Global Bollywood is an academic anthology, but it contains several essays that might be of interest to lay readers who are fans of Hindi films and filmi music. There are, admittedly, a couple of somewhat jargony essays in the collection, but they can be avoided for readers allergic to that sort of thing. Accessible essays that take on specific subjects, and present new and helpful information about them, dominate the anthology. As a result, I can recommend it alongside another book I reviewed some time ago, Tejaswini Ganti’s Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema.

Defining “Bollywood”

Sangita Gopal and Sujata Moorti’s thorough introduction to this volume is a pretty definitive survey of much important scholarship on Hindi cinema. Given my own background and interests, the sections from which I learned the most were probably the somewhat more ‘marginal’ sections, where Gopal and Moorti provided overviews of some slightly more obscure topics, such as the influence of 19th century Parsi street theater on the emergence of the Bollywood acting and musical style (they cite Kathryn Hansen’s work on this subject; also see Hansen’s translation of Somnath Gupt’s book).

Still, here is the definition of “Bollywood” with which Gopal and Moorti begin:

Frequently remarked upon by insiders and always remarkable to outsiders, song-dance occupies the constitutive limit of Bollywood cinema. It determines – perhaps unfairly but invariably – the form itself even as it frequently escapes the filmic context to inhabit other milieus. (1)

One could object that it’s not just the song-dance that is distinctive about commercial Hindi cinema, but the particular stylization of the acting, which seems over-the-top and melodramatic to many viewers acculturated to the values of European art cinema. Certainly, it wasn’t just song-dance that Satyajit Ray rebelled against starting in the 1950s – or, more recently, Aparna Sen, or Mira Nair. These art film directors were also interested in more naturalistic characterization, and in finding beauty in the everyday.

I find more personal joy in seeing desi characters in science fiction movies than in any other genre of film. I get a completely irrational “see, we made it into the future” type of feeling. I also like the fact that in the future one’s race is usually treated as an incidental rather than defining feature. Terminator Salvation opens next week and features at least one desi character named Rahul (played by actor Anjul Nigam). No pictures or background on his character are available yet (he explains on his Twitter account that he was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement), but I suppose it is too much to wish that he is one of the cyborg terminators. If anyone has the scoop on his character “Rahul” let’s hear it.

If Nigam looks familiar it might be because you have seen him recently on TV’s “Lie to Me” or (*barf*) “Grey’s Anatomy.”

[warning: very very mild spoilers are contained in this post]

[warning: only a true sci-fi fan will understand all the references in this post]

Yesterday I got the chance to see Star Trek at the local IMAX theater. A little backstory about me: I am a Trekkie. I am not the kind of Trekkie that dresses up in Star Trek outfits and knows all the obscure little trivia, but I am still pretty hardcore (well, ok…only half of the previous statement is true). You see, the original Star Trek movie (which sucked by the way) is the first movie I have any memory of. I saw it at the drive-in theater in San Jose, CA in December of 1979 when I was three. I sat behind my dad and the audio was lousy but it must have made some sort of a subliminal impression on me given that I spent the next 30 years of my life quite literally trying to be Captain Kirk.

Captain Christopher Pike: [to Kirk] You can settle for less in ordinary life, or do you feel like you were meant for something better? Something special.

Sigh.

In any case, the new movie opens with the magnificent bald head (no, not Captain Picard) of Captain Robau of the Federation Starship Kelvin. Robau is played by Pakistani American actor Faran Tahir:

[It’s] a great thing,” Tahir said in an exclusive interview. “I have had conversations with J.J. about this, … because I knew the other people who were being considered for this role, and they were not [cast]. So one day over dinner I was, ‘So what was it, why?’ You know, just to get a window into it. And I think he—and I have to commend him on this—what he was trying to do was find a certain quality in the actor and just to set up the story, you know? And to me, that is refreshing, and it’s great to hear. … The biggest compliment is that he was looking for a certain quality. He could have found that in me, he could have found that in [anyone else]. And it just happened to be me, and … the added … layer to that is that, yeah, I happen to be of a certain descent, and … the casting was [in] the spirit of what Star Trek is about.” [Link]

It’s election season again in India, and with an 80% reduction in Bollyflix released this year (a side effect of the finance crisis), the real action is in political ads. Recently, Congress bought the exclusive rights to play Jai Ho at its rallies for a whole year, much to the dismay of the BJP which objected that “Anyone should be able to use the song. ‘Jai Ho’ should not belong to any one; it belongs to the country.” [link]

Congress wasn’t just interested in playing the original song, it actually redid the whole thing, gutting the original and producing a muzaked easy-listening patriotic version for use in a political ad:

The BJP struck back with Bhay Ho, a dark tale of international terror:

Both of these clips hint at what a mainstream Indian studio would have done with Slumdog, assuming that they had been interested in the concept at all.

Since my son was born two and a half years ago, I have pretty much given up on staying current on Indian cinema. It’s difficult to get out to the movies, and our local Indian store really doesn’t seem to have a very good collection of stuff. I saw more Indian movies on the plane from Mumbai to Newark in January than I probably did in all of 2008.

On a recent day-trip to New York, we picked up two DVDs of what might be termed “anti-Bollywood” Hindi films that might get us back in the habit, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, and Luck By Chance.

By anti-Bollywood, I mean films that try to be “realistic” rather than sentimental, and that have limited use of songs to accompany, rather than interrupt, the plot of the film (the “diegesis,” for you film geeks). Many conventional Bollywood films don’t have written scripts, and star-power, branding, and memorable songs often have more to do with the success of those films than acting skill, or good, believable stories. In the old days, the emphasis on realism in Indian cinema was mainly the province of art-house directors, and mainly involved glum themes and a certain ponderousness. Happily, in the past few years, with the rise of Indian multiplexes, a realist sensibility has started to take hold on the margins of Bollywood itself. To my eye, the movement started with gangster films, and directors like R.G. Varma. But now it seems like we’re increasingly seeing a broader range of themes and styles of filmmaking in this space: an anti-Bollywood Bollywood. (Meanwhile, the same-old same-old of Hindi commercial cinema sputters along, effectively unchanged.)

Below are my brief reviews of Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! and Luck by Chance.

Mutineers, have you been the victim…of strange assumptions and blatant stupidity?

Are you confused? Uneasy? Constipated?

You may be suffering from PSSD. Post-Slumdog Stress Disorder is a very real ailment, with devastating consequences for its sufferers. Victims of PSSD often, on a daily, if not hourly basis, endure flashes of rage, manic ranting, rocking back and forth while twitching slightly in the corner, and a smug proclivity to email links to anti-“Slumdog Millionaire” news stories with the subject line: “HA! Look who agrees with me! LOOK!!”.

If you have been accosted by allegedly well-meaning but clearly oblivious, pink cylons who initiate insensitive conversations about this movie with you, DO SOMETHING. Instead of being harmed by that dangerous trauma trigger, show them this educational video, so that they leave you the fuck alone, then you can go back to being bitter about not going to medical or law school, in peace.

Link courtesy of old skool mutineer SexyGultiHo. And yes, that’s his screen name.

Tonight, I’ll be trying something a little different in the bunker.

Instead of live-blogging the Academy Awards the way I might have in the past, via a disjointed, half-kundi’d sort of list, I’m going to use the nifty program you see below. If it’s good enough for Sports blog Ball Don’t Lie, it’s good enough for this fellow fan o’ Sheed:

What’s great about this is…well…everything. I can put up instant polls, pick out comments from you to publish in the stream of live blogging, and then tie it up at the end in to a lovely little package with a “replay” ribbon on top, so all may enjoy it at their leisure. I played with it on my own blog, here, so that’s what the finished product will look like. I’m excited, about this and whatever else may come. Are you? :)

::

I will also be one of many, many people participating in SAJA’s post-Oscars Call-in Web Radio Show Thing tonight.

Rrrrrrrrrrrr.

Earlier this week I read a salacious article claiming that innocent little Latika Frieda Pinto is really a shady McShadester:

The star of Slumdog Millionaire has been hiding a secret husband whom she ditched after the film became a hit, it was claimed today.

Freida Pinto, 24, is said to have married Rohan Antao at a ceremony in Goa in December 2007 but last month ended their relationship. The couple were previously thought only to have been engaged… Their relationship appears to have foundered in the wake of Slumdog Millionaire’s success. Pinto, who plays the main love interest, was nominated for a Bafta and the film won a Screen Actors Guild Award for outstanding performance by a cast.

It is claimed that Mr Antao, a Mumbai-based executive, supported Pinto during filming but ‘she just stopped calling him’ at the time of the Golden Globes this year, according to reports today. [Link]

If you check out the picture of Mr. Antao you can’t help but come to the conclusion that the poor chap never had a chance. In reality you can only date so far outside of your attractiveness league and the fact that guys like Salman Rushdie have a lock on the statistical outlier category means that the Rohan Antaos of the world are headed for disaster. Then I read another article yesterday that got me to re-think this all a bit. Perhaps Frieda is innocent and Antao is possessive and delusional.

Oscar season is upon us once again, and with it the opportunity to make some money by betting on the home team. Gambling on the Oscars is as venerable tradition as gambling on Diwali, making this the third biggest betting day of the year.

The sole uncontroversial topic about Slumdog is that it’s the odds on favorite tonight for both best picture and best director. The only surer bet out there is Heath Ledger for best supporting actor (you have to put down $25 to see even $1 of return) and he’s dead!

Furthermore, as we get close and closer to Oscar time, the odds keep improving in these two categories. Right now, Paddypower is giving 1-14 odds for best picture (bet $14, make $1 profit if Slumdog wins) and Danny Boyle 1-10 odds for best director (bet $10, make $1 profit if Boyle wins).

Boylesports is offering better odds for bestpicture and worse odds for best director, but in both cases, the certainty of a Slumdog win is higher today than it was just a few days ago.

Even at these odds, Slumdog is still a good investment. King of Elections Quantgeekery Nate Silver says that Slumdog has a 99% chance of getting best picture and a 99.7% chance of getting best director, estimates based on how well previous awards (which Slumdog has swept) predict the Oscars.

The chance to win big might also stem the anti-Slumdog tide of public opinion in India. Right now there is already over Rs. 2 billion ($41 million) staked on the film, so a lot of Indians will be rooting for the same film that they objected to.

Honestly, I’m perplexed by the range of reactions that Slumdog has elicited. I liked the movie, had a great time while I was watching it, adored the sound track and cinematography and thought the plot and acting were clichéd. But a week later, I would have forgotten the film if not for all the other hoopla surrounding it.

The core of the controversy seems to be whether the film is exploitative. Who gets exploited (slumdwellers, old India, new India) changes depending on who is levelling the accusation, but each time the claim is that the movie is somehow poverty pr0n.

The main broadside against the film was lobbed by Amitabh who said:

“if SM projects India as [a] third-world, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations.” [link]

He later backpedaled, saying that the words were not his own, and that he had put them up merely to start a debate.

Similar criticism came from former ambassador (and Sree’s dad) T P Sreenivasan, who saw the movie as undermining new India:

Having read the novel and seen the film, I cannot say that it has done more good than harm to India. This is not a matter of my wanting to shove the reality under the carpet… the film is exploitation of the novel, of Dharavi, of poverty, of Rahman, of India itself to titillate foreign audiences. It is the exploitation of the new curiosity about India’s success.

Torture is internationally banned and the director of the film knew that India had not joined the global consensus against torture….The torture scenes do not add much to the story, but denigrates India even more than the slums do… As though the depiction of squalor, crime and cruelty is not enough, the film challenges India’s success. [link]

And an anonymous friend of mine summed up his discomfort with the film by saying:

Anything having to do with the third world that masses of white people go into paroxysms over is guilty until proven innocent…

This post really doesn’t require an introduction after THAT title, but I’ll include one anyway, to answer your question(s) (which I’m already receiving via Facebook* and Twitter), preemptively.

Q: Why didn’t you tell us this craziness was going to be on?? Now it’s too late to record it!

A: I didn’t tell you this fustercluck would be airing because I didn’t know anything about it. I have long considered LIVE With Regis and Kelly to be a rather annoying TV program which rarely features anything I’m interested in— and I love the Today Show, so I’m not exactly difficult to please. Since I never watch the show…I had no way to know.

I’m at home, at my Mom’s house, and while I was getting ready to go out, I thought I’d watch the “third hour” of Today; in DC, we get all four hours of the show, so I assumed that it might be on here, as well. When I turned on the television, I heard unfamiliar theme music and mentions of Regis…and just when I was about to turn the set off, I heard, “Anil Kapoor!” being announced. “Oh. Because of Slumdog,” I thought.

Now I had a choice to make. I could do the responsible thing and finish my breakfast so that I would not be late for my full slate of appointments in the city today…or I could frantically pause the show, twitter a rhetorical question about whether I should blog it for SM and make coffee while pondering all of the above. When I returned to my iBook, I had my answer, as delivered by the pleas of several of you to not let this opportunity go by unblogged. Well, so much for making my appointments!

“Our next guest is one of the most successful and popular actors in Indian film history and has been blowing away audiences with his role as a game show host— a role that is near and dear to me— it’s in the hot movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ which is nominated now for ten Oscars…now please welcome— Aneel Kapore!”

M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” starts playing and the man walks out. I curse the remote for not being as useful as Comcast’s (never, ever did I think I’d type the words “useful as Comcast” btw) is, back home. I miss the “30 seconds back” button something fierce. I’m already having second thoughts about this. ;)

“Kapore” strides out in a suit and light-colored tie like he’s got tickets to the gun show…and by that I mean that he’s doing the “I am victorious!”-arm-thing. He immediately growls something like, “Hey!” and proceeds to grope Regis via a bear hug which lifts Reeg off the ground.

I can’t contain myself, I HAVE to live-blog the Golden Globes. That statement itself might be a spoiler, I know. If you’re on PST, have this isht on DVR or otherwise loathe learning something before you’re supposed to, don’t go past the jump.

[And if you are a Wesssssider, then come on. You’re used to this, so no need to complain…I’m from there, I remember the feeling, but there’s nothing to be done. Except move here. Which is what I did. ;)]

If you’re on the right coast and feel like gettin’ your Mutiny on…party over here!

People talk trash about Air India, but it has one distinct advantage — if you’re lucky enough to fly to and from India on one of their newer 747s, which are equipped with personal video screens, you have a wealth of Indian TV, movies, and music to entertain yourself with, while eating Chiwda (instead of peanuts) and not-too-bad shrimp curry. (You still have to sit in a cramped little chair for 16-24 hours without losing your mind, but that would be the case on Lufthansa too.)

Our son wasn’t too much trouble on our recent Mumbai-to-Newark flight (he slept through much of it), so I was able to sample a range of subtitled Indian movies in different languages that I otherwise might not see. In some cases, I didn’t watch whole films — sometimes just an hour or so — but it was an interesting experiment to compare a group of films that normally are only seen by members of specific linguistic communities. People sometimes talk about Indian cinema as if the only films worth watching are made in Hindi and produced in Mumbai, but perhaps the folks who are saying that only watch those films?

The most entertaining, and highest production value film I watched was the Tamil film, Sivaji, The Boss, starring Rajnikanth (star of several YouTube “superhits,” including “Little Superman”). I initially enjoyed the sense of Tamil ethno-linguistic pride in the film (Rajnikant’s love interest is named “Tamizhselvi”), though it did start to get old after a little while (I did not see such an obsession with regional identity in the Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, or Punjabi films I sampled on this flight. Is the Tamil-centricness of Sivaji, The Boss unique to this film?).

Rajnikanth’s manic physical comedy and dancing, and the film’s over-the-top sets and situations, are really why someone who is not a long-term Rajnikanth fan watches a film like this. I couldn’t say that the anti-corruption plot made any narrative sense, though there were some powerful “crowd” moments here and there; there’s just a whiff of the rough edges of actual Indian politics. More than anything else, it seemed like Rajnikanth’s mission in this film is to entertain the audience as fast as possible, and continue doing so until every last bit of amusement is squeezed out of every damn frame of the film. (I wish I knew where he gets the energy.)

Incidentally, Sivaji, The Boss was the most expensive Indian film ever made, in any language, as of 2007. It was a super-hit in the South, and successful even dubbed into Hindi.

Andrew Brietbart has a fascinating OpEd about a film opening the precise moment India’s 9/11 was being unleashed -

On the evening of Nov. 26, the biggest names in Bollywood walked the red carpet at the Bombay premiere of “The President Is Coming,” a comedy about six 20-somethings vying to win the right to shake hands with President Bush.

Among those in attendance at the star-studded premiere Wednesday evening was Bollywood’s “new heartthrob” Imran Khan, who proudly posed for paparazzi donning a T-shirt with Mr. Bush’s face sandwiched between the words “International Terrorist.”

…At the precise moment Mr. Khan and hundreds of others making their fortunes in the multibillion-dollar Indian movie business were watching “The President Is Coming,” only a few blocks away, 10 20-something Muslim extremists began a horrific three-day terror spree.

In the ironic, postmodern world, you earn accolades by tarring a disagreeable politician with the epithet “terrorist.” By contrast, had Mr. Khan worn a t-shirt critical of Bin Laden & his supporters, and stepped out of his comfy limo at the wrong time just a few blocks away, the word “terrorist” would have taken on a considerably more literal meaning.

The Oscar buzz has already started and it’s only been one day since “Slumdog Millionaire” was released. So far, the new offering from British director Danny Boyle (of Trainspotting fame) has been referred to by The New York Times as a film that “could be the breakthrough work that leads the world to focus on the genre …of Parallel Cinema, a more personal narrative type of film like Mira Nair’s art house hit “Monsoon Wedding.”

And, Roger Ebert predicts the film will win an Best Picture Oscar nomination, calling it “a breathless, exciting story, heartbreaking and exhilarating at the same time [whose] universal appeal will present the real India to millions of moviegoers for the first time.”

When you read gushing reviews like Ebert’s, you can’t help but walk into the movie hall with high expectations, wondering whether a film can really live up to all the hype. The answer is: Yes.

“Slumdog Millionaire” is being billed as a film about “first love, determination, and realizing your destiny.” Not quite the pitch that you’d expect from a mainstream film about a kid from an Indian slum. This is a film that will surprise viewers who think they’re going in to watch a movie about India’s tremendous poverty and rich-poor gap. It switches swiftly between scenes that take you into an India that is at once poor and wealthy, moral and crime-ridden, developed and undeveloped, hopeful and disappointing. And, though the story is laced with a trace of Bollywood romance, goondas, and some implausability, it is for the most part, as Roger Ebert says, “real.” Add to that a soundtrack by A.R. Rahman and Danny Boyle’s directorial talent for bringing India’s sensory overload and motion to life without the typical exoticism or “oh those poor things” mentality and you have a winner.

More of my review below the fold.

I’ve occasionally groused about how bad I think a lot of Bollywood music is today, so it seems only fair to say a little about a soundtrack I actually like, Singh is Kinng. I picked up the CD in New Jersey recently, along with Dr. Zeus’s “Welcome 2 Da Club,” a CD I would also recommend, for those who like hip hop mixed with bollywood hits.

First, I should admit that after Googling the film’s title quickly, I still can’t quite figure out why there are two n’s in “Kinng.” (Does anyone know? Is it some astrology/numerology thing?)

The standout track is of course the title, with the O.G. westside signature synth sound, and a contribution of a rap from Snoop Dogg. Alongside Wyclef Jean (who had some great lines in his contribution to DJ Rekha’s “Basement Bhangra Anthem”), American hip hop suddenly seems to have gotten a lot more interested in directly participating in Indian pop music (not just via remix or sampling anymore). My favorite lines from Snoop are the following:

Ferraris, Bugattis, and Maseratis
Snoop D O double G, the life of the party
Lay back, stay back, i’m in the Maybach
This aint James Brown, but it’s the big payback
Watch me zoom by, make it boom by
What up to all the ladies hanging out in Mumbai
Cheese make dollars, east west masala
Singh is the king, so you all have to follow

(Not that there is anything that exciting to rapping about expensive cars. But I do like the way he pronounces “Moombai.”)

The British Bhangra/remix group RDB produced the album (and they appeared alongside Akshay Kumar at the IIFA awards a few weeks ago); this is by far their biggest mainstream Indian release — good for them. Tigerstyle (whose “Nachna Onda Nei” was used in a recent dance number on “Britain’s Got Talent”) are also involved with some solid remix tracks on the album. It’s also cool to see Hard Kaur in action again in Bas Ek Kinng, though once again it seems like it’s all about the punchy way she uses her voice — there’s not much going on in the lyrics.

Finally, Daler Mehndi is solid with “Bhootni Ke,” a catchy wedding number. I always like it when DM gets to really work the power in his voice.

Not that every track is memorable. If you’re buying tracks off of ITunes, I would recommend tracks 1-4, and the Daler Mehndi track (#10).

Here’s about 1:15 of a song called “Dil Dance Maare” from the new Hindi film, Tashan. The two male leads are the currently ubiquitous Askhay Kumar, and Saif Ali Khan. The female lead is Kareena Kapoor:

The lyrics are a little… well… I don’t really know how to describe them:

White white face dheke dil woh beating fast sasura [When I see a ‘white white’ face, my heart starts beating fast]
Jaan se maare reeee eehhheeee

Aare
White white face dheke dil woh beating fast sasura
Jaan se maare re
Ohhhooo
White white face dheke

Aahh…
White white face dheke dil woh beating fast sasura
Jaan se maare re
Oh very… oh very…
Oh very happy in my heart
Dil dance maare re
Very happy in my heart, dil dance maare re
Dil dance maare dance maare
Dil yeh dance maare
Oh very happy in my heart
Dil dance maare re

It’s not entirely an arbitrary expression of a self-hating colonial mentality (or, as Fela Kuti said, “colo-mentality”); in the context of the film, the characters apparently come across an American film crew while traveling around India, and join the production — hence the blond wigs and so on. (My wife was watching the DVD in the other room, and she called me in when this song came on: you have to see this.)

Still, am I the only one to find the song/video at once deeply embarrassing and oddly catchy? I’ve been finding myself singing it for comic effect for family and friends this week.

Is that salmonella outbreak still affecting tomatoes? Got a few that might be unsafe to eat? Well, pick ‘em up and prepare to hurl them at me, cuz I thought Brick Lane was a dud.

But first, let me explain:
The movie is, of course, based on the critically acclaimed novel by Monica Ali. She of the Granta 20 under 40, Booker shortlist, and ravishing looks. No, I’m not jellus (ok, maybe a little bit), but for one reason or another, I never got around to reading the book.

Despite filmmakers ardent wishes, fans of any much-loved book want a movie to be a faithful adaptation. I praised The Namesake movie because it vividly brought the book to life, and willingly overlooked the disjointedness and odd pacing of the film.

Therefore, in the spirit of thoroughness, I picked up Ali’s book and spent the past few days hoping to crawl beneath the skin of the characters, to let their emotions wash over me, to exult in their triumphs and sob at their failures. I’m about halfway through and so far will admit that the movie does reflect the book: in both cases I struggled in vain to keep my eyes open. Well, I did manage to stay awake through the film, but the woman next to me succumbed quite rapidly to the charms of a deep, grunting, wheezing slumber.

Yes, the movie is poignant and lyrical and subtle. But just as the tension ratchets up in anticipation of a climax, the plot meanders, the intensity dissipates, and the viewer/reader slumps back into the seat.

Much like in sex, this can be very frustrating.

“Mariska Hargitay.” Say it aloud, softly and with reverence: “Mariska Hargitay.” Yes, it’s the name of the actress on Law and Order, but from the lips of Mike Myer’s newest creation, Guru Pitka, it’s a mantra, a blessing, and a joke that never stops giving.

I went to see The Love Guru with hackles raised and claws sharpened. I came to bury, not to praise. But 87 IQ-draining minutes of fart jokes, midget jokes, and sight gags (ever wanted to see someone literally have his head up his ass?) later, I came out slightly charmed, humming the Guru Pitka song and wishing my friend “Mariska Hargitay” every time he sneezed. Light-hearted, good-natured, and silly beyond belief, the movie might bore those who can’t easily access an inner 12-year-old, but for everyone else it’s well worth at least 5 demerits on the Hindu Janjagruti Samiti chart.

Mike Myers built a career playing outsized characters, goofiness masking the fact that world inhabited by those characters, the entire point of the parody, revolved around something actually not all that familiar to most Americans. Sprockets? How many Americans knew anything about West German Mimimalism, let alone enough to mock it? Wayne’s World? Brought GenX tropes and Slackers and cable access television to the mainstream in 1992. Austin Powers? It seems obvious now, but British 60s spy films weren’t on anyone’s cultural radar in the mid-90s.

So now that his new creation satirizes Hinduism, spirituality and the Guru-Shishya relationship, what will mainstream Americans make of it? How offensive is Guru Tugginmypudha?

After seeing so much bad press on M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, I was beginning to get ready to not see it, to let it wait until DVD as I ended up doing with Lady in the Water (which was every bit as hokey as people said it would be).

In this case, the New York Times was just positive enough to keep me in my Shyamalan == opening weekend pattern, and I’m glad of it. I actually enjoyed the film. I did have my doubts about some of Shyamalan’s choices, and in the end the whole thing doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But some of the images Shyamalan put together in the film were genuinely, arrestingly creepy — I will probably remember the scene in Princeton for a long, long time. Finally, the conceit as a whole is, I have to say, strikingly original.

If you generally like Shyamlan, don’t let the reviewers’ piranha-like viciousness keep you away (especially since that viciousness is so easy: quite a number of people seem to be using the ready-made zinger, “‘The Happening’ Is Not Happening”). On the other hand if you hated Signs and The Village, you’ll probably hate this too.

I’m sure readers will have their opinions, and not all will be positive. Fire away (try to avoid spoilers, please).

Finally, the obligatory desi tidbit: The Happening was 50% financed by an Indian company, UTV. Though The Happening is not going to make anything like the kind of money Shyamalan made with his first three big films, it apparently has exceeded opening weekend expectations, despite the horrendous press. Which means, UTV and Fox will likely make their money back. Which means… Manoj Shyamalan probably isn’t going anywhere.

Trivia: Did you know that Shyamalan just came up with the middle name “Night” around the time he applied for college? The application wanted a middle initial, and he went with “N.” Gogol, all over again.

Periodically, we’ve heard about Bollywood actors starting blogs, usually in conjunction with the promotion of their latest film. I seem to remember Aamir Khan briefly blogging around the time of the release of the Mangal Pandey movie (he’s at it again). Bipasha Basu, too, briefly blogged, to promote Apaharan.

But now it seems like blogging superstar phenomenon is taking off, as Amitabh Bachchan has been blogging with relish for more than a month (via the BBC). There does seem to be some promotional element here, as the image you see when you enter the blog, of Big B, is from Ram Gopal Varma’s upcoming sequel to Sarkar, Sarkar Raj (I reviewed the original Sarkar here). But Amitabh Bachchan isn’t just doing it as a stunt; he seems to really relish the act of communicating directly with his fans, even if it sometimes leads to controversy.

In an early post, Amitabh Bachchan apparently referred to Shah Rukh Khan’s new TV game-show, Kya Aap Paachvi Pass Se Tez Hain? (“Are you smarter/faster than a fifth grader?”), as a “flop.” The comment caused a major uproar, leading to the following rather overwrought apology:

In their book Borders and Boundaries, editors Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin write: “As an event of shattering consequence, Partition retains its pre-eminence even today, despite two wars on our borders and wave after wave of communal violence. … Each new eruption of hostility or expression of difference swiftly recalls that bitter and divisive erosion of social relations between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, and each episode of brutality is measured against what was experienced then.”

This statement speaks directly to the premise of Pakistani director Mehreen Jabar’s debut film Ramchand Pakistani, which recently premiered in NY at the Tribeca Film Festival. Based on a series of true events which took place in 2002—during a period where India and Pakistan were on the brink of war—it is the story of one innocent Hindu Dalit family which became a victim of the national hostilities that have permeated Indo-Pak relations since partition. The story begins in a small, dusty border village in on the Pakistan side of the Thar desert. Ramchand (Fazal Hussain) is the willful, naughty son of a Hindu Dalit farmer Shankar (Rashid Farooqi) and his wife Champa (played by Nandita Das). One morning, when Ramchand gets into an argument with his mother, he skips school and goes for a walk in the desert terrain bordering his father’s farm. Without realizing it, he crosses over into Indian territory. His father follows him to bring him back, but it’s too late. Indian patrol officers, suspicious of their motives (“Are you Pakistani spies?”) take both of them into custody.

For the next five years, Ramchand and his father are trapped in a bureaucratic prison system in India, where despite the lack of evidence that they did anything wrong, it is impossible to release them because of a longstanding battle of wills between the Indian and Pakistani governments. The film follows Ramchand’s coming of age in a prison where he and his father share a cell with Indians and Pakistanis, many of whom made the mistake of “crossing over” and have gotten lost in the shuffle.

Well, Cicatrix and Sandhya have given us much of quality to chew on today with their posts on Love Marriage, so leave it to the English professor to do a review of a gross-out comedy, the much-anticipated (well, by me) Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. The film opens nationwide this coming Friday, 4/25.

My wife and I saw the film for free — thanks to an invite to a press screening/sneak preview in downtown Philadelphia. (I know the serious journalists in the house must cringe every time a blogger gets thought of as equivalent to “press,” but oh well.)

My first thought is — I wouldn’t be surprised if the film opens at #1 in the U.S. box office over the coming weekend. I’ve been seeing quite a number of ads for the film on TV this past week, suggesting that New Line Cinema thinks the film will open big (bigger, anyway, than Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, four years ago. Bigger than Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in Baby Mama? I’m not sure).

As for the film itself, there my response might be a bit more idiosyncratic.

One of the things I miss most about living in Los Angeles is the IFFLA that takes place at the ArcLight in Hollywood every April. There was just something cool about being one of the first desi kids on the block to be able to see some smart films that are typically overshadowed by the usual Bollywood fare. Granted, there are a few flops but for the most part you can be pretty sure that you will walk away satisfied at having seen one or two memorable flicks. This year’s film festival is THIS WEEK, April 22nd to 27th.

As I pursued the line-up I noticed a few films I’d really like to check out if I was still there. The first one reminds me of my childhood vacation in Ahmedabad where I became a feared kite-killer over the course of several months, Under The Ahmedabad Sky. Eventually, my own kite, with dozens of confirmed kills, went down. I learned an important lesson that day. No matter how bad, powerful, or smart I am, there will be someone “more badder” to eventually take me down:

A short film written by comic Hari Kondabolu will be playing with a group of other shorts at the SFIAAFF film festival this weekend (Friday night and Sunday night), and readers in the Bay area might want to check it out. As you may remember, Sepia Mutiny posted on Hari’s aggressive brand of comedy earlier, in this post (also see Smithsonian Diamonds Exhibit — with a rather shocking epithet for the Queen of England).

Here is the short blurb on Manoj:

MANOJ is a short documentary about the life and remarkable success of Indian-born standup comedian, Manoj Krishnamurthy. Manoj’s use of South Asian stereotypes has led to a growing fan base across the United States and has placed him on the edge of greater stardom. However, this begs the following questions: What happens in America when you’ll do whatever it takes for a laugh? What if you don’t care?

The idea of the film is interesting — what if a performer actively and intentionally set out to exploit comic Indian stereotypes for all they’re worth? It reminds me, a bit, of Dave Chappelle’s own dilemma about whether his brand of comedy was subverting old racial humor, or in some sense perpetuating it. It’s also an issue that is in the air when discussing Kal Penn or Russell Peters.

No clips from the film are available online yet, but Hari was nice enough to email me a couple of snips of dialogue to give us a sense of what he’s after in Manoj:

What do you do once Nam-e-sake is out and the DVD is long since released? Well, if you’re Kal Penn, you make Harold and Kumar Escape from Gitmo (link makes noise if you open it), but what about the rest of the cast?

Well, Mira Nair is bringing Irfan Khan along to a new project entitled (and I kid you not) Kosher Vegetarian:

The Namesake director Mira Nair is making another movie about intercultural relationships, this time between an Indian guy and a Jewish girl, played by Natalie Portman. In sort of a strange twist, Irfan Khan, who played the father in The Namesake, will play Natalie’s Gujarati boyfriend in the film, tentatively titled Kosher Vegetarian. [Link]

Meanwhile Tabu is opening a Bollywood acting school in London, something that sounds like a Kal Penn film in and of itself:

Bollywood stars Anupam Kher, Urmila Matondkar, Tabu and Boman Irani are opening a “Bollywood Acting School” in London, to train students for a career in Indian cinema. [Link]

I’m just picturing a class of very pasty folks diligently practicing the phrase “Arre o samba!” until they get it right. I imagine the fight instructors stand around saying, “No no no, that’s not nearly fake enough. Your punch needs to pass around 3 feet from his face from the proper Dishoom! Dishoom! fighting technique.”

This past Sunday I went down to the University of Pennsylvania for a rare, open Q&A session with Kal Penn. As readers may remember from Anna’s earlier post on the subject, Penn is at Penn this spring, teaching a class on representations of Asian Americans in the Media. He’s also shooting episodes of “House” (go, House), and stumping for Obama in his free time, though with that schedule I’m not sure how he has any.

As I understand it, there was initially some controversy about the class — is this going to be a stunt, or a real asset to a the Asian American Studies curriculum?

If it were just about bringing a little glamor to campus, I would be skeptical too. But I think it’s fair to say Penn is both an actor and a careful observer of the representation of Desis in both Hollywood and the Indie film world. If you listen to him talk, it’s clear that he’s thought carefully and self-critically about his experiences and choices (he’s very aware that his role as a home-grown, Muslim-American terrorist on 24 might be seen as “problematic,” for instance — though he still defends the choice to take the role). He’s self-conscious enough to know what a racist representation of a South Asian character is, and call it by that name. But at the same time, he’s open about the fact that minority actors sometimes need to play ball to get an entree in Hollywood.

In response to one of the questions posed by a student at the Q&A Kal Penn effectively acknowledged that this was the dilemma he faced when he auditioned for his first Hollywood movie, “Van Wilder.” Unfortunately, Penn also suggested, in response to another question, that things aren’t all that much better even now, for actors who are just starting out:

“I think things for me personally as an artist have changed dramatically, but I know that overall, that change has been slow and incremental. There is no shortage of truly talented actors of South Asian descent in places like New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London. There are folks who majored in theater, studied film, and are experiencing the same struggles I went through when I was starting out. I think that was my main point: things for me have begun to change, but things for others are perhaps remaining the same.” (Kal Penn, from an email)

There is going to be a new Tarsem Singh movie, The Fall and here the trailer is funny, albeit for somewhat different reasons than The Love Guru:

There is sort of a S&M look here, which might be appealing if one is into that sort of thing… On the other hand, all the leather and stylized violence might also just come across as kind of kitschy and pompous — this is the kind of imagery that’s very, very easy to mock.

Behold, the trailer for “The Love Guru” (tagline: His karma is huge). I have mixed feelings, because I really lurve Mike Myers; I quote something from Goldmember almost daily. But, as familiar and fun as the shrimp/gnome scene in this trailer is (“Moleee Moleee Moooole”, anyone?) seeing Myers travel around on a pillow, flying carpet-ishtyle made me want to smack someone.

Plot nugget below:

Pitka (Mike Myers) is an American raised by gurus who returns to the USA in order to break into the self-help business. His first challenge: To settle the romantic troubles and subsequent professional skid of star Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) whose wife Prudence (Meagan Good) left him for rival skater Jacques Grande (Justin Timberlake). [wiki]

We should totally do a meetup on June 20th, so we can shriek about what offended us, afterwards. ;)

p.s. Thank you to lion and astrosmurf, for the tip!

If you, too, are watching the 8oth Annual Academy Awards, you might have noticed that one of the first people thanked in an acceptance speech was a Desi. The inaugural Oscar of the night went to Alexandra Byrne, who was nominated for Best Costume Design. Byrne won for her work in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which is why she said “Thank you, Shekhar” during her brief, graceful remarks.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is the Academy Award-winning 2007 film sequel to the film Elizabeth. It stars Cate Blanchett and is based on events during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Written by William Nicholson and Michael Hirst and produced by Working Title Films, The Golden Age is directed by Shekhar Kapur. The film has music composed by Craig Armstrong and A. R. Rahman. [wiki]

You may not have caught it, because she said “SHAKer”. I almost didn’t catch it, because I was still swooning over presenter Jennifer Garner’s flawless gown and dimples (I’m a sucker for dimples). The only reason I snapped out of my reverie is because of my crack training here in the bunker, which has given my kundi magical abilities to notice potentially bloggable topics (see what I did there? HA!).

Four years of recording the minutiae of brown everything have passed, but I still perk up and think, “hey!” when I recognize something Sepia, especially when I do so during a program I am watching for the dresses…speaking of which, it’s time for me to get back to the show…SHAKer’s star, Cate Blanchett is taking the stage…

Last week Anna posted about some “controversial” statements made by a British politician with regards to inbreeding within the British Asian (i.e. Muslim) community. Specifically cited was the practice of marrying one’s first cousin. Coincidentally, a friend of mine from L.A. (Amyn Kaderali) has just finished a movie (awaiting distribution) titled “Kissing Cousins.” It is not a documentary but rather a “Relatively Romantic” comedy that tries to make the audience feel just a bit uncomfortable. Here is the trailer:

Amir is the last bachelor in his group of coupled-up friends. When they accuse him of being incapable of having a relationship and replace him as the best man at an upcoming wedding, Amir and his visiting long-lost cousin hatch a plan to prove them wrong. [Link]

Among the cast of actors is the gorgeous Rebecca Hazelwood as the hot cousin, Gerry Bednob, David Alan Grier, and…Urkel (sorry, Jaleel White…respect). Amyn also previously released the short film Call Center. Keep an eye out for Kissing Cousins at upcoming film festivals and let SM readers know how it is.

The folks over at Cinematical.com have been taking an early peak at some of the films that will be playing at this year’s SXSW Film Festival in Austin. This one immediately caught my eye as a film that more people need to know about:

FLYING ON ONE ENGINE captures the story of the severely disabled Dr. Dicksheet, a man who has donated his surgical skills to the cause of alleviating suffering among India’s poor. The film both highlights the problems of cleft lip and other congenital deformities, and also tells the dramatic story of a person risking his life to help those in need. Emphasizing Dr. Dicksheet’s frailty, his surgical brilliance, and the spectacular effects of his actions, this film juxtaposes the Nobel Prize nominated surgeon’s godlike status alongside the incredible desperation of the Indian community in which he serves.

The website of The India Project which Dr. Sharadkumar Dicksheet (from Brooklyn) runs is filled with inspirational pictures and stories, so I am glad someone has made a documentary about his work to spread the word. He is an eight-time Nobel Prize nominee and although he is himself hobbled by sickness, his patients think of him as a “God” for the help he brings to their lives.

Star Wars fans were excited to learn today that a new animated film based on the the Star Wars Universe will be released this August:

Star Wars: The Clone Wars makes its theatrical debut as an all-new, computer-generated feature film in August 2008, followed by a television series in the fall.

The new adventures in a galaxy far, far away apparently take place between the second and third Star Wars prequel films, similar to the Clone War series of the same name that ran between 2003 and 2005. Returning characters include Anakin Skywalker - who later becomes Darth Vader - along with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Padme Amidala. New heroes also join to battle familiar villains from the Star Wars prequels, such as Darth Sidious, Count Dooku, and General Grievous.

“I felt there were a lot more Star Wars stories left to tell,” said George Lucas, Star Wars creator and executive producer of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. “I was eager to start telling some of them through animation and, at the same time, push the art of animation forward…” [Link]

One of the major points covered in the press release is that a new female Jedi character will be introduced. She will serve as Anakin’s padawan (the way Anakin was Obi-wan’s padawan). The name of this young Jedi (who will of course eventually be hunted down and killed by Vader) is Ahsoka Tano:

… among the familiar characters like Obi-Wan, Anakin and Yoda is a mysterious new Padawan named Ahsoka Tano.

This young Togruta is eager to prove herself as a worthy Padawan to her bold Master, Anakin Skywalker. Able to wield a lightsaber and pilot a spacecraft with great talent, Ahsoka promises to become a worthy Jedi. [Link]

Tano joins a long list of other sci-fi desi characters. Mysterious is right though, because I can’t find much of a backstory on her yet. The name Ahsoka makes it seem like she is Indian (dot not feather) but the name Tano makes it seem like she is Indian (feather not dot). Or maybe, since this all happened a long long time ago, and in a considerably far off galaxy, ethnically ambiguous is ok. For those of you who like bad-ass ambiguously desi chicks, get your tee-shirt here. For those of you who like your animated warriors more traditional, there is always this.

Via Chapati Mystery, a fifteen minute short film called “The Little Terrorist,” which was nominated for an Oscar for best short in 2005. If you have fifteen minutes, you can watch it here (the first 30 seconds or so are black; be patient):

The video appears to have been posted by the production company itself, so you can watch in good conscience. According to the film’s website, it was filmed on location in a rural village in Rajasthan on a shoe-string budget.

Also, you may want to go straight to Video.google.com to view it on a slightly larger screen (especially if you want to read the subtitles).

One minor question to consider might be: what dialect are the villagers speaking? Would we simply call it “Rajasthani”?

In the past, I was somewhat snarky when it came out that Aishwarya Rai, before her marriage to Abhishek Bachchan, agreed to marry a Peepul tree because of her “Manglik” status.

The New York Times had a story recently (thanks, Jamie), which described how Aishwarya Bachchan recently dropped out of a Hollywood project with Will Smith in order to be home in Mumbai to celebrate Karva Chauth.

For those who don’t know, Karva Chauth is a traditional Hindu festival where wives fast for a whole day without food or water as a symbol of their devotion to their husbands. I have many women friends who object to the festival as regressive, though I also know one or two people who do observe it out of a sense of loyalty to tradition. (Perhaps not too surprisingly, the women I know who observe it are NRIs, not ABDs. Are there any ABDs out there who observe Karva Chauth?)

Here is the quote the NYT gives regarding Aish’s decision to return to Mumbai for Karva Chauth:

Ultimately Ms. Bachchan chose to return to Mumbai and starve with a smile. National television channels covered her first Karva Chauth as headline news. Two months later she shrugged off her loss in an interview. “You do what you have to do,” she said. “Feeling torn and thereby unhappy, confused or guilty is not something I want to feel. So you make your choices and go with it. You get some and some you don’t.” (link)

What to say. From what I can tell, everything Aish does outside of her acting seems to reflect a pretty sincere traditionalism. One has to presume she’s observing Karva Chauth because she really wants to, not because anyone put pressure on her to do so. So, if we accept that the festival of Karva Chauth isn’t inherently sexist (and the case can be made that it is), here I’m inclined to give props to Aish for putting tradition over her career. It certainly beats America’s celebrity culture — which has lately just been depressingly bad, what with Britney losing her mind, and Amy Winehouse smoking crack…

On the other hand, the Indian media loves this kind of thing, so it may be that sacrificing a romantic comedy with Will Smith might actually help her Bollywood career — and she can have both. Jodhaa Akbar, anyone?

I enjoyed looking at some of the influences behind The Namesake last week, and I’ve started to look at some of Mira Nair’s older films — including one that I hadn’t seen before, The Perez Family.

The Perez Family is a film adaptation of a novel by the same name by Christine Bell. It’s the story of a family separated at the time of the Cuban revolution, which has the potential to be reunited because of the Mariel boatlift of 1980. The boatlift brought more than 100,000 Cuban refugees to the United States, with full approval of both Castro and the U.S. government.

My detailed (possibly too detailed?) take on the film is below the fold, but at this point one obvious issue for discussion does come up, which is whether there are points for comparison between Cuban refugees and Indian immigrants from the 1960s and 70s. Cuban Americans are famous for skewing somewhat to the Right; many of the earlier wave were wealthy landowners in Cuba, who had the most to lose in Castro’s Cuba. But perhaps many earlier Indian immigrants are themselves somewhat more conservative than one might expect, perhaps because of the “artifact” of U.S. immigration law up through 1980 — which made it relatively easy for doctors and engineers to come in.

I’ve been watching Mira Nair’s Director’s Commentary on The Namesake DVD, and it’s been surprising to see how much of the film was inspired by other film directors and visual artists’ work. This was a film I liked quite a bit when I first saw it, and it had the unusual distinction of being a film my parents also liked. (I also liked the book, though I know from earlier discussions that a fair number of readers did not.) Watching the Director’s Commentary I realize there was a great deal in Nair’s film I had missed earlier.

Despite the immense amount of craft that went into the making of the film and the strong performances by Irfan Khan and Tabu, I doubt that The Namesake will get much attention come Oscar time. Why not is an endless question; one might point out that the Oscars don’t really award the year’s “best” films so much as the films the major studios feel are at once somewhat “serious” and “commercially viable.”

Still, the nice thing about writing for a blog is, you can pay tribute to the films that caught your attention from a given year, even if no one else agrees with you. (Readers, what desi-related films — produced in India or elsewhere — stood out to you from 2007?)

In the post below, I explore some names from among the large array of people who inspired Nair and collaborated with her as she put together the visual and aural elements of the film. The artists are both Desi (mostly Bengali) and American, though it’s really the former group that leaves the biggest impact on the film.

I hope you enjoy the links below as much as I did assembling them; they make for quite an art history lesson!

I recently got a chance to see an excellent documentary called I For India (thanks, Kate!). It’s a kind of family documentary that spans nearly forty years. When Yash Suri moved to England, in 1965, he decided to buy two Super 8 film cameras, two tape recorders, and two projectors. One set he kept, the other he sent to his family in Meerut. He filmed and recorded his family’s life and growth through the 1970s and 80s, his family in India did the same — and they sent each other the tapes, as a way of staying in touch. The result is an amazing archive of what happens to a family when one part of it goes abroad. Yash’s daughter Sandhya Suri assembled and edited the material into a unique 70 minute statement. Here is a brief clip:

(You can also supposedly see a clip from the film at the BBC, though when I tried it I couldn’t get the video to play.)

SF mutineers, together with writer / director Manish Acharya imbibed the Loins of Punjab last night as part of the SF South Asian film festival. Two word summary - it rocked.

Two word summary - it rocked.A crowd numbering several hundred packed the Castro theater in San Francisco for the laugh out loud ride and presented Acharya with a standing ovation and even a little bit of spontaneous singing (“Bole chudiyan… bole kangana…”) for his work. Although, as expected, Desi’s dominated the audience, the movie really resonated with the surprising gora / gori representation and the hispanic lesbian couple I was seated next to laughed most of the time as well. Still, much of the appeal of the genre comes from being in on the joke and the real magic is best experienced if you’re ABCD and perhaps even moreso if you’ve spent time in New Jersey.

Nevertheless, Loins is, by a wide margin, my new title holder for “Best ABCD Comedy.” My previous candidate was the (panned by many) Where’s the Party, Yaar about a group of desi college students in Houston. Both movies transcend the usual “cultural idenity” story line and instead solidly demonstrate a new, hybrid culture that’s neither here nor there but nevertheless confident about where it is and where it’s going. American and desi stereotypes blend fluidly and we’re far from feeling sorry for the folks with one foot on either side.

A Universe of Patels

Probably owing to the respective backgrounds of the film makers, WTPY is a bit more “American” in its character portrayals while Loins was far more Desi. Although both Manish Acharya and Benny Mathews of WTPY are 1.5 gen, Benny undoubtedly got most of his material from the Music Masala parties aimed at Houston’s desi young adults - hence, a more overt “hormones gone wild” and, unfortunately a generally less flattering FOB portrayal. By contrast, Loins of Punjab brings in a much broader audience of heroes and heroines sporting both ABD and DBD colors.

Loins, however, is yards ahead of Where’s the Party in the quality of its writing, execution, fit, and finish. Some critics weren’t impressed by the “gimmicky” humor but, as an audience commentor noted, Manish does a fantastic job of making old punchlines fresh and unexpected. I know we’ve seen the hero’s significant other defect and return a million times before… But, in Loins it’s so well executed that even a sophisticated, and sometimes cynical audience in a place like SF was still taken by surprise.

WTPY: ABCDs, FOBs, Boys, Girls, and a Party

The casting was superb and, as Acharya emphasized in Q&A after the flick, character development is the backbone of the movie. Their quirks and interactions had me solidly entertained for its hour and a half duration and I can honestly say that I wish the movie overall was longer. The title leads one to expect more story / character development around the Loin King, for example - a promising angle but one which is unexplored. Jameel Khan’s sleazy event producer made the most of his on-screen time and yet, I still wanted more. Ajay Naidu’s Turbantorious BDG was so well done I had a hard time believing it was really him dancing, rapping and shooting off angrier-than-thou lines. Still, going further down all these avenues while keeping within acceptable bounds for movie length would probably have been impossible and I’m forced to credit Acharya for his restraint.

It is critical to note that while poking fun at character and ethnic quirks (the individual Guju family members captured the panoply of stereotypes so well it’s scary), the comedy was ultimately good natured and uplifting. Yes, we’re often laughing at them but we also all recognize that the world would be a worse place without them. Acharya firmly believes & demonstrates that there are many paths to being a movie hero. And when the foundation for your story is a diaspora as diverse as India and America, it’s a fitting moral.

Straight Outta Da Pindh

Good news for mutineers in other cities - Acharya says that Loins is aiming for limited release in the US in March 2008.

After the movie, a dozen mutineers & I tried to converge on Samovar Tea Lounge for a mini-meetup…. However, the venue turned out to be far more of a restaurant than an alternative to Starbucks and menu’s + white-linen table service tends to be pretty antithetical to the flow of a meetup. So, we ended up rerouting ourselves across the street to Urban Bread for coffee and pastries. Consensus at the table was strongly positive and with many surprised by the negative reaction other mutineers seemed to have to the flick. To each his own, I suppose.

[related - Manish Vij’s Loins of Punjab review & link compendium]

Hello SF Mutineers, just a gentle reminder that the SF South Asian Film Festival kicks of today. Our movie + mini-meetup is tomorrow, Saturday, November 17.

The Movie -

2:00 pm, Saturday, November 17th, Castro Theater, San Francisco Admission: $10 Director: Manish Acharya Country: India (2007) Running Time: 88 mins, 35mm, Color Synopsis & Tickets

The Meetup - After the movie, a drink at Samovar Tea Lounge, just a couple blocks around the corner.

View Larger Map

Bollywood film Om Shanti Om brought in about $1.8 million at the U.S. box office over the weekend, which puts it at a respectable #11 on the U.S. chart (on only 114 screens). It’s certainly the highest U.S. opening for a Bollywood film I’ve seen in recent years; it may be the highest ever (anyone know for sure?). The film also did very well in India and other markets, coming in ahead of the Tom Cruise war flick, Lions for Lambs, internationally.

Serious cinephiles (and some not-so-serious ones) have reviewed the film and dissected its merits and flaws. But the director, Farah Khan, has essentially credited the film’s success to one thing — Shah Rukh Khan’s exposed torso:

“The entire credit for the film’s success goes to Shah Rukh,” director Farah Khan told Reuters over phone on Sunday. “He is the film’s main attraction and the shirtless song is definitely one of the main reasons for the film’s hit. It is the scene to watch out for.” The bare-chested act by the 42-year-old actor who underwent rigorous training sessions to develop a six-pack, has helped the song “Dard-E-Disco” reach the top of the charts across television channels and FM radio stations. (link)

See the following hard-hitting report from Star News, for a more behind-the-scenes look at Shah Rukh’s abs:

The segment opens in Hindi, but after about 30 seconds there are English subtitles. It’s worth staying at least until Shah Rukh makes that comment about his cleavage (!); there’s also a sneaky little insinuation about Karan Johar there at the end.

I was at this bar on Friday night and as I ordered my drink I noticed that American Gangster (which came out on Friday) was playing on every television in the joint, including the one behind the bartender. Is video piracy really this rampant? Anyways, the rest of the night I tried to not watch so I could see it in its entirety next weekend. Flash forward to Saturday morning. I was sitting on my couch scratching myself and all of a sudden I thought, “What happened to that smokin’ Piper Perabo from the movie Coyote Ugly? I mean, come on! There has got to be a way to get her back into some film. So I looked her up on IMDB and noted that she will be co-starring in a movie called Ashes which comes out next year. And THAT is where this rambling story finally finds its desi angle:

ASHES follows the story of two brothers from the inner city whose lives are unraveling. As one plummets deeper into mental illness, the other, Ashes, copes by throwing himself into the dangerous New York underworld. Ashes is torn between the family he is responsible for, and the community that consumes him. [Link]

Sepia Mutiny is currently trying to determine if the above drug use was prescribed by Doc 420

Click on the above image for the trailer. The film is directed by and stars Ajay Naidu of Office Space fame as the title character. All I can say is that it is about time there is an Indian American Gangsta film. I mean, the Cubans had Scarface, the Italians had The Godfather, African American’s have Denzel in American Gangter mentioned above. Why the hell has it taken THIS long for a story about the Indian American gangster experience that most of our readers have had at least minor brushes with? I know some of our readers will point to Maqbool as good Indian Gangter film but I ask you, if The Godfather had been only about Don Corleone’s time in Sicily would it be as relevant to Italian Americans? I didn’t think so. And so I eagerly await Naidu’s Ashes. It might finally take the “model” out of our minority. Plus Piper Perabo will be in it.

Once upon a time, in a land called “college”, I dated a wealthy white boy from Arizona. He was a nice boy, with nice parents who rushed to embrace and accept me. I was young and eager to be embraced. Trouble was, his mom had an odd way of tacking on an explanation (sometimes sotto voce, sometimes not) to anything “cultural” whenever she addressed me. Implicit in every conversation was the assumption that they would refine me, expose me to the better things in life, elevate me somehow. I shrugged it off time and again until the weight of all that well-intentioned condescension finally felt too crushing: for god’s sake, high art to this family meant Monet’s fucking Water Lillies!! They spent gobs of money on interior designer who made them buy a pool table swathed in beige felt!

I would stand there in my thrift or Army-Navy surplus wear and thrill at the fact that I was secretly turning up my unrefined nose at them, a giant thought-balloon screaming “TACKY!!” rising above my head. I didn’t say anything because it was all so deliciously meta. Also? I was a chicken-shit people-pleaser.

So, anyway, it’s been a great many years since I dumped the guy, but seeing Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited brought on some strange flashbacks.

I’m a sucker for cinematography. Great art direction and visual flair can supplant character development, direction, or even plot, as far as I’m concerned. So naturally, I’ve been a rather ardent Wes Anderson fan. His stilted little diorama-like movies were fine by me. I accepted his narcissistic, self-involved characters because I was watching Anderson’s carefully constructed little world, and if the darker/foreign people were always a little goofy, and not really treated all that well by the main characters, well, that’s alright, right? His world, his prerogative, and all that. Besides, the soundtracks were so great!

Following upon the stunning artistic and commercial success of “The Last Legion” (1, 2, UB40), co-stars Sir Ben and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan have agreed to team up again, this time as Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal. Colin Firth is rumored to be considering the role of Aurangzeb .

My fans will watch me in anything because I am TMBWITW

The casting of Sir Ben is, in my mind, absolutely perfect. Shah Jahan’s marriage to Mumtaz at 19 has become a symbol of eternal love. Sir Ben also is a man who never stopped believing in love, having married his fourth wife at age 63, after the following:

“three failed marriages, four children by two different wives, a long-term live-in lover who was replaced by wife No 3 (also nearly half his age), whom he then jettisoned after discovering her embracing her lover in a photograph on the internet in 2005.” [Link]

Shah Jahan built a giant marble tomb to house his wife’s remains, as if she was a figure from ancient Egypt. Sir Ben feels the same way about wife #4:

“Daniela is like an ancient mythological princess. She has great deep dignity. She moves like an ocean liner…” [Link]

The following two paragraphs from A.O. Scott encapsulate pretty well why I’m not rushing out to see The Darjeeling Limited:

“The Darjeeling Limited” amounts finally to a high-end, high-toned tourist adventure. I don’t mean this dismissively; it would be hypocritical of me to deny the delights of luxury travel to faraway lands. And Mr. Anderson’s eye for local color — the red-orange-yellow end of the spectrum in particular — is meticulous and admiring.

But humanism lies either beyond his grasp or outside the range of his interests. His stated debt to “The River,” Jean Renoir’s film about Indian village life, and his use of music from the films of Satyajit Ray represent both an earnest tribute to those filmmakers and an admission of his own limitations. They were great directors because they extended the capacity of the art form to comprehend the world that exists. He is an intriguing and amusing director because he tirelessly elaborates on a world of his own making. (link)

Are people planning to stand in line for this one? I’m not; after four quirky films (and one amusing AmEx commercial), I’m bored of Wes Anderson’s whole approach to filmmaking, which I call “quirky for quirky’s sake.” It’s not that quirky is always bad; I found Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, for instance, pretty compelling — and that was a damn quirky film. But I often feel like Wes Anderson’s approach to filmmaking is to simply think, “wouldn’t it be funny if the old Indian manservant stabbed Bill Murray with a pen-knife at this point?” And then do it, just for the excitement that comes with absurdity.

And as much as I was intrigued by Anderson’s use of Waris Ahluwalia in The Life Aquatic (he’s credited in Darjeeling Limited as well), the non-speaking part in that film made the striking Ahluwalia into a sort of exotic turbaned curiosity. Ahluwalia’s role in Spike Lee’s Inside Man, though brief, was much more provocative and engaging. Even if audiences didn’t sympathize with Ahluwalia’s character as much as one would have liked, at least that role led to a meaningful reaction.

Incidentally, there is another travel film with India as a destination coming out. Though from the review, Outsourced does seem to flirt a bit with cliches, I’m much more interested in it than I am in Darjeeling at present.

Gabbar Singh: You have a lot of strength left in your arms, don’t you? Remember what you said to me that day? ‘These aren’t arms, they’re your noose’. Look at you now, the noose has opened! You still have alot of strength in your arms, don’t you? Give me your arms, Thakur.

Gabbar Singh: How do you plan to fight me Thakur? I’ve long cut off, and discarded, your arms.
Thakur Baldev Singh: One uses their feet to crush a snake Gabbar, not the hands. [imdb]

The highest grossing Bollywood film ever, and still one of the best, is the 1975 film Sholay. [Film synopsis.]

As a boy, my favorite part of the film was the (original) ending, where Thakur Baldev Singh confronts his nemesis, the dacoit Gabbar Singh. The Thakur has no arms, Gabbar Singh having cut them earlier, but he still manages to fight and kill Gabbar Singh using just his feet.

It’s perfect bolly. The scene rings true emotionally, but makes little sense as a fight. I mean, who could believe a man with no arms could defeat somebody who was built like Amjad Khan? Clearly I was overly skeptical:

Snelville, Georgia police are investigating whether William Russell Redfern, who has no arms, may have caused the death of his neighbor after head-butting and kicking him in a fight.

… Elliot said the armless man attacked her brother. “They got into a big confrontation, a verbal confrontation and a fist fight and he came after my brother, he came with full force, and head butted him as hard as he could,” said Elliot. [Link, via 3V]

OK, head butting somebody until they have a heart attack lacks the potent symbolism of killing them by “trampling him with spike-soled shoes” but it seems that the movie was more “realistic” than I had thought.

Film clips of the fight on the other side of the fold.

As brown people we constantly urge greater authenticity in fiction films about brownistan. But authenticity comes at a price, as the producers of The Kite Runner movie have found out as some people are alleging that it may endanger the life of one of the main actors in the film. [SPOILER ALERT]

The novel The Kite Runner was written by an Afghani-American from Fremont about two boys growing up in Kabul: a wealthier child (the protagonist) and his servant who is also his best friend.

The producers of the movie went out of their way to try to make the movie as authentic as possible. They filmed in nearby Kashgar (in China, for security reasons), filmed in the vernacular, and they tried to use mainly local kids.

The problem comes because a critical scene in the novel involves a rape, in particular the rape of the protagonist’s best friend. This made the father of the actor playing the best friend uneasy:

“When I told them I would not let Ahmad Khan take part in this film, they said: ‘We won’t film that scene’,” … [the father] says. [Link]

However, what the producers did was to shoot the scene without showing very much:

Because this key scene was filmed in a non-explicit way, it seems that at the time Ahmad’s father did not even realise it had happened. I called up one of The Kite Runner’s producers, Rebecca Yeldham, in Los Angeles… “The scene contains no nudity. It’s rendered in a very sort of impressionistic way. But it’s also important in being faithful to that story - that there’s no confusions that the attack in the alley that took place on that child was a sexual violation…” [Link]

This past weekend I ended up seeing the Jodie Foster movie, The Brave One, which co-stars Naveen Andrews of Lost fame. Was the movie any good? Well no, not really, but that is what you get when you ignore the all-powerful tomato meter. The synopsis of the flick is as follows:

For Erica Bain (Jodie Foster), the streets of New York are both her home and her livelihood. She shares the sounds and the stories of her beloved city with her radio audience as the host of the show “Street Walk.” At night, she goes home to the love of her life, her fiancé David Kirmani (Naveen Andrews). But everything Erica knows and loves is ripped from her on one terrible night when she and David are ambushed in a random, vicious attack that leaves David dead and Erica close to it.

Though Erica’s broken body heals, deeper wounds remain—the devastation of losing David and, even more overwhelming, a suffocating fear that haunts her every step. The city streets she had once loved to roam, even places that had been warm and familiar, now feel strange and threatening.

When the fear finally becomes too much to bear, Erica makes a fateful decision to arm herself against it. The gun in her hand becomes a tangible way to protect herself from an intangible enemy…or so she thinks. [Link]

As a couple, Foster and Andrews have zero chemistry. The one brief “sex scene” between them actually made me want to vomit (for reasons that are all too obvious if you watch the film). Still, my companion to the film noted that Andrews’ character was not exoticized in any way. The fact that he was desi was barely even acknowledged in the film. In fact, the only two references I caught included one quip about his mother worrying about the wedding invitations and a “Mughal” ring which served as an engagement ring and was pertinent to the plot of the story. So, even though the movie kind of sucked, I found it really refreshing that a desi actor was cast to play a character that was not required to “act Indian.” Unless you count the fact that he plays a doctor.

There is one other little coincidence (planned??) worthy of pointing out. The soundtrack to The Brave One features the luscious voice of Sarah McLaughlin at various points throughout the movie. She is married to a brown dude too. I’m just saying.

Longtime Mutineer Desi Dude in Austin left a tip on our news tab, which immediately got my attention:

Rajnikath don’t need no Fair and Lovely…not when he has 25 CGI artists lighten his complexion frame-by-frame for a song-and-dance sequence in his latest sambaar-mix potboiler Sivaji.

Say what?! I neither know nor care about either Sivaji the fillum or its rotund ishtar, but following the link DDiA left took me here:

If you have watched Sivaji..You have observed the fair complexion of Rajinikanth in the song Oru koodai Sunlight.Everyone thought it was make-up that made Superstar Rajinikanth look like a European in that song, but the secret is something else. [Naachgaana]

Yindeed, the secret is far more time-consuming and technologically advanced than some pancake from Max Faktor.

The secret of actor Rajinikanth’s ‘white’ tan in the song sequence “Style” in the ‘Sivaji’ was not the result of any fairness cream or cosmetic touch-up but an entire year of Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) work by city-based firm Indian Arts.

The colour tone of one of the U.K.-based dancers in the background of the song was used to turn up the tone of the actor, frame by frame. The post-production for the 6,000 plus frames took a year to complete, as computer graphics artists from Indian Arts toiled to make Rajinikanth the “Vellai Tamizhan”. [The Hindu]

According to the article from our new tab, a total of 6,700 frames were painstakingly altered, to give the second-highest paid actor in Asia skin as pale as the complexion of one of his Gori backup dancers. Okay, that sentence was awkward as kundi. I’ll just quote something, instead, yes?

Vanaja is an art film, which is to say, the director, Rajnesh Domalpalli, doesn’t come out of the “Tollywood” world of commercial Telugu cinema (he actually has an M.F.A. from Columbia, and the script for this film was submitted as his Master’s Thesis). Domalpalli’s primary actors are nearly all amateurs — people he found on the street. Carnatic music and Kuchipudi dance play important, but not overwhelming, roles in the film, and even there, it appears the actors actually spent months training in these rigorous arts.

This is a film about caste and class relations in a village setting, but Domalpalli doesn’t take the familiar route seen in many other films about village life (i.e., villagers are exploited, landowners are inherently evil). Here, the rich people, though they do not always behave sympathetically, are as human and complex as Vanaja herself. I don’t want to get too bogged down in plot, but suffice it to say that the romance in the film follows a surprising course.

Throughout, Domalpalli pays very close attention to details, including sets and staging, and the result is a film that feels very natural, yet is full of visual pleasures. The colors are rich, though not unrealistically so, and the acting is much better than one would expect from an all-amateur cast and a novice director.

I’m very curious to know how this film might be received in India, in particular in Andhra Pradesh. Unlike the films of, say, Deepa Mehta, who I’ve now come to feel makes her movies primarily for western audiences, Domalpalli’s Vanaja might actually be popular with Desi viewers. (My mother-in-law, who is visiting us from Bombay, liked it.)

One other thing, since Anna (rightly) wants us ignorant northies to learn a bit more about South Indian culture, the set of cymbals on the right side of the photo above is called a Nattuvangam. (The word of the day is Nattuvangam. Say it. Good.) Though I’m a little confused, because this site defines Nattuvangam a little differently; I gather that “Nattuvangam” refers both to the cymbals and to the act of conducting the dance by playing the cymbals?

On our News tab, Haldiram writes:

Noureen DeWulf (of “Americanizing Shelley”) is featured in a new spoof of sports movies (a la ‘Not Another Teen Movie’) called “The Comebacks” - while she plays a football player (who wears part of her sari over her uniform in one shot??) her character’s name (why do people think confusing American Indians and South Asian Indians is funny?) and the other bizarre scenes in the preview do not make one optimistic. Time will tell if it’s another Harold & Kumar-like breakthrough - or just offensive.

In The Comebacks, Noureen plays Jizminder Featherfoot.

Wow.

There are so many things wrong with that character’s name, my head is paining. But it gets better— they don’t just mash up Native Americans with desis; one scene depicts faux athletes training…while Jizminder gyrates like a belly dancer, up on a platform.

Maybe I am getting anxious about further filmy humiliation for no reason. Over at WorstPreviews, they don’t even mention Noureen/Jizminder, despite her memorably madcap adventures on the field, during which she tackles someone while wearing her helmet AND a chunni!

Eh, what am I so upset about…East is all East, right? Aladdin, turbans, Ayatollahs, Jasmine, Ali Baba, Taj Mahal. I wonder, since we’re conflating everything, could we claim Esther as one of our own? I have always loved her. Persian, Indian…close enough. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must wrap up this post. I’m running late— I was supposed to bhangra outside my teepee, for no discernible reason, a full hour ago.

The trailer’s been out for a few weeks but I figured that perhaps a few Mutineer’s haven’t had a chance to check it out quite yet. So, true to my culture beat of late, I now present the trailer for Harold & Kumar part deux -

My take?

Time magazine asked mostly-desi* actor Krishna Bhanji ten reader-submitted questions in their August 13th issue; on their website, there were several more “online extras”. I picked the eleven most mutinous inquiries for you to procrastinate with— the entire interview is on their website, where incidentally (for all my fellow Lego-lovers) this Picture of the Week should inspire smiles. Now let’s get back on topic and learn about the actor who, for better or worse, is part of every ABD’s childhood.

1. What do you look for in a role? —Catherine Raymond, BELLINGHAM, WASH.

I look for the echo inside me. Maybe we’re all born with our future coiled up inside us like a spring, and we just unravel this coiled spring and work it out. I’m sorry if this sounds a bit bizarre. I’m trying so hard not to be pretentious because I’m always called pompous and pretentious.

First Gandhi-related inquiry:

2. How would Gandhi play the role of Ben Kingsley? —Mills Chapman, VILLANOVA, PA.

He was an astonishingly quick and witty judge of character, so I bet he could have done a very good impersonation of me.

3. Would you change anything about your acting career? —Grant Curtiss, ST. PETERSBURG, FLA.

No. It’s a bit like The Butterfly Effect, that amazing science-fiction novel, where if you go back and alter one molecule of your past, the present that you’re enjoying will disintegrate.

4. Have you ever felt compelled to pursue any political issues? —Ross Davenport, PERTH, AUSTRALIA

I’m only strong as a storyteller. I’m not strong as a politician. Hopefully, with my journeys around the world, having visited the Pakistan earthquake zone, a girls’ school in Afghanistan and some refugee camps in the Palestinian areas, then I’ll be stronger as an actor at choosing the right kind of material.

What’s in a name?

5. Why did you change your name (from Krishna Bhanji)? —Andrew Lawrence, FAIRFIELD, CONN.

It was a way of getting to my first audition. My dad [who is Indian] was completely behind it. My first name, Ben, is my dad’s nickname. My second name, Kingsley, comes from my grandfather’s nickname, which was King Clove. He was a spice trader. It’s a bit late to change it back now.

Also out in the U.S. this week: Anupama Chopra’s King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema. As the title suggests, King of Bollywood is a full-length book meant for a general readership, looking back at the life and career of Shah Rukh Khan — aka, the “Badshah”. Chopra traces the various changes in the Bombay film industry in the 1990s, and argues that Shah Rukh is in many ways the face of the new, Yuppified, transnational Bollywood. From earlier conversations on SM, I know that some readers are a bit sick of Shah Rukh, though I would argue that Amitabh Bachchan has been far more over-exposed in the past few years (Shah Rukh has been only doing about one movie a year). The question Chopra is interested in isn’t “is Shah Rukh Khan a great actor,” it’s “how and why has Shah Rukh been such a success in the Bombay film industry given his outsider status?”

Derived nearly entirely from face-to-face interviews, there’s a lot of factual material about Shah Rukh Khan in Chopra’s book that I didn’t know — and I suspect that all but the most diehard fans won’t know most of it either.

As many readers probably already know, actor Sanjay Dutt was just sentenced to six years ‘rigorous imprisonment’ for possessing illegal weapons, including an AK-56. Last winter, he was cleared on more serious terrorism/conspiracy charges relating to the Bombay blasts of 1993. My first thought was, oh well — no Munnabhai 3, I guess. (Or, who knows? Intezar karo, Munnabhai?)

But then there are more serious questions — one might be, is it really a fair sentence? Readers, what do you think?

In my view, even if, it’s legally a reasonable sentence, Sanju does have an explanation for owning a weapon in 1993. For one thing, as a film star (and as the son of two very famous actors), his family was a target for the criminal underworld; I’m sure he wasn’t the only one to have these kinds of weapons in his possession at the time. Secondly, as of 1992/3, the Dutts were also apparently getting regular death threats from communalists following their humanitarian work on behalf of Muslims in the areas affected by the 1992 riots. Given the total lawlessness in Bombay at the time as well as his family’s own prominence, both on screen and in politics, one can understand what he might have been thinking.

On YouTube, you can watch a BBC Channel 4 Documentary on Sanju, called Sanjay Dutt: To Hell and Back, that talks about the Dutt family, Sanjay’s troubled youth (did I mention he was a heroin addict in the 1980s?), and the events surrounding the trial. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. (Part 2 is the section that deals the most with the events leading up to the arrest.)

I also think the fact that Dutt has had this trial hanging over his head for fourteen years is pretty severe punishment in itself. While I respect the court’s judgment, today I feel bad for Sanju. The Bollywood actor who should really be in jail is probably Salman Khan: Sanjay Dutt may have been a bad boy, but at least he never killed anyone, eh? (Ok, allegedly killed anyone.)

One of the Christian Science Monitor’s reporters recently caught a showing of the apparently eagerly awaited film “Khuda ke Liye (In the Name of God)” in Lahore:

Why would I drive 4-1/2 hours to see a Pakistani movie?…

The film is being hailed in some segments of Pakistani society as the most important cinematic event in memory…

As the title suggests, the movie is about Islam and the battle between two polarized groups - modernized elites carrying the banner of “enlightened moderation” and radicals with their “jihad” - both had claims to the religion…

For many Pakistanis - or at least those in this theater - the movie offers an explanation for the unrest around them.

“I had been dying to see this movie,” Sara Malik, a 17-year-old student, dressed in jeans and a powder-pink T-shirt told me after the movie. “It’s an amazing story, because it explains what really happens behind things like the Lal Masjid [Red Mosque],” she said, with nods of agreement by nearby school friends. The violent weeklong battle between religious militants and the Pakistan Army this month in Islamabad was unnerving for the entire country and unlike anything the youth of the country had ever witnessed. [Link]

A synopsis of the movie, about musician brothers caught up in a post September 11th world, can be found on the film’s website. Adding to the local relevancy of the film (as mentioned by the young woman above) was the recent Lal Masjid siege (a.k.a. Operation Sunrise) against the militant Ghazi brothers:

Abdul Rashid Ghazi of the Red Mosque, for example, made one of his last anti-vice stands against the release of “In the Name of God.” Mr. Ghazi called the movie blasphemous and anti-Islamic. “We won’t allow this,” he warned the government earlier this month.

Ghazi was killed a few days after uttering those words at the hands of the Pakistani military, and the movie is now showing all over the Punjab province, the Pakistan Army’s stronghold, in the city of Karachi the financial capital, and a few well-to-do surrounding towns in Sindh. It is unlikely to make its way west to the provinces bordering Afghanistan and Iran. The uncensored movie is not only likely to be rejected by the provincial governments led by Islamist parties, but also by the Pashtun and Baluchi tribes themselves, who are portrayed as violent, cunning, and chauvinistic religious fanatics in the movie. [Link]

Though some were quick to declare a flop, Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart is actually pretty good. There are strong performances and interesting characters, and a sense of suspense in the plot that took me by surprise. The standout from my point of view is Irfan Khan’s performance as a fictional pseudonymous Pakistan CID investigator, who pursues Danny Pearl’s kidnappers with a strong sense of purpose and efficiency. Irfan, whom we last saw in The Namesake has a certain presence about him; when he’s on, he owns the screen. (Angelina Jolie also gives a surpsisingly compelling performance.)

Politically, the film does give the wonks out there some interesting bits to chew on. Perhaps the most interesting issue that came up was the obvious schizophrenia within Pakistan’s government in January 2002, during the 10 days of Pearl’s kidnapping. The Pakistan Interior Minister at one point flat-out tells Mariane Pearl (played by Angelina Jolie) that Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping is an Indian plot to discredit Pakistan’s ISI (I haven’t confirmed whether this actually happened or not). Meanwhile, other Pakistani officials are much more helpful in the investigation; even Musharraf, whose televised statements are replayed in fragments in the film, seems to be on the ball.

Visually, the film has a strong desi feel. Most of the exterior shots were done on location in Karachi — which looks suitably chaotic and lively — while the interior shooting was done in Pune, Maharashtra. Also, something like 1/3 of the dialogue is in Hindi/Urdu, which might be a draw in itself. (There’s even a little joke about ABD accents at one point.)

I’m not terribly bothered by Asra Nomani’s criticisms of the film, which seem mostly personal: she wants the film to be a portrait of her friend Danny Pearl, while the filmmakers decided to make a film mainly about his kidnapping and the investigation that followed. Nor am I particularly up in arms about the fact that Angelina Jolie, who is white, is here playing Mariane Pearl, who is biracial (her father is Dutch and her mother is Cuban). For me, the criterion is believability, not finding a direct racial match. (See criticisms of Jolie’s casting at Racewire: here and here)

In fact, my biggest objection to the film was the way it glossed over the apparent use of torture in the investigation of Pearl’s kidnappers. It’s especially jarring given that the message of the film is the urgency of the need to propagate a sense of shared humanity across political and cultural divides. The film seems aware of the torture question — there are montage references to the statements that Pearl’s kidnapping is retribution for the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay — but it doesn’t actually take a stand on it. For me, that doesn’t work: either we support the use of torture, or we are against it.

Okay, not sure how many of you are watching Fox’s kinda awful reality show “The Lot” right now, but I have to say, I’m actually glad I am. One of you let us know that our girl Shalini is up this week. This time, Shalini had to make a comedy, in just five days. Since she’s more of a documentary/serious filmmaker, this quite understandably freaked her out. However, once I saw the montage of her having trouble directing her short and then heard one of her actors disparage her, I knew she must have done a brilliant job, since that’s how transparent these stupid shows are.

Shalini’s film is called “Dr-in-law” and it made me do that “LOL”-thing those whippersnappers are always exclaiming. It really is funny— and extra awesome because the two main characters are both Asian…and neither of them are the doctor. I don’t require it, but if I can see myself in or otherwise relate to a piece of art, it’s that much more precious. Somewhere, a put-upon brown kid dreams of doing what she shot. ;)

Anyway, when the show is over, it will be time to vote— and if I’m not mistaken, there is just a two hour window after “The Lot” airs in your time zone in which to do so. Shalini went first, so her phone number will end in “01” (and isn’t that fortuitous? I always feel like numbers ending in “01” are superior, but I’m fobulous like that)…but who uses a phone these days, if there’s a way to do something online? What, you like your phone? Fine, dial 1-88-The Lot-01.

Some of us may be skeptical about Shalini’s skills, but compare her work to second, third and fourth the rest of the films in the competition (which, except for the last one, were all kinds of lame), and it’s hard to dismiss her talent; I found myself cheering at the TV repeatedly for the brown girl in the ring. It’s also hard to dismiss her glittery make-up, which inspired the title of this post. Feel free to discuss it (or her film, even) below.

Just a little nudge to remind you that Fox’s “The Lot” is on at 8/7c tonight; I wrote about it last week and judging from the 200+ strong comment thread, you might want to tune in for yourself. It’s an otherwise awful reality show, but its one bright spot is contestant Shalini Kantayya, a filmmaker we’ve received many tips about— and for good reason.

Shalini came to India in 2001 when she made her first feature on the Kumbh Mela. The Fulbright scholar wanted to make a movie that connected her to her motherland. Raised in America by a single mother, she was in search of her roots. She has also just made a film with Nandita Das.

“My love for visual storytelling also became integrated with my love for human rights. I always considered myself a humanist and was always inspired by stories of ordinary people who overcome seemingly insurmountable hardships. Filmmaking is not just my profession; it’s my calling,” [link]

Last week, Shalini created a brief, moving film about a gay South Asian comedian named Vidur Kapur, who is based in New York. His take:

“We filmed the entire short in one day. It was exhausting but we had incredible chemistry working together and a lot of fun,” he says. “She’s very organised and hardworking, yet sensitive and compassionate.” [link]

To me supporting Shalini is about more than rooting for the brown girl in the ring. I appreciate the themes she is moved by:

Vidur is very positive about this film that goes beyond being an entry for On The Lot. “It’s important to generate awareness and acceptance as Asians in the USA. A movie like this is so important to get people to question their beliefs and assumptions,” Vidur adds. “Besides, my manager believes Shalini and I should be nominated for a GLAAD media award for this movie.” [link]

Even if you’re on the fence about her, consider this— wouldn’t you rather see her survive another round? If you’re not impressed at all, I’m not telling you that you should VOTE BROWN; I don’t think anyone on this site is about that kind of blind, unexamined loyalty. But if you’re not sure…what’s the harm in seeing more of what she’s got?

This is going to be the sloppiest, most rushed entry I’ve ever posted, but that’s because I’m so excited about what I just saw, I want to get the information to you sooner vs. later. I can edit after I publish, damnit.

There’s a show we have received several tips about— “The Lot”. We keep hearing about it because it has a desi contestant named Shalini Kantayya:

ON THE LOT, executive-produced by Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg, will give aspiring filmmakers from around the world the chance to earn a $1-million development deal at DreamWorks.

Premiering on May 22 and airing twice a week throughout the summer on FOX, this reality-competition series features a cast of undiscovered filmmakers who will compete to win the support of the show’s viewers, as their fate will be decided by a weekly audience vote…

Every week, the hopeful filmmakers will produce short films from a chosen genre, running the gamut from comedies to thrillers, dramas to romance, action to horror. They’ll have access to the best resources the industry has to offer — professional writers, cast and crew, and maybe even Hollywood celebrities. [link]

I usually don’t get home until about now, so I knew I wouldn’t get to watch it and that’s why I promptly forgot about it— until tonight, when I was channel-surfing because I’m sick and on the couch. Once I heard that of the 15 finalists, five would be featured tonight, I stuck around to see if the brown girl would be in the ring…and she was.

Despite being high on codeine and everything else in my virus-wracked system, I sat up for the first time all day because THIS GIRL IS TALENTED. No wonder they plucked her out of a pool of 12,000 applicants from all over the world.

I’m not typing that because she’s brown— she had the BEST FILM OF THE NIGHT and Michael Bay, the guest judge who directed “Transformers”, agrees with me.

Here’s the thing: there’s but a wee two-hour window in which to vote for true awesomeness (dial 1-88-Thelot-05 or click the next link to show your love online). You can vote as many times as you’d like (handy “Vote” button is highlighted in yellow) AND you can view Shalini’s 3-minute clip yourselves— I think once you do, you’ll be cheering her on as effusively as I am, though you won’t sound like a frog while doing it.

By now, even the Grey Lady knows about Provoked, the new Jag Mundhra biopic starring TMBWITW as Kiranjit Ahluwalia and Naveen Andrews as her abusive husband. The actual story behind the movie is a horrific one:

Ahluwalia arrived in Britain in 1979 from India, aged 24, following an arranged marriage… Deepak immediately began to abuse her. ” … He would push me about, yank my hair, hit me and drop heavy pans on my feet…” Deepak also raped her frequently, telling her that this was his right.

[After 10 years, in 1989] One night, when she had gone to sleep after cooking Deepak’s dinner, he woke her up and demanded money. When she refused, he tried to break her ankles by twisting them. He then picked up a hot iron and held it to her face. Eventually Deepak fell asleep and Ahluwalia was consumed with the rage she had suppressed for 10 years. Approaching him with a can of petrol, she poured it over Deepak’s feet and set them alight… [Link]

Originally convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, her case was taken up by the Asian advocacy group Southall Black Sisters (SBS) who found her new counsel and sought a retrial.

Following a campaign, led by SBS, Ahluwalia’s conviction was quashed on appeal in 1992. The court accepted some new evidence … [and] Ahluwalia admitted manslaughter at the retrial…

Ahluwalia’s successful appeal against her murder conviction set a historic precedent - that women who kill as a result of severe domestic violence should not be treated as cold-blooded murderers. As Ahluwalia says, “I never intended to kill him, I just wanted him to stop hurting me…” [Link]

Ahluwalia became a cause celebre, a household name who was later honored in an unusual ceremony that included both Cherie Blair and Spice Girl Mel B.

As usual with biopics, there is some controversy over the liberties taken in the process of making the movie. The director is entirely unapologetic:

The director ‘Jag’ Jagmohan Mundhra in his defence said “Even if you tell a true story, a true story is never really a true story. How do you define the truth? None of us were really there and obviously the recollections of people who were there have changed now. Ultimately I do have to tell an engaging story. If I can’t tell an engaging story no matter what cause is at stake, nobody will see it…” [Link]

Once upon a time Indian cinema could rest secure in the loyalty of its large domestic base. Even if Indian audiences didn’t always like local movies, they were unlikely to defect to American (or other foreign) movies. However, this is all changing, as Hollywood sets its sights on the domestic Indian movie market:

… only a few years ago, Hollywood films warranted only about 100 prints, and if there were dubbed versions, they were often released after the English-language version finished its run. The tactic made most Indian moviegoers feel like second-class citizens …

The turning point, experts say, was last year, when some 400 prints of the James Bond film “Casino Royale” were released in India - including three versions in Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu - simultaneously with the global debut. [Link]

In 2005, foreign films had only around 5% of the $1 billion dollars in theater tickets sold in India each year. However, Hollywood profits are now growing at 35% per year as they aggressively roll out dubbed movies as part of a global release. Despite Bollywood’s size (more people buy tickets to Bollywood films than Hollywood ones, world wide), it doesn’t have Hollywood’s deep pockets:

Movie tickets in many part of India cost $1, meaning Bollywood’s global revenues are about 2 percent of Hollywood’s, says Mr. Bose. “Hollywood can spend 8 percent of its normal marketing budget for a film and get the same amount of exposure as a top Hindi film,” says Sanjay Ram of BusinessofCinema.com in Mumbai.

The most lavish Bollywood films rarely cost more than $10 million. “Spider-Man 3” is thought to have cost $260 million. [Link]

The new release of Spiderman3 has local moguls scared:

The film opened to Rs 19.17 crore on it’s opening weekend in India, making it a likely contender for the highest earning film of 2007 — Indian or otherwise. [Link]

“Spider-Man 3” has already been blamed for taking the momentum from one of the few major Hindi releases this year, “Ta Ra Rum Pum” (“Don’t Worry, Be Happy”). [Link]

Sequels to “Shrek”, “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Harry Potter” are all also due out later this summer.

A Son’s Sacrifice is a 27-minute documentary about a halal slaughterhouse in Ozone Park, Queens, run by a Bangladeshi immigrant and his son, Riaz and Imran Uddin; the film, by Israeli-American Yoni Brook and Kashmiri-American Musa Syeed, who met while studying at NYU Film School, has just won Best Documentary Short at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. Beyond the clear Ibrahim/Abrahamic allusion, the title refers to son Imran’s decision, at age 27 and holding a degree in communications from Clark University, to return to Queens and take over the family business. From an article in the Queens Times-Ledger:

The film is not just about a live meat market, according to its makers. It is a metaphor for the immigrant experience. Brook described the proliferation of live markets in and around New York City as an act of defiance against assimilation. It is an opportunity for immigrants to allow their American-born progeny to experience directly the culture of home by witnessing halal ritual slaughter.

I don’t know that I’d call that “defiance against assimilation” — it might just be evidence of a different kind of assimilation or, since the whole idea of “assimilation” is both so imprecise and so loaded, maybe we should just be talking about the constant process of formation of metropolitan culture in the era of globalization. In any event, the film earned an item in yesterday’s New York Times, in which the reporter visits the slaughterhouse:

“When circumstances throw an American country boy and a Himalayan village belle together, the ‘apple pie’ gets a smattering of ‘masala,’ only to prove that ‘You Can’t Curry Love!’”

That’s from the official synopsis of a film called Americanizing Shelley that’s being released this weekend. It’s a production of something called American Pride Films, and stars Namrata Singh Gujral. It had its premiere at the Nashville Film Festival (wonderfully known as NAFF) a couple of weeks ago. Here’s the trailer:

In the video post here, Michelle Malkin endorses the film, describing a scene that is “highly unpopular in HollyWeird” and says that “for once, it will be worth shelling out the big bucks… to support a movie that supports America.” According to this website, the film is “riling the hate-America brigade.” It interviews Singh Gujral, who says she’s “not a political person,” although as Vinod noted here two years ago, she’s certainly been, er, honored in a political setting. As for the early reviews, the LA Weekly calls the film “minor but sweet,” while the Washington Post dismisses it for “embarrassingly low-rent production values.” Finally, although the film appears made for the mainstream U.S. commercial market, Variety opines that “screenwriter and star Namrata Singh Gujral will probably find her most appreciative aud among young Indian moviegoers who want something outside the arthouse.” Your thoughts?

Ravi Kishan, Voice of Spidey

Though Hollywood films currently only take a modest slice of the Indian film market, Hollywood studios are working harder than ever to “colonize” Indian film audiences. The latest strategy is to move past Hindi dubbing — and release films dubbed in regional languages as well as Hindi.

This is the fruition of a long process of evolution, beginning with the “unofficial” dubs back in the day. Then, as more Hollywood films were being released in India, blockbuster films started getting officially dubbed — the peak of which might have been last year’s hugely successful Hindi version of Night at the Museum (Museum Ke Andar Phans Gaya Sikander, which is actually much catchier than the non-rhyming western title). And the Hindi release of The Incredibles also made waves a couple of years ago, when it was announced that the “dad” character’s voice was going to be dubbed by Shah Rukh Khan.

Now, Spiderman 3 is getting the official dubbing treatment — in Bhojpuri. The Bhojpuri film industry is the fastest growing segment of India’s different, language-based film markets. Last year, 76 Bhojpuri films were released, which is still less than other languages (245 Telugu films; 225 Hindi films), but with a captive audience of 100 million+ Bhojpuri speakers in UP and Bihar, the fan base is vast.

Here Spidey’s voice is being dubbed by Ravi Kishan (pictured right), a “Bhojywood” superstar responsible for hits like Panditji Batayie Mera Byah Kab Hoi. The budget for the dubbing alone was $250,000 (Rs. 1 Crore), which is about three times the entire budget for a regular Bhojpuri film, and Ravi Kishan says he spent 12 days doing it (on his normal films, he normally does all vocal dubbing in a single day).

Kishan seems to have a sense of humor about his dubbing work:

“No, this isn’t a nightmare. I’m dubbing for ‘Spiderman’ in Bhojpuri.”

The last such film from Hollywood to be dubbed in India by a star was “The Incredibles” in which Shah Rukh Khan gave voice to the main character.

“Well they don’t call me the Shah Rukh of Bhojpuri cinema for nothing. I’m doing this because I wanted my Bhojpuri fans to enjoy ‘Spiderman’ in the voice that they love - mine!

“Wait till they hear me saying ‘Hum makad manav hain, ud kar aayab aur tohar tetuwa dabaa deb’ (I’m Spiderman, I’ll fly to you and throttle you).” (link)

Well, at least he’s not shy about it.

Last week I was standing in a bookstore, looking for something trashy and utterly mindless to buy. I picked up Deborah Rodriguez’s “Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil.” and read the first chapter, which was around all I could handle.

I realize that I was far from the target audience for such a book. I’ve never had a haircut in my life, and I’ve never been to a spa. I’m not a very sympathetic audience for stories about how the women of Kabul felt better inside because they felt more glamorous outside (well, inside their burkas). Furthermore, I am a guy, and this was a tremendously girly book:

When Deborah Rodriguez arrived in Kabul in 2002 as part of a charitable aid mission, what she saw appalled her… It was a land of bad haircuts, poorly applied makeup and no styling gel. To Rodriguez, a Michigan hairdresser with a can-do attitude, task No. 1 was obvious: get these poor people some beauty salons. [Link]

Despite my lack of personal experience with the topic, I was willing to suspend disbelief and work with the book’s basic premise, namely:

…hairdressing … is one of the few truly viable options for would-be female Afghan entrepreneurs. There’s a huge demand for such services, as many Afghan women sport elaborate hair and makeup styles under their burqas. At the same time, it’s work that can be done entirely in female company - a necessity in a segregated society. [Link]

My problem was not the subject but the condescending tone of the book. It was “City of Joy” meets “Steel Magnolias,” the usual story of somebody in the first world who finds their calling “helping” people in the third world, where the only purpose of the poor and unfortunate is to serve as a backdrop to the protagonist’s journey.

For example, the opening chapter tells of “Roshanna,” a friend who had been raped and thus was no longer a virgin. Roshanna was terrified of her wedding night, when eager crowds await a bloody rag — the telltale sign of virginity.

Ms. Rodriguez sprung into action, whipping out nail clippers, cutting her finger, dripping blood on a handkerchief and instructing Roshanna to place it under a cushion. When the time came, she could swap it with another one. The next morning, she writes: “When I rush into the hallway, I see that Roshanna’s mother is wailing for joy. ‘Virgin!’ she shouts at me triumphantly, waving the handkerchief stained with my blood. ‘Virgin!’ “… [Link]

C’mon now. Afghan women have never figured out how to fool their husbands with chicken blood after thousands of years? It took a spunky hairdresser from Michigan with a can do attitude to come up with this? Roshanna’s mother didn’t help her, and was even fooled by the simple deception? As if!

When I was younger, I was always jealous of the other Asian kids. Why? Because they had kick-ass unarmed martial arts. A Chinese kid could say “Hey, don’t mess with me - I know Kung Fu like Bruce Lee!” What was I going to say in response - “Well, I know Ahimsa like Gandhi?”

And it wasn’t just the Chinese kids. If you were Korean, you could say you knew TaeKwanDo. If you were Japanese, obviously you could claim to know Karate. Sure, India does have martial arts like gatka, wrestling, and Kalaripayattu but nobody had heard of those and I couldn’t even pronounce “Kalaripayattu.”

In fact, the physical activity that India is most known for is Yoga. I like Yoga but it’s not very macho, and how on earth are you going to use it to defend yourself?

In fact, this amazingly paneer filled clip from Yoga vs. Kung Fu is the only time I’ve seen Yoga used in a movie to beat somebody up:

[Yes, it’s dubbed into French. IMHO, that just makes it all better.]

You shoot better when you realize that your soul is a leaf falling through time, and that work shouldn’t equal struggle. And yoga never aligns you with the universe better than when your forearm is still tingling from the buck and recoil of a .357 bullpup.
Someone needs to open a combination shooting range and yoga studio. I’m serious. Maybe I should do it. Hose off a few clips of Glaser safety slugs, then see how deep you can go into Warrior II. The murder rate would go down. No, wait — it would stay the same, but people would realize it’s all part of a bigger plan. [Link]

Maybe that’s the best way to make Yoga more effective as a tool for avenging the wrong done to your master - do Yoga softly, but carry a big Dandasana.

Turns out there was not just one, but two desi-related films up for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars this year. I’m talking about Denmark’s After the Wedding, which will be released here in the US next week on March 30 in select cities. Don’t know how I overlooked this one back when the nominees were announced, but the late release date probably explains it.

While many films concerning Westerners in India involve characters going to the motherland to find themselves after going through some sort of a crisis (Shantaram and Darjeeling Limited come to mind), After the Wedding is different. This film deals with the emotional turmoil a Westerner goes through after he leaves India. In After the Wedding, a Danish expat, Jacob, lives in India and runs an orphanage. He also has an adopted son, Pramod, whom he’s raised since infancy. When the orphanage is threatened by closure, Jacob begrudgingly leaves India for Denmark to meet with a businessman, Jørgen, who offers to help keep the orphanage open. Jacob also discovers that a) Jørgen’s wife happens to Jacob’s ex and b) Jørgen’s daughter (gasp!) might actually be his. And so Jacob must now ask himself a difficult question: return to India and his adopted Pramod or stay in Denmark with the biological daughter he’s never known?

You can view the trailer after the jump. Is it just me or does Jacob look like he’s in excellent shape for someone who’s about to face a mid-life crisis?

It is a picture that I imagine many who read this blog have a variation of in one form or another. You know, that image of the the nuclear desi-American family— returned to the sub-Continent for a long (summer) vacation— of mom, dad, brother, sister posing in front of the Taj Mahal. The group is huddled close on that bench hoping for the perfect portrait. And really, how can the picture be bad? That grand marble monument towering in the background, its skewed reflection glimmering in the rectangular pond. Observing that familiar image reflected on the movie screen and understanding that feeling of closeness and comfort of being together in a foreign place, put a big smile on my face, as did most of Mira Nair’s latest film The Namesake.

I know we’ve previously blogged a review of the film, but this was a very personal book for me, I think for most of us. I even made my mom, who doesn’t usually read “English novels” read the book, and she loved it. So I think the movie merits more than just one review. In any case, I’ll do my best not to repeat too many of the things cicatrix mentioned earlier, and promise to stay away from the word timepass. The film was “just too good yar,” to merit the use of the word to describe it.

I find it hard to have high expectations for movies based on books. I have been burned too many times. With that in mind, my expectations for the movie were upward leaning, but not over reaching. I didn’t know how Nair could add visuals to a novel that was for me already so vivid. As the stunning opening credits blurred between Bengali and English, I immediately knew Lahiri’s story was in good hands. Nair and her longtime collaborator Sooni Taraporevala’s treatment stayed true to the novel while also providing an original point of view. Their take does a fine job of including the highlights of the book, but in their attempt to hit all the major points, the movie misses some of the extras that made the story so poignant. (Warning: Spoiler Alert, especially if you haven’t read the book)

The inclusion of the Ashima and Ashoke’s early years was good, but I wanted to see more of their early married life, more of Ashima’s struggle adjusting to life in America. To life without her family. To life without the familiar. I wanted to see her overcome that struggle, and grow into her life in America, as we saw in the novel. I think that is an important part of the story, and not spending enough time on some of these nuances took away from the story’s gravitas. The significance of the late night/early morning phone call for example, how was the audience supposed to know that odd-timed phone calls only meant significant news from India, usually bad?

“I don’t want to raise him in this lonely country,” says Ashima (Tabu), soon after the birth of Gogol Ganguli in Mira Nair’s new movie The Namesake, opening in a limited release today. Based on the critically acclaimed and commercially successful novel of the same name by Jhumpa Lahiri, the movie proves to be a remarkably faithful adaptation. Raise him here, of course, she does, but those words remain a rare break in her composure, a heartfelt expression of homesickness and fear.

For the record, I loved the book, and was rather nervous about how such a tender mood piece - thin on plot and crowded with sensitively drawn characters - could possibly translate onto film. The story of a young Bengali couple, strangers to each other, starting a life together in a foreign country, raising children who might grow up to be strangers to them in turn, vanishing, absorbed into the alien world… the frisson of recognition for almost any South Asian immigrant would be electric, right?

It certainly was to me, as I sat there trembling in my seat, watching the title credits scroll across the screen in a Bangla script that slowly faded to English lettering.

Wow, go Filmiholic — this week she has interviews with both Kal Penn and Jhumpa Lahiri coinciding with the imminent release of The Namesake.

She and Kal Pann actually discuss Sepia Mutiny in Part 1 of their interview, with regards to the SM debate over desis playing terrorists in hollywood, and specifically Kal Penn’s role as a terrorist in a recent episode of 24. I gather he’s sympathetic to the fact that people are having a discussion, but not entirely sympathetic to the “blogging = people yakking at each other endlessly” part:

The point that I was trying to make was that I’m glad that people are discussing it, why I’m glad that people are getting pissed off about it is that I think that one of the things that’s happened since September 11 is we feel like we don’t have control over our representatives in government, especially as people of color, and I think it’s important to take that back.

It’s important to write letters to your Senator, your Congressman, to the guys who are actually voting on the issues that come up fictitiously on 24. The things that happen on 24 are so far-fetched, but there’s an under layer of reality to them that applies to things like the Patriot Act and racial profiling.

These are things that I hope people don’t just blog on Sepia Mutiny and whine their asses off, I hope that they take that a step further and take the passions they explain in those blogs and send a letter to Hillary Clinton, send a letter to whoever your usual rep is and it does have a remarkable effect when you do it as voting block and I hope that it motivates people to take that a step further. (link)

(A little ouch there… two quick responses: first, it should be pointed out that in several instances — Power 99 and Hot 97 come to mind — SM has done a bit more than whine. Second, just watch what we do on the 2008 elections, mofo!)

Anyway, the question stands: on the question of whether to do something like “Van Wilder,” I have to admit I have no idea what I would do in his shoes — how can one make the best out of a rather limited array of options for an Indian-American actor? Especially several years ago, before we had Harold and Kumar, Lost, E.R., and Heroes.

Still, as a counterpoint, I would encourage people to read the recent New Yorker profile of Joel Surnow, the guy behind 24. I was especially disturbed about Surnow’s blithe embrace of the use of torture in the show, contrary to American law and all existing human rights conventions. Once one knows that justifying torture is a pattern in the show — or, put more forcefully, a specific ideology it is promoting — it might be easier to see where to draw the line.

Just when you thought the old geezer couldn’t possibly have any surprises left in the bag, Amitabh Bachchan has walked into a controversy for the part he plays in the new Ram Gopal Varma film Nishabd.

The photo to the right says most of what you need to know. Big B. plays a 60 year old man who falls in love with his daughter’s eighteen-year old friend (played by newcomer Jiah Khan). He’s tortured about it, but it appears that nothing untoward happens between the two of them. Still, his wife finds out, and I gather from reviews that the film after intermission becomes a typical family melodrama — guilt, shame, etc. While the general scenario is roughly similar to Nabokov’s “Lolita,” the story is actually quite different: there’s no abduction, no marriage to and then murder of an inconvenient mother, and no insane cross-country chase involving witty pseudonyms. On the whole, the film seems to be an order of magnitude less twisted than Nabokov. (And that’s probably a relief.)

As for the quality of the film? Not great, by most accounts. (I haven’t seen it.) The best review I’ve seen is Baradwaj Rangan’s (via DesiPundit), and he is far from thrilled. He says Nishabd isn’t as good as Naach, which means it must be truly bad, since Naach was itself pretty crappy.

Congress government party officials in Uttar Pradesh want the film banned, on account of it being “against Indian values.” But does it really make sense to ban a film for flirting with a taboo — and not crossing it? We’re in strange territory here: somewhere between Minority Report and the Immaculate Conception. Anyway, it’s yet another example of a plea for censorship that is incoherent.

There has been a major protest in Allahabad over the film, where protesters have claimed the film is bringing in “Western values.” And here it might be noted that while Nishabd does seem to have a western feel for it, India does have a tradition of mature men and young women (or girls) getting together — it’s called child marriage. (That, incidentally, is a subject that the great V. Shantaram condemned some 70 years ago, in his film Duniya Na Maane. So this is not a new thing).

Two years ago when Aishwarya was promoting Bride and Prejudice in the US, we were subjected to this idiocy on Oprah. (My favorite part of the interview: Do Indian women practice the Kama Sutra?)

Now Fox Searchlight provides us with a tongue-in-cheek promotional interview with Kal Penn on The Namesake. Although this clip is staged, something tells me that Kal will be fielding similar questions from media personalities in the coming weeks. According to IMDB, the film opens this Friday, March 9. Brace yourselves, I’m sure we’ll have fodder to blog about.

We’ve heard of Hollywood investing money in the Indian film industry. Now it looks like the cash money is already flowing in the opposite direction.

Last night when I was flipping channels, I paused to see the trailer for Chris Rock’s I Think I Love My Wife. Now, it wasn’t the trailer itself that made me stop flipping (it doesn’t look anything I’d pay ten dollars to watch). No, it was the fact that the UTV logo flashed on the screen, billed as the movie’s producer. Yes, that UTV. The same Indian production company that made Rang De Basanti, Don, and Chalte Chalte is apparently cranking out Hollywood movies now, too.

Although I couldn’t find any mention of ITILMW on UTV’s website, a few google searches confirmed my suspicion. According to Rediff:

UTV inked co-production deals with Fox Searchlight and Will Smith’s production company Overbrook Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment [back in 2006] to create and distribute films worldwide - making it the largest co-production deal out of South Asia worth $37 million. The $14 million production, I Think I Love My Wife, starring Chris Rock, will be UTV Motion Pictures’ second venture with Fox after Mira Nair’s The Namesake.

Oscar season has come and gone, and Indian film came nowhere close to being honored with Rang de Basanti failing to even make the foreign films shortlist and Water getting passed over. Reacting to RDB’s poor showing in the BAFTAs (the British Oscars), actor Naseeruddin Shah had this to say:

“We just don’t make films of an international standard… I really don’t think we make films that can match those from other parts of the world. And I am not referring to Hollywood - we make copies of Hollywood,” [Link]

Criticisms of Bollywood’s lack of originality and quality are nothing new, but coming from Shah they carry more weight. When I make similar statements, my Bollydefending friends justly point out that as an ABD I just don’t get the genre-specific joys, but it’s harder to rebut somebody who has acted in both mainstream Bollywood film and alternative cinema in India, appearing in over 130 films with 3 Filmfare magazine awards to his name. Furthermore, his statements appear to be more than an indictment against Bollywood; as quoted they are a criticism of the entire Indian film industry.

This is not to hold Hollywood up as an exemplar of good taste and originality. M.Night won worst director at this year’s Razzies and this year’s Best Film, The Departed, is a less exciting copy of Hong Kong’s Infernal Affairs. [Granted it really won as a deferred reward for Scorcese, but still …]

What makes Shah’s criticism interesting is that he’s not saying India should be like Hollywood, instead he’s comparing India to other third world countries, saying that they produce better movies:

“We can’t match the types of films made in Iran for example, Poland, Japan, Mexico or Brazil, Vietnam or Korea… These countries are producing the most incredible movies and we are still plodding on with our boy-meets-girl safe, old formula. That is the reason I think our films aren’t taken seriously”. [Link]

Others point not to quality but to the lack of an adequate marketing budget (thanks Anil). The producer of The Departed had this advice:

… the financers who fund Bollywood movies must spend double or triple of the production costs they are currently spending just in marketing efforts and use it to promote the beauty of Indian cinema to a mainstream audience. As far as ‘The Departed’ is concerned, the promotion budget exceeded the costs of the production of the movie [Link]

Apparently the only surprise about Deepa Mehta’s Water losing out on the Best Foreign Film award last night was that the eventual winner wasn’t Pan’s Labyrinth, the consensus favorite, but rather The Lives of Others, by an impossibly tall German director with an impossibly aristocratic Prussian name. So there’s little gnashing of teeth or rending of garments in the Indian press today, simply matter-of-fact recognition that “India’s Oscar jinx” carries on. It’s also apparently a known fact (I never get to the movies, so I’m just repeating what I read) that the entire field for the foreign-film award was extremely strong. So no injustice here any way you cut it.

However, I am rather exercised at the Monday morning snub from the newspaper round-ups of red carpet fashion, which roundly ignore the gorgeous heirloom gold-threaded Banarasi sari in which Mehta graced the ceremony. Los Angeles Times, New York Times — no one paid the slightest notice, positive or negative, to the passage across the red carpet of the Water crew. Even my mellow Hank Stuever in the Washington Post — political, worldly, and queer as the proverbial three-dollar bill — ignored the desi contingent, his confessed ogling of Ryan Gosling affording John Abraham no residual love.

Oh well. Perhaps it’s all for the best that our peoples passed by under the radar, considering the standard-issue snark that’s become de rigueur in such coverage. Or perhaps coverage was the point — body coverage, that is: with so much exposed bosom and leg to take in — let alone Jack Nicholson’s creepily depilated dome — those who took cover in dignified, discreet outfits necessarily condemned themselves to oblivion in the morning news.

Deepa could have joined the flesh parade, had she wanted to match up against Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren in the “do they still got it?” division, a bit of a rigged fixture for a director against two actresses. The dresses were there for the wearing, but the sista had a much better plan:

They must have been throwing clothes at Mehta once the nominations were announced.

“Yes, they were,” she admits. “Chanel, Armani, Prada etc. … approached me. `No, thank you. I’m wearing my mother’s sari.’ For one thing, I’ll never wear a dress in my life: I’m more blue jeans and cargo pants. It was just a question of what sari.”

Her mother’s sari was part of her trousseau.

“My paternal grandmother gave it to my mom when she got married,” she recalls. “It’s gold but because it is so old (from the ’40s), it’s burnished. It’s very subtle. The gold thread is a weave not done anymore. It’s gorgeous and it’s personal. It’s Mom’s.

“And Bulgari wanted to do my jewellery. But I’ll wear my antique Indian jewellery because it goes with the sari.”

Read the full, friendly feature from the Toronto Star here. As for the Oscars, if you’re feeling the pain of desi exclusion, the Economic Times offers you here a kind of consolation.

We’ve all seen a movie and been inspired to change our lives. Usually, with me, that impulse lasts around as long as it takes me to get home and then I forget or move on. However, in Bharat Gheewala’s case [I can’t make that name up - what could be a better name than that?], he plans to act on this impulse.

Gheewala’s inspiration came from an unlikely place — the movie “The Last King of Scotland” which should earn Forest Whitaker an Oscar tonight. Watching the movie reminded Gheewala of his own experiences in Uganda over 30 years ago:

“It was a case of leaving the kitchen and the bathroom and all our belongings and just getting out,” he said. “At first no one knew if Amin had meant what he said. But when it became clear that he had there was real panic… “In the end most of us left with nothing. People knew Amin … was a killer and would carry out his threats if we did not obey him…” [Link]

Interestingly enough, it also made Gheewala, now a successful businessman in the UK, feel he should do something to help Uganda:

“There is a saying that when you prosper you should give something back to the land of your birth, the land that created you as a person and that’s what I want to do.” [Link]

Gheewala says he now wants to build a hydroelectric plant to generate electricity in the south of Uganda, and create a lasting legacy for his family. I can’t tell if he’s serious or not, or if this is all clever PR, but I thought, on Oscar night, it would be nice to spotlight somebody who at least claims to have been inspired by the silver screen.

One of the side characters in the recent documentary Wordplay is a desi crossword puzzle aficionado named Kiran Kedlaya, who came in second at the 2006 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (the Crossword Superbowl, if you will). Kedlaya is an MIT mathematics professor who specializes in polynomial equations. According to the interview on Cogito.org, he started competitive crossword solving in graduate school, and says the skill works the same part of the brain math does:

Is there a connection between math and crosswords? Dr. Kedlaya thinks that math, music and computer science – popular professions among “solvers” – tap into a similar part of the brain. Wordplay, says Dr. Kedlaya, suggests that the link is using language in unique way. In a crossword, figuring out the word from the clue is not sufficient; decoding how the letters cross is vital, too. (link)

This is corroborated in the film Wordplay, where it’s pointed out that a disproportionate number of the top crossword puzzle-solvers are people with computer science and mathematics backgrounds. It makes a certain kind of sense — though I might have expected verbal types to have a leg up in some ways.

The obvious issue this might raise for people is, to what extent is crossword puzzle solving a kind of adult version of a spelling bee? I tend to think the skills involved are somewhat different: while doing the NYT Sunday Crossword requires a large reservoir of arcane knowledge, it doesn’t require (or benefit from) rote memorization.

After the jump: a super-easy Sepia Mutiny themed Crossword I myself created, using a free service.

Since we have been talking about California doctors I thought I would share a news item that just came to my attention. Do you knows which desi male is in such high demand in Hollywood for his magic hands? He’s not a yoga instructor or a masseur, instead he’s Dr. Raj Kanodia, surgeon to the stars!

What do Jennifer Aniston, Ashlee Simpson and Cameron Diaz have in common? When Aniston recently underwent rhinoplasty, she turned to Dr. Raj Kanodia, the plastic surgeon behind Simpson’s and Diaz’s new noses. [Link]

Would you trust a bald barber?

Aniston’s rep confirms the operation. “Jennifer had a procedure done to correct a deviated septum that was incorrectly done over 12 years ago,” [Link]

While the official story is that she hated her original nose job and came to Kanodia for correction, nosy parkers insist that that a broken nose is just balm for a broken heart.

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that all these famous actresses are coming to a desi doctor to get demure little noses? I imagine him doing these operations with an cartoon angel on one shoulder and a cartoon devil on the other. The angel tells him to just do what the client wants, and the devil tells him to go ahead and do what he really wants - to give these women beautiful, majestic desi schnozzes instead. The poor doctor’s hands twitch, caught by conflicting impulses, until he leaves the room crying and his associates finish the surgery instead.

More on Kanodia: Champa And Tulsi Go to Hollywood

Our earlier post on him: Of Course…A Desi Doc on Dr. 90210

The big news in Oscarland this morning (with a Desi Angle of course) was the inclusion of Deepa Mehta’s Water amongst the nominees for “Best Foreign Language Film.” According to Canada.com, Mehta said that she was in a state of shock over learning that her film had been nominated. Frankly, so was I. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy for Mehta. She clearly put a lot of hard work and time into the film. And it is clearly something she is (and should be) proud of. I just don’t think the movie was that good. As I mentioned in my quickie review here, I thought the film was a good timepass, but in the end I thought it lacked the authenticity a period film like Water should really have.

Mehta’s third film in her trilogy of elements is set in 1938 India and revolves around Chuyia, an 8-year-old Hindu widow - brilliantly portrayed by Sarala - sent to leave her family behind and live in an ashram with other widows. The movie follows Chuyia and focuses on her interactions with Shakuntala (Seema Biswas), the de facto caretaker of the widows, and Kalyani (Lisa Ray), a widow who wants to start a new life and relationship with Narayan (John Abraham), a Gandhian. While Biswas and Sarala both give really good performances, I thought the third facet of the plot, that of the relationship between Ray and Abraham, along with the misleading sets a definite contributor to the mediocrity of the film.

Water will be competing for the Oscar against Denmark’s After the Wedding, Algeria’s Days of Glory, Germany’s The Lives of Others and Mexico’s Pan’s Labyrinth. I did find it noteworthy that Water is the first non-French film from Canada to be up for a best foreign language film (link). I think that is impressive initself: think about it, Canada submitting a Hindi language film as its submission for Best Foreign Language Film. I think that is amazing.

Given that many of the reviews of Water published in the mainstream media are quite positive of the film, clearly my impression of the film is not that of the majority. Nevertheless, I am in agreement with the reviewer who wrote that the many overly positive reviews are a reflection of people confusing an honorable message with a good movie. I do wish Mehta the best at the Oscars though.

The Academy Awards air February 25 at 8 PM on ABC.

Related posts: Fun With The Reviewers: Deepa Mehta’s Water, earth, fire, WATER, Water Is Finally Here, Is Deepa Mehta Back in the Game?

Just saw this over on Beliefs, Blackness, and Bollywood…apparently Mira Nair has signed on to direct the big-budget film Shantaram, with Johnny Depp as the lead and Brad Pitt’s Plan B as producer. Shantaram — for those of you unfamiliar with the title — is based on a Gregory David Roberts novel of the same name. The story revolves around an Australian heroin addict who escapes prison, sets up a medical clinic in the slums of Mumbai, and finds himself immersed in the city’s underworld, which consists of smuggling, gun running, and working in the Indian film industry.

I haven’t read the book yet (I’m just going by what I read in wikipedia and elsewhere on the internet), so I’m withholding judgment on the project for now. However, the details of this film so far are quite fascinating.

Take, for example, the story of how Johnny Depp managed to snag the lead role. According to this article, both Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp wanted the part, but Gregory Roberts ultimately chose Depp. Apparently it came down to the fact that…

“Johnny Depp has a lot of Indian friends,” Roberts said. “The way he spoke about them has made me realise that he was the best actor who could bring that love to the film.”

Following on Siddhartha’s discussion of the “Desi Angle” question, there’s an insightful piece in the Indian Express by Shubhra Gupta (thanks, SP) on a related question: is it possible that the only foreign films that have a chance at getting nominated for the Oscars are those that register as completely “other” to the West? This year, India’s official choice, Rang de Basanti, didn’t make the top 10, while the Canadian-financed Deepa Mehta film Water, did. (The final nominees will be announced next week.)

But Paint It Yellow/Saffron (that’s what its English-subtitled version [of Rang de Basanti] is called … didn’t travel too far down the road to the Oscars for that exact same reason: confused, contemporary youth exist all over the world. To a foreign viewer, the film is not ‘Indian’ enough, not in the same way as, say, a Water is: it is also, and this is not a well-known fact, very strongly reminiscent of Canadian film Jesus Of Montreal, in which a group of actors’ lives change drastically as they put on a passion play.

Incarcerated widows in a pre-Independence Indian ‘ashram’. Oooh, that’s Indian. Where else would you find little girls and beautiful young women and old crones with tragic backstories and cruelly shaven heads? It’s another matter that even today, Vrindavan’s widows lead lives of quiet desperation. It’s also another matter that major portions of the film had to be shot in Sri Lanka, which masquerades as Varanasi. But Water has the backdrop of the British ‘raj’, the horror of child marriage and ‘sati’, and brutal oppression. Can’t get better, can it? (link)

Gupta is right on many counts here. Rang de Basanti does have urban, middle-class kids speaking liberal amounts of English (as well as a white girl, speaking Hindi). What she’s overlooking, of course, is that while Rang de Basanti is a lot of fun, it just isn’t that serious a film. It doesn’t have the sense of gravity or “prestige” that makes a film a plausible Oscar contender. A much better choice, by far, would have been Omkara — which has the three A’s: it’s Arty, “Authentic” (though still legible to western audiences, via Othello), and most importantly, Adult. (I often feel that NRIs or ABDs should pick India’s official Oscar selections, since the Board that currently makes this selection clearly has no idea what it’s doing. Paheli?)

Still, I fear that the three Indian films that have reached the nomination phase over the years — Mother India, Salaam, Bombay, and Lagaan — do all fit a pattern: they focus on desperate poverty. While this is undeniably an important (and continuing) part of Indian society, it’s sad that only the exotic, impoverished India of street urchins or rural desperation is likely to make an Oscar-worthy film.

Someone might object: why should Indians care about the Oscars? No Satyajit Ray film was ever nominated (though I must admit I don’t know how many of his films were officially submitted). And isn’t this is the same Academy that gave Best Picture to A Terrible Bore A Beautiful Mind? But, whether or not it’s justified, there always seems to be a great deal of interest in the Indian media about the Oscars — despite rampant evidence that Americans simply don’t get Indian cinema.

Perhaps we should start our own awards? The Mutinies?

When the hell did I become a chronicler of Bollywood? I barely know a damn thing about the films. But the pulsating worldwide buzz of matters Ash and Abhishek is so intense right now, it has penetrated even my cortex. I surrender to the glamour and the glory. Consider how our dashing duo have spent the last three days:

Thursday: Star in glamorous, media-frenzied, movie premiere event in Toronto.

Friday: Star in glamorous, media-frenzied, movie premiere event in New York City.

Saturday: Travel, presumably.

Sunday: Oh, I don’t know… how about we get engaged at a private ceremony at Daddyji’s Juhu crib?

A couple of days ago the Indian press was still reading the tealeaves based on Ash and Abhishek’s “hand-in-hand” appearance in Toronto — actually, the pictures show Ash demurely at her gentleman’s elbow —

The buzz about the marriage of Aishwarya and Abhishek has become almost a belief now after Ash has been spotted more frequently in the company of the Bachchans in the recent days thereby adding more fuel to the gossip mills.

Well, mill no more! It’s official. Sorry, Neha and Chick Pea and the rest of you lovely ladies… Thank God we know another superfine Abhishek who might still be available. Having U.S. passport even!

“He is so sexy. Sexy man!” she screamed. [Link]

And this was no tween pining from behind a roadside barrier. The ‘she’ in question paid upwards of $100 for a ticket to the premiere of Mani Ratnam’s Guru, held at the gorgeous Elgin Theatre last night. As in, she was inside. And still screaming. Frenzy does not even begin to describe the spectacle that is a Bollywood West premiere. Short video of the madness here. Had TMBWITW not discovered my (sizzling) relationship with Abhishek (call me!) perhaps I too would have been a part of this much-hyped affair. Kaash…

Last September, when Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival, the story goes that far more people turned up at its screening than at the Babel screening which happened on the same day. Brad Pitt in the flesh could not conjure crowds like the Bachchans and SRK. The year before, Lisa Ray and John Abraham appeared on an Eye Weekly cover after Water’s debut. Eye is a highly popular Toronto magazine that provides excellent insight into arts and culture happenings. Its covers are usually dedicated to indie bands and other hippy shit. To think that John Abraham, he of little faith in barbershops, is now actually a part of that hippy shit…It makes me proud.

If there’s one thing Toronto does well it is luring film dollars to town. Hence the frothy excitement generated by Guru’s premiere among suits on both sides. Numerous Bollywood productions have used Hogtown as their backdrop and City Hall is finally realizing that there’s more to film than production. With South Asians poised to become the largest minority group in Canada within ten years, the domestic market for such films is - to put it lightly - huge. Ever so in love with all things multiculti, our Mayor Miller personally extended an invitation to Bachchan and Rai to grace the premiere with their fairy dust.

As SM regular Badmash notes on the news page, the new sitcom “Little Mosque on the Prairie” has its debut this evening on the CBC, Canada’s public broadcasting network. I hope that many of you Canadian mutineers will check it out and report back on what, from the clips available on the show’s site and news reports, looks like a smart comedy that takes on anti-Muslim prejudice without straying from the tried-and-true writing and directing approaches that make situational comedy work. Here’s the synopsis:

LITTLE MOSQUE ON THE PRAIRIE is a new comedy from CBC Television about a small Muslim community in the prairie town of Mercy, many of whose residents are wary of their new, more “exotic” neighbors. The series takes an unabashedly funny look at the congregation of a rural mosque and their attempt to live in harmony with the often skeptical, even down right suspicious, residents of their little prairie town. The sitcom reveals that, although different, we are all surprisingly similar when it comes to family, love, the generation gap and our attempts to balance our secular and religious lives.

You can get a sense of the show from the CNN report linked above. (If you can’t stand Paula Zahn, forward to 00:38 for the start of actual piece.) The airport scene is classic. The humor is pretty direct and there’s lots of room for slapstick but that’s what makes the format work. Also check out this story about the show from the CBC itself. It’s mercifully Zahnless but shows fewer clips.

Both segments introduce us to the show’s creator, Zarqa Nawaz. This sister is no joke! She’s a British-born, Toronto-raised practicing Muslim mother-of-four, who “had a Bachelor of Science degree from U of T in her hands when she realized that medical schools had screening committees to keep people like her out of the health care system.” She went on to broadcast journalism and film, and has lived for the past ten years in cosmopolitan Regina, capital of Saskatchewan:

If anyone in Bollywood needs a big brother to watch over her, one of my first guesses would be item-number girl extraordinaire, Shilpa Shetty. And lucky for her (and for us too), Big Brother will be watching her, and by Big Brother, I am referring to the UK television show’s ongoing celebrity version (thanks Jai).

The BBC reports yesterday that Ms. Shetty (31) was the sixth of eleven stars to enter the Big Brother house, wearing a pink sari. Because Shetty, who has appeared in over 30 Bollywood films, is an unmarried Indian female, attractive, and over the age of 30, it appears that they are going to focus on her love-life (you know, being single, desi, and over 30, the horror, the horror).

The film icon will reportedly have a dinner date with another housemate, in which she will be encouraged to flirt and reports say Ms Shetty - often the subject of marriage speculation - will dine at a later stage in the show with the housemate she finds the most attractive. Inevitably, Indian coverage of the show will focus on romance in Shilpa Shetty’s life.”

But it isn’t likely that any shaadi will result from the show. When responding to a love-life related query from one newspaper in the run-up to the show, Shetty kept it fashionably coy saying, “I shall marry but after three years. There is no-one in my life as of today. And, I am very happy living single, at present.” (link)

Correspondents, like always, are saying that Shetty’s appearance on Big Brother is bound to be hugely controversial in India where many would question its standards of morality. Maybe so, but these correspondents must then have missed some of her more risque-scantily clad-and-in-the-rain dance numbers that Shilpa has participated. Morality, Shmorality, it is Big Brother, and by the look of things already, this season sounds like it is going to be interesting. I know I will be watching, and with Shilpa on, I bet many of the two million plus British Asians will be too. You can see videos of the show here, Shilpa’s page here, and Shilpa big brother news here.

Kal Penn’s latest film, Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Raj, has opened poorly, at #10 on the U.S. box office. More than that, as of now it’s running an astonishing 0% approval at Rotten Tomatoes — the worst of the worst! (Even that Maha-Flop, Gigli, came in higher, at 6%). The original Van Wilder didn’t do that much box office, but became a hit when it went to DVD. But reviewers here aren’t saying things to the effect of “This was really sexist and adolescent, but kind of funny” the way they often do with gross-out comedies. Here, it seems most are basically saying “I wish I could forget the 90 minutes I wasted watching this piece of crap.” That spells no cult status and no DVD after-life: The Rise of Taj will probably just disappear without a trace.

Has anyone seen it? Is it as “bad as Badalandabad”? Is it as bad as “a day without sunshine”? Does it “not even compare three cup sizes to the half-assed original from 2002”? (Not quite sure what that means, but you get the idea.) The juiciest, ragingest five lines of snark I could find were the following:

Flavorlessly directed by Mort Nathan (2003’s “Boat Trip”) and seemingly penned on a napkin by David Drew Gallagher, “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj” has direct-to-DVD written all over it. There is unequivocally no reason why such an asinine, energy-deprived waste of time has reached theaters. I have had knee-shaking, ass-skewering hemorrhoids that were funnier than this so-called comedy, which doesn’t inspire a single laugh, smirk or smile in all of its running time. (link)

Go MovieBoy. (Oh, and sorry to hear about the hemorrhoids! Ouch!)

Personally, I’m not going to go see The Rise of Taj, even though I do admire what Kal Penn has been able to do in Hollywood. Neither the reviews nor the trailers suggest anything redeeming to be found here. And no, one doesn’t go to movies just to “support” aspiring Indian American actors. Really, the best support anyone can give Kal Penn at this point is an email along the lines of “make less crap, ‘kay?”

It has been some time since we’ve mutinied over Ms. Aishwarya Rai, the Bollywood bombshell who in her past couple of film ventures hasn’t had too much luck conquering the western film market. Rai, who made her Hollywood debut in the somewhat successful English ode to Bollywood, Bride and Prejudice and flopped in the poorly executed (yet visually exciting) Mistress of Spices, may have scored a nice role and hopefully a better foray into the west with her role as Mira, a sword-wielding warriorete, in Doug Lefler’s, The Last Legion. The film, which stars Sir Ben Kingsley and Colin Firth —Rai impressively receives third billing — is the story of twelve-year-old emperor Romulus Augustus, who in the midst of the fall of the Roman Empire, escapes to join up with a small band of survivors who make their way to Britain in search of the chotu ruler’s ultimate legion, one of which I take is Miss Rai.

“Dare to Be Daring”

I have to say after seeing the trailer (I know, it is just the trailer) Aishwarya’s performance looks quite good (link). The role is completely different than anything she has been in before, the cast is stellar (Ben Kingsley was Gandhi!), and Ash as an ass-kicking, sword handling fighter is a nice contrast to the usual, happy-go-lucky, Bhangra-circle dancing Ms. World that we are used to seeing. It can only be a good thing that she is moving away from doing the strictly desi themed film and towards playing a non-ethnic role. A well-received performance here, in an actual mainstream film, has the potential to really catapult her to the Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz levels, and on top of all that, Rai has extra incentive for this film to be successful, she bought the Indian rights. The Last Legion rated PG 13 is being distributed by MGM and the Weinsteins, and is set to release sometime in 2007 (I’ve seen both January 19 and April 27 as potential release dates).

Commenter “Midwestern eastender” used our News Tab to tip us off to the fact that the movie I blogged about earlier is now on-line for your viewing pleasure.

Enjoy your weekend and drive safe out there.

Actually, the new Shah Rukh Khan movie Don isn’t as bad as you might expect, given all the negative reviews (for instance). It’s also shaping up to be a box office success.

Farhan Akhtar is probably the most hyped director in the new wave of Bollywood film directors. Though he comes from an old B-wood family (his father Javed co-wrote the script of the original Don), Farhan’s first film, Dil Chahta Hai showed no signs of film dynasty nepotism. Dil Chahta Hai was considered a stylistic breakthrough because of the realistic (well, relatively) plot and its rebellious attitude, and it became an anthem of sorts for the post-liberalization generation. That sense of clarity or mission is missing here: in his remake of Don, Farhan devotes most of his writer-director energy into matching western action flicks, fight-for-fight, and stunt for stunt. On this he succeeds: I liked the first car chase, and I think the skydiving fight scene is probably a first for Bollywood. There is also a certain amount of Kill Bill theatrical viciousness here that’s novel in the Bollywood hero-villain iconography.

What most of the film’s critics have missed, I think, is the basic problem of identity this film symbolizes, a problem which is broader than just this film. Farhan Akhtar seems to be torn between two approaches: on the one hand, he could do a slightly tweaked version of an outdated version of India, from a “disco” gangster movie that wasn’t all that great to begin with. (Yes, I said it.) The upside is you get the warm-and-fuzzy nostalgia atmosphere, but the danger is the mindless perpetuation of the myth of the “glory days” of Bollywood and Amitabh Bachchan, as if we need any more of that. Or: he could make a slick, essentially imported style of action movie, with a few “traditional” songs added to appeal to the folks in UP (the “Mourya Re” and “Khaike Paan Banaraswala” numbers). This film flirts with both but doesn’t fully commit, which shows it fundamentally doesn’t know what it wants to be.

It may be a false choice, but the question continues to nag: will the real, contemporary Indian film aesthetic please stand up?

A very happy one-week anniversary to “Ugly, Ugly, Bollywood Fugly,” a brand-new and already fabulous blog that aims to chronicle and record for posterity the more egregious cosmetic and sartorial effects of Bollywood film. But of course it’s fabulous: Sepia friends DesiDancer, t-HYPE, and Filmiholic are all involved! Just one week and it’s already a treasure trove of gems like the one above. With material like that, there’s nothing else to say… except for the fantastic captions that our fearless hunters-of-ugly have composed. Welcome!

Ever notice how sometimes there are certain themes in your life? This month it was the theme 'everything is related to the South Asian diaspora via Africa route.' Chick Pea's mother fed me fried mogo w/ tamarind sauce, Yo' Mom told me stories of her life in Africa as a child, and a friend of mine just got back from a summer social work stint working in the desi townships of Durban, South Africa. I'm very interested in the creation of political ethnic identities in the South Asian diaspora and was intrigued by hearing these stories, and seeing the different diaspora perspectives.

Appropriately, I saw an early screening of the movie "Catch a Fire" last Thursday, and haven't been able to stop talking about the movie since. Starring Tim Robbins (as the German Afrikaner oppressor), and Derek Luke (as the freedom fighter Patrick Chamusso), the movie is beautifully crafted, telling the story of a South Africa man who gets caught up in love, betrayal and the fight for freedom.

Catch a Fire is based on actual events that occurred in the 1980s. While Nelson Mandela was locked up for treason in the Robben Island prison, the banned and exiled ANC was engaging in sabotage against the Apartheid government. Patrick Chamusso, on the other hand, had found a job at the Secunda Oil Refinery, the largest coal-to-oil plant in the world. He preferred his simple family life to the underground movements. His wrongful arrest and subsequent interrogation and torture by the South African Special Branch forever altered his outlook and led him to Mozambique where he joined the ANC and received his military training. He volunteered to single-handedly carry out the operation to blow up the Secunda Oil Refinery and as per specific instructions, only property was damaged by the explosion.

Robyn Slovo, who is one of the film's producers, and Shawn Slovo, who wrote the screenplay, are actually daughters of Joe Slovo and Ruth First, pioneer white activists who stood up against the Apartheid government. Joe and Ruth joined the ANC, while in exile. [link]

Maybe I'm just a sucker for movies with men who play roles as fighters against injustice, like The Motorcycle Diaries. Or maybe it's because in reality, Luke is paying for his on-screen daughter's real-life education because she is the daughter of an HIV positive African woman. I'm not sure, but both reasons make my heart melt for this story, both on and off screen.

Just in time for Halloween, SM commeter “Red Snapper” left a link on our News Tab to a new Pakistani zombie flick titled “Zibahkhana” (Hell’s Ground). From the movie’s website:

Five urban, contemporary Pakistani students plan to drive out of the city for an open air rock. On the way they cross some angry demonstrating victims of turbid, diseased water along the way and arrive in an area inhabited by a clan time and technology has long forgotten. Two worlds collide as the city youths take a fatal turn and land up in a quagmire shrouded in evil where the only fight is the one to survive. [Link]

Does anyone know what an “open air rock” is? If so, our next LA meet-up should be an open air rock too. Variety has more on the flick:

“Zibahkhana” (Hell’s Ground) might not be Pakistan’s first horror movie, but it’s almost certainly the first featuring midget zombies and produced by an ice cream mogul.

A co-production between U.K.-based video label Mondo Macabro and Pakistani production company Bubonic Films, “Zibahkhana” is directed by first-timer Omar Khan, a Pakistani film historian and the owner of a chain of ice cream shops in Lahore. Producer is Pete Tombs, an expert on Asian horror and exploitation movies whose Mondo Macabro video label has released such titles as Indonesia’s “Lady Terminator” and “Virgins From Hell…”

“We don’t have songs or comedy sequences, none of the prerequisites of the South Asian film,” says director Omar Khan. “It’s a complete ripping up of what’s expected from local productions…” [Link]

Well thank God for that last promise! Bollywood’s attempts at adding song and dance sequences to horror flicks have failed miserably.

If these film-makers are smart they will slip some incisive social commentary into this film in much the same way that the makers of Battlestar Galactica use a sci-fi vehicle to launch a devastating commentary on the Iraq war. For example, take a look once again at the synopsis of the movie I quoted at the top of the post:

Two worlds collide as the city youths take a fatal turn and land up in a quagmire shrouded in evil where the only fight is the one to survive.

Sounds like parts of the Pakistani/Afghan border to me. But enough serious talk. Let’s take a look at some of the movie production stills shall we?

The news wires are all abuzz with desi-related gossip about the couple we love to hate, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Pitt and Jolie, along with their three children, are in India to shoot scenes for the upcoming movie A Mighty Heart, in which Jolie stars as slain journalist Daniel Pearl's widow, Mariane. Pitt's Plan B production company is coproducing the film...Relentless paparazzi coverage of the Jolie-Pitt clan's visit has led the couple to remain holed up in Pune's Le Meridan Hotel almost nonstop since they arrived by private jet late last week. [link]

Brangelina starring in The Great Rickshaw Escape

Brangelina in India has created all the frenzy that the Hindustan Times Page Six thrives on. First, we had Angelina Jolie wishing she were filming in Pakistan instead, where Daniel Pearl's abduction had originally taken place.

Meanwhile, Jolie says she and Pitt are disappointed they are not shooting the film in Pakistan. Security concerns there caused officials to suggest they work elsewhere. So with the exception of a few background scenes shot in Pakistan, A Mighty Heart will be made in Pune.

"I am disappointed that we could not shoot the film in Pakistan, a country that I love and have visited three times," said Jolie in a statement issued on Saturday by Trevor Neilson, an adviser to the couple.

"They talked with people from all levels of the Pakistan Government and there's certainly no hard feelings. But it became clear that it was preferable to film in India," Neilson said. [link]

Now, we have Brangelina's security with an (almost) killer choke hold...

A bodyguard for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie manhandled a British photographer as he tried to take their picture at a hotel in western India, an incident caught on video by an Indian television station. On Saturday afternoon, when Pitt and Jolie tried to leave the hotel, one of their security guards caught a British photographer trying to take their photo, grabbing the man by his neck and verbally abusing him. [link]

And the infamous rickshaw escape...

The couple were chased by photographers, cameramen and reporters, forcing them to turn back after a 20-minute ride that took them past stores in downtown Pune, in western India.[...] Several traffic signals slowed their short rickshaw ride. At every red light, security men traveling in a rickshaw behind jumped out and surrounded the three-wheeler to prevent the media from snapping pictures of Pitt and Jolie. [link]

Oh, Brangelina. Welcome to the motherland. I'm placing bets that the next baby in their internationally adopted clan is going to be desi. Any takers?

Update: You can watch The Attack of the Brangelina Security Guard here! (Thanks, Manish!).

A quick-hit/public service post concerning two of the major annual events on the American desi cultural circuit. First, the South Asian International Film Festival (SAIFF) opened last night in New York City, and runs until Sunday. The films and events are taking place at venues around Manhattan; you can buy tickets online or just show up at the door. Here are some film synopses to whet your appetite:

“My Cultural Divide” - A three month visit to Bangladesh becomes a discovery of family and home that runs parallel with the filmmakers attempt to tackle the complex issue of global trade. Accompanied by his ailing mother, he takes us on a very personal journey to bridge the gap between his heritage in Bangladesh and his life in Canada. He connects his politics with his humanity, and weaves together a story that is both thought provoking and touching.

“Driving in India” - There are no traffic regulations and much like survival of the fittest, the biggest vehicle on the road wins unless you’re an elephant. Shot all over Northern India, “Driving In India” is about a sudden and fast-paced economical environment that has contributed to this challenging way of transportation, but it also shows the relentless optimism and humor of the people and the unwavering need to survive.

“A Cry in the Dark” - This film captures an extraordinary succession of abuses of authority and culminates in a horrifying, desperate act. She was an ordinary village girl but the popular movement that rose up in the wake of Thangiam Manorama’s death shook the foundations of a government. Reportedly raped and killed in police custody her death shook the foundation of local government and barely made the world news.

“Quarterlife Crisis” - Dumped on his 27th birthday by his college sweetheart Angel for being indecisive, Neil makes a silly bet that takes him on a wild ride through New York’s singles scene, accompanied by four testosterone-packed imbecile buddies and one crazy scheming New York taxi driver. On these madcap adventures Neil journeys from life choice paralysis to real life manhood. [w/ Lisa Ray and Russell Peters]

…and lots more feature films, documentaries, and shorts. Many of the films are by emerging or first-time filmmakers. Ali at Eteraz has an interview with one of the latter, Shripriya Mahesh.

On a less happy note, we hear from Sarita Vasa of ArtWallah, the decade-old Los Angeles desi arts festival, that the organization and festival are in jeopardy. They are launching an appeal for emergency funding. Sarita writes:

I like to keep track of the various industries where desis are making an impact, especially in New York City. When I was growing up, almost all the news stands were owned by Bangladeshis. Later, Punjabis became a major presence in taxi cabs in the city and gas stations in the suburbs. But the one I missed along the way had to do with Sri Lankans and porn stores [hat tip Manish].

In 1999, Tunku Varadarajan wrote an article for the NYT about Gujarati motel owners that contained the following throwaway line:

Sri Lankans, in case you didn’t know this, run most porn-video stores… [Link]

I did some digging, and the best estimates I could find show only a 10% ownership of the video smut business (I’m not entirely sure that these figures describe the same period as Varadarajan’s article, and they may be low since they came from within the Sri Lankan community). Still, no matter what the numbers, it’s a fascinating history.

The story starts, as all good New York City stories start, with the Mafia. La Cosa Nostra had dominated New York’s red light businesses for a number of decades but finally found their dominance undone by new technology:

Video’s emergence in the ’80s changed the Mafia’s porn role. No longer could the mob dominate distribution by simply running adult theaters and peep shows. Gotti and Basciano allowed businessmen without ties to the Mafia to move into retail stores. Immigrant entrepreneurs, particularly from Israel and Sri Lanka, multiplied X-rated video shops in New York neighborhoods from Greenwhich Village to Queens.

“The days of Mob influence are gone,” claimed a Sri Lankan businessman. “There’s no money in the business for them. Tapes used to be $100 each. Now they’re selling for $3:99.” [Link]

Confusingly, the same source also tells an alternate story, one where Sri Lankans entered the business earlier, working with the Mafia at first:

Sri Lankans worked for the Mafia through the 1980s and moved into ownership when the Mafia left. [Link]

This generates a great image in my mind, almost Benneton-like in its pluralism, of Sicilian and Sri Lankan mobsters working side by side to bring smut to the city that never sleeps. If this is true, a lot of hollywood dialogue needs to be rewritten and desi actors will start to complain that they only get roles as doctors, terrorists or gangsters. Sri Lankan script doctors will have to be hired to write lines like this:

“Leave the gun. Take the cannoli wattalapam .”

I found another viral video to add to the list of wackiness (Avon Lady, Little Superstar, Nike) we've been broadcasting from here at the bunker (thanks sleepy!). Let me present to you Tunak Tunak Jesus Jesus.

I don't understand one word of the song, but I'm pretty sure that the the subtitles are not telling me what the song is saying.

Manish did a previous post with other earlier video remakes of the song. It has since caught like wildfire. We have of course the original version by Daler Mehndi, A Japanese game show version StarCraft Tunak Tunak, and even for Razib, a Tunak Tunak Brown. There's even a Tunak Trailer. In fact, a search of Tunak on YouTube shows 321 videos. What is it about this song that can create this viral epidemic?

I think that it's time for the Tunak Tunak Sepia Mutiny version to be created. I'll get the monkeys in the bunker working right on it...

So maybe this is a stretch, but surely those who hold that Vedic civilization stems from nomadic people from Central Asia will accept that we desis therefore have a vestigial family tie with Borat, the absurd, allegedly Kazakh TV reporter who’s a creation of British comic Sacha Baron Cohen. As you may know, Borat’s movie, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, opens in a few weeks, after a rapturous welcome at the Toronto Film Festival and at various sneak previews.

The Borat character is quite brilliant, as you can see on any of the video clips here. Of course, if you were Kazakh you might not feel the same way. Unfortunately, Borat had to come from somewhere, and it seems that Kazakhstan drew the short straw. I feel bad for the Kazakhs; Borat tests their patience and sense of humor, and now, with the movie about to open in the US and Europe, the Kazakh government is highly agitated about the prospect that Borat will become their country’s global image. Here’s the spokesman of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry:

“We understand that Borat is a kind of satire, but it is just a pity that Mr Cohen chose Kazakhstan as the origin of his hero,” Mr Ashykbayev told The Times. “As far as I know, he has never been to Kazakhstan, although there have been efforts on the part of some people here to invite him so that he can see what our country is really like.” …

Mr Ashykbayev said that there were no plans to ban Borat from Kazakhstan. But he added: “I hope the companies responsible for screening this movie will show some responsibility and not show it.

“It is quite insulting to the people of Kazakhstan and it may create some accusations from the public against the Government for letting such things come to our country.”

That’s from an article today in The Times, which reports that the Kazakh government is bankrolling a film of its own, Nomad:

Without LonelyGirl15 to satiate our YouTube obsession anymore, the viral video land has been somewhat quiet. That is until The Avon Lady hit the inter-waves (thanks, MadGuru).

That's right kiddies, starring in this insanity of a rap opera video with a dinosaur Avon lady is our very own Kal Penn (as well as Superman Brandon Routh as the cop). There is a perfectly good explanation why the video is trying to be the next 'Lazy Sunday'-- because it is housed out of the same group of filmmakers of said SNL fame, The Lonely Island.

The Lonely Island is a group of filmmakers, founded in 2001 by Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone and Andy Samberg... The Lonely Island has created numerous comedic films, shorts, parody songs, and music videos. They have made three full-length pilots, all of which have been rejected...The site also includes a blog from Chester Tam, often referred to as Chez. The blog, titled "Chez Chat", gives humorous summaries of the site's updates. [wiki]

Watch, comment, enjoy. As for me, Chez's you tube videos and podcasts are my new inter-addiction. I cannot wait for Part II and some more Kal Penn in speaking roles.

Chick Pea mentioned recently that there is a new film opening on Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, who is infamous amongst desis for summarily ejecting Uganda’s 50,000 Asians in 1972. Most of the Ugandan desis got out, and many came to thrive in places like England and Canada. We saw this discussed in Mississippi Masala, and it’s referenced in the writings of M.G. Vassanji. Unfortunately, the 300,000 Africans (most of them fellow Ugandans) who died as a result of Idi Amin’s various military campaigns and programs of internal ethnic cleansing did not have the same second chance. This is a man who caused untold suffering, and who led his country down a truly catastrophic path.

A new film on Amin, called The Last King of Scotland (in reference to one of Amin’s more fanciful titles for himself), starring Forrest Whitaker, recently premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, and seems to be generating a fair amount of buzz. The Washington Post reviews the film, and while it’s too early to really get the film’s slant, it’s a little bit worrisome to me that the director is quoted in the article saying how he really wanted to show Idi Amin as a “complex” character, and his actions as partly justifiable:

“A lot of the things he tried to do were very popular,” said Macdonald, highlighting even the expulsion of the Asian business leaders as something that had resonated with Ugandans who became shopkeepers and business owners for the first time.

The Asians, expelled in 1972, had formed the backbone of the Ugandan economy before Amin came to power.

“Amin made Ugandans feel proud to be African, and proud to be Ugandan. He was someone who tried to get rid of the colonial inferiority complex,” Macdonald said. (link)

That last sentence should be a reminder to people that it’s just as easy to commit injustices in the name of fighting colonialism as it is to do so the other way around. I should also note that it’s distressing to hear the director of the film speaking so appreciatively of a truly brutal dictator. (On the other hand, perhaps he’s simply trying to make the film sound non-depressing for the media.)

“The Namesake” had its world debut on Saturday, at the Telluride film festival [Thanks Gautham]. We first blogged about the movie almost two years ago [We also blogged the casting call, but got no couch privileges]. The trailers [Quicktime, Real, WMP] for the movie look excellent, so I’ve been wriggling with antic