More reading
I'm trying not to have as big a backlog on my reading posts as last time, so I'm posting on these two books right away :).
(8.) Cherry Adair; Lora Leigh; Cindy Gerard's Rescue Me was an okay collection of light reading. As you can guess from the title, it's a theme anthology set around various dangerous situations where the ladies require for the guys to rescue them (why is there never a story where the situation is reversed, I ask...).
(9.) Stephen Alter's Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief: Inside the World of Indian Cinema was a very entertaining and fun read. In the book, Alter follows the making of Vishal Bhardwaj's Omkara right from the idea stage to the actual filming and the first release of it. At the same time he talks about various conventions of Indian cinema, with plenty of anecdotes about filmi things, comments by people inside the industry, and his own encounters with several filmi personalities.
Omkara is an Indian adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello, but the scene is set in modern day, among gangsters in Uttar Pradesh. Still, the film has some wonderful performances, Saif Ali Khan's Langda (Iago) at the top of them.
It's interesting to read how he was really hesitant about taking the role at first and even balked at cutting his hair, but finally did do it. This background stuff about film-making is always very interesting, because when you see the final product, you don't really think about all the stuff that the film-makers had to do to arrive at the finished product.
I've seen some comments about the book offering only a superficial view of Bollywood, but in my opinion it works well, since it's giving a broad overview of the industry while still offering inside glimpses to things through the making of this one film. I quite liked it.
(8.) Cherry Adair; Lora Leigh; Cindy Gerard's Rescue Me was an okay collection of light reading. As you can guess from the title, it's a theme anthology set around various dangerous situations where the ladies require for the guys to rescue them (why is there never a story where the situation is reversed, I ask...).
(9.) Stephen Alter's Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief: Inside the World of Indian Cinema was a very entertaining and fun read. In the book, Alter follows the making of Vishal Bhardwaj's Omkara right from the idea stage to the actual filming and the first release of it. At the same time he talks about various conventions of Indian cinema, with plenty of anecdotes about filmi things, comments by people inside the industry, and his own encounters with several filmi personalities.
Omkara is an Indian adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello, but the scene is set in modern day, among gangsters in Uttar Pradesh. Still, the film has some wonderful performances, Saif Ali Khan's Langda (Iago) at the top of them.
It's interesting to read how he was really hesitant about taking the role at first and even balked at cutting his hair, but finally did do it. This background stuff about film-making is always very interesting, because when you see the final product, you don't really think about all the stuff that the film-makers had to do to arrive at the finished product.
I've seen some comments about the book offering only a superficial view of Bollywood, but in my opinion it works well, since it's giving a broad overview of the industry while still offering inside glimpses to things through the making of this one film. I quite liked it.