Actor Omi Vaidya’s film “For Here or To Go?” will have its world premiere at Silicon Valley’s Cinequest Film Festival this evening. We caught up with the actor last night at Cinequest to talk about his new film, working in Bollywood and his future plans. “For Here or To Go?” captures the angst and uncertainties of… Continue Reading
Filmmaker Shlomi Elkabetz’s “Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem,” was Israel’s entry for the 2015 Oscars. This is an intense, heart-wrenching and sometimes difficult to watch film that Elkabetz wrote and directed along with his sister Ronit Elkabetz, who plays the central character Vivian Amsalem. The film revolves around Amsalem’s drawn out court battle to… Continue Reading
For 25 years Kathleen Powell and Halfdan Hussey, co-founders of Cinequest Film Festival have worked hard to bring this unique festival that combines films and technology under one roof in the heart of Silicon Valley. Besides well-known filmmakers and actors, the festival features emerging artists and filmmakers and shines a strong spotlight on the contributions of youth… Continue Reading
Silicon Valley’s Cinequest Film Festival turns 25 this year. The film festival opened tonight with Dana Bachman’s “Batkid Begins” at the historic art deco California Theatre in San Jose. This feel-good and inspirational documentary about a little boy’s wish to be a super hero seemed to have resonated with the audience. The film and the filmmakers got… Continue Reading
Damien Chazelle’s film “Whiplash” won 3 Academy Awards this weekend at the 87th Academy Award for best supporting actor, editing and sound mixing. Chazelle wrote and directed the film. “Whiplash,” is an intense film centered around two ambitious musician – a 19 year old drummer (Miles Teller) and his draconian music instructor (JK Simmons). This tightly… Continue Reading
That language is not a barrier to music is amply illustrated in this track “Thuli Thuliyaai” by Vandana Srinivasan. I got hooked to this Tamil song the first time I heard it. While I don’t completely understand the lyrics of the song, I instantly connected with the music. That is what matters in the end, right?… Continue Reading
LISTEN: Academy Award Winner Resul Pookutty “I don’t remember getting up from my seat and getting the award from Will Smith…I had a blackout,” confesses Academy Award winner Resul Pokutty, who won an Oscar in 2009 for “Slumdog Millionaire.” “ I never imagined I’d win an Oscar…I was shocked. I never thought that we, the Indian talent… Continue Reading
LISTEN: Academy Award Winner AR Rahman On His Musical Journey Part-2 In February 2009 I spoke to AR Rahman or AR as he prefers to be called about his musical journey and how it all started in his hometown of Chennai in Tamil Nadu. We spoke on the eve of his big Academy Award night… Continue Reading
In early February 2009 I caught with AR Rahman on one of his brief visits to Los Angeles. AR as he likes to be called was in Los Angeles for the big night at the Oscars. AR’s music in Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” was a huge success and the film had won strong praise from critics and movie goers. “Slumdog… Continue Reading
British actor Eddie Redmayne plays the famous scientist Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything.” The film takes you into the personal life Hawking and his time as a graduate student at Cambridge where he met his future wife Jane Wilde. It was around this time that Hawking got his diagnosis about the motor neutron disease.… Continue Reading
Lisa Fruchtman is an Academy Award winning editor (The Right Stuff) and a filmmaker. In Part-2 of our conversation we talk with Fruchtman on how she got started as an editor. What seduced her to continue her career as an editor at at time when there were barely any women editors in the film industry. This… Continue Reading
Lisa and her brother Bob Fruchtman produced and directed “Sweet Dreams,” an unusual film about drumming and ice cream shop. Yes, it sounds implausible, but that is the message of the film too. How to think out of the box and make things happen, especially in a war-torn country like Rwanda. Lisa is a successful… Continue Reading
Shonali Bose’s award-winning film “Margarita With A Straw,” has received praise ever since it was first shown at The Toronto Film Festival in 2014. The film is loosely based on her cousin Malini’s story. This coming-of-age film stars Kalki Koechlin, Revathy, Sayani Gupta, and Hussain Dalal. We caught up with Shonali in San Francisco and in… Continue Reading
Mention Walter Murch and you will get two kinds of reaction. The first is one of instant recognition. The second one veers between “The name rings a bell.” or I don’t know who he is.” However, if you ask them if they have heard of Francis Ford Cappola’s The Godfather or Apocalypse Now or George Lucas’s American… Continue Reading
Stumbled upon this delightful track “Balma” by Maati Baani and was instantly hooked. This is a wonderful musical collage with elements of Indian classical music, Klezmer music and hot jazz. Musicians from France, New Zealand, Spain and India are featured in this track. Matti Baani bills itself as a global music band and is the… Continue Reading
LISTEN: Sukhi Singh On Building Sukhis, Gourmet Indian Food Meet Sukhi Singh, a tenacious and battle hardened entrepreneur, who went from selling home-made curry pastes at Berkeley Bowl and farmer’s market to founding a multi-million dollar food company in San Francisco bay area. ”We bring Indian food to the mainstream table,” is how she describes her… Continue Reading
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Silicon Valley-based Cinquest film festival that celebrates films along with technology and innovation. This year’s theme is “The Power of Creating,”and nearly 200 films from different parts of the world will screen at the festival. The festival spotlights young filmmakers in multiple ways. There is the Picture The Possibilities (PPT) session that helps connect… Continue Reading
In a few weeks time we will get to see the second season of HBO’s “Silicon Valley.” When the show debuted last year I was a bit skeptical and unsure if I wanted to watch it. But, this was a Mike Judge show and I thoroughly enjoyed his film “Office Space.” I tuned into the… Continue Reading
Pico Iyer is a well-known writer and essayist. He is a prolific writer, who spends most of his time living in Japan. In part-2 of our conversation Iyer talks about growing up in England and California, his writing style, globalism, living in Japan and his favorite author Graham Greene. Iyer often writes about globalism, and yet lives in a… Continue Reading
Pico Iyer is a well-known author and essayist. In 2008 during a hectic book tour schedule Iyer graciously made time for an hour-long interview to talk about his book The Open Road: The Global Journey of the 14th Dalai Lama. He first met the Dalai Lama through his father Prof. Raghavan N. Iyer, who taught at Oxford and University of… Continue Reading
This interview was recorded in 2009, when Padmasree Warrior was Cisco’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Her role has expanded since then and she is currently a Chief Technology & Strategy Officer at Cisco. She joined Cisco in 2007 after having spent over 20 years at Motorola in Chicago. At Motorola she was an Executive Vice President and Chief… Continue Reading
Meet David Rai, who is a third generation Punjabi-Hispanic farmer from Yuba City in California. Rai’s grandfather Bishan Gill Singh came to America over 100 years ago and married Ernestine Zuniga, a Hispanic. Their daughter Mary married Lal Singh Rai, who came from Punjab to America before World War 2. Rai along with his sister Leela… Continue Reading
London-based journalist and author Jules Stewart’s second book titled, Spying For The Raj: The Pundits And The Mapping of the Himalayas was released in 2006. Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who is listed as the world’s greatest living explorer by the Guinness Book of Records, has written the forward for the book. I caught up with Stewart in London in 2006 just… Continue Reading
Before CK-12 Neeru’s attention revolved around her on her family, children and their education. During this time she got busy volunteering for her children’s school. She also went back to school and got a second master’s degree in education from Stanford University. Inspired to do something in the area of education Neeru’s husband Vinod Khosla suggested looking into textbooks… Continue Reading
Open-Sourced budget? Did you read that right? Yes. This is the first time that the US government has published its annual budget (FY 2016) on GitHub.It is is going the open-source route. Users are free to use the data from the budget in any way they want. Besides GitHub, the budget is also published in… Continue Reading
ATMA is a new track by a A.E.S., a San Francisco bay area-based music group. The track fuses American hip-hop style lyrics with Hindustani or North Indian Classical music. A.E.S was formed last year by a trio of musicians. The name is derived from the alphabets of their first name – Alam Khan, Eligh and… Continue Reading
The Kamla Show 