Browsing: Features

24/7 Talk is Cheap - The Blog
6 IAAC – The Big Indian Tamasha Comes to NY

Where would you get to rub shoulders with Salman Rushdie, Shabana Azmi, Danny Boyle, Shashi Tharoor, M.F. Husain, Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta, Madhur Jaffrey – and the late, great Ismail Merchant? Well, I met all these topnotch names in New York, all thanks to a small, spunky organization which has survived and thrived by sheer chutzpah. It’s brought a mix of Indian cinema, art, theater and dance to barren city streets, making them all a natural part of American life.

Indeed, if you’re talking about Indian art and culture in the city, you can hardly go a few sentences without mentioning Indo American Arts Council or its creator, Aroon Shivdasani. This year IAAC celebrates its 15th tumble and toss year, and so here’s the story of the little engine that said I think I can, I think I can, against all odds.

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Cinema
2 Bollywood Cinema Showcards – A Lost World

Long before Hindi cinema was rechristened Bollywood, there were film posters and showcards under glass in the lobbies of the theaters in India.

As you bought your tickets to enter a magic world, you sauntered by the display cases to check out these show cards, a collage of hand painted photographs which whetted your appetite for the treat to come.

Most of these old markers have disappeared but recently cinema fans got a chance to see a cache of vintage cards, lovingly preserved.

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24/7 Talk is Cheap - The Blog
1 A Day of Light and Sweets

The fireworks still explode in the memory, and the taste of nuts and cream and sugar still linger on the tongue. For immigrants from India, the childhood memories of Diwali are strong, for it is a time when India transforms into one glittering celebration. Public buildings are illuminated with neon lights and every home, no matter how humble, is ablaze with earthen lamps. In fact, entire villages are turned into fairylands, dotted with millions of lamps, glowing in the dark of night.

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24/7 Talk is Cheap - The Blog
0 The Bollywood Boss comes to Brooklyn

Good news for masala lovers – Bollywood is coming to the borough of Brooklyn! Queens and Manhattan have long been the strongholds of Indian cinema but the heady cocktail of comedy, melodrama, fights, songs, romance, item numbers and more are now making their way to Park Slope, with a theater showing ‘Boss’, hopefully the first of many Hindi movies.What is coming to Brooklyn is quintessential masala, amplified in true Akshay Kumar ishtyle.

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24/7 Talk is Cheap - The Blog
1 Starry Encounters in Bollywood

Imagine sitting across the table from the iconic Amitabh Bachchan as he tells you – and only you – in his rich baritone about his daily life. Imagine the one and only Madhuri Dixit chatting with you about who does the cooking in her family as her husband Sriram Nene gamely shoots a picture of her and you together. Imagine the wonderful A.R. Rahman actually bringing you a glass of orange juice when he hears you are fasting that day.

Yes, all this actually happened to me!

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24/7 Talk is Cheap - The Blog
1 Raanjhanaa – An Obsessive Love, Dhanush Shines

‘Raanjhanaa’ – we don’t see men like that anymore – men who are willing to annihilate themselves, subsume themselves for the woman they love, bringing almost a noble, heroic luster to unrequited, unconditional love. ‘Ranjhanaa’ is a Grecian tragedy set in Varanasi, on the ghats and alleys of the holy city and you won’t forget it easily.
I have to admit the film became somewhat of an obsession with me when I saw the pre-release Youtube videos of some of AR Rahman’s songs. They totally blew me away, especially the song ‘Tum Tak’ – so rich in its Sufi textures, so overwhelmingly about a higher love that it had me totally obsessed. I found myself watching the videos again and again, trying to piece together the story from dialogues.

When the movie came out, I was there right in the front char anna class, like a genuine filmi fan, drinking it all in.

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People
0 Zarina – A Retrospective at the Guggenheim

Home and exile are two of the most evocative words in the English language, and they are seared into the work of Zarina Hashmi, noted printmaker and sculptor, who was born in Aligarh in India. Zarina, who goes by only her first name, has been a nomad, a transient who has taken many journeys, crossed many borders. The floor plans of past homes, the many stories of dislocation and the sweet lost language of Urdu are embedded in her prints.

Having worked in relative anonymity for 35 years from her small loft in Manhattan, NY, Zarina, 75, is now suddenly on the international art world’s radar. The prestigious Guggenheim Museum is showcasing “Zarina: Paper Like Skin”, the first retrospective ever of an Indian woman artist, featuring 60 works dating from 1961 to the present.

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24/7 Talk is Cheap - The Blog
2 Mira Nair: The Not So Reluctant Filmmaker

This year Mira Nair celebrates the 25th anniversary of her first feature film, the Oscar-nominated ‘Salaam Bombay’ and also the birth of her new film, ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’.
On the eve of the release of ‘Salaam Bombay!’ in New York back in 1988, I had taken a subway downtown to interview the new, not-so-famous filmmaker in her tiny apartment.
The world had not yet discovered ‘Salaam Bombay’ but she was exuberant, excited, animated.
Twenty-five years later, she seems exactly the same – exuberant, excited, animated. There have been critically acclaimed films from ‘Mississippi Masala’ to ‘Monsoon Wedding’ to ‘The Namesake’. The awards and accolades have been coming thick and fast.’The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ screened at The Venice International Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival, among others. Nair calls it her labor of love, five years in the making.

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24/7 Talk is Cheap - The Blog
1 Tina & Tarz on Love, Marriage & Reality Shows

” I still have insecurities and I am nowhere near perfect, but Tarz has taught me that no one else’s opinion of me matters besides of those that truly know who I am, such as my family. Being around Tarz’s “life is short so don’t let anything bring you down” mentality gave me the courage and security to be on this Bravo show, as I’m sure there will be quite a bit of smack talk!
We’ve had a year filled with some really tough and tragic moments, which I’m guessing will translate into tons of drama and insane moments on the show-which means those haters will have plenty to feed off of!” – Tina Sugandh on her new reality show on Bravo.
Single Desi Guest Blog

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24/7 Talk is Cheap - The Blog
2 Review: Mira Nair's The Reluctant Fundamentalist

You’re in the comfortable upper middle-class home of Changez Khan’s parents in Lahore where a qawwalli concert is in full swing and the mesmerizing sounds of Sufi devotional music pervade the room.
The camera zones in on the red paan-stained mouths of the performers, then cuts to the kidnapping of an American academic on the dark streets of Lahore, then back to the musical energy, the total civility of Urdu poetry in bloom. Paan stains and blood. Ethereal music, gun shots and screams. The crescendo rises and you are totally hooked.

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