June 29, 2005
Brownout in TOFilm
The Mistress of Spices and Deepa Mehta’s trilogy finale will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September (thanks, DesiDancer). Mehta’s filming was blocked by protests, but that’s just Water under the bridge:
Filming on Water in India had to be abandoned five years ago after protests over the pic’s subject. It concerns an 8-year-old child bride, sent to an ashram after her husband’s death, who forces the other widows to question their culture and faith. Pic stars Lisa Ray and John Abraham. The Hindi- and English-language film eventually was shot in Sri Lanka under the name River Moon, a moniker selected for its cheesiness, producer David Hamilton said. An “anti-publicist” was hired to keep word of it out of the media…
Now they say desi artists are picking cheesy titles? Here’s one: Mistress of Spices is exoticism buzzword bingo. And Padma Lakshmi’s cookbook title, Easy Exotic, is exactly the two things which desi women don’t want to be known for.
Also making its world premiere will be Mistress of Spices about an Indian woman (Aishwarya Rai) running a spice shop in San Francisco whose magic fails her when she falls in love. Pic is from Paul Mayeda Berges and Gurinder Chadha, the team behind Bend It Like Beckham…
How’s the art film actor with washboard abs doing? Everybody says he’s fine:
Indian filmmaker Buddhadev Dasgupta’s Kaalpurush will world premiere. [The] pic, starring Rahul Bose, follows a man struggling to come to terms with the memory of his powerful father…
At least two other indie films made the cut:
Pics selected for the discovery program include… the world preem of Dreaming Lhasa from Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam from India… Added to the contemporary world cinema program are… Amu from first-time director Shonali Bose…
Finally, let’s keep The Quiet with Elisha Cuthbert. Why is high-funda actress Cuthbert (House of Wax, The Girl Next Door) on my list? Because she desifies nicely. Looks good in wheatish, na?
Previous post here.
manish on June 29, 2005 02:35 PM in Film · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
Manish - thanks for the inadvertant plug. :)
But yeah - if I hear another food metaphor in a desi title, I don't know what I'll do.
Production photos from Mistress of Spices can be found here:
http://www.ashforever.com/gallery/index.php?cat=96
rage-
same thing as I'll do if I see another brown-chick-lit book with f**ing mehndi'd hands or spices/katoris on the cover?
DD, yeah, exactly. I wonder how the conversation goes when it's time to decide on the cover design. "Here's a novel idea. Let's do that whole ethnic thing up... the bestseller junkies love that stuff..."
*shudder*
I used to work at a major (as they say) publishing house, and you'd be shocked shitless if you could've fly-on-the-wall-ed at cover-design meetings. PC thinking flies out the window, and your hypothetical conversation is pretty tame by conparison.
Cicatrix, I worked at several "major" publishing houses as well, and I know *exactly* what you are talking about. (And the irony is, once, when I offered an educated opinion on the cultural inaccuracies of a particular cover, I was shotdown and berated by the author, marketing, and the publisher.)
It's all about the Benjamins. Sell-out punks.
Hmm...I bet you would do the same if it was enough money.
Good luck, Aish!
This movie just might work as a silly romantic comedy of the Julia Roberts/Sandra Bullock variety.
Well, one can hope.
Canada Dry, did you comment during a cover meeting, or after the book was already printed? If the latter...ooh! they would have really wanted to shut you down! 20,000 books sitting in a warehouse with a stupid cover? They'd love that!
If you want to send me an email, I'd love to hear more of your experiences. Mine, for example. include the fact that whenver a south asian author was in the building, I'd get summoned away from my envelope-licking duties to present an apne face at meet-and-greets.
Its not Shabana, but the other 70s "arthouse" favorite Smita Patil, that starred in Mirch Masala.
Cicatrix, whenever a brown author was brought up in a marketing meeting, everyone at the table turned to me and asked, "What do you think?" like I represented every South Asian book-buyer.
Email to you is on its way.
I can't comment on 'The Mistress of Spices,' the movie, but the source material is crap. Chitra Divakaruni is a terrible writer: her work is a mixture of banal social commentary with cheesy orientalism, and her prose is flat and undistinguished. There have been some terrific South Asian writers who have got well-deserved recognition, but some dross is mixed in with the gold.
Oy, thanks, fixed.
nice brownout on Elisha Cuthbert, Manish. She does look better for it...
have to agree with amba about the book being crap...but even then, if i remember right, the "mistress of spices" was an ugly girl who takes on the body of an old woman. she does some cheesy ass magic and turns herself into a gorgeous hottie for one night only...so if chadda plans to stay even remotely faithful to the novel, we get to see ash as herself for approximately five minutes (during which time, in the nove, she's busy making love to the hero. whatever happened to ash's no kissing rule?). think i'm gonna watch this one just to see what kind of *creative* liberties chadda and berges have taken. anyone know who plays the hero, by the way?
Dylan McDermott-- the cast list is here.
That's just the title of the book - so I don't know how you can blame anyone for that.It was Divakaruni's adaptation of Like Water for Choclate in the first place. Each chapter has an associated spice and recipe - it was that cheesy :-).
I am sure the DVD will have Aish dishing out a few. I remembered the book when I wrote about Desi Store woes last week.
Glad to know none of you liked book.
I loved the novel, mistress of spices... come on, you guys have to read it before saying the "chapter titles" were "that cheesy".
After reading it i thought it would make an awesome movie.... kinda like "Chocolat"....
Padma Lakshmi acts in this film. You can learn more about her at her website Padma Lakshmi Official Site.
Has anyone seen Amu? I tried looking for it on dvd and can't find. Since it was released in back Jan. I thought it would be on dvd by now, did it not do that well in India?