Entertainment
Feminist wave in Bollywood not new: Sudhir Mishra
Panaji: Many point out that a wave of feminism has surged into Bollywood, with examples like “Piku”, “Queen” and “Tanu Weds Manu Returns”, but filmmaker Sudhir Mishra notes that it’s just a blast from the past.
The filmmaker says the Hindi film industry saw a lean period for actresses in the late 1990s, but now it is right back on the track with women getting on the centerstage.
The showbiz is filled with talented female stars like Kangana Ranaut, Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone and Vidya Balan, but Mishra feels that finding a star with the stature of yesteryear heroines like Meena Kumari or Nargis is tough.
“The change is wonderful. With the change we are going back to the 1950s era in terms of female actors. In the middle of 1980s and 1990s the film industry became regressive with sayings like ‘people don’t want to see women as leading actors’ or ‘you cannot make women-centric films because they will not work’.”
“Look at 1950s heroines like Meena Kumari, Nargis, Madhubala — they were as good as a male stars,” Mishra told IANS on the sidelines of Film Bazaar here.
He added: “So, it is not new. When we say new, let us not insult the old because they were big. Today, we have no one at the level of Meena Kumari, Nargis or Waheeda Rehman. In fact, Tanuja is underrated but look at her effervescent acting skills with the spunkiness, frankness and her comedic spirit.”
The National Award-winning director, who became part of the annual film market for a session on Saturday, asserted that feminist films are not a fad of the current times.
“When you see ‘Piku’, ‘Queen’, when you see work of Shyam Benegal, the characters portrayed by Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi, Deepti Naval or films by Prakash Jha — many filmmakers in India have displayed that women are as capable, as devious, wonderful, as capable of betrayal as anything as men,” he said.
Be it his “Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi”, “Chameli”, “Inkaar” or “Khoya Khoya Chand” — all Mishra’s films have a recurring pattern of strong female characters.
And the director, who entered the showbiz as a director with “Yeh Woh Manzil To Nahin” in 1987, quips he is only acquainted to strong women.
“I don’t know any other kind of women. So you could expect another strong female character in my upcoming film ‘Dasdev’,” he said.
Mishra has tried to rehash the classic tale of “Devdas” and stir the story with a whiff of freshness. The director puts that he has flipped the story in a modern context.
The political drama stars Richa Chadha, Aditi Rao Hydari and Rahul Bhat.
“I have taken characters — Devdas, Paro and Chandramukhi from Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s classic novel and put their life in other context. In the movie, they will be addicted to power with everyone getting hooked to power,” he said.
Mishra also shared that he is working on his next script “Mehrunnisa”, but refused to divulge any information.
“You cannot get it out of me,” he said when asked about some names on top of his mind for the film.
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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