India, 8/9.

"For six days starting Friday, a handful of Los Angeles venues will play host to venerable actors from India (even the couple dubbed 'the Brangelina of India'), some of the country's best-known movies, a parade of fashion models dressed in rustling embroidered silks and workshops helmed by some of India's more prominent artists," writes Kavita Daswani, opening a Los Angeles Times package on "India Splendor, a multicultural event... designed to showcase the film, fashion, art - and even spirituality - of India." More on the lineup and on LA-area Indians, "a demographic being catered to by a number of promoters organizing Bollywood-inspired dance nights, hoping to draw in crowds homesick for the film music, pop videos and people of their native country."

Updated through 8/11.

"The studio behind Saawariya, Sony Pictures Entertainment, is the first in a wave of American studios to produce their own kaleidoscopic Bollywood musicals," writes Anand Giridharadas. "The American studios are keen to make money in India, but in a nation where $19 of every $20 spent at the box office goes to indigenous films, the studios are deciding to join Bollywood, not conquer it with their American-made fare."

Also in the New York Times, Andy Webster reviews Cash, "a Bollywood caper providing abundant proof that Hollywood pictures have no monopoly on ostentatious wealth, or, to use a spent expression, bling."

"It seems safe to assume that most viewers of Ezham Mudra, a film by Indian director Rajeev Nath, will be unaware that they are watching Casablanca in disguise," writes the Guardian's Xan Brooks.

For further clicking, do see Alison Willmore's latest round up at the IFC News Blog: "Bollywood, Lollywood, Nollywood."

Online listening tip. Anupama Chopra on the Leonard Lopate Show, talking about her book, King of Bollywood.

Update: "It's been 60 years since India won its independence and the country of Mahatma Gandhi is now on track to becoming a global power. But the country's new prosperity remains elusive for many, with millions of farmers still leading lives of abject misery. Spiegel visits five very different places to see what India's future holds."

Update, 8/10: Richard Attenborough's Gandhi "told the story of Gandhi as the father of a nation; now a new film, Gandhi, My Father, reveals the extraordinary story of the son and the man he described as 'the greatest father you can have but the one father I wish I did not have,'" writes Sarfraz Manzoor. "The film's release coincides with the publication of a monumental new biography by Rajmohan Gandhi, a historian and grandson of the Mahatma."

In the London Times, Anil Sinanan reports on the romantic comedy Marigold, "the first significant Hollywood film to appropriate Bollywood's unique style of filmmaking, with plenty of knowing references for Bollywood buffs and with enough savvy to engage newcomers."

Updates, 8/11: "The making-of-a-team sports movie is a timeworn genre, and yet Chak De! India (Go, India!) finds new variations," writes Andy Webster in the NYT. "Though the game here is field hockey, those fondly recalling the United States soccer team's first-place finish in the 1991 Women's World Cup will find a lot to like.... [T]he film's greatest merit is its commentary on sexism in India. As it should, Chak De! India gives the women, in the closing credits, the last word."

And the Independent runs a bulky package: "India at 60: special report."

Posted by dwhudson at August 9, 2007 8:50 AM