Shabana Azmi arms herself against internet stalkers who maintain fan websites in her honor.
News like this is always tenuous - a lot can happen when a movie is still in the early planning stages, and this one may never come to be (or may come to be without Shabana ji). That said, IBN reports that Nikhil Advani is planning a multi-star masala flick whose cast includes Shabana Azmi, Madhuri Dixit, Dimple Kapadia, Karisma Kapoor, Rani Mukerji, Preity Zinta, Deepika Padukone, and Genelia D'Souza.
The first three on that list have long been my dream cast for some movie - any movie, really - and for them alone I am excited by this news. But, who knows how many of these are signed - they could just be the actors Advani has in mind as he works on the script.
Advani claims it's not a "women-centric" film (I am really starting to despise that term, and if I can organize my thoughts as to why I'll publish something about it on Filmi Geek one of these days). He says there are just as many male stars, but the article doesn't include any hint of who they might be.
Stay tuned ...
A friend in Calcutta sent this beautiful photograph that was in the Telegraph a few days ago, of Shabana Azmi and Dharmendra at the reception where they were honored with the Padma Bhushan. Don't they both look wonderful?
... when Shabana met Gloria.
I bet that when Shabana Azmi had a chance to sit down and talk with her hero, Gloria Steinem, earlier this week, she wasn't bashful and tongue-tied the way I was back when I met Shabana ji. Just saying.
The gorgeous picture is courtesy of Shabana ji herself, via Twitter. Follow her if you don't already - she single-handedly made this blog obsolete. Oh, and pease follow me, too.
Warmest congratulations to Shabana Azmi, who was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the President of India today. This decoration is India's third-highest civilian honor, awarded to recognize distinguished service to the nation. It is given in recognition of work in the arts, social work, sciences, and many other fields.
Along with Shabana ji, Dharmendra, Mira Nair, and many others also received the honor this year.
The Padma Bhushan will join the Padma Shree on Shabana ji's mantle - that award is India's fourth-highest civilian honor, which she was given in 1988.
Read more about the award and the award ceremony here.
I saw this press release the other day that reported Shabana Azmi taking enthusiastic part in a book launch for "well-known homeopath Dr. Mukesh Batra." (I have shamelessly cropped Dr. Batra and others out of the above picture; please follow the link to see it.) Shabana ji said at the event that she believes in homeopathy, and praised Dr. Batra for helping relieve her pain and speeding the healing when she suffered a leg fracture. She also credited him for her beautiful skin.
The press release gave me pause. To me, the word "homeopathy" refers to the use of hyper-dilute "solutions" in which nothing is left of any active ingredient other than some mystical molecular memory. I believe this is utter quackery, snake oil of the lowest order. It includes such arrant nonsense as the claim that these solutions become more effective as they become more dilute. In short, I think it's rubbish, and that purveyors of it should be prosecuted, not praised.
But I did some research before sitting down to write this post, because I know that the term "homeopathy" has a broader usage as well, that refers to a wider variety of what we in the West sometimes call "alternative" medicine, natural medicine, or holistic medicine. That is far too broad of a scope for me (even as a fairly narrow-minded rationalist) to dismiss out of hand. Reading the press release, it sounds to me like Shabana ji, Dr. Batra, and his book are using the word in this broader sense. I did a sanity check with an Indian friend of mine, who also understood the word that way (and spoke very highly of her own experience with practitioners).
If Shabana ji believes that she has been helped by such natural and holistic remedies, I have no quibble with that, and no concern for either her good sense or her well-being. I would worry about someone who would reject scientifically-developed treatments for serious ailments - I wouldn't mess around with cancer, for example - but for pain remedies, or mild stimulation, or treating cold symptoms and the like, I can readily believe that natural remedies are often as effective (if not more so in some cases) than pharmaceuticals. So, it was just the term "homeopathy" - its two very different meanings - that threw me in this case.
This video puff piece has some more about Shabana ji's relationship with Dr. Batra, and some clips of both Shabana ji and Javed Akhtar looking wonderful.
The Times of India yesterday had this report with more information about how Shabana Azmi spent her birthday at her new Khandala home, named Sukoon ("peace, tranquility"). Lots of fascinating people stopped by to pay their respects. In the picture above you can see Nandita Das with her little child, and Konkona Sen Sharma. To our right of Shabana ji is, I believe, Sandhya Mridul. And that fellow over on the end ... the text says it's Anil Kapoor, and it does look like him - 30 years ago though. Perhaps it's the youthful clothes ... at any rate, a very flattering picture.
Also present, according to the report: Urmila Matondkar, Ashutosh Gowarikar, Poonam Dhillon, and a bunch of others. (Perhaps one of these years I'll get myself invited.) One thing I'll say, I love the way that many of the younger women Shabana ji has worked with - Urmila, Nandita, Konkona, Sandhya among them - remain close to her years after those projects. It's lovely, and it speaks to what a marvelous mentor and friend she must be.
Shabana Azmi was spotted earlier this week letting loose at the music launch for her friend Dia Mirza's new movie, Love Breakups Zindagi. Here is the story at Daily Bhaksar, also carried by other sources.
How cute is that?
More pictures of the launch here at Prokerala.
Javed sahib wrote the lyrics for the songs, which I haven't listened to yet. He was at the launch too, of course.
(Picture source)
Hello folks! Some of you might have noticed I've posted a few reviews at Filmi Geek in the last couple of weeks. I am still getting into the flow of my new job and still trying to balance the various interests tugging on my time, so I don't want to promise too much and then fail to deliver. That's why I haven't tried to return to a regular posting schedule here.
However: this was too interesting not to share, and maybe it's the kick-start I need to get back to glancing at the news about Shabana Azmi every day and sharing the best of it with you.
Some of you probably know that Shabana ji is working on a film with director Gurinder Chadha (who made Bend It Like Beckham, among others). The new film is called It's a Wonderful Afterlife. I've been alerted to a Live Journal page carrying an IBN piece on the film, which includes short clips of interviews with Ms. Chadha and Shabana ji, among others. The movie looks very funny; I'm looking forward to finding out more, and looking forward also to Shabana ji being in a film that is sure to find wide art-house distribution and buzz in the U.S.
Click here to load the page and watch the video. And thanks to Gauri at BollyWHAT for the heads-up.
Incidentally that Live Journal page seems to for fans of Sendhil Ramamurthy, the good-looking fellow who plays the irredeemably stupid Mohinder Suresh in the television series Heroes. It will be interesting to see how he'll do sharing the screen with Shabana ji.
It's been a long, long wait - nearly a year - but Manish Vij over at Ultrabrown reports that Manish Acharya's Loins of Punjab Presents ... is finally seeing a (limited) U.S. theatrical release.
Manish says the film, a screwball and very original comedy about a small-time desi talent contest in New Jersey starring Shabana Azmi, Ajay Naidu, and a bunch of other talented folks, will open September 12th on two screens in New York, and will later show in the San Francisco bay area, Chicago, and a few other cities.
I hope that if it does well it can be picked up for an even wider distribution. There are at least two art houses in metro Boston where it would fit right in to the usual program. But I am not going to wait to find out; I think I'll be heading to New York for that opening weekend. It's absurd that I have still not seen this movie.
Going through some older news clips, I came across a sweet blog posting that I had missed previously. It is by someone named Ananda, on a blog that appears to be affiliated with an orphanage in China called Home of Hope. Ananda writes:
Today I had lunch with Shabana Azmi at her home.... We spent a very pleasant afternoon together. As soon as I entered her home, she wanted to know the secret of my “trimness”. And insisted that I show her my work out. So I spent the first half hour ..as a exercise consultant, and we did crunches together on the floor. ..she is quite an impulsive lady !The post goes on to say that Shabana agreed to endorse Ananda's Home of Hope project, so perhaps we will hear more about this in the future. You can read the rest of Ananda's post here.
Imagine [me] being a mother and holding a thali and then saying, "Nahi!" and dropping the thali. If this were the case, I would have packed up and gone a long time ago.-- Shabana Azmi
She was in Delhi to shoot for Anubhav Sinha’s Rajdhani Express, which she describes as “a completely mad film. It is a political satire on the lines of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. In fact, Anubhav, who has written it, says that it is his ode to Jaane Bhi...”I had not thus far encountered very much news about Anubhav Sinha's political satire, so this is quite nice to see. As always, more news when it's available.
Glamsham has a little piece about Onir's Sorry Bhai, in which Shabana Azmi is again paired with Boman Irani. It includes the first still I've seen from the film, reproduced above. There is still no release date, though the article says "next year." I was hoping for a fall 2008 release.
Yesterday Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar were at the music launch for Farhan Akhtar's upcoming film, Rock On. Farhan is not the director of this film - he's its star. Apparently he enjoyed making the film quite a bit. It seems there's nothing Farhan cannot do - he sang his own songs for the film, and gave a rocking performance at the launch. Here is a blog post with lots more about the launch.
That's Javed sahib and Shabana ji at the launch, with Shabana ji's sister-in-law Tanvi Azmi. I am not sure who the woman on the left is but I am going to guess that she is Tanvi's daughter.
According to this piece, Shabana ji is in charge of mentoring contestants from the eastern portion of India. When asked what connection to the east drew her into that role, she credited eastern legends like Satyajit Ray and Gautam Ghose as significant influences in her career. Here's some more news about the show, which is apparently produced by Ekta Kapoor (a friend of Shabana ji's best known for producing wildly popular television serials). Zeenat Aman is also slated to be a judge on the show, along with actor Amrita Singh and director Mahesh Manjrekar.
"I'm glad for once that this show has three women as mentors and not just a token woman as judge," Shabana ji says according to this article about the show. That's certainly Ekta Kapoor's deliberate touch at work.
I'm sure clips from this show will turn up on the internet sooner or later so I will keep you posted if I come across any.
UPDATE: Here's a link to a source for on-line viewing of the first episode. I haven't tried it myself so I can't vouch for the quality.
I've just caught up on a couple of weeks' worth of Shabana Azmi news, and I've written several posts which I'll put up for you over the next week or so. (Hey, you can't expect me to use up all the good stuff at once!)
Here are a few interesting news items to get started:
This is a funny story. Times of India reports that Prince Charles has invited Shabana Azmi (along with Javed Akhtar and a number of other Indian luminaries) for a four-day stay at Buckingham Palace to discuss cooperation between the UK and India regarding charitable causes.
Shabana ji's fellow guests include industrialists Mukesh Ambani, Laxmi Mittal and Ratan Tata.
The tone of the TOI piece suggests that Shabana ji is rather bemused at the invitation. "I really don’t know how these opportunities come my way," she said. "They just seem to fall into my lap."
A couple of years ago on Koffee with Karan, Shabana Azmi told Karan Johar that she would not have wanted any of the roles Jaya Bachchan played in his movies, because the women were doormats with no discernible character arc. Today, though, comes a rumor that Karan Johar has finally come up with a role that piqued Shabana ji's interest.
The word from "Bollywoodz.net" is that Shabana ji has signed on to play Shah Rukh Khan's mother in Johar's next, Khan, a film about the persecution and isolation experienced by Muslims after the 9/11 attacks. According to the article:
When contacted to confirm her presence in the film, Shabana just laughed and said, "Main chup rahungi."That is, "no comment." But Bollywoodz.net is one of those innumerable worthless aggregators that auto-copy content from other places without attribution, so I can offer no odds on the truth of this item. As always I'll keep an eye out and let you know when I hear about this from a reputable source, or indeed any identified source at all. UPDATE: Here's the same story in the Mumbai Mirror, this time with a byline - Subhash K. Jha. Jha is an obsequious hack, but stars do seem to answer his calls, so if he says he talked to Shabana Azmi he probably did.
Thanks to Aung for bringing this big news to my attention. Shabana Azmi is in a kids' film called Kalpvriksh, directed by Manika Sharma. The film looks like it will be ready for release later this year.
The film's official website offers just a little information but it sounds like a very interesting project, potentially very enchanting and delightful. Here's the basic outline of the story, from the website:
KalpVriksh – THE WISH TREE is a magical, inspirational and an extremely entertaining story of five children in a hill-station who come together to save their ‘wishing tree’ (KALPVRIKSH) from being cut by vested interests. The film is extremely lively, entertaining, endearing and engrossing so that the underlying message to protect trees and environment is seamlessly driven home.Also piquing my interest is the description of the films songs, which sound they have very thoughtfully crafted and lush visuals:
The Earth song is a colorful collage of images to tell the story of the Earth’s evolution. As we travel over snow capped mountain peaks to gushing waterfalls and rivers, pupae turn into butterfly and a giant dragonfly flaps its wings across the sky over a dense tropical forest.The cast is also listed on the website, and in addition to Shabana ji includes Saurabh Shukla, Makrand Deshpande (who was so wonderful in another kids' movie that Shabana ji was in, Makdee), and others, as well as a guest appearance by Shah Rukh Khan. I am very excited to hear more about this project and I will of course keep you posted. Between this one and Sorry Bhai, the second half of 2008 should be a good one for Shabana films.
Dhanua’s dhaba song is his fantasy on the other side of life, where his abusive and exploitative owner, Shankar dada transforms into a sorrier version of Dhanua in rags and Dhanua becomes the Don (the underworld King) of the dhaba, flashing a white three piece suit and a red shining car. This song is in theatrical genre.
Nikita’s concert song on stage as a rock-star is complete showbiz. It’s the opening song of the film and resembles a Michael Jackson concert in which the fans are fainting with awe and adrenalin is running high.
The celebration of the tree song is vibrant and has the raw energy of nature. It throbs with life. The tree sways from side to side and dances, shivers and gurgles like a baby with the children. The Wishing tree is happy to come back to life after thousands of years with the love and faith of the children.
KALPVRIKSH is a very visual film. All the scenes in the film are color-coded, they fall within a certain scheme of colors according to the mood and inner journey of the characters. For instance Sean’s room is blue, reflecting his state of mind. He misses his father constantly.
This news report comes from a very questionable source, and I won't believe it until I see it printed elsewhere, but: According to this sketchy downloads blog, Onir's next film will be an adaptaion of Hamlet in which Shabana Azmi plays Queen Gertrude and Boman Irani, Polonius. Sounds appealing, but as I said, I reserve credulity on this one.
Onir has just finished Sorry Bhai with Shabana ji, Boman sahib, Chitraganda Singh, Sanjay Suri, and Sharman Joshi, and we should have some pre-release news on that in the near future.
UPDATE: Here is the story from a somewhat more established source, Hindustan Times, who report that Siddharth and Soha Ali Khan are playing Hamlet and Ophelia. I have to say I am not convinced this is such a hot idea, but we'll see what happens as the story unfolds.
