#yes i started the film. yes Zoya is the love of my life and hearing her backstory made me tear up a bit bc if she had gotten in that car.

[theinfinitedivides]

ZOYAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[tarasharmashow]

A v HAPPY NEW YEAR and wishes for all good things for us all this year and forever touch wood:)...And Yipee just saw my #TheTaraSharmaShow YouTube Channel is almost at 14 MILLION view all organically Please SUBSCRIBE

Hi Hi! My Dear Blogamily and once again apologies for another long hiatus between posts but as social media is the immediate and consistent medium that has us all in touch we are constantly connected! HAPPY NEW YEAR to us all! Here is to wishes for good health, joy, love, success, kindness, empathy, success and all other good things for us all forever touch wood:)!

How are all of you? Do write in with news.. Would love to hear.

Here is our annual HNY photo...same location as the last several years and same resistance from all to stand and pose even when promised it will only be a few seconds haaha! The teller of time is our kids’ heights. Zen taller than me Kai getting there. There are 3 dogs in this picture but one seems to be hidden in there somewhere haaha!

As always I am bursting with so much to share and a desire to hear back from all of you too, but alas, rushing between things and as happens in posts after a while, not sure where to start, so suffice to say I really will write more regularly and in fact as I am trying to write a new show / book / film, not sure what it will be, there will be lots more writing on here henceforth.

Last year saw a return to normalcy for us all after the 21ish months of covid lockdowns and more. Needless to say it had been a very strange time yet as an eternal optimist I did look for the silver linings and we all got through but being back to real normal things is and was fab! Prayers for those who went through very touch time and tragedy.

School for our kids, real, physical school topped the back to life list. Then gradually letting go of masking when safe to do so. The long awaited amazing family trips and holidays. Travel. Me back acting in a big film, The Archies. My standard joke that goes with that revelation - ‘I am not Betty, I am not Veronica, I am the Mother!’ Haahha, took me a while to accept playing the role of Archie’s Mum in the film, but they are young stylish cool Mums and a film directed by fab Zoya Akhtar with the super cast and crew it has, was an immediate yes for me, when I got picked post auditioning. Will reveal more about it nearer release but yes, good to be back on the big screen and I hope you all like my work and it is all a success touch wood:)!

Now onto creating new work. Have a few things up my sleeve and hoping to make them happen successfully touch wood:).

@roopaksaluja and #BANGBANG continue to work hard and as they do more in the production and content creation space with long form global content potential blockbusters in development I hope they succeed too touch wood:).

Football has become an even bigger part of our lives. It helped us loads in lockdown being a release and surprisingly exciting regular source of joy and fitness as our family played lots. Kai plays football for BARCA Elite now and Zen and him for school and us managing to go to Qatar for a #WorldCup match reiterates the joy sport and football brings to us all. 

#YogaWithTara that I began at the start of lockdown and unexpectedly continued bi weekly for over 2 yrs and in fact still do at least once a week helped keep me going too and is and was a super way to stay in touch with my communities. #SaturdayNoonLiveWithTara too.

Again, as this began as a HNY wish, I hadn’t  intended to ramble, but clearly I have, so will zip it now, but will say au revoire with a bit of exciting news that only just came to me... Our #TheTaraSharmaShow @youtube​ channel is at almost 14 MILLION VIEWS all organically!!! Thank you all. The amazing guests, sponsors, our kids Zen and Kai, for being the inspiration behind me starting teh show over 12 years ago now, our fab Team TSS and all of you, our viewers The episodes are timeless and listening to people like #RohitSharma #ViratKohli #SunilChhetri and other inspiring guests now, I am just as motivated and moved and hope you are too. So please do head to the channel, watch, subscribe and share and yes I hope to bring more seasons with more exciting guests on successfully soon touch wood:). Same goes for all my platforms, do please join me there too. As mentioned as I post regularly on insta, YT and FB, I am guilty as charged of sometimes neglecting my blog, but will try and be more regular. Here are my links:

https://www.instagram.com/tarasharmasaluja/

https://www.youtube.com/@tarasharmashow/featured

https://www.facebook.com/tarasharmashow

Ah and something brewing with #MixedThat’sUs.. watch this space to find out :)

Have a wonderful year and beyond all! 

And until we meet again, 

Tarataratara!!!

[spotlightsaga]

Kevin Cage of @spotlightsaga reviews... GLOW (S01E08) Maybe It's All the Disco Airdate: June 23, 2017 Ratings: @netflix Original/Privatized Ratings Score: 9.75/10 TVTime/FB/Twitter/Tumblr/Path: @SpotlightSaga **********SPOILERS BELOW********** I don't like to start reviews or articles at the end of an episode and backtrack... And if we did that here it would start everything on such a dark tone, which would make it extremely hard to recover. One of our biggest priorities is to match what we write in these articles to the emotion that is evoked from the screen. 'GLOW's 'Maybe It's All the Disco' literally bounces through a myriad of emotions, each one felt with an incredible intensity. We just got through the last episode literally fawning over the writing of Rachel Shukert, even nominating her work as a writer for our end of the year Spotlight Saga Awards that we'll be polling across TV Time and other social media outlets (obviously TV Timers' votes will weigh the heaviest 💯)... But here we are again, just one episode later, doing the exact same type of fawning over 'GLOW's 8th episodic entry, not only with Award Worthy writing by Nick Jones, who made our list last year with OITNB S4E07 'People Persons', but also powerhouse, natural director Sian Heder, who literally captures everything that Jones has written and is able to find the perfect way to funnel each emotional bullet-point from scene to scene... Leaving the audience feeling the exact way that Ruth must feel as the credits role. It's brilliant. It's 'GLOW' showing that it's only going to continue to get better & better... And for that, Nick Jones is the first writer to make back to back yearly SS nominations for Achievement in Writing and Sian Heder gets her first Achievement in Direction nom from us, directly after an episode of 'GLOW' that we didn't think could be topped. Tanya Sterling, don't think we've forgotten about you. You're editing here was a marvel. As far as 30-Minute 'dramadies' this year, 'GLOW' and FX's 'Baskets' are taking the cake. Each series has done phenomenal work capturing as much of these characters and their growth, both in life's often tricky timeline and existentially... As well as giving us solid story arcs to sink our teeth into, all in such a short period of time & low number of episodes. See, Big 4 Networks, you don't need 22-25 episodes to make such a monstrous impact! Netflix and FX are literally schooling those fools! The camaraderie of these women is really taking center stage. At first it was like a hodgepodge of diverse misfits, none of which complimented the other in any way. Now, here they are breaking Sheila the She-Wolf (Gayle Rankin) out of her shell by celebrating the birthday that Sheila never wanted to celebrate in the first place. All of this is spearheaded by Jenny aka Fortune Cookie (Ellen Wong), who nabs a huge chunk of the episode's spotlight by taking us through her family's past in Cambodia 🇰🇭, and showing us exactly why she's so desperate to hang on to any part of American Culture that she can, having been deprived of things like birthday parties herself. It all suddenly makes sense, and it was so heartwarming to see just how much Sheila has warmed up to Ruth (Alison Brie), even looking to her for a 'way out' and clutching to her for dear life at the beginning of their amazing scene in the roller rink. Sheila has been so 'stone-faced' and comically dry, that seeing the women ban together and make her feel important, putting a smile on her face, even getting her on roller skates and participating with everyone was one of my favorite scenes of the series so far. Rankin is very close to clinching a piece of my heart forever as Sheila in this series. Obviously, not all is peachy and smiles & skates. Rhonda (Kate Nash) and Sam (Marc Maron) are on the fritz. Sam is embarrassed that their relationship has gone public and in true Sam Sylvia fashion, he treats her like shit after a friendly conversation about Bond films... One that goes a little awry when 'A View to Kill' & the pigeon double take in 'Moonraker' come up. Sam even makes her wait outside so they don't walk in together, even tho all of them are already very much in the know that they are screwing. The cherry on top is when Sam then scolds her for coming in late. He plans on breaking up with her, and goes out venue shopping with Ruth when Bash (Chris Lowell) goes MIA, for reasons only Carmen (Britney Young) knows at the time... Leave it to Cherry Bang (Sydelle Noel) to pull it out of her, though. Should be interesting to see just how she uses this newfound information in the very near future. As Ruth tags along with Sam, while he venue shops with the likes of a space owner played by Brooke Hogan (yes, the infamous daughter of Hulk Hogan and star of the VH1 show that you probably don't remember), Rhonda is doing exactly what her character Brittanica would do... Think things through. This gives her the home court advantage and she breaks up with him upon his return to the hotel. Sam is left stunned & ironically vulnerable as she breaks it off while he's completely nude, dropping the bombshell that she DID actually like him. Upon hearing this news Sam attempts to salvage the relationship, but Rhonda is ahead of him... And she's right. Sam doesn't like Rhonda, not the way she deserves to be liked & loved, anyway. His sudden change of heart is brought on by the terrifying idea of infinite loneliness, so shouting out that he had 'period sex' with her, in an attempt to prove some sort of love or loyalty, simply won't cut it. The great part about seeing all this asshole-ish behavior from Sam through most of the episode? It doesn't last. Sam IS an asshole, don't get me wrong, but that doesn't mean he's a completely unlikable one. One of the biggest 'drama bombs' of the season is dropped when Ruth discovers she's pregnant after literally setting up a chemistry set in her bathroom just to find out, positive or negative. It's a gut-wrenching moment, an impossible one. We've seen Ruth slowly mend things with her former best friend and main event opponent, Debbie (Betty Gilpin)... As we have also seen Debbie patching things up with Mark (Rich Sommer), sort-of anyway, at least making something we could refer to as progress throughout this episode. Imagine destroying all of that and more by adding the extra slap in the face that not only has Ruth slept with Debbie's husband, she's also now carrying his baby. Just as Ruth accompanied Sam on his venue hunt, Sam accompanies Ruth on a mission so distressing & so polarizing among the human race that we can only look at Sam in a different light. Ruth is terrified, but very sure... She's having an abortion. Sam adds some much needed levity to the situation and improvises as Ruth's husband at the abortion clinic. In turn, Ruth faces her traumatic experience and swivels back & gives Sam a 'Zoya The Destroya' line as she heads to the procedural area... "In Soviet Union, abortion is the only thing there is no line for." Her fading smile, sad doe eyes, & nervous laughter provides one of the most poignant & affective scenes in the entire series. She heads back, lays down, assures the doctors, assures herself, and fades into the blue-skied nothingness painted onto a single tile of the clinic's grid, dropped ceiling.

[spotlightsaga]

Kevin Cage of @spotlightsaga reviews… GLOW (S01E07) Live Studio Audience Airdate: June 23, 2017 Ratings: @netflix original/Privatized Ratings Score: 9.5/10 TVTime/FB/Twitter/Tumblr/Path: @SpotlightSaga

**********SPOILERS BELOW**********

The greatest thing about pro-wrestling is that it’s literally a live show, anything can go wrong (or horribly right). Even shows like NXT, Lucha Underground, ROH, PWG specials, shows that are filmed, then edited, then sent out as a television series or a digital copy (since DVD’s & even BluRays are becoming obsolete) can go way off script. When improvisation is introduced into the wrestling show, that’s when the magic begins. Recently a troll on FB attacked one of our articles on A&E’s ‘60 Days In’. After a well pieced together article that covered what we thought were 'producer pushed situations’ vs what was occurring naturally in the series (it’s kinda hard to fake an entire REAL jail, considering they need the space), he simply skipped over everything I had written from the heart and wrote one little line, “You know this is fake, right?” He clearly didn’t read it. After my retort, he brought up pro-wrestling… Ah, he done did it now! Any tried & true fan of professional wrestling will defend their sport or 'Sports Entertainment’ (whatever you want to call it) to the death. Of course everything is planned in advance; the moves, the winners, the storylines… But it’s the pageantry, the training, the real risk of physical injury, the freedom that some wrestlers have in their promos, and an array of other variables, that make pro-wrestling so damn great and have seen it survive for well over a century.

'Live Studio Audience’ captures all of that AND MORE. As a matter of fact, we want to go ahead and nominate this very episode as one of the best of the year for a 30 Minute Comedy or Drama. We get it all… The thrill and excitement of the very first GLOW Live Show ever, the anxiety & stage fright that comes with it as we see Machu Picchu (Britney Young) run for the hills without even getting inside the 20x20, a overworked and panicked Bash (Chris Lowell) abandoning the possible financial future of the show to console Carmen in her 'emotional distress’, two women taking a chance - Cherry Bang (Sydelle Noel) & Tammé the Welfare Queen (Kia Stevens) instinctively changing the direction & storyline of their match without anyone else aware of their scheme besides the newly 'white sheet wearing’, transformed 'Beatdown Biddies’, Stacey (Kimmy Gatewood) & Dawn (Rebekka Johnson) - who’s main concern is if Bill Cosby will be mad at them… Literally changing the match from the uber-cliché, women of color beating up on the elderly to two bad ass, strong Black Queens taking on two racist KKK members, signifying the ongoing battle of racism in the United States! The latter had to be one of the best, most outrageous scenes of GLOW to date. And like Sam said, 'I guess you’re never too young to know about this country’s racial history’.

Sam (Marc Maron) was apprehensive of Cherry & Tammé’s surprise changes at first… But by the end of the match he had gained confidence in the women after hearing the crowd of 30 or so erupt into roars the likes of a full house in the broken down gym would sound like. He even hilariously referred to them as 'The Black Panthers’ in what was ironically riveting commentary. All of it accompanied by the same solemn keyboard tune for the entire show thanks to Sheila the She-Wolf (Gayle Rankin), as it was the only song she knew. Suddenly a show that was hitting every pitfall and taking every wrong turn was lighting up all the faces of the rather 'eclectic’ crowd that had turned up for GLOW’s free show. Suddenly everyone from Sam to all the women in the locker room knew that this crazy idea, one that felt like it would never work, could and WOULD come together. They could actually succeed at what they had set out to do!

By 'Main Event’ time, the crowd was literally eating out of the amateurish palm of GLOW’s outstretched hand. The electricity and excitement running through the building that connected the women with their audience was not only palpable, it can literally be seen worn on the faces and demeanor of everyone in the building. Even all of us at home could feel the tv radiating with the GLOW! Truly!!! It all came down to Liberty Belle, the 100% 'sweet as American Apple Pie’, confident and poised symbol of the 'American Way’, Miss Debbie Eagan (Betty Gilpin) vs 'Zoya The Destroya’, the 'Dirty Russian’, who wants to drain your swimming pools and fill them with Borscht, 'Accidental Homewrecker’, Ruth Wilder (Alison Brie). And yes, if any of you are wondering, I totally said that last line out loud as I wrote it in my best Russian 'Zoya The Destroya’ voice. I can’t help but ponder if Alison Brie was inspired by not only the real GLOW Girl she is portraying, Colonel Ninotchka (Lori Palmer), but also WWE’s own modern version, Lana (CJ Perry)… And that just maybe, Lana is inspired by Palmer herself! It fits, that’s for sure… Even on the heels of Rusev, The Bulgarian Brute.

The match is going well, unexpectedly well. Unbeknownst to the other women, Carmen had taken Ruth & Debbie to visit her brothers… Big Kurt (Carlos Colon Jr aka WWE’s Carlito) & Mighty Tom Jackson (George Murdoch aka WWE’s Brodus Clay, TNA’s Tyrus, and even a part-time, humorous, FOX News anchor). The two headlining women had gone to the brothers for help. They wanted to dazzle the crowd and give them more than just basic moves and the great wrestling tradition of Heel vs Babyface, Good vs Evil… They wanted a match that would elevate both GLOW as a show and themselves as performers. After some hilarious misfires, they were ready… And they ran that ring just like they had intended to, just like they had practiced so hard for. Unfortunately, just as 'the unexpected’ can elevate a wrestling program, it can also add unwanted chaos and ruin. Suddenly, Debbie’s soon to be ex-husband and Ruth’s casual, shameful partner in a secret affair, Mark (Rich Sommer) peaked his head out of the crowd and into Debbie’s field of vision. Debbie freezes and runs off into the back to allow Mark to browbeat her while she misses one of the biggest and best opportunities of her career. Obviously, there’s going to be more for Debbie, but this is going to hurt. Dump the douche already, Debbie!

In an attempt to save the main event, or at least stall until Debbie possibly made her triumphant return (which she never did), Ruth continued on in character yelling out hilarious, typical Russian stereotypes at the audience, who actually ate it up for awhile. As it was bound to happen, the audience started to turn on Ruth. They rightfully wanted a big finish to the show that had unexpectedly turned them from bored passerby’s that were sucked into the building in promise of a free show, to GLOW’s first diverse group of fans. Rhonda (Kate Nash) saw her moment to shine. She had been practicing a 'GLOW Rap’ with Sam’s stolen camera that a jealous, vindictive (yet somehow still relatable and sympathetic), Justine (Britt Baron) had stuffed in her locker in an attempt to set her up and get her fired, all for sleeping with the boss. Rhonda climbed in the ring and started to do GLOW’s now infamous pre-show rap that they were notorious for on their real life tv show. First Ruth followed suit, then the rest of the women stormed the ring and joined in… And GLOW was officially born!

I know I’ve taken a lot of your time and should probably end there, but it’s important for me to give credit where credit is due. Not only did Director Jesse Peretz (thank you so much for HBO’s 'Divorce’, Jesse, and btw 'Our Idiot Brother’ is criminally underrated), but 'new-to-the-game’ writer Rachel Shukert was flawless in her writing, dialogue, and scene transitions… You too, Emma Rathbone! Also, this episode was dedicated to the memory of Chavo Guerrero Sr, the father of Armando Guerrero, the man who trained the wrestlers of the original GLOW as well as the world famous Chavo Guerrero Jr, who trained all the actresses of the series… Except for Kia Stevens, y'all. You think WWE’s Kharma or Independent Scene & TNA Knockout Wrestler 'Awesome Kong’ needed training by the great Chavo Guerrero Jr?! Psssh, that woman is talent personified! Thank you, Liz Flahive & Carly Mensch, on behalf of Spotlight Saga and the French-born, now worldwide, burgeoning community of TVTime.com, we LOVE GLOW!