Filmiholic

Musing on a connection between the Spanish guitarist

Paco de Lucia

…and the Indian director

Sudhir Mishra

Just had to share this little nugget I happened to notice under the Wikipedia entry for the movie Lakeer, under the “Cast” section:

* Nauheed Cyrusi as … FARHIYO AHMED i love the girl in this movie she is so hott i swear i die for her i don’t know if she have a man but i sill love you………. please if you see this messege please write me back i love you so mach..

NBC legal expert Dan Abrams, appearing on NBC’s nationally televised Today show, just declared Bollywood a “loser” for the choice of Sly Stallone as the actor who would be involved in the Hindi movie Kambaqt Ishq, one part of the bigger story that’s been so much in the press this week.

You can see a clip here.  They get to Bollywood around minute 1:50.

Having temporarily rebelled against the required reading for certain pieces to come, I’ve been devouring Amitava Kumar’s 2007 novel Home Products.   The protagonist is a writer from Bihar (hey, wait a minute…) who comes to Bombay and works as a film journalist, and then gets involved in writing a screenplay.  As if it were not already a great read (with unexpected humor and much expected beautiful turns of phrase), Home Products is also bursting with filmi references and commentary:

Ajay was less interested in telling you whether Hindi films are good or bad; instead he tried hard to make his readers aware of the enormous importance these films had in their lives.  In one piece, he had challenged his readers to deny that every one of them had a favorite Hindi film song.  By way of example, he had offered that many Indian men, in the late seventies and eighties, looking for the first time at their bride’s face on their wedding night, recalled the scene from Kabhi Kabhie when Amitabh lifts the veil and looks at Rakhee.  Kabhi kabhie mere dil mein khayal aata hai…

More than once, Ajay had said that no one in India has as much influence as the Indian film hero: he runs the barber’s shop simply by smiling from a photograph on the wall, he tells a woman what a man wants by looking into her eyes from the screen, he teaches a man how to cry when his mother dies, he gets voted into office and runs the country from his seat in the parliament, and, as was clear during the textile strike, even Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on a visit to Bombay cared enough for the filmstar lying in a hospital bed at Breach Candy but not for the thousands of workers and their families starving because of lost wages and lost jobs.

No, friends, not a reference to the hunk in that movie opening on May 30th….

But rather, I’m wondering what’s the hold-up with the East coast cinemas of the Big chain that Reliance Capital has bought, for the purpose of screening Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and other films in areas with large South Asian populations.

They’ve already done a soft launch in California, and were due to start their openings in the New York / New Jersey area by now, but it’s gone eerily silent and nary a word from the folks at Reliance as to why.

I guess maybe the paint’s still drying in some places…

Update: Just heard today (May 28) that the Columbia Park 12 in North Bergen will start showing “one or two” Indian films in about six weeks’ time.  This is indeed an interesting development, given that this was the location of the departed Cineplaza, which shut down last summer.

Does anyone else do this too?  You’re on the train or bus to work and you’re reading a book, and then you start scrolling through the albums and playlists on your MP3 player, sommelier-like, trying to find the perfect musical accompaniment?

For Melanie Abrams’ sometimes very steamy Playing, I chose an amorous playlist of that included Bob Marley, Mary J Blige, Janet Jackson, Kailash Kher, and so on.

Then, while moving through Manil Suri’s The Age of Shiva - a lot of which takes place in film-drenched Bombay through the 1950s, ’60s and onward - it was some five CDs’ worth of historical movie music from a collection called 50 Golden Years, with oldies sung by the likes of Sonu Nigam and Anuradha Paudwal.

The last book read, V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Love Marriage was a bit more challenging. 

Aside from MIA, no other Sri Lankan Tamil artists came to mind, as my knowledge of Sri Lankan music is sorely lacking.  The next best solution I could come up with was the soundtrack to Mani Ratnam’s Kannathil Muthamital (the tale of an adopted girl and her search for her birth mother in northern SL), and after that I just wandered off to A.R. Rahman’s Golden Collection 1, and then finally the soundtrack to the Surya/Jyothika starrer Peralagan. 

True, the connection between the music and the literary subject matter is tenuous, but in does help to create an aural environment. 

Part of my Friday night was spent dashing between two PEN World Voices panels.  First, in the old B. Altman department store, now part of CUNY, there was the Sex in Literature panel.  After that, Rushdie.

Had to depart before the Q&A ended to zip up to the 92nd Street Y to try and snag a seemingly elusive press pass (or last minute ticket; anything!).  Once that was sorted out, I got a seat in the balcony between the competing scents of a woman wearing Tendre Poison and a man wearing a leather jacket that gave off a very abbatoir-y smell.  (Ugh.)  (more…)

Seen around the city:

Who says shopping can’t lead to enlightenment?

While ladies are buying bangles, husbands can rest:

Bombay and Hollywood, closer and closer always:

Hungry Rajasthani camel on Fifth Avenue:

After sliding the Welcome DVD into the player the other night, before the movie started rolling, this video appeared.

It’s a spot against human trafficking, and after a few fragments of vignettes pass by, we hear John Abraham, then Preity Zinta, and finally Amitabh Bachchan, all speaking out against it.

What I found rather jarring, given the gravity of the subject matter, was Ms. Zinta’s choice of eyewear:

 Look at that lush cover.  Playing, indeed.

Today was the official release date of Melanie Abrams’ first novel.

When you read about it in coming days and weeks (my review too, soon), you will likely hear a lot about the S&M in the relationship between Josie, the American grad student, and Devesh, the older Indian doctor.  And yes, those parts of the book do often crackle, but there’s also a lot of heavy psychological issues going on too, and, most important, a well spun tale.

The filmi connection comes in two places: first, in the novel itself.  As the relationship between Devesh and Josie begins to grow, he introduces her to Hindi movies, even driving her miles away (the story is set mainly in North Carolina) to catch a movie at a cinema.  Another night, they watch RGV’s Company at home.

The other filmi filament between the author and the Maharashtra-based (ahem) movie biz is her hubby, Bombay raconteur Vikram Chandra.  The couple now both teach at University of California, Berkeley, when not writing or spending time back in India, in that salty, cinematic city by the sea, where Melanie and SRK have a hair stylist in common.

Some of her favorite Hindi movies:  Satya, Lagaan and Parineeta.

While she’s not crisscrossing the country right now to promote Playing, you folks living in or near San Francisco and Berkeley will have a few chances to see her during April. 

In the months after the first Abrams-Chandra co-production arrives (the baby’s due date is in May), Melanie will be out and about to meet her readers in the US and India.