Yes. I am VERY bitter. Instead of coming to a real NASA Engineer such as myself, they chose SRK for the part in their new movie Swades. Some things are just inexplicable. From The Times of India:

Can you imagine Shahrukh Khan doing a Kalpana Chawla, donning the space suit and taking off? If your upper factory’s done a pole vault trying to imagine the Dilli ka munda as a scientist, don’t bother.

Come December, and Ashutosh Gowariker will present the Badshah as a NASA engineer, who retraces his steps to Bharat land in the quest of fulfilling his dreams.

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Barnard College is hosting a talk in Manhattan Tuesday about the preeminence of Bollywood films among the Hausa of Nigeria (via Mango Latte).

One of my fondest memories of Russia during the USSR is of dining with a newfound friend. His Tetris-like apartment had the look of violent meticulousness, a Tokyo sense of space. In that lockbox he had allocated a massive drawer jammed with carefully-filed Hindi films from the ’60s, which he showed off, blowing happy notes. We dined on cabbage and cold potato soup, but his Raj Kapoor impression was uncanny.

Shwas, a Marathi film, was chosen as India’s official entry for the Academy Awards next February (thanks, Prakruti). It sounds like it hits the same themes as Roberto Begnini’s Life is Beautiful; it has a great shtick based on a real-life story:

It tells the story of a young boy stricken with cancer of the eyes… an operation will save the childÂ’s life but will rob him of his sight forever. The grandfather follows helplessly, unable to save the child from a lifetimeÂ’s darkness. At the door of the operation theatre, they are informed that the operation has been cancelled and will take place the following day… the grandfather takes the child out for the day to show him all the sights he will never see again…

Wonder if Shwas will be ‘Indian enough’ for the judges. I haven’t seen this film, and the eye operation angle usually invites screechy, soapy melodrama. But the one-day-to-truly-live setup can work well: an ice palace in a desert, ‘tell me something that will make me love you.’

Speaking of loss, I also hear Khamoshi did well by the deaf. No surprise, it’s by Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

The Indo-American Arts Council is opening its annual film festival with a swank cocktail party and a Bride and Prejudice screening at Lincoln Center on Nov. 4.

But, an upstart challenger with a slick Web site and little by way of details, the South Asian International Film Festival, is also opening with that film on Dec. 1.

Be still my beating heart, ’tis desi indie overdose. And that’s not even including the regular Third I screenings. But can anyone shed light on the SAIFF: does it have a different mission than IAAC’s film fest, is it a desi version of the Asian-American one? Or is this yet another internecine schism, like the duplicate, competing Indian Independence Day celebrations all over the country?

Update: I emailed the SAIFF organizers. Heard back from Soman Chainani, who used to work for Mira Nair’s production company. He says the festival is focused on films about South Asia, while the IAAC focuses on the diaspora.

Screen Daily has some interesting details on yet another Mira Nair project (thanks, Brimful!)

[Nair] recently acquired the remake rights to an Indian “blockbuster” and has sold them on to an as yet undisclosed Hollywood studio. “It will be the first time there has been a reverse, when Hollywood will buy Bollywood. I’m going to remake it in an African-American context.”

Blockbuster in an African-American context? Maybe Shaft meets Sholay! I can see it now: Will Smith channels Amitabh, Martin Lawrence does Dharmendra. Don Cheadle sneers as Gabbar Singh, Mya dances over rough-cut bling. Instead of ‘Mehbooba Mehbooba,’ we get ‘Girls Dem Sugar.’ And all the motorbike scenes are filmed on a wicked Japanese racer.

I think the reverse is even funnier, Indian ripoffs of Hollywood films. But I hear that’s been done.

Mira, no charge for the treatment. Just send me a couple of points off the back end.

Time Asia runs an interesting profile on Mira Nair (also see Sajit’s post):

Nair was also, she claims, an unwanted child—or, as she puts it, a “contraceptual blunder.” In 1957 the Indian government was worried about its exploding population, and her father, a senior bureaucrat, had sworn to limit the family to the two sons they already had. He sent his wife Praveen to a clinic for an abortion, but she couldn’t bring herself to go through with it…

…Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love was universally skewered, and even Nair disowned it as an “aberration.” (Time)

As Amardeep Singh has fisked in far greater detail, some reviewers have complained about the desi influences in Vanity Fair:

The buzz is all about how Nair has played up Thackeray’s Indian influences—he was born in Calcutta—including a Bollywood dance number and an ending shot in the Rajasthani fort town of Jodhpur. The New York Times griped about the “outlandish” sight of Witherspoon doing a “grinding Indian-flavored hoochy-cooch, worthy of Britney Spears,” saying it seemed “shoehorned in from another movie.” (Time)

Nair defended her colonialism-centric angle as a legitimate, innovative interpretation:

The basis of what I loved and which I thought Thackeray plumed so acutely and beautifully was the relationship between the colony and the empire. Thackeray himself was born in Calcutta and came to England, and I always saw him and his writing as a sort of satiric look at his own society; that he was the ultimate insider/outsider and I think it was in that realm and that vein that he created his great heroine, Becky Sharp… (Metro)

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A new Bollywood film about the Sepoy Mutiny is nearing completion. The Rising, a patriotic screed that’s the love child of Lagaan and 1942: A Love Story, stars Aamir Khan, the ubiquitous Aishwarya Rai, Rani Mukherjee and Amisha Patel. It focuses on Mangal Pandey, the original militant vegetarian who sparked the rebellion. And nothing says ‘freedom fighter’ like a big, honkin’ moustache (vegetable wax only, please). Director Ketan Mehta hopes the film is subversive, not preachy:

“We have seen our history from the British perspective. Now let us see it from the Indian perspective…”

I have to admit the Brits are good sports about it, shelling out shillings for Lagaan and those adorable cricket-playing natives. But what about the odd appearance of Prince Ears at the film’s ceremonial kickoff? Chuck, just a hint: you were on the other side. Khan wiggled uncomfortably:

“This film is not against the Queen’s rule, but the East India Company, which ruled India then.”

A nuanced, sensitive position on war. Well, ok then. Mehta also did the art film Mirch Masala with Shabana Azmi and the film Sardar on the iron-willed annexer of Indian kingdoms, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. A.R. Rehman, who did the music for Lagaan, is scoring the film, to be titled Mangal Pandey for the Indian market.

Numerous villagers who all claim to be Pandey’s descendants are up in arms over a smooching scene in the film, the irony of which is left as an exercise for the reader. We at Sepia Mutiny are just chapped over being kissed off by their casting department for said scene, despite our obvious lip-locking skills.

Keira Knightley, whose breakout role came in Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham, is going head-to-head with her former mentor as they both film Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It’s a Brit vs. British Asian showdown separated only by angle and time.

As Sajit has posted, Chadha’s version, Bride and Prejudice, is an unapologetically Bollywood interpretation starring Aishwarya Rai that debuts this year. Knightley’s version comes out in ’05, a traditional version with mostly British actors set in yesteryear London.

Chadha recently released the full trailer for her version, a light-hearted romantic comedy co-starring Martin Henderson, Namrata Shirodkar, Anupam Kher, Naveen Andrews, Indira Varma and Ashanti. Check out the bit where Henderson describes bhangra (‘screw in a lightbulb with one hand and pet the dog with the other.’)

Throw in the Mr. D’Arcy character from Bridget Jones’ Diary, he of the ugly jumper, and never-married miss Jane is gettin’ some lowe. And she’s not the only one. Considering all the desi shout-outs scampering through Vanity Fair, and the desi re-imaginings of Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the English are in for some hot, back-door reverse colonialism action.

Mira Nair to direct the new Harry Potter movie? According to Nair herself:

“I’m getting offers to direct Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I read it over the weekend. I’m still deciding… I’m not letting all this go to my head. I’m grounded. I practise detachment, it helps me keep my balance. I’m a Dilliwalli [someone from Delhi], only an asana [a position in Yoga] gets me on my head! My son Zoharan’s excited. I’ve seen all the Harry Potter movies with him.”

I’d be quite interested to see what she could do with the material. I thought that Chris Columbus did an awful job, both in terms of deadening the joy in the material, but also in terms of whitewashing it all. Cuaron, on the other hand, did even better than I had expected (although given how well he directed “A Little Princess“, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised). He also managed to showcase the non-white characters who were there all along, and who play a larger role in the story as the series goes on. No word yet on whether Sitara Shah will come back as Parvati Patil (heck, they haven’t even re-signed Daniel Radcliffe yet).

For more on Nair, read Sajit’s earlier post on the topic, where he mentioned this rumor earlier. Continue reading →