Cineswami talks about Hollywood’s India connection, and also Shahrukh Khan’s RA.One

Bond, James Bond. But Daniel Craig won’t be uttering those lines any time soon on Indian soil as the James Bond producers haven’t managed to reach an agreement with Indian Railways on permissions. Surely, there’s something black in the lentils as there have been protracted discussions on a part of the shoot happening in India. The Railways say that on their part everything was hunky dory and the decks were cleared for the world’s most famous secret agent to return to India for the first time since Octopussy. February would have seen a motorcycle-riding Bond, the very antithesis of Gandhian values, jump on a moving train near Sabarmati. That jump will now happen in the fallback location, South Africa. At least Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt has no such issues. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol had a hush-hush shoot in India and also cast Anil Kapoor in it for good measure. Cruise will visit Mumbai for a fan screening of the film ahead of its world premiere in Dubai. This begs the question, if the film plays before the public in Mumbai first, shouldn’t that logically be called the world premiere? On such weighty semantic matters do the world revolve. Meanwhile, the ubiquitous Shahrukh Khan is pulling out all the promotional stops till we have RA.One coming out of our ears. Click here to read more