HINDU FILMMAKER REACHES AGREEMENT WITH MUSLIM PROTESTERS

Ending a row between Indian Hindu filmmakers and Muslim protesters, director Kamal Hassan said today (Saturday) that he has agreed to mute the audio in several scenes of his spy thriller Vishwaroopam that the protesters had deemed offensive. Following a five-hour mediation conference overseen by Home Secretary R. Rajagopal of the state government of Tamil […]

INDIA PROTESTS LENO GAG

Among the deeply devout, humor and religion do not intermix. (About the only religious figure depicted as laughing or even smiling in religious iconography is Buddha.) Jay Leno is the latest to learn that lesson as the government of India formally lodged a complaint about a gag that was included in his Tonight show monologue […]

BOLLYWOOD FORCES ALLEGED PIRATE SITES TO SHUT DOWN

Users in India of some of the leading file-hosting sites found those sites replaced by the following announcement on Wednesday: “This site has been blocked as per instructions from Department of Telecom (DOT). As reported by TorrentFreak.com, such sites as RapidShare, MegaUpload, MediaFire, and HotFile have been blocked. India produces the largest number of movies […]

BOLLYWOOD PRODUCERS HIRING WESTERNERS

As Indian films garner a wider audience abroad, Bollywood studios are increasingly including roles for Western actors in their productions, Agence France Presse, the French news agency, reported over the weekend. Alexx O’Nell, a 30-year-old native of Connecticut who came to Mumbai, the country’s film capital, when his U.S. marketing firm transferred him there, said […]

O’BRIEN PAID $1 MILLION FOR AMERICAN EXPRESS COMMERCIAL

American Express Co. has paid Conan O’Brien $1 million to appear in a commercial that begins airing tonight (Monday), the same day that he launches his new television show on TBS, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The ad, in which O’Brien spoofs his own reputation for overseeing the smallest details of his shows, plants […]

CBS AND RELIANCE TO CREATE INDIAN CHANNELS

CBS is coming to India. The network’s production arm, CBS Studios, is teaming up with India’s Reliance to launch Big CBS Prime next month, with two other Indian channels in the planning stages, Big CBS Spark, targeting a youth audience, scheduled to debut in December, and Big CBS Love, targeting women, set to premiere in […]

TV REVIEWS: OUTSOURCED

The premise may do more to impact the ratings of NBC’s season opener of Outsourced — a young American is sent to manage an outsourced call-center in India — than the content, which most critics agree is funny — in some scenes, outrageously so. “But whether intercultural relations can generate enough hilarity to sustain an […]