Bollywood and Santa Fe Together!

Photo courtesy of fan site kites-themovie.com
In late July, the Bollywood movie Kites is expected to start filming in Santa Fe. The movie features Indian star Hrithik Rosan (pronounced Rith-ik Rose-n if you want to sound Bollywood-knowledgeable) and Kangana Ranaut, as well as Latin American actress Barbara Mori. (According to preproduction rumors, Kangana plays his wife and Barbara his mistress.)

For those of you who can't get enough Hrithik, here he is an Acer TV commercial:



I do have this wonderful image of a big Hindi song and dance number on the plaza--probably too much to hope for!

Check out my other posts on Bollywood and movie-making in Santa Fe:

The 3:10 to Yuma, posted 01/27/07

Intercollegiate Bollywood Competition, posted 07/26/07

Kevin Costner's Swing Vote, posted 09/22/07

Kevin Costner Fans, posted 09/22/07

Little Lizards

One of the charming features of my yard in Santa Fe is that several little lizards live here (or at least visit frequently). They can sometimes be seen sunning themselves on a stucco wall, but more often they are darting across the yard at 90 miles an hour--clearly distressed by my presence.

That's why it was so phenomenal to find this little guy (or gal?) posing for the camera this week. I first noticed the underbelly from the inside of the screen, and was able to get my camera, get outdoors, focus, and snap a couple of photos before I scared him (her?) off.

I'm not very good at lizard identification--I first thought it might be a New Mexican whiptail, but now I'm waffling on that claim. (The whiptail is an interesting lizard because there are only females--they reproduce by essentially cloning themselves.)

Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral Report

Starting with mineral--the snow at the Santa Fe Ski Area is just about gone. When I drive down Cerrillos in the morning I can see the mountains which are snow-capped from some time in the fall (late October or so) to some time in the spring. There is just a tad still there--must be on the shady side of the mountain....

A bear was sighted on the college campus a couple of weeks ago--apparently forced to forage further down in the valley due to a long winter and late spring. Caused quite a stir!

Prairie dogs are available for viewing all over the college campus. NYC-based playwright Israel Horovitz, who comes to us each June to direct an early staged reading of a new play, has described them as "rats with cuter outfits." Lots of groups in Santa Fe protesting inhumane prairie dog treatment. There are women who feed them, and any contractor who builds in a prairie-dog-inhabited area has to plan for "relocation". A prairie dog even has a feature role in the new Indiana Jones movie! Try to imagine this happening in other cities with other varieties of rodents!

Wonderful local meat, cheese, and vegetables available at the Santa Fe Farmers' Market yesterday. Bought some grain-fed beef and pork sausage from Casa Verde Graziers, goat cheese with raspberry from South Maintain Dairy in Edgewood ("it's all about the girls") which the producer told me was "best eaten right out of the dish with a spoon--when you've 'had a day'", mixed salad greens and baby spinach, and some Taos tomatoes. Click here and here to read my previous posts on the Farmer's Market--it really is an out-of-body experience!

Planted some salvia in my garden earlier this week and it hasn't died yet. Happy summer!!