Tag Archive for 'Bollywood'
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
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.
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:
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:
From the Washington Post:
Artwork from the Punjab state of India decorates the Ray family home. A Johann Sebastian Bach statue sits on a piano. But in the basement — cluttered with wires, old concert fliers and drawings — Arjun Ray, 25, is fighting distortion from his electric guitar.
For this son of Indian immigrants, trained in classical violin and raised on traditional Punjab music, getting his three Pakistani American bandmates in sync is the goal on this cold New England evening. Their band, the Kominas, is trying to record a punk rock version of the classic Bollywood song, “Choli Ke Peeche” (“Behind the Blouse”).
“Yeah,” said Shahjehan Khan, 26, one of the band’s guitarists, “there are a lot of contradictions going on here.”
Deep in the woods of this colonial town boils a kind of revolutionary movement. From the basement of this middle-class home tucked in the woods west of Boston, the Kominas have helped launched a small but growing South Asian and Middle Eastern punk rock movement that is attracting children of Muslim and Hindu immigrants. It also is drawing scorn from some traditional Muslims who say their political, hard-edged music is “haraam,” or forbidden. More:
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:
Sanjukta Sharma in Mint:
On the eve of the release of 3 Idiots, the only film of 2009 with Aamir Khan in a lead role, the actor’s residence at Pali Hill, Bandra, wasn’t exactly bustling with pre-release activity. He had already completed a tour across India, promoting the film, and All is Well, the film’s anthem, was already in advertisements and Top 10 lists of radio channels. Khan spoke to Mint in his study, crowded with books and files and a painting recently painted by and gifted to him by Salman Khan. Edited excerpts:
Such a long promotional tour for ‘3 Idiots’ across the country, and that too in disguise. You must be tired?
I am actually a bit under the weather. But, today, for the premiere, all the people that I visited are coming to Mumbai. After this, I’ll have to go and meet them.
You do few films. What makes you decide which films you want to be a part of? Why ‘3 Idiots’?
I choose films based on my excitement about the script and my level of confidence and faith in the director and producer of a film. At that time, I am the audience. I move towards roles instinctively, there is no great thought behind it.
I loved the script of 3 Idiots. I have been very keen to work with Rajkumar Hirani for some time now. The only doubt I had and still have is the age of the character. He’s 22 and my own age is 44 now. The audience will decide whether I’ve been able to pull it off nor not. But the character of Rancho, which I play, is someone who Raju (Hirani) felt was close to who I am in real life. I have taken some bizarre decisions, have followed my own rules. More:
Shashi Baliga on the man as he completes 50 years as scriptwriter, producer and movie director. In the Hindustan Times:
Director Kabir Khan remembers with some sheepishness the enthusiasm with which he showed Yash Chopra the script for his Kabul Express, a spare, taut film set in the badlands of Afghanistan. “There I was,” he says, “discussing the script with Yashji (as everyone calls the veteran), convinced I was making a cutting-edge film because it had no songs and dances. When he casually mentioned that he had made a film too, called Ittefaq, which had no songs — some 30 years ago in 1969.”
The next time Khan went to Chopra with a script was for his last movie, New York. “Yashji instantly pinpointed the flab in the script and picked out the scenes I could cut. I did so — because he was absolutely right,” he recalls.
On the day before New York opened, however, Khan had a bad case of pre-release jitters. Till his 77-year-old producer told him gently, “Beta (son), whatever the box-office fate of New York, I want you to know I am proud to put my name to your film.”
It is a moment 38-year-old Khan says will stay with him all his life. More:
From the Times, London:
When Shaikh Nasir, 33, a shopkeeper with a passion for cinema, embarked on his first feature film in the industrial town of Malegaon, his 50,000 rupee (£650) budget meant that a cart had to serve as a camera crane and neighbourhood tradesmen were used as actors.
Even the plot was recycled. The film was a spoof remake of Sholay, a 1970s Bollywood action adventure, except that the horses ridden by the bandit in the original were replaced by bicycles in Mr Nasir’s 2000 version.
The homage delighted local audiences and won the director a cult following, but its DIY appeal never extended beyond the sub-continent. Six low-budget films later, however, and Mr Nasir is on the verge of breaking on to the world stage. His latest project, Malegaon ka Superman (Superman of Malegaon), made for 100,000 rupees, is winning international acclaim. More:
Vikas Bajaj in the New York Times:
After seeking help from him and other numerologists, actors have added or dropped letters from their names — the actor Ajay Devgan recently became Ajay Devgn. Filmmakers have deliberately misspelled the titles of their movies — “Singh is Kinng” was a recent hit. And companies have redesigned brands and logos.
Recently, a travel company started a luxury train service, The Indian Maharaja – Deccan Odyssey. Mr. Jumaani had recommended adding the word “The” and hyphenating the name. Sajivv Trehaan, who heads the tour company the Travel Corporation (India), said the maiden trip was sold out and he believes Mr. Jumaani’s wordsmithing helped. He says Mr. Jumaani’s counsel has been a key to many of his business successes.
“The world has changed for me since then,” Mr. Trehaan said about the time seven years ago when Mr. Jumaani suggested he change his name from Sajiv Trehan. “We were a small company at the time. Now we have seven offices overseas. And I live in Switzerland.” More:
Actor and model Lisa Ray chronicles her journey through cancer and its lessons in a blog. From Mint Lounge:
In June, model and actor Lisa Ray was diagnosed with multiple myeloma — an incurable cancer of the white blood cells. In between getting blood transfusions, trying to retain a normal life and attending press conferences for her new film, Ray decided to write a blog: The Yellow Diaries. Partly sardonic, partly heartbreaking, it’s a glimpse into her personal journey and the journey of those who are battling cancer. Edited excerpts:
From the marrow
7 September 2009
A few months ago my bone marrow started sending me messages.
The signals: I was always exhausted, pale, drained, and completely depleted of red blood cells. The lack of oxygen made me a serial yawner and spacier than a displaced Czarina. Little did I know, but my haemoglobin had fallen to levels where even a dedicated bloodsucker would turn their thoughts to revival. In between work and travel in India this year, I got a routine blood test and the results sent me to the hospital for a blood transfusion.
But not a reason to stop and, like, change my life?
The attempt to communicate probably started earlier. Time when I was ‘busy’. Building a career and impersonating myself. Travelling a lot and stock-piling impressions and drama and super-hyped destinations and a life in ‘art’. So I couldn’t hear my marrow gently carbonating. Trying to get my attention. Instead of tuning in to my body, I tuned out like a landlocked pirate tuning out the sounds of the sea.
And then I stopped travelling and returned to Canada. Got myself tested by Dr Susy Lin, landed in emergency and eventually got full membership into the Cancer Club.
That’s how I found out I have multiple myeloma.
To read Lisa Ray’s blog, visit www.lisaraniray.wordpress.com
NDTV Group Editor Barkha Dutt interviews Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan:
Four experts recommend the best recent books on Bollywood. From the New York Review of Ideas:
Corey Creekmur, Associate Professor of Cinema and Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa, coauthor with Mark Sidel of Cinema, Law, and the State in Asia:
It’s now common to view the Partition of India as the most significant, and traumatic, event in modern South Asian history, and a few critics have noted its muted presence or striking absence in popular Indian cinema, but Bhaskar Sarkar’s Mourning the Nation: Indian Cinema in the Wake of Partition (Duke University Press) is the first full-scale study of the deep impact of the Partition—whether treated directly or, more often, repressed—on Indian film.
Another, quite different, exploration of the cultural politics of representation in popular Indian cinema is the project of Neepa Majumdar’s Wanted Cultured Ladies Only!: Female Stardom and Cinema in India, 1930s-50s (Indiana University Press). Arguably, the star is the most important feature of Indian cinema, and Majumdar’s book is a long-overdue account of the debates and negotiations around the controversial creation of female stars in Indian film. Her study is even more remarkable because it creates a vivid sense of an era from which many key films no longer survive. More:
Amitabh Bachchan, who’s returning to television as Bigg Boss host, talks about the joys of the small screen and the Internet. Rubina A. Khan in Open:
Q You are an ardent follower of the international series, The West Wing. What do you like about it? Which character would you have liked to play in the show, if you were asked?
A I have liked the very concept of the format. Who would have imagined that the office of the President of the United States of America would be material for a TV serial! The whole excitement of being able to position yourself inside those hallowed portals is enough to keep one glued to the proceedings. Then as the events unfold, the speed with which incidents occur and are addressed, is an education in screenplay writing and performance acumen. Each situation, each performer is so perfectly crafted that it is impossible to find even a minuscule flaw. It’s absolutely brilliant! Just observe the camera movements on shots. It is incredible how they have operated them with such finesse and élan. The timings of the artists, the entries and exits, the lighting and the steady cam movements are done to perfection… And what of the artists! They are all simply brilliant. Each chosen and performing to such perfection that it is ompossible to imagine any other in their place. I would have been happy to play an ‘extra’, or ‘junior artist’ as we address them respectfully here in India, in the background, making my ‘passing shot’ on the odd cue, just so I would get an opportunity to watch and observe how magnificently each episode was recorded. More:
