bobby generated a mammoth craze in 1973 that beat Amitabh Bachchan's breakthrough film, the cult Zanjeer, by a good margin, and secondly, the 1976 Kabhi Kabhie lost out to Dus Numbri in box-office grading, as traditionally, that is always decided by the proportion of profit to investment and Kabhi Kabhie was a far-costlier film!

Hema Malini starred in four films (Johny Mera Naam, Seeta Aur Geeta, Sholay, Dus Numbri), and producer G.P. Sippy and his director son Ramesh Sippy were the only filmmakers to notch up more than one film - Seeta Aur Geeta and Sholay.

Forever the biggest

Sholay, of course, was the topper of the '70s and remains India's biggest hit ever. Along with Roti Kapada Aur Makaan and Deewaar earlier in 1975, it consolidated the 'multistarrer' (as it was called in ungrammatical film parlance) trend. As long as 12 years ago, it was assessed that the number of people who had watched the movie in theatres had exceeded the total population of India, what with people going to experience the revenge spectacle dozens of times! The 70mm canvas, the Stereophonic Sound (a first in Indian films), the cult villainy of Gabbar Singh, the memorable major and minor characters and the taut screenplay and dialogues by Salim-Javed rightly made Sholay an unparalleled epic that is unbeaten even today. Interestingly, one film almost came to match the scale of its cost-to-profit ratio - the same year's devotional Jai Santoshi Maa that spawned dozens of such films.

Landmark decade

The '70s remains a landmark decade in more ways than one. Johny Mera Naam became Hindi cinema's first film to gross Rs. 50 lakh [1 lakh = 100.000]. (...) 1971's Haathi Mere Saathi smashed Johny's record to become Hindi cinema's first film to gross a crore [1 crore = 10.000.000] - the costliest tickets in any part of the country then were three rupees! Haathi Mere Saathi was the first film scripted by Salim-Javed who in the following year co-scripted Seeta Aur Geeta and finally Sholay and of course created the Angry Young Man persona of Bachchan. Haathi Mere Saathi also was the first-ever music score to notch a Silver Disc (250,000 gramophone records) for outstanding music sales. Bobby was Hindi cinema's first teenage love story that had actual teenagers in the leads. Amar Akbar Anthony took Bachchan to the official Numero Uno position till then held by Dharmendra. (...) Muqaddar Ka Sikandar popularized the Cinemascope format on a large scale in Hindi cinema'. 

Vedi anche:

- Angry but amazing: i sorprendenti anni settanta

- Numero Unos - A survey of the top hit films: 1950s. Il testo raccoglie i link a tutti gli articoli della serie.

Ramoji Film City

[Blog]  Il primo articolo dedicato agli studi cinematografici indiani ci porta ai Ramoji Film City di Hyderabad, mecca del cinema telugu e non solo, imponente ed organizzatissima distesa di set aperta al pubblico e trasformata in località di svago e intrattenimento.  

Le prime del 13 luglio 2012: Cocktail

Saif Ali Khan e Deepika Padukone tornano insieme sul grande schermo nella commedia romantica Cocktail, diretta da Homi Adajania, che aveva già lavorato con Saif in Being Cyrus. Nel cast anche Boman Irani e Dimple Kapadia. La sceneggiatura è firmata da Imtiaz Ali. La colonna sonora è composta da Pritam. Un assaggio nei brani Tumhi Ho Bandhu, Daaru Desi, Yaariyan, Second Hand Jawaani e Alif Allah (Jugni). La pellicola è stata girata in gran parte a Londra. Trailer.

Quanto a Homi Adajania, scorrendone la biografia scopriamo alcune curiosità. Homi è sposato con la stilista Anaita Shroff. Being Cyrus è ambientato nella casa di famiglia di Homi, nella rinomata località di Panchgani. Aamir Khan e Kiran Rao si sono sposati nella stessa casa, ed in seguito l'hanno acquistata. Alcune sequenze di Taare Zameen Par sono state girate al suo interno. Pronti per il dettaglio più clamoroso? Homi anni fa collaborò alla realizzazione di un'installazione artistica alla Biennale di Venezia (*). Suo era il compito di condurre in laguna un fachiro indiano (!). Ovviamente era impossibile convincere un vero santone, così il nostro ingaggiò un impostore... Da questa esperienza è stato tratto il film che ha segnato il vero debutto sul set di Farhan Akhtar, The fakir of Venice. Farhan interpretava il ruolo di Homi. La pellicola (diretta da Anand Surapur) non è stata ancora distribuita. 

(*) M. Francesca ci segnala che si trattava di Mother, opera di Maurizio Cattelan presentata alla Biennale nel 1999. 

Aggiornamento del 9 giugno 2022: The fakir of Venice è stato finalmente distribuito nelle sale nel 2019. Quanto a Mother, Cattelan seppellì il fachiro nella sabbia per tre ore; emergevano solo le mani, giunte in segno di preghiera.

'Gangs of Wasseypur' is like a virus

Vi segnalo l'articolo 'Gangs of Wasseypur’ is like a virus, di Avijit Ghosh, pubblicato oggi da The Times of India:

'The strange thing about Gangs of Wasseypur is that one cannot fathom what chord it has exactly touched. (...) Director Anurag Kashyap’s blood epic leaves you drained even as you get drowned in it. The dark and bleak universe that Kashyap conjures underlines the power of cinema. No movie has evoked a more passionate reaction this year. And it doesn’t matter that not all are laudatory. As a movie, Gangs of Wasseypur makes primary departures. Kashyap blends the global with the regional to create a new aesthetic cool. The movie has a transcending quality that enables even those unschooled in its regional nuances to enjoy it. Stylistically, the movie has the distinct stamp of the usual Hollywood suspects but the visual and aural landscape is uncompromisingly its own. (...) The music and lyrics are stylised folksy. The dialogues are raw and rooted, though cusswords seem to be used sometimes also for effect and cheap thrills. (...)

But viewing the movie as a biography of Wasseypur or as a document on the Dhanbad coal mafia would be inappropriate. Kashyap’s movie is essentially a bleak, unsettling morality tale. The coalfields of Dhanbad are just a theatre where two parallel feuds - between Sardar Khan and Ramadhir Singh and between two Muslim communities (Pathans and Qureshis) - play out. Yet in its barebones, Gangs of Wasseypur is about a son seeking revenge for his father’s murder, a story told countless times in Indian cinema. If the movie is still able to keep the audience transfixed for two hours and 40 minutes, it is because Kashyap takes you inside the anarchic world that he creates and keeps you there. The movie becomes a compelling ballad of a certain kind of people, their idea of morality and relationship, patriarchy , the evolution of a criminal’s weaponry and much more. So much so that its flaws - and they are quite a few - cease to matter.

The credit partly goes to the craft. In Kashyap’s hands, much of Wasseypur’s violence almost becomes erotic; the bylane stabbing scene is like choreographed artwork. It is scary and thrilling and leaves you gasping for air. But it is the film’s characters that we really take home. Wasseypur’s men and women arise like smoke from the bowels of the stinking drains that they live around. They aren’t amoral; they just have an alternate version of morality, indispensable for their survival. (...) The characters (...) tell us that the evil and the good are not separate particles; they are rather entwined and live comfortably and without contradictions in us.

Wasseypur not only creates an alternative model of the ‘cool’ film but also throws up another model of success in Bollywood. It doesn’t really matter that the film is only a modest box-office success and will not cross the coveted Rs 100 crore mark. Many will be enthused by the fact that even after staying honest to a script’s core, you can make a movie that makes money, gets screened at a select section in Cannes and becomes a reference point for serious discussion on cinema. That it can be done with largely unknown actors and technicians from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, which underlines the vast creative energy that these regions have in store, is another plus. Perhaps the power of Gangs of Wasseypur lies in its ability to leave us with something which in absence of a better word can only be described as “an experience.” Like a virus, the movie almost forcibly creates space inside you and becomes a part of you'. 

Vedi anche Le prime del 22 giugno 2012: Gangs of Wasseypur I

Audience comes of age, 'A' films on rise

Vi segnalo l'articolo Audience comes of age, 'A' films on rise, di Bharati Dubey, pubblicato oggi da The Times of India. L'argomento del testo è l'incremento delle pellicole classificate dall'organo preposto alla censura come per adulti (A) o comunque da visionare in compagnia di un adulto (UA). Mentre il numero dei film prodotti è leggermente diminuito (1.288 nel 2009; 1.255 nel 2011), il quantitativo dei titoli considerati UA è rimasto invariato (400), e quello dei titoli considerati A è addirittura aumentato (da 214 a 244). Anurag Kashyap giustamente puntualizza: 'It's heartening to see our audience mature. But real maturity will be apparent when audiences stop giggling at abuses on screen and when we actually come out of our repressed sexuality'.

Pukar (1939) : Recensione

[Blog] Recensione di Pukar (1939) sontuoso kolossal in lingua Urdu diretto da Sohrab Modi. Con Chandramohan e Naseem Banu.