Actress Noureen Dewulf plays an Indian sorority pledge named Sanagarvarapoopoo “Poo Poo” Gandosimi in this summer’s “National Lampoon’s Pledge This!” The film reads like a female rehash of “Van Wilder,” and stars wealthy porn star Paris Hilton as the sorority president. Peta Cooper (PC) interviews Dewulf (ND) for DesiClub.com:

PC: Does your character have a lot of “fobby” qualities?
ND: Fobby? Not really, I mean she speaks with an accent, wears Indian clothes and is really innocent until she gets corrupted.
PC: Does she wear deodorant?
ND: Peta – Shut up! (laughs) I kind of like FOBs anyway. They are cute and funny plus ignorance is bliss right?
PC: So you’re in this movie with Paris Hilton, how do both of your characters interact?
ND: Well, Paris’ character, Victoria, is the president of a sorority (Gamma Gamma) that my character Sanagarvarapoopoo Gandosimi aka “Poo Poo” is trying to pledge. So basically, she tortures me and the other pledges throughout the film, which is really funny. [DesiClub.com]

Even if it is funny, it’s going to be pretty damn hard to top the hilarity of Hilton picking up a cell phone during the sex scene in her previous masterpiece, “One Night in Paris.” (NSFW)

DesiClub.com: Noureen DeWulf — in hot company with Paris Hilton

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A whole bunch of stuff going on in the world of movies. Some we’ve missed; some yet to come:

• Amitabh Bachchan — Film Society of Lincoln Center pays tribute to the actor by screening 12 of his films (estimated total running time: 3683 hours). The undisputed king of Bollywood also appears in person on April 15 to talk about his long and storied career (estimated total running time: 3683 hours). (via BBC News)
• “Mughal-E-Azam” — Bollywood’s biggest film of all time is restored, colorized, re-recorded, and possibly molested (I mean, c’mon, they’ve done just about everything else to it). Film purists aren’t crying foul though. The production company behind the colorization says it was merely completing the unfulfilled dream of its creator. Playing in theaters now.
• “Continuous Journey” — Ali Kazimi’s film won the Best Documentary Feature Audience Award at the 23rd San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. It documents a period when Canadians weren’t as nice as they are today:

  Continuous Journey is an inquiry into the largely ignored history of Canada’s exclusion of the South Asians by a little known immigration policy called the Continuous Journey Regulation of 1908. Unlike the Chinese and the Japanese, people from British India were excluded by a regulation that appeared fair, but in reality, was an effective way of keeping people from India out of Canada until 1948. As a direct result, only a half-mile from Canadian shores, the Komagata Maru was surrounded by immigration boats and the passengers were held in communicado ­ virtual prisoners on the ship. Thus began a dramatic stand-off which would escalate over the course of two months, becoming one of the most infamous incidents in Canadian history. [Continuous Journey]

• “Morning Raga” — In their own words:

  Morning Raga is about the meeting of worlds. It is a story that brings the modern and traditional together, unites the past with present, Carnatic music with Western music, the comic with the tragic, fate and coincidence with individual choices. It is a story of our times where our worlds are interacting with each other. [Morning Raga]

  Even tougher to figure out is where it’s playing. As far as we can tell, it’s slowly popping up in theaters around the country.
• “Bomb the System” — The title screams, “movie about the digestive consequences of a bad batch of pani puri.” The official web site says, “first feature in over 20 years to delve into the world of graffiti art.” Let’s hope they read this, and find some way to combine the two. The film (Exec: Kanwal Rekhi, Prods: Ben Rekhi, Smriti Mundhra) opens in L.A. and N.Y. on April 22. (thanks, Abhijay Prakash)
• Kal Penn — Yahoo! Movies hosts production stills from the actor’s new flick, “A Lot Like Love.” Gawker, a Manhattan gossip blog, published this Penn-sighting from one of their readers:

  on the afternoon of sunday the 3rd, i saw kal penn (from the new superman sequel, the lead role in the movie adaptation of jhumpa lahiri’s bestselling book “the namesake” and the role of kumar in “harold and kumar go to white castle”) at whole foods in Columbus circle. he was wearing a knit wool cap, a black fleece patagonia jacket and a vest over the fleece. was it really that cold? he noticed me squinting at him, so i asked him, “what’s your name?” he replied, “kal.” i then asked him, “were you in a movie?” he said, “yes.” then, i asked him if the movie had been “harold and kumar go to white castle.” he replied in the affirmative and asked me if i had seen it. i replied honestly that i had not. He seemed to be annoyed and bewildered at the same time by my answer. i guess his annoyance was compunded by the fact that i am asian and the movie i asked about was supposed to be the movie that proved asians could produce a mainstream hit. well, it bombed at the box office. at least he has now gotten those two nice roles that i just mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph. [Gawker]

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Several tipsters sent us this NYTimes article about a new Indian film that surprisingly has not stirred up much controversy as of yet:

Late last month, a low-budget drama called “My Brother Nikhil” opened in movie theaters across India, telling the story of a gay man’s struggle with his family and his country after contracting the virus that causes AIDS.

Quietly, gently, “My Brother Nikhil” has tested the limits of the Indian cinemagoer’s sensibility.

Commercially, it is no runaway Bollywood blockbuster; nor is it meant to be. Rather, its impact lies in having served up a story about love and loss – sentimental staples of contemporary Indian cinema – with a gay man at its center, and having done so without kicking up the slightest fuss from India’s cultural conservatives. As one review published in the latest issue of Outlook, a mainstream newsweekly, put it, “The two lovers seem just like any other couple.”

Playing here in Mumbai, formerly called Bombay, and in about a dozen other major cities in India, “My Brother Nikhil” is part of a new breed of Bollywood pictures known here as the “multiplex movie” – appealing to an urban middle-class audience, peppered with English phrases, and easy on the song-and-dance numbers and potboiler story lines usually associated with Indian commercial cinema.

The Indian Supreme Court is currently reviewing the ban on homosexuality in India.

“My Brother Nikhil” has faced none of the protests that six years ago greeted “Fire,” Deepa Mehta’s film about two women in love. Actors and athletes have been plugging “My Brother Nikhil” in television spots, an extraordinary marketing ploy in an industry where few people plug movies that are not their own. “I care about my brother Nikhil. Do you?” is the punch line. “This film has shown it’s possible to show a committed gay couple,” said Vikram Doctor, a journalist here who is active with a support group called the Gay Bombay Group. “It’s passed the Censor Board without any comment. Theaters have not been attacked. There’s no catcalling. It’s treated respectfully by the audience and the filmmaker. I’m happily surprised.”

View movie trailers and listen to the soundtrack here. Continue reading →

• Shakti Kapoor investigates allegations. Finds Bollywood casting couch doesn’t exist.
• Stars return to the scene of the crime. But what happened to the stains? (Check out the photo caption)
• Aman Verma also caught by an undercover sting. Reaction here ranged from “Aman who?” to “Aman who?”
• Producers’ Guild withdraws ban on Kapoor. Realizes it shouldn’t throw stones from a glass couch.
• Indian government takes aim at the messenger. Messenger sees its ratings soar.

Previous post: Casting couch caught on tape

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Pencil or Outlook in the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles from April 20-24, 2005. The organizers haven’t released the schedule yet, but they’re showing the newly colorized Mughal-e-Azam as well as Morning Raga (Shabana Azmi, Lilette Dubey; playing in New York at the Imaginasian).

Here’s the photo gallery from 2003 with indiephreaks Rahul Bose and Koel Purie, and the festival home page.

I have grown tired of blogging about right wing Hindu fanatics and responding to ignorant comments so I am going to come back to some Jucier issues. Like Daisy Dukes for example. Sonia Kaur tips us off to the fact that the director of the upcoming Dukes of Hazard movie starring Jessica Simpson, will be one Jay Chandrasekhar who is also credited with the script.

In other movie news, tipster Deepa Menon sends us a San Francisco Chronicle article about Ash filming in San Francisco. I am breaking my self-imposed ban on writing anything about Ash because my only alternative is to write about Modi.

Crews transformed a historic section of downtown Oakland into a tableau of bright lights and cameras this weekend as Indian super star Aishwarya Rai, the queen of Bollywood, filmed her latest American movie, “The Mistress of Spices,” about an Oakland shop owner trained in the art of healing with spices.

On Sunday, Old Oakland became a veritable outdoor set — complete with adoring fans clamoring for autographs — as the Legogo bargain store at 8th and Washington streets was dressed up as the lead character’s spice shop and an adjacent postal store did its duty as a taqueria. A parked taco truck played itself.

Some passers-by were enamored of the 31-year-old Rai, who was crowned Miss World in 1994 and whom actress Julia Roberts — with whom Rai is compared in India — proclaimed “the most beautiful woman in the world.”

All you Gurinder Chadha fans can rest assured that a very handsome white gentleman will be playing opposite Rai. Oh come on. Actor Dylan McDermott is such a hottie. But the real question is, “will they kiss on screen?” I so care. NOT. Now I will reinstate my ban on blogging about Rai. The only thing that will get me to break my pledge is if a story comes out that says her passport has an “E” on it. Continue reading →