Much as the role of the hero and the heroine has morphed in the Hindi film industry, so has the depiction of the villain and the vamp—and, of course, the journalist. From a pure print person till well into the late 1980s, the journalist on film is now largely a TV person. From a poorly…
Tag Archives: Shobha De
30-plus, glamourous, sexy, brainy and seductive*
Raveena Tandon is playing Shobhaa De, the former editor of Stardust, Society and Celebrity, in the Hindi film Shobhana’s Seven Nights that is already doing the rounds at international film festivals. But quite clearly the journalist turned best-selling author is not amused. In an interview with Kavitha Shanmugham of The Telegraph last Sunday, Tandon says:…
Shobha De tears into Vinod Mehta in India Today
There are two tried and tested formulas for commissioning reviews in the shockingly incestuous bordello of Indian books that has now spread its wings into Indian journalism. The supposedly dignified formula is to get an author’s friend or associate to do the unctuous needful (say a Khushwant Singh to “review” a David Davidar) so that…
Enter: The queen bee of Bombay film journalists
Anju Mahendroo (in picture), the colourful actress who once boasted of an off-field partnership with cricket legend Gary Sobers, is to play the role of the gossip columnist Devyani Chaubal in The Dirty Picture, based on southern sleaze queen Silk Smitha‘s life. Devyani Chaubal wrote the saucy Frankly Speaking column in the now-defunct film magazine…
Khalid Mohamed on ToI, DNA, HT and the stars
Khalid Mohamed, longtime film critic of The Times of India and sometime editor of Filmfare—who hopped over to DNA and then to Hindustan Times in Bombay after making four films in the interim—talks about his 32 years in journalism and the stars he met along the way, in the January issue of Society magazine. #…
107 headlines from ToI on Commonwealth Games
Pride of the nation? No, shame of the nation. The following is a list of the 107 “negative” headlines on the Commonwealth Games that have greeted readers of The Times of India (Delhi market) from August 1 to September 2, 2010: • Now, two top cyclists fall victim to dengue • Dengue threat right at…
Penguin sacks ex-Gentleman, David Davidar
David Davidar, the former magazine journalist who rose to become publisher of such stellar Indian literary names as Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, Khushwant Singh and Shobha De, has been sacked from Penguin Canada following charges of sexual harassment. Davidar, 52, part of the team at the now defunct monthly, Gentleman launched by Minhaz…
The media, the message, and the messengers
The Booker Prize winning author Arundhati Roy‘s 31-page, 19,556-word essay “Walking with the comrades” in Outlook magazine*, has produced a fast and succinct response from the journalistic Twitterati after Tuesday’s dastardly ambush of paramilitary forces by said comrades. From top, NDTV English group editor Barkha Dutt, Pioneer senior editor Kanchan Gupta, Indian Express columnist Tavleen…
Wife-beater? Freeloader? Menace to society?
Restaurants are now suing newspapers for bad reviews claiming “defamation” and loss of business. But how should authors respond to bad reviews? Should they just be thankful for the publicity? Should they get into a slanging match with the reviewer and hope for the best? Should they, as Shobhaa De, the author of “Superstar India”…
IJR 