Hollywood & Bollywood : Mandira Bedi needs a break!

Monday, October 28, 2013

Mandira Bedi needs a break!

two-year-old son - all this is taking a toll on Mandira Bedi and she confesses she is craving for a break before starting anything new.

"There is `24`, there is saris and there is my son. That`s all I can do right now. There are talks about new seasons of both the shows - `Indian Idol Junior` and `24`," the 41-year-old said here at the launch of her sari store.

"Right now, I just want to breathe because since March I have not rested, I have not slept, I have not had even a minute of me time. I need a little bit of a break before I take on anything else," she added.

Mandira is playing an Anti-Terrorist Unit officer in the TV show `24` produced by Anil Kapoor, who also plays the lead in the show.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What is Bollywood?

What is Bollywood?

Back in the 1980s and 90s when I gave talks to various groups about contemporary cinema, one question that often came up in the discussion periods was "What does it mean when a film is called a "noir?" That question sprang from a new spate of darkly-toned, psychologically-oriented crime thrillers that began with Lawrence Kasdan's landmark noir "Body Heat" (1982) and culminated in the 90s with other noir hits like "The Usual Suspects" (1995) and "L.A. Confidential" (1997). The antecedents for the these films came from the 1940s cycle of noirs that included "Double Indemnity" (1944) and "The Big Sleep" (1946). There have now been dozens of new noirs, including ultra-violent "neo-noirs" typified early on by Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" (1992) and "Pulp Fiction" (1994). Filmgoers today seem to know a noir when they see one.

So what am I asked about these days? One question is: "What does Bollywood mean?"

The general perception is that Bollywood stands for Indian filmmaking. While Bollywood is a reference to popular Indian cinema, it is only a part of the picture of film in India today. The word Bollywood derives from an allusion to Hollywood filmmaking and its penchant for turning out motion pictures with mass-audience appeal.

The "B" in Bollywood comes from Bombay (Mumbai), the capital of the expansive Hindi-language film industry in India. The wide acceptance of Bollywood as a catch-all term for Indian cinema can be attributed to the increased distribution and popularity of Hindi films around the world—by television broadcast and on DVD. Critics and media have popularized the term.

A central figure in the movement toward mass-appeal Hindi films was Raj Kapoor (1924-1988), a director-producer-performer. In his early landmark films "Awaara" (1951) and "Shri 420" (1955) Kapoor introduced Indian audiences to amusing common-folk heroes whose antics and resilience merited comparison with Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp.

In "Awaara," Kapoor incorporated songs into the narrative, as well as previously-taboo romantic candor such as on-screen kissing. He cast beautiful women as co-stars and for one film brought Russian circus performers to India for added entertainment in the picture. In time Kapoor's wildly popular films grew in length. One was four hours fifteen minutes long. Liberal inclusion of music by the duo Shankar-Jaikishen and song lyrics by the poetic Shailendra were a part of every film produced by Kapoor.

Kapoor helped set the sound stages for what would eventually be characterized as Bollywood film—mass-oriented, formulaic, often epic in length and proportion, populated with glamorous superstar actors and beloved character players, and infused with music, song and dance.

Music, perhaps more than any other element, is the essential characterizing ingredient of a Bollywood film. Few Hindi films are made without songs, and the popularity of a film's music can determine the extent of a picture's success at the box-office. (Of local note, University of Michigan graduate Sheena Sippy, granddaughter of the founder of Bombay's Sippy Films, has worked on the CD releases of songs from Sippy productions, a major sideline of Bollywood enterprise.)

The genre range in Bollywood film is wide: westerns, samurai, crime, law-and-order revenge films, action epics, domestic drama, coming-of-age stories, teen-age and adult romance. While there may be considerable repetition and stereotyping in the various Bollywood genres, creativity and innovation within the songs, music and dance can overcome narrative limitations and more than satisfy audience expectations.

Want to watch an example of Bollywood at its best? Try the much-acclaimed "Lagaan" (2001), an epic set near the end of the 19th century in a small Indian farming village. The film's plot includes injustices brought on by a British military officer, youth romance, a cricket match, and a wealth of songs, folk music and dance. "Lagaan" runs a robust 222 minutes.

You can see that the term "Bollywood" does not work as an umbrella for all Indian film. India offers a much fuller extent of cinematic expression, and other regional production centers (as well as various Hindi filmmakers) turn out motion pictures that are distinctly different in content and form than Bollywood's mass-appeal Hindi cinema. The great Bengali director Satyajit Ray paved the way for alternative Indian cinema with films whose humanistic narratives and realistic styling (as in "The Apu Trilogy" of 1955, 1956, 1959) were inspired in part by his work as an assistant for the Italian neo-realist director Vittorio de Sica. Lower budget, art house films with a broad range of social, political and personal subject matter continue to be very much a part of Indian cinema today.

But just like in the US, humble films in India get a lot less attention than the splendor and spectacle that typify Bollywood.

HOLLYWOOD

HOLLYWOOD

HOLLYWOOD. An area of the city of Los Angeles famous primarily for its association with the film industry,

Hollywood was originally a small independent agricultural community. It merged with Los Angeles in 1910 in order to obtain an adequate water supply. At approximately the same time, the film industry began to locate in the region, seeking to take advantage of natural sunlight that allowed year-round filming and a diverse southern California landscape that provided cheap scenery.

In 1914, the director Cecil B. DeMille decided to locate his studio in Hollywood permanently, and other companies followed. By the 1920s, Hollywood had beaten out rivals such as Culver City and Burbank as the place most associated with the film industry, although in fact movie lots were scattered throughout the Los Angeles area.

The growing power and romance of film made Hollywood a cultural icon and a major tourist attraction. In the 1950s and 1960s, Hollywood also began to attract television studios and record companies. While still home to many entertainment-related companies and remaining a popular destination for starstruck visitors, the area's actual role in film production began to lag in the 1970s. Soaring production and living costs in Los Angeles led many companies to seek opportunities elsewhere, and Hollywood itself struggled with problems associated with urban blight.