 India Post News Service
NEW YORK: The year 2006 saw Indian art and entertainment gaining unprecedented acceptance and popularity among connoisseurs and lovers of the eclectic in the US, even as the name Bollywood stuck for good in the vocabulary of movie lovers in this country.
The sudden burst of A.R. Rahman's composition Chaiyya Chaiyya during the opening credits of the Hollywood blockbuster The Inside Man set a foot-tapping trend for Indian entertainment overseas early on in 2006.
The Inside Man director and Hollywood biggie Spike Lee may not belong to any major Bollywood fan club in Hollywood, but he surely changed the way millions of filmgoers across the globe, especially in the US look at Indian entertainment, for its been a record-breaking year for Hindi films at the US box office in 2006.
The licensing of Chaiyya Chaiyya from the film Dil Se, was handled by One World Entertainment, which had earlier licensed Hindi film music for the Disney Pictures production Raising Helen starring Kate Hudson, and The Universal Studios film The Guru.
Hip-hop singer-songwriter Shakira took the Bollywood theme several steps further when she daringly incorporated the trademark hip dance and jhatkas of Bollywood dances into her performance at the MTV Video Music Awards 2006 in New York.
Shakira, who got Bollywood choreographer Farah Khan to choreograph the MTV awards night number - Hips Don't Lie -- brought Bollywood in-your-face, when she and her other dancers performed their number dressed in bright colored Bollywood costumes.
Not surprisingly, recognizing the growing popularity of Hindi films in the US, BODVOD Networks, a company that holds exclusive rights to popular Indian movies from top studios such as UTV and Adlabs, launched films on-demand on cable television in New York.
Seven out of the 14 foreign language films released in the US this year that grossed over $2 million at the box office were Hindi films. And although the North American viewers for Hindi films are predominantly South Asian, there's now a sizeable and growing comity of non-Indian fans, who have come to enjoy the elaborate song & dance fare dished out by Bollywood.
Legitimizing the Bollywood style of story telling, some of the biggest names in Hollywood have made a beeline for Bombay in 2006, to strike lucrative deals with movie makers there. Among them was A-listed actor Will Smith, who, during his much publicized visit to India, struck a deal with India's UTV to produce mainstream films.
An estimated $500 million are likely to be invested by Hollywood studios in Indian films following their foray into Bollywood during 2006.
Also bringing Bollywood closer to American audiences was veteran playback singer Asha Bhosle who, at 73, had mainstream audiences in New York tapping their feet and humming to the best of R.D. Burman numbers as part of the Kronos Quartet concert at Carnegie Hall in New York, in April last year.
The Grammy-nominated Kronos album You've Stolen My Heart: Songs from R D Burman's Bollywood, which is a big hit in the world music section at all major music stores in the country, brought Indian movie magic center-stage in America.
While on movies, Waterborne, starring Shabana Azmi made by filmmaker Ben Rekhi, became the first feature film made by an Indian American to be featured on Google's new online film offering.
Bollywood's biggest box office grosser this year Rang De Basanti made it to the Academy Awards this year, as India's official entry for the Oscar.
In Hollywood, meanwhile, the one big desi name Manoj Night Shyamalan failed to rise to expectations this year. His much publicized film Lady in the Water bombed making just about $40 million at the box office.
Critics treated Shyamalan none too kindly either following his spat with Disney over a script change. Shyamalan had not agreed to any changes and went to town to talk about it -- perhaps the reason why his Lady literally drowned in the water.
Indian American actor Kal Penn, who took Hollywood by storm with his capers in the stereotype-busting film Harold and Kumar go to White Castle in 2005, failed himself doing just what he tried not to do in Harold and Kumar… he played the stereotype to the hilt in Van Wilder 2: The Rise of the Taj, complete with an impossible screen name, Taj Mahal Badalandabad (!). Not too surprisingly, the movie bombed, unable to scrape even $4 million at the box office.
As a consolation, however, Kal Penn was noticed in Superman Returns, one of the biggest Hollywood releases of the year 2006.
Desi Bollywood fans got their fill of live shows this past year with some mega concerts that stormed through several American cities. Salman Khan led the pack with his Rockstar concerts followed by the immensely popular Himesh Reshmiya's Aapka Suroor concerts and Bollywood Heat with Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan and Preity Zinta and others.
Indian Art
Movie mania apart, it was Indian contemporary art that was ubiquitous in the New York art scene, with works of Indian artists going under the hammer at unheard of prices at the prestigious auction houses, Christies and Sothebys, during 2006.
There has been a sudden mushrooming of Indian American art houses which have made an admirable job of bringing Indian art to the mainstream American oeuvre.
The spectrum was wide with works of maestros in the field like MF Husain, Tyeb Mehta, S.H. Raza, V.S. Gaitonde, F.N. Souza and Akbar Padamsee on one end and several young and upcoming artists on the other end.
At the Sothebys Fall Indian art auction in New York City, FN Souza's Man with Monstrance went under the hammer for $1,360,000, followed by Tyeb Mehta, whose untitled work went for $1,248,000 while another untitled work by Gaitonde fetched $1,108,000.
Sky is the limit
Perhaps indicative of where Indian art is headed in future, famous London-based Indian artist and sculptor Anish Kapoor caught the imagination of New Yorkers and worldwide tourists to the Big Apple with his public sculpture, the Sky Mirror.
The giant 23 ton, 35-foot diameter installation at the Rockefeller Center displayed during October 2006, reflected the images of life on the street on the convex side and an upside down view of the Manhattan skyline on the concave side.
Organized by the Public Art Fund and hosted by Tishman Speyer, the Sky Mirror reflected the coming of age of Indian art on the world canvas |
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