Don’t miss the video of the prestigious event.

The duo will promote their forthcoming film at a press meet in New York after this event.

Source: Rediff

If you have watched singer Falu and her band perform at the fabled Joe’s Pub in New York or the more famous Carnegie Hall or on Fox TV, you would not have missed a tall and contemplative man. When she introduces the band members, she smiles broadly at the man, Gaurav Shah. You can see her blushing, though they have been married for 10 years.

“He is the soul of our band,” Falu says. “He is not just a singer; he writes songs, and though I have been into classical and traditional music since the age of 3, and he started learning it much later — we both were trained under (sarangi maestro) Ustad Sultan Khan — he knows much more than I do. He constantly challenges me to be better and he is a great inspiration to me and the band.”

Shah, who knows Sanskrit, Hindi and Gujarati, was just about 3 when his parents migrated to the United States from India [ Images ]. He is also a professor of medicine at Columbia University and is involved in cancer research.

“Music is my passion, it is my religion,” says Shah, who performed with Falu at a Carnegie Hall concert last month. “But surely, medicine also means a lot. I think I am drawn to these disciplines because art and medicine bring freedom to people. Art can educate us and help us rise above tension and the bad things happening around us. Medicine helps us to be free from physical diseases.”

The band is named after Falu, who is the main attraction, though few realise how much her husband is involved in the music and the performances.

Her work has caught many publications’ attention. The Aspen Times called her ‘one of the more impressive voices of the globalisation of music.’ She was featured in a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal two years ago on new genres of music.

Falu calls her style ‘Indie Hindi’. She has also been called a ‘Sufi Rocker’.

Shah, who grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, has been listening to a variety of Indian music (religious, Kishore Kumar [ Images ]) as well as Western pop.

“That is why in our concerts you find a healthy mix of the two,” he says. His interest in Indian music continued as he graduated from Harvard College and then Columbia Medical School, both with “highest honours”.

Another Indian physician-musician is Roopa Marya, also a professor and with two albums to her credit.

“Though I grew up in Texas in an area that did not have hundreds of Indian families as one finds in New York or Los Angeles or Chicago, I had many Indian friends, and I attended Indian festivals and events,” Shah recalls. His mother Lina, a homemaker who would sing often while doing chores, was a big influence on him. At the age of 8, he asked her to tell him a few things about Indian melodies and musical schemes.

“There is a lot of music in my mother’s family,” he says. “Her mother used to sing a lot. So in a way, I have been listening to Indian music from my baby years.”

Attending a flute concert by Ronu Mazumdar, who was travelling across America, also ignited an interest in instrumental music in Shah, even before he became a teenager. He plays the harmonium at Falu concerts.

“I was also interested in the philosophy behind the songs,” he says. “And all kinds of songs, from the Indian movies, bhajans, ghazals and qawwalis.”

He began learning Sanskrit on his own, later taking credit courses at Harvard. He also studied ghazals and Urdu under Professor Ali Asani at Harvard.

Shah is so much into his music that he confesses it has never helped him relax from his medical work. “Music is an obsession with me, and for many years I used to practice it 10 hours a day, several times in a week,” he continues. “Of course, I cannot give it so much of time now. But Falu often spends a full day many times a week doing riyaz.”

The “craving” for learning more music made him take a year off to go to India. He met Falu Dalal through a common friend and ended up taking courses with her.

“I still remember our first meeting,” he chuckles. He had gone to meet her at her house. “She was carrying the tanpura from one room to another.”

Adds Falu: “I looked at him and wondered how this guy from Texas, who had a cap on him pointing in the other direction, was going to learn Urdu and classical music?”

Little did she know then about Shah’s obsession.

She looks up to him in more than one sense. “He understands me completely as a person and as an artist,” she says.

What is his songwriting process?

“To write songs, I find myself retiring to a zone of inspiration and nostalgia — which is sometimes difficult with the stress of medicine,” he says. “I find it most helpful to go back to nature — for example, take a walk in the woods, or go on a long drive through the mountains. I also find it helpful to remember my mentors — Ustad Sultan Khan and others. My lyrics are usually in English but the melodies draw from Indian classical and semi-classical traditions.”

Falu and Gaurav do not like the word ‘fusion’ for their music. The word sounds experimental, she says. ” I think the best example I can give is that of North Indian classical music, which came into being in present form perhaps 600 years ago — and which draws beautifully from Carnatic music elements as well as Persian and Arabic music elements, and is an experience, not an experiment.”

Though the two perform together most of the time, occasionally Falu sings with others. For instance, she performed with A R Rahman [ Images ] in the presence of Michelle Obama [ Images ], Oprah [ Images ] Winfrey and Elizabeth Taylor [ Images ], she has appeared on the companion CD to the Deepak Chopra bestseller The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire, and performed with cellist Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project.

“But there is nothing,” she says, “like a performance with my band and Gaurav by my side.”

Mumbai based vfx house Prime Focus has contributed a number of shots to stereoscopic 3D film. The movie, which stars Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver, features numerous stereographic and ‘Holotable’ displays, animated graphics, immersive environments and other visual effects created by Prime Focus.

A team of 90 artists which worked on making Avatar a visual spectacle was spread across Prime Focus’ Los Angeles, Vancouver and Winnipeg facilities, with President & Senior Visual Effects Supervisor Chris Bond and Visual Effects Producer Chris Del Conte driving the project out of the LA office. The bulk of Prime Focus’ work was done for the film’s Bio lab and Ops Center, the bustling hub for military operations and one of the key environments in the film.

“Our experience working with stereoscopic 3D material, both on the movie Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D and through our proprietary View-D technology, more than prepared us for Avatar,” said Bond.

Prime Focus designed displays for the Op Center’s Holotable over which the film’s main characters discuss their missions and plans to mine a valuable mineral found on the planet Pandora. In one key scene, the film’s protagonist Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang) bring up a three-dimensional hologram of the ‘Home Tree,’ where the Navi, Pandora’s indigenous population, live.

The Prime Focus VFX team also created displays called Immersives that provided a 180-degree stereo perspective, allowing military personnel to control air traffic flow in 3D. Additionally, Prime Focus contributed CG helicopters, buildings and atmospheric elements seen from the Ops Center and Commissary windows in several sequences.

Said Del Conte, “Much has been said about James Cameron’s incredible vision as a director, his hands-on style and the very high bar he set for all his visual effects vendors, so playing a part in bringing Avatar to life has been a fantastic experience for our team.”

Source: Bollywood Hungama

The game involves a storyline along with six indigenous Indian games. Avinash, a Non Resident Indian (NRI), has returned to his grandparents’ village. He needs to recapture his ancestral house from the village head Garjan Singh. He also needs to help the marriage of Gowri and Gopal that Garjan Singh is opposing. To meet these ends, he needs to win six games: pachisi (a chess game), aadu puli aatam (a hunting game), kite fight, kabbadi, gilli danda, and a dance game, with moves from garba and bhangra.

GameShastra, a prominent Indian game studio, took 16 months to develop this game for Sony. Prakash Ahuja, CEO, GarmeShastra hopes high for the success of Desi Adda but is aware of the challenges it faces. “Indian kids have grown up playing American games and changing the monster slaying mindset is going to be tough,” said Ahuja.

Ahuja states that according to estimates, the Indian gaming industry is going be around $100 million (Rs. 460 crore) by 2012 and the key factor that will allow this industry to thrive will be local content. “But for any industry to survive it needs to develop its own content. That is the only reason why Bollywood thrives and not the Pakistani film industry,” said Ahuja.

“The idea behind packaging Indian games is that they are both relatable and at the same time slightly exotic for the urban kid. A pachisi may be a simple chess game but today the board itself is unavailable,” he said.

Although Desi Adda comes with an age rating of three plus, but Ahuja aims to get parents nostalgic about these games hooked to it as well. The preview of the game makes one wonder about the complexity level. And by the looks of dancing on Bollywood music, it may be the toughest for those only familiar with Counter Strike and RuneScape.

Source: Silicon India

The projects, I Am Number 4, Pirate Latitudes and Harvey, are a mix of adventure as well as book and play adaptations, a Reliance BIG Entertainment statement issued here Saturday said.

“With the backing of Reliance, we are able to continue developing our slate and producing films for the worldwide movie-going audiences,” said Stacey Snider, co-chairperson and CEO of DreamWorks Studios.

While I Am Number 4, based on an eponymous novel co-written by James Frey and Jobie Hughes, might be helmed by Transformers director Michael Bay, Speilberg himself is planning to produce and direct Pirate Latitudes.

Pirate Latitudes is being developed out of a posthumously published novel by Michael Crichton, whose Jurassic Park was made into a movie by Spielberg.

Said Spielberg, Michael Crichton was one of our greatest storytellers who expanded all of our imaginations with his books, films, and television. With the E R series and Jurassic Park series, I enjoyed one of the best collaborations of my career. Now with Pirate Latitudes, I and all of us at DreamWorks have the chance to be excited about bringing this new Michael Crichton work to the screen.”

Article Source/Credits: ibnlive.com
Posted on: September 07, 2009