by Sidhartha Vaidyanathan O, bowled again ? Discussing Sachin Tendulkar has never been easy. He lends himself to arguments. Most of these arguments are like giant fractals – each made up of smaller, similar sounding mini-arguments. To debate Tendulkar is to be caught in a whirlpool and bombarded with streams of thought from tangential directions. So I have tried to rip the present Tendulkar debate (about his poor series against New Zealand and calls for retirement) threadbare. I have singled out each part of the argument and presented my view. As always, you are welcome to disagree and extend... 

Bihardays, unveils the poster of Naya Pata. Directed by Pawan K Srivastava, Naya Pata, is first crowd funded film from Bihar.

Presently film is in post production stage , and will be completed soon. Wishing Pawan and the team of Naya Pata, all the best.

 

 

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Part One Rajendra .N. Dash In conversation with Prashant Kumar R.N dash : The movie man of Bihar On growing up with cinema:   In 1942 my father was posted in a village in Orissa and I saw my first film in a tent show over there.It was a Bengali film, Jaydev. I was fascinated by moving images and the projector, I was amazed by how a projector which is throwing light on a screen is converting it into moving images and sound. I just used to look at projector and then screen, screen, then projector – it was kind of unparalleled magic for me. I was really fascinated by this magic. In 1938,... 

By Somnath Batabyal Somnath Batabyal My friend could not believe her ears. “Shakespeare? Cutting-edge? You must be joking. You need to get out more, see some new theatre and de-colonise your mind.” I was returning, elated, from a performance of Toni Morrison’s incredible musical sequel to Othello when I dropped the clanger on the phone to my friend. I’d used the words ‘cutting-edge’ in the same sentence as that old tool of colonial oppression, William Shakespeare, and I wasn’t going to live it down without some careful argumentation. My feelings for... 

R.N.Dash By R.N Dash Bhojpuri,the language of about 150 million people in India and abroad, has its cradle in the western half of Bihar, and the adjoining eastern part of UP. Yet Bhojpuri Cinema had its origin elsewhere, although the first Bhojpuri feature was made in Bihar. The first feature film made in Bihar and Jharkhand (Punarmilan,1931,Directed by then top Director Dhiren Ganguli,produced by Maharaja Bhupendra Narayan Singh of Deo) was not a Bhojpuri Film. It was the Filmistan studio at Goregaon, Mumbai that introduced a Bhojpuri song in one of its films in 1946.Bhojpuri dialogues and... 

ratnakar-sadasyula By Ratnakar Sadasyula Tony Scott was not an auteur, nor was he a director with an artistic touch. Unlike his brother Ridley, whose Blade Runner has been dissected  and analyzed, and whose Alien was as a landmark in sci fi horror, one would not  really ponder over every frame of Top Gun or even his best picture to date True Romance. Make no mistake, Tony Scott was as popcorn  as it gets, his movies were hard core entertainers all the way.  Still it takes some amount of skill to churn out an entertainer by itself, and Tony Scott was extremely good at it. His... 

By Arnab Ray babua khilaadi dadua anari Ever since I watched “Namak Halal” and Amitabh’s “I can talk Ingliss I can walk Ingliss. and I can laugh Ingliss…Ingliss is a varry phunnny language…Bhairon becomes Byron because their minds are very narrow” I knew that there was a Bhojpuri movie hidden somewhere there just waiting to come out. And so it has —Namak Halal has been dubbed into Bhojpuri and released as “Babua Khiladi Dadua Anari” —inspired by “Main Khiladi Tu Anari”, one of Bollywood’s rare movies with a subtly gay subtext (or so people claim).  Of course there... 

Anjali Damania Karjat, Maharashtra: On Friday last week, when 42-year-old pathologist Anjali Damania received a government order informing her that she had lost ownership of a 59-acre farmland she had so lovingly nurtured for close to 18 years, it just brought a wry smile to her face. What is 59 acres for a woman who has stalled irrigation projects worth Rs 5,000 crore across the state and who has become the pivot in a struggle against a corrupt system. The forfeiture of her farm was the system hitting back at her, hoping she would get scared and abandon the movement. But on Monday, when... 

Somnath Batabyal  By Somnath Batabyal The email came in the early afternoon. Would I make myself available at the London office of the Al Jazeera for an interview at 4pm? I was in Bristol. Refusal, therefore, was easy. Also, the fact that there was no mention of what the interview might be about was irritating. Even my hubris did not allow me to believe that I knew everything about everything. The reply was immediate. Could I do a Skype interview instead? Still no mention of the subject matter. I wrote back an irritated email stating that while technically that was feasible, I would not commit... 

by Sidhartha Vaidyanathan V V S Laxman: V for victory! The history of soccer is a sad voyage from beauty to duty. When the sport became an industry, the beauty that blossoms from the joy of play got torn out by its very roots. In this fin-de-siècle world, professional soccer condemns all that is useless, and useless means not profitable. Nobody earns a thing from that crazy feeling that for a moment turns a man into a child playing with a balloon, like a cat with a ball of yarn; a ballet dancer who romps with a ball as light as a balloon or a ball of yarn, playing without even knowing he’s playing,...