Joy Mukherjee

It is hard to define Joy Mukherjee. You could call him a chocolate boy hero with an infectious smile. Or you could look at that strapping frame to realise why many in the sixties felt he was the closest Bollywood had to Rock Hudson machismo.

Co-stars would define him as the ultimate prankster who never left space for a dull moment on the sets.

Joy Mukherjee was an enigma in ways more than one. His meteoric rise thanks to sixties jubilee hits such as Love In Tokyo, Ziddi, Shagird and Phir Wohi Dil Laya Hoon was as abrupt as his bowing out of the limelight after around a decade of glory.

For the record Joy breathed his last in Mumbai’s Lilavati Hospital on Friday (03/11/2012) after a prolonged illness at the age of 73.

The man, who made broadshouldered athleticism a fashionable image for the Bollywood hero long before the Khans and the Kumars discovered the gym, spent his last days on the ventilator.

“His wife Neelam Mukherjee was by his side when he passed away at 9.30 am on Friday. We are yet to decide the time and venue of the cremation,” said the actor’s spokesperson R.R. Pathak. Joy is survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter.

Hailing from a film family, Joy made his debut at the age of 21 in the 1960 hit Love In Simla opposite Sadhana. His father Sashadhar Mukherjee, a noted filmmaker who co-founded Filmalaya Studios, produced the film. A series of hits followed.

The legacy of the Mukherjees continues through newgeneration stars of the clan. Kajol and Tanisha are daughters of Joy’s brother Shomu Mukherji while Joy was an uncle of Rani Mukerji and director Ayan Mukerji.

For his fans, Joy Mukherjee will continue living in some of most unforgettable love songs ever recorded in Bollywood, including ‘Woh hain zara khafa khafa’ (Shagrid), ‘O mere shahe khuba’ (Love In Tokyo) and the title song of Phir Wohi Dil Laya Hoon – (Source - Indiatoday)

Waar (2012)

It claims to not only be the most anticipated film in the history of Pakistan, but to be based on true events. And, for once, the Hollywood-style hyperbole can be excused. The feature-length action thriller called Waar (“to strike” in Urdu) is eagerly awaited, despite being out of tune with the trend for movies packed with singing and dancing.

Waar is coming to cinemas in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi and even the restive frontier city of Peshawar later this year. The trailer was viewed more than 500,000 times in the first month when posted on YouTube in January, entering the website’s top five videos.

Inspired by real events such as a Muslim extremist assault on a Pakistani police academy in 2009, the film follows a team of anti-terrorist police officers who, with time running out, try to stop a new attack. But the subject matter is not the only attraction, say local critics. With its slick production and use of digital technology, the film, reportedly the country’s most expensive ever, is a long way from the staples of local cinema.

“Waar is very, very new,” says Sher Ali Khan, film reporter for the Express Tribune newspaper.

In recent years, there has been a series of films dealing with edgy subjects in Pakistan but these were made by, and watched by, the westernised middle classes. “So far the masses haven’t accepted these new kind of films. They have catered to the westernised upper middle class. Popular tastes have stayed with the standard styles of plot and production,” says Khan. “Waar can be considered the first new wave film to go mainstream.”

One major difference with the traditional fare is the lack of song and dance routines. Director Bilal Lashari, who studied film-making in California, says: “There was just no question, even if people were telling me: ‘How can you do without them?’ For audiences here, it is going to be a complete 180 degree shift. From cinematography to style of acting, it is different from what has gone before.”

The Pakistani film industry, which flourished after the country’s independence in 1947, has languished for decades.

Cinema owner and distributor Zorraiz Lashari says a combination of booming cable television outlets and competition from India’s Bollywood film industry almost finished off the local studios, concentrated in the western city of Lahore and known collectively, if somewhat unoriginally, as Lollywood.

“It costs 20m rupees [£140,000] minimum to make a decent movie and it’s very difficult to get your money back. You can buy a Hindi-language film from India for half or a quarter of that price,” Lashari says.

From 700 cinemas in 1977, there are now only 175 and the only films to turn a profit have been in languages such as Pashtu or Sindhi, spoken in particular regions of the country, where Indian productions are incomprehensible.

Weak regulation leading to endemic pirating is one major problem. There are even occasional efforts to temporarily ban Indian movies.

“Even if a couple of multiplexes have opened, cinema is still very niche,” says Sarah Tareen, a Lahore-based producer. “The main medium is television. Only a fraction of the population go out to watch films.”

However, along with Waar, a whole series of similar films is being readied for release in coming months.

One is Kaptaan, a cinematic rendering of the recent life of Imran Khan, the cricketer turned politician who currently tops popularity polls in Pakistan. The film will cover Khan’s life since retiring from sport 20 years ago and will dramatise his entry into politics as well as his failed marriage to Jemima Goldsmith, who is played by a Pakistan-American actress.

Tareen is producing Tamanna (Desire), a drama exploring class, adultery and, through flashbacks, the heyday of Lollywood. “It is neither action-based nor Bollywood-style. It is much more a pure drama with a narrative telling the story of three individuals,” she says.

Sanaa Ahmed, a film journalist in Pakistan, sees the new developments in Pakistan as part of a broader global trend. “There are a lot of new young people with stories to tell who are figuring out ways to tell it,” she says. “It’s a new wave.”

Lashari says Pakistan needs to “recreate” its cinema. “Everyone here has been following Bollywood but the best we can ever come up with is going to be a B grade knock off. We need to create our own identity,” he says. (Source – TheGuardian)

Kiera Chaplin

Four years after it was made and went around the festival circuit, young film maker Rajshree Ojha’s English multi-starrer ‘Chaurahen’ is finally up for release marking the Indian cinema debut of Charlie Chaplin’s grand daughter Kiera.

Despite its delayed release this month, Ojha hopes that the film – which has an ensemble cast of Soha Ali Khan, Ankur Khanna, Victor Banerjee, Roopa Ganguly, Zeenat Aman, Shayan Munshi besides Kiera Chaplin – will connect with the audience.

The film holds its relevance even after four years as “the situation, about love and how people move on in life, has not changed overtime,” Ojha said.

Insisting that a director should not necessarily be stuck with films of one genre, Ojha said the story line was entirely different from her other film ‘Aisha’ based on Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’. The film, made after ‘Chaurahen’, was more into a romantic comic mould unlike this film which consists four separate stories set in three different metros.

Ojha was also very appreciative of the role of Kiera, cast as Lea, a girl who arrives in Kolkata, one of the three cities, to find her moorings and hopes the 29-year-old

model-turned-actress would get more offers after ‘Chaurahen’.

“She (Kiera) saw my first small film. She said four ingredients – my first short film, me, the script of Chaurahen and the chance to visit Kolkata and India – prompted her to act in the film and she did not charge a single penny,” Ojha said. (Source – IndianExpress)