Tumgik
#Hotel Mumbai bollywood movie 2019
mariacallous · 2 years
Text
In the summer of 2019, the actor Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub won a role on “Tandav,” an Indian political drama being produced by Amazon Prime. The title was clever. In Hindu lore, the tandav is the dance of life and death performed by Shiva, the god whose terrible powers can end the universe—a neat metaphor for the dark, intricate maneuvers of national politics. When Ayyub read the show’s script, he spied a handful of allusions to the India around him. In one episode, policemen barge onto a university campus to arrest a Muslim student leader. The scene recalled the government’s persecution of popular student politicians and, more broadly, the hostility toward Muslims that marks the Hindu nationalism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.). The B.J.P. had just begun its second straight term in power, and “obviously, when you write, you write about recent things,” Ayyub said. Mostly, though, “Tandav” aspired to be splashy entertainment—the kind of show in which a Prime Minister dies after drinking a glass of poisoned wine, which happens in the opening episode. “In fact,” Ayyub said, “I even told the director, ‘If your main character breaks the fourth wall, you will have your “House of Cards.” ’ ”
Ayyub played another student leader, a tyro named Shiva Shekhar—not quite the main role, but a key one nevertheless, and a fillip to his career. A little more than a decade ago, Ayyub had been a floundering theatre actor in Delhi. “It took me four or five months, with great difficulty, to save enough money to buy a refrigerator,” he said. Then he moved to Mumbai and threw himself into its entertainment industry—into Bollywood, to use a term that many of its denizens dislike. Since then, Ayyub, now thirty-nine, has earned supporting parts both in blockbusters and in small, sparkling movies. He has a magnetic way of speaking Hindi, but he isn’t yet the sort of actor who is mobbed on the street. When we met, in June, he suggested not a luxury hotel or Soho House—the usual, discreet haunts of stars of a certain luminosity—but a café near his apartment complex. We sat outdoors, in sweaty, pre-monsoon weather, and Ayyub went through cigarettes and chili-cheese toast with the vim, if not the metabolism, of an undergraduate. After being cast in “Tandav,” Ayyub said with a laugh, he had to lose weight to look young enough to be Shiva Shekhar.
In the first scene that Ayyub shot, Shiva is onstage in a student skit, playing his namesake deity: a Shiva in a suit, newly risen from a cosmic nap, wondering how to be relevant once more. Tweet about something controversial, an accomplice proposes—something about how the university’s students, forever demanding azaadi, or freedom, from their government’s oppression, are “anti-nationals,” traitors to India. The audience chuckles; the B.J.P. rants in this vein so often that it has turned into a trope. But Shiva is surprised. How can a call for freedom be controversial? “Azaadi?” he exclaims. “What the . . . ?” The last word is drowned out by the shriek of mike feedback.
Like nudity and sex, profanity discomfits the average Indian film or television producer. This is especially true of those who make the quintessential Hindi movie—the song-and-dance melodrama, fit for all ages—but the instinct persists in those who aim to be edgier. When lawyers for Amazon Prime and an external law firm first reviewed “Tandav” ’s scripts—a customary procedure—Shiva’s line had been a full, florid “What the fuck?” One of the lawyers told me that his team had urged the showrunners to prune the expletive, but that there was more concern about “Tandav” coming off as anti-B.J.P. One character, the lawyer remembered, “was a politician depicted as a conservative, pushing for the privatization of education, which is one of the Modi government’s issues. We always said, Do it in a way where you can’t match the incidents onscreen to real incidents.” (Amazon broadly disputed this characterization.)
Drawing inspiration from bleak headlines—the religious lynchings, the cronyism, the autocratic acts of the state—had become a fraught enterprise. The B.J.P. and its supporters were growing intolerant of contrary views and criticism, and they were liable to react badly—through social-media attacks, targeted harassment by government agencies, or endless litigation. Outright violence was rarer, although its threat was never distant. “In the year or so before ‘Tandav,’ ” the lawyer said, “people were objecting to anything.”
When “Tandav” premièred, in January, 2021, Ayyub was on location, shooting a film. On Twitter, he noticed that he was being tagged frequently—sometimes by people praising him, but mostly amid heaps of abuse. In cities and towns far from Mumbai, people filed police complaints, claiming that the portrayal of a foulmouthed Shiva was an insult to Hinduism. (A B.J.P. official told me that, in the large family of Hindu-nationalist organizations, “an enthusiastic worker can always be found who will file these complaints to keep his bosses happy.”) Such cases usually go nowhere, but in the B.J.P.’s India, where the police and the courts are pliant, it’s hard to be sanguine. Recently, a Muslim journalist was imprisoned for three weeks because someone complained that a four-year-old tweet derided Hinduism. The account that reported him was anonymous, had one tweet and one follower on the day of the arrest, and went offline thereafter.
To be safe, Amazon cut the skit scene from “Tandav” a few days after the show began streaming. But the storm raged on. A senior B.J.P. leader wrote to Amazon, accusing its “ideologically motivated employees” of running “vicious programming.” Amazon petitioned India’s Supreme Court to protect the show’s director and producers from arrest while the cases were being heard; the Court refused to grant this reprieve. That felt unprecedented, Ayyub said, and it tipped everyone into a state of high alarm. An Amazon employee who worked on “Tandav” remembers how taxing the experience was. “It took over our days, nights, weeks, months,” he said. “And we were all working from home, because this was peak Covid. So I was on calls with the Amazon guys in the U.S. late night my time, early morning my time, because the company wanted to protect its employees.” All the discussions, he said, were about “how to keep our people safe”—but for a few months it really looked as if an Amazon executive might go to prison for green-lighting a cheesy TV show.
Filmmaking thrives in plenty of other cities in India, but “Bollywood” has become shorthand for Indian cinema as a whole, and for the thousand or so movies that the country releases annually. For nearly a century, Bollywood has also worn the warm, self-satisfied gloss of being a passion that unifies a country of divisions. Not only are its audiences as mixed as India itself, filmmakers will say, but Bollywood is a place where caste and religion don’t matter. The most piously presented proof of this is the fact that, in a Hindu-majority country, a Muslim man named Shah Rukh Khan has been the supreme box-office star for decades.
Even if Bollywood possesses this liberal fibre, the rightward swing in Indian politics has gnawed away at it. In Mumbai, people divide recent history into pre-“Tandav” and post-“Tandav” periods, reading the show’s fate—its bitter legal battles, its suspended second season—as a lesson in what can and cannot be said in Modi’s India. Their nervousness manifests in absurdities—in, for example, how Amazon Prime now discourages characters who share their names with Hindu deities—but also in decisions to put audacious film and TV projects into cold storage. Other filmmakers embrace genres that match the B.J.P.’s tastes: dubious historical epics that glorify bygone Hindu kings; action films about the Indian Army; political dramas and bio-pics, dutifully skewed. These productions all draw from the B.J.P.’s roster of stock villains: medieval Muslim rulers, Pakistan, Islamist terrorists, leftists, opposition parties like the Indian National Congress. Through Bollywood, India tells itself stories about itself. Many of those stories are now starkly different, in lockstep with the right wing’s bigotry.
Governments have tried to control Indian cinema in the past—mostly through the Central Board of Film Certification (C.B.F.C.), a state authority that can order alterations or essentially ban movies by refusing to certify them. But the B.J.P.’s disdain for Bollywood registers as something deeper—as an echo, in fact, of its animus toward the Congress and other rival parties. When Modi came to power, in 2014, he decried national politics as an élite club: upper-class, upper-caste, English-speaking politicians, activists, and journalists, all cozied up to one another in the plush pockets of central Delhi. In the eyes of the B.J.P., Bollywood, too, is full of liberals disconnected from the real India. And if the film industry is full of “nepo kids”—the children of actors, producers, and directors—then Rahul Gandhi, the Congress’s aspirant Prime Minister and the son, grandson, and great-grandson of earlier Prime Ministers, is the foremost nepo kid of all. “People like us—we’re hated,” the director Nikkhil Advani, the cousin and grand-nephew of producers, told me.
The B.J.P. began with small, typical political moves. In 2015, it appointed a B-movie actor, who was also a longtime Party member, to lead a prestigious, state-run filmmaking institute. When a C.B.F.C. chair quit, citing coercion by the government, she was replaced by Pahlaj Nihalani, a director who’d made a campaign video for Modi. Nihalani didn’t want any swearing in cinema—or violence, or sex, or, in one case, even the word “intercourse.” When Alankrita Shrivastava submitted her movie “Lipstick Under My Burkha” to the C.B.F.C., in 2016, “they refused point-blank to certify it,” she told me. In an industry known for writing larger-than-life characters, Shrivastava had told human-size, bittersweet stories about the desires of four women. The C.B.F.C., in a letter to the producers, objected to scenes of sexual intimacy, and to the “lady-oriented” plot. This hidebound reaction, Shrivastava told me, could have occurred under any government. Her point was that, back then, she was able to appeal to a tribunal, which certified the film for release. “It was frustrating and expensive, but at least there was a way of getting the decision reversed,” she said. Last year, the government abolished the tribunal. Now the only recourse available to censored filmmakers is litigation.
The B.J.P. exhibited another skill as well: an ability to whip up its base—its Internet bruisers, rank-and-file cadre, and ideological allies—into a frenzy so coördinated that it came to resemble popular sentiment. When Aamir Khan, the versatile star of several of Bollywood’s highest-grossing films, admitted, in 2015, that he was worried about growing intolerance in India, a social-media backlash began against Snapdeal, an e-commerce platform that Khan had endorsed on billboards and in TV spots. Within months, Snapdeal decided not to renew his contract; even this year, Khan pleaded with audiences not to spurn a new film because of his past remarks. In 2020, one director told me, an actor friend was put through the wringer of a boycott campaign on Twitter. “When I saw that, I went and deleted all my posts about politics,” he said. “I had a film coming out, and they’d have definitely used my tweets against it.”
Ignoring the mob felt increasingly unwise. In 2016, Sanjay Leela Bhansali—a reserved, bearded director known for maximalist costume dramas—started making “Padmaavat.” Bhansali was dramatizing a legend: the story of Padmavati, a Hindu queen from the Rajput caste, who is so renowned for her beauty that Alauddin Khilji, the Sultan of Delhi, attacks her husband’s kingdom to abduct her. Bhansali shot “Padmaavat” with his usual grandiosity: cavernous palaces, scenes teeming with extras, rich palettes of fabric. Toward the end, Padmavati and her handmaidens are besieged by Khilji’s army. Instead of submitting, they dress in red and stream through the palace, like blood through an artery, to leap into a pit of fire—a happy ending, in the moral universe of the Hindu right. Khilji is portrayed as half-mad, lustful, and a committed carnivore, stereotypes of the Indian Muslim brought to life.
Before the film’s release, though, a rumor leaked of a love scene between Padmavati and Khilji. This, it appeared, was too great a slight against Hindu honor. A B.J.P. politician announced a reward for beheading Deepika Padukone, who played Padmavati. A posse of young, angry Rajput men stormed onto the film’s set, found Bhansali, and roughed him up; then they destroyed film equipment and, in a later incident, burned down part of the set. According to Bhansali, he had to finish shooting “Padmaavat” under the protection of fifty-two policemen. “At one point, I thought, Enough. Change my profession. I can’t make films anymore,” he said later.
The B.J.P. often ascribes these events to fringe elements or faceless Hindu “patriots.” But the number of such incidents makes filmmakers assume that they’re seeing a bigger transformation, in which the average member of their audience now truly likes everything the B.J.P. likes, and abhors everything it abhors. For anyone with hundreds of millions of rupees riding on a movie, a director of lavish blockbusters said, these are tectonic confusions. “When someone thinks of a movie idea—not just me but other people who think of themselves as liberals—they think, Is it O.K. if my hero is a Muslim?” he told me. “But the darker question is: Is there even an audience out there for this kind of movie?”
“The Kashmir Files” has proved particularly vexing. Released earlier this year, the movie purports to be based on true events: the brutal eviction, beginning in 1989, of tens of thousands of Hindus from the Muslim-majority valley of Kashmir. At least two hundred Hindus were killed, according to government data, but the movie inflates the number to four thousand. Armed insurgents were responsible, but, implicitly or explicitly, the film blames many others for enabling the tragedy and for lying about it afterward. Unsurprisingly, they include some of the B.J.P.’s pet antagonists: leftist university professors, the Congress. “The Kashmir Files” has already triggered a riot, and one B.J.P. leader given to casual calls to shoot “anti-nationals” urged his Twitter followers to watch the film “so that there is no Bengal Files, Kerala Files, Delhi Files tomorrow.” Modi praised the film as another bursting of the liberal bubble; B.J.P. leaders distributed free tickets. After “The Kashmir Files” became one of the highest-grossing releases of 2022, Nikkhil Advani told me, filmmakers naturally wondered if this was the kind of thing people want to watch. “Now that it has worked,” he said sardonically, “let’s all make this kind of nationalistic, jingoistic cinema.”
In Mumbai, the quotient of Bollywood celebrity is highest in Bandra, a western suburb shaped like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. The stars who appear elsewhere in the city on movie posters reside here, amid narrow, winding roads, weathered Portuguese churches, and chic bars that they can never visit. Salman Khan, an actor who has spent most of his career playing a square slab of muscle, lives in the same apartment building where he and his two brothers—both actors now—grew up. Not far away, the actors Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan, the children of stars themselves, occupy several floors of an apartment block. The drivers of Mumbai’s black-and-yellow taxis ritually point out these landmarks as they pass by.
Mumbai’s worst-kept secret lay a few doors from my hotel, down a road facing the sea. Shah Rukh Khan lives with his family in a villa the size of a small hotel, set back from a pair of heavy gates. Above a wall surrounding the compound, Khan has erected a black metal fence with a platform, where he sometimes materializes, in sunglasses, to greet the fans thronging the sidewalk to glimpse him. The pavement is never empty; even late at night, returning to my hotel, I’d see a few straggling devotees taking selfies, talking quietly, or just gazing at Khan’s house in the dark. In those moments, nothing demarcated the gulf between their worlds—between fan and celebrity, outsider and insider—more vividly than the black metal fence.
One morning, a man with a polite mustache joined me at my hotel for breakfast. Once a consummate outsider, he is now trying to become a new kind of insider. I’ll call him Ramesh, because although he belongs to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the mother ship of the B.J.P. and other Hindu-nationalist groups, he was keen to stress that he was meeting me in a personal capacity. The R.S.S., a volunteer organization that’s nearly a hundred years old, isn’t a political party. It’s the custodian of a belief that India is, first and foremost, a land for Hindus; it aspires so much to a literally muscular Hinduism that its members often receive paramilitary training. Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin was once a proud R.S.S. man. Modi joined the R.S.S. when he was young, as did many other B.J.P. leaders. Ramesh denied, though, that the R.S.S. wields any undue influence over the government. “It’s like there’s a college—let’s say, Harvard,” he said. “A hundred students of Harvard become senators in the U.S. Now, every time they go to their professors to ask something, would you say Harvard runs the government?” He framed this as a rhetorical question, but I suspect that we had different answers in mind.
In 2019, the R.S.S. formed a media unit in Mumbai, ostensibly to liaise not just with the film industry but also with journalists, the music business, and other trades. Ramesh cherishes this work. He’d come to Mumbai the previous year, from a town in southern India, where he’d grown up as a film buff. He still remembers the first movie he watched with his father in the cinema, when he was four years old: a pulpy mystery called “Hatya,” or “Murder,” dreadfully inappropriate for his age. In scrupulous daily accounts of expenditures, his father used to include the title of every film he’d watched, along with the price of the ticket. “I still have the list of hundreds of movies that we’ve seen,” Ramesh said.
Ramesh’s work with the R.S.S. involves many meetings—often half a dozen a day, with directors, producers, writers, and studio executives around Mumbai. He solicits these on WhatsApp. (A director sent me screenshots of one of Ramesh’s texts: “Your debut film was an internationally acclaimed movie and also won several awards here. . . . We would love to meet you for an informal interaction at your convenience & comfort.”) Ramesh’s mission, he said, is to nudge filmmakers toward subjects close to the R.S.S.’s heart. He wouldn’t care for a drama about conflict between Hindu castes, for instance: “Look at the great history of this country—and what do we show? We show all bad things.” But conflict in itself is not a problem. He often suggests tales of India’s military and intelligence agencies, or stories about the battles won by Hindu kings. He told me about a seventeenth-century Hindu general who, according to legend, held a pass against a Muslim king’s army with the help of just a few hundred troops—“you know, like ‘300.’ ” That would make for an excellent movie, Ramesh said, because it would encourage people to feel good about India. “Every story should end sukaant—that is, happy.”
Happy endings are relative, though. If a film conforms to the R.S.S.’s vision of India, Ramesh excuses any manipulations of fact; if it departs from that vision, Ramesh believes that its creators seek to “tarnish” India’s image. He cited “The Empire,” a show on Disney’s Indian platform, about Babur, the Muslim warrior who founded the Mughal dynasty in India, in 1526. Why make a show that humanizes Babur, Ramesh wondered. He doesn’t consider Muslim rulers to be Indian, even if they were born in the country. “They were invaders,” he said. “Sacred Games,” a noirish Netflix series, depicted a Hindu man plotting an act of terrorism. Ramesh thought that it was propaganda: “You want to show Hindus as terrorists because you don’t want to acknowledge Islamic terrorism.” “Tandav”? Also propaganda. But he forgives directors who invert history, depicting Hindu kings defeating their Muslim foes in battles that they actually lost. “You have to show something that will inspire people,” he said. And when I asked him about “The Kashmir Files”—about how brazenly polarizing it was, how its tenor was far from sukaant—he claimed unflappably that it was all fact. “You should know the history,” he said.
The B.J.P. likes to attribute its success to a Hindu awakening. Ramesh, similarly, thinks that Bollywood would be wise to heed a newly aware public that will brook no offense. If Amazon feels daunted by the lawsuits against “Tandav”—if it feels compelled to make shows and movies for Hindu partisans—that doesn’t worry Ramesh: “They must be happy that we do court cases. We don’t go and destroy their buildings.” His own efforts to set Bollywood right were minor, but they represented the importance that the R.S.S. vests in cinema. “We recognize that this is the most powerful medium, which controls minds, which influences the opinions of people,” he said. “A film is a mirror of society,” he went on—a tired, tedious idea, although it struck me that the Hindu right, to obtain the precise reflection it wants, is recasting not just society but also the mirror itself.
The writer Saadat Hasan Manto, who crafted some of the darkest, funniest short stories of the twentieth century, once adored the cinema, sometimes watching three films a day. In the late nineteen-forties, just before the British Raj ended, Manto joined Bombay Talkies, the first great Indian studio. The subcontinent was bloodily being pulled apart into India and Pakistan. “Hindu-Muslim riots had begun,” Manto wrote later, “and as wickets fall in cricket matches, so were people dying.” In these precarious times, one of the studio’s heads, Savak Vacha, a Parsi, set about reorganizing Bombay Talkies, promoting several employees who, like Manto, happened to be Muslim. “Vacha began to receive hate mail,” Manto wrote. “He was told that if he did not get rid of the Muslims, the studio would be set on fire.” Manto felt responsible; how would he face his colleagues if the studio were visited by violence? His friend Ashok Kumar, Bollywood’s earliest superstar, tried to reassure him. “ ‘Manto, this is madness. . . . It will go away,’ ” Manto recalled him saying. “However, it never went away, this madness. Instead, as time passed, it became more and more virulent.”
There was, perhaps, never a prelapsarian India—an India resounding with religious harmony—but “in many ways Bollywood, in its beginning, was one of the most cosmopolitan employers,” Debashree Mukherjee, a scholar of South Asian cinema at Columbia University, told me. In part, this was a political alignment with freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who wanted India to be a plural country. But it was also born out of necessity, Mukherjee said, because the movie industry was created as a patchwork of many other trades. “Some of the earliest financing came from Gujarati Muslims, and some of the earliest writers were from the Parsi theatre scene,” she said. Lyricists wrote songs in Urdu, a language inflected with Arabic and Persian and fostered by Muslim nobles as a medium of high culture. On a set, the dress dada might be a Hindu tailor and the art dada a Muslim painter. “The workforce was diverse, which remains the case today,” Mukherjee said.
Onscreen, Indian Muslims tended to be typecast, but in mainstream Bollywood this wasn’t so unusual: every character tended to be typecast. When Muslims led the story, they often figured as Mughal nobles, as courtesans, or as players in what the film scholar Ira Bhaskar calls the “Muslim social,” in which older, feudal ways of life tilted at the twentieth century. The stock of secondary roles included the benevolent Muslim elder (Khan Chacha, or Khan Uncle), the soulful poet or composer, and the best friend.
The Muslim type appeared even in “Amar Akbar Anthony” (1977), a landmark film that enshrined the ideal of religious tolerance. “Amar Akbar Anthony” is unabashed Bollywood—long and exuberant, with a baroque plot and half a dozen musical numbers. Three brothers, separated in childhood, are adopted into different faiths, and grow up to be the film’s dashing heroes, each neatly falling in love with a woman from his own religion. The movie’s conclusion is never in doubt. Its energy springs instead from the question of how its various ends are obtained: how the brothers realize that they’re brothers, how they find their long-lost parents, how they win their women, how they defeat a crime lord who has tried to destroy their family. The film ends in a joyful, syncretic reunion—the Nehruvian nation transposed onto the family in the clearest possible fashion. In this idyll, Akbar, the Muslim brother, could have clerked in a bank or run a magazine; instead, he sings Urdu qawwalis, and his love life is its own little Muslim social.
“It’s only in the late nineteen-eighties, and really with greater and greater frequency in the nineteen-nineties, that mainstream films start showing Muslims as gangsters, smugglers, and then terrorists,” Bhaskar said. Not by coincidence, she pointed out, these were also the decades when the B.J.P. grew as an electoral force. In 1992, after calling for the destruction of a mosque in the temple town of Ayodhya, B.J.P. and R.S.S. leaders watched as their followers tore the building down in a matter of hours. The demolition ignited riots, ushering India toward its present condition of chronic, quivering polarization. In 2010, Bhaskar met the director Yash Chopra, who had made many staunchly secular movies between the sixties and the eighties. “We couldn’t make those kinds of films today,” he told her. The plural ideal had withered too much. “Back then, we had faith in it.”
But perhaps it has been a mistake to regard cinema as a moral compass, to treat it as anything other than what it is: a machine to make money by pleasing as many people as possible. “Some of the criticism that Bollywood is frivolous or misogynistic has come from the well-meaning liberal left, which looked down upon the form,” Nandini Ramnath, a film critic for the Indian news Web site Scroll.in, told me. Ramnath believes that Bollywood’s prime confection—the family entertainment—appeals to audiences not despite its vanilla universality but because of it. “If the left was anxious that such films weren’t prescriptive enough or noble enough—well, now the right wants films to be prescriptive in its own way,” she said. The leaders of the B.J.P. are “brilliant at creating the impression that they’re omniscient and omnipotent,” she added. “And I think the clearest signal is: think twice before you say or do anything, because you don’t know who it’s going to offend, and you can assume it’s going to offend us.”
In Bollywood taxonomy, the director Dibakar Banerjee makes “gentry films”—films for people whom the industry regards as the “thinking public, classy folks,” Ramnath told me. (A second kind, she said, are “mass pictures”—movies for everyone.) Banerjee’s sly, charming début, “Khosla Ka Ghosla,” or “Khosla’s Nest” (2006), featured a young engineer who postpones his plans to immigrate to the U.S. so that he can thwart a local don’s schemes to annex his family’s land. Another movie, “Shanghai” (2012), which kicks off with a deadly attack on a leftist academic, is broadly inspired by Vassilis Vassilikos’s novel “Z.” Banerjee, who is fifty-two, waited out much of the pandemic with his family in their house in the Himalayan foothills. On Zoom, he tends to stare into the distance and gather his thoughts before answering a question, a habit that often made me think the image had frozen. Then he’d slap at a mosquito on his arm, and I’d know he was still online.
In 2017, Banerjee felt an itch. He’d been reading with horror about the lynchings of Muslims and about the murder of a journalist named Gauri Lankesh, all at the hands of Hindu extremists. This was, he said, “a special eruption of the poison”—and yet much of the country seemed not to sense its dreadful import. “The middle class was aware only of a daily, ubiquitous ‘othering’ of people in our lives,” he said. “I really wanted to make a film about it.” The following year, Banerjee signed a contract with Netflix, for a movie tentatively called “Freedom,” and shot the bulk of it in the course of thirty-six days at the beginning of 2020, largely in Mumbai. “We had another five days of exterior sequences left, but that didn’t happen, because the Indian lockdown started,” he said.
Earlier this year, Banerjee sent me a Vimeo link to his finished film, which confronts the bigotry infecting India. Banerjee approaches his theme slowly and sideways, through the story of one Muslim family. The family’s first generation, living in Kashmir during the unrest in 1990, finds itself sundered from its Hindu friends. In the second generation, a young woman wants to buy an apartment in present-day Mumbai, but no one will sell to her. (Muslims in Indian cities commonly struggle to find places to live, a form of discrimination practiced by Hindu homeowners and residents’ societies.) In 2042, the woman’s son, a novelist, lives in an even more ghettoized Delhi—a geofenced city where the state machinery determines what people can do based on their social-credit score. The wretchedness of this future spills out of the movie; later, I seemed to remember every frame as being gloomy and grim, even though several scenes are brightly lit. “We’ve lived through enough history to understand what’s going on now,” Banerjee said. “Now we can extrapolate, which is what my film does.”
During the years that Banerjee wrote and shot his movie, the takeover of Bollywood quickened. By 2019—an election year—new power brokers had emerged in the industry, seemingly from nowhere. One of them, the son of a legislator allied with the B.J.P., directed “The Accidental Prime Minister,” which pilloried the Congress leader who had governed India before Modi. (“It felt like propaganda even as I was making it,” Arjun Mathur, one of the film’s actors, told me. “I really regret doing it.”) Another produced a fawning bio-pic of Modi. One director told me about Mahaveer Jain, a producer who “was a nobody” but who now partners with some of Bollywood’s biggest studios and filmmakers. Jain, who said that he couldn’t meet me because he was unwell, is often described as the B.J.P.’s chief Bollywood liaison. In January, 2019, he helped choreograph a meeting between Modi and a band of A-listers, which yielded a selfie that blazed through the Indian Internet. Conspicuously, not one person in the photo was Muslim.
Sometimes there are more deliberate flexes of muscle. In the summer of 2020, under the pretext of probing an actor’s suicide, federal authorities launched an investigation into the drug habits of some of Mumbai’s most famous stars. Among them was Karan Johar, the city’s most influential filmmaker—a director who runs a sprawling production firm, a TV host who jokes on his talk show with his Bollywood friends, and, as the son and the nephew of famous producers, a twenty-four-karat nepo kid. Kshitij Prasad, a young executive producer who was then with Johar’s company, was called in for questioning, and he later said that the officers seemed keen to pin something—anything—on Johar or on another celebrity. “They kept insisting I was supplying drugs to the industry,” Prasad said. (The investigating agency has denied Prasad’s version of events.) When Prasad refused to coöperate, he was sent to prison for ninety days, then released on bail. The threat of a tax raid has also become a weapon, one director told me. When he was raided himself, investigators noticed that he’d been donating small monthly sums to news sites like Scroll and the Wire, which often criticize the government. “They said, ‘Don’t contribute to any of these publications,’ ” he said. “So I had to stop.”
Even these events, though, were reduced to mere prologue last October, when drug inspectors arrested Aryan Khan, the twenty-three-year-old son of Shah Rukh Khan. A team of agents, under the orders of the same officer who’d imprisoned Prasad, stopped Aryan in a Mumbai port terminal, where he was preparing to attend a party aboard a cruise ship. The agents found no drugs on him, yet they held him in jail for nearly a month before allowing him bail. Earlier this summer, they dropped all charges against him—which made it impossible not to speculate about what had happened. Had a government agency really imprisoned Aryan Khan without proof, as pure intimidation? Shah Rukh Khan said little during those weeks. The rest of Bollywood, meanwhile, absorbed the news as the most cautionary tale of all: if they could do this to the king, imagine what they could do to us.
By mid-2021, after a series of lockdowns, Banerjee had finished postproduction on his generational drama. Like a punctilious gardener, he’d offered to trim some of the movie’s nettles himself, unwilling to have Netflix stung more than necessary. (According to an internal memo, these changes included cutting images of the Indian flag. The memo also suggested, “In one of the shots, one person is walking in the background during National Anthem—remove that person.”) Toward the end of 2021, after Banerjee showed Netflix the film, something shifted. “There’d been a discussion about releasing the film in late 2022,” he said. “But an executive told us that they couldn’t commit to a release plan.” (Netflix denied this characterization.) The government had issued new guidelines for streaming platforms, obliging them, for instance, to pull a show or a movie within thirty-six hours if a court or a state agency ordered it. As Netflix kept dithering, Banerjee felt that he had just a few options left. “Wait indefinitely for the release to happen, or look for a producer who has the interest to release it in India—for the audience that I meant it primarily for—or look for a producer who doesn’t release it in India but releases it everywhere else,” he said. That last possibility was “very, very horrible—but what choice do I have?”
Banerjee’s film joins a growing trove of content that studios and filmmakers are reluctant to air. One director told me that he’d shot a love story about a couple who run away from home to be together. No one wants to release the film, he said, because “it just so happens that the boy is Muslim and the girl is Hindu.” According to two sources, a miniseries based on “Maximum City,” the popular nonfiction book that recounts Mumbai’s religious riots in 1992, has been frozen. (The production company denied this.) “Takht,” a Karan Johar extravaganza set in the Mughal period, began gestating around 2018. Two people who worked on the film described it as a celebration of secular values—which, they suspect, is partly why it’s effectively comatose. (Last year, Johar denied that he has abandoned the project.) Nikkhil Advani, who made the series about Babur, told me that he’d never experienced any censorship himself. But when I asked if he’d planned a season on Humayun, the second Mughal emperor of India, he said, “I had, but it’s not going to happen.” Humayun had waged persistent war against Hindu kings, but Advani found it dull to compose him in the shrill key of the bloodthirsty Muslim. And although there were other obstacles—the first season’s wan performance, rights issues with a source book—Advani knew that a humanized Humayun wasn’t worth pitching to any platform. “There’s no way they will allow me to make this,” he said.
More than once, I heard filmmakers liken their circumstances to those of their Iranian counterparts—in a tone that was plaintive but also, I thought, a little wistful, as if they hoped that these travails would burnish their artistic cachet. An ex-Amazon Prime executive classified the dismay over shelved projects as “whiplash—from writers and directors who assumed streaming platforms would give them the freedom and funds to tell whatever stories they wanted, without any checks and balances. If these people are just going to roll over and die, they don’t have the right to bitch to you about it.” A former executive at another streaming service described many of these filmmakers as people “who’ve never been in a room where someone else is more important than them,” and said that the recent encounters with political might were mere jolts to that privilege.
But that wasn’t necessarily a refutation of the belief, harbored by so many writers, directors, and producers, that their work was being iced because of its politics. In a conversation with a former Netflix employee, I asked why Banerjee’s film had suddenly stalled. “There’s a huge sense of fear,” the employee admitted. “No one wants to take the political risk of releasing a project like that.”
In contrast, Bollywood is glutted with movies and TV shows that align with the B.J.P.’s politics. There’s a series on a 2019 terrorist ambush of Indian troops in Kashmir. A film about Vinayak Savarkar, an architect of Hindu chauvinism. A bio-pic of Nathuram Godse, the erstwhile R.S.S. member who assassinated Gandhi. (Its producer promised that the film would “explore the mind-set and journey of a freedom fighter.” He was referring to Godse, not Gandhi.) Two vocal Modi supporters, the actors Kangana Ranaut and Anupam Kher, are collaborating on a film about the Congress leader Indira Gandhi and her two-year suspension of democracy, between 1975 and 1977. One director showed me a four-minute video that he’d received on WhatsApp—a teaser for a production about a Congress corruption scandal in the eighties. The clip interleaved old news footage and fresh footage so deftly, the director said, “that you feel like they don’t have an agenda. Then you read the names of the people involved.” At the end of the video, a logo popped up: Anupam Kher Studios.
One day, I met Sandeep Singh, the producer of not only the film about Modi but also the upcoming Godse and Savarkar bio-pics. His office was in a suite on a high floor of a hotel; for a while, the hotel’s power failed, the afternoon warmed the room, and we sweated gently into our coffee. Singh, who moved to Mumbai in 1992, worked as a film journalist before breaking into the industry, and, in accounts of not being invited to awards ceremonies, he let slip his resentment about being an outsider in Bollywood. He didn’t come off as a rank B.J.P. apologist, like Kher and others often do. Rather, Singh is that more common phenomenon: a producer who wants his films to ride the B.J.P.’s success. He made his glowing, airbrushed movie about the Prime Minister, he said, because “the character of Modi excites people.” His Savarkar film similarly exploits a fierce public debate about a right-wing ideologue who is being championed anew by the B.J.P. and the R.S.S. Savarkar is “a misunderstood hero,” Singh said, and his reputation had been sullied by rival politicians. “For today’s youth,” he went on, “it is very important to know what our past is.”
The first week I was in Mumbai turned out to be a representative one, as far as Bollywood releases were concerned. One new movie, “Major,” was about the life of an Indian Army officer who died trying to rescue hostages from the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, in Mumbai, after Pakistani terrorists seized the building, in 2008. Another film, “Samrat Prithviraj,” sang the glories of a twelfth-century Hindu ruler, Prithviraj Chauhan, who was killed after a battle against Muhammad Ghori, a king venturing eastward from present-day Afghanistan. “Samrat”—or “Emperor”—had been affixed to the title at the eleventh hour, after members of Chauhan’s caste protested that calling the film “Prithviraj” was insufficiently reverential. This was the same group that had vandalized the set of “Padmaavat”; it was perhaps easier to just give in.
I watched “Samrat Prithviraj” on the morning of its release—“first day first show,” as it’s called in Bollywood—with Nandini Ramnath, the film critic for Scroll. Ramnath was excellent, acerbic company for a movie with plenty to be acerbic about. In the lead role was Akshay Kumar, an aging action star with a face as lean as a greyhound’s. Kumar’s Prithviraj is a self-righteous bore, forever harping on about Hindu tradition and the need for Hindus to stick together. (The film’s obviousness won it tax exemptions in several states ruled by the B.J.P.) His sandstone palace is bathed in a golden light—the perfect venue for his wedding to an ingénue of a princess. But Prithviraj can spare little time, and just a couple of song-and-dance sequences, for love. Most of the film is taken up either by his councils with advisers about battles or by the battles themselves. In the climax, Prithviraj dies—but not before he rewrites history by killing Ghori. (Lions in a coliseum are involved.) The film’s epilogue calls Prithviraj the “last Hindu ruler in north India” (a falsehood) and laments that, after his death, India recovered its honor only when it gained independence from the British, in 1947—thus conflating homegrown Muslim rulers with European colonists in a sweep of rhetoric.
When the lights came up, there were barely a dozen people left in the theatre, down from the twenty or so at the beginning. In the weeks that followed, “Samrat Prithviraj” proved to be a box-office dud. It’s the sort of fact that some filmmakers cited to me in hopeful tones, as if to say that the Hindu-nationalist playbook doesn’t guarantee a hit—that the whims of the audience will ultimately thwart any ideological conquest of Bollywood. But this idea ignores the sheer volume of oxygen taken up by films like “Samrat Prithviraj,” and their accretive psychic weight. And it overlooks the movies that aren’t being made, the stories that aren’t being told, the things that aren’t being said. “The worrying aspect,” Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub told me, “is that, out of fear, you draw back and you draw back and you draw back, until you step on the very people you ought to be defending.”♦
16 notes · View notes
ehtesham · 5 years
Photo
Tumblr media
• Lucknow Da Kurta, Pathani Salwar, Tab Lage Mard Varna Lage Bekaar 😆😂 • Can Anyone Guess Which Movie Is This Dialogue From?🙋🏼‍♂️ __________________________________________________ #mysisterswedding #meribehenkishaadi • • • • • • • • • • • #menswear #2019 #mumbai #mumbaifashionblogger #indian #incredibleindia #mensstyle #outfitoftheday #lookbook #outfitpost #bollywood #instastyle #streetwear #dapper #fashionblog #menwithstyle #styleblogger #streetfashion #indianwedding #wiwt #indiaclicks #picoftheday #mumbaigram #stylish #mensfashionpost #nikah #womenswear #sherwani (at Hotel Leafio) https://www.instagram.com/p/BsFUaVdBhI8/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1gpa7pdqouoz3
1 note · View note
newsdesk24 · 3 years
Text
Corona Impact on Bollywood stars
In the last 12 to 15 months, the havoc that Corona has caused in the country has not only worsened the economic condition of middle and lower-class families. Rather, the roots of the glamorous and dazzling-looking film industry have also been shaken. The situation is that in the last one year many small artists have said goodbye to Mayanagari Mumbai. The stars reduced the security of their homes, the demand for designer clothes also halved. Some people also had to sell properties to maintain their lifestyle. In contrast, one thing is that many Bollywood celebs have invested heavily in the stock market and mutual funds. Bollywood stars have also discovered many opportunities to earn through investments when the corridor closes in the way of earning.
There are some stars of the count, who did not have much effect on the corona and lockdown, but apart from this, the crisis that is happening on the rest of the industry is disturbing the entire Bollywood. The beginning of 2021 had raised some expectations. Many production houses in Bollywood, who are looking for a return to theaters and multiplexes, had also confirmed the release dates of their films, but in the last 15-20 days, due to the second wave of Corona, the producers are seen again withdrawing from the release. Huh. In such a situation, conditions do not seem to improve in the first half of this year.
Films came down, revenue dropped by 80%
A total of 1833 films were released in Bollywood in the year 2019 whereas only 441 films were released in 2020. The theater's revenue from movies dropped by 80%. A recent report by FICCI states that the total income of the entertainment sector has come down by 24%.
Designer clothing made at 50%: Anju Modi
Now the stars are ordering designer dresses less often. In addition to shooting, stars used to order dresses for the red carpet, parties, special meetings, or events. The cost of a dress ranges from ten thousand rupees to a million rupees. Celebrity fashion designer, Bajirao Mastani and Ramleela costume designer Anju Modi say that earlier every day I used to get actors' dress orders, but everything has stopped in the Corona era. The orders are halved. Because of this, I had to reduce my staff by 50%.
50% drop in Bollywood's security services
Gurcharan Singh Chauhan, president of the country's oldest security association of India, says that five percent of our security in the entire country works in Bollywood-entertainment, which has been reduced by 50 percent due to Corona because the event, Crowd, Party, function are all closed. Above all, the government has not included them in the list of free vaccines.
RK of Tiger Security Agency Dubey told that big stars used to take 10-12 bouncers or security guards at the time of the event. It has just stopped. Some of the stars' houses where 20 security guards used to live earlier are now running five.
Money invested in various funds
Nikhat Ashraf Mohammadi, chief operating officer of Mumbai-based Idafa Investment Company, says that Mumbai's wealthy section in Kovid (which also has clients from Bollywood and entertainment sectors) invested as much as ever before. Celebrities made investments through the Alternate Investment Fund (AIF), with a minimum investment of Rs 1 crore. In 3-4 years, it gets money with 6 times the growth. Apart from this, celebrities also invested in Stock Exchange (Equity).
According to Nikhat, there was no income on the ground and no one could go anywhere. The celebrity section was making such investments by deploying its funds from here to there so that they could be profitable in the coming years. Our company did not have even a minute in Kovid. All the work was done by phone and email. We have not done so much investment work in the last several years. People invested in shares of companies like Reliance, Ola and Zomato, and Pharma.
Big stars in depression or stress, small economic crisis
Actor Piyush Mishra says that Establish stars have the same problem that they are in depression, but do not worry about the passing. In contrast, the actors who struggle and earn daily income are in a bad state. Some people have sold the property, many people around me have left Mumbai and returned to their cities.
Film actor Israel Khan says - It is not possible for an actor like me to cut gym and workout. Earlier I used to go with my Jaguar for the meeting, now I go by taxi. Earlier meetings were also held in good places, but now it is not so. The Source of income has been almost closed for the last one year.
Expenses fully under control
JD Majithia, chairman of the Indian Film and Television Producers Council TV and Web Series, said that most of the expenses of TV actors are spent on maintaining a lifestyle. Dresses, parlors, food inexpensive hotels, shoes, and many other expenses are all reduced.
The biggest upheaval in the lives of small stars
Senior trade analyst Komal Nahata says that the expenses of A and B grade actors cannot be reduced because their lifestyle is their compulsion, but their earnings have been cut. The condition of actors below B grade has worsened. They are either taking loans or spending their savings and selling properties. There is a real upheaval in his life because the actors in this queue are on a daily income.
According to film producer and trade analyst Girish Wankhede, A-grade actors sign contracts and take an advance of 25% of the fee two years in advance, but only those who do so are counted actors. Apart from these, 70 percent of the industry runs on daily earnings. They get paid according to daily work. Many B-grade actors who owned two or three flats sold their properties to make a living. Apart from this, going to a party, hosting a party, investing in property has completely stopped.
No effect on these stars
Only Akshay Kumar from India was among the top 10 highest-grossing actors in the world in the Forbes list in the year 2020. Apart from films, Akshay Kumar, who earned Rs 362 crore annually from endorsement and other sources, was at number six in this list.
In the year 2020, Akshay Kumar, Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, and Ajay Devgan were among the top 5 actors in the industry in terms of film fees. Of course, Aamir Khan did not do any film in 2020, but he was ranked number four based on the fees of Lal Singh Chadha. Apart from these big stars' fees, they also participate in the profits of the film. He also has a part in the profits of all the rights of the film. In such a situation, they maintain their lifestyle.
Source-Media reports
0 notes
bollywoodproduct · 5 years
Photo
Tumblr media
Hotel Mumbai is a collabraation of India, Australia and America and is based on 2008 Mumbai Attack on Taj Mehal Palace Hotel. The movie was first released on Septemebr 07, 2018 in the Toranto International Film Festival. The movie has already been released in Autustralia on March 24, 2019 and in United State of Ameria on March 22, 2019.  https://www.bollywoodproduct.com/bollywood-movie/hotel-mumbai-2018 https://www.instagram.com/p/B5S2BxYJGJH/?igshid=1llqbzkviix2a
0 notes
lyricsovera2z · 5 years
Link
HUMEIN BHARAT KEHTE HAIN LYRICS - HOTEL MUMBAI : The Humein Bharat Kehte hain Song lyrics / Humein Bharat Kehte Hain Lyrics from Latest Bollywood Upcoming Movie Hotel Mumbai. 'Humein Bharat Kehte hain Song lyrics' The Humein Bharat Kehte hain Song was Sung by Stebin Ben. Featuring by Anupam Kher & Many More. (LyricsOverA2z.com) The music of the Song Humein Bharat Kehte hain (Lyrics), has been composed by Sunny Inder. The lyrics of the song Humein Bharat Kehte hain (Lyrics), have been penned by Kumaar. (LyricsOverA2z.com) The Humein Bharat Kehte hain (Lyrics) Song was released on November 13, 2019.The Upcoming Movie 'Hotel Mumbai' will Be Released on 29th November 2019.
0 notes
weekendwarriorblog · 5 years
Text
WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND March 29, 2019  - DUMBO, UNPLANNED, THE BEACH BUM, HOTEL MUMBAI
This is going to be another weekend where I haven’t really seen any of the wide releases except for a few that opened limited first. Next week will probably be the same as I head to Las Vegas for CinemaCon and will miss most of the bigger press screenings.
Tumblr media
Sadly, I would have loved to have seen Tim Burton’s DUMBO (Disney) in time to review it for you, as I am generally a fan of Disney’s classic animated movies (vs. the Jeffrey Katzenberg wave from the ‘90s, most of which I still haven’t seen), as I am a fan of Tim Burton and much of the cast of this one. It includes Michael Keaton and Danny De Vito, both reuniting with Burton after Batman Returns, and Eva Green, who has appeared in a few of Burton’s recent movies… AND she once called me a “pervert.” (The story is funnier if I don’t explain why.) But the story of Dumbo is classic Disney in the sense that it reminds me of all the wonders of watching movies as a kid filled with joy and awe… as opposed to now where I always feel a sense of dread, wondering if a movie will be half as good as it hopes. Anyway, I’ll see this on Thursday night and maybe write something Friday if I’m up to it.
I’m less likely to see UNPLANNED (Pure Flix), a movie that I’m shocked even exists, let alone is being released into 1,000 theaters. This is almost like the polar opposite of the great Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake in that it’s a biopic about Abby Johnson, a Planned Parenthood clinic director who was so shaken by witnessing her first abortion (not her own) that she became an anti-abortion activist. Besides sounding like something out of Jordan Peele’s upcoming The Twilight Zone show, it’s also horrifying to think that the Pro-Life crowd is now trying to recruit the Christian Right to their cause through movies, one that received Pure Flix’s first R-rating, no less.
After premiering at SXSW, Harmony (Spring Breakers) Corine’s new movie THE BEACH BUM (NEON), starring Matthew McConaughey and a typically oddball cast including Snoop Dog, Zak Efron and Jonah Hill, will also open wide this weekend. I’ll probably try to catch this just cause I’m so curious about Corine’s oddball auteur sensibilities. Spring Breakers was actually a bit of an anomaly, and it was one of his few movies I actually liked, compared to something like Mister Lonely, which I found unwatchable despite its similarly-odd cast, which included Werner Herzog.
Then there are two movies expanding nationwide this weekend, both of which I’ve seen and enjoyed, the first of them being Anthony Maras’ directorial debut HOTEL MUMBAI (Bleecker Street), a terrific ensemble piece starring Dev Patel, Armie Hammer and Jason Isaacs – three actors I truly love – about the terrorist attacks on the luxurious Hotel Taj in 2008. I was really impressed with how Maras and his cast and crew tell this harrowing story that’s not quite on par as Peter Greengrass’ United 93 but has a similar impact as you watch it and see how these amazing people came together to prevent even more people from dying. I also should point out that the primarily Indian cast beyond Patel are also excellent, showing there’s a lot of talent coming from India that have yet to break out in a big way Stateside.
Focus will also expand Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s drama The Mustang into an unknown number of theaters, and I also recommend this movie if you have an opportunity to see it. It’s a wonderful movie starring Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts (Rust and Bone) as a convict who finds a way to fight against his anger issues and violent tendencies by training a wild horse in the prison’s program. Since I haven’t seen the other three movies above, as of this writing, I recommend seeking out Hotel Mumbai or The Mustang if they’re playing wherever you live.
LIMITED RELEASES
Tumblr media
I was a bad boy this weekend and didn’t watch any of the screeners I was supposed to watch, so that means I’ve only seen one of the movies opening in select cities this weekend, and that was Kent Jones’ DIANE (IFC Films), which played at Tribeca last year where it won two awards. It stars Mary Kay Place as a Massachusetts woman named Diane, who puts most of her time into helping others in her big family over herself while also dealing with her son Brian’s (Jake Lacy) ongoing addiction that has him going in and out of rehab. Personally, I found it a slog when I saw it at Tribecalast year.
Opening in New York (Village East and Alamo Drafthouse, the latter a part of their Drafthouse Recommends series) and L.A. (three Laemmle theaters)  is Sophie Lorain’s French coming-of-age comedy SLUT IN A GOOD WAY (Comedy Dynamics), a movie that I haven’t gotten around to watching the screener, as of this writing, but what a great title, huh? It stars Marguerite Bouchard, Romane Denis and Rose Adam as three teenage girls exploring their first taste of freedom, all three of them in love with the guy who works at “Toy Depot” – a sex shop -- where they each apply for part-time jobs.
Also opening in select cities is Alison Klayman’s documentary THE BRINK (Magnolia) which follows former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon through the 2018 mid-term elections as the controversial Breitbart founder tries to reinvent himself by getting involved in the European Parliamentary Elections of 2019 with his “global populist movement.” I’ll be curious to see how this compares to Errol (The Fog of War) Morris’ American Dharma, which premiered during film festivals last September but (as far as I know) still hasn’t been released yet. I’m not even sure it found distribution but Bannon is not a very popular figure among American liberals (for good reason), so I can’t imagine many critics would approve of either film.
This week’s Saban Films’ offering is Sarah Daggar Nickson’s thriller A VIGILANTE, starring Olivia Wilde as an abused woman who sets a course to help victims rid themselves of their domestic abusers while also hunting down her husband, whom she needs to kill in order to truly be free. It will play in select theaters Friday after a month on DirecTV.
Downton Abbey director Michael Engler reunites with Downton writer/creator Julian Fellowes who adapted Laura Moriarty’s bestselling book The Chaperone (PBS Distribution Masterpiece Films). The amazing Haley Lu Richardson (Split) plays Louise Brooks before she became a movie sensation in the ‘20s and is just a student in Wichita, Kansas. When she is sent to New York to study with a dance troupe for the summer, her mother requires a chaperone, a role taken on by the by-the-books Norma Carlisle (Elizabeth McGovern).  This witty period piece opens Friday at New York’s Landmark West 57 and Quad Cinema and then expands to L.A.’s Laemmle Royal, Playhouse 7 and Town Center 5 on April 5.
The Discovery Channel is also giving Ross (Born into Brothels) Kauffman’s new documentary Tigerlanda release in New York on Friday just a day before it premieres on the cable channel Saturday. It’s a film about a group of Russians trying to protect the last Siberian tigers from extinction, and it’s produced by Fisher Stevens of the Oscar-winning The Cove.
Cocaine Cowboys director Billy Corben returns with the doc Screwball (Greenwich), another film set in Miami, this one that looks into Major League Baseball’s doping scandal and how it affected New York Yankee’s Alex Rodriguez. It opens in select cities following its debut at TIFF last year.
The makers of The ABCs of Evil, Tim League and Ant Simpson, return with The Field Guide to Evil, a horror anthology featuring short films by eight (actually nine) foreign horror filmmakers telling folktales about myth and lore, including Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio), Can Evrenol (Baskin), Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz (Goodnight Mommy) and Agnieszka Smoczynska (The Lure). I missed this movie at Fantasia last year (‘cause I didn’t go) but it will be opening in most Alamo theaters (about 40 nationwide) on Friday.
This week’s Bollywood release, opening in about 100 theaters nationwide, is Thiagarajan Kumararaja’s thriller Super Deluxe (Prime Media), the second film from the director who won the Indira Gandhi Award for Best Debut Film at the 59thNational Film Awards in India. It’s a film about how fate messes with the life of a group of people, as fate is wont to do.
Renowned indie distributor Jeff Lipsky’s seventh feature as a director, The Last (Plainview Pictures), will open in New York at the Angelika and CMX New York on Friday, then will expand to other cities including L.A. on April 26. It involves a large Jewish family of four generations learning that their 92-year-old matriarch, a Holocaust survivor (Rebecca Schull) has a secret that shocks the entire family.
Opening in L.A. at the Laemmle Music Hall is the Holocaust drama Sobibor (Samuel Goldwyn Films) from reputed Russian actor/director Konstantin Khabenskiy (he appeared in Timur Bekmambetov’s Wanted and Nightwatch), playing Soviet prisoner Alexander Perchersky, who led a rebellion at the Nazi’s Polish death camp Sobibor in 1943 in order to escape, freeing hundreds of Jews.
As a counterpoint to Unplanned, there’s Josh Huber’s romantic comedy Making Babies (Huber Brothers) about a couple played by Eliza Couple and Steve Howey who spent five years trying to have kids, so they start exploring other medical and spiritual ways to conceive a child. The movie also stars Ed Begley Jr. and the late Glenne Headly and will open in select cities.
STREAMING AND CABLE
Tumblr media
Besides playing at the Egyptian in L.A. (see above), John Lee Hancock’s THE HIGHWAYMEN will be available on the Netflix streaming service after playing in select theaters for a couple weeks. I finally caught it last week, and really enjoyed it. It stars Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson as former Texas rangers Frank Hamer and Maney Gault, recruited by the Governor of Texas (Kathy Bates) to hunt down and kill Bonnie and Clyde, whose crime and killing spree has gotten out of hand. Hamer and Gault travel across stateliness trying to find them, following the different clues left behind. This is definitely my kind of movie, not just due to the subject matter, but also seeing such great actors as Costner (possibly the last of the bonafide movie stars?) and Harrelson taking on such great roles to show a different side of the story than the one mostly known from the Warren Beatty movie. I really enjoyed both actors’ performances and the general tone of the film, although I do feel that it was a little too long and drawn-out and not in a good way ala David Fincher’s Zodiac. But it does pay off, and it’s a shame that more people won’t be able to see this on the big screen because the film looks great due to the cinematography by John Schwartzman. I’ll also give a shout-out to my pal Johnny McPhail who plays the farmer who witnesses one of Bonnie and Clyde’s brutal murders. Rating: 7.5/10
Also, Friday sees the return of Santa Clarita Diet for its third season, again with Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant. 
LOCAL FESTIVALS OF NOTE
Tumblr media
The big festival starting in New York this week is the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual New Directors/New Films, which always has interesting stuff although it’s definitely getting more indie and esoteric in recent years. It kicks off tonight with Chinonye Chukwu’s prison-set drama Clemency, starring Alfre Woodard and Aldis Hodge, which recently won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. The festival’s Centerpiece Is Alejandro Landes’s Monos, another Sundance prize-winner, starring the wondrous Julianne Nicholson as an engineer who travels to the South American jungle and is taken captive by teenage guerillas. The Closing Night film on April 6 is Pippa Bianco’s Share– ALSO a Sundance prize-winner! – which deals with sexual assault and the role of the internet, something which seems very relevant and pertinent. There’s a lot of interesting foreign films and a good amount from women filmmakers in this year’s line-up, which you can read more about here.
REPERTORY
METROGRAPH (NYC):
This weekend, the Metrograph begins its Total Kaurismäki Show, as in Finish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki, who has been making festival-winning films for almost 40 years and has YET to have a film nominated for an Oscar. This Friday, the series begins with some of the director’s lesser-seen ‘80s movies Hamlet Goes Business  (1987),Calamari Union  (1985) and Crime and Punishment (1983), as well as Shadows in Paradise  (1986), Ariel  (1988) and then the 1990 film The Match Factory on Saturday. This week’s Late Nites at Metrograph  offering is Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner: The Final Cut  (1982/2007) and Playtime: Family Matinees (which has become my idea of comfort food in terms of cinema) is showing Abbot and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde  (1953). Sadly, I’ll be out of town on Tuesday when the Metrograph is presenting Claire Denis’ The Intruder (2004) with a QnA by Ms. Denis who will also introduce No Fear, No Die (1990) right afterwards. (If you also can’t make this night then never fear as BAM is beginning a full-on Denis retrospective, which you can read more about below.)
THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):
Tarantino’s reopened rep theater continues to kill it with a single screening of Mike Nichols’ 1966 film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, on Weds. afternoon. This week’s double features are John Boorman’sPoint Blank  (1967) and The Outfit (1973) on Weds. and Thurs., Fellini’sLa Strada (1954) – one of my personal faves – and Il Bidone  (1955) on Friday and Saturday, then the ‘30s musicals Dames and Footlight Paradeon Sunday and Monday. The weekend’s one-offs are midnight screenings of Kill Bill Volume 1on Friday and the comedy anthology Amazon Women on the Moon (1987) on Saturday. The weekend’s KIDDEE MATINEE is The Black Stallion (1979) and there will be a special 20thanniversary screening of the Wachowski’s The Matrixon Monday. Tuesday night’s GRINDHOUSE double feature is two directed by Roger Corman -- The Trip (1967) and The Wild Angels (1966).
FILM FORUM (NYC):
Bob & Wray: A Love Story continues with a double feature of Virtue  (1932) and Viva Villa (1934) on Weds., a reshowing of Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon (1937) on Thursday as well as a Fay Wray double feature of Once to Every woman (1934) and They Met in a Taxi  (1936). Friday sees a reshowing of the double feature of The Mystery of the Wax Museum and The Vampire Bat, both from 1933, and a double feature of Lee Tracy movies, Doctor X (1932) and Carnival  (1935). On Saturday, there’s a special screening of the early Fay Wray film The Wild Horse Stampede with piano accompaniment, plus a double feature of John Ford’s The Whole Town’s Talking  (1935) and Frank Capra’s  You Can’t Take It With You  (1938), both written by Robert Riskin. This weekend’s Film Forum Jr. is the Disney animated classic Bambi (1942).
EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):
Besides a Weds. double feature of John Lee Hancock’s new movie The Highwaymen with his 2002 baseball film The Rookie starring Dennis Quaid, the Egyptian begins Noir City: Hollywood – The 21stAnnual Los Angeles Festival of Noir, running all weekend. It begins Friday with the double feature of Trapped (1949) and The File of Thelma Jordon  (1950), continues Saturday with Appointment with Danger (1951) and Shdow on the Wall (1950), Sunday is Sudden Fear and The Narrow Margin, followed on Monday by City That Never Sleeps and 99 River Street from 1953 and on Tuesday with Playgirl and Hell’s Devil Acre, both from 1954. (This series will continue next week as well.)
BAM CINEMATEK (NYC):
On Saturday night, BAM will start a new series called “Beyond the Canon” (pairing a classic with a more recent film which it inspired) with a double feature of Anna Rose Holmer’s The Fits (2015) and Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975). At the same time, BAM is kicking off Strange Desire: The Films of Claire Denis, which will run until April 9 and will show some of the French filmmaker’s best films, including Beau Travail (1999), White Material  (2009), 35 Shots of Rum and more recent films like her upcoming English language debut High Life, starring Robert Pattinson.
MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):
On Thursday, MOMI is having a special presentation of Alexandre Rockwell’s 1992 film In the Soup, starring Steve Buscemi, Stanley Tucci, Seymour Cassel, Jennifer Beals, Carol Kane and Jim Jarmusch as part of the 9thAnnual Queens World Film Festival with Rockwell in discussion with former director (and QWFF Spirit of Queens honoree) David Schwartz. To prepare for Mike Leigh’s fantastic new film Peterloo, MOMI is also presenting Past Presence: Mike Leigh’s Period Films, showing the master’s earlier films Topsy Turvy (1999), Mr. Turner (2014) and Vera Drake (2004). It will include a preview screening of Peterloonext Wednesday with Mike Leigh in person!
IFC CENTER (NYC)
I guess Weekend Classics: Early Godard is continuing this week after all with a 35mm print of Weekend (1967) while the winter season of Late Night Favorites ends with Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain (1973) as well as David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001).
MOMA (NYC):
Modern Matinees: B is for Bacall continues with Douglas Sirk’s 1956 film Written on the Wind on Weds, Vincente Minelli’s Designing Woman  (1957) Thursday and Young Man with a Horn (1950) on Friday.
LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):
This week’s Friday midnight offering is Mandy director Panos Costamos’ 2010 debut Beyond the Black Rainbow.
Next week, it’s a doozy of an April opener with Warner Bros’ Shazam! taking on Paramount’s Pet Sematary and the STX drama The Best of Enemies trying to pick up any remaining scraps of business. I’ve only seen one of them.
0 notes
moviesbucket123 · 5 years
Text
Hotel Mumbai (2019)
The true story of the Taj Hotel terrorist attack in Mumbai. Hotel staff risk their lives to keep everyone safe as people make unthinkable sacrifices to protect themselves and their families.
Hotel Mumbai is a 2018 biographical thriller film directed by Anthony Maras and co-written by Maras and John Collee. It is inspired by the 2009 documentary Surviving Mumbai[5] about the Mumbai attacks in…
View On WordPress
0 notes
gethealthy18-blog · 4 years
Text
9 Actors Who Picked Bollywood Late Enough To Prove That Acting Is Timeless & Ageless
New Post has been published on http://healingawerness.com/getting-healthy/getting-healthy-women/9-actors-who-picked-bollywood-late-enough-to-prove-that-acting-is-timeless-ageless/
9 Actors Who Picked Bollywood Late Enough To Prove That Acting Is Timeless & Ageless
9 Actors Who Picked Bollywood Late Enough To Prove That Acting Is Timeless & Ageless Niharika Nayak Hyderabd040-395603080 December 17, 2019
While many people have claimed that actors and actresses have an ‘expiry date’, it couldn’t be further from the truth. Like every field, many actors realize that acting is their calling much later in life. Some even make the difficult decision to abandon well-paying jobs and successful careers to make the switch and pursue the job they love. To know which of your favorite Bollywood stars actually started their careers a little later in life, scroll on.
1. Adil Hussain
_adilhussain / Instagram
It wasn’t until Gauri Shinde’s English Vinglish that we saw Adil Hussain’s fresh face grace our screens. Considering that most directors stick to casting an already well-established actor for their movies, Shinde’s decision to cast Adil was noteworthy. The actor received the industry’s attention after getting cast in the 2010 film Ishqiya. Despite Adil being just a few films old, he has become a favorite among new-age film directors like Ang Lee and Mira Nair. He made his entry into Bollywood at the ripe age of 40.
2. Ronit Roy
ronitboseroy / Instagram
Before making his big-screen debut with Udaan, Ronit was already an established TV screen actor. People started viewing the actor in a different light after his powerful portrayal of an abusive father in the movie Udaan. Following the success of Udaan, Rohit went on to star in many hit Bollywood movies like 2 States, Kaabil and Student Of The Year. He was 27 years old when he made his debut.
3. Lillete Dubey
milokmat / Instagram
Picking her roles carefully has worked out well for Lillete Dubey. She gained critical acclaim after starring in a Shyam Benegal directed film Zubeidaa. From that point forward things have only been looking up for Lillete. She has been pushing forward films like Monsoon Wedding, Pinjar, Baghban, and The Lunchbox. She even went on to star in the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel with the likes of Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, and Dev Patel.
4. Sanjay Mishra
imsanjaimishra / Instagram
Sanjay gained recognition with his roles in Bollywood films like Bunty Aur Babli and Apna Sapna Money Money. His comic timing and dramatic flair made him a fan favorite. The 55-year-old actor is known for taking on a large number of projects and refers to them as ‘practice’. The actor was last seen in the movie Kadwi Hawa which is a social parody on environmental change.
5. Kirron Kher
kirronkhermp / Instagram
Kirron Kher was at the ripe age of 41 when she bagged a national award for her role in Sardari Begum. Until her role as Sumitra in Devdas, she did not pursue many mainstream roles. She went on to star in humorous roles like in the movie Dostana. From that point forward she is seen playing the quintessential Bollywood mother in most of her movie roles.
6. Amrish Puri
Source: The Print
Forever etched into our memories in the role of Mogambo in the film Sholay, the yesteryear actor got his big break into Bollywood at the age of 38. Known for his villainous baritone voice and scary expressions, he went on to star in projects like Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom and many more.
7. Pankaj Tripathi
pankajtripathiiii / Instagram
Before bagging his widely praised roles in Omkara and Gangs Of Wasseypur, Pankaj Tripathi had blink and miss appearances in movies like Raavan, Apaharan and Run. The actor clearly brings a lot to the tale judging by his powerful performances on his previous projects that include movies like Fukrey, Anaarkali of Aarah and Masaan.
8. Boman Irani
boman_irani / Instagram
The 55-year-old actor didn’t begin his acting profession until he was 44 years old! With Raju Hirani’s Munnabhai M.B.B.S, he made a name for himself with his humorous role and has not looked back ever since. The actor has had many professions in his life before his big break in Bollywood. He worked as a waiter at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai and even found success as a small-time photographer before foraying into the world of cinema.
9. Piyush Mishra
officialpiyushmishra / Instagram
Besides being a fluid performer the actor also has an uncanny ability of creating beautiful verses. Be it in his music composed for Gulal or the impeccable way he delivers dialogues in movies like Gangs of Wasseypur, Pink or Traffic. Mishra has truly done everything to defy the impossible standards set by Bollywood. His first appearance on the big screen was in the Shah Rukh Khan starrer Dil Se in 1998 at the age of 35.
All in all, it’s safe to say that in terms of Bollywood and acting, age is just a number. With so many talented artists remaining underexposed and behind the scenes, it’s no wonder fans get angry due to nepotism. Many directors even choose to keep hiring the same big budget name for their movies as that’s what seems to rake in big money. Tell us your thoughts on this list. Did any of these names come as a surprise to you?
The following two tabs change content below.
Latest posts by Niharika Nayak (see all)
Niharika Nayak
Source: https://www.stylecraze.com/trending/actors-who-picked-bollywood-late/
1 note · View note
nehakhosla · 5 years
Link
Tumblr media
देश की आर्थिक राजधानी मुंबई में हुए 26/11 के आतंकवादी हमले पर बनी फिल्म ‘’ रिलीज हो गई है। फिल्म में डायरेक्टर एंथनी मारस ने पाकिस्तानी आतकंवादी आमिर के कबूलनामे के वास्तविक फुटेज का इस्तेमाल किया है। फिल्म में मुंबई के ताज होटल पर हुए हमले को दिखाया गया है कि हमले के दौरान होटल के स्टाफ ने किस बहादुरी से भीतर मौजूद लोगों को बचाने का प्रयास किया था। पुलिस और स्थानीय प्रशासन ने मारस को जानकारी, इंटरव्यू और कसाब के कबूलनामे के वास्तविक फुटेज दिए। कोर्ट में पेश किए गए टेप भी मारस और उनके सह-लेखक जॉन कोली को उपलब्ध कराए गए थे। मारस ने कहा, ‘हमने कसाब के मुकदमे के हजारों पन्नों को देखा, जिसमें गवाहों के बयान और आतंकवादियों व उनके हैंडलरों के बीच हुई सैटलाइट फोन पर बातचीत के टेप शामिल थे। हमने आगे की जानकारी के लिए कसाब के वकील का इंटरव्यू भी किया।’ उन्होंने कहा, ‘हम एक महीने से भी अधिक समय तक ताज में रुके, स्टाफ के लोगों का इंटरव्यू किया और उसी कॉरिडोर, किचन में गए जहां फिल्म में हुई घटनाएं घटित हुई थीं।’ इस फिल्म में अनुपम खेर, देव पटेल और आर्मी हैमर मुख्य भूमिका में नजर आएंगे।
from Entertainment News in Hindi, Latest Bollywood Movies News, मनोरंजन न्यूज़, बॉलीवुड मूवी न्यूज़ | Navbharat Times https://navbharattimes.indiatimes.com/movie-masti/news-from-bollywood/actual-footage-of-ajmal-kasab-confession-used-in-hotel-mumbai/articleshow/72286731.cms
0 notes
technicalbaccha · 5 years
Link
from Bollywood | The Indian Express https://ift.tt/2XY9uiX
0 notes
Text
Dubai City Tour – All You Need Know About That!
Appreciate Dubai city tour with top Dubai tour places sightseeing from us and investigate the wonderful and exciting tourist spots in Dubai City by Luxury Busses/Minivan with Experience Drivers.
 We generally endeavor to convey the best tourism benefits by including best Dubai Tour Places and packages to give best administrations to our customers and clients, which lead us to stay dynamic in the rundown of top 10 best tourism organizations in Dubai UAE.
 In our Tour Packages which incorporate of Top Dubai city tour places 2019, we will drive you to the most alluring spot in Dubai city and will give you a chance to explore stylish, exciting and conventional side of Dubai UAE.
 Dubai city known is a most alluring spot in the Middle East just as in whole world as a result of his excellence and safeness. Dubai city pull in thousand of guests every day, particularly in virus season between Octobers till March month. Should you are planing to profoundly appreciate Dubai city, we prescribe these months. - Dubai City Tour Book
 A great many people accompanying their families and getting our best arrangement of Dubai city tour 2019 packages by including their own decision Dubai Tour Places amid school get-away time, in this way they get the most obvious opportunity to invest energy with his family and children in the most popular and loaded with rush spot on the planet Dubai. In the no so distant past UAE was brimming with desert, yet after the disclosure of oil in UAE, this city begin blasting in quick track toward advancement, and today UAE include in rundown of top nations in term of economy.
 Today Dubai city renowned for Luxury Hotels, Best spot of shopping, Sky scrapper tall structures, extraordinary night life and the city of rush which is brimming with Parks, Entertainments, Sports exercises and so forth.
 The most top point of Dubai tourism office is to draw in the greatest guests to Dubai UAE and accordingly they are sorting out various celebrations and occasions every year. Neighborhood occupy just as out Lander getting a charge out of these celebrations.
 Amid tour season these places considering the best Dubai city tour places. Individuals remaining in Dubai UAE are tensely sitting tight for these developments with the goal that they could pick up the greatest pleasure and joy by getting best transportation arrangements of Dubai city tour packages.
 Dubai city is the second enormous city inline to populace out of each of the seven province of United Arab Emirate, It's arranged on the south west side of Arabia Gulf Ocean.
 Our Dubai Tour Places packages and sightseeing administrations will fill your heart with joy remarkable; our expert drivers with extravagance transports will without a doubt get grin your face in each snapshot of your Dubai tour with us, in short you will never be disappointment by picking our best Dubai Tour Places bundle as we never bargain on the nature of administrations.
 We have the best arrangements on Dubai Tour Places 2019 – Dubai City Tour Itinerary – Dubai City Tour Packages So what are you hanging tight for? We should make your fantasy convert to the real world.
 See Dubai like a Pro in one-day on this sweeping and flawlessly curated tour that blends old with the new. Some strolling with some driving, a customary lunch notwithstanding a lot of dazzling selfie openings! This tour fuses everything of the short-tour portrayed above with significantly more! This tour enables our visitor to appreciate both Old and New Dubai in noteworthy detail. This tour can likewise be modified for those at the air terminal, to suit a stopover or a delay between two flights.
 Source - https://dubaicitytourbook.com/
 The World's first Bollywood amusement park injected with Adventure, Dance, Comedy, Music, Romance, Flavor and Emotion. Bollywood Parks Dubai is the world's first of its caring where you can live, learn and experience the colorful universe of Mumbai's preferred film industry. The recreation center comprises of 5 incredible film industrialized zones enlivened by the Bollywood Blockbuster movies, for example, Dabangg, Lagaan, Sholay and your most loved legends like Krrish and RA.One and a lot more shocks anticipating for you at the Park. More than ever you will observer the visual magnificence of the great Rajmahal which is the home of the indistinguishable Taj Mahal. Wander the avenues of Mumbai Chowk with its well known nourishment, shopping and gathering soul. We will likewise show you how to make blockbuster motion pictures like Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara which you get the opportunity to act in aswell. Experience the home of the districts first Broadway-style Broadway melodic.
0 notes
starfriday · 5 years
Text
Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films presents Anusha Bose’s short film ‘Shame’
youtube
A powerful dark comedy film featuring acting powerhouses Swara Bhaskar, Ranveer Shorey, Tara Sharma, Sayani Gupta and Cyrus Sahukar
New Delhi, January 15, 2019: Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films presents Anusha Bose’s short film ‘Shame’. Starring Swara Bhaskar as the protagonist, the movie showcases the journey of a meek, vulnerable woman working at a posh hotel, who emerges from the background to unapologetically reclaim her dignity, confidence and her right to desire. Ranveer Shorey who plays the character of a guest staying at the hotel, yet again delivers a performance which keeps everyone interested in the story.
The Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films platform has been a pioneer in the short film genre. Working with new and established directors and storytellers, the platform is the go to destination for original and powerful short film content. Through a slew of powerful short films, the platform has successfully redefined movie watching for cinephiles over the past few years. Not only has it gained immense popularity but the platform has also become one of the most credible and celebrated stages for short films in India.
Commenting on the release, Kartik Mohindra, Chief Marketing Officer, Pernod Ricard India, said, “The short film industry has been growing dramatically with viewer habits evolving and our platform, Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films has been at the forefront of driving this change. By creating content across genres, which is original, powerful and perfect we have been able to create a space for ourselves within the Indian short films industry.”
Talking about the movie, he further added, “We are delighted to release ‘Shame’ on our platform and feel extremely proud to collaborate with incredible directors and actors such as Anusha Bose and Swara Bhaskar. In line with the brand’s philosophy of ‘make it perfect’, we have and will continue to encourage and motivate talented film makers to showcase their creativity through our channel.”
The story of ‘Shame’ is a short film which perfectly depicts the twisted journey of the main protagonist. This dark comedy walks the thin line that separates the two worlds; the haves from the have-nots; the affluent from the service providers; the indulgent from the repressed.
The link to the movie - https://youtu.be/WFfIzcrpy7A
About Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films:
Centered around “Make it Perfect”, Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films has become the destination for Indian short films. The platform has collaborated with successful storytellers from Bollywood who truly stand for originality, creativity and Perfection. Large Short Films has evolved to create an ecosystem for aspiring directors to feature along mainstream Bollywood directors and still be able to create a niche for themselves in the industry.
Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films has released some of the most prodigious and award winning short films with some of the renowned artists and directors from the industry which truly reflects originality, imagination and perfection.  ‘Ahalya’, ‘Interior Café - Night’, ‘Ouch’, ‘Chutney’, ‘Anukul’, ‘Mumbai Varanasi Express’, ‘Khool Aali Chithi’, ‘The School Bag’, ‘Bruno and Juliet’ and ‘Shunyata’, ‘Juice’, ‘Maa’, ‘Chhuri’, ‘Her First Time’ and ‘Iktarfa’ are some of the phenomenal films released in this platform. Barrel Select Large Short Films as the platform for original short films has been the pioneer in popularizing this genre of filmmaking.
Follow us on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LargeShortFilms
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LargeShortFilms
YouTube: https://youtube.com/LargeShortFilms
0 notes
topyaps · 6 years
Link
Salman Khan and controversies go hand-in-hand in almost anything and everything, no matter whether he is hosting a show or shooting for a movie. The bhai of Bollywood always lands into something fishy. And this time too, during the shoot of his upcoming movie Bharat, which is a remake of a Korean movie, he and the makers had to face the strong wrath of some villagers.  The shoot of Bharat was planned to happen at Wagah border, but due to security reasons, the crew was not allowed to film at the location. So the film-makers decided to create the replica of the Wagah border at a village in Punjab.
The Film-makers of Bharat wanted both Indian & Pakistani flag on the replica. For the scene, they required a Pakistani flag to be hoisted and that’s how the controversy began. The local farmers, traders, and villagers were not ready for this.
  The Asian Age
  The villagers were fine with the recreation of the border in the village, but hoisting a Pakistani flag on Indian soil was not acceptable for them. The villagers did not take it kindly and filed a police complaint against Salman Khan and the film-makers.
  Zee News – India.com
  They even surrounded the sets and the hotel where Salman Khan was staying. Such displeasure from the side of locals has been seen in the past as well. I mean citizens are very sensitive and take even a cricket match with Pakistan very seriously, then how would they keep mum on a Pakistani flag on their soil.
  gifskey
  The shoot of the movie has been completed and the team is back in Mumbai, but with a legal case against the actor Salman Khan and film-makers of Bharat. The movie directed by Ali Abbas Zafar will be released on June 5, 2019.
  gifskey
  Movies are often get stuck into such troubles due to unintentionally hurting the sentiments of the public. We wonder what will happen next. What do you think?
The post Salman Khan’s Bharat In Trouble For Hoisting Pakistani Flag, Locals Created Havoc appeared first on TopYaps.
via TopYaps
0 notes
Text
Varun Dhawan wiki, family, Career, Movies & Biography
Tumblr media
Varun Dhawan Personal Life
Youngest Bollywood superstar Varun Dhawan now becomes one of the highest paid actors. In Bollywood, he is known as “Bona Fide Bollywood Superstar“. Varun Dhawan was born on 24 April 1987 in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. VarunDhawan age is 30.  He is the son of Bollywood film producer David Dhawan and Karuna Dhawan. Varun was born and brought up in a Hinduism ethnicity family. He has only one elder brother named Rohit Dhawan who is also a well-known film director while his uncle, Anil Dhawan is an actor.
Varun Dhawan Girlfriend
If we talk about Varun Dhawan girlfriend then he is in a relationship with a popular fashion designer Natasha Dalal. Before her when Varun was in the USA he dated a girl named Sara. After that, he came into the contact of the actress Taapsee Pannu but later they broke-up due to some unknown reasons.  
He completed his schooling from Bombay Scottish School, Mumbai. He did his business management course from Nottingham Trent University, England.
Varun Dhawan height is approximately 5’9” and his weight is 80 kg. He has a build with a chest to be around 40 inches and biceps are 15 inches. He has dark brown eyes, black hair.
Varun Dhawan House
Currently, he resides in A/15, Sagar Darshan, Hanuman Nagar, Off Carter Road, Khar (West), Mumbai.
201 and 202, Beach Wood House at Oberoi Enclave which is Next To JW Marriot Hotel in Juhu, Mumbai.
Varun Dhawan Career
Varun Dhawan started his career as an assistant director. He assists Karan Johar for his movie "My Name is Khan". In that movie, he worked with SRK, Kajol.  His first acting debut was in 2012 with the movie ‘Student of the Year‘. For the movie, he won Lion Gold Favourite Debut (Male) 2013. He started his acting in 2012 its already 6 years now. He did 10 movies 8 are hits within them.
Varun Dhawan Movie
2012    Student of the Year
2014    Main Tera Hero    
2014    Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania    
2015    Badlapur  
2015    ABCD 2  
2015    Dilwale  
2016    Dishoom  
2017    Badrinath Ki Dulhania        
2017    Judwaa 2  
2018    October
Varun Dhawan Upcoming Movies    
2018    Sui Dhaaga
2019    Kalank
Varun Dhawan is now one of the most favourite actors. He mostly does comedy movies. But he is also doing serious roles in Badlapur. Visit here to find Varun Dhawan Awards.
0 notes
dxbplanet-blog · 7 years
Photo
Tumblr media
Dubai's theme parks: The most elaborate sandboxes on earth
You are about to board the fastest roller coaster on the planet, the 150-mph Formula Rossa, the pride of Ferrari World Abu Dhabi theme park _ where pride, like most everything else in this desert architectural playground, comes super-sized.
But before you’re launched from the confines of a glistening indoor pavilion that spans the length of seven football fields, there is the vital matter of adjusting your racing goggles to keep the bugs out of your eyes.
The first theme park in the universe devoted to a luxury Italian sports car, Ferrari World is also home to the brand-new Flying Aces coaster, which boasts not only the world’s steepest cable lift and tallest loop but presumably the most fearless riders on earth.
Tumblr media
Studio Central re-creates an old New York set on a Hollywood back lot and provides entry to the four other zones in Motiongate.
Not a car fan? No worries, because Ferrari World is but one spoke in many wheels.
Formerly the exclusive domain of Southern California and Central Florida, world-class theme parks are now springing up at roller-coaster speeds in the United Arab Emirates.
Where once stood sand dunes, skilfully engineered immersive environments now allow visitors to interact with internationally familiar pop-culture icons. I
Included in the mix: Smurfs, dinosaurs, Marvel superheroes, protagonists from the Cartoon Network, “Hunger Games,” “Ghostbusters,” “Shrek,” “Kung Fu Panda,” “Hotel Transylvania” and, the jewel in the crown, blockbuster Hindi movies.
instagram
“We’ve got something for everyone, from ages 5 to 100,” said John Hallenbeck, general manager of the Hollywood-inspired Motiongate Dubai, which welcomed its first guests in December.
Mostly made up of family groups from the Arab states, the audibly enthusiastic crowds – some 5,000 to 6,000 people a day, a park rep told me – tend to filter in not first thing in the morning, as in American parks, but starting late in the afternoon, after the midday heat.
Talk about an oasis.
Adjacent to the 2,000-acre Motiongate, as part of a $2.85 billion resort complex collectively known as Dubai Parks, are the new Bollywood Parks, Legoland and Legoland Water Park.
Connecting them all is Riverland, a retail/dining area that also accommodates the 500 rooms of the Polynesian-themed Lapita Hotel, along with the construction sheds for the region’s first-ever Six Flags park, due in 2019.
“Theme parks are new to the local culture,” said Hallenbeck, a Wisconsin native and a seasoned executive of Universal Studios internationally. “People may get in line and not know what they are in for.”
What they find inside Motiongate are five separate, tree-shaded zones set to different themes. While one remains under scaffolding in anticipation of a late spring reveal, eventually the park is poised to offer 27 rides, five of them roller coasters.
The fastest, the smooth-as-silk 60-mph Madagascar: Mad Pursuit, is now operational and, like Disney’s Space Mountain, runs its course entirely in the dark.
Among the park’s distinctions: It’s the first anywhere to unite rival studios (Columbia Pictures, Lionsgate and DreamWorks, the last of which is sheltered inside a giant soundstage); the first to exploit both “The Smurfs” and “Hunger Games” franchises; and the first in the region to offer a water rapids ride, the Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs River Expedition. And, yes: The ride vehicles are designed to carefully contain the flowing Arabian robes worn by some guests.
Far less sprawling, but abundantly charming, is the neighbouring Bollywood Parks Dubai, which tips its turban to the Mumbai film industry’s exaggerated escapist fare. Outstanding among the more than a dozen exotic attractions is the Lagaan: Champaner Cricket Carnival, a robust motion-simulator adventure based on a 2001 Hindi sports drama.
(All ride narratives are in English, though safety instructions are also delivered in Arabic.) “Bollywood is a lot about shows, and India is a lot about food,” said general manager Thomas Jellum, emphasizing that his park, where at any given moment a live musical number breaks out on the grounds, places human experience above mechanical rides.
In fact, a planned-for roller coaster remains in the blueprints stage, though Bollywood does boast its own pulsating landmark _ the 850-seat Rajmahal Theatre, home to the elaborate stage extravaganza “Jaan-e-Jigar,” a musical melodrama about twin brothers.
“Disney has its castle, and we have the Rajmahal,” Jellum said of the Taj Mahal-like entertainment venue. “Inside is a full Broadway musical, with a cast of 70.” That’s actually about three times the size of Broadway’s largest cast, but Bollywood is about extravagance – and “Jaan-e-Jigar” requires a separate ticket for its nighttime performances.
“This is very much an evening park,” Jellum noted. Elsewhere in Dubai, the stand-alone IMG Worlds of Adventure is an anytime park, given that its record-setting 1.5 million-square-foot expanse is completely enclosed, at times making it seem that you’re inside an enormous shopping mall.
Open since August and named for its co-chairmen, Ilyas and Mustafa Galadari, the $1 billion IMG houses rides fashioned around Spider-Man, Thor, the Hulk, the Avengers and even the Powerpuff Girls, not to mention a haunted hotel maze restricted to those 15 and older, an upscale Iron Man restaurant and, in its prehistoric Lost Valley zone (one of four), the aptly named Predator coaster. IMG Worlds of Adventure also has huge ambitions, seeking to attract 4.5 million visitors in its first year.
Already, plans have been announced to build an adjoining park with nine more zones, including those for Pokemon, Barbie and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
To be called IMG Worlds of Legends, it is intended to span two million square feet.
Like all of the other parks in the region, it should help set the stage for Dubai’s Expo 2020, the world’s fair and tourism booster that the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, hopes will do for his already popular emirate what the 1893 Columbian Exposition once did for a certain town in Illinois.
IF YOU GO
Getting there: From the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa, in central Dubai, take the metro rail to the Ibn Battuta station and then taxi to the Dubai Parks main entrance for Motiongate, Bollywood Parks and Legoland – about a 45-minute trip.
IMG Worlds of Adventure, is half an hour away by cab.
Ferrari World, on man-made Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, takes roughly an hour by taxi.
Read more: https://goo.gl/b6zeav
#Dubai #Earth #Elaborate #Parks #Sandboxes #Theme ‪#Travel #Dubai #DXB #MyDubai #DXBplanet #LoveDubai #UAE #دبي
0 notes