Curious Case: By Radhika Bhirani

Radhika Bhirani for ZeeZest.com ~~ rbhirani@gmail.com ~~ Vidya Balan and Vidya Vincent, the righteous forest officer that the National Award-winning actor plays in her latest film Sherni, may be different from each other, but look closer and you will find parallels. They make space for themselves in a male-dominated space, remain undeterred by challenges, know their strengths, do what they believe in and let their work speak for themselves. Nothing or nobody screams out loud in Sherni either. Yet, there is a roar! From playing a radio jockey in Tumhari Sulu to a scientist in Mission Mangal, a mathematician in Shakuntala Devi and now a forest officer in Sherni, Vidya's unconventional choice of projects in recent times have further cemented her space in the Hindi film industry as an artiste who wants to not just entertain, but inspire and reflect the changing reality and place of women in Indian society. In conversation with Zee Zest, Vidya Balan talks about how her choices impact he...

Radhika Bhirani for ZeeZest.com ~~ rbhirani@gmail.com ~~ Sunil Grover is a name synonymous with comedy in the Indian entertainment landscape. He has been eliciting 'hansi ke funware' from audiences with his voice and acts for over two decades, creating an indelible imprint in the audience's mind with his characters ranging from Sud to Gutthi and Rinku to Dr Mashhoor Gulati. But in the past few years, the actor has got a chance to break free from his 'comedian' image and widen the scope of his offerings by dabbling in different genres and formats across the film and OTT space. His latest is a crime comedy series Sunflower. In conversation with ZeeZest.com, Sunil Grover talks about his journey, his learnings, sustaining success, and the actress he would like to team up within a romantic film. Excerpts: 1. Sunflower is a mix of crime and comedy genres. What were your initial thoughts on the project? When Vikas Bahl sent me this script, we had been discussing the idea o...

Radhika Bhirani for Zenger News ~~rbhirani@gmail.com ~~ For a man who took the Los Angeles nightclub scene by storm in the 1980s with a troupe of male striptease dancers performing for women, Indian immigrant Steve “Somen” Banerjee didn’t exactly have a happy ending. Born in 1947, Banerjee, a Bengali from Bombay (now Mumbai), harbored the American Dream in his youth like many immigrants worldwide. After years of trial and error, he hit the jackpot in 1979 with a club named Chippendales that featured an eponymous burlesque show of beefy men gyrating in their signature white cuffs, collars, and black spandex pants. Chippendales , which offered “night outs” to remember for girls and women became a pop-cultural phenomenon that continues to have a fan base across six continents more than four decades since its inception. However, it is the sordid chapter of its history in the 1990s when greed, corruption, and crime led to deaths, attempted murders, and Banerjee’s eventual arrest and suicide...

Radhika Bhirani for Zenger News ~~ rbhirani@gmail.com ~~ Hours before “ Radhe: Your Most Wanted Bhai ”, Bollywood’s first big-budget film that went for a multi-platform release , its makers urged the audience to avoid piracy. But within hours, the movie was circulating on piracy sites, social media, and messaging platforms, including WhatsApp and Telegram. “We offered you to watch our film ‘Radhe’ at a reasonable price of INR 249 [$3.4] per view,” Salman Khan , a top Indian actor, tweeted two days later. “In spite of that, pirated sites are streaming ‘Radhe’ illegally, which is a serious crime.” The film was released by Zee Studios across screens in over 40 countries on pay-per-view service ZEEPlex, and direct-to-home platforms in India, on May 13. The incident brings the focus back on the heightened susceptibility of streaming content and the perennial menace of piracy in India’s multi-million dollar movie business. Zee filed an official complaint at the Cyber Crime department of th...

Radhika Bhirani for Zenger News ~~ rbhirani@gmail.com                                                ~~ “Request for beds 570, I could arrange just 112. Requests for Remdesivir: 1,477; I could arrange just 18. Yes, we have failed. So is our health care system (sic).” The Twitter feed of Bollywood’s reel villain Sonu Sood , who emerged as a real-life hero in India’s prolonged fight against the Covid-19 crisis, is replete with pleas and posts about helping others as the nation battles the second wave of the pandemic. In 2020, Sood helped stranded migrant workers reach home, provided aid to frontline workers, helped skilled and unskilled workers find jobs, and more. Cut to 2021. The actor has been actively using his network to arrange oxygen cylinders, concentrators, plasma, hospital beds, and other essential medical supplies for those in need, apart from arranging oxygen...