JSC honours Sivan

• Indiainteracts reports that Santosh Sivan is to be honoured by the Japanese Society of Cinematographers, on Sep 28 at Tokyo and Sep 30 at Osaka. They have some reaction from the Before the Rains director, who will be present at the event:

[...] "I really can't tell which honour I enjoy more - to be praised for my direction or cinematography," said Sivan. "But they're screening two of my most contrasting works as a cinematographer, Mani Ratnam's 'Dil Se' and my own directorial venture 'Navarasa' with Japanese subtitles. Can you believe it?" [...]

Well yes, actually! Indiainteracts also considers if the ovation Sivan received in Toronto for Before the Rains was indicative of the West accepting more of a 'new kind of Bollywood, removed from the song-and-dance tradition'. Sivan however seems to question that image in the first place, saying:

[...] The so-called Bollywood formula has never been the sole trademark for Indian cinema. ... My two films at Toronto were not only very different from the Bollywood formula but also different from each other and also in different languages, English and Kannada. Foreign audiences don't equate Hindi formula films with Indian cinema. [...]

• On a more theatrical note, tomorrow night is opening night for Rosemary Harris and Oscar and the Pink Lady! Good luck to everyone, especially to the solitary Granny Pink! The play is showing at the Cassius Carter Centre Stage at The Old Globe in San Diego. See Playbill or the above official link for brief info regarding the storyline or the design team. If anyone is planning to go, we would love to hear from you!
  
• Also, a reminder that the Lincoln Center version of The Coast of Utopia is being released by Amazon on October 10, for the pretty generous price of $10.20! Here are the nice (albeit brief) things they have to say about it:

Tom Stoppard’s magnificent trilogy, The Coast of Utopia, was the most keenly awaited and successful drama of 2007. Now “Stoppard’s crowning achievement” (David Cote, Time Out New York) has been collected in one volume, with an introduction by the author, and includes the definitive text used during Lincoln Center’s recent celebrated run.

Celebrated indeed. You can pre-order now. Go on, you can afford that many roubles! Here's why: if you were not able to see it, this is probably the closest you can get, and if you were, you spent considerably more than $10 on your ticket/s! One hopes it carries a 'May Cause Nostalgia' warning. And you thought you had just got over it.

• In Stoppardian news, Caryn James of the New York Times briefly discusses Stoppard Goes Electric, while BroadwayWorld provides some nice Utopia-esque historical background to Rock 'n' Roll in their discussion of the band The Plastic People of the Universe, who - if you happen to be in the vicinity - are performing at 9.30pm tomorrow night (27th) at the Public Theater in NYC. I wonder - nice hearingness or not very nice hearingness?!