The ever-illuminating Shashwati has a precious find: the Hot Spot reviews International Gorillay, a paranoid Lollywood fantasy about assassinating Salman Rushdie (circa 1990). With disco. And batsuits. Aw, yeah! Praise the Lord and pass the cheese.
Rushdie plans to drive the final nails into the coffin of Islam by opening a new chain of Casino’s and Disco’s spreading contemptable vice and debauchery. Mustafa Qureshi… decides to call it a day with his day job at the Police station and induct his unemployed brothers to create a Mujahid (God’s soldiers) trio whose sole aim is to seek out and destroy the despised Salman Rushdie before he manages to destory all virtue and decency on the planet. The trio have a personal axe to grind as their beloved family cherub was recently slaughtered by Rushdie’s men while protesting Satanic Verses… The direction is sledgehammer subtle as is the norm for Punjabi cinema and the one-liners have to be delivered slowly and deliberately and sometimes even three times in a row so as to not miss their point!
Rushdie is eventually offed by a laser beam to the head from four flying Korans (watch the cheesy special effects). The Koran as a directed-energy weapon: Isn’t that, um, a bit sacrilegious? But wait, there’s a subtext — the film functions as sly literary criticism:
… Rushdie… is of course a man of unsurpassed evil and tortures his hapless victims by forcing them to listen to chapters from his fatwa-inducing book…
I can think of several desi authors, the reading of whose works would qualify as torture. Rushdie ain’t one of them. Ironically, this film was banned in the UK, a country which defended Rushdie against censorship for years. The ban was eventually lifted at the behest of the author himself. Apparently, Rushdie wasn’t too worried about death by killer lasers from levitating religious screeds.
Don’t miss Bubonic Films’ archive of cheesy Bollywood clips and Lollywood horror films. The scariest things about these movies are the hairstyles.
strange… I agree salman rushdie doesnot deserve all this, but religious fanatics see him more as someone who tried to hurt their religious sentiments rather than looking at rushdie as a talented creative successful writer who spares none and is bold enough to write on anything he likes including religion… surprisingly many comedians on late nite shows here in US make fun of everything including religion , politicians and no one issues a fatwa on them.. probably Rushdie being a muslim outraged muslims even more for writing on their religion despite being one of them. freedom of expression, freedom to write on anything one wants to write is not allowed in some parts of the world , there are plenty of examples even in the recent times like tasleema nasleen , the author of shame or lajja etc., though I didnot read any of her works. BTW Manish Iam curious about this statement from u “I can think of several desi authors, the reading of whose works would qualify as torture” would u mind sharing the names of those desi authors whose work would qualify as torture? thank u.
Where the hell do you guys find all this stuff…? It’s the most addicting read on the web!
“The Wall Street Journal is dinner, but Sepia Mutiny…that’s dessert!”
-Ankur Gopal / William Forrester
Thanks! We get by with a little help from our friends.
I went cross-eyed from boredom trying to read Monica Ali’s Brick Lane and eventually gave up, which is pretty rare for me. It’s like walking out of a movie, reserved only for the most egregious cases. I can’t understand why this tract was touted for a Booker.
E.g. there are several passages where the protagonist gets letters from her semi-literate sister in Bangladesh. Most authors would give you a paragraph or two so you get the flavor of it. Ali actually forces you to wade through pages and pages of sub-literate, repetitive letters written at third-grade level.
Manish, fyi, seems OM shutdown NRI a few weeks ago.
Oops, thanks. I changed the link to the blog he merged it into, Tablatronic.
thanks manish for the reply. Some writers can be very boring…I didnot read any of monica ali’s novels and based on ur impression on her style of writing, I will not read any of her books, thank u… booker nomination..ha..
I dont know why I didnot like arundhati roy’s booker prize winning novel ” god of small things” and had a hard time reading it , except for occasional brilliant paragraphs in the novel, the novel was boring for me. And I wondered why her novel won bookers prize.may be the judges look at something else that we are not able to catch.
Though I like vikram seths poems and style of writing , I did not like his suitable boy, he dragged it too much. I liked his last novel “equal music” better.so even good writers sometimes can write bad novels.
I felt the same way when I read another indian writers upamanyu chatarjees “english august” some ten years back. The protagonist staring at empty walls of a room endlessly with no optimism was just depressing.
very few writers manage to continously weave novels around interesting new plots in their novels. And very few writers watch carefully every sentence they add to their novels.But there are some brilliant writers like Aynrand too where not one sentence in novels like atlas shrugged is a waste and all the plots, subplots, characters carry her philosophy in every sentence.