Meet Geeta V. Patel, who directed and wrote Meet The Patels a documentary about one family’s quest fo find a suitable bride for their son. Beta, you have to get married is what Geeta’s parents tell Ravi, her sibling, who had just turned 30. Crisis, crisis, crisis is what I was thinking says Geeta. In Meet The… Continue Reading
In 2013 South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho released his first English film Snowpiercer in the US. The film is based on a graphic novel by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochelle, which Joon-Ho read in one sitting at a bookstore in South Korea. It took him a few years before he was able to make the… Continue Reading
Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi are the directors of The Boxtrolls, a 3D, stop animation film from Laika Entertainment. The film is based on Anthony Snow’s book Here Be Monsters. Annable and Stacchi adapted the boxtrolls characters from Snow’s book and called it The Boxtrolls. In this podcast interview we spoke to Annable and Stacchi about… Continue Reading
Over the years I have had people ask why my podcast inteviews are not up on my YouTube channel. I heard them, but was unsure if I should mingle my TV/video interviews with my audio. In the last few months that request has only grown and I can no longer ignore them. So, starting today I… Continue Reading
Best of Enemies is a riveting documentary film that takes you back to the 1968 Presidential elections and the intense politcal debate between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal on ABC. Buckley and Vidal represented and stood for two different visions of America during this time. The debate was not a loud one, but a… Continue Reading
Who was Amy Winehouse? Yes, we all know she was a talented and a 6-time Grammy winning British musician, who died tragically at the age of 27. But, who was the real Amy Wineshouse? How did she die and how did this happen in this day and age in London? These were some of the questions… Continue Reading
Ever wondered about the tower of Babel of programming languages? What programming languages do Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia and Google use? I have. Am often on the lookout for articles that explain how companies like Twitter and Facebok scale and morph and add new features so quickly. Remember how we stuck around Twitter when the famous… Continue Reading
Bill Pohlad’s “Love & Mercy,” is a compassionate film about Brian Wilson, the gifted and creative co-founder of the Beach Boys. This California band defined American music in the 1960s, and were a huge source of inspiration and influence to many musicians in the US and around the world, including the Beatles. We caught up with Pohlad at this year’s San Francisco… Continue Reading
Marryam H. Reshii is a New Delhi-based food writer, who has her pulse on all things related to food in her city. She is the author of Celebrated Chefs of India, Eating out in India and 101 Popular restaurants. She is a Consulting Editor with the Times of India for their Times Food Guide. In this interview, which we… Continue Reading
Filmmaker Prashant Bhargava passed away on May 16, 2015. He was 42 years old. Bhargav was a young, talented filmmaker, who is deeply mourned by his fans, friends and family. Bhragava had a brilliant eye and ear for stories, details and colors. His films like “Patang,” and “Radhe Radhe,”were visually stunning. I had an opporuntunity to interview Bhargav… Continue Reading
Filmmaker Alex Winter’s new film “Deep Web:The Untold Story of Bitcoin And The Silk Road,” highlights the story of Ross Ulbricht the founder of Silk Road, the underground marketplace, his arrest, the charges brought against him, his trail, bitcoin, and the intersection of technology, privacy and law. A final veridct on Ulbricht’s case is expected from… Continue Reading
Meet Madhur Jaffrey – an award-winning actress, cookbook author and the host of TV cooking shows that helped demystify Indian cooking. Born in British India, Jaffrey went to London to study acting and relocated to the USA in the late 1950s. She currently lives in New York with her family. When Jaffrey moved to England… Continue Reading
This is our final episode with Dr. Salman Akhtar about the history of Bollywood or Hindi cinema. We talk to him about the label “Bollywood,” used to describe the Hindi film industry based in Mumbai. There are those who don’t like the term, while others see nothing wrong in using the term. What does Dr. Akhtar… Continue Reading
Leila Sen shares the story of Hedeya Khayat, her Armenian mother’s unusual story and journey from Turkey to Egypt, to India, to England and finally to the USA. As part of a people who define themselves as ‘survivors’, one wonders what it was like for Khayat who became Hoda Dutt after her marriage and learnt… Continue Reading
Alex Gibney’s documentary “Steve Jobs: Man In The Machine,” was the opening night film at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival. In this 120 minute long documentary we get to see Steve Jobs up close and personal and discover facets of him like his obsession with Zen Buddhism. Jobs apparently wanted to be a monk… Continue Reading
Dr. Salman Akhtar talks about Bollywood or Hindi cinema’s 100 year old history in this multi-part interview. In Part-3 of our conversation he talks about female sexuality and the angry young phase of Hindi cinema during the 1970s. “I will tell you a very interesting story about female sexuality in Hindi film,” he says. And he shares the… Continue Reading
Meet Mikey McCleary, musician, composer and music producer.He has been kept busy creating music for Bollywood films and Indian advertisements, and lately he has branched out to score music for Indian-American filmmaker Shonali Bose’s “Margarita With A Straw” If his name is unfamiliar, his music must certainly be familiar to most of us. You might… Continue Reading
Dr. Salman Akhtar talks about the 100 year old history of Bollywood or Hindi cinema in this multi-part interview. Dr. Akhtar comes from a family of poets and writers in India. His father Jan Nisar Akhtar worked in Hindi film industry as a lyricist and poet. His mother Safia Akhtar was a talented writer & poet. His brother Javed Akhtar is a well-known writer… Continue Reading
Ustad Ali Akbar Khan (1922 -2009), the legendary sarode maestro was born on April 22, 1922. He would have been 93 years old today. He spent his formative years in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. His father Ustad Allauddin Khan was a court musician and is the founder of the Maihar Gharana of Hindustani classical music. Khan sahib as… Continue Reading
Dr. Salman Akhtar talks about the 100 year old history of Bollywood or Hindi cinema in this multi-part interview. What is different about Dr. Akhtar’s approach is he brings his trained psychiatrist eyes to the subject and helps us understand what socio-economics factors permeated and colored the narrative and story lines of filmmakers. And how films in turn… Continue Reading
Academy Award winner Danny Boyle of “Slumdog Millionaire,” is busy directing his latest movie in San Francisco bay area. And the new biopic is about Silicon Valley icon Steve Jobs. The shooting of the film started in the beginning of the year. The cast and crew has spent time filming in San Francisco and in locations around South… Continue Reading
How is sound designed for a film? Ever wondered about it? We did and spoke with Academy Award winner Resul Pookutty to find out how he and his team worked on Shonali Bose’s “Margarita With A Straw.” Pookutty won an Oscar for his work in Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire.” “Margarita With A Straw,” is about… Continue Reading
Anne Thompson lives, breathes, talks and writes about films. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Thompson on Hollywood at Indiewire. She is the author of the book “The $11 Billion Dollar Year.” She teaches a course on films at UCLA. A prolific writer Thompson has written for Variety, Entertainment Weekly, New York Times, Washington… Continue Reading
Masashi Niwano, Festival director of San Francisco-based Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) breaks it down for us on what to expect at this year’s annual CAAMFest. This is one of the oldest and largest film festivals that has grown over the years and now includes food and music as part of its offerings. This… Continue Reading
What are the sounds of Bollywood music? What are the various influences that shaped and continue shape Bollywood music? If you delve deep into the subject of Bollywood music as Prof. Jayson Beaster- Jones has done, you will discover all sorts of musical influence from jazz, big band to gypsy music and hip-hop. American music… 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
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
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
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
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
The Kamla Show 