10) “We are particularly amused at your allegation that a 22-year-old law student caused “irreparable injury” and “loss of reputation” to a powerful media house by highlighting a highly technical trademark dispute of public importance and reflecting on the protracted nature of the litigation. Continue to amuse us, and we may begin to reciprocate.
AMEESHA PATEL, ladies and gents! Here she is in the (undead) flesh, straight from the sets of Go Goa Gone. That pancake make-up is so thick, it looks like the make-up artist thought she would be starring in a 1960s film opposite Mehmood instead of walking the red carpet at Cannes.
I'm also a little disappointed at her dress. I was hoping for something a bit more fun from Ameesha but I suppose Sherlyn Chopra already cornered the market on see-through dresses.
And now for actual film reports...
Come to Filmi Girl, Michelle... and back to your regularly scheduled programming.
One of the more thoughtful reflections on Hindi cinema to pop up...
For an explanation, one could go back to classical Indian aesthetics with the actor as a mirror on which emotions appear and vanish; it was about representation, not reality. Or one could subscribe to the idea of the actor conveying a mode of actorly being rather than a sense of being in the world. Looking at Shahrukh Khan (that consummately bad actor, who asserts with ironic pride that he has five expressions in his repertoire) one sees a stratified history of Hindi film acting. He is the medium summoning up shades of earlier actors like Shammi Kapoor, Rajesh Khanna and Dilip Kumar, and at his best he is Bachchan. But we have been there. We are among family.
LOOK! It's Kylie!! I'm suddenly feeling the need to fall in love at first sight!
Before gorgeous Aishwarya pictures, please to be having some interviews!
But in the midst of all this chatter, one simple fact often gets buried from view for all but aficionados of Indian film. In short, Bollywood – as we know it today and as it is being reported on heavily this month by media around the world – has only existed since the 1990s.
“The term 'Bollywood' is used to mean the Mumbai-based Hindi film industry in its post-liberalization phase. Economic liberalization came to India only in the 1990s,” Parichay Patra, a graduate student at Monash University who is co-editing Salaam Cinema: Representations and Interpretations Celebrating 100 Years of Bombay Cinema, told The Diplomat.
I'm not sure I'd use the economic angle but certainly the 1990s is a dividing point we can agree on.
Here's the toast of France, one Mr. Anurag Kashyap, receiving his Order of Arts and Letters. Four films he's associated with are being screened. FOUR. France loves them some Anurag.
But one question has been niggling... where on Earth is Kalki?! Come on, now! How come we haven't seen her in fabulous frocks all up and down the red carpet?! Don't tell me there is something to those rumors of D.I.V.O.R.C.E.? I mean, with KJo also in Cannes and Kalki in Dharma's upcoming Another Film In Which A Young-Ish Guy Doesn't Know What Love Is And Has A Girl Helpfully Teach Him At The Expense Of Her Own Autonomy, I would have thought she'd have made an appearance or two.
And Reema.
I'm disappointed that Zoya didn't give Reema a chance to wear a flash tux and strut down the red carpet exactly like the boss she is.
Meanwhile Vaiju Naravane at the Hindu gives a round up of happenings at the Indian Pavilion... including a VEGETARIAN DISASTER. (I empathize. Seriously, I do.)
But this quote was telling:
Thierry Fremeaux, the Festival’s co-director said: “There have always been two traditions in Indian cinema, that of Bollywood and that of the cinema d’auteur of which Satyajit Ray is the best-known exponent. Today we can clearly see the emergence of a third stream, that of independent film-makers who are going international through co-productions, breaking away from the old mould to give us a new vibrant cinema that portrays the fast-paced reality of a changing India.”
Read: "breaking away from the old mould" and "portrays the fast-paced reality" to mean "making movies that Europeans and Americans can understand instead of that Communist Song and Dance Crap."
Well, AK seems to have gotten one thing out of this besides a trip to the sea side... Fox Star Studios is producing Bombay Velvet. Which is now apparently the first part of a trilogy. Get ready for Cannes 2015-2018!
Here she is, ladies and gents, India's most beautiful... according to some dude at People Magazine who was encouraged to tie this up with the promotions for Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and dragged Dippy in her orange coverup straight from the pool.
Our Lady of Glamour returns! AISHWARYA RAI IS BACK! Rocking an classic, hour glass, Mad Men style that I highly approve of.
In 2011 India saw a 42 percent jump in the number of Hollywood movies shot there with several Hollywood studios such as Disney, News Corp's Fox, and Sony entering deals with or buying stakes in Indian companies.
There has also been a surge in the number of Hollywood movies released in India, where 3.6 billion film tickets were sold last year. Hollywood studios have been releasing their films in India simultaneously with their North American releases and also dubbing films in various regional Indian languages.
Snap of the Bombay Talkies crew courtesy of Karan Johar's twitter feed.
The only story today is Ugly promotions from Anurag Kashyap.
It’s a terrible tale of corruption, indifference, and systemic violence, shot full of a wicked, black humour. When the father and his friend approach the police to register the child’s disappearance, there is a meandering, cruelly drawn-out scene that comes straight out of absurdist theatre. Kafka’s influence on Kashyap is very evident in this remarkably crafted and acted scene.
You know, it's odd. Last night I watched the inconsequential but pleasant Mere Dad Ki Maruthi. What really separates a film like Ugly from one like Mere Dad Ki Maruthi? Aren't they just two sides of the same coin? A lost car and a lost girl. Only one is optimistic at the end, full of belief in consumer culture, with no time for old men's complaints about corruption. (Like literally, there is a very funny sequence where the Hero mocks his father and uncles for rambling on about it over their whiskey.)
I'm not sure what my point is here but the Kafka mention got me thinking about some other reading I did this week. It's all well and good to rage against the machine but if the only people you're raging to agree with you but have cynically accepted whatever it is you're raging against, what's the point but a big circle jerk? Yesterday I also happened to be reading about the modern day slavery that exists in places like Immokalee, Florida and when I went to the grocery store, all I could see was blood and sweat and tears covering every strawberry and leaf of lettuce. And I paid a dollar more for organic, not that it wasn't the same people picking both but we all felt that good left-wing righteousness, I'm sure, with our organic strawberries.
Actually, going back to the first piece, do you know what my dream project from Anurag Kashyap is? I think I've said this before but I would love to see an American encounter film made for mainstream global audiences based on the Wounded Knee Incident. How badass would that be? Kashyap flipping the tables and pulling a reverse Danny Boyle to make a film about how badly Americans screwed our own indigenous population.
Back to more glamour tomorrow with Aishwarya making her appearance!
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