If you have not seen the recent trailer of Vishal Bhardwaj’s upcoming period magnum opus ‘Rangoon’, well, trust me you’ve not missed anything. With some terrible VFX, loud music and predictable storyline, this might turn out to be Vishal’s worst film ever.
But what interested me the most was Kangana Ranaut playing a swashbuckling 1940s movie star named Julia ,who travels to the Indo-Burma border to cheer up the troops. It would not be far-fetched to assume that the character of Julia is modelled on Fearless Nadia, the Australia -born stunt star in the 1930s and ’40s who headlined such adventures as Hunterwali, Miss Frontier Mail, Diamond Queen,Hurricane Hansa, Toofani Tirandaz and Punjab Mail. With Saif playing a Parsi filmmaker (modelled on the original Homi Wadia but with a grey tone), comparisons are but obvious.
Today’s Needull, a short article by The Quint, stems from my curiosity about this blonde woman, who would turn conventions on their head to capture the imagination of people, wielding whips and doing acrobatic stunts, all by herself, while secretly romancing her director. Around a century before the YouTube reactors all around the world fell in love with Bollywood beauties and decades before the first ever Wonder Woman movie was made in Hollywood, Fearless Nadia was already representing Bollywood super-heroines on the global stage.
Bloody Hell!!
Needull in a haystack 