Slumdog scoops Indie film awards

Slumdog Millionaire sees a young boy enter Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? A movie about a poor Indian boy who wins a game show fortune has taken three prizes, including best film, at the British Independent Film Awards. Slumdog Millionaire, which is not out in the UK until January, also won best director for Danny Boyle and best newcomer for 18-year-old Dev Patel. Political drama Hunger also took three prizes, with Michael Fassbender named best actor for playing Bobby Sands. Harry Potter star David Thewlis picked up an outstanding contribution prize. The 45-year-old, who plays Remus Lupin in the wizarding franchise, is also known for his roles in Mike Leigh's Naked and Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven. more

Kuzhalmannam Ramakrishnan in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest performance of a hand-drum

Guinness record for longest hand-drum

IANS

Saturday, November 29, 2008  14:34 IST

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Noted mridangam exponent has made his way into  lasting for 301 hours.

 Ramakrishnan set the record for his marathon performance at the Nadalaya Auditorium of Nehru College of Aeronautics and Applied Sciences in Comibatore from August one to 13 this year.
    

The certificate from the Guinness approving the feat was received by Ramakrishnan earlier this week, sources close to the artiste said.
    

It noted that Ramakrishnan's performance had been confirmed as the new Guinness Record for the longest marathon hand-drumming by any artiste.
    

In 2005, he had enthralled the music lovers by playing for 101 hours non-stop in Kannur.  more

Yash Chopra gets int'l 'lifetime achievement' award

Wed, Nov 12 12:50 PM

A Kazakh comedy about a family coping with the harsh life of sheep and goat herding on a barren landscape took top honours at the second annual Asia-Pacific Screen Awards on Tuesday.

The movie "Tulpan", the first feature film by Kazakh documentary-maker Sergey Dvortsevoy, is set in southern Kazakhstan and tells of a young nomad who returns from military service to a family yurt and tries to win the heart of his neighbour, Tulpan.

The film, which won several awards including the top prize in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival, beat Hong Kong's "Men Jeuk" (Sparrow), Turkish film "Uc Maymun" (Three Monkeys), "Om Shanti Om" from India, and China's "The Red Awn" for top prize.

Yash Chopra, founder of Yashraj Films and a major player in the Indian film industry, was awarded the FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers Associations) Award for outstanding achievement in film in the Asia-Pacific region.  more

Bharat Ratna for Bhimsen Joshi

AWARD

Bharat Ratna Bhimsen Joshi

Is it a case of better late than never? The ailing 86-year old is the first Hindustani classical vocalist to be so honoured with India's highest civilian award

OUTLOOK WEB BUREAU ON BHIMSEN JOSHI

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Satyajit Ray M S Subbulakshmi Pandit Ravi Shankar Lata Mangeshkar Ustad Bismillah Khan And now, finally, the list of distinguished luminaries from the field of art and culture who have been conferred with the award ofBharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, has a sixth name: unquestionably, the greatest living Hindustani classical vocalist: Pandit Bhimsen Joshi. Bhimsen Joshi is the first Hindustani classical vocalist to be so awarded -- Carnatic vocalist MS Subbulakshmi in 1998 and Lata Mangeshkar in 2001 are the other singers who have received the honour. He will be the the 41st recipient overall since the award was instituted in 1954 (he would have been the 42nd, but the posthumous award to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose in 1992 had to be withdrawn as the Award Committee could not give conclusive evidence of Netaji's death). Joshi has already been a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shree awards. He is the second Kannadiga, after Sir M Vishweshwaraiah, to have won this award. Bhimsen Gururaj Joshi was born in a Kannadiga Brahmin family on February 4, 1922 in Gadag, an idyllic village in Dharwad district of Karnataka. At a young age, he was deeply moved by a recording of Basant by Ustad Abdul Karim Khan, a great master of the Kirana gharana. All he wanted to do was to learn to sing. But his father, Gururaj, a Sanskrit scholar and a noted educationist, wanted young Bhimsen to study to become a doctor or an engineer instead. Things came to a head in 1933 when the 11-year-old young Bhimsen picked up a quarrel (thestory goes that he had asked for an extra spoonful of ghee with his meal, and was refused) and the young boy ran away from home -- in pursuit of a guru to learn music from. He headed first to Gwalior, as he had heard that apart from Lucknow and Rampur in north India, it was the best places to learn Hindustani classical music. He spent the next three years in these parts of north India, roaming the length and breadth of the country, paying for his ticket by singing bhajans and abhangs on trains, doing odd jobs and domestic chores in the houses of noted artistes in his endless quest for a proper guru and some music lessons. more

Vikas Swarup's novel becomes Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire

Oliver twisted in Mumbai express

Mon, Nov 3 02:15 AM

Dharavi may be the world's biggest slum, but the grit and determination of its inhabitants is what acclaimed British director Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, is about. Scripted by Simon Beaufoy (of The Full Monty fame), the film is an adaptation of Vikas Swarup's novel, Q and amp; A. As the story begins, the irrepressible hero Jamal (Dev Patel) is close to winning the top prize in the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? but the producers and police are convinced he must be cheating.

But the producers and the anchor Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor) are convinced Jamal is transpires cheating. "How can a slum dweller, a chaiwala in a call centre know the answers which even professors did not know?" they wonder.

Handed over to the police, Jamal is tortured to make him confess the truth. But it turns out that each question Jamal gets right is linked with his troubled past.

The schematic screenplay uses the questions as a way to uncover that past. It being a Danny Boyle film, the answers involve sprints through chocker back-streets, grisly flashbacks to the slum where a nine-year-old Jamal and his older brother, Salim, spend most of their childhood running from pimps and gangs.

The film has been nominated for six awards in the British Independent Film category of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. A remarkable feat considering Dev Patel and Freida Pinto are both first timers, while children brought up on the streets play Jamal and Salim.

Director Danny Boyle of Trainspotting fame, said, "They are brilliant actors, you don't have to teach them about acting and #8230; It is part of everybody's DNA (in India)." Boyle has a carnivalesque approach, doesn't ignore the violence and squalor - the crushing poverty, children sifting through garbage, heartless, casual crime - yet celebrates the resilience of the orphans.

"I feel the temperature of the film is appropriate to my reaction to the place, which is that I loved it desperately. You kind of leave India at the end but it kind of doesn't leave you - it changes you.

" Anil Kapoor is impressed by the book: " It was a novel idea and I wanted to be part of it." And he has played that eminently.

Swarup is satisfied with the adaptation. "My own take is underclass.

The whole idea of the quiz show being an ubiquitous expose of life history through the film medium has been well-achieved," he said. What has wowed the London audience and critics is that there is no sermonising or running down of Swarup's underclass.

It weaves a dream for them, and is Boyle's tribute to "Mumbai, the maximum city".  source