Hollywood & Bollywood (Header): Film icons who got government recognition a tad too late

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Film icons who got government recognition a tad too late

With the 77-year-old Shashi Kapoor being presented the Dadasaheb Phalke Award yesterday, we take a look at industry icons who were honoured by the government in their twilight years...

It was a dramatic coincidence that Shashi Kapoor, who uttered the iconic dialogue "Mere paas maa hai" in Deewar (1975), was bestowed with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the highest honour in Indian cinema, on Mother's Day yesterday.

Shashi Kapoor flanked by Karisma Kapoor, Ranbir Kapoor, Rekha and Neetu Kapoor during the award function at Prithvi Theatre in Juhu on Sunday.

Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley presented the award to the veteran star at a ceremony held at Prithvi Theatre which has the who's who of Bollywood in attendance.

As the wheelchair bound Kapoor, 77, was unable to travel to New Delhi due to ill-health for the National Awards ceremony (where the award is conferred) earlier this month, the honour was bestowed on him here.

His case makes one wonder why most industry stalwarts are acknowledged for their contribution to Indian cinema so late in the day. Awards are given either posthumously or when the actors are too old and ailing to personally collect them - often they are not in a position to cherish the honour or even recognise anyone.

hitlist takes a look at other such film icons who were honoured with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award towards the fag end of their lives...

Prithviraj Kapoor

After his death in 1972, he was posthumously awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the year 1971. His actor-filmmaker son Raj Kapoor accepted it on his behalf.

Raj Kapoor

In 1988, Bollywood's showman Raj Kapoor collapsed at an event in New Delhi where he was to receive the award. He had to be rushed to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences from the ceremony itself. After a month of hospitalisation, he passed away. He was 63. Kapoor was unwell to attend the ceremony in Delhi, but it was on his insistence that his family agreed to take him to the capital.

Satyajit Ray

Arguably the greatest filmmaker of the country, Satyajit Ray was conferred the award in 1985 at the age of 64. The government had named him for the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian honour, in 1992, the year he passed away. He had received the Honorary Oscar Lifetime Achievement Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science just days before his death.

Sohrab Modi

The Dadasaheb Phalke Award came to the actor-filmmaker in 1980 when he was 82. He passed away four years later.

V Shantaram

The filmmaker received the award in 1985 when he was 83 and died five years later.

B R Chopra

B R Chopra (centre) with his family members during a function organised to felicitate him on receiving the Dadasaheb Phalke Award at his Juhu residence.

Pran

In May 2013, Pran, best known for his negative characters on screen, was presented the government award by the then Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari at his suburban residence. He was 93 and could not attend the ceremony in Delhi due to ill-health. He breathed his last two months later.

Thanks, but no thanks

Bengali actress Suchitra Sen (1931-2014) was a contender for the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2005. The actress, who lived a reclusive life in Kolkata and did not step of her house post the late '70s, refused the honour as she did not want to be photographed in her twilight years or be seen in public.

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I am not dating Alia Bhatt: Varun Dhawan clarifies once and for all

In an interview with the tabloid Mumbai Mirror, Varun Dhawan has unleashed a bombshell by declaring he’ll never date an actress.

But wasn’t he recently linked with his SOTY co-star Alia Bhatt?

“I am not dating Alia,” Varun makes it clear.

And what about the Aashiqui 2 girl Shraddha Kapoor. Isn’t something brewing between Shraddha and him?

“If I say 'We are good friends', it will be misconstrued as 'Boyfriend Girlfriend',” says Varun.

Varun adds that he was amused to hear the rumour of his link-up with Bipasha Basu who is eight years his senior.

“She is quite senior to me. We spoke about the rumour and she said, 'Welcome to the film industry'.”

The youngster is presently busy with dad David Dhawan’s film Main Tera Hero and says, “I shall never date an actress.”

due courtesy to apunkachoice.com

Classical Hollywood cinema

Classical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative,[1] are terms used in film history which designate both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between 1927 and 1963. This period is often referred to as the "golden age of Hollywood." An identifiable cinematic form emerged during this period called classical Hollywood style.[2]

Classical style is fundamentally built on the principle of continuity editing or "invisible" style. That is, the camera and the sound recording should never call attention to themselves (as they might in films from earlier periods, other countries or in a modernist or postmodernistwork).

The golden age[edit]

During the golden age of Hollywood, which lasted from the end of the silent era in American cinema in the late 1920s to the early 1960s, films were prolifically issued by the Hollywood studios.[3] The start of the golden age was arguably when The Jazz Singer was released in 1927 and increased box-office profits for films as sound was introduced to feature films. Most Hollywood pictures adhered closely to a genre—Western, slapstick comedy, musical, animated cartoon, biopic (biographical picture)—and the same creative teams often worked on films made by the same studio. For instance, Cedric Gibbons and Herbert Stothart always worked on MGM films, Alfred Newman worked at Twentieth Century Fox for twenty years, Cecil B. DeMille's films were almost all made at Paramount, director Henry King's films were mostly made for Twentieth-Century Fox, etc.

After The Jazz Singer was released in 1927, Warner Brothers gained huge success and was able to acquire its own string of movie theatres, after purchasing Stanley Theatres and First National Productions in 1928; MGM had also owned a string of theatres since forming in 1924, known as Loews Theatres, and the Fox film Corporation owned the Fox Theatrestrings as well. Also, RKO, another company that owned theatres, had formed in 1928 from a merger between Keith-Orpheum Theaters and the Radio Corporation of America[3].

RKO formed in response to the monopoly Western Electric's ERPI had over sound in films as well, and began to use sound in films through their own method known as Photophone [5]. Paramount, who already acquired Balaban and Katz in 1926, would answer to the success of Warner Bros. and RKO, and buy a number of theaters in the late 1920s as well, before making their final purchase in 1929, through acquiring all the individual theaters belonging to the Cooperative Box Office, located in Detroit, and dominate the Detroit theaters.[4]

However, filmmaking was still a business and motion picture companies made money by operating under the studio system. The major studios kept thousands of people on salary—actors, producers, directors, writers, stunt men, craftspersons and technicians. And they owned hundreds of theaters in cities and towns across America, theaters that showed their films and that were always in need of fresh material. In 1930, MPDDA President Will Hays also founded the Hays (Production) Code, which followed censorship guidelines and went into effect after government threats of censorship expanded by 1930. [6] However the code was never enforced until 1934, after the new Catholic Church organization TheLegion of Decency—appalled by Mae West's very successful sexual appearances in She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel [7]—threatened a boycott of motion pictures if it did not go into effect [8], and those that didn't obtain a seal of approval from the Production Code Administration had to pay a $25,000 fine and could not profit in the theaters, as the MPDDA owned every theater in the country through the Big Five studios [9].

Throughout the early 1930s, risque films and salacious advertising, became widespread in the short period known as Pre-Code Hollywood. MGM dominated the industry and had the top stars in Hollywood, and was also credited for creating the Hollywood star system altogether[10]. MGM stars included at various times "King of Hollywood" Clark Gable, Joan Fontaine, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Gary Cooper, Mary Pickford, Henry Fonda, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Garland, Ava Gardner, James Stewart, Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Vivien Leigh, Grace Kelly, Gene Kelly, Gloria Stuart, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, John Wayne, Barbara Stanwyck, John Barrymore, Audrey Hepburn and Buster Keaton [11]. Another great achievement of American cinema during this era came throughWalt Disney's animation. In 1937, Disney created the most successful film of its time, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs [12].

Many film historians have remarked upon the many great works of cinema that emerged from this period of highly regimented film-making. One reason this was possible is that, with so many films being made, not every one had to be a big hit. A studio could gamble on a medium-budget feature with a good script and relatively unknown actors: Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles and often regarded as the greatest film of all time, fits that description. In other cases, strong-willed directors like Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock andFrank Capra battled the studios in order to achieve their artistic visions. The apogee of the studio system may have been the year 1939, which saw the release of such classics asThe Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Destry Rides Again,Young Mr. Lincoln, Wuthering Heights, Only Angels Have Wings,Ninotchka, Babes in Arms, Gunga Din, and The Roaring Twenties. Among the other films from the golden age period that are now considered to be classics: Casablanca, The Adventures of Robin Hood, It's a Wonderful Life, It Happened One Night, King Kong, Citizen Kane, Swing Time, Some Like It Hot, A Night at the Opera, All About Eve, Mildred Pierce, The Searchers, Breakfast At Tiffany's, North by Northwest, Dinner at Eight, Rebel Without a Cause, Rear Window, Double Indemnity, Mutiny on the Bounty, City Lights,Red River, The Manchurian Candidate, Bringing Up Baby, Singin' in the Rain, To Have and Have Not, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Roman Holiday, Giant and Jezebel.

"Well, it's not the men in your life that counts, it's the life in your men."

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Film icons who got government recognition a tad too late

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