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She was the queen of all she surveyed. Kalpana Lajmi was the director to watch out for, the most promising female director since Aparna Sen, when Ek Pal and then Rudaali stormed the festivals and even made a neat profit. Today, at 62, Kalpana is isolated and in desperate need of financial aid for a serious kidney ailment. Kalpana, who used up all her savings to look after her mentor and companion Bhupen Hazarika in his dying days, is isolated and all but forgotten. Shockingly, the bio-pic on slain actress Priya Rajvansh which Kalpana was supposed to direct, has quietly passed on to another director. A sure sign that the film industry has forgotten her. In this hour of need, only a few close friends Neena Gupta, Ila Arun and Soni Razdan are there by Kalpana's side. In fact, Soni, we came to know, is trying to organize a regular fund...

That 2012 began with an overwrought hyper-melodramatic brutal and tumultuous remake of Agneepath and ended with Yash Chopra’s muted mellow all-heart-no-malice ode to romance Jab Tak Hai Jaan seems indicative of the direction that Bollywood seems headed for. The journey, as we can see, is unpredictable and largely exciting. Looking back, some films of 2012 that fetched hype-star ratings seem bloated and over-eager to please either critics or the masses, but never both. Luckily the films that were truly meritorious did get a place under the swoon.

Each year Bollywood surprises us, and not always in a good way. 2012 seems like a watershed year even by the continuously evolving standards of filmmaking set by envelope-pushing directors who have filtered into filmdom during the past years. 2012 was the year when Tigmanshu Dhulia, Sujoy Ghosh and Shoojit Sircar came into their own with films that took mainstream cinema to new heights. It was...

Starring Sridevi, Adil Hussain, Mehdi Nebbou,Sujata Kumar

Directed by Gauri Shinde

There are no villains in English Vinglish. Only imperfect human beings like you and I, who make that common error of taking loved ones for granted.

Admit it. At some point in our lives we have all felt that if we don’t speak good English, we are not destined to be successful human beings. Imagine a housewife–beautiful, efficient, charming, supportive…imagine if she looks like…well, Sridevi and still feels she is being taken for granted just because she can’t speak fluent angrezi.

Shashi’s children find her embarrassing at times. Her husband openly cracks jokes about her accent and poor grasp of a language we should have thrown out with Tom Alter’s wig in Shatranj Ke Khiladi. Shashi’s husband thinks he’s just being urbane and witty. But it hurts. We see...

New Delhi, Nov 5: After Jagjit Singh passed away last month, noted music-composer Bhupen Hazarika's death has further left a huge void in the Indian music industry, say celebrities.

Hazarika, who was on a ventilator for four months, had been in and out of hospital. He passed away Saturday at Kokilaben Hospital in Mumbai.

Filmmaker Kalpana Lajmi, who collaborated with the musician on her films like 'Ek Pal','Rudaali' and 'Daman' was at the hospital when he died.

'The nation will mourn the death of Bhupen Hazarika,' Lajmi told TV reporters.

The film industry remembered the singer and many paid.