Bollywood Connection in Trump Hacking Story (NY TIMES)

Excerpt: “At least 19 of the hackers’ targets were senior officials or prominent citizens of the U.A.E., including diplomats whose emails have previously been leaked to the public. At least 15 of the targets are senior officials or diplomats from Egypt, a close ally of the U.A.E. and a foe of Qatar. Among the Egyptian targets was Gen. Abbas Kamel, now the director of the Egyptian Intelligence Service and previously the chief of staff to President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. … The Bollywood targets — including the stars Aishwarya Devan, Anushka Sharma, Meghanna Raj and Nikki Galrani — suggest the hackers may have been fans, the lawyers said. “My guess is this was a frolic of the hackers,” Mr. Wolosky said.””

Read complete article HERE.

Qalandar Reviews PHILLAURI (Hindi; 2017)

There is a certain magic to Phillauri, Anshai Lal’s directorial debut for actress-producer Anushka Sharma, and it isn’t because of the supernatural element (Sharma plays Shashi, the ghost of a woman from 1919 who haunts nervous Kanan (Suraj Sharma), on the verge of his wedding to Anu (Mehreen Peerzada) a century later in the same village).  It’s because the old-fashioned virtues of focused storytelling, memorable characterization, strong casting, and above all fresh dialogues and lyrics by Anvita Dutt, elevate what could so easily have been the hackneyed Punjabi love story of Shashi and Roop Lal (Diljit Dosanjh), making of it a story about two individuals, not mere instances of the Bollywood hero and heroine, and in a particular time and place, the Jalandhar village of Phillauri on the verge of the Indian national movement.

Unusually for Hindi films, both members of the pair (not just the male half) are imbued with strong personalities, and this isn’t accidental.  A gentle current of feminism runs through the film, brought to mind by an initial effacement:

Interview with NH-10’s Navdeep Singh

Thanks to agyaat for pointing me to this interview — love Nh-10 or hate it, Navdeep Singh’s passion and bitterness does shine through here. The bit about the censor board’s elitism, determined to protect “the masses” from thinking for itself, convinced that only “educated” folk can be trusted with representations of violence, is not only absurd but ironic for those of us who have seen NH-10, given the mess the “educated” Arjun lands the leading couple in. — Qalandar

EXCERPT: “You had to fight with the Censor Board to get the film released. What were you told to cut?
Words like randi, saali, kutti were cut. We were allowed to show the word “randi” scribbled on the wall, but nobody could speak it. We were told to tone down the fights in the honour killing scene and when Meera (Sharma) gets beaten up in the sarpanch’s house. The second time when Meera sees the word “randi” written on the wall after her husband dies, we were asked to cut the shot from six seconds to three seconds. I asked the board members why we had to cut it the second time when it was allowed the first time in the bathroom scene, and the answer was that the first time she erases it. That’s so arbitrary! But the first time we went for the censor certificate, half the members wanted to ban the film.”

Read the complete interview HERE

A Note on NH-10 (Hindi; 2015)

LINK

There was a fair amount in the NH-10 trailers that I find off-putting about contemporary Bollywood: the utterly (and to me, somewhat alienating) Hollywood cinematic idiom, the sense that the film’s audience must share the socio-economic aspirations of the two lead characters, the sort of de-racinated upwardly mobile Indians presented as normal, almost the only “normal” in a milieu where to be “ethnic” is to be associated with violence and deprivation’s dark heart. Director Navdeep Singh’s film (his second, after the atmospheric Chinatown remake Manorama Six Feet Under) certainly pushes those buttons, but there’s much more to the film, making it one of the best (and certainly the most harrowing) Hindi films of the last few months.