Monika’s Pensieve

{FILM DIARY}
Billu (2009, India)
Seen: Thursday, 31st December 2009
Runtime: 137′
Director: Priyadarshan
Cast: Irrfan Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Lara Dutta, Om Puri, Kareena Kapoor (cameo), Deepika Padukone (cameo), Priyanka Chopra (cameo)
Production House: Eros Entertainment, Red Chillies Entertainment
Plot: Billu is a barber living below the poverty line. When a film crew comes to shoot in his village, gossip starts that [...]

{FILM DIARY}
Duplicate (India, 1998)
Seen: Saturday, 12th September 2009 (DVD, repeat viewing)
Runtime: 158′
Director: Mahesh Bhatt
Cast: Shahrukh Khan, Juhi Chawla, Sonali Bendre, Farida Jalal, Kajol (cameo)
Production House: Dharma Productions
Plot: Bablu is a very sweet guy who works as a cook and Manu is an evil and perverted gangster. The problem is that they both look the same…
Trailer

Impressions [...]

I found it hilarious how tendentious the report is (but hey, Indian media just is like that, I’ve sort of gotten used to it now). SRK was really trying to play it down, while they were trying to get maximum scandal out of it. It was kind of funny ;) Still, the main facts seem [...]

This sort of thing has happened before (SRK has spoken about being frisked and checked at US airports before), but unless the Indian media is misrepresenting what happened, it’s just been taken to new levels…
Apparently, Shahrukh Khan was detained for 2h at Newark airport yesterday. He was only released after the Indian embassy interfered. The [...]

{FILM DIARY}
Brick Lane (UK/India, 2007)
Seen: Friday, 10th July 2009 (cinema, Lato Filmów festival)
Runtime: 102′
Director: Sarah Gavron
Cast: Tannishtha Chatterjee, Satish Kaushik, Christopher Simpson
Production House: Film4, Ingenious Film Partners, Ruby Films, Seven Seas Productions, UK Film Council
Plot: The story of a Bangladeshi woman, married to a Bangladeshi man in London and how she gradually starts taking control [...]

This is an article about two young lovers, who committed suicide when their communities put pressure on them.

The strike I’ve been following has finally come to an end - it lasted two months. More details on the settlement can be found here.
Consequently, release dates for the coming major Bollywood releases have finally been announced :)

This is a case I’ve been following for a while and it just gets weirder and weirder.
Akshay Kumar, who is one of Bollywood’s biggest stars at the Indian box office, was invited to walk the catwalk during the Lakhme India Fashion Week. While on the catwalk he approached his wife, Twinkle Khanna (another Bollywood actress [...]

I’d intended to write about this ages ago, but somehow didn’t *sigh* Anyway, Indian elections came and went and the Congress party won once again with even more votes than last time (that means the government is socialist yet again).
A lot of interesting news reports came up during this time. On the one hand, there [...]

Hollywood investing in Bollywood is old news by now. But it looks like their interest in Indian cinema is growing. It’s no longer just the Hindi language sector they’re after. Fox Star Studios is set to enter the Tamil film industry (also known as Kollywood).
Fox generally seems to be very keen on investing in Indian [...]