Anupama Chopra Biography and latest books by Anupama Chopra

Anupama Chopra (born February 23, 1967) is an author and film critic of great repute. She has penned several books on Indian cinema and has been reviewing movies for channels like NDTV and India Today.

Career

Anupama\'s first book Sholay: The Making of a Classic won the coveted National Award for the best book on cinema. Her next release Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (The Bravehearted will take the bride), was picked up and published by the British Film Institute in 2002, as part of the Modern Classics Series. Her next publication, King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema, was featured on the Editor\'s Choice list of the New York Times. Her next First Day First Show: Writings from the Bollywood Trenches, is a compilation of her articles on Bollywood over two decades.

She has also spoken about Bollywood for various international publications of repute such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Variety and Sight & Sound.

Personal life

Chopra is married to Bollywood filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra of the Munnabhai fame. She is the sister of critically acclaimed Bollywood director and screenwriter Tanuja Chandra and Commonwealth Prize winner Vikram Chandra.

Her works of fiction

• Sholay: The Making of a Classic

National Award Winner: \'Best Book on Film\' Year 2000

Film journalist Anupama Chopra narrates the fascinating story of how a four-line idea developed to become the greatest blockbuster of Indian cinema. Starting with the complicated process of casting, moving on to the actual filming over two years in a rocky landscape, and finally the first weeks after the film\'s release when the audience did not welcome the film and the trade declared it a failure, this is a story as dramatic as the film itself. The book describes Amitabh Bachchan\'s struggle to convince the Sippys to choose him (an actor with ten flops behind him, over the flamboyant Shatrughan Sinha); the last-minute confusion over dates due to which Danny Dengzongpa\'s quit the fim, handing Gabbar Singh’s role to Amjad Khan; and the budding romance between Hema Malini and Dharmendra during the filming that helped the spot boys make some extra money and almost killed Amitabh!

•  King of Bollywood : Shah Rukh Khan and the seductive world of Indian cinema

The book is the astonishing true success story of Bollywood, one man\'s struggle to become a star. Shah Rukh Khan\'s larger than life tale takes us through the colourful Bollywood movie industry, where dreams and obsessions share the limelight with extortion, murder and corruption. Shah Rukh Khan broke into the $1.5 billion business despite it always being controlled by a few film families. As a Muslim in a Hindu majority nation, taking pride in classic Indian cultural values, Shah Rukh Khan has come to embody the wishes and contradictions of a complicated culture tumbling headlong into US-style capitalism.


•  First Day First Show: Writings from the Bollywood Trenches

First Day First Show is Anupama Chopra\'s guide to the world of lights, cameras and action along with its shadowing darkness. She tells us about the lives of the stars and the struggles of those who never make it to centre stage; she lets us participate in the making of legendary hits like Sholay and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and also the hard-won successes of small film-makers; she shows us the murky links with the underworld. There is also a rather odd story of the royal bodyguard of Bhutan who wrote sripts; of the embarrassed Pakistani soldiers at Wagah border who did not allow their favourite Indian superstars to shoot.