Archive for the 'Movies' Category
Indian filmmaker Deepa Mehta and Dr. Matthew Bernstein, Emory Professor of Film Studies, discuss Mehta’s friendship with Salman Rushdie, her beautiful Elements film trilogy, issues of censorship in India and Mehta’s forthcoming adaptation of Rushdie’s novel “Midnight’s Children.” Emory University
‘Kavi’, American director Gregg Helvey’s short film (19 minutes) in Hindi about an Indian slave boy, has lost out the Oscar in the Best Short Film (Live Action) category to the Danish entry ‘The New Tenants.’
Read more at kavithemovie.com and here and here
Asra Q. Nomani at The Daily Beast:
A precursor to Hinduism and Buddhism, the ancient philosophy of Tantra dates back some 6,000 years to the Dravidian culture that flourished in the Indus Valley cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in modern-day Pakistan, seeping later into the religious traditions of India, Nepal, and other parts of the region. Its tenets of goddess worship, self-discovery, and spiritual liberation resonate in Avatar, from the Neytiri’s deity-like qualities to Jake’s journey of self-identity. Avatar’s climax is actually not the Tantric sex of their consummation, but a moment that comes later, when they do something modern-day Tantric sex experts call “soul gazing,” and racier sexperts call “sex gazing.”
The Tantric theme in Avatar follows a tradition of Eastern philosophy in popular culture. Consider Star Wars’ iconic line, “May the Force be with you.” Writing the script for that film, director George Lucas became influenced by 20th-century thinker Joseph Campbell, whose encounter with Hindu aesthetic Jiddu Krishnamurti years earlier sparked a lifelong passion for Hindu thought. More:
While American blockbusters shy away from Islamist villains, Indian films give them a showing. Arun Venugopal in the Wall Street Journal:
In Indian movies, the terrorist isn’t some veiled abstraction: He’s your brother (“Fiza,” 2000) or house guest (“Black and White,” 2008) or the woman you couldn’t live without (“Dil Se,” 1998). Their torment—over Kashmir, or U.S. foreign policy, or killings at the hands of Hindus in Gujarat—is writ large. When it cannot be expressed through dialogue, it’s expressed through song.
Over the top? Yes, some of these films definitely are. They’re movies with big, bold emotions, featuring characters who care openly about their cause, whether they’re extremists trying to destroy the country or vigilantes trying to save it (“A Wednesday!” 2008). Indian films tackle the big questions: What motivates someone to commit mass murder? Can a terrorist be reformed? And can even a suicide bomber love, or be loved? By contrast, even Hollywood’s most engaging efforts on the subject, like the TV show “24,” are more about plot and pacing and getting to the bomb in time.
Bollywood has the enormous advantage of cultural proximity. India contains a large Muslim community, people who are not just watching movies but quite often scripting them, composing their soundtracks and starring in them as well. Some stereotyping aside, to a far greater extent than Western filmmakers, Indian filmmakers know how to capture the Muslim experience and critique it. More:
From The Financial Times:
I wait to meet Khan in the coffee shop at the Courthouse Hotel, off Regent Street in central London. A former magistrates’ court, its grey façade and quiet lobby feel too restrained for a Bollywood superstar.
I had been warned earlier in the day that the star was feeling unwell and that lunch would be delayed. Eventually, after a three-hour wait, I am ushered up to the star’s suite on an upper floor, where Khan, looking tired, greets me warmly.
He is wearing a slim-fitting black suit, a sky-blue shirt with open-necked white collar and shiny black shoes. He plays with his glasses as we talk.
We go into the sitting room of Khan’s suite, a wood-floored, wood-panelled room with armchairs grouped around a coffee table and windows overlooking the street below. The hotel has set up a small buffet table, and a waiter puts rice and chicken curry on a plate for Khan, who normally spurns carbs to maintain his six-pack. He has made an exception for this lunch.
I ask the waiter for chicken and rice with extra lentils and salad on the side. We eat with our plates in our laps, until Khan breaks off to light a cigarette. More:
Above, Nadira a.k.a. Florence Ezekiel in Raj Kapoor’s Shri 420.
From Tablet, an online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture (via Ultrabrown):
Rose Ezra. Ruby Myers. Farhat Ezekiel Nadira. From the earliest years of Bollywood, these and other Jewish actresses garnered starring roles. And while they may have looked somewhat exotic to moviegoers, they came from Baghdadi Jewish families who had been living in India for decades. Reporter Eric Molinsky speaks to film scholars, as well as friends and relatives of these once-beloved but now mostly forgotten stars of Indian cinema, to find out how they became the “go-to girls” for leading female roles in the 1920s, ’30s, and beyond.
Click here to listen to fascinating lecture.
Shubhangi Swarup in Open:
My career as an extra began when my friend, who was directing a music video on a shoestring budget, desperately sought fillers-in for her nightclub sequence. For free. With good intentions, I washed and conditioned my hair, wore a slinky dress at 9 am and showed up. Only to be insulted by the make-up dudes, who thought my hair needed re-doing and caked my face like the Joker from Batman.
If watching life pass by is a hobby of yours, then I would recommend the patient, thought-provoking job of an ‘extra’. On the music video set that day, while I tried to catch up with my favourite author Naguib Mahfouz, some models snorted a line of coke or two (for inspiration, I’m assuming). As your role increases, the pressure to be inspired does too.
When it was time for my two minutes of fame—a shot where I try to seduce the singer away from his lady love—I screwed it up royally. I had to sing the following lyrics in a seductive way: ‘O mere raja, paas to aaja, dono milke naachenge.’ (Oh my king, come closer, let’s dance together.) My laughter got worse each time I’d repeat the lyrics, and I just couldn’t get myself to look into his eyes and sing those words with a straight face. In the end I was in splits, with tears in my eyes. More:
also read Adventures of Shubhangi
Bollywood Food Club reminds us that the legendary Bollywood actor Pran turned 90 on Feb. 11. He has appeared in over 350 films; his last three, according to Wikipedia, are 1942: A Love Story (1994), Tere Mere Sapne (1996)and Mrityudata (1997). We love the scene (see YouTube video) in The Evening in Paris (1967)
The paintings are from his website pransikand.com
Why does the greatest superstar in Indian cinema history hanker so much for political patronage? From Open:
In his biography of Sonia Gandhi, journalist Rashid Kidwai writes of a winter day on 13 January 1968, when Sonia Maino landed in Delhi to marry Rajiv Gandhi. It was Amitabh who received her at the airport. In a 1985 interview, Sonia said, “Mummy (Indira) had asked me to stay with the Bachchans so that I could learn Indian customs and culture from close up. Slowly I came to learn a lot from that family. Teji Aunty is my second… no, my third mother. My first is my mother in Italy, the other was my mother-in-law Mrs Indira Gandhi, the third is Teji Aunty. Amit and Bunty (Amitabh’s brother Ajitabh) are my brothers.”
In 1984, after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, Amitabh was one of the men drafted by Rajiv into politics. The two men had known each other since childhood—Amitabh was four and Rajiv two when they met at a fancy dress party at the Bachchan home in Allahabad. “Ma says he messed up his pants,” Amitabh was to recall.
But the mess that was to follow their entry to politics was more than Bachchan could stand. It took no more than a few years for controversies such as Bofors to surface, where Amitabh’s name figured along with Rajiv’s. It was only then that this son of a Sikh mother, who had given little thought to fighting the 1984 election for the Congress in the wake of the massacres of Sikhs, chose to quit. More:
Ayesha Khan in The Indian Express:
So, I debate: should I now watch My Name is Khan, with its catchy tagline: “My name is Khan and I am not a Terrorist”. The tagline hurts. It insults.
Incidentally, my surname is Khan. And I know that a name like that needs lots of explaining. While I managed to rent a flat in the so-called cosmopolitan neighbourhood of Ahmedabad that is barred for Muslims, by paying more — about 50 per cent more — than the rest because I am a Khan. It was fine for a year till I renewed the rent lease recently. The building president, two days ago, asked me to pay up a month’s rent as “brokerage” for renewing the lease for the flat that she has nothing to do with — an absolutely unheard practice, which I refused. Otherwise, she said she would tell all that I am a Muslim and get me thrown out. Incidentally, the flat owner is decent and asked me to stay put, the neighbours are sweet. They are least concerned about my surname and more interested in my profession — that of a journalist.
But the building president thinks that a public revelation of my surname — Khan, which speaks of my religion — is leverage enough to get the flat vacated. I am curious to find out what happens next, and am ready for another bout of silent fights. More:
Here's looking at you in 3-D
The Times, London, reports from Mumbai:
Bollywood’s wealthiest mogul is poised to enter the booming business of transforming 2-D films into 3-D — with classics such as Casablanca expected to be given the full stereoscopic treatment.
Anil Ambani, who dominates the Indian film market but is also a leading Hollywood financier, will soon unveil a giant outsourcing centre in Mumbai that will be dedicated to the process of “dimensionalisation”.
The £25 million facility is the result of a partnership between his post-production business, Reliance MediaWorks, and In-Three, a Los Angeles-based specialist in 2-D to 3-D conversion.
Inside the new unit, 1,000 Indian technicians will be guided by a handful of American experts. In-Three has already given industry insiders a taste of what may be in store, holding private screenings of 3-D snippets of classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, 12 Angry Men and Casablanca. More:
Update: Mumbai calls Sena bluff as movie opens to full house
Multiplex chains in Mumbai will have only a limited release of Shah Rukh Khan’s new film “My Name Is Khan” following threats of violence by the ultra Hindu-nationalist Shiv Sena party. As things stood on Friday noon, single-screen theatres will not show the movie.
Bal Thackeray, the leader of the party, has warned that he will not allow the movie to be released unless the actor apologises for opposing the party’s call to boycott Pakistani cricket players.
Shah Rukh Khan is the owner of the Kolkata Knight Riders Indian Premier League Twenty20 cricket team. He had said Pakistani stars should be included in the Indian Premier League teams. Shiv Sena supporters say that Pakistani players are not welcome in the city after the 2008 terror attacks.
Thousands of police were guarding Mumbai’s cinemas on Friday.
The movie is a classic love story set in the US after the 11 September 2001 attacks, and the Times of India’s critic has given it a rare five-star rating:
Ok, let’s get this straight from the very beginning. It’s Khan, from the epiglotis (read deep, inner recesses), not `kaan’ from the any-which-way, upper surface. In other words, it’s the K-factor — Karan (Johar) and Khan (Shah Rukh) — like you’ve never seen, sampled and savoured before. My Name is Khan is indubitably one of the most meaningful and moving films to be rolled out from the Bollywood mills in recent times. It completely reinvents both the actor and the film maker and creates a new bench mark for the duo who has given India some of the crunchiest popcorn flicks.
Jyoti Thattam in Time:
On a dirt track under the midday sun, Irrfan Khan waits at the starting line. The 42-year-old actor is playing a poor army recruit from a village in central India who runs just to get the extra ration of food allotted to athletes. At his first race, his character doesn’t know what to do when the pistol sounds, so he prays. “You idiot! Run!” the starter screams. That spurs the soldier into action, and the naive confusion on his face turns into determination. Extras from the Bengal Sappers — actual young army recruits who live on the base in Roorkee in northern Uttarakhand state, where the movie is being filmed — crowd around the sidelines as he lowers his head and takes off.
This kind of character — the village boy who succeeds against all odds — is a staple of Bollywood, India’s film industry, the largest in the world. But Khan turns it into something more. In his hands, the true story of Paan Singh Tomar, a track-and-field champion turned mountain bandit, becomes a parable about the frustrated poor. Khan says the film, written and directed by Tigmanshu Dhulia, an old friend from drama school, appealed to him because it follows the hero once he has been forgotten. “It talks about our system,” he says. “It’s a sign for any nation, any society — how much they are prepared to care for a talent.” More:
[Image: www.irrfan.com]
The poster of Dunno Y ... Na Jaane Kyun
From BBC:
The director of a Bollywood film featuring the first male gay kiss in mainstream Indian cinema expects censors to pass the film for release.
Sanjay Sharma made Dunno Y … Na Jaane Kyun (Don’t Know Why) after a High Court ruling overturned a law against homosexuality in India last year.
“At the moment I’m not thinking about any political or censor problems,” Sharma told BBC Asian Network.
The release of Bollywood’s answer to Brokeback Mountain is planned for May.
S. Mitra Kalita in the Wall Street Journal:
Since this film is about a Muslim man married to a Hindu woman, something you might know about, can we talk about the role of religion in your life?
I’m a Muslim. I’ve been brought up by an amazing set of parents who taught me all that I know. I’m married to a Hindu girl. I’ve never tried to explain my religion to her and she’s never tried to explain her religion to me. We don’t make a big deal of it. I go celebrate Eid or might give her a gift on Diwali. Our kids know the prayers of both religions. The bottom line is that they’re thinking of God.
The modern Indian should be moving toward nonradicalism. It’s okay to be idealistic but one should be realistically idealistic. I’ve led my life that like. I am God-fearing. I am a proud Indian. I am a capitalist. More:
From The Guardian:
A film retelling mountaineer Reinhold Messner’s legendary ascent of Nanga Parbat, in which his younger brother was killed, has reignited a bitter mountaineering row and prompted fellow climbers to attack as “false” the version of events being portrayed on the screen.
A group of climbers who accompanied Messner, now 65, and his brother Günther on the 1970 expedition have criticised the makers of Nanga Parbat for telling only one side of the story – and have threatened legal action.
The film, by the director Josef Vilsmaier, is being advertised under the slogan “two brothers, one mountain, their fate” and promises to reconstruct the events when Günther disappeared after apparently following Reinhold down Nanga Parbat in Pakistan, the ninth highest mountain in the world and one of the most treacherous to climb. From the start the film, much of which was shot on location, makes clear that it is telling the story “from the point of view of Reinhold Messner”. More
Oscar-winner A.R. Rahman’s song “NaNa” (click above to listen) from the Hollywood film “Couples Retreat” has been shortlisted for nomination in original song category for the 82nd Academy Awards. It will be competing with 62 other songs.
Rahman’s son Ameen also makes his singing debut in this track.
Couples Retreat is a comedy film directed by Peter Billingsley and written by Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn and Dana Fox.
Film director Raju Hirani’s incredible life story. Shoma Chaudhury in Tehelka:
Hirani’s latest film, 3 Idiots, has been having what stock markets would call a historic bull run. In just 18 days, it has mopped up Rs 350 crore — double the entire business of the last record-holding film Ghajini (which in turn had done 50 percent more business than all the films that ranked below it). Numbers aside, the film seems to have uncorked a dormant emotion in society, and its upbeat slogan “All is well” has become the unchallenged anthem of the season. The film had 21 nominations at the Screen Awards and won 10, including best film and best director. Hirani is undoubtedly the big man of the moment.
Yet the affable, mild-mannered man sitting unassumingly at a coffee shop in Delhi under the TEHELKA office seems peculiarly untouched by the applause around him. He’s been quite happy to trek across the city for his interviewer’s convenience rather than insist on the star’s prerogative that we go to him. Sundry people are swarming around him, jostling for autographs. For a film man, it should have been a cinematic moment. More than 20 years earlier, Hirani had opened his autograph book in the anon – ymity of his room in the Film and Television Institute in Pune (FTII) and signed with quiver of excitement: Raju Hirani: editor, director, producer, 1988. The world lay headily at his feet, he was sure he was going to conquer it. What a self-fulfilling proph – ecy it had turned out to be.
But for Hirani, of the many major “plot points” in his life, the public success of 3 Idiots features nowhere. His idea of success lies in other, much more poignant, autobiographical moments. The moment he first told his father that instead of studying to be an accountant, he wanted a career in cinema. The exact moment he received a tele g – ram from FTII telling him he’d been selected for the editor’s course (NSD and FTII had both rejec ted him first time round when he applied for their acting course). The first 5-min – ute student film he made on a Chekov story, The Bet. Powerful moments of escape, selfrecognition, arrival — many of which imbue his film with the searing conviction and tension of lived experience. More:
From the Wall Street Journal:
After tying up with Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks last year, India’s Reliance ADA Group is eyeing a purchase of another Hollywood studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. But the Indian company isn’t willing to pay anything close to what MGM is seeking, a person familiar with the matter said.
MGM, which is struggling with $3.7 billion in debt stemming from its 2005 leveraged buyout, has extended first-round bids beyond this week as it tries to galvanize more interest in its assets, the person said.
People familiar with the talks said earlier this week that bids are in the $2 billion range, far below what MGM owes its lenders. Some could come in below $1.5 billion, they said. More
3 Idiots’ portrayal of the IIT education system is both grossly unfair and untrue. Sandipan Deb in Open:
I cannot help but have my views on 3 Idiots coloured by the fact that I am an IITian. Call it Imperial College of Engineering, call it whatever, but what is obvious is that the film is a comment on the IIT system. And it is a grossly unfair comment.
I went to do engineering because at that time, if you were a middle-class boy and you were good in studies, it was either engineering or medicine that was fore-ordained. There was no other option you even entertained. A native dislike for Biology pushed me towards IIT, and there I went, quite happily. Within days, I discovered that engineering did not interest me in the least, and I spent the next years putting in just enough effort to survive. Professors either reviled me or despaired of me. But I have never had so much fun as I had on that campus.
Yes, our boys and girls are still rammed into the IITs by their parents, whether or not they have any interest or innate talent. Coaching classes turn aspirants into rote-monsters, and often, they end up without any life skills. In the IITs, you encounter characters like Chatur Ramalingam, the desperately competitive mugpot in 3 Idiots, but the truth is that such people rarely ever top their classes. More:
Booker prize winner Salman Rushdie is in Mumbai with film-maker Deepa Mehta for the film adaptation of his book Midnight’s Children. Excerpts from the Times of India:
On meeting Amitabh Bachchan: I’ve met Mr. Bachchan before, in New York, and at both meetings, he was a charming, gracious presence.
On asking Deepa Mehta to film the novel: Her passion for my work and my admiration of hers.
Does Midnight’s Children have a ‘filmable’ quality? Now that we have a screenplay we like, I would say that, yes, Midnight’s Children is eminently filmable. I have been a film buff all my life and believe that the finest cinema is fully the equal of the best novels.
From the Bollywood movie 3 Idiots:
From Economic Times:
On the success of his movie Three Idiots
You can never imagine that. Actually I was just hoping it would cross Ghajini, because Ghajini itself is so huge and to try and come close to it itself is a huge task. I was happy with the way the film had turned out. But I never imagined that it would be so big. The movie is still running and its gross revenues can go anywhere between one-and-a-half to two times more than Ghajini’s revenues.
On marketing the movie:
Film making is all about communication. You are telling a story to someone. So once you are ready with the story, you will have to tell people that you are making this story and would they like to hear this. That’s what marketing is at the end of the day So if I don’t tell anyone that I am about to tell a story how will people know? So certainly marketing is important. But the best that marketing can do is to get you a good opening on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Big stars or the goodwill of a director can only get you a good opening. Ultimately, what’s going to take your film forward is the film itself. More:
More on the 3 Idiots controversy:
Author Chetan Bhagat is pissed at the makers of the film 3 Idiots for not crediting him enough for the story based on his book Five Point Someone. Bhagat sold the rights of his book, a national bestseller, to producer/film-maker Vidhu Vinod Chopra (VVC) but then sparked off a controversy after he posted a blog claiming that the makers of the film had been ‘unfair’ to him. He said that the pre-release claims by the film’s makers that 3 Idiots was only ‘loosely’ based on his novel was a lie. Yes, he said there were changes and deviations, but ‘it is no way an original story’.
Meanwhile, the 3 Idiots gang led by VVC and followed closely by actor Aamir Khan accused Bhagat of being ‘publicity hungry’ now that the film has become a blockbuster hit. At a televised press conference in Delhi’s satellite city of Noida, Chopra lost his cool, telling a journalist to ’shut up’ after he was asked about the controversy. Chopra apologised a few hours later but the damage was already done.
It was left to director Raj Kumar Hirani to clarify that:
1. “We legally purchased the rights to the novel” with complete authority to alter the text. “We have always said that if we had not read the book we wouldn’t have made the film. But it must be remembered that the screenplay that has evolved from the book is very different from the book and has a life of its own,” he said at the same ’shut up’ press conference.
2. Hirani denies Bhagat’s claim that he was not shown the final script, saying there was a four-hour narration at the end of which Bhagat was made to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
3. Hirani says Bhagat was never told that he would get more than credit in the rolling credits. So why crib now one week post-release.
At the heart of the war, writes Vir Sanghvi in the Hindustan Times is the question of ‘grace’.
Here are two images you may remember from television. The first was the Oscar ceremony. Simon Beaufoy won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay for Slumdog Millionaire. It is no secret that Beaufoy’s script differed significantly from the book by Vikas Swarup on which Slumdog was based. But Beaufoy made it a point to thank Swarup on stage and to say that without his book there would be no screenplay, no movie, and no Oscars.
Later that same night Slumdog director Danny Boyle, while accepting his own Oscar, apologised to the choreographer Longinus, whose name had been left out of the end credits of Slumdog. When the film won the Best Picture Oscar, the entire unit went on stage including Vikas Swarup who had been flown in to Los Angeles by the makers of the film at their expense. more
Previously on AW:
Discovery Travel & Living trailed Shah Rukh Khan for over a year to put together a special ten-part series on the superstar. A glimpse into the first two episodes in Hindustan Times:
Much as I love Mumbai and Delhi and India, I think London would be my next favourite place on earth. I like the weather, the greenness, the cold. Normally I come here for work and holidays but I love coming here. There were two places in the world which my mom wanted me to see, one was Madame Tussauds in London and the other was the Louvre in Paris. So it’s the greatest moment and achievement of my life that I am in Madame Tussauds. She would have been very proud.
When I’m in London, I go to Hyde Park to play soccer with my kids and their friends. I don’t play unfair. Aryan will cheat a bit but he should not. Since he’s playing against the girls, maybe he wants to win but I think he does that in school also which is not good. I think this is his one bad habit that I need to change. You don’t cheat and win. You don’t lie and win.
You can tell the difference between boys and girls when they are playing. You can spend 20 minutes with the boys and 20 minutes with the girls. You may have fun with the boys but you realise life is best with the women and so I like to be with girls. And I want them to be really tough. At least the girls whom I know, they should be tough and should kick all these idiots around. Guys are a little dumb. I am sorry, I may lose some male fans but the girls rock! More:
Manu Joseph in Open:
It is said that getting Aamir interested in a film has the excruciating agony of waiting to win a girl’s affections, and his acceptance comes with the greater torments of a woman’s terrifying obsessive love. “He is involved in every aspect of a film,” a director says, “Some might not like that. He does not trust anyone, it seems.”
Most of the time, though, Aamir rejects the scripts. One such writer who was rejected remembers a whole evening he spent in Aamir’s home trying to sell him the idea. “I was nobody then, but Aamir spent a lot of time with me discussing the story. He had so many questions. So many doubts. ‘Would this work, would people find this convincing… I know people and the people won’t accept it’. He didn’t know me at all, but we went to the toilet together and we peed standing side by side, talking about the script. In the end, he said ‘no’.”
Aamir says that he does not waste the moments of his life doing anything he does not love enough. “When I am choosing a script, I don’t think of the audience. I think of myself. I have to love it. Then I think of the audience. I wonder how can we tell this story without boring anyone. I have only one interest in a film. The message is not important to me. What is important is that I don’t bore you. I know what you want is entertainment. The only responsibility of a film is to provide it.” More:
From the Times of India:
`3 Idiots’ may be creating box-office history. But all’s certainly not well between Chetan Bhagat, the author of the book from which the movie has been adapted, and its hero Aamir Khan, producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra and director Rajkumar Hirani.
An `idiotic’ controversy has broken out over accusations of credit poaching. The film credits the story to Abhijat Joshi and Hirani. Bhagat’s name appears at the film’s end.
Bhagat is miffed that the film does not give him due credit. Khan claims that Bhagat is trying to take away the credit from the film’s scriptwriter, Joshi. More:
From Mint:
Produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and directed by Hirani, 3 Idiots created box office history by fetching Rs175 crore just days after it was released in 1,750 theatres across the world on Christmas day, which makes it the biggest opening for a Hindi film this past decade.
While Bhagat believes that around 70% of the film is based on his book, the makers of the film have previously said that only 2-5% of it is based on the book and that it was like an original script after the changes. On Thursday, Bhagat said in a blog on his website www.chetanbhagat.com that the film-makers had been unfair.
He alleged in his blog that, contrary to what the makers have said, much of 3 Idiots is from his original. More:
In Rediff.com Sunaad Raghuram’s tribute to Vishnuvardhan, the silent superstar of Kannada cinema
I woke up to the news of the sudden demise of a man Kannada filmdom was so used to knowing as Vishnuvardhan. The name on his passport, though, would have actually read: Mysore Narayan Rao Sampath Kumar. Born 1950. Mysore. Vidyaranyapuram if I may add. As I sit down to pen my thoughts on the man whom I had liked, admired and enjoyed watching on screen right from the 1970’s, there comes a visage so handsome and smart that I yearn to see it all over again. more
